Honey Money

[Trip]

@Deveroux I relied on swarm gifts too, but had a lot more trouble keeping my bees in a good mood and never thought of the aspiration. Obviously it made a difference!

[MarianT]

I bought 11 bee boxes since that was the number I could go around doing swarm rounds, and I got them all up to the friendship point where I could get swarms. Then they were good for the rest of the challenge and I didn't have to give them mite treatments or bond again. I did a grind for the whole challenge of Send Swarm, Collect Swarm, Send Swarm, Collect Swarm. I did Good Timers and ignored my non-essential needs.

Did you find that the value of the honey was affected at all by mite infestations or by your level of friendship with the bees? Like, once you were friends with them, did the value increase at all by raising your relationship level higher?

I spent a lot of time on Bonding interactions because I was assuming that if the bees were enraged, the value of the honey would go down.

The value of the honey does go down when bees are enraged. It's highest when they're calm, medium when irritated. My Sim was at the highest level of friendship, but the bees still got enraged, maybe because he was always sending their swarms to get gifts.

[SoulGal7]

I spent a lot of time testing both the vendor tables and the retail store. I am not sure why, but I wasn't selling a lot on the vendor tables, and when I made honey cakes, they just went bad. In fact, one day I had no sales at all. So, in my real file, I went with the retail store and she lived on the retail lot. I did have a club going constantly to get the rally troops, and had 100% markup from the start. I also bought the marketable trait. I never hired any retail help. I saved up for the curious shopper perk first which helped with sales and then got the faster check-outs. I had celebrities on my lot and could have sworn that some of the paparazzi stole some of the items in my store. My sim had the Friend of the World Aspiration - I figured that being friendly would help sales. Traits were Loves Outdoors, Geek, and Dance machine. Dance machine is a good one because you can take disco naps, which are really fast and help with energy. Her fun was always red. She had maxed cooking skill and some of the honey cakes were impeccable. Towards the last days, the honey cakes were selling all the time. If that had happened at the beginning, I would have stayed with honey cakes and made a lot of simoleons. She had a total of 6 bee boxes. I found that was manageable to bond with bees, collect swarm, send swarm, etc. and still be able to deal with the customers. With the vendor's table, you could not do anything else but stay at the table, so you couldn't tend your bees when you were having your yard sale. Great strategy everyone!

[Deveroux]

Honey value going down when they were mad was part of the reason I didn't collect honey at all. They hated me, but the swarm gift values were unaffected so I ignored their complaints. They stung me a lot for good measure.

[Rainbow Dash]

I hadn't felt much like posting on the forums lately, real life getting me down and all that but things are better now so I thought it was about time I posted my strategy.

When the Challenge Team ruled we were allowed to create a Spellcaster, that's exactly what I did, after all I'm never one to turn down a chance to play with Occults in Tournament Challenges. Honey Bee spent the first two days in the Magic Realm until she got the Copypasto spell. She headed back home to bond with her bees while waiting on recipe cooldowns from the Sages, she also practiced magic to grind experience to get to a high enough level to learn the spell. (I picked perks to speed that up). Back home she drank a Perk Perging potion and repicked her perks, mostly Disharge, Practiced Practicality, Hexproof and a bunch of ones that reduced the magical cost needed for casting spells.

By this time her bees were ready so she collected honey, baked a honey cake and copied it over and over, she got sent a familiar in the mail so I wasn't worried about her dying from overcharge and I had the Discharge perk for that reason.

She bought the Marketable trait and built a tiny little retail store, purchased advertising, placed signs, hired an employee and opened shop. Everything was at 100% mark up, Scrubaroo took care of the cleaning, Plentiful needs potions took care of her needs and she worked on customers to gain perk points, I had her be confident from potions most of the time so she could Close The Deal when a customers bar was high. Perks gained were Serious shopper, Sure sale, Faster checkouts (Large), Slick salesman, Curious shopper and Mega manager in that order. Her employee was answering questions when quiet, ringing up customers when busy and was praised and sent home early to keep him happy, he also got promoted to the max level eventually.

I'm kicking myself, I went with a Vendor style in my practice run but decided to switch to a Retail Store in my scoring file, that was dumb, retail stores bring in far more customers so I thought that would make up for selling cakes at a lower price than you could at a Vendor Table. Turns out I was mistaken and I would have made more money and gotten a better score with Vendor Tables. *Sigh* Well I had zero retail experience whatsoever when jumping into this challenge so live and learn I guess.

Hey look, I've hit 666 posts, everybody better watch out! Darn, probably should have saved this post for Halloween but on well.

[SoulGal7]

Hi Rainbow Dash - Sorry life is getting you down. Hope you cheer up soon