for some slightly humorous yet very irritating reason... my "master scientist" has spontaneously reverted to being an adept scientist...and some of my other nearly 'mastered skill' villagers are also slowly dropping in stats. i havent toyed with the time clock, the only stews they've eaten are ones that increase health, energy or clear sinuses, and i havent opened any surprise satan packages or had any new island events...the only change has been increasing my culture to a level two,but i dont know why this would effect anything (?).... are my villagers becoming retarded?!?! has anyone else had this happen?

We have seen rare reports of that happening, but we've never seen it ourselves and haven't been able to reproduce it here in our lab. One lead that we had was that certain stews were causing skills to decrease, but haven't had anyone that could prove it. If you wouldn't mind working with me on this, I'd be happy to see if we can figure it out.

i can try to help. what would you need from me? i havent been playing for all that long (a total of 150ish-200ish hours). so if i have to start a new village im not going to be heart broken. lol.

We'll start with the easy things that won't require you to start over. It would help to know exactly which version of the game that you're playing. There are many places to buy the game, and they don't all have exactly the same version. So, to pinpoint which version you have, I would need to know where and approximately when you purchased the game, as well as the exact version number that's displayed on the menu screen.

The next step is to do a little experimenting. Find a few villagers who have skill levels that you can keep track of (either by screen shots or making written notes). Then keep an eye on what they do, checking their skill levels after different activities. It might be the most productive to start with feeding them various stews and check their skills each time they eat (since that's the one "lead" that we have). If that doesn't cause a reduction in their skills, then try other things. Since we've never been able to find this problem, I can't give you any other specific guidance.

It's happened to me and I'm sure of that, because this day with an event one of my villagers became master doctor at 100%. I tried some stews that make the villagers healthier and, after eating one he was still master doctor but at around 90%! The other villagers also had their skills decreased a little. But it seems that some other skills had increased a little in a random manner (not absolutely sure)! I think it was a stew with the "Red Anthurium" near the dam (3 on the keyboard) inside, but I don't know which other herbs.

Laurence, that's very helpful. Would you mind doing some experimenting to see if it's all stews or just certain stews? Also, I'll need to know exactly which version of the game you're playing. See the post above yours for the information that I need. You can send it in a PM, if you're not comfortable posting it here.

Hello, Barbara!
I purchased VV: TLC at Big Fish Games the 17 on February 2007. The exact version number that's displayed on the menu screen is 1.00.
It was on my 3rd tribe ("I Pappagalli"). The 08/23/2007, Mali found a vial that he drank and became Master Parent at 100% (and not doctor as I said, sorry). It's a few days later that I made my villagers drinking some stews for their health and that I notice something changing in their skills. Mali was also master scientist at 100% and his skills of parenting and research decreased at 90% (or 95%). Mali who was also master scientist at100% became master scientist at 90% too. I know there are others (they all ate theses stews) like that but I didn't note it. It's difficult to remember every thing that happened, it was more than 1 month ago!! Now this tribe is "complete", they are 115 and it runs almost alone! It's difficult to keep tracks of what they do (and I don't have enough time for the moment to follow them)
I may try to make again these stews, this week-end

when i logged back into my game, it only took about 20 minutes before my poor scientist was back up to a 'master' level.

my info is as follows:
version 1.06.03
purchased through yahoo games- not sure of exact date, i'll try to find out though. i have been trying to experiment with the only stews that i have fed to my villagers and i have not been able to noticeably recreate what happened. if they are decreasing in skill level, it has not been dramatic enough for me to notice...i'll keep toying with it and see what i can manage.

Thanks, Laurence. If you get time to make some stews, that's great, but don't worry about it if you're too busy. I'll see if I can find v1.00 to do some testing myself, too.

Thanks, Jane. Maybe by working together, we can find the cause.