One of the new skills to learn in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch is nectar making. This five-level skill allows Sims to buy a nectar maker and then stomp on a range of fruit to produce bottled nectar they can then drink, sell, or store in a rack to mature.

There is a range of different produce to experiment with and maturing your nectar can increase your profit if you want to make a business out of this new skill. Here’s everything you need to know about crafting, drinking, and selling nectar in The Sims 4.

Updated on July 10, 2024, By Helen Ashcroft: We’ve updated this guide to add information on the unlockable occult nectar recipes, as well as adding the buffs and effects drinking nectar will give you.

What Is Nectar Making?

Nectar making is essentially producing the Sims equivalent of wine and involves a simplistic version of grape stomping. Your Sim will need to purchase a nectar maker, and then some produce to get started with.

The skill works best alongside gardening, so you can grow your own produce to turn into nectar, allowing you to make even more profit and eliminate some of the hassles of ingredient purchasing.

Is It Expensive To Make Nectar?

The real beauty of nectar making is that you can get started with just a few hundred simoleons. A nectar maker will cost you $350, and if you want a rack to store your produce in this will cost another $300 for a stackable shelf that stores ten bottles.

The cheapest nectar to craft is apple, which costs $42 for the three apples you need, and produces a bottle of nectar that sells for a minimum of $57.

To make your first few bottles you can purchase basic ingredients just by clicking the nectar maker. This will allow you to make grape and apple nectars at level one skill, as well as strawberry nectar, which can be crafted at level two.

All bottles sell for a profit.

At first, you’ll get poor-quality nectar, and the profit is low, but your earningsincrease if the quality is higher and if the nectar is left to mature.

What Are The Best Things To Grow For Nectar Making?

You can use almost any fruit, berry, or herb for nectar making, but some items offer a much faster yield, increasing your profit. Here are the recommended items for your garden, including the growth times.

If you put a roof over the area your plants are in, they’ll
grow all year round
. If you have irrigated planters (
Eco Lifestyle
) or sprinklers (
seasons
) you can also
automate watering.

How Do I Make Nectar?

It’s very easy to make nectar. All you need to do is right-click on the nectar maker barrel and select craft nectar. This will display a menu that allows you to choose from all the available recipes.

If you do not have the ingredients and/or skill level the recipe will be grayed out and unselectable.

You’ll need to
clean the nectar maker every few bottles.
To do this, simply
select the nectar maker and choose the clean option
. Make sure to
clean it each time the option appears
to keep quality high.

The better your mood and higher your skill level, the better quality nectar you’ll produce. Like most crafted produce, you can have poor, normal, or excellent quality.

Your Sim will stomp the ingredients and then decant the nectar into a bottle. The bottled nectar will go into your inventory. In order to age it, you’ll need to place it on a table or in a nectar storage rack.

The Different Types Of Nectar

There are five levels of the nectar making skill and ten different standard recipes. However, two of the recipes are flexible, allowing you to combine different fruits and berries to see if your Sims enjoy the result.

Below is a list of the available recipes, the skill level required to unlock them, and the ingredients needed.

There are also three additional Nectar recipes you’ll need to unlock.

How To Unlock Additional Nectar Recipes

There are three additional recipes, linked to occult Sims.

The Effects Of Nectar

Nectar offers several different buffs to your Sim, some are common, while others are specific to a certain type of nectar. Whichever type of nectar you drink, you will go through the following stages:

• First Bottle: Smooth Sipping – Mood +1, Small Mood Boost
• Second Bottle: Extra Nectar Feeling – Mood +4, Medium Mood Boost
• Third Bottle: Really Great Nectar Feeling – Mood +6, Large Mood Boost
• Fourth Bottle: Over-Nectared – Dazed +8, Uncomfortable +3, Energy fully drained to exhausted, bladder expelled.

If you have maxed out the Expert Nectar Maker Aspiration, the Nectar Know-It-All reward trait will give you the following buff:

• Nectar Sooth-Sayer: Confident +4, Medium Mood Boost – Removes anger, sadness, embarrassment, tense and uncomfortable debuffs. It also stops Sims from emptying their bladder after too many bottles.

The mood buff you get will vary, depending on the type of nectar. Some bottles also have an extra effect. Here are the mood buffs for the core ten bottles of nectar.

The Effects Of Occult-Specific Nectar

Moon Petal and Valerian nectars both give regular Sims a happy debuff, with an extra effect for the occult they are designed for. Plasma Nectar will make regular Sims instantly sick and queasy and should be avoided.

• Moon Petal Nectar calms Werewolf Sims, unless they drink too much when the effect is reversed.
• Valerian Nectar will increase Spellcaster Charge on magical Sims but too much can cause overload.
• Plasma Nectar functions like other plasma drinks and quenches a Vampire’s thirst as well as giving a happy boost.

How To Mature Nectar

Maturing nectar is simply a case of waiting. You can just leave a bottle on the side, and as long as it remains unopened, it will mature. Here’s how long it takes.

• Lightly Aged – Two Sim Days
• Moderately Aged – Five Sim Days
• Finely Aged – Seven To Eight Sim Days

Nectar seems to mature after a specific number of hours, meaning it will count each day as 24 Sim hours from when it was bottled.

The first two stages appear set, but the final stage of maturity sometimes takes a little longer.

Nectar will age moderately faster in a basement or cellar, and significantly faster in a Nectar Rack. The above data is based on
using a Nectar Rack.

If you complete the Expert Nectar Maker aspiration you’ll gain the Nectar-Know-It-All trait which allows you to craft nectar that is already lightly aged.

Aging nectar enhances the strength of positive effects, and reduces the strength of negative effects, as well as increasing the value of the bottle.

Once you reach skill level five, you will also craft excellent quality nectar the majority of the time, as long as your needs are met before you begin the process.

How Quickly Can You Max Out The Nectar Making Skill?

The nectar-making skill is easy to max, as long as you can keep your needs up. You simply need to keep making nectar. There appears to be a steady increase in how many bottles it takes to max out a level as follows.

• Level One – Zero
• Level Two – 7 Bottles
• Level Three – 12 Bottles
• Level Four – 17 Bottles
• Level Five – 22 Bottles

This means making approximately 58 bottles. However, there does seem to be some slight variation depending on what you make that is difficult to measure.

Higher skill-level recipes appear to take slightly longer to make, meaning the skill builds a little faster since it builds as you stomp. The length of time taken will be the same overall, but the number of bottles required may vary slightly.

How To Maximize Your Nectar Skill With Cheats

If you want to speed up the process, you can max out your skill with the following cheat process.

• Press Ctrl + Shift + C on PC or press all four trigger buttons at once on console
• Type testingcheats on into the box that appears in the top left and then enter / select
• Type in the cheat stats.set_skill_level AdultMinor_RanchNectar 5 and hit enter / select

This will max out your skill at level five.

What Does Nectar Sell For?

You’ll need to take into account the cost of ingredients when making nectar, and this is a good reason to learn the gardening skill. With gardening, you can grow the fruits and berries that offer the highest profit. You’ll also maximize all profit by not having to pay out for ingredients, which are generally a couple of hundred simoleons per bottle (excluding the clearly expensive vitality recipe)

When you hit level five you’ll pretty much be finished with the aspiration and will be crafting
lightly aged items as a default.
Therefore, it’s difficult to get not-aged versions of the highest-level recipes.

Here are all the recipes you can craft and the maximum prices they sell for at each maturity level. If your nectar is of normal or poor quality, it will sell for less. These prices are based on excellent quality, something you’ll achieve with pretty much every bottle at max level skill.

If you sell your nectar to Roberto Crinkletop in Chestnut Ridge, he will pay a higher price for it than selling through the inventory.

Where Is Roberto Crinkletop The Mysterious Rancher?

Roberto will pay almost 50 percent extra for nectar, so it’s worth hunting him down. He will appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 11am and 3pm, and you can find him outside the grocery store in New Appaloosa.

All three community lots are a similar distance from the grocery store which is centrally located in the neighborhood, just across from the competition arena.

If you travel to any New Appaloosa lot when he is around, you’ll see a notification that he wishes to buy your nectar. Click the notification and then click his portrait. This will take you to his current location.

You’ll need to have the nectar in your inventory and then select: Friendly > Sell Nectar

Selling to Roberto
does not currently count towards the aspiration goal
of making 100,000 Simoleons selling nectar.