I often have a Cowplant in my dorms, I find it keeps everyone on their toes and it's always good to shake up the Dormie pool every so often. I never direct anyone near it, but if a passing Dormie happens to wander over that way, well, c'est la vie. Or c'est la mort, I guess.

I've sometimes toyed with the idea of keeping a pet Cowplant. But ... intending to feed it often enough that it doesn't eat passers-by, which is probably weird. XD

I had a Cowplant once when I was playing a Legacy back in the days. It was fenced without a gate.
I don' recall if I ever had a sim eaten by it.

I never feed my cowplant unless there's a visitor on the lot I don't want to die. The cake comes out after a certain amount of time that the plant goes unfed. It's like if you don't feed it, it fends for itself.

I don't really like playing apocalypse-themed stories, but I did ponder one afternoon about what I'd pull off as an apocalypse on Felicity Island. The general idea was that there were two secret projects at the Research Base: the quest for the holy grail, and developing a plant-carnivore hybrid that eats something much bigger than insects. Goopy, the new guy that had arrived there just about two months before the projects were terminated, felt truly excited that he would get a chance to work on the hybrid. He couldn't have felt more sad when he heard the news about the projects' cancellation because the company had run out of funding. He snuck into the lab the night before the staff's departure, stuck a few seeds into a couple of vials and put them in the back pocket of his pants. When he got to his room, he felt tired, so he took off his pants and went to sleep. The next morning, as the chopper came to pick the researchers up, Goopy slipped as he was trying to board the vehicle. Being rather absent-minded, he forgot that the vials were in his pocket in the first place, and didn't notice that he dropped one of them. The worst part - the vial broke.

A few months later, shaman Amanaki was visiting the far stretches of the Grasslands in search for some herbs, when he found a massive monsteresque creature, with a bovine-like head, but supported on a stem. It stuck out a big, sweet-looking cake out of its stinky mouth. Amanaki despised sweet foods, but was nonetheless fascinated by the plant-animal thing. He tried bringing it some food, such as a dead animal, and the cowplant seemed to like it.

This is the part where I had to get back to studying, but I did manage to work out an ending. In short, misplacing the Staff of Tuzu, according to this, wouldn't have been the only reason why Sims of Felicity Island had disliked Amanaki.

There's always the pygmy variant: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=87495

I used to do this at the Secret Societies in my old University campuses - put a gate in the fence around the Cowplant, but then lock it so no sims could get at it. Not necessarily weird, but certainly pointless.

I had one once and kept feeding it to save the Sims. So I doubt if I will have one again soon, because I will feed it all the time again - I hate Sims dying and am definitely not ready for Sims being eaten.

Oh come on, nudge some of those twins over there and let nature take its course :D

In the secret society the cowplant has two uses: killing off sims so ugly that I will never want to play them, to fill the graveyard so knowledge sims can be scared; and killing sims I really want to play. Secret society members who die are immediately replaced by new ones. By progressively killing off the ugly, eventually all the secret society members will be beautiful. Now and then a secret society member will come by looking really fascinating. I use the simblender to make that member selectable, then unlock the gate and and command: Grab Cake. Then my playable sim can phone the Grim Reaper, and pay ten thousand simoleons of secret society money (which I keep topped up with motherlode) to resurrect a new playable sim.

Sadly, drinking the cow's milk at the secret society does not extend life at all. On a residential lot it will confer five more days of life. I have sometimes had real villains use them for that purpose: unlock the gate, greet an obnoxious townie, then wander off, whistling nonchalantly. I have never bothered to feed the cowplant, and it has never died of starvation.

Now that may just be a great idea, smorbie1 :D

I have two or three cowplants in one of my neighbourhoods. Sometimes I go back to play a household, to see a gravestone next to it - another townie gone, which is ok by me. I have used it a couple of times to kill off some Sims I got bored with, and used the resultant milk to make a Sim younger. The vampire family has one - it seemed appropriate, somehow.

I don't have any yet, but I'm playing a Test of Time challenge, and thinking to add the cowplant to all households during gen03 (last generation of Prehistory). It will be an avatar of the sims' goddess, and they will have to make sacrifices to it (feed it) or risk the goddess' ire...

Questions (I've never really played with a cowplant before): If left unfed, will the cowplant attract playable sims of the household, or just passerbys? If it's the latter, is there a mod out there to get rid of playable sims' immunity to the cake?

It will only attract controllable sims and *greeted* visitors/walkbys. At least in *my* game, people who have not been greeted, seem unable to interact with it.

And there are mods to change the target group a little. Pescado's darwincowplant mod makes it so that only non-playables are on the menu. And it will not consume the smarter ones, or the very stinky ones.

The cowplant will eat anybody with the right to be on the lot: nanny, gardener, maid, townie, resident - it's not picky. There is a deep-sea fish that holds out a light on the end of a tendril dangling in front of its mouth, to lure prey. The cowplant extrudes its lure only when it is hungry. If fed regularly, it will not put out the cake; that is a hunger device. You can control the cowplant action by locking the gate for all sims. Just unlock it when you want someone dead.

Come to think of it, I have seen a sim with many body points resist the cowplant attack. He just pushes the snout away.

Well, on the wiki it says that the Cowplant won't eat sims that are stinky because of low hygiene, so this part has nothing to do with Pescado.
Someone told me though, that the cowplant "handing" the cake right after being fed the leg of lamb, was a bug..and a mod fixes it. Anyone knows where i could find that mod?
It has lead me to think wrong about that beast...
Edit :

Where does that info comes from, Jo?
I had 5 disagree on my post, saying exactly that..
Can someone be clear about this please?

You're right, @Rosebine; it makes absolutely no sense the way Jo tells it. I wonder who told her that incredibly silly fish story...

The Cowplant only puts out the cake when he is hungry, because that's how he attracts victims. But if you keep him fed - at least one $35 piece leg of lamb every twelve hours - then he will never go hungry, and keep the cake to himself.

The cake comes out when the plant is hungry. If fed regularly when the cake appears, the plant will not feed on its own. But the cake is part of the hunger mechanism. Your feeding it does not cause the cake to appear, it will cause it to disappear.

Thank you both.
So, if in my game, it shows the cake right after i feed it...each and every time, *I* have a problem?
And so..I will re-ask...what is the fix for this?

^ Well that how it's always worked for me. O_O

If I knew what mod that would be, I'd tell you right away... Could you not ask the person who told you that in the first place? If they know that there's a mod for it, maybe they also know what it's called and where to get it...

But in the meantime, I'll have a look around...

I think what Jo is saying is that a new cowplant doesn't put out a cake or eat Sims until it's been fed once, but once it's been fed once (with a leg of lamb) it will put out the cake after 12 hours, and from then on, until the end of the universe, it will keep on expecting a leg of lamb every 12 hours, or else it will eat any Sim that comes near and takes the cake. If you like, according to this theory, feeding the cowplant for the first time is what activates the Sim-eating behaviour. Whether this theory is true or is just an old Sims' wives' story I have no idea. I have certainly read it before, but it might have just been in a previous post of Jo's. I most certainly shall not be doing any experiments to find out for myself -- not ever! -- none of my Sims are expendable!

As far as I an concerned this whole cowplant thing is a lot of bull! What with cowplants and cow mascots, just what do Maxis have against our bovine friends? IMHO cows are comparatively gentle big beasts that we abuse by first taking their calves, and then taking their milk that was intended to feed their calves. So why malign them in this way? I wonder if Will Wright had some bad experience with a cow when he was a child.

I have a cowplant that's never once been fed and it's got its cake-tongue dangling out and ready.

For me too...




If DezzyBoo knew/remembered he/she would have been able to tell..
But thank you BO for trying to help.
In the meantime, I'll go do some more testing..making sure I did not hallucinated all those times...Since AndrewGloria won't DO it! lol

You know, it's just struck me - 'the cake is a lie' (and was so a long time before Portal).