Sims 4 Rival Dynasties Hints & Tips

[Nutella]

This thread is not for questions.   All questions need to be done at the official Sims 4 Rival Dynasties thread.

[MarianT]

These are skills that you might not want your heir to claim for their maxed skills:

Charisma
Cooking
Fitness
Logic
Painting
Rocket Science

But it depends. You don't want your alien heirs to max Rocket Science, but they could max Painting. You'll probably want to keep Painting free for your Mansion Baron and Retail heirs.

[MarianT]

Follow Nutella's story for some great hints and tips. The link can be found here.

[MarianT]

Finding an Alien spouse

First of all, if you have a male alien, there's always the chance that he'll be abducted and impregnated so that you don't need a spouse. If you plan to have more than one alien in your challenge, consider making at least one of them male.

It's easy for an alien to tell whether another sim is an alien. After the introduction, check the "friendly" options. One of them should be "secret handshake" if the other sim is an alien.

The science career offers the most opportunities. Your co-workers might include an alien; when you make the satellite dish, you can contact aliens -- and once in a while they'll show up; when you reach level 6, there's a day when you have aliens in disguise at work; and finally, when you make the wormhole generator, you can contact aliens through that. It may take 3 or 4 tries. Even if you have more than one alien in the challenge, you can put both of them in the science career at least long enough to find out whether your alien has alien co-workers.

Going around town and meeting everyone is tiresome, plus everyone will get angry when they find out your sim is an alien. Still, good places to check are the retail stores (the NPC staff might be aliens) and the spa if you have Spa Day. If your sim goes to the park or the library, you can click on the chess table and pick "Play chess with..." That will bring up all the sims on the lot, and your sim can make introductions to those of the opposite sex.

It's possible, also, that Get Together will introduce the easiest way to meet aliens -- by starting a club and choosing "alien" as the trait required for membership. This will bring up all the aliens in town. Just add the ones of the right gender who aren't your rivals.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that if someone who has made a wormhole generator just happens to leave it in the yard, that anyone can use it to contact aliens.

[reggikko]

My Sim just got the following text message from a club member: "I got a tip that it's Aliens night at the bar tonight. Want to check it out?" Unfortunately, it was sent to my Mansion Founder, but it may be a good idea to join clubs for this potential opportunity. She's in the Good Timers club.

She was dead tired, so I didn't send her. I probably should have anyway.

I was also thinking about clubs and making enemies with the rival families. If you put your heirs of each family into their own clubs, you should be able to set it up so that one of the club activities is to be mean to the rival clubs.

[Nutella]

Painting is not the only big money maker in game, there are others.

Mansion Option

Painting - obvious choice, requires "marketable" and "creative visionary".  If you are going for portrait museum value, this is the best one.

Handiness - I love this skill.  Once you get to level 7, go to granite falls and learn the camping mascot blueprint.  The little tiny mascot is fast to make, and the value is more consistent than paintings.  Of course you will need "marketable", but you can skip "creative visionary".
 
Cooking - cupcake machine / sell to local bakery.  Use the oven to level cooking, only use the cupcake machine to make money after you reach level 10.  You can make "baconing" a level 8 recipe, with "marketable" the price range is around $300-$800.  Cooking makes less money than all the other skills I list here, but I love the cooking skill because it is so easy to level.

Baking - cupcake machine / sell to local bakery.  You can use the oven or machine to level, not a huge difference in leveling speed.  At level 10, you can make "eclairs", with "marketable" trait the price range is around $1000-$1500.   Due to a bug, baking is very hard to level.  If you do choose baking, I suggest using the club baking perk.

Photography - ugh!  Now this skill makes a lot of money, if you can handle sitting there on your computer hitting the take photograph action and clicking "c" on your keyboard like a million times.  It takes very little game time, but a huge amount of real life time, is it worth it?  I don't think so, but others might say it is.  Sims 4 photography is also very dumb (unlike sims 3), the subject doesn't matter.  Remember back in sims 3 where you take a picture of the dragon cave and you get like a super valuable photo?  Well, in sims 4 taking a photo of beautiful scenery vs a photo of a plain floor = no difference.  If you just want money, open your inventory click on camera to take picture, then hit "c" to capture photo 5 times, rinse and repeat.  Each outstanding photo is about $20-30, so 5 photos can net you $150 - just keep repeating that and you will be a millionaire.  I feel like I have aged 10 years doing some test runs using photography to make money, so not worth it.  This skill absolutely ruins the game for me.

Retail Option

Same skills as mansion option above, because you will need the store to be worth $100,000.  You don't have to make money through retail, you can make money through painting and just transfer it to retail store when you are ready.  Although you need to work the retail store for retail perk points, but what you sell doesn't matter - you can sell literally anything, just need to sell and move the items so you can get perk points.

Alien Option

If you are worried about not having enough whim points for this option, don't worry.  Go level cooking or baking, seriously these 2 skills have so many whim wishes it's unbelievable.  Personally I like cooking because baking is harder to level.   Have your alien sim with the master chef aspiration active (important), so you can get a maximum of 3 cooking whim wishes (1 blue emotion one, and 2 white regular ones).  If you don't choose master chef aspiration, you will only get one blue cooking whim and one regular white cooking whim.  Choosing that aspiration allows for 2 regular white cooking whims.  You don't have to finish the master chef aspiration, just need to have that as the active aspiration.  Cancel all the non cooking whims, I manage to get 14,000 whim points in just 4 sim days.  It is that good.

[MarianT]

Mansion Option

Something I just discovered -- cooked meals that are stored in your household inventory contribute to the value of your house and don't depreciate. You can't sell meals (except for cupcakes and other baked goods made using the cupcake machine), but you can store them. It costs $100 to make an 8-person Baked Alaska, which will be worth about $1000-$2000, and takes less time to make than a large painting.

[dontmindme]

For people looking to quickly and easily finish the date portions of the soulmate aspirations, the Rattlesnake Juice bar is your go-to date location. It really only has chairs so you'll only get socializing with your date requirements.

Edited to add:

For anyone playing an all GTW alien challenge, I would suggest leaving Nerd Brain as an open aspiration. The reason is simple: it's the only aspiration that directly deals with Rocket Science, which your aliens more likely than not need anyway, and it's worth 5,000 points. That alone gets you Steel Bladder and Antiseptic. Soulmate, childhood aspirations, and your unique aspiration should ensure the other 8000 points without much hassle. Yes, you'll have to keep Logic as another open skill but it's useful for many careers anyway so you may as well. Additionally, the other two Knowledge aspirations are good for farming points, given that they cannot be completed without career involvement.

[Makenziegma]

Attempting to create my own story and working through the pics and imaging brings an entirely new appreciation for the stories that have already been written. This is very time consuming. Fortunately we love our sims so while it requires time it is also enjoyable!!!
Modify message

[MarianT]

About aliens:

I strongly suggest that you have only one alien bloodline in your challenge. In my failed attempt, my 5th generation heir was related to every alien in town and had no one to marry. The game would not spawn new aliens. When she went to the bar on Alien Night, she was related to everyone there. If she set up a club for aliens, she was related to everyone in the club. When she went to Sixam, she saw her relatives.

I also suggest having your alien go last in the rotation, to give the game time to spawn aliens.

[oshizu]

If you are planning to start a Rival Dynasties Challenge in Newcrest, I recently posted a thread with details on each of the lots.

http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=27831.0

[MarianT]

Warning -- I had trouble aging up 2 toddlers in my current story. With the first, exiting and repairing the game worked. With the second, that didn't, so I decided to use the CAS.fulledit cheat since this isn't a Hall of Fame attempt. That worked, but my toddler who had maxed all the skills, did not get the Top-Notch Toddler trait or the Happy Toddler trait and is starting at 0 for his child skills.

Anyway, if you want to age up your toddlers early, you can, but if the parent keeps picking up the toddler and putting him down, I'd suggest waiting the 7 days rather than using the cheat.

[oshizu]

I realize this thread is not for questions but I'm so curious.
Was the parent who kept picking up and putting down the toddlers Vlad or Zoe?

[MarianT]

I realize this thread is not for questions but I'm so curious.
Was the parent who kept picking up and putting down the toddlers Vlad or Zoe?

Both.

[Ricalynn]

One thing that I ended up finding later that I thought was important to remembering for moving heirs out.   You only need 2 unique skills for each heir which means if all the houses are going the same you only need 8 per bloodline as long as all three bloodlines are still in the running at the end and about the same speed.  There are some skills that are able to be mentored just by having a level 10 in that skill which a mentor + the right location = super fast skilling.

Skills that can be mentored - There are exactly 8!
Fitness (gym trainers are awesome)
Guitar ( nannies!)
Handiness (Repairmen or landlords have max)
Violin (nannies!)
Piano (nannies!)
Writing
Logic
Painting

Other skills which seem to be incredibly easy to level:   Cooking, Gourmet Cooking and Herbalism.  I managed to do Cooking and Gourmet Cooking on a single sim in less than 24 hours with Rally the Troops.


 - Rally the troops works for everything but Thirst and Vampire Energy.  For some reason the game has made it so nothing works to raise Vampire Thirst/Energy beyond the mechanics given to us by the vampire game pack. 

- Turn off vampire movement boosts when training toddlers.  A toddler asking for help raises communication + whatever skill you're boosting with the action they want but if the vampire flies away it takes longer to get the action done which is more time spent as a toddler. (This was taught to me by @oshizu and her wonderful story)

- Don't forget that this is a race, a challenge, a contest against.. yourself.  You get attached to the pixels but eventually someone is going to win.  You can choose to have it all come down to the museum because that's random or you can spend every week doing everything absolutely necessary to take that family to the edge.   If you choose favorites, you'll notice the effect it has on your gameplay. 

- Have the next gen early!  While having a toddler early while you're still setting up sounds horrendous, that's what a nanny is around for. If you can add her/him to the family club, even better.  Basically, the earlier you get the next gen going, the faster the challenge will go.