Dynasty....What did I do wrong?

[Joria]

Failed my dynasty and I'm thinking I just don't know how to do it right.  First of all I chose culinary career for my founder.  She quickly maxed both cooking and gourmet cooking and made it to sous chef but no matter what I did I could not get her to get promoted.  She always left for work inspired with all her needs topped off, she always worked hard, she always did her daily tasks.  She was at the point of death and still no promotion!

 Is this a bugged career?  I figured since she would be the one making ambrosia it would be up to her to become the family chef.

 Is there a better career for a founder?

She accomplished everything else needed except the career and making the friends she needed.  Oh, she had plenty of friends, but they all died before she could make and eat ambrosia!  I have a great deal of difficulty making friends.  Any tips as to how to manage the time you need so I can get the friends I need?  I even invited two households to join with mine, (at different times as household number one with potential bff died off quickly), and still did not have more than two friends.

Please help fellow Simmers!  I rely on your successes.

[Dellena]

Sounds like you got a bugged one for some reason.  Did you try clearing your cache files?  Seems like something got hung up if you didn't get promoted when everything was full.

[MarianT]

Joria, it sounds bugged to me, too. My founder went the cooking, gourmet cooking route, too and reached the top of the career a few days after her elder birthday. If you have a saved game, try repairing your game (go to Origin and right-click on your game, "repair" is in the options). Then give your founder a youth potion and send her to work again. Another idea -- my founder completed her requirements before the patch that made everything "easier". She had to write a cookbook in order to get the last promotion; maybe the game still "remembers" that that's necessary for promotion.

[Playalot]

Hi Joria,

sounds very bugged to me. I chose to go the painter route with my founder just because it brings in a lot of money. I also made friends by being mentored at the gym and then befriending sims that were younger than my founder to make sure they didn't die before it was time for him to eat ambrosia. He even befriended a couple of children just as extras in case any of the adult sims did die. If you see a teen doing homework in Oasis Springs park you can 'help them with homework' and it raises the friendship bar very quickly. Often there are teens there late at night!

It is important to empty your cache especially after updates/patches as usually that is when things tend to go wrong with career requirements and/or aspiration requirements. I empty the cache files often, and if things start to go a little buggy in my game I empty all the cache files and repair my game straight away.

The higher your charisma level the easier it is to make friends especially if your sim is confident or very confident. Using jokes helps too. Once your sim is a friend with someone, just a quick chat/visit every other day or so can maintain and increase that to good friend status. Basically when I'm making friends I just queue up as many interactions as possible and really don't let the other sim get in a word until they are friends. That way it speeds up the process as you don't have to wait for the other sim to finish chatting, you can just keep adding more interactions as the first few drop off. Look for the interactions that give you a double hit of friendship like 'ask about day' and the green charisma options as well as the other coloured options relating to your sims emotions (blue for confident).

Hope that is helpful. 

[Joria]

The cooking thing, not gaining promotions, is a known bug I found out.  You just don't max out your two skills before they are asked to be maxed.

I do clean out my cache files before every time I play.  The latest problem is not being able to put things in the refrigerator so I'm hoping the repair game will work for that.

With making friends, my problem is I just don't seem to ever have enough time.  There is always something else that needs to be done.  I even have a houseful of townies, hoping I'd get more friends that way but they usually die before I do.  I'm going to try enhancing my charisma skill and going to the park or gym more and see if that works.  Thanks for all the tips and support!

[Joria]

Dynasty again with a chef and again lack of promotion.  I've noticed she leaves the house in the proper "inspired" mood but by the time she greys out and is at work, and it's instant, she gets a "happy" moodlet before I select anything, like "work hard".  Of course, "work hard" often ends up with her being tense but not for some time.  If I don't select anything she either comes home happy or tense.

She is doing much better at making friends.  Thanks for the tips on that!  Her charisma level is at 4 at the moment and visiting the gym always gets her chatting with a lot more people.  However, getting them to "good friend" status still takes hours of one on one chatting.

[stitching_JA]

I've noticed that job performance sometimes decays badly when they are tense and working hard. I've forgotten to change from work hard a few times, and once I'm sure a sim came home with lower performance than he'd left with despite working hard all day. If they are tense, or any other negative emotion, try switching to normal for the work tone.  Performance then doesn't decay as quickly and may even improve a bit.  I switch to normal before any moodlets boosting the desired emotion ends, unless they are going to be very happy.

If you look at the career panel while they are at work, you can sometimes see a little white arrow on the left or right ends of the performance bar.  It seems more likely to show up as you change the work tone and which end it shows at will tell you if the tone you picked will improve or hurt performance.  Also, sometimes I've been able to get the performance to make tiny jumps when switching work tone between fine and normal and back again when they are in good moods.  Between these switches I check on other sims, and then am back looking at the working sim's panel when I make the adjustments.  I usually see the little arrows when doing this, and if they don't appear or the performance indicator doesn't move I leave them alone for a while. 

For keeping the inspired mood, is her mood at home only due to decor?  Try browsing art on the web, playing with clay, taking a thoughtful shower, and viewing inspiring decor items.  I think those all give four hour moodlets.  If you have Outdoor Retreat, the cloud-gaze action (click on your sim) gives a 6 hour moodlet.

I hope this helps - good luck.

[Joria]

I've noticed that job performance sometimes decays badly when they are tense and working hard. I've forgotten to change from work hard a few times, and once I'm sure a sim came home with lower performance than he'd left with despite working hard all day. If they are tense, or any other negative emotion, try switching to normal for the work tone.  Performance then doesn't decay as quickly and may even improve a bit.  I switch to normal before any moodlets boosting the desired emotion ends, unless they are going to be very happy.

If you look at the career panel while they are at work, you can sometimes see a little white arrow on the left or right ends of the performance bar.  It seems more likely to show up as you change the work tone and which end it shows at will tell you if the tone you picked will improve or hurt performance.  Also, sometimes I've been able to get the performance to make tiny jumps when switching work tone between fine and normal and back again when they are in good moods.  Between these switches I check on other sims, and then am back looking at the working sim's panel when I make the adjustments.  I usually see the little arrows when doing this, and if they don't appear or the performance indicator doesn't move I leave them alone for a while. 

For keeping the inspired mood, is her mood at home only due to decor?  Try browsing art on the web, playing with clay, taking a thoughtful shower, and viewing inspiring decor items.  I think those all give four hour moodlets.  If you have Outdoor Retreat, the cloud-gaze action (click on your sim) gives a 6 hour moodlet.

I hope this helps - good luck.

Thank you!  I'll check the performance indicator and see what's going on there.

Yes, her inspired mood is mostly from decor.  Pretty much everything in the kitchen gives inspired as do the lights I posted right by the door she leaves by.  Does cloud gaze give inspired?  She could do that to boost relationships as well as get her mood right.  Thanks so much for that one!

[Playalot]

This post here gives a lot of different ways to get your sims into any/all moods.


There are two main ways sims become (for example) inspired.

1. by the surrounding environment. Which is fine as long as they stay in that room.

2. by changing their emotions through doing something like cloud gazing or drinking a certain mixology drink. The sim will stay in this mood more-or-less wherever they go for as long as the moodlet is present. Somewhere between 4-6 hours. The only thing that would cancel out this kind of mood would be a stronger environment score or if they experience a stronger emotion such as 'very sad' or 'very embarrassed'

If your sim is at home cooking, as long as the kitchen has an overall inspired aura then your sim will besome inspired. But when your sim leaves that room or the house then if you have not made them 'do' anything to get a certain mood/emotion then they will default to 'fine' of maybe 'happy'.

Before my sims leave for work I stack up a lot of actions so that they have at least 16+ of whatever mood they need. That way they can work hard for as long as the moodlets last. There are some now that will last the entire work shift. This works much better than just having one inspired moodlet. It takes about an hour to do it all so when I get the 'work shift starts in one hour' notice I start my sim doing all the things to get him inspired.


For example, cloud gaze, drink Pros and Prop, Reminisce on Inspired memory, Eat perfect grape, view inspired art, etc
Even certain conversations really help such as getting another sim to tell your worker sim a 'deep secret'. This gives a nice moodlet that will help to stack up the inspired one.
Upgraded showers/basins also help to stack up good moodlets.
Eating fruit/vegies etc from your garden are a good way to boost the  target emotion too.

If you find your sims don't have enough time to do anything extra there are time saving 'tricks' to help. One trick for saving time is to get the most expensive bed as soon as possible as the sims energy bar will refill much faster; just like the most expensive shower upgraded will make your sims shower a lot quicker too.

[Joria]

Playalot you are a font of information!  Thank you.

First of all, is there a list of which fruits veggies gives certain moods?  Ditto on mixed drinks.  (She's working on mixology)

I took the easy route, however.  She had enough points so for one of her unique rewards I bought her the one that keeps her inspired.  She worked hard all day and came home still inspired.

[Playalot]

Yep, there sure is a list all about drinks. You can find it here just scroll down a bit.

The best thing to do with drinks is to drink 3/4 of it then store it in the fridge or your sims inventory that way it will only take one sip to finish it (and get all the moodlets) which is much faster than having to wait for your sim to drink all of it. Remember that drinks and food will only last a certain time in their inventory so you have to plan it out etc.

All fruit/vegies etc give the same moodlet. Depending on the quality of the produce. Perfect produce gives the best but I can't remember them all off the top of my head as all my games only have perfect produce at the moment. Perfect produce gives your Sim a +3 Happy moodlet for 4h. I think just ordinary gives a +1 for 4h. You can also stack up the moodlets by eating a ordinary produce then eating a perfect one so your sim would get two moodlets for 4h.

Once you have got the hang of moodlets/emotions/moods etc The Sims 4 becomes much easier. It just takes a bit of time finding it all out. Carls' guides have a lot of information in them I guess it's just that there is so much to look through when you are trying to solve one particular problem. And there's nothing wrong with taking the easy route, it's all got to be fun and for me a sim not getting promoted is enough to make me really frustrated! It's the one thing that really gets my goat! 

[Joria]

What gets my goat is my insistence on trying to complete a dynasty!  I just frustrate myself endlessly instead of just playing and slowing absorbing all the ins and outs of the game.  I keep the guide open at all times but you're right, sometimes there is so much information it can be hard to find exactly what you need, especially when you are frustrated.  lol  Thanks so much for the link!