Gems, Metals, and Space Rocks
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Overview:
First I want to say collecting is basically just for fun, at least at first. Before I knew it I was wheelin’ and dealin’ thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and had a stash of ingots filling various rooms of my sims house. It may not seem like it at first, but honestly you could make a decent living off of gem collecting. I’ve set up a really thorough guide in my opinion, and it will lead you to the highest level collectibles. It will still take a lot of time, but at least you’ll know what you are doing.
There are three categories to collect:
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Gems
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Metals
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Space Rocks
You can sell any of these as soon as you find them, but for each there is a way to increase their value before you do that. Each category has it’s own “rare” item that is quite expensive and hard to find.
These items can be displayed throughout your house, they have different worths, and some are “special”. Gems will pop up in the same place every time, but they will not be the same gem. There is a chance you could get a special gem, but most likely you will get a normal gem from the same exact spot. Whenever you find a spot, it will always produce the same category. So if you find a space rock, you can go back to that spot later, and it will always be a space rock, just different size, quality, etc. So it’s important to visit every spot as often as possible to keep new gems and rocks “forming” and you’ll have a better chance at getting a special one.
That’s great, but how do I FIND them?
Find gems by looking for rocks on the ground – these are not nearly as hard to find as seeds, which are quite small and can easily blend in, but rather rocks can easily be spotted even if you are zoomed out above tree level. Read on for more info on how to collect.
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Before you Go Collecting, The Basics:
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The Collector:
Basic requirement is the collector, a lifetime purchase that costs 40,000. You can definitely find rocks easily without the collector though, it just makes it a LOT easier, unlike special seeds where it’s a necessity. I recommend starting to collect after you have reached a high level job that gives you days off and have acquired the collector. For instance the highest of the military profession is the best job for gem hunting because you have a ton of days off to go looking for gems, or of course you could just go unemployed which would make things a lot easier, but possibly harder to get the collector. Finding gems and exotic rocks is timestaking like most endeavors in the sims, so definitely plan for a whole sims day to be taken up if you want to collect all gems on the entire map (they respawn after a few days). I have made a map for you, showing you where gems types are on the map, so don’t worry if you are short on simolean, I will give you a head start. I also have created a cutting guide as well, hope you enjoy.
Spawning:
All seeds/rocks/etc. Will respawn in the same places, meaning once you’ve found a special seed, go back there and hope a new seed has arrived, or easily check with the overhead view and the collector turned on. I am NOT sure if it changes from game to game, but I’m pretty positive it doesn’t and works like fish, seeds, etc. So I have created an overhead map with the areas listed. This will save you some time and possibly get you by without the collector for the most part. You’ll learn the “good spots” very quickly.
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1. Collecting GEMS:
- Yellow sapphire
- Blue Topaz
- Ruby
- Smoky Quartz
- Emerald
- Tanzanite
- Diamond
- Luminorious Gem
- Rainbow Gem
- Pink Diamond (special)
There are too many values to list and it would only confuse you, all you need to know is that Luminorious, Rainbows, and Pink Diamonds are the most expensive. See my cutting guide for further details.
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MAPS
List for Sunset Valley, the map was removed because of copyright.
1 Aqua
2 Aqua, Emerald, Yellow, Diamond
3 Smoky, Ruby, Yellow, Tanzanite
4 Aqua, Smoky, Diamond, Rainbow
5 Emerald, Ruby, Yellow, Tanzanite, Rainbow
6 Yellow, Tanzanite, Diamond, Special
7 Ruby, Tanzanite, Diamond, Pink
Ron’s RIVERVIEW MAPS
Here I created my own maps from screenshots for you to look at. All the maps use the graveyard as the north side, so keep that in mind. I let the game respawn for three sim days, but noticed there were still a few missing, they are marked with an orange dot, and you may find some that I missed 🙂
NOTE: Remember there are different types of gems for each spot. Just because I listed “diamond” somewhere doesn’t mean that’s all you will find there. Gems will always be in gems spots, metals in metal spots, and space rocks in space spots.
north of stadium (click images to enlarge)
north of water tower
south of water tower
south of stadium
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Increase Gem Value: Cutting
Send gems to be cut in the mailbox. The next day if you check mail at the mailbox* they should have arrived. After you have them to their highest state, you can display them on a pillow or a display stand by left clicking on it (once you drag it where you want it to be)
There are 8 different cuts for gems, more are unlocked as you send them.
| Cut Type | total # cuts before available | Value Multiplier | Cost of Cut |
| Emerald | 0 | 1.25 | §10 |
| Oval | 4 | 1.5 | §20 |
| Pear | 8 | 1.75 | §35 |
| Plumbob | 16 | 2 | §50 |
| Marquis | 30 | 2.3 | §75 |
| Crystalball | 45 | 2.6 | §100 |
| Brilliant | 60 | 3.5 | §250 |
| Heart | 5 of each type | 5 | §1000 |
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Ron’s GEM CUT AND SELL GUIDE
Here I’ve created a sell guide for you in an Excel Spreadsheet. I have no idea how to program, so sorry I can’t make an online version for you. Basically this shows you the exact price you will get for each cut to keep you from “losing” money cutting a gem, all you have to do is type in the value.
For example you have a ruby and you want to give it a marquis cut and then sell it for money. This is impossible, you will spend more money cutting it than you get for selling it. Basically this is a way to sell all your EXTRA lower to middle value gems.
The file shows how much it costs to cut a gem, what the final value will be, and what the final price will be compared to all the 7 other cuts.
here are links to the excel file on rapidshare and megaupload.
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2. Collecting METALS:
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| Metal | Weight Range | Value Range |
| Iron | 1-52 | 7-20§ |
| Silver | 1-52 | 25-35§ |
| Gold | 1-52 | 40-120§ |
| Palladium | 80-300 | 300-500§ |
| Plutonium | .1-5 | 1,000-1,800§ |
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Increase Metal Value: Smelting
Smelting is almost always profitable with up to a 75% value gain. Honestly I sell anything less than 30, which means all iron, silver, or other low valued metals. The cutoff for profit is 22.858, which only gets your money back against the initial value. Until you collect every type of the metals that is. At that point you gain incredibly because you will normally get TWO ingots back for a single metal, so you double your profit automatically! So get out there and fill your vaults up!
See my Riverview maps for locations
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3. Collecting SPACE ROCKS:
Increase Space Rock Value: Analyze
There are three types of space rocks, small, large, and gigantic. In order to increase their value all you have to do is “analyze” them – apparently it is a skill built into the DNA of all sims. Again just reminding you that just because you found a “small” space rock somewhere, doesn’t mean that’s all you will find the next time around.
| Space Rock | Weight Range | Value Range |
| Small | 1-65 | 10-100 |
| Large | 100-1,050 | 50-300 |
| Gigantic | 50,000-1,000,000 | 2,000-5,000 |
Sunset Valley has 6 basic areas, I had to take the map down due to the fact it was from a guide.
1 Small Space Rock
2 Large Space Rock
3 Small Space Rock, Large Space Rock
4 Small Space Rock, Large Space Rock, Gigantic Space Rock
See my Riverview Maps in the gem section for space rock locations.
Gigantic Space Rocks are probably one of the coolest things you can find in the game. They are extremely huge and if you ever find one, you are extremely lucky.
Telescope:
Extremely rarely you will see a meteor drop, and even more rarely is a chance it will be gigantic. You will get a message saying your sim has seen a meteorite crash, and after about a half hour the space rock will show up on the overhead map (you don’t need collector to find these) I’m still compiling the exact data for the % chance you find stars and such with the telescope, but I’d just stick to collecting if you’re trying to snag a meteor. Either way you go, gigantics are extremely rare, I have only found one, and I think you can take a guess as to how much I’ve searched for them.
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Tips:
Mail
*Mailman delivers the mail at 8am. If you make there before them, you can “instantly” send something to gem cutter, and get it back right when the mailman leaves! Also works for ordering omni seeds once the omni plant gardening challenge is accomplished. It’s kind of funny to watch the mailmain wait for you. Once I had an entire queue full of things to send and he had to sit and watch me put every single one of them in the mailbox before he could deliver my mail, haha.
Dumpster Diving:
One sims trash is another sims treasure, sometimes literally. Yup, occasionaly a sim will throw away a perfectly good quality gem. You can find them by going around and digging through people’s trashcans. Unfortunately you can’t look through the industrial size dumpsters. If the “rummage” option is NOT available, that means that can has no trash. It can be tricky finding the trash cans from time to time because they are in different spots for each home, but they are there if you look hard enough. Although the chances of getting a gem are relatively high, the chances of getting some trash are about 100%.
Beware the Gnomes:
There is a pretty good chance of getting a gnome instead of a gem. From time to time when you send a gem/rock/metal to be cut, you will recieve the following message: “Your (gem/metal) was actually a magic gnome!” and you’ll have it in your inventory. These little guys are worth 1 grand each, so pretty profitable. But, you can also interact with them by kicking them and they will change their pose, but think twice, because they will likely cause all kinds of mischief in the night!
Helpful Mod:
There is an amazing mod that increases the amount of items in your queue. It’s great for everything, but especially for collecting! You can click up to 25 different gems/rocks/whatever instead of the usual 8!! So you can find a ton of gems all at once, and leave your sim to go around collecting them all without having to wait. Sweet as honey dipped butter. Here is the link directly from the source – I have been using a 25 box queue without any issues!
Sims 3 hints and strategy guides 