Advanced Honey Making and Mead Brewing all in one powerful Mod Pack!
History players, off-the-grid players, and players who love to craft are going to love this. Today, I’m showcasing a brand new mod that enhances honey harvesting in the game and allows your Sims to use their refined honey to brew their own mead! PiedPiper has created a honey production and mead brewing mod that will allow your Sims to craft 61 new types of food and drink; 25 different types of honey and 36 flavours of mead.
In addition to the 60+ new craftables, this mod also adds three interactive custom objects, 3 different styles of display shelves for your honey and mead, a custom 10 level skill, new moodlets, a custom animation, and several new ways to sell what you’ve crafted. All custom objects are functional Off-the-Grid.
Most of the mod is base game compatible but Seasons and Get Famous are recommended expansions to have access to the mod’s full range of features.
The mod is currently in early access for patrons but will be released to the public on February 12th, 2022!
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Honey Production
To start producing honey, Sims can use the wild honey stump found in Build/Buy under Outdoor Activities or the bee boxes from Seasons. The honey stump can be harvested from once every 24 hours but there is only a 50% chance of a successful honey harvest. If your Sim is successful in harvesting the honey, they will end up with a basket of honey in their inventory.
Purchase a honey press from Build/Buy to start refining your honey! The Filter Wild Honey option on the press is base game compatible and allows you to refine honey harvested from the wild honey stump. Press Raw Honey is only available to players with the Seasons expansion; this option is for refining honey harvested from bee boxes.
Your Sim will do a custom animation while using the honey press. When the honey has been refined, you can collect the contents from the honey press. Honey from the wild stump will give you 6 jars of wild honey. Honey from bee boxes will give you 6 jars of an assortment of different honey types. Although there are a total of 25 types of honey, your Sims won’t be able to harvest every type; the type of honey you get is dependant on region. Some types of honey are native to specific worlds and cannot be harvested outside of that world.
Here are the different types of honey that can be harvested in each region:
- Mt. Komoberi – Alfalfa, Acacia, Clover, Heather or Multiflower Honey
- Henford-On-Bagley – Forest, Clover, Eucalyptus, Dandelion or Multiflower Honey
- Newcrest – Sunflower, Manuka, Buckwheat, Multiflower or Macadamia Honey
- Oasis Spring – Acacia, Multiflower, Chestnut, Macadamia or Avocado Honey
- Sulani – Orange Blossom, Clover, Sage, Thyme or Multiflower Honey
- Brindleton Bay – Rosemary, Acacia, Sunflower, Rapeseed or Multiflower Honey
- Willow Creek – Blueberry, Multiflower, Lavender, Clover or Linden Honey
- Windenburg – Pinetree, Multiflower, Tupelo, Wildflower or Clover Honey
- All Other Worlds – Sunflower, Acacia, Clover, Multiflower or Clover Honey
Multiflower Honey can be harvested in all regions! Clover, Acacia, and Sunflower Honey are also common types of honey that can be harvested in most regions.
All honey types can be eaten, used as cooking ingredients, and be sold for profit. Most of the honey types will also help your Sims recover from illness when eaten. Multiflower, Orange Blossom, Dandelion, Lavender and Linden Honey do not have any healing effects on Sims but all other types of honey help prevent illness in Sims and will also help Sims recover from illness if they are sick.
Some types of honey also have other effects. For example, Pinetree, Chestnut, Wildflower and Sunflower Honey will slightly increase your Sim’s Energy motive. Clover Honey is also higher in calories than other types of honey.
All honey is edible and can be sold directly to a Health Food Store for profit by clicking on the honey. It’s also tagged as sugar so it can be used in place of sugar in cooking recipes.
Mead Brewing
Honey is also the main ingredient in brewing mead. To start brewing mead, purchase a mead brewer from Build/Buy and instruct your Sim to light the fire. Once a fire is going, you can begin brewing mead with the honey you’ve crafted, along with various other ingredients in the game. There are 36 different flavours of mead and your Sim will eventually unlock them all as they build the new custom Mead Brewing skill. The Mead Brewing skill is a major skill; it has 10 levels.
All the ingredients for brewing mead are optional. Your Sims can still make mead without the listed ingredients; this is so base game players who don’t have access to the different honey types or other pack-specific ingredients will still be able to make all the different kinds of mead. Of course, it is cheaper to make mead if you have all the ingredients so if you’re looking to make a larger profit, having the ingredients is helpful. Pied Piper has also incorporated many of their own custom ingredients into the recipes. The recommended harvestables for those ingredients are linked on their Patreon page.
When your Sim finishes brewing a batch of mead, they will get a barrel. The barrel can be stored and displayed on the custom shelves that come with this mod. They can also be poured out into bottles. Each barrel makes 6 bottles of mead and each bottle makes 6 flagons of mead. The bottles can be sold instantly at the Farmer’s Market (L6 Mead Brewing) or to a Liquor Store (L10 Mead Brewing). Selling to the Farmer’s Market is more profitable than selling from the inventory; you’ll make 2x the profit from selling via the Farmer’s Market option. You make slightly less money from selling to a Liquor Store but you do gain fame from doing so if Get Famous is installed.
Here are all the different types of mead along with their ingredients and their required skill level. All recipes have a base cost of §120 to craft but having ingredients will reduce the brewing cost.
[table id=101 /]
Drinking mead will give a variety of different moodlets depending on the type of mead. Sims can become either Confident or Dazed from continuing to drink mead after the initial 3 hour Relaxing Remedy moodlet wears off.
Display Shelves
PiedPiper has also included three different display shelves with this mod to store your honey and mead. You can customise your very own mead cellar and keep barrels of mead stored on the large floor shelves. The two honeycomb shaped shelves are perfect for storing honey or individual bottles of mead.
Our Thoughts
We previously wrote a walkthrough of one of PiedPiper’s other mods, a Functional Loom, and we were very impressed by the complexity and detail of that mod. We knew we were in for a treat when we got the opportunity to explore this mod and we were not disappointed! We had a lot of fun refining all the different types of honey and using all the new objects to brew so many different kinds of mead. Just like the Functional Loom mod, the Honey Processing mod is much more than just a new functional object. It adds over 60 new craftables, 3 different interactive objects, a custom animation, a new major skill, new ways to sell our crafted items, and even three different shelves designed specifically for displaying these craftables. It’s basically a whole DLC pack in and of itself.
I think my favourite detail of this mod is how the different types of honey are region-specific. It’s such a unique and realistic detail that adds a layer of challenge to the mod. If you want to harvest every type of honey, you’ll have to travel the whole Sims world to find them all. It’s a really neat way to motivate us to explore worlds we may not have really bothered to play in before.
I also like that all the mead recipes can be made without ingredients. It was a smart choice considering that the honey types are locked to specific regions and not all players have all the packs containing the ingredients for some of the mead recipes. Base game players can still enjoy the full functionality of the mead brewer even if they don’t have the unique honey types which requires Seasons.
We can’t wait to see what PiedPiper comes up with next!
