"How does that work, anyway?" Ask me anything!

Adding to wikis is an annoying process. For a while I updated the wiki with stuff but it just takes too much time on top of the time spent gathering the data.

I would get a website but I do not have experience running one, a lot of content is already covered by carl, and I wouldn't want to 1:1 copy his information over, nor would I want to write it back out myself. I think a compromise with Carl could be reached (Like allowing me to contribute articles to his site?) but I don't know.

I don't have time to look into all those right now, but I can tell you offhand fishing bait is more about "using bait at all" than specific baits, though certain fish do look for certain size fish as bait or prefer a certain "type of bait" like harvestables versus other fish. Garden plants do not update properly on non-owned-or-active lots because they update at 6am and if you're not there at 6am, they do not update. Animals I think...? Will only actually work on owned lots, but can be plcaed on those lots and visited, and they are basically not doing anything unless you're there, so they're fine. And CAS bonus traits dont alter autonomy, but do alter available whims sometimes, and are mostly used to unlock specific interactions that check if you have the trait. The trait *itself* doesnt usually do anything. The traits are instead "accounted for" in other parts of the game, i.e. collecting something will check for the collector trait and award a second item, increasing relationships checks if it's a faimly member and you're a family sim and will reward extra relationship, etc.

Anti-aging face masks remove one day from your accrued age? So that's how Bella does it!

The anti-aging mask would make a great storyline for a middle-aged wicked sim who is trying to stay youthful at all costs...

Better than young virgin blood.

The spa better have it on stock everyday...

Fittin' to buy a case.

Thank you so much for the replies. It's honestly a shame how The Sims 4 doesn't have a comprehensive, Minecraft style wiki that explain how everything in the game works in a full detail. As for aging, this is everything I know from my experience and testing.

Every single way to reset sims' age to the beginning of the current lifespan I know of:
Base game:

• Potion of Youth
• Ambrosia (requires a Potion of Youth to be made)
• Cowplant's essence of life

Get to Work:

• Age Away serum

Seasons:

• Orchid scented flower arrangement

Romantic Garden:

• Overwhelmingly positive outcome when wishing for youth from the wishing well

Realm of Magic:

• Potion of rejuvenation

Paranormal:

• Absorbing soul scrap

Nifty Knitting:

• Giving some gift to the grim reaper. Forgot what that was since I don't own the stuff pack

Strangerville:

• Requesting life extension from the mother plant

Add more if you know
As for the bonus days in the elder life stage, here's how this works:

• The active trait (depends on the lifespan)
• The long lived trait from completing the bodybuilder aspiration (depends on the lifespan)
• Cowplant essence (10 days regardless of the lifespan)
  Positive outcome from wishing youthful vigor (RG) (5 days regardless of the lifespan)
• Passing "no regrets" milestone (L&D) (don't know how many since I don't own L&D) 
  
  

This is how many days the active trait adds in each lifespan:

2 on short, 4 on normal, 15 on long

The long lived trait:

8 on short, 16 on normal, 66 on long

As soon as you change the lifespan, so do the extra days from these traits

Extra days obtained from the wishing well and the cowplant essence are counted as bonus days and stack. This means that if your sim drank the cowplant essence twice and got the positive outcome from the wishing well once, they'd have 25 bonus days. You can basically make a sim that lives thousands of days like that.

All the extra days obtained stack. If you have the active and the long lived traits, you get the bonus for both of these + days obtained by the cowplant essence and the wishing well.

Wiki says that "no regrets" milestone also gives additional days but I can't explore that as I don't have the expansion pack.

I read somewhere that orchid scented flower arrangement may also give additional days, but I can't tell how many as I also don't have seasons

From my testing, sims with the cheerful trait seem to live longer but I cannot confirm that as MCCC does not list the days obtained that way

Important note: on short lifespan there's a bug where the bonus days from essence and the wishing well are bugged. Meaning if you have 10 bonus days, you actually get 20. EA, it would be nice if you fixed that.

So here's some starting information to for you to work with if you ever decide to dig deeper into the game's aging mechanics.

Yep, the game's not kidding when you get a buff after fully using it (You have to have it on long enough for it to work!) that you feel like you're actually younger. 

Hi! I'm relatively new to Sims 4 - quit playing 9 years ago & just came back last March. So there's a lot I don't know! Guides are very helpful!

I have questions about the special event/quest characters. I started a new sim when i started playing again in March & used her to play out the Time Travel quest with Emit Relevart, the special character who guided those quests. Rather than use the household I'd been playing when the Enchanted By Nature quest came out, I went back to her saved game & she played out most of that quest too. One day while playing her Emit Relevart came knocking on her door to visit, so the chatted awhile & played chess for hours. The next day she got the call offering her money if she married in 7 days, & so I had her pursue & marry Emit.  Strangely, he was in a household called Ashley altho no other sims showed in the household panel, & was worth 200k simoleons. Who knew my sim didn't need that pittance from the marriage challenge!

Anyway, he has programming to only wear his one futuristic outfit no matter what he's doing. He literally has no other outfits, not even a "naked" outfit. I gave him one with just his undies, along with all the others, but I have to manually have him change into them or he showers fully clothed. He will also head off to work in his undies unless I have him change into one of his everyday outfits, so he has no career outfit assigned to him. It's a bit of a nuisance but amusing at the same time. Is there anything that can be done to change this or anything else you tell me about his special character status?

Also Father Winter seems to have moved into his household. Things possibly got messed up with mods - he has 6 children so I've been trying out some live-in services mods. He's not controllable, he cleans & sleeps in the extra twin bed in the Butler's room! (This game is a blast but wild! BTW Emit is currently an Astronaut!) I have no idea why the mods would affect Father Winter though. Can kids autonomously invite sims to move in? (I doubt it but thought I'd ask!)  TY!

Emit has a special hidden trait called "isemit". You can probably remove it with cheats, and definitely remove it with mods. The trait is called trait_isemit and its ID is 406958. As far as I can tell that's the only thing that would dictate him being weird and removing it would mkae him a "normal sim".

Special NPC households are strange and I imagine if you're using MCCC it probably did something with them and shoved them together. The "Ashely" name on the household implies MCCC population is being used, I think- it probably tried to spawn a sim based on your settings, chose a Sim whose last name is Ashley, and then the game said "Well, no, we're spawning emit, so let's conform him to the terms of the filter that decides who can be Emit" (literal terms- the game has Filters for NPCs, and they have Terms, which determine who Spawns), and adjusted whoever Ashley was into Emit.

Moving in/out of unplayed households isn't handled the same as when playing, so "asking to move in" isnt part of it at all, it's all just kinda done in the background. The Sims themselves don't actually "interact" to do it.

Oh goodness, I did not expect such a quick reply! Thank you, and thanks for the very helpful information. Do you happen to have any ideas about how I could encourage Father Winter to go bunk elsewhere? He is living in Emit's house like a Butler would. But there's only one Butler along with a re-occuring Nanny so I can't 'fire' him! I know this question is not the purpose of your thread but with your knowledge I thought you might have an idea or two. The only thing I know to try is to fire all the help, remove the mods, and see if that fixes it.

I'll have to decide whether to actually remove Emit's special trait now or wait awhile. His weirdness is part of his charm & I'm having fun with it ATM. He came with a computer whiz aspiration & I got him to the top as a Tech Guru then switched him to Astronaut. When he maxes that career and his kids get older/move out he's going to become a scientist - which seems to me would probably have been assigned his aspiration/goal by EA if it hadn't been in an EP and not the Base Game. And I'm planning for his kids populating future games and living on in a Relevart dynasty. 

Thanks again. You are a gem. :-)

P.S. to anyone who might be interested - I had the whole family (except the toddlers) go museum hopping & when they returned, Father Winter had disappeared. It seems traveling off lot did the trick.

That makes sense about wikis. On the topic of websites - I guess I just have a different perspective on this, having been a Petz (the PF Magic version) player before I was a simmer? In that playerbase, personal websites (either hand-coded retro style, or made with builder sites like Wix) are common as dirt, and one of the most important modders in the current Petz playerbase (creating the most up-to-date branch of the univerally popular PetzA mod) has a pretty crude and rudimentary website for their mods and explanations compared to several other people making petz breakdowns, mods, utilities and "hexed" (petz term for CC) pets/clothes/objects, but a web page that's just plain text and bullet points is still easier for my phone to browse than a google doc masterlist, and less laggy when my internet connection is bad. Still, I get if you're not comfortable with it, especially since small websites look to be less "expected" as go-to mod/CC/info hubs with simmers compared to Petz players. I hope Carl would be willing to host your articles - I swear he's hosted articles written by other people before on his Sims 3 site?

Sorry I asked so many questions at once,  I just got excited. u_u. And werewolf temperments and moon phases would probably be better suited to one of your patreon posts than to a reply on a forum thread, anyways.

I hope it isn't annoying for me to ask one last question, but - I saw you mention in another thread that "community garden"/off-lot garden plants are handled differently from garden plants on either personal or public lots. Is it ok if I ask what the differences are?

I would love to know how the lunar phases effect regular human sims, and if the phases have any special effects on non-werewolf occults.  So far, I've only been able to figure out that stargazing with a human sim while the moon is half full gives a +1 happy moodlet. I haven't really seen any other effect.  I know that there were added images to the basegame collection of the Space Prints specific for moongazing as well but otherwise I have found no other benefit to paying attention to the moon phases without being a werewolf.