Here’s another occult mod for y'all that literally nobody asked for! It’s always bothered me that TS4 mermaids don’t have a fatal weakness. Ever since choosing Hydration as the equivalent for Dark Energy in terms of necessary survival for the Mermaid Bloodlines (since I do like to have the primary benefit of bloodlines be something that can reduce the risk of death), I’ve wanted to make Mermaids, well, have a weakness that can be fatal.
My attempts at finding a mod that already did this mostly lead me to threads along the lines of [“do mermaids die if hydration drops?” “no” “ok”] and, for some reason, [“can mermaids drown sims?”]. So that was no help. I would have to do it myself!
Problem was, I had no idea how to actually pull it off. I tried traits and stuff but… yeah, no, it didn’t work. But between Servo Bloodlines making me figure out how commodities are selected, and Dhampyr tempting me to test edits out for real, I ended up figuring it out.
So what does this mod do? First, it creates a different Hydration motive. Turns out Mermaid Hydration is literally just Hygiene with a text and buff override, so that couldn’t stand. Pfft, Vampires and Servos get their own needs! Mermaids should, too. So Mermaids now have an actual separate Hydration motive, removing Hygiene from the list. They’ll still get the smelly broadcaster if their Hydration gets low, though.
And second, this new Hydration motive (which to be fair is literally just a clone of Hygiene that I modified a bit too much) will have a different failure interaction! Now, now. You know how Sims collapse when their energy reaches rock bottom, or how they starve if their Hunger need is too low. Now, Mermaids will need to stay hydrated. Why? Because as the title implies, Mermaid Hydration is no longer harmless. Oh, no it isn’t. As soon as their Hydration reaches the lowest value possible (failure, which anyone wondering, the value is: -100), the poor Mermaid will have strained themselves too much! Much like an Elder who exhausts themselves too much, the Mermaid will then die of Overexertion.
Now, don’t fret. Hydration for Mermaids is set to decay over 7 times slower than the Hygiene of regular Sims. You’ll likely still want to exercise near a readily available source of water, of course. Can’t ever be too careful.
TL;DR: Mermaids now have an actual Hydration need, and failure to stay hydrated will lead to an early demise.
Yes, I had way too much fun writing the description, why do you ask?
It did turn out rather short in comparison to my other descriptions, though, I’m slightly scared.
Languages
I only used in-game strings to franken-code this wonder of nature into existence so any language should work.
Credits
Sims4Studio for existing so I could go in and make this thing happen
Future plans:
This is the part where I say I’ll keep working on my queue, and I will, but let’s be real, after releasing 2 mods and updating a further 2 within the past one or two days, I really just wanna go procrastinate and play the game for a few days. Then I’ll get back to work with my queue and looking into the other Nyx mods.
