Just wondering, what do you guys think are the best Skills, Professions, LTRs, LTWs etc. etc. for earlier generations? The most useful, easiest, ones to avoid and so on. Would gardening be a good choice for Founder? I'm planning for my founder's profession to be Chef, as I can't think anything more useful.
Well, starting as one of the base 3 skills for Ambrosia is actually not what I would recommend. I would recommend - for the easiest run - that the founder start with painting. Here's my reasoning: when you have a cook/gardener/fisherman, they can all become obsolete with abundance. If you bring in a helper Sim - I'll say Agnes for good measure - you can have them Paint your founder, garden, fish and cook. They only really need one or two lifefruits and deathfish and a few replicators before you won't have to worry about ambrosia ever again whereas painting is required at every lifestate of every heir. I recommend getting the painting/artist Sim out of the way first, and worry about the cooking/gardening/fishing for later as if you have a spare/helper do it for you, you'll likely already have an abundance of the required tools to make the ambrosia, and with a replicator you won't even need a cook from then on out. Not to mention, you could always save fishing for later on, stock a pond with 10 deathfish (note, you won't get them back) and have your fishersim fish for them at all hours of the day. But keeping a stock of 20 deathfish will likely be all you'll need (and that's overkill, really) so long as you use and upgrade the replicators. So Handiness might help for later down the line too.
Cooking/Fishing/Gardening always seem like the most important skills, but whenever I would attempt this and start with one of those I always struggled with painting. If you get the painter out of the way ASAP then you won't have to worry about "oh, well, who's going to paint so-and-so's pictures as a Tod/C/Te/YA/A/E?"
Also, for LTR belonging to your specific founders/heirs... make a list of the ones you want to keep "Universal" and don't forget it! If you give your founder Steel Bladder in a hurry to get them ambrosia, no one else can even think about using it, so you'll have 7 other generations that will always need a toilet.
My recommendation is to go through each generation prior to starting and give a general idea of what skills you plan to do for each generation. They don't have to be perfectly accurate, list 2 or 3 of the ones you "might" want to do so when it comes down to when you're actually in game you might remember "Oh goodness! I need to move this skill up more!" Or "Oh dear, I'm not ready for that skill, move it down a few generations!" But having 2 or 3 listed is good. Now go through the LTR list and find ones that pertain to those skills. "More Creative" for Painters, "Born to Cook" for your Chef, "Super Green Thumb" for your gardener... and so on.
Be wary of certain LTR that can sometimes cross over more than one career - like Artisan Crafter that goes to BOTH inventing and sculpting. If you were to do an inventor later on after your artist who does sculpting you might wish you hadn't made that a unique lifetime reward.
Personally, other than skill specific ones, I try to use throw-away LTR for unique LTR. Things like "Discount Diner" and "Free Entertainment" ones are good for those things, and they're cheap - though try not to use all the cheap ones on one person... always save a few as a "panic" button for when you realize your Sim has burned through all their LTHP.
Sorry this list is long, and it's not even over yet. Funny enough, I haven't completed an Immortal Dynasty - but I learned almost all of this from reading them and from my Life State's Dynasty.
Oh, save those support skills for later on, try not to bring them up sooner, the only exception I can think of to this would be Alchemy, but that's because the Elixirs are just so helpful in the beginning. Save those skills that require other skills until later so you can prep for them. Nectar Making requires a lot of fruit and fruit of a particularly good variety (at least Excellent in Quality, but having Perfect would probably be ideal) to make the best batches of Nectar (of course, with my experience I still don't even touch those perfect fruits until my Nectar Maker is at least level 7 or so to be safe. I like to just buy Apples, Limes and regular Grapes from the grocery store to hold them over until they get higher up so I can assure that I'm not wasting good fruits.
Handiness is also a skill you'll likely want to put before your Nectar Maker so you can upgrade all of their Nectar Makers.
Inventing, Nectar Making and several other skills are what I would consider "support" skills. They require the support of other skills in order to have good results quickly. I classify inventing as one of those skills because it's simply not easy to find a pink diamond (or 3 of those, really) and have the heart shape cut ready to go immediately. Not to mention it's nice to have someone a few generations prior pick up a majority of the scrap to be used so your Inventor doesn't waste their time running around looking for scrap instead of inventing.
Anywho, sorry, that was long winded. I have a minor question to those who have completed a ID, how many weeks were you in?
I ask because, I'm at 30 some-odd weeks in Dragon Valley (almost finished with my Life States Dynasty) and I'm not having a bit of trouble. I tend to run into trouble with most of my other towns, so I just want a general idea of how many weeks out I'll have to go (though I know it does vary, I just want an estimate as right now I have no number to go on) when/if I attempt my dynasty. It will also give me an idea of other towns to try to see if they'll survive the multiple weeks it takes.
