The Royal Flush: Sunset Valley's Handyman Championships

[MissTrips]

Re Front Door Upgrades ... If you have any bathroom objects in the room behind it, it can't be upgraded as a front door. I discovered that in one of my many immortal dynasty attempts with an all-in-one bathroom in the front 'foyer' area.

Ahh.. well that's one thing expalined.  yeah, I had a little one room place, just enough to put items in and my sim slept ouside on a rocking chair under a roof overhang to avoid getting overheated.  I was switching in and out doors trying to find out if *one* of them would work, to no avail...

[Canucklehead044]

My sim wasn't able to upgrade the firetruck either. Well, he upgraded it but it didn't register.

[KRae]

With my EPs I only had 22 possible upgrades not counting the food replicator and teleportation pad. I got all those so I'm pleased with that part of my score, but if I had been a little less scattered and made better use of my inappropriate trait , I think I could have done better with total upgrades, but never anything near 50 much less 74. How? Please tell me, how?

[_Annika_]

Jingle Bells, my door-to-doorbells saleswoman went around making sure that everyone had upgraded doorbells, silent running dishwashers (not too many of those) and fireproof stoves and fireplaces, as these are the fastest upgrades available in Sunset Valley.

Her traits were:
handy (obviously)
loves the outdoors (mood bonus)
loner: (mood bonus)
slob: (no need for showers)
computer nerd: (faster computer upgrade)

She joined the firefighter career, and then promptly took 5 days off. She took a class in handiness, and then tinkered to level 3, adding a couple of bonus upgrades to her score. She stayed in the career until Sunday afternoon (day 1 week 2) and then quit, having done the extinguisher and alarm upgrades, and also getting her weekly pay.

I think I might have missed some possible upgrades, or there's a trick I missed, because some people had more unique upgrades than I thought was possible with the restrictions - for example the brain enhancing machine is banned, so no upgrades possible there. And the    PlasmaPunch Gyroscopic Conductor can only have one upgrade on it, instead of the two different ones. I didn't quite reach the LTHP for even the food replicator, so I decided to skip that and the teleportation pad, and go for pure upgrade count. I skipped one or two others, because they took too long I think. Basically if I could get more single doorbells in that time than a single unique upgrade could offer, then I skipped it. The scoring adjustment meant I got more unique ones though.

One important thing to know was which items have a 15 minute upgrade time. I read about it in one of the old challenges - the ranch toilet that came with pets is one of them. The bath/shower that comes with seasons, or the shower that comes with Mastersuite. There are a couple of fireplaces that do, too. Also, the kareoke machine only takes 15 minutes for singing synth, but the sim keeps upgrading. You can cancel after 15 minutes when one of the bars is full.

For time management, my sim napped in the rocking chair for fastest energy recovery, and ate lettuces when hungry. I left some of my unique upgrades to do during the wee hours of the morning when I had been kicked out of someone's house after 3am.

[Makenziegma]

Handee Andee might have had some different ideas that what I am seeing posted so far. Especially amazed at how different my sims strategy was as compared to DeKlitch's sim even though the scoring wasn't much different. Maybe just a testimony to many different ways to play. Well, not feeling to badly about my 17th ranking out of nearly 70, but just surprised at with what a different take I seemed to use on this.... maybe I would have scored even better    but didn't feel to badly with my outcome.
Anyways, some of the things I found that helped Handee was:
1) My initial focus was on quickly earning the LTR's of:  meditative trance sleep followed quickly by dirt defiant and steel bladder. In order to need less sleep starting on day 2 I invested her first day in my fallback LTW that I know I can always earn in about a day....  Culinary Librarian...  LOL While I know this doesn't help with this strategy necessarily it did help provide her with more time in the long run. She didn't need much sleep and was granted extra hours in every day starting from day 2. Which was quickly followed up with less showering and bathroom breaks asap. I felt that just grabbing a quick tomato when needed was not very time consuming for eating and just bought them at 25 at a time.
2) Handee also became a fireman. However, she did not attend one fire. Despite this she somehow continuously earned promotions and was never in trouble at work since I would just remove from her to do list whenever it appeared. Being a fireman enabled her to upgrade everything around the fire station (I also did not get credit for the fire truck) and when she needed a quick social she either talked to a fireman or made a cell phone call to the mascot from universities.
3) Handee never did earn a bed. She took her bedroll with her wherever she went. However, she did buy a two bedroom house near the fire station. The function of her house though was simply as an upgrading and deconstructing building. I utilized what I could in the house to upgrade. Then I would sell promptly. Since there was no income except the fireman stipend she ended up with no house by the end of the challenge. After each item was upgraded, it was recorded and sold. Eventually there were not even walls left on the house so she could have money to buy items such as the expensive tattoo machine, hot tub, gyroscope, etc. Which were promptly sold after each was upgraded but continuously lost money due to the items never being worth what they were when first bought.
4) After upgrading as many unique upgrades at home by "working" her way out of her own house... Handee spent the rest of her time on number of upgrades by frequenting places just as the Karaoke restaurant and the library in which she could do multiple upgrades of items such as toilets and sinks.

This was definitely fun and I also put a lot of research into this pre-challenge. Thank you everyone for your great work on these challenges and helping us file any questions!!!  This is one of the best places on the internet!!!  :-)

[Deklitch]

Just looked up what my traits were, they were handy, loves the outdoors, loves the heat, lucky and book worm.

[Turoskel]

Reading what others did I can see a few things I forgot about, but other than that I didn't do much different, one trait I did give my sim though was insane, I found the social motive was what I had the most trouble keeping up in a quick practice run and it meant they could just talk to themselves if it got too low, my test sim was a fairy so he could carry a fairy bungalow with him wherever he went but I decided against that for the main challenge as it didn't make a lot of difference, carrying harvestables around and using a rocking chair seemed more efficient so I just used a human.

I still had my notes from last years handyman challenge so used that list to work off, glad I kept them now 

[YukiA]

Two words: Carl's Guide. And past experience with actually doing something like this (seeing how many different things I can upgrade) for fun. Which is why I knew about the doorbell
I think my biggest fault was being nice and letting Emma do her business periodically, instead of making her hold it in until the end of the night. also, I had no mapped out plan for who's house I was going to hit first. So she went all over the place.

[Elena]

I am so sorry about the big delay. I was busy last week, went out in the weekend and became busy again with non simming issues in the last few days:)

My strategy consisted of several elements:
Palmira Cyan ate coffee beans for food and sleep. She completed her LTW – Swimming in Cash – as soon as possible for its powerful moodlet.
She maxed the firefighter career and paid attention to all wishes related to handiness. This allowed her to obtain a teleporter. It helped her getting around town quickly and visit townies.
She mainly concentrated on upgrading their houses with custom doorbells, fireproof stoves and fireplaces.

Cyan made several mistakes:
She wasted precious time upgrading her home fire alarm. She forgot to upgrade the dishwasher outside the Alvi house.
She had no idea of the fantastic fast objects mentioned in Annika’s post - thank you, Annika!
And she also went to take the trophy from Town Hall although she missed the reward ceremony (I am not sure if that is a mistake!)

You can read a full account of Cyan’s handywoman weeks here.
Enjoy, I am off to finish up my file for 'perfect' this week:) but I'll regularly check up this post just to anwser any questions:p

[Nutella]

Wow Elena, your full account of the weeks is amazing.  Very impressed.

[Metropolis Man]

@Elena — that was an amazing and very creative write up…to put it in a interview format was really slick.

[Elena]

@Nutella: Thank you for your kind words and support! I am so sorry about the delay and hopefully it's not too late...
@Metro: Thanks again! I am so bad when it comes to writing, but I think I've learned a lot from you, the team, the guide and past challenges:p

Off to sleep now and hopefully I'll find time this weekend just to finish perfect and probably try out that max moodlets lol

[_Annika_]

That was a very interesting read! I had no idea that herbs and coffee beans could be so powerful - I've never used them to that extent before. I had a slight inkling that that was what might have given you the edge. I thought it would save a few hours of sleep at the most - not no sleep at all! And I didn't know about the sweetgrass cancelling the nauseous moodlet. I didn't think it was worth trying for the LTHP for a teleporter, but clearly you prooved me wrong. I can't wait to try it out myself now!

[Turoskel]

Really interesting read Elena, I loved the interview style, also a lot of useful tips and many things I didn't think about.

[saltpastillen]

Thank you for that awesome write up Elena

I know the reason I never do great in these challenges is that I don't have patience for doing research. I now also know it's because I don't know all here is to know about my EP's. But I love reading these kinds of write-ups and learning new tricks.