I'm glad my feedback was helpful. Here's is my strategy wrap up:
The half a day I spent on doing practice runs was very valuable. I already knew the mechanics of how emotions work in the game thanks to Carl's Guide etc, but the practice runs were where I made sure I could use them to work for me instead of against me. To save time I mostly use ways to get emotions that didn't result in the emotion persisting. Where that wasn't possible, I made sure that the new emotion would be strong enough to overtake the previous one.
I had my starting sim do basketcase first since she would start off the game as fine which saved me from having to get her into it later. She spent the first 15 min or so with a dresser changing into each of the emotional hats. This covered playful, angry, dazed, energized, flirty, inspired and sad. I also made her walk around very briefly while wearing each hat because I wanted to be sure that the game had recognized each emotional state.
For the remaining basketcase emotions the order was important as it allowed new emotions to override old ones with a minimum of effort which meant I never had to waste any time on waiting for a moodlet to expire.
She watched kids tv until she got bored. Then I turned on music she disliked which immediately made tense override bored. I made her dance until a short time after she got the uncomfortable moodlet in the background. Turning off the music stopped her from being tense, leaving her with uncomfortable as her dominant emotion for 20min or so. (How long this particular uncomfortable moodlet lasts depends on how long the sim stayed in the disliked situation after the moodlet started). Next she stopped a Sim walking past with a rude introduction followed by a pickup line and briefly played an instrument badly where sims could hear her for embarrassed.
After that she used a club to get Eric Lewis and Nina Caliente to come over. She used photos to quickly become good friends with Eric which along with the club moodlet made her happy. Finally she brushed her teeth (confident), drank some pitch black tea (focused) and had a brief nap (asleep) to finish basketcase shortly before midday.
After basketcase was done, my sim asked Eric & all his family to join our household. Alice immediately put on the angry hat and started doing angry paintings for later. I don't have Strangerville so our freebie was used on possessed.
Eric's materialistic trait made him a good choice to do the "very" versions of all the positive emotions. First he took photos with Nina until the two of them were good friends and asked her & Katrina to also move in with us. With the moodlets from a new good friend & the club, all he needed was an expensive statue to admire plus a piece of fresh fruit to eat and he easily reached very happy. Next he used all the positive emotional hats except playful followed by brushing his teeth then drinking pitch black tea. Finally it was back to the dresser for the playful hat & star shaped sunglasses to get very playful then finding a passing sim to tell jokes to until he was hysterical. I kept a very close eye on Eric because I didn't want to risk a death at this point and as soon as he was hysterical he was sent to bed to sleep it off.
Meanwhile, Dennis, Vivian and Olivia were locked in a room together immediately after they joined the household. When Dennis or Vivian got scared from a fear of death moodlet, I had them repeatedly scream incoherently at the others. And when Olivia also got scared from being screamed at, I had her repeatedly scream incoherently back at them too. In practice, I had discovered that this would sometimes (not always) result in a sim who was terrified due to fear of death and being screamed at. Fortunately this approach ended up going very smoothly in my challenge file. This was very lucky because none of my other attempts to get sims terrified in my practice runs such as seeking out ghosts and the grim reaper did anything.
After Dennis achieved terrified he had the dubious honour of getting picked to do very uncomfortable, very embarrassed and mortified via bladder failure, rude introduction + pickup line, and playing an instrument badly. Whenever I could spare a moment from supervising Eric, I had Dennis drink glasses of water to speed this up.
After Eric was done and while we waiting for Dennis's bladder to fail, I had hotheaded Nina and her mother spend their time being mean and riling each other up until they could declare each other enemies. Also Alice had finished some angry paintings by this point. Using the angry painting's emotional aura, viewing the angry painting, wearing the angry hat, and the angry moodlets the Calientes had from the socials & being enemies, we checked off both very angry and enraged. Again I sent the enraged sim to sleep immediately to avoid a death.
Meanwhile, my sim's positive moodlets from earlier were starting to wear off by now. So she achieved very tense thanks to the combination of her loner trait and turning on disliked music while she was already doing a disliked activity. Then I made her violate her vegetarian principles by eating a ham and cheese sandwich which made her very sad. Not too long after this Dennis's bladder finally failed, he did his last couple of embarrassing activities and that was that.
