Take This Job and Score It

[SimBlip]

I love the spreadsheet, Rica! It's so wonderful of you to share your hard work every time!
(The only thing maybe is that gardeners and writers receive an honor trophy, not a ribbon.)

Many congratulations to Lena, Nutella, Drift and Ratchie for their amazing scores. Also a round of applause for everyone who participated. I'd also like to thank the moderators for serving up a real brainbreaker and making this event possible.
Special thanks to Rica who responded very quickly and in a most encouraging way to my queries.

I played without university and had a nagging feeling throughout that it was possibly the worst mistake I've made so far.
Julia Vava Voom used all 14 days of her vacation allowance. She purchased a holiday home in France and used it to make inventions and to write. That was ok-ish, but Julius Vava Voom used only 7 days: one in Egypt to take pictures and six in France to up his number of performances on bass, piano and drums. Seven days unused can not be good, but I couldn't think of anything else for him to do abroad.

My Sims started off as genies, mainly to make friends quick and easy. Julia became a fairy as soon as she found a money tree seed.
For quick money trees, bloom no more then three times and let nature do the rest. Same for omni plant seeds. She received 12 of those and growing deathfish towards the fisherman career was a real doddle.
She stored harvested moneybags and deathfish in a treasure chest until she had at least $120,000 worth of each. That was a little over the top, but gardening didn't take up much of her time and she worked on other careers in the meantime.

The sculpting career was such a laugh. Gain one skill point, register, Midas Touch the Ambiguity Itself statue a couple of times and it's all done. If your Sim has the 'artisan crafter' LTR, those statues sell for $30,000.

[SimBlip]

Well done, Nutella!

But, I am more than a little surprised at the rewards you state for the science career.
You didn't get the gizmo to upgrade objects even though you maxed the career?

I'm puzzled as to why the flamefruit and deathflower count as career awards. It seems to me these 'cast-offs' or 'presents' are repeatable and much similar to the gnomes and scrap one can get from solving certain cases in the private investigator career?

[Nutella]

Well done, Nutella!

But, I am more than a little surprised at the rewards you state for the science career.
You didn't get the gizmo to upgrade objects even though you maxed the career?

I'm puzzled as to why the flamefruit and deathflower count as career awards. It seems to me these 'cast-offs' or 'presents' are repeatable and much similar to the gnomes and scrap one can get from solving certain cases in the private investigator career?

1) The science career max gives me the ability to "Perform Experiment On" objects, but it is not a physical reward.
2) The gizmo to upgrade objects?  Are you talking about the Group Science Project?  I didn't include the big group science project gizmo because the science career does not require science skill, it requires handiness, gardening, and fishing. 
3) The flamefruit and deathflower count as career rewards because they were given to you as part of the promotion, one time thing, not repeatable.  This has been a debate for a long time, and according to the last similar challenge (rabbit hole jobs & carrots), these were consider rewards.  Correct me if Im wrong on this Rica.
4) Yes I removed 3 reward objects from the private investigator cases, one for gnomes, one for guitar, and one for the oven.  I didn't realize the PI cases were repeatable, at least the cases didn't show up for me anymore after I completed it.

[SimBlip]

Sorry, Nutella.
I'm only talking about the science career, not the Group Science Project which I do not know about.
I forgot that the machine a mad scientist performs upgrades with is not a physical object.

I'm quite happy to accept that the flame fruit and deathflower are career awards if so stated.
But from my immortal dynasty, I know that my mad scientist often came home with these items, as well as the odd money tree seed or a life fruit.

Whatever the case, you played this challenge beautifully. Congratulations, and many thanks for your spreadsheets.

[Nutella]

But from my immortal dynasty, I know that my mad scientist often came home with these items, as well as the odd money tree seed or a life fruit.

Yes, you get 2 promotion rewards from science career.  It can be any combination of 2 of these: money tree seed, life fruit, deathflower, flame fruit.  I forgot exactly which level gives you, i believe is level 7 and level 9. 

[Turoskel]

Congrats Nutella and Lena 

Liquid Job Booster only works with xp based careers so it was taken for all the professions.

That explains why I thought it didn't work, I did use basil though.

I learned one important thing from this challenge, don't use Starlight Shores again, was so buggy, and of course I missed out on a couple of rewards from city hall because of routing errors.   

I will say playing dynasties helps a bit as I've learnt from those how to keep skills to certain sims, and I learnt from this ways to help my dynasty sims cap their jobs faster.

[Deklitch]

Oh ... I got a life fruit seed and a death flower seed from my sim in the science career. I figured they wouldn't count as career rewards and so didn't include them in my score, silly me.

I did mine in Union Cove and set down in that lot near the laundry and the tattoo parlor.

I made one sim a fairy and the other sim a genie, and they were married. Fairy was the one who would go into science eventually so started off with gardening, fishing and handiness, and went into athletics, nectar making and inventing as well. Genie got to do painting, photography, sculpting, writing, logic. Genie proved the more successful of the two.

I messed up the first two weeks or so, no advancements or anything, I should have sent the fairy to do the business career or part time jobs while doing the gardening/fishing, I think. I also didn't think to do the change life states thing. My genie just wrote sports books. He managed to supermax writing through doing them. My fairy's most amusing bit was his number of butt fires while doing inventing.

All in all a fun challenge, congrats to the big scorers, well done to all who competed in it and thanks to the challenge team.

[Ricalynn]

Normally I wouldn't have included the two plants from the Science career because when you get a promotion it doesn't say you get them for the promotion which are the words I would look for.   However, it's too late now to really make a stink over it. 

Well done to everyone.   

Oh and I totally used Twinbrook for the entire reason of the fact that it was preset up to handle the ambitions professions.   All the lots had mailboxes and trash cans in reasonable places.  There weren't too many places for the ghosts to be unfindable.  No combined rabbit holes just in case.

[Nutella]

Sorry about the two plants from Science career.  I read through past challenges (similar ones) and the two plants from science career was counted as reward (carrots), I just assume it would be the same for this challenge too.

Will be happy to remove the 2 points off my score.

[drift9999]

I think most of the more important strategy bits have already been kind of covered. Very well done to Nutella and Lena, and to all who participated.

I used a fairy/vampire pair for this challenge, for Bloom and skill-gains plus easy performing respectively. I chose traits such that they could, on W1D1 apply to university with enough honor credits to complete their degree in 14 days.

I did the combo of Midas Touch, Swimming in Cash and Wish-Enhancing Serum to give their LTHP a good kickstarter, and then sent them to university. After that, it was basically a liquid job booster-fueled trip, with plenty of working at home and motive mobile trips. Honorary degrees were also very helpful - they allow your Sims to start at level 3 in the relevant careers.

For the gardening and fishing careers, I bloomed Money Trees, and Omniplant/Death Fishes. SimBlip has pointed out an easy way to do Sculpting, and Band is very simple to do with subways.

Finally, for neighborhood choice I used Twinbrook, as Rica has explained earlier; it has clean rabbit-holes plus relatively simple-to-navigate lots.

[Femke82]

I used most of the strategy already discussed (combo of Midas Touch, Swimming in Cash and Wish-Enhancing Serum) to get as much LTH point on the first day as I could.

I didn't know that the liquid job booster only worked for self-employed jobs. I stopped using it after a few tries in a rabbithole as I didn't noticed any difference.

I could have gone to university but as I don't play there a lot I didn't realise you start a rabbit hole job at level 4, it could have saved me so much time!

What I did figure out in my testfiles is that with a job (for example ghost hunter) for wich you get the city of the key at level 10 of the career, the ceremony is only on saturday or sunday. If you complete the career on a monday you have to wait until saturday to get the ceremony. But to get the key of the city I had to be in the career itself. I don't know if that is something other players also noticed? In one testfile I moved on to another career and got the ceremony as usualy, but I didn't get the key of the city. It could have been a glitch but I made sure I finished the career before saturday in my officel file just to be sure.

Another mistake I made was making my two sims not maried from the start. I maried them during the challenge, but had to wait a while so it wouldn't mess up my playing time with the days off they get. So they got married while the one was in a self-employed job and the other just reached level 10 en could change jobs after the ceremonie.

I had a lot of fun during the challenge and learned a lot of new information by reading all the commentary!

Femke82

Edit to add a question: If you used your 14 days to go to university then how do you complete the nectar making career when you can't learn nectar making of buy a nectar making machine from your home town? At least, I've never seen the first skill book for nectar making at the consigment shop, only the second and third.

[Deklitch]

Femke, the other sim could have gone to the travel worlds for the nectar making needs

[Ricalynn]

Edit to add a question: If you used your 14 days to go to university then how do you complete the nectar making career when you can't learn nectar making of buy a nectar making machine from your home town? At least, I've never seen the first skill book for nectar making at the consigment shop, only the second and third.

Buy a piece of property, put a nectary register on it and you can buy the machine.   Or with University came the Brain Enhancing machines which teaches Nectar Making skill.