Sims 3 for XBox 360 bug workarounds and gameplay hints, part 2

This post is now too big for one blog entry! If your bug/problem isn't listed here, try the other post:

Sims 3 for XBox 360 bug workarounds and gameplay hints, part 1.

 
-- My Sim's portrait changed!

This seems to be a bug from interacting with a dresser and changing a Sim's outfits via Plan Outfit. I've seen characters revert to their earliest-age portrait, and I've even seen one character have the toddler portrait from a version of herself in another game that I didn't import, but had the same character name and gender. I've read online that part of the cooking career can make a Sim's portrait become a mysterious mustached man, but that may be PC-only as I haven't see it happen on the console for any level of that career.

To fix it, go to a mirror and choose Change Appearance. Just to be sure the game registers to change, I pick a different hairstyle and then pick the same hairstyle the Sim had to begin with (or if you feel like an actual change, go for it!) and then exit the mirror. The portrait should be fixed now.


-- How do I complete the Family Heirloom challenge? My painting is now worth over $8,000 but I can't get credit!

I had a heck of a time figuring this out, as selling the painting from Build & Buy mode did not work. While I've read elsewhere that the artist being dead can bug out the painting, that may be the PC version. I completed the challenge with a painting painted by a living Sim after a dead Sim's painting didn't work, but I didn't try the following method on the dead Sim's painting first. Whether your artist is dead or alive, if you have a painting that has appreciated in value over $8,000, do this:

Go to Build & Buy mode. Choose the Storage (moving box) cursor and put the painting in storage. Open up the Catalog and then open Family Inventory. Find your painting (it should be at the bottom of the list of stuff) and Move it to Sim inventory. At this point you should get the challenge complete message, even without having sold the painting at all.

If you don't get the challenge complete, try going out to normal play mode and selling the painting from a Sim's inventory. For help on getting a painting to $8,000, check this helpful forum post. You will want to turn aging off if you are trying to get a living Sim's painting that high.


-- Why does the food in my expensive refrigerator keep spoiling / going bad fast?

This is a bug that has to do with placing two or more fridges on the same lot, even when initially setting up a house and only having one fridge by the time you're done decorating. If you place a new fridge anywhere on the lot before deleting the old one, you may hit this bug. This applies to the most expensive fridge and the MinusOne Kelvin fridge from the end of the Culinary career.

The best fix is to take all the inventory out of the fridge via Build & Buy (to be sure it doesn't get deleted, I don't trust the inventory system after having lost books due to deleting all the bookshelves). If it's the MinusOne fridge, put it in storage. If it's any other fridge, sell it. Buy a good fridge (or retrieve the MinusOne from storage) and put in the kitchen, then transfer the fridge-stuff back into fridge inventory. This should hopefully fix it, I noticed a dramatic improvement after doing this in a game where food was spoiling pretty much overnight in the most expensive fridge. (Thanks to Placebo966 for posting the two-fridge bug answer here.)

Moving may also fix it if you're still having trouble with the MinusOne fridge specifically. I still have some issues with games where I can't seem to fix the fridge problem by the fridge-delete method nor moving, and yet a few in-game days later the fridge will often magically sort itself out. I have noticed that putting Pizza in the fridge seems to make everything go bad during buggy times, so perhaps it has something to do with it being a meal cooked outside the lot.

After several tests, one thing that seems to force food into spoiling, no matter how recently it was made and stored, is to leave the lot and load another area. I've noticed this in a game where the food was fine while my viewpoint stayed on the main lot or the surrounding neighborhood, but as soon as I loaded another area or followed a Sim out of the area, when returning I would find all the food gone bad.

A newer solution I have found for food that goes instantly-bad for no apparent reason the moment it leaves the fridge, is to take all the current dishes out of fridge storage via Build & Buy and put them on counters and tabletops. Have Sims "put away leftovers" on all the dishes, thus putting them back in the fridge. This should fix the issue, though it may return again if you save/quit the game and then load it again. Repeat the process of taking out and putting away leftovers again to fix it. This will not fix food that goes bad part-way through eating it, as that food's timer has run out.

Further notes: I have had issues with a game I "fixed" with the fridge-delete method, but after turning the console off and then returning again later to play the game, new batches of food would again spoil. They would go from Perfect quality in the fridge to Bad the instant the Sim pulled the plate out of the fridge, within in-game hours of being freshly made and stored. The fridge did not list the food as spoiled inside it, nor did the green odor smoke effect appear for the fridge itself. I noticed I had one dish, Dim Sum at Perfect quality, left over from when I had played the game the last time. That dish did not spoil, and once it had been used up, any new dishes I put in didn't spoil either. So, it would appear that previous gameplay-session leftovers can bug out new leftovers until those "old" (but not spoiled) leftovers are gone.


-- My toddler Sim refuses to potty train!

Does your toddler have a trait like Grumpy or anything else remotely-negative? You can often tell that they do right away by their mood bar being low for no reason at all. Check their traits, odds are you will find something like Grumpy there. Have the toddler play with a toy for a few minutes so he/she gets a positive moodlet for being entertained, then try potty training. This should work even if the toddler does not need to pee.

If you absolutely have to have a certain trait for the slot and still can't potty train the toddler, and already have the teen and young adult trait slots planned, save up points for the Mid-Life Crisis lifetime achievement award which lets you change traits. There is also the Change Lifetime Wish award which may be necessary if you got a trait you didn't want as the child grew. If you need a trait to fulfill a parent's wish, like Genius or Evil, check this post where that particular question is answered.


-- NPC Sims keep shouting at me that they are hungry, tired, etc. I can't even control them!

This happens when you spend a lot of time in a public place, say the library while doing the Homeless Challenge or anything else that would keep you in one area or building for a long time. NPC Sims seem to be far too stupid to take care of themselves, even with high free will on. I've watched them leave screaming toddlers outside their houses, to the point that the toddler will pass out from exhaustion. I've seen adult Sims pass out as well, and complain a million times that they're hungry. They seem to get stuck in the building with you until their needs are so extreme they finally remember where the door is and go home.

There doesn't seem to be any easy fix for this, other than changing buildings or map areas completely. I've tried actively killing people just by keeping them in conversation (which sometimes gets them stuck in the building long enough to pass out instead of going home), but so far that hasn't worked, mostly because the Sim ends up called to work eventually. The best choice for that would be an unemployed Sim, but based on how long I've seen Sims complain about food when I managed to get them really stuck in the building with me, it may be hard-coded that they can't die in that situation.


-- An NPC Sim can't even take care of their own kid(s)!

Related to the previous question, yeah, this happens and is massive facepalm. Weirdly enough, I've seen toddlers just vanish in the evening from buildings like the library. Even if they pass out and sleep late into the night, they will vanish not long after, from what I've seen. They're still in the game and should show up at home or with their parent(s) again later, so it's like they're summoned home magically somehow or the game didn't intend for Sims to keep their toddlers out that late.

Also, it appears that several houses where toddlers can spawn with starting families have no crib(s) or other amenities for children. Thus, the babies and toddlers will always scream and cry until they pass out from exhaustion. This will also happen with any new children, regardless of whether the mother is married or has moved in her love interest; Penny Aragon managed to have twins to ignore on her floor, but all that is in her house for sleeping is a double bed. The Idahos and the family living closest to the community garden are also notorious for this.

In my most recent Homeless Challenge game where I decided to have aging turned off, I noticed how badly William Connor neglected his daughter River. She's adorable and looked similar to my adult Sim, so once I finished the challenge, I went to his house and worked through the romantic options to marry him. I made sure River transferred to my "house" with me (it was still the park I'd made for the challenge), then once I was home, bought a new house and kicked deadbeat out of the household, and thus the game.

I could have killed him with something like the walled-in swimming pool method (edit: or not, found out he's Unlucky via another game), but didn't feel like dealing with two days of the Mourning moodlet. One thing I noticed is that River actually looks like an abused and neglected child once you have her, because the only thing her father had done was almost finish teaching her to walk, plus the other adult in the household was an enemy on her relationships screen, and the adult's child-age boy was a nemesis with most of the bar red. River has Insane as a trait, and it's no wonder!


-- Can I get a ghost baby/toddler/child by killing it?

Going completely against the grain of the previous question, it's possible to kill a child by drowning or fire, but a toddler/baby is too young to get into the pool and is fireproof. The only way to get rid of a toddler/baby is to ignore them until they starve so badly a social worker comes and takes them away. You cannot get children back after they're taken away, and the social worker will take all the children, toddlers, and babies in the household.

There is no way to stop the social worker, even if she can't get into your house. The children disappear instantly as soon as the message comes up that the worker is there, and an adult in the house will get an action added to their list of "be yelled at." They won't get the scolding if the worker can't get to them (like with a no doors walled-in lot) and she will just go away. Putting walls, swimming pool borders, severely-lowered terrain, water-feature moats, etc, around children will have zero effect in "saving" them since they just plain vanish from their locations and the Sim sidebar list.

Ghost children created by fire/drowning have 5 days to be a ghost and will vanish at the end of those 5 days, unless you bring them back to life with Ambrosia or the resurrection karma power.


-- How do I get a real ghost baby that can grow up?

Supposedly there is an opportunity to make a ghost permanent at level 5 in the Science career track. I haven't tried that yet, but I have tried another method. Note that the method described below puts the 5 day "Mostly Dead" moodlet timer on the babies, so there is a limited time to play with them. However, something in that ghost game seems to reset the moodlet to five days at times. It's not the death of another Sim so I'm not sure what it is, and it's not dependable.

The way I have done it is to kill off one parent and have that couple "try for baby" before the ghost returns to the netherworld. If you don't care about gender, it's really easy. If you do care about gender, create a backup saved game just before the couple "try for baby" so that if in 3 days time you don't get the gender you wanted, you can redo it. For tips on multiple births and getting both traits to be available, see the other post.

When you get the message "The baby is coming!" be sure to save the game. The ghost attribute is completely random at the moment of birth, so if you don't get a ghost the first time, reload the saved game and try again.


-- Can I kill NPC Sims on my lot?

Yes, both neighbors and townies, with some exceptions. Unlucky Sims will always be resurrected by the Grim Reaper (which from what I've seen so far is William Connor and Sofi Nelson as far as staple starting NPCs go). Pregnant women will bug out at time of birth and while they will continue to complain about hunger, sleepiness, etc, it won't be as often and they won't die via starvation or fire. Children will not starve to death, as the social worker apparently only cares about your kids and nobody else's, but they can burn to death. I haven't tried toddlers or babies yet, though I've seen them disappear in the evening off other lots, plus they are immune to fire and can't get into a pool, so I imagine it would not be the best idea to try because the worst case scenario would be having a screaming baby on your lot forever.

Sims who do not fall under the exceptions can be killed by either fire or starvation, and possibly drowning (kids too) but you would actually have to get them into the pool and then wall it in. When Grimmy shows up, the Sim will beg for life but will not be given a chance at the 5-day normal ghost limit a player Sim has, and will be forced to hop into their tombstone. They will actually leave a useable tombstone behind, but as soon as you load a saved game containing that tombstone, it will vanish. I have also bugged out a game by having the ghosts spawn at night like they will via the tombstones, then saving the game to a new file, and reloading the new saved game. The ghosts could not return to their missing tombstones at dawn and were stuck on the lot indefinitely.


-- Can I add the Grim Reaper to my household?

No, but he can be your Boyfriend and you can Woohoo with him! Unfortunately, Try For Baby is never an option. At maxed-out Best Friend status you can invite him to move in, but while he will do the animation that says he'll move in, he will just stand there afterwards and isn't added to the household or Sim list. You can't move to a new lot while Grimmy is on the lot, and even if you move right after he vanishes, he's still not in the household.

There are two Grim Reapers, one of which has four traits and one has five. Both are romance-able. Getting either Grimmy to high friendship/relationship status appears to bug out the relationship panel (the big list version) for the Sim who has befriended Grim, but other Sims in the household can still view their own relationships in that panel. The only way to check on your bugged Sim's relationships is to go talk to the person (they will be exactly where you left off if you have the Super Friendly charisma skill milestone and they are Friends or better), or they happen to be listed in the three random relationships that show up in the mini-side-panel during play.

How do you befriend/seduce the Grim Reaper? Use (or make) a Sim who has (or acquires) maxed charisma, the Super Friendly and Everybody's Best Friend charisma skill milestones, and both the Never Dull and Attractive lifetime achievement awards. While you do have the option of trapping and starving / burning NPCs to death, a much easier option is to have a second Sim in your household with the Unlucky trait, so either make one ahead of time or adopt a child and age them up and pick the Unlucky trait for them unless they already had it on arrival. You could make your Grim-seducing Sim Unlucky but you will have to do extra work keeping up on needs because of spending time swimming / drowning in the pool, so it's easier to have another Sim do that.

Drown the Unlucky Sim over and over again for maximum Grimmy visits. I find the best pool design for this is to make a pool that is 2 squares by 2 squares, then put a 1-square-wide fence box on the four corners of the pool. Put a plant like pansies or something inside the fence-boxes so Grimmy doesn't accidentally spawn inside there, plus it's pretty. Put a pool ladder on one side of the pool and have your Unlucky Sim get in and swim, then put the ladder in storage. Sims require 3 empty squares outside the pool (including corner squares) to be able to get in and out without a pool ladder, hence blocking off the corners with fence-squares.

My little pool of death:

The first time Grimmy appears and doesn't vanish immediately, do "Charming Introduction" if it will let you; otherwise, use the shortest-animation friendly social on him a few times. After that, I find that "Make Silly Face" is one of the shortest social animations in any of the options, so use that on Grimmy until he is maxed-out Best Friend. Then you can seduce him (you can do so sooner but if he isn't Best Friend yet you will be wasting time that could have been saved by taking advantage of the Everybody's Best Friend skill milestone).

Grimmy will only be on the lot for a short amount of time, so it will take lots of deaths to get him to Best Friend. You can reload the saved game from just before the Unlucky Sim drowned if Grimmy vanishes right after resurrecting them (or vanishes after banishing an NPC to their tombstone), or if you get the wrong Grim Reaper. If on the last death you just interacted with Grimmy, the available social actions will still be there as if he never left; this makes it easy to see which Grimmy you got once expanded social options are available, like the romantic Embrace option. As for knowing when the Sim is drowning, they have a nice warning for how long it will be until they drown under their moodlets panel when they begin to drown.


-- Randomly can't plant fruits / vegetables / items even with the right Gardening level.

I've only come across this in one heavy-gardening game, and there seems to be no information about it or it's very hard to find with the right search terms. Basically, a harvested item I should be able to plant (not a seed, but fruit, veggies, eggs, cheese, whatever) won't have the option to plant while it's sitting on the ground.

My older gardening game went through planting a crapton of items and never had a problem, and minor dabbling in other games hasn't hit issues, so I'm not sure if something "starts" the bug happening at random or what... because the comparison of zero problems in the old game and notable problems in the new one is pretty dramatic. One thing that is different in the problem game is that I've never used that particular home lot before, which is 10 Haskin's Way (the big plot in the same neighborhood map section as Fairy Tale Park).

One trick that sometimes seems to work is to wait until the next day and try to place and plant the bugged item again. This method seems to be very hit and miss. I've had better luck just trying new harvested items from the same plant the bugged ones came from, until I find one that plants successfully.

A method that doesn't appear to work is placing the item, seeing that it's not plantable, saving the game, and reloading it. It's still not plantable.

After more messing around, a method that seems to actually work reliably is to just keep moving the item around in build and buy mode until it's plantable. This may be an issue with the 10 Haskin's Way lot after all. Once the item is planted, it can be moved to wherever it didn't want to be planted before.


-- I want to have a nice garden via Gardening, but Fire Code is too high!

Welcome to yet more reasons why the console version is made of fail. Garden plants and harvested garden items in inventory are pretty much the worst offenders for Fire Code problems.

If you want to do a serious gardening game for the challenge points (and I'd suggest doing cooking at the same time if you haven't done the perfect recipe challenges), make a whole new game with two Sims and as minimal a house as you can get away with. Seriously, make the house small and ditch everything but walls, doors, a couple of lights at most, and the bare necessities for furnishings. Choose one of the small plots, preferably the one by the community farm. That one is handy for initial gardening training along with harvestables that are useful for fertilizer later. Another viable plot is the one by the Pity Committee playground as that has two nice fishing spots in the immediate neighborhood, and you can always just travel to visit the community farm. I would recommend playing with aging turned off so that's one less thing to worry about.

Sim 1, let's call her Lizzy, should have the Green Thumb trait and shoot for the Super Green Thumb lifetime achievement award (it may take a while to get). She will be your gardener. When there's nothing to garden, have her read gardening skill books. You can give her the Angler trait too, to help with the other Sim's cooking, and to try for the fishing challenges. Once Lizzy's gardening is really high, she won't have much gardening-related stuff to do besides tend the garden every morning, so fishing would fill time.

Sim 2, let's call him Fred, should have the Natural Cook and Handiness traits. If you didn't give the Angler trait to Lizzy, give it to Fred if you still want to help his fish dishes (higher quality caught fish make for a better meal) or try for fishing challenges.

Fred should get a job in the Culinary career, unless you have the Karma Power Jackpot, in which case forget working for now and just get money using that. Whichever path you choose, have him read handiness skill books until he can tinker a sprinkler to auto-water. Tinker it to do so, then keep leveling handiness until he can upgrade the meal quality on the stove (be sure it's the most expensive stove, too). Note that tinkering raises your handiness skill at the same time, so you don't need to be reading a skill book if there's enough objects to upgrade.

If you want Fred to upgrade other items in the house, do so. Be careful of electronic items as they can short out and electrocute your Sim. I recommend waiting until the next skill level to try upgrading those items, even if it was available sooner. Once you're satisfied with upgrades, have Fred go get that Culinary job if he doesn't have it yet, and then read the cooking skill book to get cooking skill to 1 if he doesn't have it already. Now he should cook his butt off for everything he can make. The more times you repeat a recipe, the more chance you get for the quality to increase. Remember to buy new recipes at the bookstore as he levels up cooking, and have him read them.

Lizzy should look for seeds around town, and plant enough Normal, Uncommon, Rare, and Special seeds to get a decent variety of plants going (see the Ambrosia question/answer in this post for more about Special seeds). You need to have a certain skill level to plant each kind of non-normal seed, just save the others for later. You should have at least one sprinkler to water the garden plants, and you can turn it on yourself in the mornings until Fred gets handiness high enough to make it auto-water. In my game where the gardening progress is very advanced, I can fit two of every kind of plant within the sprinkler's watering radius and my gardening Sim can still get to all of them to weed and harvest.

Remember that when Lizzy's gardening skill is high enough, she can plant fruit/veggies/etc instead of seeds. This is a way to get better plants, and there is a small chance she will create a plant of one quality level higher than the item itself when she plants it. If she has the Super Green Thumb lifetime achievement award, it will usually improve the plant quality most of the time, possibly every time.

Eventually Lizzy will start to get gardening opportunities related to delivering x amount of a certain quality of vegetables or specific harvested items. If you know you can't complete the opportunity quickly, decline it. It will come back eventually, and by that point you will probably be ready to turn it in immediately. This is how you get the ability to plant eggs, steaks, hamburger patties, and more. If you fail one of these key opportunities, you will never be able to get it again, so seriously, don't be shy about declining it.

If you get a Money Tree from a Special seed, keep fertilizing it every time it needs fertilized (you should do this on all plants anyways). As long as the tree is properly watered and tended each day, it will eventually become Perfect. Note that it does not count as Perfect until it shows Perfect and you harvest money bags off of it. Once you have the challenge points for it, I recommend sledgehammering it for Fire Code reasons (it's not worth the money harvest considering Fred should have a job and the Karma Jackpot power gives enough even if Fred quits/retires). As far as I can tell, the Money Tree is the only garden plant that will live forever if properly tended.

Fred should aim for the final level of the Culinary career, where he will get the best fridge in the game. Every little bit to help towards perfect recipes is worth it. Once Lizzy is harvesting high-quality garden items, especially perfect ones, it will be notably easier to make a perfect food recipe.

If you made Fred an Adult, you can make him an Elder once he's done with maxing out his Culinary career, by using a birthday cake. Then he can retire and get a smaller wage every day and not have to work anymore. If you don't want him to get old/retire, the last few levels of Culinary career aren't bad anyways. It ends up being a 3-day work week with relatively-short hours, so Fred can work indefinitely for a nice income.

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Is your issue not listed here? Try the other post:

Sims 3 for XBox 360 bug workarounds and gameplay hints, part 1.

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