The Skills Dilemma: If You Get Help It'll Cost You

[Metropolis Man]

All of the ovens say +cooking skill.  I figure it's like how the computers say +video gaming skill and +writing skill, indicating that you can get that type of skill from using them.

Yeah, I see that now --- hmmmm...I am confused. I always buy the Cooking-U Pro (2nd stove in list) and I thought it was listed as +cooking 5 whereas the others had nothing after the skill. I do not know if they changed this or if it's my senility kicking in lol.

[Tixxis]

Any cooking related skill is a little odd. You get a skill boost twice. One time for actually making something and then a second time for having made something.
While you're making something, you get more skill if you take your time. A caprese salad is just too quick. Green salad and BLT give more boost. And anything you do on an oven will give just that little bit more.
I think the confusion over higher skilled dishes versus lower skilled dishes may come from this. Most higher skilled dishes need an oven.
I bet you get more skill rate from cooking a rack of lamb than from making Monte Christo sandwiches.

[Metropolis Man]

Any cooking related skill is a little odd. You get a skill boost twice. One time for actually making something and then a second time for having mad something.
While you're making something, you get more skill if you take your time. A caprese salad is just too quick. Green salad and BLT give more boost. And anything you do on an oven will give just that little bit more.
I think the confusion over higher skilled dishes versus lower skilled dishes may come from this. Most higher skilled dishes need an oven.
I bet you get more skill rate from cooking a rack of lamb than from making Monte Christo sandwiches.

Lol - just like in real life I suppose. I did not get much skill in cooking while in grad school heating up Budget Gourmets in the microwave. Once I started actually chopping, measuring, and using cooking techniques a whole new world opened up.

[ClayMask]

Any cooking related skill is a little odd. You get a skill boost twice. One time for actually making something and then a second time for having mad something.
While you're making something, you get more skill if you take your time. A caprese salad is just too quick. Green salad and BLT give more boost. And anything you do on an oven will give just that little bit more.
I think the confusion over higher skilled dishes versus lower skilled dishes may come from this. Most higher skilled dishes need an oven.
I bet you get more skill rate from cooking a rack of lamb than from making Monte Christo sandwiches.

Yes, except no boost after the baked dishes, or if you make cupcakes using the cupcake factory.  I can't remember what the various dishes I tried were to time how level affects baking speed, but I cooked a few fully and came up with an experience/min rate for them, all at the same cooking level.  I know for gourmet cooking I tried caprese salads versus many different gourmet dishes, and it was always the fastest for me due to that boost at the end raising the average rate/min by a lot.  It obviously doesn't give the most experience per dish.

It would be interesting to know whether the oven does have an affect on experience/min if the level required for the dish is the same.

[Tixxis]

I know for gourmet cooking I tried caprese salads versus many different gourmet dishes, and it was always the fastest for me due to that boost at the end raising the average rate/min by a lot.  It obviously doesn't give the most experience per dish.

This is interesting. The obvious advantage of caprese salad is speed. But the dish in itself is lower level. I maintain that the level of dish you create is not a vector for determining skill rate.

[ClayMask]

Would anyone else like to share their strategy?  It's nice reading about people's strategies and what they learned.

[Tixxis]

Would anyone else like to share their strategy?  It's nice reading about people's strategies and what they learned.

I'd like to second ClayMask and appeal especially to @lena and @officialghosts to let us know more about their journey in this particular challenge.
We all like to learn new things.
And sometimes - this is meant to everyone - even if you've lost, it's good to just speak up and get it all off your chest.

[officialghosts]

I appreciate the appeal, @Tixxis. I honestly never feel I have anything very interesting or new to add to these discussions, especially after superior simmers offer such amazingly detailed explanations like the one @ClayMask gave above. I was gathering my thoughts to write something, but then I got Splatoon, which might be more addicting than the sims... let's just say I've been distracted the past couple days.   

90% of what I do in game is made up on the fly; the only practice files I've done were covering only  the first few days. Basically, I don't have any real strategies to discuss, so I'll speak a little on what I did/learned.

Biggest mistake I made was not getting married immediately. That's always one of the first things I do for challenge sims due to that wonderful +3 moodlet (and in other challenges, the points from Soulmate.) Here I was so focused on completing Bodybuilder that I pushed it off until I was leveling charisma.  I struggled a lot with maintaining the 'Very X' mood until that point at the beginning of week 2,  which could've been avoided if I'd just gotten hitched to the first gym trainer I met.

I believe my game glitched when doing handiness, as I first had her repair a fridge, which made tons of puddles in the focused room. After going into CAS  to mess with her disguise, the puddles were gone. Apparently they had just gone invisible, because almost every time she tried to repair radios (about 20 of which had been laying around the lot playing  constantly for this moment) she'd get shocked. I worked through a day of numerous dazed moodlets before giving up and having her use a woodworking table.

I leveled her logic skill by having her create focused paintings which became the decoration for her focused room, because the only mood lamp I have is the Supernatural one, which is inspired. The walls were also covered in tons of her small paintings for the +3 decorated moodlet.

I was very whim orientated in this challenge, mostly because one persone household meant there was no one there to enable Everly's moodlet solver addiction and to make up for not at all focusing on the aspirations. Lots of 1x1 pools were purchased  and subsequently deleted.

ClayMask mentioned the difficulty of getting decoration moodlets while fishing, but I did find a way to manage. I purchased the Bargain Bend as a retail lot (nervously checks to make sure that was allowed) and placed walls at the very corner near the fishing spot. Then I just took my focused paintings from home and placed them on the walls, and apparently that was close enough to count! If it didnt't, I had more than enough points to put her on a focused potion iv for the duration.

And that's all I can think of now! For someone who struggled to find anything to say, I sure rambled a lot.

[Tixxis]

Thank you so much for sharing with us @officialghosts
I think fishing was one of the hardest to make too. And I just love your solution to the problem.
Buying a retail lot close enough to a fishing spot for those mathematical diagrams to work is genius!

And wow... you did the whole challenge all in 8 days from becoming elder with 'inspiration' lamps only? That is just great!

[ClayMask]

Thanks for sharing, Officialghosts.  I'm always impressed by how well you manage to do without full practice runs or many lamps.  This time you also had to deal with a glitch.

Great solution for fishing!  Did you manage to stay very focused all the time with it?

[officialghosts]

Haha, thanks Tixxis and ClayMask!

Even though I'm aware of how useful the inspired lamps are, it didn't really click to me how much only having an inspired one seems to limit. I've always just worked around it through career rewards or paintings.

And yes, I did manage to stay very focused the entire time while fishing, through the paintings and other moodlets. There was never a time when fishing at that spot when the paintings didn't reach.

[Tixxis]

I did manage to stay very focused the entire time while fishing ... There was never a time when fishing at that spot when the paintings didn't reach.

Brilliant!

[Shewolf13]

Apologies for the scattered-ness of this.  I had a bunch of notes I'd made, but have somehow misplaced them so this is off memory and since I completed this the first or second day, the memory is not as good as it should be either XD  The winners and many others have given very concise and awesome advice, so I'll just try to give a few things that I learned from my practice file to my challenge file.

I did do a practice file this time around, something I don't often get a chance to do.  I was excited for this one, believing I actually had a chance at doing fairly well.  Skilling is something I feel somewhat confident in.  Of course, being that I couldn't change the first aspiration, I concentrated on fitness first.  It did take quite a while, though not as long as it did in my practice file so at least I improved XD

One of the things I did was use lamps and did the outdoor living, having no actual house.  After fitness (which I did at his lot, with him watching TV while he ran on the treadmill), I concentrated on the creative skills first, such as painting and writing.  He lived on moodlet solvers, bought with both aspiration and whim points.  One thing I found is that moodlet solvers were definitely worth it.  Based on my practice file, it was worth buying them as opposed to saving up the points to get things like Never Weary.  At least in my own testing.  Or maybe it just felt that way.  In my practice file, I saved up for the Never Weary, Hardly Hungry, etc and it seemed to have an adverse affect since I managed to only cap 12 skills in my practice file while I capped 14 skills in my challenge file.

I found the easiest thing for gardening was just to plant a ton of stuff (10 of every plant he could come upon right in the immediate vicinity) and then just kept gardening, feeding him a moodlet solver as he needed it.  Same with fishing, though I did have him use both the chess table and the computer to get focused, then sent him fishing for a while.  Never even thought of buying a retail space to place focused paintings!  Brilliant, btw @officialghosts

Hm... let's see, I didn't actually concentrate on the cooking/baking/gourmet skills for a bit because I actually did them as I needed them.  So the times when he needed to eat (because of lack of moodlet solvers), it actually worked surprisingly well so I could concentrate on the other skills first, then saved them for last and just had him make dish after dish.  I did use the caprese salad route for Gourmet cooking.

Now, one place I go wrong is I can't seem to get it through my head how the various emotions effect things.  For instance, I don't seem to think about finding a mate to get the boost from a wedding, etc.  I seem to need to find a different frame of mind.  I tend to get caught up in the story aspects of things so that sometimes any "strategy" I may have gets a bit lost as I'm playing.  I want to thank everyone for their hard work, especially in sharing.  I learn so much about gameplay from reading the strategies!  Thank you all ^^

[officialghosts]

Thanks for sharing, @Shewolf13 ! I've also learned a ton from reading these strategies.

And I will admit I went the outdoors route for this challenge despite it not being necessary. Old habits die hard, I suppose. (Does saving money on walls and a door count as an excuse?  )

[ClayMask]

Thanks for sharing your strategy, Shewolf13.  I too went the outdoors route, since rooms didn't seem necessary.  I only built a small portion of wall for my fireplace, and to put up a decoration and focused diagram on.  I only buy things as needed, and didn't see need for additional walls beyond these.