Misc adventure tip – always go back to tombs

There’s a tip in the game that says you should have your sims save up their simoleons because adventures can be expensive.  I’ve found just the opposite – adventures are very profitable.

After your sims have gone through the various tombs in the three World Adventures destinations, always have your sims go back to walk through them again.  The treasure and relic spawners within the tombs respawn throughout each tomb when your sims return to their home worlds.  Since your sim already opened all the doors and disarmed the traps, she can just walk through the tomb collecting everything in a fraction of the time it took to explore the tomb in the first place.

This screenshot shows portions of five rooms in two different tombs under the Celtic ruins in Champs Les Sims.  There’s a relic on the table nearest the camera, just out of the frame to the right in the corner of the next room is a money bag (the spawner is under a rubble pile the first time through this tomb), there’s a pile of ancient coins on the table in the middle of the screen, just behind that table (the small room that has a secret door entrance) is a gem spawner that sometimes produces extremely rare gems, and in the far background corner we can see another money bag.  Treasure chests will also be refilled, so open them all again too.

The only places treasures don’t respawn are inside sarcophagi.

More crazy gem prices

So I’m gathering more information for the collectibles spreadsheet and I’ve run across another crazy gem price, this time for gem dust.  Here are the screenies…

What is going on here?  Why is one pile of lapis lazuli gem dust that weighs 61.02 grams worth $115 when the next pile weighing 70.45 grams worth only $6?  There is some wild manipulation of prices going on behind the scenes here!

Sims 3 Supernatural tip – gem cutting machine

The Supernatural expansion pack added a machine that would let sims cut gems at no cost – the gem cutting machine.  While it did take the sim through the progression of different cuts from the most basic emerald cut through the moon cut (even the expensive heart cut is there, but it seems to be available right from the beginning of a sim’s use of the machine), the gem cutting machine did not impose any simoleon charge to cut the gems, unlike sending gems away to the gem cutter via the mailbox.

If your sim can’t afford to purchase one outright, head over to the elixir consignment store.  There’s a gem cutting machine there that your sim can use for free.  The machine is quite loud and will wake other sims in the house, even if they are separated from the machine by several floors.  Sims with the heavy sleeper trait may be able to sleep through the noise, but everyone else, including Bonehilda, will be awakened by its noise, and you may see one or more of your sim’s family members come down to complain about the noise.

One other thing I noticed with the machine has to do with a sim’s want list.  When you see this want appear in a sim’s list:

Your first thought might be that as long as you get a gem cut with the machine, it should satisfy this want, right?  Well, it isn’t quite that simple.  You see, in order to satisfy this want, you have to click on the gem cutting machine and select “Cut a stack of gems…” then follow the dialogs to select a gem type and cut.  If you click on a gem in your sim’s inventory and select “Cut [all] with machine…”, your sim will still use the machine and cut the gems, but it won’t satisfy this want.  Starting the interaction from the gem cutting machine is the only way that I’ve seen so far to satisfy the want.

But if this want does appear, it’s an especially quick and simple way to add 200 lifetime happiness points to your sim’s balance.  It’s not a lot, but it adds points faster than just letting your sim be happy.

A strange formula for cut gem prices

I’m going through adding a bunch of data to this blog’s collectibles information page today and I found some interesting information about the prices of cut gems.  For comparison, real diamond pricing is usually based on the “4C” method; jewelers price their diamonds taking into account the stone’s cut, color, clarity and carat weight.  In The Sims, I was expecting a simpler calculation because only the gem’s stone type, cut pattern and gram weight are displayed.  I was expecting that heavier gems would be priced higher than lighter gems within the same stone and cut categories, following some identifiable pattern.  However, there does not appear to be a direct correlation between a gem’s weight and its price, or if there is, the game allows for some wild exceptions.

For example, the prices that I’m seeing in-game for plumbob cut quartz gems seems reasonable based on the weight:

weight	price
91.77	§30
88.05	§28
80.01	§26
69.84	§22
67.80	§22

So the only outliers on this list would be the last two where they are the same price despite a difference of just over 2 grams.  But, that could be attributed to a rounding difference, depending on the formula that is used.

However, I also had a stack of plumbbob cut jade in my sim’s inventory.  The prices for those gems do not appear to follow as consistent a formula.  Here’s what I saw:

weight	price
70.08	§398
63.81	§384
39.86	§1,148

WTF?  Why is the third gem at almost half the weight of the other two almost triple their price?  And just to be certain, here are some screenshots of the plumbbob cut jades listed above:

So really, WTF?  I don’t see anything different in any of the descriptions.  Do you see a difference?

In general heavier cut gems will be worth more than lighter weight gems of the same type of stone, but in some cases the weight might not make a difference in the gem’s price.  It almost looks like there is some kind of 4C calculation being made in the game to come up with the price; now if only the game would tell me the missing variables.