Favorite Ways to Spend Your Happiness Points

[Pam]

That's very interesting, LlamaMama.  I might have to do some testing on that. 

[LlamaMama]

It makes me wonder if it's worth having a replicator if the sim doesn't have the culinary career.

[Pam]

Honestly, I rarely use a replicator.  I like having my Sims learn to cook through the generations.  I always have one who is a great cook who cooks for the whole family. 

[bshag]

I'm going to try the storing ambrosia method you described Pam.  Hopefully it will work as there are some children of a parent who can make ambrosia but who live outside the parent's home.  I'm famous for not letting go of my favorite sims.

[Sophie4563]

Wow Llama, that was really helpful! My food in the replicator kept coming out spoiled and I was wondering why. The only other time I had it I was playing with a Culinary sim with the special fridge.

[Joria]

I just found this enlightening bit of info on the wiki:

A lot of people find the Food Replicator confusing, saying that the food randomly spoils. After extensive research, the reason for this has been found - the replicated food is directly linked to the quality of the original, or, to be more exact, the quality of the fridge. Basically, when the food in the fridge goes bad, so does the food in the replicator. For that reason, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that a Sim complete the Culinary Career. This grants the Sim a special refrigerator that causes food to never spoil. By proxy, this will result in food never spoiling in the replicator.

I play tested this.  I made a LTW of 5 Star Chef and once that was achieved I received the special refrigerator as a prize.  I kept this as an ADDED refrigerator.  I wound up with two replicators as well, but not sure how I did that!  I doubt I would have "bought" two of them.  Ok, the extra refrigerator was where I stored my replicated food, and of course, it also showed up in the main refrigerator.  I upgraded my replicator so it would process 20 dishes instead of 10.  I then spent hours replicating those 20 dishes of each kind I had "saved", and kept putting them in the refrigerator.  It is bottomless!  The result was food did not have to be cooked again EVER, but it took two days, (my time, not Sim days), of cooking/storing/replicating and adding to the refrigerator.  This meant every Sim in my house always had their favorite food ready to be taken from the frig.  While I always sent them to the "normal" frig to get their food, that food didn't spoil either.  This idea was not my own original idea but from a post on the Legacy Challenge topic on the Sims 3 forum.

[wildredchild]

That is awesome Joria!  Thank you for doing that testing.

[Joria]

Getting back on topic, my favorite way to spend my Happiness Points USED to be steel bladder, hardly hungry etc. etc.  I wanted my legacy Sims to just focus on their LTW and raising generations, not having to go pee, eat or bathe.  What was missing was Observant.  So I switched to Observant with a different legacy as my first choice and it did indeed help me find a mate the second day of play.  At this point, since I'm involved in a challenge, I needed to travel a lot.  First choice was Prepared Traveler.  It didn't matter if I could easily find personality traits but it quickly became necessary to have No Bills Ever.  My third focus was getting that Collector!  Without that everything went at half speed and I spent all my time trying to find things.  My LTW was the movie composer one and my traits were virtuoso, green thumb, klepto, bookworm, and I can't remember the other one.  I basically chose traits that could help me make money fast.  Klepto was the most valuable one for getting a lot of money right at the start so I could buy into businesses, get my Carter's and start traveling.  I used my virtuoso talents everywhere I went to play my guitar so quickly achieved my LTW which finally gave me enough points to buy that Collector!  Between the klepto and guitar playing for tips and making Supernovium, I have enough to now really focus on achieving the end of that challenge.  

If I ever start a new legacy, and I know I will, I'll start with Observant, then Multi-tasking and Opportunistic.  These should get that legacy rolling along quite nicely.

[AriaGirl77]

I also really like Fast Learner, especially for Sims who's LTW's are skill related.

[Zundar]

Observant first for young adults and multitasker for kids. Rabbithole working sims get office hero and professional slacker, unless they're workaholics. Stay at home sims go for no bills ever. Then it depends on their traits.

[Leto85]

Meditative trans sleep. Without a doubt MTS. Or I have really planned on another strategy, but that one is very handy if I can find the time to save points.

[Metropolis Man]

Hey, big Leto, nice to see you back. Yeah, I've been a MTS fan for a long time. I've said this elsewhere and that's that I don't feel MTS is worth the points for a rabbit hole career Sim, but for round the clock self-employed Sims, MTS is super.

[Pam]

It's also great for parents.  They can actually have time for things other than raising the toddler triplets. 

[Leto85]

Haha, thanks Metro! But why should it be practical for a rabbit hole career sim? With having less time sleeping your sim will have more time working on skills relating to that career. Or do you just mean that sim should spent the points on other things?
@ Pam: that is really true! :O Very practical for people who want to raise multiple children. I haven't thought of that before.

[Metropolis Man]

Haha, thanks Metro! But why should it be practical for a rabbit hole career sim? With having less time sleeping your sim will have more time working on skills relating to that career. Or do you just mean that sim should spent the points on other things?

Yeah, true to some extent. I typically use vacations and days off for skill building with rabbit hole career Sims. Obviously, if the 30k points are there waiting to be spent, why the heck not? Pick it up for any Sim. They'll definitely accomplish more.