4x4 Dynasty Hints & Tips

[ratchie]

I stole all the books from the university co-ed dorm and sold them for a profit at the consignment store.

Rachel

[Snufflesxx]

One thing I've learnt from having my heir in a rabbithole job is that you really need to give them the workaholic trait. My Sim is in the military which means that his work days are quite limited so it would have been useful if he'd been able to work from home.

[KRae]

I think limiting the number of children is useful. When they graduate everyone in the family with a rabbithole job misses a work day.

[Margerita]

I think limiting the number of children is useful. When they graduate everyone in the family with a rabbithole job misses a work day.

Or just limit the amount of rabbithole jobs you have planed, either or works.

[Nutella]

Ambitious + Workaholic + Multi-Tasker LTR works wonder for rabbithole job.  Ambitious also does double duty here for the extra lifetime happiness points.

[Margerita]

Ambitious + Workaholic + Multi-Tasker LTR works wonder for rabbithole job.  Ambitious also does double duty here for the extra lifetime happiness points.

Don't forget the bonus lvls for having a degree, lvl 4 instead of lvl 1  - yes please.

[Trip]

Consider picking up schmoozer too; you can ask for promotions with less career progress.

I haven't attempted a 4x4 yet, but schmoozer has helped me in other dynasties.

[saltpastillen]

If you want to play with Into the future and have problems accepting skill opportunities, remember that a sim can have many different jobs, and as long as they don't max a career any other heir can play it too. This is useful if you want to have several heirs collect opportunities from the opportunity rich professions.

[Shirin]

Just offhand, other than a Private Investigator, what other professions are rich in opportunities? I've gotten about 8 from PI, and I know there's a few more, but I keep getting the one to Study, or repeats of old ones.

[saltpastillen]

I usually get a lot of ops from the showtime professions - though I guess it can vary from game to game.

[hazelnut]

Just offhand, other than a Private Investigator, what other professions are rich in opportunities? I've gotten about 8 from PI, and I know there's a few more, but I keep getting the one to Study, or repeats of old ones.

The PI profession has loads of ops.  At least it used to have, although some of them are long-winded and/or involve stakeouts, which seem to be buggy recently.  Ghost hunter has three that I know of.  I don't think the other Ambitions professions have any.


Some thoughts on Hidden Springs, having played my first four generations there:

• There are no combined rabbitholes, which is good.
• The town has a reputation for being laggy, although I didn't find that at all.  The file did get pretty large, though - with all the glitches that usually implies.
• The Lodge was very useful at the start.
• There's a lot of unroutable terrain.  Frustratingly, this includes a number of spawner locations.  There was a special seed spawner just up the road from the lot I used but almost all of the seeds were inaccessible.
• I chose it as my photography town, having found out the hard way in the Life States that only the default diner registers for the photo.  Unfortunately, I failed to notice that there's no beach so you still can’t complete the  ‘Around Town’ collection .  I'd recommend Sunset Valley or Riverview for photography (possibly also Lucky Palms but I don't own that one so I'm not sure).

[EtnaFan666]

Here are a few things to watch out for and some loopholes:

• Job comes before marriage. My first heir in my test run was into Film but married an ex-vampire and the next thing I know, five days off and she's three days to true adult!  If I hadn't sent her to University she would have never gotten her requirements done, but she still turned into an elder because she didn't top her career until she was old! Marriage gives you two days of honeymoon leave so be careful not to get married until you are sure you can top your heir's career!
• As I said above, University and travel is great if you need the time to do skill challenges. Unless you have a Level 3 Visa and your own vacation house, you should stick with University since you get two weeks and a weekend free of classes. The classes can be a pain but unless you are going for a degree(my first heir didn't need a degree but got one in Business anyways), you can just have minimal classes and spending the rest of the time doing skill challenges or going for a Social Group trait slot. My first heir surprised me by getting Poseidon(she was doing the mixology challenges) on her second day of college. When she got back to Bridgeport, she was able to focus on her career and top it eventually, and she was soon able to have a baby with William Fangmann, her husband.
• Don't be afraid to double up on careers if you have the time. University(see a pattern here) will help get your heirs a heads up by skipping ranks. I plan on my second heir attending a full term of Fine Arts with extra credit so he can start at Rank 4 instead of bottom-rank and then he can speed through his remaining promotions. But since he's contributing to the collcetion, he'll spend his college years doing the Alchemy skill challenges and then he'll top Alchemist and then Culinary. While this locks out Culinary for other heirs, I have my remaining heirs planned out so it's not a big deal to lose one career since I have all these professions and self-employed careers.  He'll get the two culinary career rewards and the four elixirs for the collections.

[Trip]

EtnaFan, did the skill challenges your sim completed at University stick? I've heard about skill challenges completed at University not transferring over when your sim returned home, but that was all the way back on patch 1.50 and I'm wondering if things changed.

Good tips, though. Marrying before you finish a rabbithole career is already something to struggle with in an immortal dynasty. Cut the time in half and the forced days off are a recipe for disaster.

[KRae]

My solution for rabbithole jobs and marriage is to marry very young and then start the job. No time off that way. I completed this without any travel EPs by being a slave driver.

[EtnaFan666]

EtnaFan, did the skill challenges your sim completed at University stick? I've heard about skill challenges completed at University not transferring over when your sim returned home, but that was all the way back on patch 1.50 and I'm wondering if things changed.

Yes, my first heir completed the Poseidon mixology challenge in Uni and it still lists as being completed even after returning home to Bridgeport. You're probably running on an early patch, I have the most recent(1.67). Those early patches were EVIL - I couldn't play Barnacle Bay with Patch 1.43 because it had tons of bugs.

So far my first heir is almost completed with her requirements. She still needs 15 recipes for Professor of Drinks(she's got all of the recipes from Brightmore, the Grind and Eugi's and most of the recipes from everywhere else) and four more promotions(she is in Film and just got into the Acting branch, which meant three day weekend - and she called over her boss but wasn't able to ask for a promotion - the option didn't show even after she got max job performance!).