As you play the Sims Social Facebook game, you accrue a bunch of random crafting ingredients. Half the time when I repair something broken, my Sim earns a Wrench. Whenever she paints, she gets a bunch of Rags and Soap, and so forth.

 

My initial strategy was to craft away. Why not, right? What, was I waiting for the perfect moment, saving up my "instantly refill Clean motive" potion? Nah. Just use 'em. So I thought.

 

Then I bought a $20,000 couch, "some assembly required." Guess what? It required nine Relaxation. You earn Relaxation randomly when you fill your Fun motive. I had accumulated a lot of these over the time that I have been playing… but I used them as I went, by crafting the Fun potion.

 

In hindsight… what a waste!

 

I had to ask my friends to send me Relaxation, and drum my fingers impatiently waiting for them to respond, before I could unpack and assemble my awesome couch. What an annoyance.

 

And so, my new rule is: don't ever Craft anything. You never know when you might want those crafting ingredients for something else! 

 

The oddest crafting ingredients are also needed to level up in most skills. In order to unlock new abilities in the Writing and Painting skills, you may need something like Fury or Harmony. Using your ingredients to level up a skill is a lot more useful than any of the potions you can create off the Craft menu.

 

You will also need ingredients if you ever try to follow a Quest Chain. These chains always have several points where you need to cash in a bunch of random ingredients. And you usually don't have time to waste waiting for your friends to send you stuff, because most of the Quest Chains are timed. (The better ones, anyway.) Wait too long, and the Quest Chain will expire, and all your efforts will be wasted.

 

Don't rule out the strange things you accumulate, either. About a week ago, social interactions started randomly dropping Spoonfuls of Sugar. We don't know what these are for, but one presumes they will be useful for something later. By which time, it will be impossible to obtain them.

 

Such was the case with Fear. You could earn Fear from a bunch of different promo items last Halloween. Several months later, you needed Fear in order to assemble your Cow Plant… but by that time, there was no way to earn Fear! You had to either have stockpiled it from last Halloween, or you had to use SimPoints.