World Handyman Championships II

[Turoskel]

What I did was very similar to Roxanne, I also used a genie but instead of tomatoes had her summon baked angel food cake as it gave her a nice moodlet.

My genie was a bookworm, handy, over emotional, friendly, hopeless romantic.

First day I got a job at the fire station then went to the library and read handiness books till she was too tired, then she went to china got the telescopic metal quest and spent three days collecting metals, digging up relics and collecting gems plus the base camp books, came home sent it all off and by next morning had done her swimming in cash LTW, I also got a motive mobile at the first opportunity, she worked about 3 days at the fire department to get all those upgrades then quit.

Once I'd got all the unique upgrades I could it was pretty much all umbrellas, I never got enough points for the teleporter and the replicator though. In one of my practice runs she got both as she rolled a ton of high scoring romantic wishes for her neighbour, he was her social go to until she got the motive mobile, but this time she didn't want to know.

I think I could have got a better score if I'd not got so bored of the umbrellas, the monotony got a bit much near the end and I sort of tailed off.

The more I read about elixirs the more I wish I did have supernatural, they seem to be very useful for all sorts of things. Also the speaker, I spotted that as my sim wished to upgrade it and after I looked in her journal and the stereo is called upgrade speakers and the wall mounted is just upgrade speaker.

[Deklitch]

I started off with a normal sim and changed him into a witch at some point (I heard about the wardrobe and wanted to see if that counted as a unique upgrade - it didn't).

I didn't know how to get the siren upgrade at the fire station, but managed to do the other one. I completed the tinkerer LTW (I used holidays to do that) and got a wish enhancing elixir thing to get the points to get the food replicator. I had enough for either the food replicator or the transporter. The food replicator cost less LTHPs and I was able to get some additional LTRs that I thought would help my sim stay awake longer. I learned through trying different things in the challenge about upgrading the umbrellas, and I finally worked out how to upgrade a door bell.

After I found out about the umbrellas through trial and error, I bought 100 or so of them and went around upgrading each of them. It was then by accident that I discovered that I could upgrade the same item and it would count as a different object being upgraded. So yeah, I had fun and learned a lot. Thanks for the fun challenge!

[Roxanne07]

Rica- That does make sense. A part of the challenge is gathering information and that must be done by the player. I see. 

I also bought a cheap empty lot in Sunset Valley to have enough money for elixirs. I didn't know how many times I had to buy out the elixir shop before I got a Midas Touch. Not the cheapest, though. I thought the Beautiful Vista moodlet of the empty lot by the beach would help, along with stereos with improved speakers playing my Sim's favorite music for maximum moodlets.

I didn't bother with the level 3 visa. I thought it was a waste of time since unlike last year, there was a maximum number of vacation days. I just took 6 3-day trips instead. One to France, and five to Egypt ( I got the Fortune Cookie Machine from the junkyard). China's base camp was too far from the road and not ideal for using the Motive Mobile, while Egypt's was right by the road and just perfect.

Funny thing is, in my test run, I thought the unbreakable upgrade on umbrellas would take just as much as it would take for a sink or a toilet. So I packed on hundreds of umbrellas before going on a trip, until I found out I could do the upgrades with a single umbrella. It was really frustrating buying so many umbrellas and putting them on the ground one by one, then going into live mode picking them up, again, one by one and putting them in my Sim's inventory. And that wasn't the worst part! My Sim's inventory was so full of umbrellas that it took around 10 seconds for it to load each time I clicked it. 

I also considered making my Sim a vampire, but then I realized Genies have all the benefits of a vampire plus they don't have to worry about the weather. 

[Turoskel]

I only used two umbrellas and queued back and forth between them with glow/unbreakable, that way I could keep them lined up on fast speed, with one she would wander off before I could tell her to upgrade it again. What I did in my trips to china was put my umbrellas on the ground at the market by the road, I think she was only at base camp when she arrived then stayed in the forbidden city the rest of her trip, just popping in and out of her motive mobile when needed.

[Ricalynn]

I couldn't be bothered to take multiple trips.  Would have been good to know but I liked having 1 vacation and having a vacation home that was right next to the road for the motive mobile.  Wish I had figured out the unbreakable thing sooner.  Mind-numbing either way I guess but I was testing the karaoke thing and I think it was worse than the umbrella due to the cancelling thing.  I just knew that I wanted to be over and done with it very quickly after doing 3 test runs the week before the challenge.  I didn't want to see another parasol again.    Plus I knew if anyone claimed 100%, it'd be good to have my game done so I could ask people how.

I never play genies.  I obviously need to look into them more.

[Sarabi]

I don't have Showtime or Seasons, but did find another item - a toilet called the Reinforced Personal Stage, which came with Pets - that has a 15 minute self-cleaning upgrade timer.  In order to take advantage of that on vaca, I needed to get a level 3 visa and purchase a home, so I chose China.  I purchased the elixir shop in Twinbrook and installed a nectary register to have access to the nectar machine upgrades, and China was where Randi spent all of her vacation days.

Randi was a werewolf and spent most of her time in wolf form - slow energy drain, wolf moodlet, and werewolves run ~ 25-30% faster than humans.  She transformed back into human form whenever she needed to sleep, because wolf energy is also restored at a slower rate.  Once she got the Moodlet Manager (no Motive Mobile, I don't have Generations), there was no further need to sleep.  Given the 60K cost of the MMgr, I didn't expect to be able to do both LTR object upgrades, but found a couple of Wish Enhancing Elixirs at the elixir shop that made it possible to complete those.

At full-bore cranking out the toilet upgrades, she was able to do right at 60/day - stopping only to gobble some Pemmican from her inventory and MMgr the sleepies/lonelies.

I know what I could have done better, and maybe I will next time.

Great fun - thanks to the challenge team and kudos to everyone who completed this.

[JSBrantner]

I figured out the umbrella thing fairly quickly, but I didn't get the motive mobile as early as others did. I also played a genie, and had her join the firefighter profession on day one, take the 5 days unpaid leave option and sent her off to the library to read handiness skill books until she reached level 5 of the career. I then sent her over to do the fire station upgrades and the one on her personal fire extinguisher. The alarm upgrade and extinguisher upgrade both showed up as counted in her unique upgrades, but even after going through all three levels of "Improved Horsepower" my stats never changed. Did anyone else have this problem?

[Ricalynn]

The horsepower engine upgrade has never counted towards unique upgrades.  Probably because it's a tiered upgrade and not just a single like all the others.

[Tipi]

Congrats to SimBlip for the highest score!

I just knew that the secret to those amazing numbers had to do with Supernatural and Seasons - the expansions that I don't have.

And, so it's not even possible to get 100% upgrades! I was really frustrated when I could not figure out, what upgrade I was missing although during my trial run, I did the upgrades in the order they are on the list in Sims wiki. And Ricalynn: Wall-Mounted Speaker is on the list at least now (and was there a few weeks back when I printed the list).

[MomOfMany]

All done with 2318 upgrades, 94% unique upgrades

2318 x .94 = 2178

I did find a way to get 100%, but it is really annoying and tedious, and in the end, not worth lost time in other areas.

I am curious to know what you figured out that made getting 100% possible?

[Roxanne07]

I'd like to know that, too.

@Sarabi: That is an amazing score without the Expansion Packs! I doubt I could do half as well if I were you!

[Sarabi]

@Sarabi: That is an amazing score without the Expansion Packs! I doubt I could do half as well if I were you!

I think some of the additional EPs probably helped, but bear in mind that I did have one object in my game with a 15-minute upgrade time, which is the same as the umbrella and karaoke machine.  Without it, it would have been impossible to do more than maybe high 200s- low 300 range.  The other shorter timers are the doorbell and sprinkler, both of which have 160 minute upgrade times.  Those times don't include the Sim's time kneeling down, standing up, moving from object to object - it's purely the amount of time they need to be hammering away at them.

I mis-managed getting the visa, and spent far too much time pursuing it - otherwise I could probably have completed a lot more upgrades than I did.  I also spent too much time werewolf hunting for items to transfigure to tiberium, having overestimated how much money Randi would need to purchase all of those toilets (625 purchase price - 532 resale, §93 net cost per toilet) and underestimated how much I would get selling the grown tiberium at the elixir consignment shop.  Midas Touch could have saved me a lot of time there, too - but I didn't think about that strategy.

Still, I did a lot better than I had expected coming into it - I was hoping to land somewhere in the middle of the pack.

It was great fun, and I've learned a lot... back to the squalling nooboos.   

[smartburn]

Like Audren, I thought the strategy had to involve doorbells as that's what I had the most luck with as well as insanely quick upgrades at seemingly random times. It never occurred to me that different toilets would have differing upgrade times, so I never bothered with those once I built the small room with the one and only door on my sim's property. I do not have Seasons or Showtime.

Otherwise my strategy was pretty similar to many others - I scored both a Wish Enhancing Serum and a Midas Touch elixir towards the end of the first week, so once I got to level 5 in handiness and upgraded the fire extinguisher that weekend, I quit the firefighter career, used both elixirs and got my LTW along with the motive mobile. Beyond the firefighting career objects and the times I was at the station, I stayed with doorbells until I maxed handiness which is when I started doing the unique upgrades. Once the unique upgrades were done I went back to doorbells.

The first LTR was the motive mobile, followed by the food replicator and teleporter (purchased at the same time), prepared traveler and, eventually, steel bladder. Traits were handy, inappropriate, kleptomaniac, ambitious and overemotional - in hindsight, I should have used loner or loves the outdoors in place of OE, and kleptomaniac ended up being irrelevant after the first week. I also spent a little too much time fulfilling wishes that had nothing to do with handiness or money. She was a witch so that she could conjure her own food, and early on I had her learn just enough alchemy to make her own invigorating elixirs. I took 4 trips total - one three-day trip to China, and 3 more trips for a total of 15 days in France (3 days then 2 more trips of 6 days each). I didn't bother with Egypt because there were no unique upgrades there and base camp doesn't have any doors.

[ladyaya]

How the heck do you upgrade a doorbell? I never did figure that one out - and next time I need to plan things out better, lol

[Metropolis Man]

How the heck do you upgrade a doorbell? I never did figure that one out - and next time I need to plan things out better, lol

It has to be an enclosed room and the door needs to be designated as the front door. And you'll see an option that says "Change Doorbell" not Upgrade. That might throw someone off a bit.