Forum Discussion
I have my garden all in planter box and there's no much space and I put patchy in the middle. Does patchy only work if he's in a open area and does my sim need to be at work for patchy to come alive?
- RandomBuzziness6 years agoSeasoned Ace
@Player_goq0p7lw Your Sim does not have to be at work for Patchy to come alive and I am only guessing about him needing space as he has always worked fine for me. Here's a pic of where I have Patchy placed in my test save:
In this pic, my Sim is standing at the edge of the lot with her garden in the background. There is at least one square of open space on each side of Patchy's tree stand, so not a large area but not super small either. Again, I am only guessing as to whether this is necessary or not. It took only one game-day after I maxed out the friendship level with this Patchy for him to come alive. He "wakes up" every day around noon and goes back to his tree stand around 5 p.m. The next time I play I will try to make his space smaller to see if this has any affect on him.
I always place my garden plants directly in the ground (I rarely use planter boxes or pots) so as an experiment maybe you can try planting at least one plant directly in the ground? To be honest, I'm not 100% sure that you even need a garden with Patchy. If there are no plants to take care of he will generally try help out around the house in other ways (i.e. clean things, take out the trash, etc) or he'll find some harmless way to entertain himself like watch TV or play with a computer. He'll never do anything bad as far as I've seen.
OT- Curiously enough, I think he counts as a household member when it comes to having enough beds to advertise for roommates. My roommate ad was cancelled shortly after he came alive. I need to test further on this.
I hope this helps & that we can find a way for Patchy to work in your game! :D
- PugLove8886 years agoHero (Retired)
@Player_goq0p7lw, @2FAB4YOU38 and @RandomBuzziness , I have not played with Patchy lately, as I have been testing other things. But when I last played with him he acted just as @RandomBuzziness said. I do play with planter pots and planter boxes sometimes, and he attends the plants in those just like the ones directly in the ground (at least when I last played him), but it is still a good idea to try planting your plants directly in the ground, especially if you don't have a lot of space
And I agree with @RandomBuzziness , that your problem might be because there isn't' enough room for Patchy.However, @Player_goq0p7lw and @2FAB4YOU38 , do either of you play on a console or on PC/Mac. If you play on a PC/Mac, do any of you use Mods or Custom Content (CC)? 🤔 If you do, please try the following:
1) Move the Mods Folder to your desktop
2) Delete localthumbcache.package file in the game folder.
3) Fix you game in Origin by logging in and go to Library, then right-click on The Sims 4 and choose the "Repair Game" option from the list. Wait until Origin finishes repairing all your packs and not just the base game.
4) Now, when you turn on your g❤️😃ame again, it will create a new mods folder that will be empty. Check to see if your game is now working without mods/CC.
5) Now you can try adding back items from your Mods folder one at a time checking your game each time to see which item is causing your game to not work properly. If you have a lot of items, you can try the 50/50 Method.
The CC creators will usually update the CC items and Mods after these updates, so when you find out which one is the culprit, you can get the updated version from whoever made that item of CC in the first place. You should try these steps anytime you have problems in your game to rule out CC/Mods problems. It is the responsibility of the Mods/CC creators to update their items anytime EA releases a patch/update, and it is the responsibility of the people who use Mods/CC to make sure they are using the most recent version.
Now, if this doesn't work, there might be another problem with your game, but it is best to rule out any Mods or CC items first! 😉I also think @RandomBuzziness is correct in that if you don't have a garden, Patchy should still come to life if you interact with him enough, and do different things on your lot, some helpful, but other times he quietly occupies himself , or he will talk with your Sims! ❤️
I also noticed that he animates around noon and goes back to his post between 5:00pm and 6:00pm. However, Patchy will have a different personality for each time you buy him. The first time I got him, he was Evil!!! I thought this was supposed to be a Halloween thing and assumed all Patchys were evil and didn't play with him until @SheriGR kept saying how nice he was! 😃 I thought she was joking until she told me that hers had some other trait! Since then I've never had another Evil Patchy! 🙌 I did have one with the Genius trait that loved to play chess all the time! 🤓❤️😃 Just know that if your Patchy spawns with the Evil, Mean, Hates Children, or even Hot-Headed he may not be so nice!😞 However, most of the traits are good traits or at least neural so there probably won't be any problems! 🤔Edit: I forgot to say that if Patchy gets hit by lightning, he will burn to a pile of ash and will be no more, unless you buy a new one! 😢
- DMDragonCT6 years agoSeasoned Hotshot
@PugLove888 You should consider yourself lucky that when lightning struck it destroyed Patchy, because in my game, a thunderstorm once happened and struck Patchy's stump while he was alive and running around the house! I could not replace the stump and the "lost" Patchy completely corrupted my save file. The only option left was to revert to an older save in order to fix it. There's a bug report on it somewhere, but since it's considered an "edge case" it's unlikely that this has ever been or will ever be fixed. Now, I always place Patchy's stump under cover in a shed or something.
- 6 years ago
Hello again, I tried moving patchy to my backyard but he didn't come alive next day. I also installed a new patchy for testing at crick cabana and checked few days later but also nothing. What's most frustrating now is that I cannot cancel my gardening service for some reason over the phone and he keeps coming so this might be interfering with patchy coming alive. I cleared 2 boxes of space for both left and right for patchy, this is becoming very silly and I got seasons asi found patchy so cool but yet he didn't come alive after I got seasons which I can only say that I'm left helpless now...
- 6 years ago
Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for this. Turns out I had it too close to my garden the whole time. I would have never knew this. Thank you so much!
About The Sims 4 Gameplay Questions & Issues
Community Highlights
Recent Discussions
- 11 minutes ago
- 42 minutes ago