Thank you, challenge team for the wonderful challenge once again!
I was wondering if I had enough time to play the full 2 Sims weeks, and I did. And I still had a full 7 seconds left to midnight when I posted my score.
The other thing I was wondering is whether moving in someone extra would be the better strategy or not. And that remains unanswered, since the difference between me and Vesper is so small.
Skills: there are 48 (adult) skills in this game, but I don't have the paranormal pack, so that leaves me with 47. And I did do parenting, see below.
Setup:
The gang very briefly lived in a big house for mansion baron points, and then moved to an empty lot, where I built my vampire skilling special: a tiny house, for the bonuses, with a gigantic roof, so that Vlad and my vampiric starting Sim Maxime were almost always covered. The lot traits were Study Spot, and then whatever two traits were most helpful for what they were doing. Focused skills were studied on one site of the house, and creative skills at the other, with a "mood lamp" placed near it. (Other skills were sort of all over.)
Maxime and Kris joined the Good Timers for Rally the Troops (mostly for Kris - vampires only need sleep if they use their powers), and when Maxime had taken it over, Vlad joined as well. I placed a darts board, so the out-of-household club members could rake in points. Mostly the club activities were bar games, dancing, being friendly, and then occasionally a skill - but I didn't want everyone to swarm the piano, so I used skilling as a club activity sparingly. I'm not sure that was the right call, because we didn't rake in points that quickly. Club bonuses for skills were bought as soon as the points were available.
Everyone cycled through some aspirations (money, vampire lore, other skills) so that they could buy Morning Sim, Night Owl, and Savant as soon as possible.
With the boosts from the tiny home, and the emotional aura lamps, everyone was mostly in the correct 'very' mood without extra effort from me. Sometimes chess moves were pondered and clouds or stars were gazed at. Vlad did drink a potion of reconfiguration so that he could influence emotions, but he didn't end up using it very much (and it only affects the others, not himself).
Finally, Maxime had the Overachiever trait, which made her skill up noticeably faster than the others, although it did give a lot of unwanted energized moodlets.
Needs: apart from Rally the Troops, I made lots of use of the crystal crown as well, for hygiene, social and vampiric thirst. There are also crystals that boost Logic and Archeology skill gain.
The vampires were pretty much fine with this set up. Kris on the other hand, did go on a rampage twice. The first time he was able to regain himself right away, but the second time that failed, so I lost him for a few hours, while everyone else wanted to run away.
I first focused on getting every skill maxed once. This took about 8-9 days. After that I aimed at level 5 for every duplicate skill, with some exceptions (of course, I didn't get there all the way).
Skilling was mostly just 'do the thing', but also:
- Violin, Piano, Guitar, and Fitness were all mentored by either a hired nanny (later invited to the club) or a gym teacher.
- Archeology, Herbalism were leveled by reading books and finishing with skill classes.
- Parenting: Kris starts with some skill, and he was able to raise it further with books and skill classes.
- Selvadoradian culture and animal training were completely done with skill classes
- Entrepreneurial skill: Maxime maxed this by selling her paintings and books
- Skiing, snowboarding, and climbing: club trips to Mt Komorebi during the night (for the vampires). I made sure to have the club boosts for these, since they didn't have the tiny house boost.
