Thank You for Your Service!

[Metropolis Man]

I'm a DNF. I started way too late. I really like this family, though, and will finish the challenge and then get them their LTR's and play until the kids finish their LTW's. I have a tendency to cheer for the underdog, so "Go pathetic Starr family!"

Hehe. Thanks for the heads up, KRae, but given the event is already closed you will not be added to the leaderboard with a DNF.

[KRae]

As I expected.

[Tandrael]

I would like to know others' strategies, I don't know if that is possible.

I know I am DNF, I did keep going but it took me like 60 days to finish! With the babies: they were born at home, but it still took me more than one Sim-day to make them best friends with mom. It took me one whole Sim-day for each thing toddlers needed to learn and one whole day to befriend each of the five Sims the stay-at-home-Sim needed to befriend, and she went to town to meet people while pregnant, but she still needed another day of interaction to be "friends"; because of course they needed to rest, eat, shower and the babies needs to be fed, changed. So towards the end it got faster because dad would train the toddler while mom went to town to make friends, but at the beginning when dad had to work almost everyday it was tough!

I wonder if there is something wrong with my game or if it Ąt's just the player! 

[Turoskel]

The charisma skill is a big help, just say hello to twenty five people and then you get a nice boost but it reset each town so I had to repeat that, when her charisma skill got higher I found she made friends much quicker, it was certainly worth the time taken to learn it.

I always had mum ask people their career then you can usually 'enthuse about...' whatever it was for a double plus, if you were lucky you might find out they were a workaholic then you could 'praise hard work' for another double plus, a lot of traits give you a certain 'enthuse about...' social that is a double plus so what I did was rotate between any of those I'd discovered plus the career one and add in a get to know or tell dramatic story in between so they didn't get bored, also those two help you to discover more traits which might give you even more to enthuse about.

I mainly targeted people in certain career outfits, medical, culinary, military and law enforcement as they were most likely to have extra traits like workaholic, genius, natural cook and athletic all good for double plus socials.

Sometimes I got lucky with a sim who also had dislikes children and a kid being on the lot, then I could have mum gripe about kids to them 

[Nutella]

I use charisma skill too, but slightly different.  I didn't do the 25 people skill challenge, instead I did the 10 best friends.  This skill challenge allows me to skip good friend stage with the baby.   The problem with this is that it resets every town, so mom will need to make 10 best friends every time they move.

Baby have friendly trait, and after 1-2 sim hours of snuggling, your baby should be best friends with mom (skip good friends stage). 

The ask career and "enthuse about" is what I do to get 10 best friends fast.

[LenaLJ]

Other than that, if you keep inviting those targeted 10 best friends over to parties, you are sure to have them around all the time. So even though you in world 2,3 and 4 have to maybe train a second toodler, or feed your children or anything, you can just do that and go back to friends making asap.

[Tandrael]

Thank you all! So much to learn!

I also used the "ask career" interaction, but if the other Sim was ambitios or workaholic and unemployed it was awfull for the relationship (I might as well just insulted those poor Sims!), so it's a great tip to look for uniforms.

For making friends sometimes I invited them over, but if mom would have to go feed or change the baby, they would leave with a "terrible outing" (or something like that) moodlet. I'm guessing that doesn't happen with a party.

Another thing that held me back in the first town where the 20000 simoleons needed to move! Even the firsborn, already a child, would contribute to the family's funds by painting!

But it seems most of it sums in "pay closer attention!"

[Elena]

Another thing that held me back in the first town where the 20000 simoleons needed to move! Even the firsborn, already a child, would contribute to the family's funds by painting!
But it seems most of it sums in "pay closer attention!"

In my test file I had problem with raising the 20K for move, but then I heard from previous posts that elixirs and other products can be consigned so there isn't much problem for me.
I use picking wildflowers to raise the first money, the military man has a very low initial wage so you can't bet on that. This is useful for any dynasty starts anyway.
I was not familiar with getting twins the vanilla way so I only had a single child first, made him genius and trained logic fast, so he searched galaxy and found a giant rock.
Didn't worry about money after that now with 10K on hand for trading but I regret buying a pre-made first house rather than building a shack and leaving all the money for trading...

[saltpastillen]

In my practice files I also had a hard time getting the money together fast enough - funnily enough in my challenge file I got a tiberium at the consignment store on day one.


I also used the ask career interaction, and if they had the kind of career that enabled me to enthuse about something I would spam that till they were best friends - so mom could make 2-3 friends a day and be home to care for the toddlers more enabling dad to work on his athletics skill to advance faster in his career.

I think my downfall was not getting the toddlers trained fast enough.

[Nutella]

I feed the $2000 fish book to the omni-plant at the science center, harvest it almost everyday till moving time.  Its not a lot of money, but enough to scrap $20,000 for the move.  The other worlds are easier since kids can paint for some extra income and dad's income from career is much higher.

[Blackrosea]

Another thing that held me back in the first town where the 20000 simoleons needed to move! Even the firsborn, already a child, would contribute to the family's funds by painting!

A couple of the things I did in my challenge file was as follows:

I adopted 2 dogs the very first day and trained them hunting. That is all they did all the time was to hunt and socialize with each other. In the first world, I had made over 500k by the time I moved. I also always bought the consignment store out over and over to refresh the items it had for sell and resold the items through the consignment store I wasn't interested in keeping or selling the books when I moved to a new world.

I used the charisma skill to know 25 people to get the quick skill of 25 acquaintances by buying the performance park and placing 25 relic registers down to get the challenge skill fast.

For my service Sim, I had him drink a nectar glass right before work for the extra buffs, and used the SimLife goggles to max fun, and the rocking chair until he was full of sleep then climb in bed for the 10 hour sleep buff. I had him eat pies his children would make with the child oven for max food buff.

[tara1727]

Nice tips Blackrosea! In my failed attempt I started in Isla Paradiso, made the stay-at-home sim find an island on the first day then sell it and boom they had 10K more. Not sure if that was allowed, I didn't bother to ask about it because I failed to age up the kid before moving to second location. All the requirements for aging up were met, just the actual caking up was missing. It was a good start tho, I used the ask about career/enthuse about approach as well combined with list of residents telling their careers so I knew whom to target.