Collectibles won't respawn
Collectibles spawn initially. Once one of my sims dig up a rock or a dirt pile once, that's it. It no longer respawns. Regardless of which sim I play with. This is happening in all of my saves. I've ...
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You need to be in the neighborhood for some time before they respawn. For fruit and flowers you additionally need to be there before 5 AM to be able to harvest.
My sim is practically living there. They still won't respawn.
As @jpkarlsen said, for the rocks, frogs and harvestables, it takes a considerable amount of time for things to respawn. Plants are fairly easily since you know the times they will spawn everyday but the other things don't seem to have a set schedule other that most of them will respawn once in a 24 hour period. Basically, you have to spend a lot of time in a zone for them to show up again. Leaving a zone and returning later doesn't work most of the time so I think that whatever timer is used only works if you are there. And zones in different worlds seem to have differences when and how things spawn so there is no one thing you can do or watch for in some of them. You just have to spend the time in a zone and wait. Sometimes it just takes a long time but they will eventually respawn.
One thing that I do occasionally is get a tent and just camp out somewhere when I'm waiting. Make sure you have something for your sims to do to kill time so to speak. Lots of the skill and survival items can be carried in a sim inventory so I always carry some of them along when I know I'm going to be a zone that my sims don't live in for a while. Like when I'm trying to complete the feather collection in BB or the new note in a bottle collection in Tortosa. I might spend a week at a time away from home when I'm doing that.
Hope this helps.
My sim has been on the Oasis Park site for 4 days with a tent and nothing is respawning.
