Sorry, everyone. I have been on a family holiday which means computers are banned.
Got back three hours ago and was delighted to find my score held up.
Thanks to Gogowars, Metro, Roxanne and Tipi for their congratulations.
As for my strategy...
I played the official file in Moonlight Falls.
I used a genie for the magically clean self option and because he/she learns fast.
Tin Tin started out as ambitious, over-emotional, handy, loner, loves the outdoors
I bought the lot closest to the Elixir Shop, i.e. Merchant Way something rather.
Tin got the Midas Touch elixir, wish enhancement serums and invigorator elixirs early in the day.
Tin used Midas in a 'contraint' way. He took enough cash to build a house and invest in first-buy real estate, then consigned a certain amount of golden statues to the elixir shop, where they sold for double the price. This saved time.
For my strategy to work, Tin needed four wish enhancement serums and 2 job elixirs. I found it quite easy for him to get those. It seems the chances of wish enhancement serums are much higher, when your Sim fulfills two wishes and has three wishes locked in when buying - if that makes sense?
What I really wanted for him was to have lots of potent invigorating elixirs. Tin ended up with only nine. In my test files, a lady handyman ended up with 13, which made for a much better end score.
Selling unnecessary elixirs gave Tin's funds a boost too and spawned the wish to buy property early. He physically went to become a partner and buy/own a property on the very first day. From there on, he handled real estate via computer. But those real estate wishes added a lot to his happiness points.
He bought over time and in this succession : steel bladder, hardly hungry, teleportation pad, food processor, moodlet manager, prepared traveller, midlife crisis, no bills ever. [Midlife-crisis and No Bills Ever were luxury and only possible because he had the wish to be worth more than $500,000. This happened early week 2.]
So basically, Tin used wish enhancer serums to boost his real estate wishes, as well as his actual handiness wishes and career-related wishes. By day 8 ( or week 2, day 1) he had all the LTRs I wanted him to have and he had upgraded everything, but China's cookie machine. The necary machine was purchased from the beach side via a registry.
With prepared traveller, Tin had 3 X 6 days in China. The first time he went into the Forbidden City to upgrade the fortune cookie machine. He stayed there to do umbrella upgrades. On his next two visits, he never left the Home Base lot, but concentrated on umbrella upgrades.
Tin had a midlife crisis to change the ambitious trait to something else. This trait would give a Sim the 'can't advance moodlet' and that needed to be avoided. Did I make him excitable? I can't remember.
Anyway, eventually the moodlet manager came in handy sporadically for such things as: lonely, stir crazy and tiredness.
I tried to avoid having to cure more than one moodlet to keep the moodlet manager from back-firing and that worked brilliantly.
Yes, so it was pretty much upgrading umbrellas for most of the time.
On a normal day, Tin would upgradde between 62-65 of these.
More potent invigorators, and hence, no use of a moodlet manager for longer, would have given a higher score as in my test files. But hey, I'm not complaining.
