September - last edited April
If you have any of these issues, please send your save game to SimsDirect
Introduction
Dirt piles are a symptom of a bug rather than a bug itself. This means, that there are many causes for plants turning into their base state and as such, they can re-occur any time although bugs were fixed. Basically what happens that the game runs into an error with the plants and doesn't know what status they were supposed to be in and hence reverts them to dirt piles.
To try keep things a bit more organized this time, all specific bug reports are being locked although they are still open. Only threads that have a [FIXED] or [ARCHIVED] tag are closed.
If you are encountering the issue, please post in this thread with the following information. Your post will be moved to the correct thread. Please create ONE post per possible cause you are seeing so I can move them to the appropriate threads. If you have a new cause that's not covered by the list below yet, just create a new thread and make sure what the new cause is.
'Legal' Dirt piles
Current Threads
If you are sure that you have a specific cause and have nothing to add, then you can just me too one of the following threads. If you post, your post will be moved into one of these threads.
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
January
Hello All,
If any of you are still encountering this on the latest game version (without mods), would you be willing to share your save file(s)?
If so, please send me a private message with a link to the file.
Instructions here: http://x.ea.com/74420
Thanks!
March
Sadly this issue seems to have returned, after being fixed.
March
Good Luck
Crin
I don't work or have any association with EA. I give advice to the best of my knowledge and cannot be held responsible for any damage done to your computer/game.
Please only contact me via PM when asked to do so.
Important Threads
June
I've been hard at work gardening and my plants have been fine previously. I'm not sure if it has to do with the number of plants. I had 10 plants and they were fine. Then I added 5 more plants and started grafting and everything was ok at first. After some more garden care (see above details), then this started to happen.
a week ago
I Am having this issue in most of my saves.
What happens is that all of my plants are constantly reverting to dirt piles. I happens at 3 am, at 5 am, and at 7 am each sim day. Plus any time a plant's status changes, it reverts to dirt piles. By status changes I mean.... needs watering, been watered, has weeds, been weeded, has bugs, been sprayed, has harvestables, been harvested... and so on.
I spend my entire game time having to keep shift clicking on plants to bring them back from dirt piles. It happens multiple times a sim day and since it happens when the 5am " plants grow harvestables," my sims never get any thing from their plants.
It is affecting most of my saves. It happens in any save regardless of season, season length, great soil lot traits, or even type of plants. It is happening to ALL plants. It happens to them whether they are sheltered in a greenhouse or outdoors.
It happens to all fruit trees, all vegetable plants, every flower plant, all the herbs, the money tree, and even the crystal tree.
I play loads of various saves and it is happening in all of them. Off the grid families, jewelry makers, flower arrangers, farmers, juice / fizz makers, nectar making lots, and so on.
I have no mods in my game. I have never used them.
It happens in any save file including new ones.
It happens on multiple pcs ( I have used my father's laptop and my mom's pc ).It is happening to many of my friends and family members in their games too. It got worse with the crystal creations patch.
I play the sims to de-stress and to try to block out being in pain and having a fatal disease. Yet the whole time I am playing, I am constantly having to keep shift clicking on every dirt pile to bring the plants back to live. It happens multiple times per day to every plant.
It is beyond frustrating.
I have tried even planting new crops and deleting all the old ones. I have tried using planter boxes and green houses. I have tried growing things only outdoors.
I have had to stop playing most of my saves. It takes hours each time I play to get through 1 sim day, because I am constantly having to babysit every plant. It is such a huge waste of time too. My sims get nothing from the plants because they revert to dirt at 5 am right when the fruit, veggies, flowers, and crystals are supposed to spawn.
I have several 10 and more generational saves that I can't even play in anymore because of this.
I am on windows 10 and have every expansion, stuff pack, game pack, and kit. It happens to everyone I know. It is even happening to several game changers during their streams.
This bug has been going on for over a year. The more patches and packs added, the worse it gets. I am thinking about just quitting the game. I spend more time in the game trying to fix the plants and their dirt piles, that I can't even play.
The game I love is no longer any fun.