Do you use the cowplant in your game, and how? I'm never sure what sort of lot I want to put it on or who I want to have own the plant, so the one earned so far in my game is being passed around sim inventories. How does the cowplant fit into your stories?

So far the only death by cowplant that I've seen happened to a dormie at the secret society, and that death occurred as the limo and my sim were leaving the lot. The game then hung up for a very long time before I forced it to exit. Returning to the lot I'd been playing, the dormie had not yet been eaten and when my sim arrived at the SS she fed the plant before another death occurred.

Hmmm. I've only actively used it once. I was getting bored of a Sim once and I'd seen one get eaten by a Cowplant, so I thought: Hey. Why not?
But I've never used one since, and I hadn't really planned to, either.

Cleric-Siblings of Psuedotyr are allowed cowplants, and to leave them unfed when in need of new acolytes. The modus operandi is for some Sim visiting to feed the cowplant, and for the Sim to then be raised by the Cleric-Sibling with the hope of making them a new follower.

Otherwise, only Sims who have earned a cowplant may have one, and that's never happened to me.

Some of my families have a cowplant outside the front gate. If an extremely annoying townie walks by (some players have that kind of townie that they just can't suffer the sight of), I lock the gate - so they can't enter the garden, let alone the house - and then have one of my sims greet that townie.
Next thing you know, the townie will attempt to grab the cake and have a high probability of becoming food.

Maybe I should give the plant to one of my meaner sims. I'll have to take a look at the teens in my town; I have several that haven't developed clear stories yet. A mean knowledge sim with an interest in science could conduct small experiments on walk-bys with the plant, or a romance sim could feed ex-lovers to it. It might also work as a houseplant with a creepy family - a mini challenge of keeping it unlocked and fed enough that stray sims don't die. My existing cults don't have anything to do with the dead, but my vampire might want the plant to make zombies...

Are there any challenges that involve the cowplant?

oh, I involve the cowplant in stories, man. I had one keeping Olive Spector alive, until she became a vampire. And I had a Black Widow that would use her special wishing well (that she won because of her huge, beautiful garden full of rare plants) to get lovers, move them in and marry them, then they would be watering her extensive garden and see a delicious cake. So basically she was living forever with that strategy.

I have only used the cowplant once in recent years - it was placed on a carnival community lot as it seemed less out of place there. It was sort of fun seeing if any of the townies or non-active playable sims would take the cake or not. My gameplay style is a little too realistic for me to add it to home lots.

Once the Oldies adopted adorable little girls. They couldn't stand the thought they might die and not see the children grow up. So, they bought a cowplant and began inviting "friends" over.

I've actually been thinking about the cowplant lately. I think I might give Olive Spectres granddaughter Curious Subject one (or rather have her earn it in a career first) and drink her victims... only problem is that I don't like to kill Sims.

I've had a sim I named Raoul Haunter. A very special looking elder..who was the owner of R.I.A. Cemeraty (Rest In Aridia).
On his home lot, he had a friend cowplant..all fenced. No one was allowed in the pen, not even Raoul. You NEED ghosts..in a cemetary, and so..you NEED death...So I gave Raoul the unpleasant task of..teleporting annoying sims to his lot...and make them eat the cake. Of course, some also died of allll kinds of ways using a certain Tombstone...I HAD to decorate his lot after all, better use that toO.
(Fugly Townies, mean appartement tenants..you name it.)
R.I.A. Cemetary populated quite fast...

I generally don't like to kill my sims either. However, I do like making it challenging to keep them alive and death can make stories interesting. So illness is modded to be more difficult, and sometimes I have random events like "start a fire and have it spread x squares before trying to put it out." My sims have a chance to live, but I have to work for it. If they do die, I tend to have their family plead for them (even when I kind of wanted them to die for story reasons, it's hard to let go). In the last two years, I think I've had three sims die and stay dead from reasons other than age - one was trapped by a fire that spread after lightening hit a tree and he was the only sim living on the lot; one died of flu and her husband lost after pleading for her; the most recent was Tommy Ottomas and I didn't see the satellite hit him and missed the chance to have his sister plead for his life.
With that in mind, maybe the best use of the cowplant for me would be as some sort of houseplant where it becomes a risk that I try to keep under control - feed the plant before it eats someone. It is very tempting to take a large break from my normal play style with a murderous household, though - aside from the whole thing about it being hard to accept death.

I never use it; in my opinion it's the most useless of the generally useless career "rewards" - not that all career rewards are useless, but some really are. (Does feeding it even raise Nature enthusiasm?)

Feeding it causes the cake to appear...so @stitching feeding it before it eats someone would have kind of..the opposite result.

http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Laganaphyllis_simnovorii

Oh I see...
I never waited 12 hours before feeding it, so this is new to me. Sorry about that.
But still..a cake appears right after you feed the plant though...and this is why i was actually feeding it, thinking that this was what triggered the cake.

My cowplants usually go hungry. I find it very wasteful to spend 35 simoleans on a leg o' lamb, just to feed the pet plant. A reasonably good group meal for the whole family doesn't even cost that much, and that overgrown head of lettuce takes such a feast twice a day? Not on my life!

@Rosebine Glitch. Idk what fixes it, but that doesn't happen to me anymore..

Jack Thompson has one on his lot mainly because it ate one of his brothers. I don't use it much nowadays. All the sims in Little Carping are custom. I spent a lot of time making them so I'm not keen to see them die off.

Jack's lot doesn't get played - it's my placeholder lot for processing townies and such. And it's always winter there. I mean this is Jack Thompson we're talking about.

I suspect you'll all know my answer to this one without reading it. No I don't use cowplants! I don't even have University, and cowplants are one of the reasons why I don't have it!

I think the cowplant is the most unpleasant thing thought up by Maxis in the whole game -- almost as obnoxious as the baby barbecue. I love my Sims -- all of them, including my townies, many of whom were lovingly created in CAS. They all live under the protection of a constitution which guarantees them the inalienable right to life, a right which is taken more seriously than in another well known country with a similar constitution. I have managed to protect all my Sims so far, but it is life simulation, and death is undeniably a fact of life, so I can't guarantee that I'll always be able to keep death out of my game. But, as far as cowplants are concerned, I can give all my Sims an absolute and unqualified guarantee that none of them shall ever have to face that gruesome form of death.

I have one cow plant but it's currently in a sim's inventory I don't play. I had a thought to turn them into a sort of maniacal serial killer by having sims get eaten by the cowplant but haven't really enacted that plot bunny yet so the sim is just chilling evermore on a lot in the corner of the hood.

Sadly, I have never used the cowplant. I've denied so many sims of a proper death. ...No wait. I take it back. I used it once with a serial killer Sim.

have not yet gotten any pack.

my understanding is that the cowplant is unlocked with some University-specific career. that career I take is unlocked with a sim graduating from a certain major. I do not remember either name (career, major).
and I take that the cowplant gives 5 days each time it is milked.
and I guess it would need to be fed (household doing feed interaction or it eating characters) for the milking option to appear.
not sure if it could lure passerbys.

would probably give it to sims that go through the career when I get University. though those household I would probably use the feed interaction instead of it eating characters.
and might use it to kill characters on graveyard/cemetery lots.

Don't let cowplants put you off university. They're completely avoidable (although if you have any enemies your sims might roll a want to drink them in liquid form). Besides I bet some of your teens would love University - many cute boys there I'm quite the fan of Ty Bubbler, despite public opinion of his looks.

I have had some dormies get eaten by cowplants at the Secret Society since resurrecting the victims for instant best friends was good for my Popularity YAs, but nobody's died that way since the Great Purge (yet ). I put one on the Beaker lot in Megahood Strangetown (which I still haven't gotten around to playing). I figure the Beakers would have something like that to deal with nosy neighbors, reporters, government investigators, etc.

mdsb759

my understanding is that the cowplant is unlocked with some University-specific career. that career I take is unlocked with a sim graduating from a certain major. I do not remember either name (career, major).

The cow plant is the career reward for natural science. You can also cheat for all career rewards.

and I take that the cowplant gives 5 days each time it is milked.

Yes.

and I guess it would need to be fed (household doing feed interaction or it eating characters) for the milking option to appear.

The household feed it a rather large leg of ham. The cow then produces the cake which sims will try and take, but they will be eaten instead.

not sure if it could lure passerbys.

Yes the cake is very high coding, the cow must be fenced off, preferably without a gate.

would probably give it to sims that go through the career when I get University. though those household I would probably use the feed interaction instead of it eating characters.
and might use it to kill characters on graveyard/cemetery lots.

The cow is fed to produce the cake, unfed the cow won't produce cake at all.