Scared of frogs? Don’t be – at least not in The Sims 4!
The latest SDX drop for The Sims 4 has added a new scenario to the game called Frog Fanatic! This limited-time scenario is all about collecting and breeding lots of different types of frogs!
We’re going to walk you through how to complete this scenario!
Getting Started
You’ll notice the scenarios have gotten a bit of a revamp. Along with lots more new scenarios, there are now difficulty ratings on each scenario to give you an idea of the time and effort it will take players to complete them. The Frog Fanatic scenario is listed as an Intermediate scenario.
This is a limited time scenario that runs until May 24th, 2022, so players have just under a month to start this scenario before it’s gone. In-progress scenarios can still be played after their cut off date so if you’re pressed for time this month, just make sure you start this scenario before May 24th. You’ll be able to go back to it anytime after.
The scenario description states that your Sim is obsessed with frogs and is on a personal mission to collect and breed as many different types of frogs as they can. The household requirements are simple; you just need one Young Adult or older Sim. When you start the scenario, your Sim will start out with a small amount of Cooking and Fishing skill.
Like the Plant-A-Sim Scenario, the goals on the info screen are weirdly vague but once you get in-game, you’ll see that there is a pretty extensive list of specific goals your Sim will need to complete. Your Sim must complete all the goals to finish the scenario:
- Catch a frog from a log
- Catch a frog from a pond
- Catch a frog from a water pump
- Breed 9 frogs
- Cook Boiling Frog Hot Pot
- Fish while using a frog as bait
- Catch or breed 8 unique Common frogs
- Catch or breed 6 unique Uncommon frogs
- Catch or breed 4 unique Rare frogs
We recommend using a Sim with the Geek, Creative, Loves Outdoors traits, and The Curator aspiration. The Geek trait and the Collector trait that comes with the aspiration will help your Sim find rare frogs more often. The Creative trait will make your Sim Inspired often which will boost their Cooking skill. The Loves Outdoors trait will provide your Sim with a Happy buff to help keep their mood high while they’re fishing.
Catching Frogs
We couldn’t help ourselves. We decided to troll you guys just a little longer and use the infamous Callia Maebey (aka: Ring Ring Girl) for this scenario. We’d say we’re sorry. If we were. But we’re not.
Starting this scenario is easy enough. Just get out there and start catching frogs! You won’t be able to breed the rest of the frogs you’re missing until you’ve caught a decent variety out in the wild to breed with, first.
You’ll need to catch a frog from a pond, a log, and a water pump so you might as well start there. Logs can be found all over Willow Creek and water pumps can be found around Oasis Springs, particularly around the Desert Bloom park. Searching a log or a water pump guarantees a frog but logs disappear after being searched and water pumps have a cooldown where you can’t search them again for a while, so you won’t be able to get unlimited amounts of frogs from them.
There is a pond located both at Magnolia Blossom park in Willow Creek and Desert Bloom park in Oasis Springs. There is also a pond in the Sylvan Glade, a secret location you can reach by interacting with the mysterious tree in Willow Creek’s Foundry Cove neighbourhood. It’s the large gnarled tree with mushroom growth next to the Crick Cabana house.
Your Sim can catch frogs at any of these ponds but they are slippery creatures and your Sim is not guaranteed to find one every time. There is no cooldown for catching frogs from ponds so you can stack up the interaction and do it repeatedly. You can theoretically complete the entire frog collection this way but it’s actually easier to breed the ones you’re missing after you’ve caught a decent variety to use as breeding stock. Plus, you will have to breed to complete all the scenario goals.
Cooking and Fishing with Frogs
Before you get into breeding, there are some more straight-forward goals to focus on, first. One is to cook Boiling Frog Hot Pot. The other is to fish using a frog as bait. They’re both easy to accomplish but do require you to invest some time into skill building.
Boiling Frog Hot Pot is a level 7 Cooking recipe. Your Sim starts with Cooking skill level 2, so you’ll need to spend some time in the kitchen. You can boost your skill gain by adding the Homey lot trait to your home and adding objects to the kitchen with an Inspiring aura. Cloudgazing, Stargazing, and watching the Cooking Network are also easy, quick activities to put Sims in an Inspired mood. Once your Sim is skilled enough, just have them cook Boiling Frog Hot Pot using one of their frogs to complete that scenario goal.
Fishing with frog bait is easier, since you can fish with bait at Fishing level 3. Your Sim starts with Fishing level 1 so they only need to go up two skill points to do this. Just click any fishing spot, select Fish With Bait.. and choose a frog from your inventory. You don’t even need to actually catch a frog. Just casting your line with frog bait is enough to complete this goal.
Frog Breeding
This is likely what’s going to eat up most of your time in this scenario. You need to breed a lot of frogs. Not only do you need to breed 9 frogs in total but you also need to breed (or catch) a total of 18 different frogs of specific rarities. To breed your frogs, you must have at least two frogs in your inventory. Click on one frog and select Breed Frog, then pick the frog you want to breed with. You will instantly get another full grown frog in your inventory. You can only breed frogs once every 4 in-game hours.
This is where strategy comes into play. Frogs have a fairly detailed genetic system that determines what kind of frog you will get from any pairing. Carl’s Guide does an excellent job of breaking the whole thing down in-depth, complete with a breeding chart, but we’ll summarize in simple terms here, too.
There are a total of 5 types of frogs (Dirt, Leaf, Eggplant, Sunflower, and Heart) and 4 attributes (Spotted, Striped, Surfer, and Whirl). Most of the frogs have an attribute attached to them except for the base frog of each type which has no attribute. You will need to pair up frogs that either have the type you want or the attribute you want.
To give an example, if I wanted to breed a Sunsurfer frog (Sunflower x Surfer), I would need to pair up a frog of the Sunflower type with a frog of the Surfer attribute. Any Sunflower and Surfer frog has a chance of giving me a Sunsurfer frog when bred together.
For the purposes of completing the scenario, these are the rarities of each frog attribute:
- Base (no attribute), Spotted – Common
- Striped, Surfer – Uncommon
- Whirl – Rare
All five types of frogs with those attributes will be of the corresponding rarity so focus on breeding different types of frogs with attributes of the rarity you’re looking for.
Frog Master
Our terrifying resident Ring Ring Girl finished this scenario in 5 days, but we expect it will take players much longer than this. We cheated her skills and motives to speed the process along.
By the time she finished the scenario, she almost had a completed frog collection. She was only missing 3 out of the 25 frogs in the collection.
Our Thoughts
We think this is a pretty cool scenario! We’re partial to scenarios that introduce players to lesser-known aspects of the game they might not have explored before. Many players are completely unaware about the frog breeding system and this scenario pushes them to really dive in and explore the mechanics of that.
As for the difficulty rating, we’d agree with an Intermediate label. It’s fairly time consuming between the skill building and breeding and there’s some strategy involved in breeding the frogs but it’s not necessarily a hard scenario once you’ve figured out the breeding mechanics.
Our main criticism is that it’s a limited-time scenario. In our opinion, limited-time scenarios should be reserved for themed scenarios that revolve around holidays and other seasonal cultural/social events. We don’t see any reason why a scenario like this should be time-locked. It can easily be enjoyed year-round.
Credits
- reshade by sunflowersyrup
