Apologies for the scattered-ness of this. I had a bunch of notes I'd made, but have somehow misplaced them
![Sad :(](https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/Smileys/default/sad.gif)
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 ^^