Household Skills Project Mk 3

[Alex]

Lea's house!  (At least I think it is - I'm going to look silly if it isn't )

Nice minion!

[hazelnut]

It is Lea's house.

Well done on spotting the tiny minion reference. Chi wasn't keen on the colour scheme (although she likes blue).  Her poor little brothers were the real minions .

[Malley]

Mwah Ha Ha Command Centre

Best name for an evil genius' headquarters ever. Period.

[hazelnut]

Thank you (*bows*)  .


The twins, Marco and David (aka Mark and Dave) grew up into tiny proto-minions.  (Incidentally, I’ve been growing a little tired of the gold slider and am quite glad that two of the three kids inherited their mother’s normal colouring - but it would have been nice if it had lasted one more generation, so that Damien could have had yellow-skinned minions…)







David, like Chi, learned little more than the essential basic skills.  Marco, as a future explorer, made an early start on logic and, especially, charisma.  With the baby walker and playpen, they were largely self-teaching and self-amusing, which gave their parents more time to practise sparring.



Laura was sent to China for a work opportunity and used the rest of her visit to hone her martial arts skill, becoming the first of the family to reach level 10…



…and, with the resulting performance boost, she achieved her lifetime wish.



The little minions had some cake…



…and started school.



Both played with the blocks table until they’d reached level 3 – Marco had a lot of trap-disarming in his future and it wouldn’t hurt for Laura to have some extra back-up when repairs and upgrades were needed.



Damien retired.  I was aware that he and Laura weren’t spending much time together and he wasn’t getting any younger.





They went on a series of dates/semi-public woohoo sessions around town and became the first couple in the family to earn an ‘eternally faithful’ moodlet.  There have been several other devoted couples but I assume they didn’t spend enough time canoodling outside the house.

Chi became a teenager and started working on her supermax.





For some reason, although I’ve had World Adventures for about five years, this was the first time I’d tried the Martial Arts Master wish or supermaxing the skill.  In fact, Chris Goole, from the Life States Dynasty, is my only Sim to have competed in the tournament at all.

Once she’d reached level 6 or so, Chi went to China to try her luck against the locals.  She had a series of easy victories but then came up against a teenage boy with an attitude problem (or maybe even better luck than hers).  Shing Zhi defeated her five times in a row before she finally won a match and then turned up again as the next-but-one opponent.  This time, it only (!) took four attempts to achieve a victory.



Her visa ran out at this point.  Maybe she should max the skill at home and rack up a decent number of sparring matches with the family before she tried again.


The twins aged up to teen and joined their big sister in the world of part-time employment.  Chi seemed to find Marco’s work outfit amusing – not that hers was so very much better.



As soon as school finished for the week, it was Marco’s turn to take a solo trip to China.



He accepted a series of adventures and soon had a level 2 visa.  (In fact, he reached level 3 shortly before returning home but I hadn’t been expecting it and so missed the screenshot.)



Surprisingly quickly, especially by comparison with other recent games, he was offered the ‘Confounded Boulder!’ quest.



I normally get my Sims to zeneport across to the axe but Marco had barely started on Sim Fu and so had to go the long way around.



Without the ability to zeneport, he also missed the chance to collect the Symbol of Pangu’s Haven.  He kept insisting he had pathing issues and couldn’t get to the hidden door.  I’ll have to remember to send him back later.

Like Chi, Marco did some sparring while he was in Shang Simla, although only in pursuit of adventures.  It’s probably just as well he wasn’t going for the tournament win: he seemed to have trouble taking it seriously…



…although Bebe’s lurking mother can’t have helped his composure.



At the end of a busy six days, he had completed several tombs and was in a position to buy a holiday home, ready for a longer stay next time.

[Malley]

yellow-skinned minions…

That would have been awesome! I love Despicable Me 

[hazelnut]

Damien developed a renewed enthusiasm for science in his old age and took DNA samples from several of his friends.  These will be passed down the family and at least one of them may turn up as a clone later.  Damien’s own cloning skills weren’t all that impressive.  I had plans to increase the family’s stock of woohooium but the cloned bars didn’t seem to work properly (no hearts during woohoo) and they eventually disappeared.

I suddenly realised that he still hadn’t got round to maxing martial arts.  He’d been at a high level 8 for ages and I’d forgotten that he hadn’t progressed further.  He was 88 at this point, so things became a little tense.  Chi and Laura both sparred with him when they weren’t at school or work and he used the board breaker and training dummy when they were.  In the early hours of his 90th day, he reached level 10 and was free to return to his science station and video games.  He also continued to collect anything and everything.



Outside the town hall after Chi’s graduation, he completed his homeworld butterfly collection.  (This graduation, incidentally, was the only one in Riverview – the day-off-but-no-ceremony glitch set in before the twins’ birthday.)  The following day, Grim came for Damien.



Chi, unsurprisingly, was the first of the children to get to level 10.



Once she’d finished mourning for her father, she returned to China to take on more tournament opponents.  She stayed at base camp rather than in the family’s new home, largely because I was still trying to build a suitably Asian-looking house, and slept in Marco’s luxurious tent.  It worked out well – I’d been worried about opponents not appearing or being busy but there was a constant stream of locals visiting base camp and the next opponent was often already on the lot.



Some of the locals were a little disconcerting, though.  Chi seemed quite worried about this old lady: fair enough, I think.  She looked far too old and fragile for such gymnastics.



And as for the creepy little girl who kept hanging around…



The man who ought to be her last-but-one opponent, according to my online researches, insisting on fighting in his socks.  Maybe he had verrucae.



He also had a serious neck injury that should really have stopped him fighting.



Maybe his various medical conditions prevented him from trying too hard.  Chi beat him easily and became a Sim Fu King (shouldn’t that be Queen?) as a result.

It was getting late but her next opponent was, yet again, already on the lot.  Maybe she could get this thing wrapped up today.  She went out to where he was waiting at the foot of the steps.  Fittingly, this final match was against Shing Zhi, the teenage boy who’d been by far her toughest opponent on her first visit.  Like Chi, he’d now grown up and had gained a level or two in the skill – but he’d not progressed as much as she had.



This time, she beat him 3-0 at the first attempt – and achieved her lifetime wish.



A few days after her return home, the twins aged up to young adults and the whole family went back to Shang Simla for an extended holiday.  Marco ran around exploring the remaining Chinese tombs and looking faintly worried about it all (given that he’s not neurotic and is brave, I’m not sure why, but it seems to be his default expression).







David spent some time sparring with and training his twin, then stayed on at the Academy to finish his quest for bodily perfection.





Chi was next door in the Scholar’s Garden, putting in the last few hours of meditation to complete her supermax.



Incidentally, you might have noticed that the twins are both dripping wet in that screenshot at the Academy.  I’m using Twallen’s Traveler mod to try to reduce the WA bugs but it’s had the odd side-effect of switching on weather in the travel destinations, even though Seasons isn’t installed at the moment.  It’s very odd – the sky stays bright and sunny despite the rain.  There are even occasional thunderstorms coming out of a cloudless sky.  I thought my graphics card was playing up at first.  Of course, since I’m playing without Seasons, the poor Sims can’t buy umbrellas to keep themselves dry .

I finally gave up on trying to design a Chinese holiday home for the family because I couldn’t get the pagoda roofs to join together properly. (I’ve since noticed that EA seem to have had the same problem with the pre-built houses.)  Instead, I downloaded battousan’s lovely Himeya Inn from MTS and spoiled it slightly by turning it from a pure Japanese house into a Far Eastern pastiche.  The Haskills seemed to like it, though.  Most of the family stayed there on free will for most of their time in Shang Simla.  When I checked up on them, they were mostly playing video games or reading.



There was one scary moment, though.  I looked in on them while Marco was asleep and found that Chi had become dangerously addicted to diving.  Even though she was hungry and exhausted, to the extent of having the drowning picture in her thought bubble, she kept running back to the diving board to have another go.  By the time I stopped her and sent her to bed, she had a 12-hour ‘fatigued’ moodlet.  I don’t remember seeing more than eight hours before – or a Sim not having the sense to get out of the pool and stay out when in that weak a state.

Towards the end of their stay, Marco became the final member of the family to reach level 10 of martial arts.



With all of the requirements for this house completed, the family split up.  David moved to Meadow Carpenter-Rhodes’ old house, close to his workplace and his boyfriend’s home.



Laura retired to a bungalow across the river (and was never seen again – Marco was unable to contact her after the move and she was never at home).



Chi bought Billy Caspian’s old house (and, unfortunately, took one of the motive mobiles with her)…



…and Marco moved into an unnecessarily large house at the expensive end of town.




House 9 summary
Skill: martial arts

Damien
Career: Criminal (evil)
LTW: Emperor of Evil
Level 10 athletic, logic, science, charisma and martial arts (also Gnubb and trampoline).
All collecting challenges completed (apart from the mushrooms, since Supernatural’s still switched off), although he only reached level 8 in the hidden skill, so it probably doesn’t count as a ‘supermax’.  Ironically, after Justin’s troubles in the 4x4, Firefly Collector was the first challenge he finished – in fact, it registered as complete when he’d only found six types.  I wonder whether Late Night messes up the stats?



Laura
(Traits: brave and clumsy – plus ambitious (jock influence) and workaholic (physical education degree))
Career: Professional sports
LTW: Sports Superstar
Level 10 athletic, handiness and martial arts (and Gnubb).  Weirdly, Master Controller also lists her as having maxed child athletic and sandbox skills, despite never having been a child.  She was very fond of playing in the sandpit as an adult, though.



Chi
Traits: athletic, disciplined, lucky, daredevil, unflirty
Career: Spa Specialist
LTW: Martial Arts Master
Supermaxed martial arts, level 10 athletic

Marco
Traits: athletic, brave, adventurous, charismatic, photographer’s eye (no prizes for guessing the next skill)
Career: Spa Receptionist
Level 10 athletic, martial arts and charisma
Building/property: Soil and Water Research Facility
Unique rewards: prepared traveller, learned relic hunter

David
Traits: athletic, disciplined, ambitious, hopeless romantic, frugal
Career: Grocery Store Clerk
LTW: Physical Perfection
Level 10 martial arts and athletic

[Malley]

The elderly opponents that Chi had to face with their medical problems were too funny 

[hazelnut]

I couldn't work out at first why the old man's feet were a funny colour.  Zombie feet?!  Then I realised he'd just left his socks on .

The little girl was really creepy.  She kept following Chi around and staring at her.

[hazelnut]

House 10

As soon as he’d finished moving into his new house, Marco went off on a trip to Egypt, to buy a camera and start working on another visa.  Oh, and to pulverise the odd mummy.



As soon as he’d recovered from that trip, he took himself off to France.  Before he’d moved house, the location merchant in Shang Simla had told him to go there to look for help in accessing the inner chambers of the Dragon Cave, the only Chinese tomb he’d not completed.  Surprisingly, just talking to his local contact in Champs les Sims gave him his first French visa point.



Getting into the château proved challenging…


…but completing the exploration of the Abandoned Wing was well worth it.



He’d started studying gardening in his teens and his new house had a walled kitchen garden that was currently almost empty of plants – an ideal place to establish a small vineyard.*

During his travels, Marco had been looking out for a suitable life partner.  I’d planned for him to marry an explorer but most refused to visit him at home, however high their relationship was on holiday.  The only exception aged from young adult (judging by her lack of wrinkles) to elder during her journey to Riverview.  Maybe it was time for a rethink.  There was still that bucket of University freebies in the family inventory...

Marco got it out of storage and summoned the mascot.   Her name was Crystal.



He asked for mascot training, swapped some jokes and asked her to move in.  Just over a day later, Crystal hopped out of bed and started looking broody.



Oblivious to his new girlfriend's interesting condition, Marco went back to China – to find that the location merchant had died.  A few hours later, someone else took over the quest but still wanted him to come to China.  She was one of his best friends from earlier visits, so he went over to explain that he was already here (duh!) and what was the next step?  She wouldn’t listen.  He cancelled the quest and tried again with someone else.  And again.  No luck.

In the meantime, he practised his mascot moves…





…and I discovered that there’s a second mascot outfit.



(I’m sure the gnome mascot outfit is widely known amongst Simmers but this was the first time I’d come across it.)

Back home, Crystal, who'd arrived with the nine-tenths wish, accumulated enough points to change it to Private Museum…



…and achieved her LTW at once.  Private Museum is one of the wishes I hadn’t done before this game and I have to say it was something of a disappointment.


Crystal gave birth in the Chinese Bedroom; quite appropriately, since Lara was fated to be a tomb explorer like her father.



Leaving their new baby to the tender mercies of the Riverview babysitting circle, Marco and Crystal went off for an extended holiday in Egypt.  Crystal mostly stayed in base camp, befriending other explorers and throwing parties (which were surprisingly successful, given that her watcher was paying zero attention).



Marco explored tombs and worked on his Egyptian visa.



Surprisingly, given that they’d hardly spent any time in each other’s company on the trip, Marco rolled a wish to propose to Crystal and she accepted, despite her commitment issues.



Then he went back to his exploring, while Crystal threw a hen party at the base camp.

Marco started getting into the more serious tombs… and into trouble.



The idiot went through twenty showers-in-a-can by not realising it might be sensible to step off the floor trap before extinguishing himself.  At last, with his inventory empty, it occurred to him that jumping into the nearby dive well might be a good idea.


The day after their arrival home from Egypt, Marco and Crystal married.  The garden party was attended by many friends and by both of the groom’s siblings (but not his mother, who had had the bad taste to die just before their departure to Egypt, thereby putting a dampener on the first couple of days of the holiday).



Marco took being married seriously.



Almost as soon as the ceremony was completed, he wished to have another child – so he planted one of the special seeds he’d been left by Damien.



Unfortunately, I lost track of the time and told him to tend the garden just before the forbidden fruit became harvestable.  Instead of just weeding it, he picked the fruit – and the chance of a PlantSim baby was lost for now.




With Lara growing up and becoming more independent, Crystal went back to work (in a remarkably inappropriate outfit)…



…but soon she was taking maternity leave again.




*I’d originally intended photography to be the only skill for this house but changed my mind partway through and added nectar-making.

[Trip]

I've only ever seen the second mascot costume while having unlockoutfits on active. I didn't know how it could be unlocked until now.

[hazelnut]

Mascot appears to be a hidden trait (it's the third one down if you look with Master Controller - no icon).  Marco and Crystal both have the trait, as do two of their kids, one of whom isn't actually a biological relation.  (Can you say 'biological' about Sims?  )  Clicking on a Sim with the trait brings up a Mascot... menu as well as the usual ones.  There's the option to suit up as either kind of mascot and then, once in costume, they can backflip, do the running man or dance mascot style.  They don't seem to be able to do any of them when in their normal outfits.

[Malley]

Sims certainly do get some interesting work attire! In my deca, one of the sims I have is currently working in a tank top and skirt, with no shoes. Apparently that's the latest trend in law enforcement 

[hazelnut]

Sims certainly do get some interesting work attire! In my deca, one of the sims I have is currently working in a tank top and skirt, with no shoes. Apparently that's the latest trend in law enforcement 

  I think Crystal was in law enforcement as well (rather oddly, considering she's a klepto).


Marco aged up to adult and popped over to see whether his twin was also having a midlife crisis.  It seemed that he was: David had cut off his curls and appeared to be trying to recapture his minion days with his new outfit.



Satisfied that he wasn’t the only one, Marco took himself (but not his razor  ) off to Champs les Sims.



He acquired his level 3 visa and got as far as he could with the French tombs without another visit to Egypt.



Then he spent the remainder of the time touring archaeological digs, hunting for rare insects and observing strange phenomena, like invisible dwarf singers…



…and lightning without thunderclouds.



(Come to think of it, that spike on the top of the tent does look as though it would attract lightning.  Marco was my first Sim to be struck.  Fortunately, he survived the experience.)


Crystal had a nice cup of tea in the conservatory rudely interrupted by the arrival of her second child.



They named him Inigo.



Immediately, both Crystal and Marco rolled wishes to have another child.  This wasn’t going to happen naturally – Crystal was almost a whole life stage older than her husband and would have been an elder already if she hadn’t been pregnant.  So, as soon as the baby was tucked up in his cot, she phoned the adoption agency.



Rather wonderfully, Ama arrived with perfect traits for this house: she was artistic, ambitious and had a photographer’s eye.  United by their shared love of photography, she and Lara were soon best friends.




Inigo aged up into a cute toddler (and yay!  Faylene’s hair’s back, after skipping a generation  )…



…and Marco successfully harvested the final member of the family.



Given that the seed had been sown by Marco and he’d cared for and harvested the plant, I was rather surprised when the baby turned out to be a girl.




Ama had been working hard on her photography and had almost exhausted the picture possibilities in Riverview, so Marco took her along when he went to Egypt in pursuit of the Ruby of Sakhara.





They toured the sights, visited most of the locals and even went into a couple of the safer tombs, Ama snapping away all the time.  By the time her teen birthday arrived, she was at level 10 of photography, with two challenges completed and another two progressing well.  Shutternut, though, was looking like more of a problem.  Since Riverview doesn’t have a beach, ‘Around Town’ wouldn’t be possible and ‘Home Sweet Home’ was also out, since sculpting isn’t yet unlocked.  That left a distinct shortage of easy collections.

A visit to the pet shop and a few temporary adoptions got her most of the ‘Animal Kingdom’ pictures and charismatic Marco persuaded a horse to let him sit on its back for long enough to get the remaining shot, ‘Horse and Rider’.

Inigo and Fleur were growing up and provided some more photo opportunities.



Marco and Crystal should have given her a lot more but something seemed to have gone wrong with their relationship since Inigo’s birth.  They were rarely able to interact at all and the game no longer recognised them as lovers for photographic purposes.  Crystal seemed more interested in making jam than making out.



With nothing to keep him at home, Marco travelled constantly, setting off on a new trip as soon as the moodlet from the previous one had worn off.  He often took the older girls with him, although travel didn’t always seem to agree with Ama.



Lara was shaping up as a promising tomb-raiding partner.



She and Marco worked in tandem to solve the puzzles of Abu Simbel…



…until disaster struck.  (Not that she seemed all that upset by it.)



OK, not so much of a disaster from my point of view, since Ama really needed the ‘Pleading to the Sphinx’ shot.  In fact, I cheered when Lara finally got cursed.  This was something like her sixth fight with a mummy and, despite losing every time – she was only at about level 3 of the athletic skill and hadn’t yet started on martial arts – she kept getting knocked out instead.

Marco finished off the tomb on his own, while the girls slept in the fancy tent at base camp.  Then they all met up by the Sphinx and Lara started pleading.

My Sims normally just explore the Sphinx like a normal tomb and I’d only seen its display once before, soon after I started playing with World Adventures: India the First managed to get herself cursed by the first mummy she met (that one in the Tomb of the Rock) and went to the Sphinx for a cure.  With that computer’s rubbish graphics, the light show wasn’t all that impressive.  This time, it was amazing.



Once they were inside. Marco and Lara worked together to get through the tomb.



Within a few hours, they’d reached the Soulpeace Statue and Lara began the cleansing ritual while Ama watched and Marco ran around opening treasure chests.



With Lara cured of her curse, they returned home for a well-earned rest – but then Ama, in the grip of a mood swing, pieced together some old junk she’d found in the cellar…

[Malley]

The sphinx pictures were absolutely amazing!

[hazelnut]

It was even better in-game - I took loads of screenshots and it was quite hard to pick the four for the update.  It's a pity you have to get a Sim cursed to see the display   .