Sorry that this is late, I have been struggling a bit with my return to work after the concussion, and family stuff has been very crazy.
I started with my spell-caster, Saphire Painter. Her initial traits were Quick Learner (from the Spellcraft & Sorcery aspiration), Creative, Art Lover, and Overachiever.
I built her a tiny home on the Glimmerbrook Watch lot in Glimmerbrook, and then went to the magic realm to meet the sages. I invited them home to make friends, using the tiny home benefits to help counter the social penalty for Overachiever. Usually I have the most trouble befriending L, but this time Simeon was the hardest for some reason. Their relationship actually got about half way into the red at one point. Tiny homes do increase the magnitude of negative social results as well as positives. The welcome wagon came by with some free fruitcake while this was happening, and I learned that she actually likes it. Eventually She was good friends with all three sages, and I used her influence points to lock in the Support the Creative Arts N.A.P. which was fortunately already one of the top contenders.
Once Saphire had befriended all the sages, She returned to the magic realm to complete the first bit of the two spellcaster aspirations, and try to get the potion of plentiful needs recipe. It was the third potion she learned. She also learned one spell from each of the sages, and bought a magic mop to make it easier for her to get around. The mop never really came into play though.
She went home, and bought some apples on her phone to start brewing potions. She was tired by this point so I had her drink the potion she got for learning Plentiful Needs. Fortunately it did not fail. It was now Monday and I had her spend the rest of the day brewing potions of plentiful needs to use for the rest of the week. This got her up to the rank of acolyte, and by casting Deliriate on a poor random sim passing through the neighbourhood, she was able to complete the second level of Spellcraft and Sorcery. She also completed the second level of Purveyor of Potions, as well as the brew five potions requirement of the third tier, however that was all the spellcaster stuff she did for the challenge. The Perks I chose for her were: Discharge, Blender Arm, and Frugal Combination. The potions she learned were: Nausea, Good Fortune, and Plentiful Needs. Her spells were: Deliriate, Repario, and inferniate.
Next she headed to the Art Center in San Myshuno to level up her handiness on the woodworking bench there. Once she got to level two she went to the library to buy some upgrade parts from the computer.
She bought one electronic upgrade as well as a handful of common and plumbing upgrades. At home I had her upgrade her toilet and bathroom sink until she reached handiness level 4. Then she upgraded her Creativepro Tablet with the High Performance upgrade.
Now it was early Wednesday, and finally time to start painting. I used the points she had gained from the spellcaster aspirations to buy Marketable to make her paintings worth more. She only had a few hundred simoleons at this point, and I was worried that I would have to hunt for collectables or sell some furniture to fund some of her early painting, but by sticking to small classic paintings, for the first little bit, she easily made enough duplicates that her funds rose quite quickly. Once she had a couple thousand Simoleons I started queueing up one small painting of each type she could make in order to get lots of different paintings, but I found it too difficult to keep track of all the types at once, so changed my mind and stuck to one type of painting until a queue of six or seven yielded no new paintings, and no significant upgrade in value of an existing painting, or two Queues in a row did not produce a new painting. Then I moved on to the next type around the selection wheel.
(Just in case anyone doesn't know, To get a queue of seven paintings on the tablet, you need to put the tablet on the ground far enough away that your sim needs to walk to pick it up and start the first painting, then you queue up six paintings. Make sure your sim is not doing anything else, and once your sim starts walking to the tablet, the first paint action becomes the active task, and you can quickly queue up the seventh. Occasionally when your sim is completely idle, the game will let you queue up seven tasks without waiting for the first task to become the active task.)
She worked through the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration, making three confident paintings on the easel, and selling three of the duplicates She made to collectors by placing them on the wall. All other paintings were sold from her inventory. She took a brief break to visit the museum in willow creek and Admire three paintings. I let the action finish naturally for each Admire. I know I could have cancelled it as soon as the aspiration counted each view to save a bit of time, but I like let it finish. I was also beginning to worry about burnout at this point as she was basically just painting and chugging potions all day, however She never even got the Mental Fog moodlet thoughout the entire week. I don't know why, perhaps her traits lowered the chance somehow. I don't really understand how the burnout system works, I just know I normally get the moodlets quite often when skill building.
She completed the Aspiration early Friday. I bought Creative Visionary about half-way through the aspiration.
I started off keeping the finished paintings on the walls in her house, as I find it easier to compare each new painting to other paintings on the wall vs in the inventory. I ran out of room quite quickly and made a bunch of walls outside where I could sort the paintings by type so it was easier to keep track. I was a bit worried a thunder storm might cause a lightning strike to destroy a painting, but while it did rain a lot I think we only got one thunder storm, and it didn't hit anything on the lot.
She did periodically start painting on the easel autonomously. I usually let her finish these paintings even though they take longer than on the tablet. This is how I ended up with one large classical painting. She mostly chose to do figure paintings and small surrealism paintings when painting autonomously.
Eventually I got through all the small painting types without getting a new painting. I only ever got two distinct illustrative paintings after four queues. I don't know if that's all there are, or if I was just unlucky. I started working through the medium paintings with the same procedure, and she finished her last painting a few minutes before 8:00. I let her spend the last few minutes autonomously, and she started a large pop art painting on the easel. I'll let her finish it later.
To keep myself interested I had her finish the Fabulously Wealthy and then the Mansion Baron Aspirations. This gave her a lot of points. I used them on a bunch of traits, that she didn't really need. She kept getting the perfectionist trait to pop up as I self discovery, and I accidentally accepted it about half-way through. I didn't really want it as it would make each painting take longer, but it also may have increased the value a little bit. I don't really know if the trait helped or hurt. She also got Romantically Reserved from self discovery. The traits she ended up with were: Art Lover, Overachiever, creative, Perfectionist, Romantically Reserved, Savant, Shrewd, Heat Acclimation, Waterproof Sim, Iceproof, Nightowl, Thrifty, Storm Chaser Sim, Marketable, Creative Visionary, Expressionistic, Heatproof, Morning Sim, Cold Acclimation, Speed Reader, Speed Cleaner, and Quick Learner. She also developed a like of painting while painting on the easel autonomously, and a like of Homebody sims when she finally became friends with Simeon.
The final breakdown of the paintings at the end was:
Funds before selling paintings: 190 084
Funds after selling paintings:566 696
Painting funds 376 612
Unique Paintings:
Abstract:
Small: 13
Medium: 9
Classic:
Small: 12
Medium: 10
Large: 1
Impressionism:
Small: 16
Medium: 14
Realism:
Small: 8
Medium 11
Figure: 6
Confident: 3
Surrealism:
Small: 11
Medium: 11
Pop Art:
Small: 10
Medium: 7
Illustrative:
small: 2
Total Unique Paintings:144
Final Score: 5 799 824.8
I had a lot of fun doing this challenge. It's the first time I've done one without doing a test run first. I often have my sims try to collect the highest quality they can of all the paintings in my normal playing, although I've never gotten as many different paintings as I did in this challenge. In my normal games I tend to stick to one type until I can get masterpieces of all the paintings my sim will make. Higher skill sims don't appear to make the low-skill variants of a painting type, or do so very rarely. I found it strange in this challenge that I would sometimes replace a masterpiece painting with an excellent painting as the only factor in scoring was the price not the quality.
I am planning to continue using sapphire in my normal play. Thank you for such a fun challenge.
