Completing an Immortal Dynasty Hints and Tips (Not Questions)

[Ricalynn]

I usually have a plethora of friendship elixirs, wish enhancing serums, invigorating elixirs and midas touch available if someone is friends with me through the official website.   Samoht nicknamed it "The dynasty starter kit". 

[Deklitch]

My to be Gen 3 spouse picked up a chisel and began sculpting. By the time I told her to put it down and read the book she needs to read by the next day of school (her last day of school ever) she had already raised her sculpting to level 3. The object didn't even start emerging from the clay by that time. I'm pleased I locked the sculpting stations in a room that only the Gen 1 immortal and all non-targeted spares/spouses can reach and not other immortals. I am keeping a close eye on the chess table and the telescope, neither of which are locked away yet, and the chess table in particular is tempting to Gens 1 and 2. My first three supermaxes have been sculpting, cooking and logic (in order). Logic is still a WIP. My remaining five planned supermaxes are alchemy, handiness, nectar making, charisma and writing (in that order). Though I do have some skills up my sleeve that no immortals are touching just in case someone accidentally works on one of those skills (yes, charisma, I'm looking at YOU). Oh and btw, painting is being done as a family skill, which as many of my immortals and their partners/spares as possible will be maxing/supermaxing as possible. Additionally gardening and instruments will also be family based skills. My indoor garden means that even my outdoors hating founder will be able to help with  gardening. Fishing isn't being touched by immortals until immortal 7, in case I need fishing as a supermax.

Also, I was trialing things with a different spare who was a witch and alchemist. I had him make a number of simbot potions (8 or so in all) and changed his career to self employed alchemist. He then went to the alchemy consignment store and put all of them up for consignment, as well as a lot of other potions he had made. That afternoon he maxed his alchemy career (after the daily sale took place). I was like ... WOW. I at least know how I can get my 4th Gen heir to max her unique career (self employed alchemist) nice and quickly, which will then give me time to get her underway on her rabbit hole career. Outside of my first immortal (sculpting) and my last immortal (writing), I intend to have each of my immortals uniquely supermax a self employed career (in order sculpting, painting, photographing, alchemy, gardening, nectar making, fishing, writing) and then work on maxing a rabbit hole career for the purposes of photo journals (in order chef (2nd), law enforcement (3rd), professional sportsman (4th), scientist (5th), business (6th) and politics (7th)). Gen 1 (sculpting) and Gen 8 (writing) will stick at their self employed careers. Spares/partners will do other careers, especially other rabbit hole careers and in the case of one of the spares, a profession.

I can't wait to see if it actually works out for me . Currently though, I need to wait for the Gen 3 spouse to become a young adult, and also for the Gen 2 spouse, or the Gen 2's uncle to die.

[samoht04]

I usually have a plethora of friendship elixirs, wish enhancing serums, invigorating elixirs and midas touch available if someone is friends with me through the official website.   Samoht nicknamed it "The dynasty starter kit".

Oh yes. My original Starting Kit was a Super Sleeper and a Slot Machine - now it's a kit of 5 Elixirs! When you have a Founder it's just easier when you don't have to worry about money or anything like that. It's almost more of a challenge to not spend all 700k at once...

So far my Dynasty in LP is going well, not much lag and the house I have is minimal but big so hopefully performance won't drop so badly. I do like LP though for the open space and it plays nicely I've found. Town and House are definitely a major part of Dynasty planning, bigger is often most certainly not better.

[Snufflesxx]

I've got a tip. Make sure you back-up your games on an external device. I didn't, so now I've lost everything. Just do it when you back-up everything else on your computer.

[Tipi]

I'm planning to start yet another Immortal Dynasty. I have always abandoned my previous attempts after two immortals for lack of interest, time etc. To keep up my interest longer now, I'm planning to try some careers I have never tried before. One of them is mixology and I'm very grateful for the list of needed lots a few pages back. I might try also one of the Showtime careers, so I would appreciate your insight on the lots you need to succeed in these careers (the absolute minimum), thanks.

[Trip]

I was able to max the magician profession in my current dynasty with just Performance Park (Port-a-Party Mini Warehouse was autoplaced and I didn't bother to remove it, but I never used it for my magician). In an earlier attempt, I maxed the acrobat profession with the same resources.

[RainBeau]

I'm planning to start yet another Immortal Dynasty. I have always abandoned my previous attempts after two immortals for lack of interest, time etc. To keep up my interest longer now, I'm planning to try some careers I have never tried before. One of them is mixology and I'm very grateful for the list of needed lots a few pages back. I might try also one of the Showtime careers, so I would appreciate your insight on the lots you need to succeed in these careers (the absolute minimum), thanks.

Sorry, but Mixology is not a career. As far as Acrobats go, wait until they have the career to start learning Athletic. It raises your performance.

[Tipi]

That's great, Trip. I was under the impression that you would have needed some other venues, too.

My bad, ombradellarosa. I meant the mixology skill, which I have never tried before.

[Vinyl]

If anyone's worried about their female heir losing too much time to maternity leave, consider having the next generation right away before joining a career.  As soon as the child is born they can get a job and start working, rather than having to wait four days plus any holidays or weekends before their next shift. 

Also, something I've observed while playing around with the sim finder app is that if the town doesn't have a sim with the selected traits the game will spawn a fresh one to order.  In limited tests I've done the app-spawned sims all appear to have shiny new age bars for their age category on the day they're summoned.  If things are timed right a future spouse might be met so that when the heir is ready to have the next generation the spouse will be near elderhood (or whatever age category is desired).  A more traditional way to track aging is to use the 'Throw Party' phone option - it'll indicate what age stage potential spouses are in, but the household must have met them first.  The portrait panel is semi-reliable for showing appropriate age portraits of townies, but all bets are off for homeless sims and any foreign sims.

And I don't recommend planning on elderly male sims for spouses - one of my heirs was eyeing a gentleman who decided to age up to elderly on her young adult birthday, then proceed to die of old age during the same party!  Something to consider when selecting a spouse (and one more reason to try and get that elder portrait painted and ambrosia eaten ASAP).

[Ricalynn]

There are some blueprints that can be found with buydebug lighting squares/circles.   If you purchase the blueprint, you can destroy everything but the light and use it for the rest of the house as a cheap light source without having to worry about having lamps everywhere too!

[Shewolf13]

The best tip I can give anyone: be patient.  My impatience made me make a mistake that cost me my save file.  I encountered a glitch and rather than ask around, find out more information about it, I made a rash decision to uninstall and reinstall the Sims 3, hoping it would fix it.  Well... rather than fixing it, something happened to my saved files and I lost all of it.  This doesn't just apply to glitches of course, but to the actual game itself as well.  Don't panic, just stay calm and keep going.  Along with this, do research.  This site is a wonderful resource as are all the wonderful people here.  Use them liberally and don't let impatience ruin things!

[RainBeau]

Since it's come up a lot, these are the settings I recommend/use for the Immortal Dynasty. It took me awhile to figure these out.

Weather and Seasons
I turn all seasons on and set them to 7 days each. Since honour roll is unnecessary in this dynasty, the holidays every Thursday make for good skilling days. This allows for anniversaries to be celebrated as well.
I turn off rain and hail 1) because they annoy me 2) because the rain can cause glitches. I leave snow and fog on because of snow days. And because fog doesn't do anything and looks cool.
I put the moon setting on one phase so I don't get zombies and werewolves don't get age-stuck.

Demographics
I want to save the film career as an option later, so I don't opt the current household out of the celebrity system. But I don't want to deal with it until I have to, so I don't let story progression turn townies into celebrities. I leave all supernaturals and pets on as a matter of personal preference.


I must say, it feels much better to post this here where it might help people than telling my dad who knows nothing about The Sims.

[Seabody]

Build small. I had an awesome house where all the generations had their own flat - complete with bedroom, skill room, bathroom, kitchen... sometimes the flats spanned multiple storeys. It was a beautiful house (in my opinion), but it took forever to load. University for De Arbol came as a welcome break. I had to wait for about 10 minutes to load. And I've only just had Generation four be born. I also uninstalled some CC I wasn't using - I'll probably resetsim * and uninstall the rest, too.

[ve1ocity]

Ve1o's Guide for a Rags' Dynasty

I personally have come to hate Agnes. Nearly each and every SV dynasty, she is there. Don't take me wrong, she is a great spouse and the majority of my favourite stories have Agnes. But just as a side note, yes you can do without Agnes. You can have a very poor and unskilled skill and go on with your dynasty.

For my dynasty, I chose the Alvi family and Zelda Mae to move in. And yes, I did it! My first generation just ate ambrosia !

And I honestly don't think its that much hard from any other, it just needs a bit more planning.

So here's some tips for a Rags' Dynasty.

1. Put off having nooboos. Rhea was an adult when she married and had Zeus. By then she had achieved her LTW, maxed cooking by then, plus two of the three skill challenges.
This gives time for the unskilled sculpture to get the 25 ice sculptures done. If your dynasty just has paintings, then its ok to have a nooboo right at the start, though be sure that he has the artistic trait.

2. Its ok to have unskilled sims, but it is best if they have a trait to help skilling. Iqbal was an angler and Zelda had green thumbs. That was invaluable! Some other under-appreciated sims I've noticed are the Sekemoto family (Yumi=cooking, Sam=artistic), Claire Ursine and the Working Friends(Monika=fishing, Tori=cooking)

3. Coffee, coffee and coffee; or make in potent invigorating potions.

4. Sell at the consignment store: sculptures, paintings, vegetables, fish...everything!

5. Building a house should be the last priority. First buy the venue and business.

6. Good beds or sleeping bags == a MUST

Is that all? Yes, perfectly! Its not impossible for a dynasty to go Agnessless!

[Turoskel]

When I restarted for the umpteenth time it was just after the University patch so dumpster diving was available, that is a great thing when starting out if you choose to go the Agnessless route (which I did as there is no Agnes in Riverview  ) I've not found a bed as yet while dumpster diving but I made it a point to buy decent beds as a priority, a lot of the other furniture I had came out of dumpsters though, even electricals like a microwave and cheap tv, then I struck lucky and found some tiberium so after a little more saving I knocked down my starter shed and built a proper house.

Also if you do move in a family with teens and have generations sign them up for art club so they learn painting and sculpting, it's a good head start especially with sculpting, plus it never hurts to have back up people in case of a disaster. I got lucky my sculptor lived to 110 and even did gen two's Young Adult sculpture but I already had my founder and her husband capable of doing them by that time, I had expected him to have to do my founders elder one but she just kept on going 

It's surprising how quickly the money adds up though once you start going for those 25 ice sculptures, most of the initial money coming into the house was being generated by the sculptor, and it racks up a lot of LTH points with the associated wishes, useful for getting a motive mobile or moodlet manager quickly.

That was all done prior to me getting Supernatural, which I feel would have changed my approach somewhat, alchemy can make it easier than any Agnes I feel.