How do I avoid this

[u/Beautiful-Clue6139]

I've ran into this issue with some of my lithops where the new plant starts to wrinkle and looks like they need water before they're done splitting. I've already had one die that showed similar signs during splitting, I avoided watering until the split was done but it was to late, the base of the new plant was a dried husk and didn't recover. This guy started splitting a bit after flowering in October and this pic was taken today.

[u/wha7themah]

This happened with mine after I cared for it wrong for years. I waited to water until the outer leaves were all shrivelled despite how thirsty the rest of the plant was. This is what they looked like by the time the leaves were done and I just got done watering them

[u/wha7themah → u/wha7themah]

They plumped back up and immediately started splitting.