Sorry it took me so long to figure this out but I have mastered getting gems, metals and space rocks to spawn, in nice big clusters one can suck up with a harvester quickly.
I highly recommend this:
1.) Get into edit town
2.) Place two 10x10 lots right next to each other.
3.) On one, place a public lot with a door on one side that faces the other lot.
4.) On the second lot place your spawners. Center them if possible but make sure the circle is clear. Place about 30 spawners right on top of each other.
5.) Save the lots to the catalog if you want but then put something of value like an outdoor light on the spawner lot.
6.) Save your game in edit town.
7.) Bulldoze the lot that has the spawners. It will take two bulldozers if you made a lot with value. Leave the other lot though.
8.) Name the remaining lot with something like "30x Vampire Eye Spawners"
9.) Save your game again in edit town.
10.) Return to your game and pick up all the gems, metals and space rocks. Spawners do not like to spawn if nothing gets picked up.
If it is the very first day and you put in two spawners like this, there is probably nothing to pick up and you should see spawning around 8pm to 2am.
My sims went to China and I immediately put in 20 separate spawning sites. They picked up everything and nothing at all spawned for about 18 hours then everything started spawning.
If you want pink diamonds, both epic and vampire eye spawn it, but I'd put a ton of epic in - at least 40. Vampire eye with 30 spawners would probably get you a pink diamond in a day.
I hope you see the value of putting a lot next to the spawners that identifies it. It's likely enough that you'll want to change it some day and now you can - just lay a new lot next to the other lot on the door side- it will knock out the old spawner.
Also, with the identifying lots you don't really need a collection helper. You don't have to pick up the whole town any more, just the lots you set up.
I mentioned the harvester, it rocks with the Ultra Harvester No Fail mod from mod the sims.
Now the only other advise is try not to have more than 1000 items in one storage place (like a treasure chest), unless you have a much better pc than me...
Hey, but isn't that a nice concern?
Nancy
