Steele Double Time Dynasty

[dethdukk]

Hey all!  So I want to do a quick introduction here, along with some info on what this challenge is.  If you don't care about my background in the Sims, and why I'm playing this challenge, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

My background in the Sims games
I've been playing Sims 4 since about a week after it's original release, with no past experience in any other Sims games.  I am a pretty avid gamer in general, so I understand how most game strategy works, but for the most part Sims 4 was a completely new experience.  I've had a blast playing it, and it's become one of my favorites.  The biggest problem I have with the Sims is simply that it's a very open ended game, by which I mean that there's no real objective built into it.  To remedy this, after I had played for a few weeks I found and tried the Immortal Dynasty challenge that Carl and the other moderators on the forum have made.  Sadly, I still haven't finished that one... I'm getting close, but it's a difficult journey, mostly due to the time investment required.  Eight generations of Sims is a LOT of game time.  And even then, the ID challenge really isn't too hard once you get past the first generation.  I still plan to finish that, but in the meantime I wanted to try something that would provide a greater challenge but not take as must time.  Enter the Double-Time Dynasty.

What is the DTD?
The Double-Time Dynasty is a modification of the Immortal Dynasty.  The modification has 2 goals:  Make the ID even more difficult, and also make it much shorter.  To do so, the number of generations you need to play is cut in half, but all of the requirements are doubled.  Outside of those 2 main changes, there's some changes to the Immortal requirements, who can be immortal, and some of the restrictions on the gallery/households have been removed.  The exact rules can be found here:  http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,24210.0.html

What kind of story will I be writing?
Now, on to what I'll be doing for this "story".  I am sorry to say that I will not be doing much, if any, actual story.  This challenge is meant to be difficult, and spending time and resources on taking proper screenshots and making up story that may affect how I am playing the game actually WILL make a difference in whether or not I complete the challenge.  For this story, I will be focused on showing what I am doing, and why over the course of the challenge.  My main goal is to show that my challenge can in fact be completed, and also to hopefully give both new and experienced players a good source of info on strategies for doing this challenge and others like it. 

That about wraps up any important info here...  what else can I say?  I will be posting chapters as I play, so what you see here is very likely where I'm at in the game.  I've only got about 2 hours of gameplay in with the new expansion "Get Together", So I will be learning a lot about that and applying that information as I go.  I do plan to use all the useful features of the expansion as I discover it, which includes being in a club gathering while at my household and using the interactions and bonuses given thereby.  As far as I know, these features are still allowed in the Immortal Dynasty as well.  Should that change, I will stop using those features.  Oh, I'll be posting one chapter per Sim-Day for the first 10-20 days, depending on how long it takes for the game to slow down a bit.  Following that, I will be posting a chapter every 5 sim-days.

If you have any questions, tips, or really anything else about the challenge and my playthrough of it, feel free to ask!  I'm happy to provide any information I have, and it's always encouraging. 

Scoresheet:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s0wIm7s8A7DYxyWvz2ZCcjE6zyxF-7xSmrQS8mhYesg/edit?usp=sharing

[dethdukk]

Chapter One - Day 1

Welcome to my first DTD attempt!  I suppose the first thing I should do is introduce you to my guinea pig... I mean uh... honorable founder for this challenge. 



Meet Keon Steele.  I decided to play in one of the older worlds instead of Windenburg.  In the couple hours of gameplay I had in Windenburg, I didn't see any new households get filled.  I don't know if that was bad luck or a glitch, but I didn't want to risk it on this challenge.  Also, if I wanted to play in Windenburg, I would have had to evict one of the families, and I'd prefer not to do that.

So, basic info to start:  Keon started with the Clubs aspiration, mostly for the benefit of getting Gregarious.  Having to have 14 good friends for Immortality is a pretty difficult task, and gregarious will make it much easier.  His 3 Traits are good, loves outdoors, and insider.   I plan to have a lot of housemates, so good will be giving me a pretty constant bonus.  Loves outdoors, same idea.  For the early game and possibly into mid-game, I'll be living in a field.  Having that moodlet for being outside is very nice while you work on getting your more permanent moodlets.  Insider I actually have no idea what it does, I just wanted to try it out.  Since I'll be in a club basically all the time, it seemed a good choice.

Aspirations:  We need 4 unique aspirations per Dynasty Sim.  I know that I want to do Soulmate, as it's a pretty easy one, doesn't take too much time, and it's one of my favorite aspirations anyways.  I also really want to try the family aspirations, I haven't done them before and the only time I'll have a chance of completing them is going to be for Gen 1, since you need a lot of household space for Big Family.  My last aspiration will probably be the Fitness aspiration, as I may need the extra time in elder that it gives you.

One other thing I should mention:  A Sims age counter will stop while they are pregnant, so it's actually a better idea to have a female founder if all you care about is having a little more time.  Since I need 3 kids, I'd actually get an extra 9 days of sim-life if I had started with a female.  Why go male then?  Mostly because it's what I normally do.   If I do fail this attempt, I probably will go for a female next time.



So, on to how I spent my first 24 sim-hours.  I did take the time to create a number of games.  Every time, I would start on the empty lot, move to the lot I needed to be on, then immediately go to both Libraries.  It took a few tries, but I did finally find one that I liked:  Louise Elder.  Now, the only reason I am so worried about getting a good-looking librarian is because in order to complete the Family aspirations in the time that I have, I need to have a spouse and have her pregnant on the first sim-day.  There's a bit of wiggle room there, but really what I want is to have the Heir as early as possible, so they will be a young adult before my Founder is an elder. 

In a game where I wasn't trying for the family aspirations, I wouldn't worry about getting a spouse that early.  And really, I don't need the spouse to look good either, but if I'm going to be playing a game with them for weeks, I don't want ugly sims. 



I introduced Keon to his soulmate, and immediately sent them off on a date in the park. 



I need 2 dates to complete the first Tier of the Soulmate aspiration, but they don't need to get a medal.  I still got a gold medal for it, which completed one of my 10 parties.  Now, as for why not go somewhere else for the first date...



I needed to find my Gardener!  I need to make sure that my Heir is a male as well, due to the Big Family top Teir requirements.  Having a gardener to get the carrots quickly will help with that.  And of course, it's never too early to start preparing for the deathflower plant and cowplants.



The second date takes us back to our empty plot of land...  except it isn't empty is it?  Adding the gardener gave us enough cash to afford the best bed, and I quickly picked one up.  Something that a lot of people underestimate is how much time in your Sims day is spend filling needs, Sleeping especially.  The less time you have to sleep, the more you have for working on skills and aspirations.  That bed is my first purchase in almost any challenge. 





After having Keon propose to Louise, I had them get down to the task of ushering in generation 2.  The less time before the baby is born, the more time it has to grow up and have kids as well.  Again, normally I wouldn't recommend having a child this early in a challenge like this, but the family aspirations are forcing my hand, so to speak. 



Following that, a quick elopement completed my Tier 2 of Soulmate, and gave me the opportunity to move Louise in and have her check if she was pregnant.



Which she was!  The fathers reaction always amuses me. 



Meanwhile, the gardener got to work planting the carrots that she ordered online.

Other things that I did that don't really match up to photos...  I started a club.  Right now the only members are the 3 people in the household.  The club activities are sleeping, fishing, gardening, programming, and playing video games.  Kell is working on his Computer Whiz aspiration.  I haven't started him on his job yet, nor have I purchased any Traits.  I'll be back in another 24 sim-hours with more info!

[KTK10]

Will be bookmarking this for sure. And you said Kell... is that short for Keon? Or were you thinking of your other Dynasty! 

[Playalot]

I bet Louise is really thrilled with her new house *snort* I wonder if she'll 'twig' on that she is being manipulated... or is Keon really in love?  *Bookmarked*

[dethdukk]

Chapter Two - Day 2

Quick update this time around!  Day 2 was mostly spend leveling up some skills and doing some dates.



Keon and Louise are both pretty excited about the pregnancy, he asks to feel the baby pretty much any time I don't have him doing skilling on the PC.  I'm actually pretty excited myself, I cant wait to see what hair color the kid gets.  I like that the hair color gets randomized if one parent has a hair color that isn't natural.  I did two silver dates and got both of their Soulmate Aspirations to Tier 4.  Using the points from that, I bought connections and started my first career, Tech Guru.  Since I start at level 4, I'll only need 1 more level before I can complete the last Computer Whiz aspiration requirement. 



And speaking of that, Keon's been pretty much glued to the computer the entire day.  I got the requirements for the promotion filled already, so with a little bit of luck I should be able to get the promotion on his first day of work.  He still has 2 days before he has to go to work, so in the meantime I'll be working on getting enough aspiration points to buy Great Kisser.  I'll use great kisser to get to charisma 10, and use that to get a boost to work performance.



The gardener was really lucky, and has already found a cowberry.  This is amazingly fortunate, as it gives me the ability to produce Focused essences for Keon, making keeping him at +8 emotion at work much easier.  Of course, I still have some time to wait before it's grown up and ready to eat Sims, but as I have 2 days before he has work, I have hopes it'll be ready by then.



Louise has been enjoying her time in the garden as well.  I was hoping that since gardening is a club activity, the Sims would work on it autonomously, but that doesn't appear to be the case.



A few other really helpful things I can mention here:  Both of the lightshow items on the left side of this picture provide a +1 moodlet to any Sims that are near them.  I believe that the colorful light show is from the deluxe version of the game, and the ghost one is of course from the Spooky Stuff pack.  If you have either one of those, putting one of these in a room is a free +1 happy moodlet for pretty cheap. 

While I'm on the note of moodlets and room setups, I suppose I'll cover it all.  I always ALWAYS make the plumbob lights one of my first purchases.  They are fairly cheap, look good, and with 2 of them you can have a +2 to any emotion for which you have the lights.  Mostly, this is good for setting up cheap focused and inspired rooms.  In addition, I always buy the most expensive radio.  It has more fun and reliability than any of the others, and since you can almost always listen to music while doing other tasks, it makes it really easy to keep your fun need maxed out.  In addition, if you can find the right station (seems to vary by sim) you can get a moodlet from that as well. 

What else...  Oh yes, I have some info on clubs, and what I've done with mine so far.  As I mentioned last chapter, I started my own club that only includes the household members so far.  It's very easy to get points quickly, as the club meetup is running 24/7, and everything I am doing with the Sims contributes points.  So far the reward perks I have perchased are:  +3 focused moodlet for being in the club.  Since everything I am doing currently requires focused, this is a very good perk, and makes it easy to stay in a very emotional state.  I also bought the "rally the troops" interaction.  It's amazingly useful, as it lets you keep everything but fun and hygiene maxed at all times, basically for free.  Fun is easily covered with the radio, and hygiene can be quickly filled with the best tub.  Outside of that, I picked up some faster skilling perks for programming, exercise, and charisma, and also picked up the work performance boost for when I start the job.



Alright, I know this one's getting a bit wordy, but I really want to get a couple more tips out of the way while I'm thinking about them.  These are all really useful for getting to +8 emotion and maintaining it through the entire work day, but I'll cover that in detail later.  Most if not all of these require the Spa Day pack, which I HIGHLY recommend buying if you don't have it.  It provides a great amount of options for long term moodlets, many of which are easily gotten and maintained.  In addition, it provides some fun interactions/actions with your Sims. 

So, great moodlets for keeping a high emotional state for long periods of time: 
Being married.  It provides a +3 moodlet for 48 hours, and can be refreshed at the wedding arch, assuming you're still married and have a good relationship with your spouse.  Getting a stone massage (some others work too):  This one's only +1 for 24 hours, but it's length is great and it can get you to the critical +8 sometimes.  Another option is the aromatherapy massages, which give +1 or +2 for 12 hours.  Taking a bath with soaks will give you +2 for 8 or 12 hours, to different emotions depending on the type taken.  My favorite is Lavender, as it gives +2 happy. Next up, doing yoga.  Finishing a yoga session will give you +1 or +2 to an emotion for 8 hours.  All of these will give you the lower number if done without an incense burning nearby, but if completed while the incense is burning, will give you the better benefit.  In addition, the incense provides a bonus to an emotion while burning as well, which makes it another good, cheap item to put in a room. 

And that's all I've got for now.  I know I'm being a little heavy on words, but I'm hoping that people can read through and get good ideas for how to better handle their own challenge.  In my opinion, the most important days of a challenge are all in the first generation, if you can get past that you're very likely to succeed.  And building on that, the most important days of the first generation are the first 5.  A lot of people move very slowly during these days, since they don't have any aspiration point, and they don't have any great items, it's harder to build skill and stay in the right moods.  All of the moodlets I just provided are cheap to obtain, with the exception of the radio (either free or have a price of around 200 per item) and are easily enough to keep your Sim at a +8 emotional state.

I'm interested in any feedback yall have.  Am I being too wordy?  Should I try for more storyline?  Is anything I'm saying actually useful?

[dethdukk]

Will be bookmarking this for sure. And you said Kell... is that short for Keon? Or were you thinking of your other Dynasty! 

Whoops!  You uhhhh... didn't see that.  Thanks for coming over and checking out the story!  Hopefully it won't be too dry. 

I bet Louise is really thrilled with her new house *snort* I wonder if she'll 'twig' on that she is being manipulated... or is Keon really in love?  *Bookmarked*

Hey hey, Louise LOVES the house.  It's got everything a growing girl needs.  Besides, the house will get there... eventually...

[KTK10]

Not wordy at all!  I love reading your tips and thoughts on game play, it keeps me interested in the game as it makes me want to test them out. Love your family and hurry up Nooboo!!

[Playalot]

If you make too many activities then the clubs don't seem to be as effective. My home club as gardening, cooking and sleeping and all the sims autonomously tend to the garden, including harvesting.

[dethdukk]

Chapter Three - Day 3



Welcome back to day 3!  So Louise has found the first angelfish of the dynasty.  Yeah, that's not an angelfish, I know.  Maybe if she caught more than one I could have gotten a screenshot of it, but nooooo. 



So I'm sad to report that today was a pretty bad one.  I ran into the bug where the club leader gets kicked out of, and cannot rejoin club meetings.  I spent the better part of the day attempting to fix that issue.  While I was at it, I did hit the gym to find a Trainer to add to the household, and also to get Tier 1 of the exercise aspiration done. 



While I was there, I also switched the Club Leader to the gardener.  I did eventually manage to fix the issue, so hopefully this will prevent Keon from getting locked out of club gatherings in the future. 



When we got back to the house, I immediately had the trainer start working on leveling up his Wellness skill.  I want him to max it eventually, but what's most important is that he get to wellness level 4.  At that level, you get an interaction that gives the sim you use it on +2 happy for 8 hours, very useful for keeping very emotional at work. 



And following that, I did my 3 gold dates for the soulmate Tier 4 aspiration, which got me enough points to buy Great Kisser.  I use great kisser as a shared aspiration, as it is by far the easiest way to level Charisma.  Charisma is extremely important for this challenge, as it gives you a phone interaction that gives you work performance, usable once every 24 hours.  Since I need to finish 2 careers, the faster I can get charisma capped the better.


And that's it for day 3!  I was really hoping to be further along than this, if I hadn't run into the Club glitch I should have had charisma maxed already.  It looks like I'll have to go to the first day of work without that performance boost, which means I probably wont get the day 4 promotion.  Guess we'll see...

[dethdukk]

Not wordy at all!  I love reading your tips and thoughts on game play, it keeps me interested in the game as it makes me want to test them out. Love your family and hurry up Nooboo!!

Thanks again!  Hopefully I'll be able to keep up the interesting parts, I suspect I'll run out of tips as I go

If you make too many activities then the clubs don't seem to be as effective. My home club as gardening, cooking and sleeping and all the sims autonomously tend to the garden, including harvesting.

I did notice today that the gardener was actually gardening automatically.  I removed fishing and listening to music from the club activities, I don't need to purchase much else right now, so my influx of points can slow down without issue.  I've been running into some issues with sims cancelling actions before they're finished, and thus losing out on the moodlets they should have gotten...  I suspect it has to do with the club gathering making them want to do other things.  Hopefully I can get that fixed.

[Playalot]

Eek, it's not like you to get bugs! What a shame, hopefully you can get that sorted. Nice screenshot of Louise fishing lol

[dethdukk]

Chapter Four - Day 4



Well, Keon is off to his first day of work.  I do have to admit, I reloaded an older save.  When I last posted a chapter, I quit the game while Keon was at work.  When I loaded the save, he had left work 5 hours early, and lost enough performance to be in the red.  Since it was due to a glitch and not poor play on my part, I decided to reload an older save.  Sadly, this does mean that I lost the trainer that I got yesterday, but I got a full day of work in this time, which resulted in getting the First Day Promotion, which is what I wanted.

I also decided to completely uninstall and reinstall my Sims 4 game, as I was getting a LOT of glitches that were preventing game play, such as the inability to join club gatherings, actions such as taking a bath getting cancelled, etc.  Reinstalling didn't fix all of them, but it helped...  hopefully a lot of these bugs will be fixed in the next patch. 



Moving on, since I wasn't able to get the trainer the second time around, I chose to have the gardener start leveling up her wellness skill.  Access to massages and the +2 happy interaction are something I wanted, and I was able to get the latter at least before the first day of Kell's work.  I've been giving thought to not getting a trainer at all now, since I'll be low on household space anyways. 



Keon and Louise renewed their Vows to each other, with Louise reminding Keon that he'd promised her a house, not just a plot of land.  That... might be a while still. 





And in other news...  Vincent Steele was born.  I did have to make sure that this Nooboo was a male, due to how the requirements for the Big Family aspiration work.  I'll probably make the next Nooboo a female, then let the third determine gender randomly. 





Enjoy your time while you can Louise... still got 2 more nooboos to go!

So, some information stuff on clubs and emotions.  Some of these are likely bugs/unintended, and likely to be fixed by EA in the future, but in case they aren't (or if you want to take advantage of them while they're not), here's some cool club related things I've found. 

If you are in a club, and one of your club activities is programming, you gain access to ALL the programming options.  This means you can start programming a video game from programming level 0.  This feels like an unintended side effect of how clubs influence the interaction menus, so... use it while it lasts.  Or hope it stays! I actually like the idea of clubs unlocking all the interactions, it feels like you're getting advice/help from club members on how to do it.  Buuuut my bet is it'll get removed.

If you're in a club gathering on your home lot, you'll stay in that gathering when you go to work.  This means you get the Club Vibe moodlet during your work day, which makes it extremely easy to get to +8 emotion.  Also very likely unintentional, and will likely get fixed in the next patch. 

So, last thing... I covered a lot of ways to get long term moodlets last chapter, now I'm going to cover good ways to stack those for work days.  Most work days are 8 hours, so any moodlets that last 8 hours are what you need.  Getting to +8 is actually fairly easy, the hard part is staying in the right emotion.

+3 married, +2 lavender bath soak, +2 wellness interaction.  This brings you to +7, and will last for 8 hours (make sure to do the wellness interaction JUST before you go to work).  If you have a job that will last more than 8 hours (or you want to guarantee that you stay +8 the whole time) you can do a deep tissue massage or stone massage for a +1 for 24 hours, which will bring you to a point where even if you lose the 8 hour wellness interaction, you'll say at +8.  It does limit your options for getting the right emotion though.  Now the harder part, the right mood.  You can get into the right mood for 4 hours easily, but to stay in it for 8+ hours you have fewer options. 

The best option overall is probably the Emotional Essences you can get from cowplants.  They last 12 hours, are quick to use, and you can use them anywhere.  The biggest issue is that they are hard to obtain or keep a stock of.  This can be fixed with a cloning machine if you have one.  Next, you can do yoga.  A yoga session will give you focused/inspired/energized for 8 hours.  The main issue with that is that it's only 8 hours, and doing yoga takes a while, which can make it hard to time properly, and takes up a lot of time that could be spent on something else.  Good if you don't have another option.  Third, you can get an aromatherapy massage (if you don't already have a deep tissue/stone massage).  These massages last for 12 hours, and give you +2 to any emotion (I believe, they may not include some emotions).  The biggest downfall with this is it requires a second sim, who has a good level of wellness skill, and also takes a while, which means both Sims could have been doing something else. 

I generally use a combination of these, I use cowplant essenses when they're available (which if you have a cloning machine is always) and if they're not, I use either a massage or yoga depending on if I have another sim with high enough wellness.  Oh, and one last note.  I mentioned that you can currently keep the club vibe, which is a permanent +3 to any emotion you choose.  This means that you don't need any of the moodlets I just mentioned as long as you are in a club gathering at your home lot when you go to work.  Again, likely to get fixed, so the above moodlets will be the best choices once it is. 

[dethdukk]

Eek, it's not like you to get bugs! What a shame, hopefully you can get that sorted. Nice screenshot of Louise fishing lol

I know, it's actually rather annoying.  I can work around it, but I'd much rather it just worked the way its supposed to!

[dethdukk]

Chapter 5 - Day 5



Day 5 has arrived, and it was a fairly busy one.  Keon has been taking care of baby Vincent while Louise takes some time to herself.  I've got her working on the Writing aspiration now.  Normally I'd have had her get started on it much earlier, as the Book of Life reward from the aspiration is amazingly powerful, but prior to the glitches with the club gathering I believed I might not need it anymore.



I mentioned yesterday that Keon got his promotion to level 5, well... here's his new work outfit.  Apparently this is proper clothing for a "Project Manager".  I don't know what world the Sims 4 designers are living in, but I've never seen a project manager that dressed like that, and I work in IT.  Seriously, what the heck.  Well, Keon's off to his second day of work anyways.





And shortly thereafter, the cowplant grew up!  It still isn't hungry yet, but hopefully that will occur before Keon's third day of work... it will be nice to have another source of long-term moodlets.  I do need to be careful that the same Sim isn't eaten within a 48 hour period, or I'll fail the challenge.  On a different note, the gardener has done well enough that I've taken note of her name, which is Skyler (nice name actually, I may need to keep that one in mind for the future...)  Well done Skyler.



Later that night, I decided to finish up my Leader of the Pack aspiration.  This requires Keon to talk to 5 club members about clubs, be the leader of a club with 8 members, and to earn 1000 points for the club.  The first and second one's were pretty easy, I just invited a bunch of random sims to join the club, then talked to them all about it.  The 1000 points requirement automatically finished when I got to the 4th Tier, apparently it tracks points from before you are at that stage, which is nice. 



Oh, I almost forgot...  I did have to convince Skyler that Keon should be the Club leader again, since I'd given her the lead in an attempt to fix the glitch.  Of course, now I have to hope that it doesn't glitch again, as Keon can no longer be talked out of being the leader of the club (reward from the aspiration).  I should also mention that I got the second promotion, and am now at rank 6 of the Tech Guru career.



Since I now have a bunch of Sims coming over to the club gathering who aren't actually in the household and controllable, I decided I might as well use them to get more reward points...  and while I was at it, check out some of the new items.  Enter the arcade machine!  This one is actually pretty fun to watch, and apparently it levels video gaming as well.  A cool new item, and one that I'm happy to have around.





And fortunately for Keon, but rather unfortunately for Skyler, the cowplant got hungry sometime during the night.  If I can keep a good eye on it, I should be able to provide Focused essences for Keon from here on out. 

Alright, so that's the end of Day 5!  This seems like a pretty good spot to do a summary of where I am in the challenge currently.  So, here we go...

Careers (2 needed) - I've gotten to level 6 of Tech Guru, my first career.
Aspirations (4 unique needed) - I've completed Soulmate, and Leader of the Pack.  I am about 50 hours of time on the PC away from finishing computer whiz, but that will be a shared aspiration.
Skills (6 needed) - The only skill I've maxed thus far is Charisma.  My Programming is at 8, and is the only other skill I have above level 4 currently.
Reward Traits (8 unique needed) - I've purchased 4 traits currently, but 2 of them are shared.  Connections, to start at level 4 of my career, is shared.  Great Kisser, to quickly level Charisma, is shared.  Frugal, to cut down my bills, is unique, as is Mentor, to help my Heirs level their skills later. 
Parties (10 required) - I've only completed the Gold Date Party so far, and Wedding is no longer an option at this point.
Friends (2 BFF, 10 Good) - I am BFF status with Louise, and can be BFFs with Skyler.  I have no other good friends yet.
Emotional whims (14 required) - I haven't been tracking these yet.
Museum Items - I haven't started these yet.

So that's where I'm at.  I'm putting a link to my scoresheet here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s0wIm7s8A7DYxyWvz2ZCcjE6zyxF-7xSmrQS8mhYesg/edit?usp=sharing
And I'll add it in the first post later.

[Playalot]

I haven't even tried the arcade machine yet. Looks... quite large eh! Well you're racing along, got loads done in 5 days.