Where do you find Harvestable Kelp?

Mermaids’ favorite food is Kelp, which satisfies much more hunger than even raw fish or human food. But buying from the grocery store can be expensive! You can harvest it from underwater plants, but where? When you’re a mermaid, you have level 10 diving skill so can go to any dive spot. I found some here at the cave at Pearl’s Deep. They are the small light-green plants (3 pictured below).

Harvestable Kelp
Harvestable Kelp

 

Each one can be harvested repeatedly, and you get 3-4 kelp with each pick! A great way to collect a good supply.

Mermaidic Kelp Not Working, Bad Quality

I’ve been trying to become a mermaid with one of the pre-made Sim families in Isla Paradiso, Rajan Patel. I want him to fall in love with a mermaid, become one, and have a mermaid baby to complete the Sims Badge! He became friends with a male mermaid and got several pieces of mermaidic kelp. But when Rajan ate it, he would get nauseous for 2 hours, throw up, and that was it. No transformation. I even waited a day or so to see if it happened later. But nothing. Then I decided to pull it out of the inventory and compare it to the normal kelp you can buy at the store.

Here’s a screenshot – the “Mermaidic Kelp” received by the mermaid is blackish and has some bad quality indications, and some normal kelp is nice green.

Bad Mermaidic Kelp
Bad Mermaidic Kelp

 

So my theory is the mermaid Townie I found has some bad kelp that he gave us! I even created a brand new Sim and merged her into the family to try it, but it didn’t work for her either. Then I put some in her inventory and moved her to another lot via Edit Town. When she ate one on the other lot, it worked! She transforms almost right away. Also when she pulled it out to eat it, it was glowing! That must mean it’s a good one. Then I moved her back into the original family. The kelp is now glowing!

Good Kelp-Glowing
Good Kelp-Glowing

 

EDIT: I found on a Sims forum that the evil mermaids may give you bad kelp. The one I became friends with did seem kind of strange looking. His name was Salty.

Building your First Island Paradise Resort

The first uncharted island I discovered is quite nice, Beryl Shoals. I decided to try building my first resort there. First, I went to live mode, clicked on the icon in map view, and converted to a resort. To build the resort, I used the stilted foundation plus the regular foundation to build a good sized building around the little pond. Created several rooms with just a bed, and a common bathroom. I took quite a bit of time creating an upper level deck with a hot tub overlooking the pond. (I had to use the terrain tools to get the level of the deck just right so steps would join it to the main building). I spent quite a bit of time just getting the basic walls, wallpaper, flooring, etc. Then when I went to Live mode it said it was closed because it didn’t have a Resort Tower!

Remember to Include a Resort Tower!

So I had to level out some of the mountain on the island and pick one of the basic resort towers (you can view the resort-specific items in buy mode- >sort by function). I read that the resort tower is where multiple guests can stay in a rabbit-hole style, where you don’t get to see what’s going on inside. You can click on it to set certain options like enable room service. One of the first complaints I got was that there was no room service!

Here’s a screenshot of my initial working resort!

 

My First Resort
My First Resort

 

Houseboat with Jetski or SpeedBoat

I couldn’t figure out how to add a Jetski or Speedboat to the Houseboat that my Sim family owns. It says you need a mooring post or cleat, or boat trailer. But I think the mooring post and cleat need to be placed on some open ocean water. So I just bought a house lot and tried out the stilted foundation to build a house out over the water, and added a mooring post and cleat there.  Here’s my new house on the mainland, in case they want a break from their houseboat.

House over water with boats
House over water with boats

 

Now that I think about it, you should be able to place a boat trailer on the roof or any large area of your houseboat, and place the speedboat there. So I tried it out and it works great!

Boat on houseboat

 

Then when he went boating, he actually went on to land, turned around, and the boat transported next to him so he could hop on.

TakingBoatForSpin

 

The speedboat is so much faster than the Houseboat that he’ll be using it to go scuba diving and snorkeling!

Sims 3 Island Paradise – How to get to another island

I installed the Island Paradise expansion pack today! I can’t wait to try all the different features in this one, like scuba diving, traveling to different islands, finding map fragments to get to those uncharted islands I see hidden in the mist, and owning a successful resort!!

One thing I wondered about was how a typical Sim would be able to get from one island to another to get to the shopping over there. Would they need to swim over? Would they need to buy a boat? No! There’s a taxi boat that automatically picks them up!

Taxi Boat
Taxi Boat