Misc tip – instant metal smelting and a little more

So you want to send your raw metal ore away for smelting but you don’t want to wait until the next sim day to get the ingots back, right?  The simple solution is to deposit the ore in the mailbox just before the mail carrier is scheduled to arrive at 8:00 AM every sim day.

It doesn’t matter what town your sim is in when she sends the ore to be smelted.  In the screenie shown here, my sim just sent some iridium ore to be smelted in Champs Les Sims.  The mail carrier waiting for my sim to move away from the mailbox is there to deliver the iridium ingots already.

Also, send your metal ore to be smelted while your sim is still in the adventure world.  There is a chance that you’ll get back one of the magical gnomes from that world with or in place of the processed metal.

Magic gnomes are social creatures

If you have a garden gnome on your lot, you know that you can have your sims kick it over.  But sometimes a magic gnome will appear in a location that you can access and you can add him to your family by putting him in your sim’s inventory and giving him a name.  A magic gnome will often teleport at night to a location in front of a radio or television and turn it on (which will likely wake your sims if they are sleeping in the same room).  But did you also know that magic gnomes like to hang out together?

In this case, we see three of the base game’s Mysterious Mr. Gnomes, two Master Manchu gnomes from China, a Sultan Sam gnome from Egypt and a Graduation Gnome from University.  It looks like Sultan Sam is either dancing or wrestling with one of the Mysterious Mr. Gnomes while the other gnomes watch; since they freeze during the day, it can be a little hard to tell.

There are many more magic gnomes than these.  I’ve also read that the Generations expansion pack allows magic gnomes to create their own families, producing baby magic gnomes that progress through the age states and eventually die to leave a special gnome tombstone.  I haven’t seen this yet (maybe I need to have my sim find one of the female gnomes like the Vampire or Cracklin Nackerbell gnome), but the way that my sims collect these guys, it’s only a matter of time before I do see them.