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The Sims 3 Nectar Making Guide
Learn Nectar Making Recipes, and How it Works
The Basics
Nectar making is a new and complex skill introduced to the Sims 3 by the World Adventures Expansion Pack. Much like wine making (which is of course what "nectar" making is modeled after), your Sim will stomp grapes and other fruits to brew them into wonderful combinations that are bottled and aged in racks. In this guide, we'll learn the basics to making a good Nectar and recipes that might help you to make more money from aging these robust drinks. Let's learn some of the fundamentals: how to make a basement, getting started with nectar making and what factors affect the price of a bottle.
I'd like to deliver special thanks to Chrys from our Sims 3 Forum. Their input was invaluable in providing mechanics data and recipes which will undoubtedly help tons of players. Because of these contributions, I'm confident we've got an incredible guide on our hands.
Additionally, if you want to take Nectar Making seriously, you'd best make your Sim a gardener as well. Quality fruit will be required down the road, and you'll want to get on the hunt for finding special seeds as early as possible for maximum benefit.
What is Nectar?
Nectar is a drink to be enjoyed by Sims. As you might expect, drinking nectar will give a Sim a powerful, long lasting moodlet. The moodlet you get from drinking a bottle of nectar depends on its quality (not price or taste). Therefore, save the horrible tasting "perfect" stuff for your Sim's consumption and the real, high dollar perfect nectar for aging and future profit.
Drinking Nectar gives a number of effects. First, you'll get two positive moodlets for drinking it: Sugar Rush (4 hours, + 15 mood) and a moodlet that can go up to 25 and last 8 hours depending on the quality of the bottle. Nectar produced with at least 1 life fruit will give a full of life moodlet which gives +50 mood for 8 hours. Flame fruit nectar will give a warm fuzzies moodlet of +15 for 5 hours. It requires at least 3 flame fruit to trigger the warm fuzzies.
How to Learn Nectar Making
To get started in this skill, you'll need to send your Sim on a trip to Champs Les Sims, France. You shouldn't do so without sufficient money to buy some equipment to bring home, so I recommend you bring at least $2500 Simoleons with you. The Nectar Maker can be bought at the Nectary in France. The vendor there sells it for $1500 Simoleons. More than one would be nice, but a single machine is enough to get you started. It's a large investment that will pay for itself over time.
You can find racks at home through the build menu so it's not necessary to buy them from the vendor in France. They can be found under sort by function in Storage - Miscellaneous. The most expensive rack likely gives a bonus to the aging rate of nectars stored within.
You can use the nectar makers at the Nectary to start learning the skill, but I recommend heading home to do a lot of the work there. You'll find your nectar maker and racks in the family inventory in buy mode.
Finding Grapes and the Other New Fruit
France is abound with wild harvestables that came with World Adventures. The locations of all the plants that can be found here are detailed in the updated plant list. If your Sim has Pangu's Axe or the Martial Arts skill they can literally get every type of new plant there but one: cherries. Cherries are located in both Egypt and China. They're rare and high value, so they're well worth the trip. I recommend China so your Sim can try learning Martial Arts as well.
How to Build a Basement
In order to succeed at Nectar Making, you're going to need a basement at home. Enter build mode and drag out the shape of the basement you want to build. You can then hit page down and begin decorating the basement like you would a normal part of the house. Include a stairwell and place it where there are no obstructions on the floor below. Be sure to make your basement large enough for some nectar rack storage and multiple nectar makers.
Why is the basement important? Nectar that's stored in a basement-placed rack goes up in price to a greater degree each day. A rack can hold fifteen bottles, and racks can be stacked up to two high. A bottle of nectar sold early is a waste of money. They should be considered investments that earn interest over time. They do age while they're in your inventory and other places, but never as fine as when they're stored properly.
How to Make Nectar
To get started making nectar, click a Nectar Maker and select add fruit. It takes ten pieces of fruit to make Nectar. Ideally, you should make them in a combination of two or more. Nectar made of only one fruit gets no bonuses (or penalties) for flavor. You'll need to come up with combinations that work well together. It can very to a large degree depending on the proportions of the two or more fruit you place into the machine. Further on, we'll discuss some of these combinations, but for now let's just get a bottle brewing.
Once the fruit is placed, you can then pick 'Make Nectar'. Your Sim will stomp the fruit and proceed to do a basic process on the machine. This produces several bottles of nectar. You'll see why several machines might come in handy when you're waiting on your first batch to complete. When it's done, you'll be given the option to name the new combination and told how it tastes. Now you can select take nectar then store the bottles in one of your racks. Sell them later when you have a good replacement. Rack space will be precious later if you're going for real wealth, so it's good to move out old bottles.
Advanced: Quality, Value and Aging
Nectar Quality
The quality of a Nectar is influenced by several factors. Just because you've made perfect Nectar doesn't mean you've made the best.
- First, time spent making nectar will improve the price as it enables you to gradually complete the Nectar Making challenges (see below).
- The Nectar Maker machine itself (what upgrade) and what style of nectaration process you're using.
- The rarity of the fruit will affect the price, but not quality of a nectar.
- Next up is fruit quality. Good fruit will generally make good nectar. Common sense, right? However, there's one more factor that can either botch or bless the process.
- Taste! Sure, you can make a ho-hum perfect quality nectar, but you can also make a nectar that sets your income through the roof. Nectar can be reduced in quality and price when things go poorly. A bad recipe can reduce perfect quality fruit to outstanding or lower quality nectar depending on how bad it goes. This works the other way, however, when you make a Nectar that tastes amazing. The right recipe combination can produce something beyond perfect.
Aging
Making more and more valuable bottles and letting them age should be your Sim's ultimate goal. Nectar Racks must be placed in a basement for optimal effect. Pick the best rack, as it seems to have a better impact on the aging process. Nectar will age at around 10% of its base value per day. Some might think it is delivering diminishing returns because this is always computed at the base value. For example, a $100 bottle aged 10 days at 10% of base value will be worth $200.
Taste Modifiers
Let's have a look at how taste impacts the price of a nectar bottle. The following multipliers are calculated along with fruit value/quality and other factors:
Amazing: 1.5 and up (1.68 highest seen)
Great: 1.3 to 1.5
Pretty good: 1.1 to 1.3
Not very good: 0.9 to 1.1
Terrible: 0.9 or less (lowest seen is .63)
Fruit Values
Here are the values for the individual fruits in the game. Chrys discovered these values by producing a pure nectar of 10 for each of these ingredients and dividing the resulting bottle by 10. Naturally the rarer fruits in the game have higher values:
Life Fruit: 40
Flame Fruit: 32.6
Cranerlet Nuala Grapes: 29.1
Gralladina Fran Grapes: 21.7
Pomelo: 21.7
Meloire Grapes: 18.1
Cherry: 16.3
Avornalino Grapes: 14.5
Plum: 12.7
Lime: 12.7
Watermelon: 12.7
Pomegranate: 10.9
Cherimola Blan Grapes: 9.1
Renoit Grapes: 9.0
Apple: 5.4
Grapes: 5.4
Nectaration Processes and Handiness Upgrades - The Mechanics
There are four nectaration processes. The first is basic, which is unlocked at the start. This offers no modification to the process. There are three more that are unlocked as you go along:
- Concentrated (level 4)- This will give you one less bottle of Nectar, but will raise the value of the other bottles. It's worse than basic unless you have one of the handiness upgrades installed, as you'll see in the chart below. This in combination with the flavor enhancement handiness upgrade will produce the single highest value bottles. However, it loses out to other methods in terms of sheer profit potential.
- Mass Produce (level 7)- Adds two bottles of Nectar to every batch, and doesn't seem to affect quality. The perfect replacement for basic and concentrated across the board. This with improved pressing can help your Sim to make it to the 200 bottles required for the Master of Nectar Making challenge.
- Extended Nectaration (level 9)- This gives the same number of bottles as the regular process, but takes longer and produces a nectar valued 15% higher in price.
Three Handiness upgrades are available for the Nectar Maker. Improved Pressing comes at level 5, Unbreakable at 6, and Flavor Enhancement at 9. My top choice is Improved Pressing, which causes the machine to produce one extra bottle of nectar. It wins by 8 and 1/3% in terms of overall profit using Extended Nectaration although the bottles it creates aren't as impressive in value.
Flavor Enhancement raises the bottle's value by 15%. At that, this logic should apply to any recipe produced: with the master of nectar making challenge completed, you'll get 25% more (one extra over the base of 4) bottles. 25% more bottles vs 15% more value. Simple eh? It's even worse for Flavor Enhancement when your Sim isn't a master. Tht'd be 33% more vs 15% more.
The only times you should use the Flavor Enhancement upgrade is when you're going for an extremely high dollar bottle with the Concentrated method. Or, when you have access to mass produced but not extended nectaration. But with just a two level window, who cares about bothering with this upgrade?
| Upgrade/Nectaration Method | Unupgraded | Improved Pressing | Flavor Enhancement |
| Basic | 4x454 1816 | 5x457 2285 | 4x523 2092 |
| Concentrated | 3x570 1710 | 4x568 2272 | 3x653 1959 |
| Mass Produced | 6x321 1926 | 7x321 2247 | 6x392 2352 |
| Extended Nectaration | 4x523 2092 | 5x523 2615 | 4x603 2412 |
This chart was produced using the best known recipe: 9 perfect life fruit and 1 pomegranate. The Sim had completed all challenges. The $653 bottle is my highest on record and I don't expect to beat it. However, if I were tackling the Bottomless Nectar Cellar Lifetime Wish or was taking a profit-driven approach, I'd use Improved Pressing with Extended Nectaration, the clear best combo.
Nectar Making Challenges
- Master of Nectar Making - After you've made 200 bottles of Nectar, your Sim will make an extra bottle in each batch. Very helpful indeed. This one will come naturally as you pursue the others. Use mass produce and improved pressing if you want to speed things along.
- Flavorful Feet - After Squishing 40 bins full of fruit, your feet get so much better at the task that it boosts the value of all your future bottles. Since higher value bottles produce more profit each day as they age, this one really helps.
- The Vizard of Vine - Look below for recipes that focus heavily on grapes to complete this challenge while making good money. It will simply give you more produce from each grape plant in your garden.
- Mix Master - After 15 different combinations have been produced, you'll complete this challenge which gives you a chance to see the outcome of a fruit combo after you've filled the bin. It's not an exact science. Your Sim may say that 2 fruits are horrible in combination but you may find with different proportions this changes. It does give you a good idea though when you're really on the wrong track.
Nectar Making Recipe Combinations
Not all fruits work well together. You may try every single combination to discover that a recipe involving this and that fruit is just impossible. Adding a third ingredient may increase the value of a bottle -- high points for complexity? There are so many combinations that tracking down three-ingredient nectars is tough.
Contrary to popular belief as per the prima strategy guide, it does matter how the fruits taste together. You can make perfect nectar that is worth $200, but if the fruits are rare and the taste is great (both factored together) you can begin to push toward $500 a bottle and possibly beyond. So start with the basic combinations that require low level gardening then work your way up to using perfect quality unknown, rare, and special ingredients. A dash of a low level ingredient may set off some other combination and produce a great tasting wine, so experimentation is key! Share your recipes at our Forum's Nectar Making Thread.
When crafting your own recipes keep in mind that just because one combination of two ingredients tastes bad doesn't mean they can never go together. You like a dash of this, a dash of that in your food, so it's not surprising that Sims often like their nectar that way! So try, try again, but mind your fruit stocks!
Here are some recipes, sorted by value, which you can try which give specific quality nectars:
Amazing Nectar Recipes9 life fruit, 1 pomegranate - the highest value nectar
7 life fruit, 2 flame fruit, 1 plum
7 life fruit, 2 flame fruit, 1 watermelon
6 life fruit, 3 flame fruit, 1 cherimola blan grapes - A high value nectar that gives all the moodlets in a single bottle
5 cranerlet nuala grapes/5 life fruit
2 gralladina fran grapes, 2 cranerlet nuala grapes, 1 flame fruit, 1 life fruit, 1 cherry, 1 pomelo, 1 avornalino grapes, 1 meloire grapes
2 life fruit, 2 gralladina fran grapes, 2 cranerlet nuala grapes, 2 cherry, 2 pomelo
5 life fruit, 5 pomelo
5 gralladina fran grapes, 5 apples
5 apple /5 renoit grapes - Probably the single best bottle for beginners
Great Nectar Recipes
9 flame fruit/1 gralladina fran grapes
9 cranerlet nuala grapes/1 pomelo
9 pomelo/1 cranerlet nuala grapes
8 pomelo/ 2 watermelon
6 lime/4 renoit grapes
The Sims 3 Skill Guides:
Athletic | Charisma | Collecting | Cooking | Fishing | Gardening
Guitar | Handiness | Logic | Martial Arts | Nectar Making | Painting | Parenting | Photography | Writing