The Sims 4's new Crystal Creations DLC basically gave me craftable cheat codes for boosting my mood, love life, and defying death

Say what you will about the properties of rose quartz and other supposedly supernatural gems in real life, in the world of The Sims 4 there's no question: gemstone jewelry can really improve your mood, skills, and defy death itself if you so choose. The newest Sims 4 DLC, Crystal Creations, comes with a suite of new moody decor choices and the ability to craft magical gemstone jewelry with stat-boosting properties.

To try out the new stuff pack, I decided to call upon a pair of premade roommates who originally hailed from the Realm of Magic DLC, and who I had most recently shoved into a Chicago townhouse-inspired apartment I built when the For Rent expansion pack came out. What's one more DLC to these magical roomies, I figure?

The Sims meta build I didn't know I needed 

Untrained mage Grace Anansi becomes my new amateur gemologist. I ditch her desk and laptop for the new Gemology Table at which she can either design a random piece of jewelry, cut a gemstone, or craft a specific piece based on my selection of jewelry style, gem, and metal. There's no use leaving things up to chance, so I decide to start with a set of orange topaz earrings, which will help Grace level creative skills faster and be more likely to create high quality work. It should be a good first boost to her new creative endeavors.

After completing her earrings, I need to charge them on a Mystical Moonlight Crystal Grid, a small ornate wooden board on which I place Grace's gem creations to charge outside by moonlight. They take up to 12 hours to charge between 7 pm and 7 am with a speed determined by the phase of the moon—a full moon granting a fast charge of three hours—and then she can wear each piece to get its benefits for two days before it will need to be charged again.

It's a good thing there's that control valve on the power of crystals because these things stack fast. That first set of earrings takes a bit of time to craft, as entering into new Sim hobbies does, but things speed up quickly. With her increased creative skill gain, Grace levels up in Gemology rapidly, unlocking new styles of earrings, rings, necklaces, and bracelets to craft. 

I put her to work on an amethyst ring which makes her regain energy from sleep quicker, an alabaster ring so that all her negative moods fade faster, and a rose quartz bracelet that keeps her social need from ever lowering. She definitely needs that last one, because she's not getting much socialization time in between her day job and crafting crystals all night. New side hustles hit hard like that.

Suddenly, Grace is stacking buffs more aggressively than any MMO player, wearing three rings, a necklace, earrings, and a bracelet each conferring its own effects. She's in a constant state of confidence or inspiration fueled by all these mood-boosting rocks. She needs to eat and shower, but she's otherwise unstoppable as the concept of sadness becomes unfamiliar to her tunnel-vision for crafting.

If I hadn't gifted Grace with unlimited free cash via Sims 4 cheats, I could attempt to be thriftier. There are small rocky nodes in public lots like parks where she can dig for gems, and I can sell each piece when it's complete to earn money too. For the sake of expediency, I just pay the upfront cost to buy each gem and then have her wear all her own creations. The rarest gems with the most valuable effects though, I will have to go find in the wild because they can't be bought.

Remarkably, the crystal hematite, which gives the singular benefit "sim cannot die," is not one of the rarest options or even the most expensive. So I make a necklace with that, naturally—a "lunar goddess" style pendant crafted with "death metal" and hematite. Because I find myself funny, apparently. 

This is when I channel my inner Live Mode sicko to wreak a bit of havoc. I decide it would be fun to befriend the Grim Reaper and attempt to gift them a necklace of undeath. As we aren't acquainted already, there's only one surefire way to call upon death, and I'm in no mood to wait for an unhappy accident. I use Grace's magical abilities, which I'd so far ignored, to set fire to the bed of her roommate, who I'd also so far ignored, in the middle of the night.

Let's just say the grim reaper showed up as planned. Before that though, Grace managed to put out the fire that had mysteriously started in her roommate's room, the success of which gave her a mood boost of confidence on top of her already quite heightened sense of inspiration from crafting. Girl's got a gem-fueled god complex. While in that confident state she gets the special interaction option to not just plead for her roommate's life back but demand it, even. 

So the grim reaper resurrects her roommate, who believes her a hero that saved his life, and she manages to make polite acquaintances with death before they leave on their spooky way. I didn't manage to gift them the necklace though, because we didn't quite make it to the official "friendship" relationship level. Bummer.

I only realized afterwards that a more interesting test of the gem powers would have been to gift my roommate the undying necklace instead before setting his bed on fire. So I guess I still have some goals in mind.

What about actual build mode? 

There, I've done my best impression of a person who actually plays with their Sims, but the reality is that I'm just a build mode chick through and through. In addition to the new Gemology skill and jewelry effects, Crystal Creations comes with a set of new furniture, decor, and display cases—32 items in all.

The style for this kit is pretty moody with dark academia vibes, mostly dark woods with brassy hardware accents. Personally I'm enamored of the multiple little jewelry clutter objects: a ring display tray, jewelry boxes, and gem crafting tools. There are several different display cases too, boxes, shelves, and an armoire with doors. The sleek new bookshelf set has slots for items as well. To my dismay, some of the color swatches between bookshelves and wall shelves are ever so slightly different. But that's a cross we lovers of wood tones have long borne.

I did have a few issues with objects snapping to the new surfaces though. The jewelry boxes only seem to snap to the bottom bookshelf slot but not the top, and not at all into the wood wall shelf or to the workspace of the gemology table. The same goes for when I place crafted jewelry in the world, their cute little displays don't snap to most of the new surfaces I'd want them to. I'd wager that may be a bug that gets fixed, but don't count on it.

I didn't actually spend any time in Create-A-Sim this time around, but Crystal Creations does come with four new hairstyles, a ton of new jewelry styles, and some knitted and flowy clothing choices.

As someone who typically spends 95% of my Sims time just building, I don't know that I'd consider Crystal Creations a must-have pack, nice as the style is—and much as I love getting new book shelf choices. For the lovers of Live Mode though, gem crafting feels like a genuinely fun, if slightly overpowered, new crafting career for creative Sims. It definitely reinforces my feeling that the $10 stuff packs with gameplay and new items are some of the best overall value DLCs for the Sims 4.