I don't feel like much that I did was hard to figure out, or different from what other people did. I split up the responsibilities for some of the various collections between my Sims at the start: gardening and fishing would be worked on by different Sims, with the gardening one also doing postcards and the fishing one also maxing handiness and being the primary one responsible for the logic and rocket science related ones. The gardener could also work on these when she had time, with fishing being very low priority for her. This way they both had things to work on while at home, and things to work on while they were away. This also allowed one of them to work on the nerd brain and angling ace aspirations, while the other worked on freelance botanist. Maxing handiness was required for entrance to the forgotten grotto. If anyone is confused about where to find any of the plants or fish, I'll be happy to share where I found them. Both Sims had the traits geek, loves outdoors, and bro.
Upgrades to the telescope and microscope helped gather collectibles on those much faster. The last thing to be completed at home was getting the necessary things from the rocket science missions, and my Sims ended up building a second rocket ship. I discovered that if I recognized a rocket science mission and knew that it wouldn't result in getting anything I wanted, I could save time by canceling the mission. As with other challenges I've done recently, my Sims also saved time by satisfying all of their needs with moodlet solvers.
Except for a couple of days, they spent the first 2.5 weeks not on vacation, working on all of the collections that they could before spending the rest of the time camping. I made sure to have them return from their trips shortly before 5 AM on Mondays, since that's when the bills would arrive if you save and exit the game. If they were camping when the bills arrived, they would be extremely expensive.Finding the normal kind of fireleaf required removing wild plants on all of the poisonous fireleaf plants, since initially none of them spawned. After a couple days or so spent in the area, these plants grew back, with at least one of them growing into the normal fireleaf variety. I noticed that a good way to have them earn some whim points while camping was to satisfy some social whims after traveling to a new place together. Camping allowed me to get nearly unlimited digsites, since every time I loaded the game all of the digsites in the area
respawned. I had my Sims each sitting at a digsite, and just mined them over and over, while looking for the last of the insects I needed, and waiting for the fireleaf to grow back. I did notice that crystals, fossils, and metals had digsites that looked different from each other, and tried to use treasure maps for on digsites for collections I had finished.
The collections that I ended up being unable to complete were mySims and insects. I'm convinced that in my game, the last of these could not be found using the normal methods. The insects that I couldn't find were the blue morpho, bee, and walking stick. I do know where and when to find all of these, but even after spending weeks looking for them, they never showed up. It was always a different kind of insect in their place, which I would collect hoping it would spawn them, but it never did. I was able to find many, many copies of all of the MySims (15+ each), with the exception of the rares. No matter how many of the other MySims I found and how many treasure maps I used, I could never find a single rare. I feel like the ability to find the last of these collectibles in the normal manner was broken in my game by a recent patch. I know that LenaLJ managed to find at least some of these though, and I can't wait to find out how she did it. Did anyone else find any of the collectibles I mentioned in this last paragraph in your scoring file for this challenge? If so, did you have a special trick? Around what real life dates did you find them?
Congratulations LenaLJ on completing your 13 collections, and winning. I look forward to finding out your strategy, but especially what technique you used to find any of the collectibles mentioned above (bee, blue morpho, walking stick, rare mySims trophies). Which collection was it that you didn't end up completing?
