Okay, after OKing the list of trophies with Metro, here goes. This one's quite long as there are quite a number of different things to talk about.
Drifter East and company capped 107 trophies in 4 weeks - actually I think there are at least 140 - 150 items out there that are valid for scoring. I made a list of 131 items, but I don't have Pets - there are a bunch of lifetime rewards and 9 sport trophies, as far as I know.
With only four weeks, I'd say a critical element here is bringing in Sims as rapidly as possible from the outset, so that you have many Sims to work on multiple different skills. For the first Sim, there are two easy Career Rewards to nail - either the Firefighter's Trophy at level 4, or the frosted glass door at Investigator level 3.
After that, I adopted a child and aged him up to Teen. I got him a club and got him started on skilling, and then immediately the next day aged him up to YA. The trick here is that your Sim will
immediately get his Participation Trophy in the relevant Club. Thus, the second sim will adopt another child, and I repeated the cycle until I had 7 YAs and one child (I left him as such to handle the ballet trophies which I would need, and he could do inventing).
Pretty close to what lvrugger did, though I didn't think of tutoring (which could be useful for children as their traits influence the graduation ribbon they get) - I just aged them up with Cs and let them take random traits.
From this point onwards, I'll split the guide into how I dealt with each group of trophy-scoring items.
Career Rewards, Profession Rewards, Service Awards- 11 Career Rewards (squad car @ law enf. 5, laptop @ forensic 6, flame fruit @ science 8, life fruit @ science 9, 3 art objects @ thief 8, 9 and 10, actor's trailer @ film 10, three film awards @ film 7, 9 and 10)
- 12 Profession Rewards (boxes of mystery and danger @ magician 3 and 7, balance ball @ acrobat 6, firefighter's trophy, coat, firetruck and alarm @ firefighter 4, 6, 10 and 10 respectively, frosted door, case board and Yomoshoto Evasion @ investigator 4, 6 and 8, spirit positioning device and paranormal memento @ ghosthunter 10)
- 5 Service Awards (award ribbon, epic hero medal, hero medal, honor trophy, key to the city)
I divided the various rabbit-hole careers and professions, as well as the skills among the 7 YA Sims that I had. Actually I made a small mistake here in that I tried to do the Showtime careers first. I thought that I might as well, since I would have a lot of Graduations which would cancel out a lot of workdays. However, when you Quit Job you lose the career rewards (they just disappear!). So among my first batch, I divided the work as such:
Drifter East: Firefighter and Criminal (+ Athletic, Martial Arts, Handiness, Painting, Photography)
Sean East: Acrobat and Film (+ Charisma, Mixology, Writing)
Green East: Magician and Science (+ Gardening)
Casper East: Ghosthunting and Law Enforcement (you only need level 6 in this) (+ Logic, Drums)
Isaac East: P.I. (+ Bass)
Emeril East: Singer and Culinary (+ Cooking, Piano)
Joy East: Music (+ Guitar)
Octavius East: Child [Ballet] (+ Fishing, Inventing, Driving)
About half-way through, though, I realised that Emeril and Joy weren't getting anywhere in their careers (non-helpful traits, especially no Workaholic which is critical for speed promotions), and besides culinary and music only have one trophy which is at level 10. So I moved them out and replaced them after I got my skill certificates from them. I hoped to draw three Missing Sim cases to get a Hero Trophy, but they just didn't seem to spawn after the first one, so after a while I decided it'd probably be a better idea to get more younger Sims and moved Isaac out too.
I quickly adopted three more Sims to fill the gaps (and I was running out of name ideas): Ninth East was to work on Nectar Making, Tenth East on Sculpting, and Eleventh East I kept as a child for some time to nab the Scout badge. As again, once done, aged up and moved out.
To quickly move out newly adopted Sims, age them up to YA and give them the LTW Swimming in Cash. This is very easy to clear - have another Sim buy a genie lamp, rub it and wish for Fortune (100K simoleons). After graduation, their ribbon went up, they were moved out and replaced with new Sims, to try and get more graduation ribbons. Failing that (if they got a duplicate), I would just buy one of the cheap lifetime rewards to put in the trophy room... I think I managed to do this up to having Fifteenth East graduate on W4D7.
School Rewards- 4 School Awards (High School Diploma, Scout, Ballet x2)
- 7 Teen After-School-Activity Awards (Participation in all the clubs)
- 2 Prom Awards (Prom Photo, The King's Crown)
- 10 Graduation Ribbons
In particular, that last item. There are
many graduation ribbons in the game (I think there are about 20 or so - I remember looking in the STBL for this and going 'wow, there are so many!'). I had 14 sims experience graduation, which definitely helped the trophy count quite a bit.
Special Plants- 4 Plants (Cheese, Egg, Burger, Steak)
There's a bit of luck involved in getting the Opportunities, but make sure that the Sim dedicated to receiving them learns ONLY Gardening and nothing else, and makes it to at least level 8 quickly.
There is a sneaky way around these opportunities that doesn't require you plant anything, actually. Have one of your Sims be a performer and have another attend his shows. I got whoever was free to throw a total of 20 Perfect Apples, 10 Perfect Cheeses and 10 Perfect Steaks to the performers. Once the opportunities are received, they can be turned in immediately with the thrown items, which would leave you more time (hopefully) to land the next one in the chain. I didn't receive the Omni Plant one, though.
Skill Certificates- 19 total. (I don't have Pets, so no Riding, and missed out Writing by mistake)
Dividing the labour made this relatively easy. I haven't checked though - does skill-building other than by books happen faster in the Library? Anyway I sent Joy, Isaac and pretty much everyone learning the instrument skills to the library to play, and of course the people who had to read Skill Books read them there.
I missed out Writing cause Sean was at writing level 8 with I think about one day to go, and after capping the Film career I had him be an Acrobat. In the end, he missed Acrobat 8 (which comes with the ring of fire) by about
one hour - should have just stopped at career level 6, and gone for Writing max, I think.
Don't forget Driving!
Lifetime Rewards- 11 items. (map to the stars, hover bed, extraordinaire-ator, body sculptor, genie lamp, collection helper, motive mobile, food replicator, moodlet manager, young again potion, teleportation pad)
This shouldn't be too difficult - just watch out for the big ones like the potion and teleportation pad. A Lifetime Wish clear is usually 30,000 points or so; Swimming in Cash is 35,000.
World Adventures Rewards- 5 from China (Halls of the Lost Army, Pangu's Axe, Pangu's Haven, Hot Springs Cave, Annex of the Resolute Fist)
- 11 from Egypt (Tomb of Discovery, Tomb of Burning Sands, Tomb of the Rock, Ancient Library, Criminal HQ, Desert Ocean, Copper Quarry, Soulpeace Chambers, Den of Lost Souls, Sanctuary of Horus, James Vaughn's Command Center)
- 6 from France (King's Burial Ground, Maze of the High Ruler, Smuggler's Cavern, Museum Catacombs, Nectary Cellars, Tuatha's Garden)
Of course, take the Prepared Traveller LTR. The Sim you use should be (IMO) the same one for all 3 trips, because he should be at least level 5 in Martial Arts and also have some Charisma points (to make those 'convince' type missions easier).
I think I had a bugged Adventure board for China - at times, I'd search the board and nothing would happen - no popup or message saying there were no adventures left for the day. I was also not very prepared at that time (I got greedy and went there early to take the books to clear the LTW of my first few Sims...)
Egypt went well, though I failed to draw the Adventure for the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut and ran out of time (Aside: Congrats, Chuckles for managing 13. That's a perfect score!) for the Bazaar Basement - I finished James Vaughn's Command Center at about 7pm or so on Day 6 and honestly wasn't familiar with the last tomb. The Moodlet Manager helped greatly, as well as a certain item I didn't use much before this -
Escape Dust which transports you back to base-camp; saves plenty of time.
France... As again, bugged adventure board meant I had to give the ones deeper in the Nectary a miss. And, of course, Chateau du Landgraab... no way that's possible with just one trip per destination!
All in all, I really enjoyed this! The challenge was so open-ended with so many possible ways of going about collecting the trophies. I'll probably thoroughly enjoy the Wishmaster one too, then...
