Forum Discussion

Sirhc2269's avatar
Sirhc2269
Seasoned Rookie
3 years ago
Solved

Where is my Dog?

Where did my Dog go? 

Ok so i have a sim that i have aged up since infant & his sim parents got him a dog for one of his birthdays. That sim has leveled up that dog and had trained him alot. After he graduated from high school, he went to university. In university you cant bring anyone with you, so he stayed at a friends house where he was staying before. This was a sim house that i have played A lot. While at university my dog would visit me, then apparently at some point the Sim he was staying with died. I have no reason why that Sim died, just that my sim started mourning their loss. Yes I am sad/mad that a Sim that I loved died while i was not even playing them. However, i am a little bit more upset that i now can't find my dog. In game the sim at university was that dogs companion, owner, familiar & caretaker. It was his best friend and partner in crime, his Ride or Die. 

So where did he go and how can i get him back, when that Sim died. The dog should have just been returned to me & since i am not allowed to have non students at university. I should have been made to move him to another sims house or something. Or when that sim dies the dog could have gone back to the Sim in university parent's house. 

Can someone please help, the loss of this dog is kind of stressing me out. Please don't just tell me that the dog is gone. 

  • @Sirhc2269Aww, I'm so sorry about your furry friend. I love my pixel pets too but unfortunately if the dog was at a solo Sims home and that Sim died... pets can't remain as a solo household and the game automatically deletes them. It's the same with babies and toddlers. You don't get a notification if a character is automatically culled, just if they die.
    The game understands rules of ownership by the current household, not the first point the character joined the game unfortunately.

    So as I see it your options are if you have an old save and could find the dog sitter's household and then add it to the library/gallery from a previous save, you could then pick it up in your current save but it would be like a new character if I remember correctly. Or you could start playing your game again from that previous save point and add some extra characters to the dog sitter's household to be on the safe side or move him to the family household and turn off death/neighbourhood stories.
    This is why I play with death off and Neighbourhood stories off to stop this from happening.
    Or you could just create the dog again and tell yourself this never happened. Add it to another friend or family house and build the relationship again, then once your Sim leaves Uni just go to Manage Worlds and split household to move the dog to your Sim's household again. That's what I have done when I've lost Sims before.
    I wish we could do that in real life, just hop into CAS and recreate a beloved pet!😞

    Edit: you can take pets to university with you if you live in your own housing. Either in one of the Britechester lots or you can change the status of one of the on campus buildings to Residential and live there with pets. Darkwing House is one I use a lot and my most recent Sim lived in Briny Tower which I edited to be a residential apartment, she has pets there.

8 Replies

  • @Sirhc2269Aww, I'm so sorry about your furry friend. I love my pixel pets too but unfortunately if the dog was at a solo Sims home and that Sim died... pets can't remain as a solo household and the game automatically deletes them. It's the same with babies and toddlers. You don't get a notification if a character is automatically culled, just if they die.
    The game understands rules of ownership by the current household, not the first point the character joined the game unfortunately.

    So as I see it your options are if you have an old save and could find the dog sitter's household and then add it to the library/gallery from a previous save, you could then pick it up in your current save but it would be like a new character if I remember correctly. Or you could start playing your game again from that previous save point and add some extra characters to the dog sitter's household to be on the safe side or move him to the family household and turn off death/neighbourhood stories.
    This is why I play with death off and Neighbourhood stories off to stop this from happening.
    Or you could just create the dog again and tell yourself this never happened. Add it to another friend or family house and build the relationship again, then once your Sim leaves Uni just go to Manage Worlds and split household to move the dog to your Sim's household again. That's what I have done when I've lost Sims before.
    I wish we could do that in real life, just hop into CAS and recreate a beloved pet!😞

    Edit: you can take pets to university with you if you live in your own housing. Either in one of the Britechester lots or you can change the status of one of the on campus buildings to Residential and live there with pets. Darkwing House is one I use a lot and my most recent Sim lived in Briny Tower which I edited to be a residential apartment, she has pets there.

  • Sirhc2269's avatar
    Sirhc2269
    Seasoned Rookie
    3 years ago

    @simsplayer818

    TY, i kind of figured that was the answer but i didn't want to accept it. Also i had meant to change the Uni lot to residential but i forgot to before i started, however i also wanted to see what it was like as student housing before i switched it. I was hoping that since the release of cats and dogs they would have fixed that and i was just missing something. However, thank you again for that reply & thank for letting me know that death can be turned off completely. 

  • simsplayer818's avatar
    simsplayer818
    Hero
    3 years ago
    @Sirhc2269 I wish I could have given you a happier solution! I get what it's like after losing about 200 Sims due to a bug. We're very invested in our creations.
    Yes you can avoid deaths from age and from Neighbourhood Stories by adjusting your settings/game options. Accidental deaths for played Sims will still happen occasionally but should no longer happen with your unplayed households.
    I run 2 save games incase of accidental deaths so I can get my characters back.
  • Apologies.  What I said in the spoiler only applies if you're on PC/Mac and use MCCC. :-(

    Spoiler

    @Sirhc2269 @simsplayer818    Hello!  I have a slight correction.  Pets are only culled when they're in an unplayed household in the Other Households section and all the human sims have died.  If the household with the pets is in My Households, they are protected from culling.  When the last human sim in a household that is in the My Households section dies, then the pets will be automatically adopted by a random household in the game; you'll get a notification with the name of the adoptive household(s).  Your active sim will retain any relationship they have with the pets.  At that point, you could go to Manage Households to find the household that adopted the pets and move them into whatever household you want.  Again, for this to be an option, the household must be in your My Households section.

    You can move a household to My Households either by playing them or by finding them using the Manage Households / Other Households tab and using the heart icon.

    Note: there is a limit on how many households you can protect in My Households which can be altered using Game Options > Gameplay > Maximum Sim Count.

  • daikoyu's avatar
    daikoyu
    Seasoned Ace
    3 years ago

    @JonaO703 

    Just to clarity this is in a vanilla game the case, yes? My last stand is that pets/toddler/children from favourite households still get culled if all Sims above kids die in a vanilla game. I know MCCC have measure to forbid this and that these pets/toddlers/children get adopted with MCCC.

    Because I don’t play with NS in Vanilla (if I then play this savegame again after the fix all this bug) I only know dead mechanics in my modded game and there only random generate townies are allowed to die with NS. (I don’t use MCCCC) So of course all their pets/baby/toddlers/children get culled.

    It would be definitely a pleasant surprise if this is now a vanilla mechanic, especially for console/vanilla players.

  • simsplayer818's avatar
    simsplayer818
    Hero
    3 years ago
    @JonaO703 That's interesting, are you on PC?
    I've never had that happen on console with Sims 4, although it should all be the same. They've just been culled whichever household category they were in. Except for in Sims 3 where they remained as a solo household.
    If it's supposed to work that way, I'm wondering if you have helped me identify another game bug I didn't know I had.
  • JonaO703's avatar
    JonaO703
    Hero
    3 years ago

    @daikoyu   You're right!  I could've sworn My Households were protected but I tested it just now and this isn't the case without MCCC.  :-(

    @simsplayer818   Sorry about that.  I edited my post to reflect the need for the MCCC mod.

  • simsplayer818's avatar
    simsplayer818
    Hero
    3 years ago
    @JonaO703 You raise an interesting point still. This is something that IMO would be welcome on Console and another example of the benefits of Mods, not just in fixing things but in adding helpful features.