More Awesome Than You!

• The base Grief penalty is -50 for 48 hours.  I knew that you could cut that to -25 by either putting the tombstone in the graveyard, or mourning.  What I didn't realize is that the two stack - if you do both, it drops to -12, which is a significant cut given the length of the debuff.
• A relative in another household dying off-stage incurs no penalty, but if your Sims see it happen, it's as bad as a regular household death.  The tombstone goes in the mortuary, so you'd better take a trip to the graveyard to Manage Dead immediately to cut that -50 penalty.
• You can click on portraits in the Relationships panel, and queue Call to Chat or Invite actions without going through the phone interface.  This simplifies queued actions that are well in the future; before, I used to queue a phone call, switch to someone else, and then forget whom the original sim intended to call.
• Gussy Up gives a mild (+10) buff for 5 hours.  Useful if you need a slight edge, but not worth doing routinely.
• Bubble Bath has two modes, Bathe Until Clean, and Bathe Until Tranquil.  The latter gives a buff that prevents all Fun drain for 8 hours, just like Freak Out.  But the time required is steep (1 extra sim hour above regular bathing), so you'd better have some serious pain to prevent.

 - Gus

I never seen the "bathe til tranquil" moodlet until today. Since it happened in the most expensive tub/combo shower, it that the only tub that gives the moodlet? My sim found a some expensive meteor rocks and I spent most of on that tub. I like the tranquil part, but do hate the time.

I have no idea, since I hate tubs in general.  For routine cleaning, I prefer the speed of showers.  If there was a cheap shower / tub, which there should be since I've seen maybe one pure tub in my entire life, I'd buy that.  But no, there's only one shower / tub, and it's the most expensive.  So I ignore tubs until I can afford that one.

The tricksy bit is that the "bubble bath" action icon has one of those grab-bars.  Grab and drag it and it changes from "bathe until clean" to "bathe until tranquil."  I never noticed this until post-1.3, where the default now seems to be "bathe until tranquil" instead of "bathe until clean."

 - Gus

I always use the 1000§ tub and the Tranquil option is always there.

I assume it's probably necessary to have the bubble bath set out on the tub to get the moodlet, right? May as well toss a rubber duckie on there while you're at it, since tubs can hold two objects.

Don't forget the Duckie!  The Duckie gives you a five hour +10 moodlet if it's in the bathtub during either a regular or bubble bath.  It stacks with the squeaky clean moodlet.  No bathtub is complete without a Ducky.

One thing I haven't determined yet -- if bubble baths will alleviate the "sore muscle" or "aching back" moodlet you get from exercising or pregnancy.  I suspect it does.

The only one I did know about was the one pertaining to the relationship panel.

Do sims ever take a tranquil bath on their own?  My sims have had a tub since they moved in and I've never seen that moodlet.

"Sims no longer automatically exit the bathtub before receiving the "Bathe until Tranquil" moodlet." came with the new patch.

The bubble bath will totally wipe away negative stressed moodlets. I had a writer sim who routinely would get stressed to significant degrees and the bubble bath always saved her. Of course I also added the rubber ducky for the extra bonus. ;)

She'd even get wants to take a bubble bath. I never had her bathe til tranquil though, seems this might be some new thing the patch enabled. I just had her take a regular length bubble bath and she'd be good to go and get back to the writing in no time. This was with a cheaper tub too.

I've yet to patch. Bathe until tranquil existed pre-patch.

Confirmed. My Sim has used this option a couple of times, after working hard until she was completely stressed out. I have not patched to 1.3 yet (and considering the list of new bugs introduced, probably won't ever). I can't remember if she ever queued it that way herself; I know I've expanded the icon via drag-bar for her at least once.

ETA:


I've used this to contact a Sim who was not, for whatever reason, available in the phone book at a given time. Makes no sense, but there you go.

I've had a Neurotic Sim autonomously "Bathe until Tranquil." It was the expensive shower/tub with bubble bath and the candle.

I don't believe I had the most expensive bath/shower, but it definitely had both bubble bath and a candle - perhaps the candle is needed?

Gussy up gives a moodlet?  I'll have to try that.   :P

I remember the first time I saw my husband clicking on rel portrates to call the sim.  I was like, "What?!  Why didn't you tell me you could do that?"  lol

No, it's not.  My cheap tub has bubble bath and a ducky, and Bathe Until Tranquil has always been available.  I don't know how it works now -- I do NOT want "bathe until tranquil" as the default for autonomous bathing, kthx -- but you used to have to expand the action in your queue in order to get the sims to prunify themselves while getting their mellow on.

I think the bug fixed (I hope anyway) is that if you tell them to bathe until tranquil and then do something else, they'll exit once clean and not get the moodlet.

I hope so, but that's not what the patch notes said.  I should be able to test this tonight.

So far as I can tell, the candle does nothing.  The Bubble Bath container is required to "Take Bubble Bath," which both fulfills the "bubble bath" wish and opens up the "bathe until tranquil" option.  Taking a regular bath only allows "bathe until clean."  The ducky gives a nice little bonus +10 moodlet.  Since you only have 2 slots available, you should never fill one with a mood candle.

The mood candles can be put on other surfaces, like bathroom counter tops.  They can be lit, but nothing seems to change while they're lit.  They appear to be ordinary decorations, so it's a bit surprising they are sold in the grocery store, rather than being ordinary decorations in Buy mode.

 - Gus

Could it be that they were intended to function, but some sloppy programmer borked the code? I've heard about other remnants of code that exist but for whatever reason don't function (can't think of one off the top of my head, will edit if I remember) - I've no idea how hard it would be to find the candle object in the XML and see if there are any properties associated with it.

When the sims are mourning, have another sim do the 'cheer up' option in the friendly interaction and the -12 will drop to a -6.

When a pregnant sim or crappy athlete has a sore back, send them to the spa for any of the three massages and they will lose the negative moodlet and gain a postive 'massage' moodlet.

I think the "massage" cure is pretty obvious.  It's even in the damned "sore" moodlet description.  The romantic Massage option banishes it as well.

 - Gus

I'm waiting for an object modder who turns the Ducky into one of these (http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/luv-duck/index.html), with a bigger buff for female sims.

They do give a mood boost. When they're lit, you'll see the mood bar has a throbby halo round it. You only need one, anywhere on the lot, to give the effect to the whole household.

The Sore moodlet gets interesting when you start messing with the listed cause.

I believe the throbby mood bar is Lifetime Happiness Points being acquired because the Sims mood is high. Mood candles are available at the grocery store because you can place them on the bath, I suppose.

In my experience baths do zilch for sore muscles and aching backs... which is a pity since many of my sims are too poor to go to the spa.

Would you? Please?  ;D

Don't encourage him. :P