Who Says Money Isn't Everything?

[Nutella]

All is good, no worries.

[Tixxis]

First post - Sorry
Can I enter still?
My score is $1,111,063.

[Metropolis Man]

First post - Sorry
Can I enter still?
My score is $1,111,063.

Look for a PM from me.

[bea.of.idris]

Hi!
I hope it isnt too late...
My final score for the challenge was $632,062

[IronicBeauty]

I going to try to sneak right under the wire if possible. I ended with $313,128

[Metropolis Man]

This event is now closed.

Great job, everyone. Fantastic participation - 78 players submitted scores. I am very, very happy. Well done to ClayMask for topping the big field. For those of you unfamiliar with ClayMask she is a former World Champion that took a couple years off. She's back with a vengeance hehe. I cannot believe the number of new players with only one post - players that registered for the forum just to participate. It's so awesome, guys., Thank you. I hope the rest of the year everyone has lots of fun with more challenges we offer and good competition.

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So, it's time for strategy discussion - finally! ClayMask will undoubtedly share what she did soon. Painting seemed to be the big thing for most players. I waited to jump into the painting career a couple days until I had the Connections reward and then was able to start as lvl 4. I always stuck with Large Classic paintings, but from what some other players said in PMs as the team was verifying stuff I believe some other types are more profitable. Thanks again, everyone for making this first event a real success.

[ClayMask]

Well, that was fun.  Here's my strategy.

I started out with a Sim, Salvador Dali, with the following traits:  loner, creative, and loves the outdoors.  I chose loner so that I could completely ignore his social bar, and not spend any time socializing.  He also got a positive moodlet from being alone, which was very helpful.  He was always alone, except for the occasional pizza delivery.I chose creative mostly so that he would have fun while painting, but the occasional inspired moodlet from it was a small bonus.  I chose loves the outdoors because I "built" his house outdoors,so he always had the +2 happy moodlet from loves the outdoors.  He was a minimalist, with at most a bed, refrigerator, toilet, shower, painting easel, the thirteen lamps required to produce a +3 inspired aura, a painting easel, a trash can, a laser show machine, and a small bathroom which doubled as a small wall on which to display a few paintings and improve his environment. After the first week he sold his bed, shower, and toilet, since he had steel bladder by then and was getting his sleep and hygiene entirely from consumables that he bought with whim points.  I'll write more on this in a bit.  For food he lived off pizza, so that he wouldn't have to spend time cooking and would have more filling meals than quick meals.  The 25 Simoleans per pizza was worth the time saved by eating the more filling meals.  The pizza caused him to gain quite a bit of weight by his adult birthday, which for some reason he suddenly lost upon aging up.  Apparently aging speeds up the metabolism.

Salvador's money making strategy was to paint as many paintings and as valuable of paintings as possible.  He painted in the abstract style because it's the most valuable.  He never truly worked in the painter career, although he did enter and quit it regularly in order to take advantage of the ability to sell his paintings to the art gallery.  During the first week he did this a few times, and after that staying in the career over the weekend was enough.  He found that the art gallery bought masterpieces for the same price as a private collector, so these were normally sold to private collectors in order to satisfy whims of his. In addition to the painter extraordinaire aspiration, he ended up completing the fabulously wealthy aspiration and a small part of the mansion baron aspiration.  The reward from completing the fabulously wealthy aspiration was very nice.  Once a week, at the same time and day that he completed the aspiration, he was awarded interest on his cash.  In order to benefit from this as much as possible, he completed this aspiration shortly before 8 AM on Sunday, one week after the start of the challenge.  This meant that he could collect two interest payments during the challenge, with the last one occurring shortly before he aged up to adult, when he would have the maximum cash.  He also made sure to have all of his valuable paintings sold at the time that interest was awarded, as well as by 5 AM on Sunday, since that's supposedly when the household bills are tabulated. He did manage to keep his bills very low, with the second one being only 78 Simoleans. 

The rewards that he chose, in order, were: marketable, creative visionary, never weary, hardly hungry, and steel bladder.  After this he started spending whim points on sleep replacement and hygiene potions, whenever these needs reached orange.  He did manage to accumulate these faster than he was spending them, and eventually bought the frugal reward.

I have included a picture of him painting here, shortly before he sold all of his possessions for the final interest payment and count of his wealth.  He was too busy to turn around and look at the camera.  At the time of the picture, he hadn't eaten for a while in order to squeeze in as many paintings at the end as possible.  The picture is mostly uncropped, in order to show all of the information.If anyone has questions for him, I'll gladly answer on his behalf, since he's too busy painting.

[ManiSims]

I went the painting route as well, but definitley not as hardcore as ClayMask did, well done!

My Sims traits were Loner, Loves the Outdoors, and Creative as well, and I had a setup a bit similar to ClayMask's minus the Inspired Lamps. I bought the Marketable and Creative Visionary rewards. I had to change my strategy halfway through her life stage; I was in the Painter career but I found not going to work was more profitable than actually working. Work took up several precious hours out of her day where she could've been painting 3-4 paintings and sell them for a lot more money. So I had my sim quit her job, and then she started making a lot more. She did lose the ability to sell to the art gallery, but it was worth the time making extra paintings.

My score was definitely not as good as it could've been, but I had a lot of fun with this challenge!

[Lisa46]

Also tried painting, with the exact same traits. I had some trouble the first few weeks with the inspiration lamps, they just bugged out a few times.

I believe my main issue was the fact that I didn't realize you could sell to Art Gallery from painter career, also I didn't make quite enough whim points to satisfy my sim's need for sleep. My sim never had a career.

[Deklitch]

I went and collected frogs and did digging and also painted. I went to work in some career and by the Thursday before aging up I had under a couple of thousand in cash. It was at around this point I discovered how to properly control the camera and about whims as I really hadn't played until this challenge. I thought on about the last Thursday, hey, I don't really need the house because of these potion things I'm getting from the whims and yeah, most of my money came from selling all my worldly possessions. lol

As I said when I posted my score, at least I didn't die!

[Poffin]

Holy cow! Well, I was feeling good about my score early in the challenge, but I ended up in 12th! (I finished with $503,451) It isn't a million, but I'd like to explain my strategy anyway. (With TL;DR length)

Yet another painter here, named Tomiko Kinsen. Her starting traits were Creative, Art Lover, and Perfectionist. She added Professional Slacker, Shrewd, Never Weary, Independent, Expressionistic, Hardly Hungry, Creative Visionary, Marketable and Steel Bladder throughout the challenge.

I chose to live on the cheapest lot in Oasis Springs. I built a tiny 2x4 room. I added a wall speaker (+1 Happy), the cheapest Environment 10 painting (+3 Happy), and a shelf with two of the reward lamps from Ambitions (+2 Inspired Aura). I didn't realize there was a higher lamp bonus, but looking at it now... duh! This combination of objects created a persistent +5 to Inspired. Finishing a painting usually gave a +2 Inspired moodlet, and an inspired shower or food took care of the last point. This allowed her to stay Very Inspired for the majority of the challenge with very little work. Outside the room, she also had the single bed with 10 energy and the cheapest possible need filling items except the shower, which was the second cheapest. I actually used items to fill needs... A fatal mistake, I now realize!

It didn't take Kinsen very long to cap the painting skill. I chose small paintings, as my testing had implied that they yielded the most value over time when paired with Perfectionist. I used Classical style until I was able to paint Abstract, at which point I switched. I horded the paintings as I created them, wanting to wait until I had Marketable to sell them. I did end up selling a few without Marketable so that she would have money to buy canvases. If she wasn't tending needs, she was painting.

Meanwhile, I collected satisfaction points by switching between Painter Extraordinaire (which she finished very quickly) and Fabulously Wealthy, and by fulfilling wants. I spent a lot of time canceling the same wants, trying to only keep the ones that were consistent with what she was already doing. (No, you may not plant something!) Even so, I derailed on filling wants a little, cooking and socializing more than was probably necessary for relatively little satisfaction. In retrospect, I shouldn't have given wants so much attention. About a week before the end, she finished Fabulously Wealthy, which was almost too little, too late.

My first priority for satisfaction rewards was getting Creative Visionary, and then Marketable. When she had both traits and a good number of paintings, I had her join the painting career. She sold off paintings to the art gallery and then quit her job, repeating the process when she had another set of paintings. She was in the Painting career for most of the challenge, but she didn't work a single day!

Kinsen subsisted entirely on garden salads, and incidentally ended up with level 10 cooking. I really considered going the pizza route, but figured it was impractical in the long run. I saved the dirty dishes in the Family Inventory until she could afford a Nanocan, and then tossed them one by one while she painted. Even at $10 a piece, throwing away those dishes added up to a small profit on the can.

She met Nancy Landgraab on the first day, and befriended her a bit so she could invite her over whenever she needed social. She would get Confident sometimes from finising paintings and rolled whims to use a bold pickup line. This ended in her having a bit of a crush on Nancy. She even asked Nancy to be her girlfriend a few times, but Nancy was having none of it.

On the last day, I sold everything she had. However, I did buy an oven and let her have a birthday cake. I couldn't bare to let her have a sad birthday after how far she'd come. If that shaved a few hundred off my score, oh well!

I am slapping my forehead over not making use of the needs potions! That is such a basic thing conceptually, but I tunnel-visioned on traditional need filling. And gosh, Loner is powerful! I'll certainly make better use of it in the future. I think I might take Kinsen and get her a family. She can get Nancy (an elder now) to leave her husband and move in with her to her empty lot! Haha. This challenge was a lot of fun, but if I never see another small, abstract painting, it'll be too soon! (But I'm sure I won't be able to keep away from painters for long.)

Maybe we should create a community hashtag and upload our challenge Sims to it? It could be fun to see/download the Sims everyone worked with.

[ClayMask]

@Poffin Marketable raises the value of an item when it's produced.  If you don't have the trait when you make the item, you won't make extra when you sell it, either.  I never thought of storing the dishes in the family inventory.  That was a great idea.

@Lisa46 I've had trouble with the lamps too, in some of my games.  There are a variety of things you can try that often work to get them to come on.  Exiting the game and reentering sometimes works, or traveling, or turning the aura off for a few game minutes and then turning it back on.

[callycat]

Wow, Claymask. That's amazing, congrats!

I'm second guessing whether this would be allowed now, since nobody has mentioned doing this so far! I couldn't and still don't see an exploit here or any broken rules, but obviously that's up to the challenge mods - I'm posting this to make sure I have a legit score as I'd rather be disqualified if I don't I still had fun.

My Sim took the Love aspiration, though she switched to Painter Extraordinaire fairly quickly and painted when she had spare time. She took Romantic, Cheerful and Art Lover (I think, without checking). She used lamps and showers to help create flirty paintings and filled her little (very basic) house with them. She couldn't go the outdoors route because she needed to avoid conversations with multiple sims at once (not helpful when trying to seduce someone) and any disgruntled exes who showed up (Dennis Kim, I'm looking at you).

She traipsed around the neighbourhood introducing herself to the better off households, then invited one of them over to seduce. She lured them into her flirty bedroom as many times as necessary, convinced them to break up with their spouse if they had one, proposed and eloped at the first opportunity. Once the wedding music started playing she moved the flirty paintings into her personal inventory, sold everything else on the lot and converted the cash to portable objects - as many expensive violins as possible first of all. Personal inventory items move to a new house with the Sim, while household inventory items are lost. Eloping while on her own lot brought up the split/merge households screen (this didn't happen before from other lots, though that may have been fixed - I didn't check), and as long as the house with piles of cash was on the left side, she moved herself over there and everyone from the rich household over to her former home/the right side of the screen. Then she moved to a cheap empty lot, sold the new house, and pocketed the cash. She only converted cash to violins just before the elopement because household bills ignore cash.

After that, she invited the new spouse over to divorce them. If she could get enough flirtiess to overcome her very sad moodlet from the split, then she immediately invited over a new target and repeated, otherwise she used a mirror to give herself a pep talk and get rid of the moodlet in much less than 2 days. Apologies from Nadia to Dennis Kim, Nancy Landgraab, Katrina Caliente and... well, everyone else whose heart she broke too, but thanks for the lovely money.

It was risky because the game doesn't always bring up the new household on the left side of the split/merge households screen when you elope, I had to cancel one and gain an unproductive divorce during the game. She had 6 days left to adult when I had to stop getting married and just let her paint and stay happy until the end - I had very little time to play before the deadline and a very glitchy game at that point. I'd sold all the violins when I planned on finishing early (before I realised that may not be allowed) and would have lost 20% of their value all over again if I'd bought more, which I'd have had to do to take her profit so far with her to another house.

[Metropolis Man]

That was a very creative strategy, callycat. And from what I read you're fine because your single Sim always remained single, correct? There were never household additions. Someone else - I think it was Playalot - did something similar and eloped if I recall. Yeah, very creative and thinking out of the box. Great score.

[callycat]

That was a very creative strategy, callycat. And from what I read you're fine because your single Sim always remained single, correct? There were never household additions. Someone else - I think it was Playalot - did something similar and eloped if I recall. Yeah, very creative and thinking out of the box. Great score.

Phew, thanks! There was only ever my original sim that was playable, yes, nobody else ever actually moved in with her and she never moved in with anyone else, she only wanted their houses