Generation 4 (part 1)By the time generation 3 had finished their tasks, life in the bunker had become almost comfortable. Thanks to Ro and Prezzie, the top floor had been considerably expanded and was, despite appearances, Beautifully Decorated. Career rewards are wonderful.
(The heir’s bedroom and the dormitory for everyone else, seen in the previous update, were Nicely Decorated.)
Arrrr! unlocking Athletic meant that the furniture could now be moved around freely and that they could train with proper gym equipment, rather than just working out to the stereo or playing ball games. More importantly, they were now allowed to carry more than three items in their backpacks.
They could watch TV, within limits: only educational channels and only at weekends or after 5pm on weekdays. In practice, this meant that the telly was mostly turned around to face the wall, to stop illicit viewing. The computer was still essentially a typewriter – one of the dining chairs was moved over to the desk if someone wanted to write. They were still limited to objects costing less than §1000 and to the cheapest appliances (with the notable exception of the chef’s fridge).
The biggest change was to their diet – they could now have more than one meal a day and the number of foods they were allowed had vastly increased. Fish, fruit and veg were still banned, although some dishes that used them as ingredients were permitted – pancakes, spaghetti, ratatouille and cobbler were all OK. The veggie versions of dim sum and fish and chips were allowed; veggie salmon and lobster thermidor weren’t. I gave up trying to work out the reasoning behind the rules and simply kept a list of what they could eat. Ingredients still had to be bought from the fridge but the combination of Decker’s maxed cooking and Born to Cook reward, plus the bonuses from the fridge and the ‘improve meal quality’ upgrade on the cooker meant that all of their meals were high quality and most were perfect. On the other hand, being limited to the cheapest cooker meant that food often gave the ‘unevenly cooked’ moodlet despite being amazing. A few meals also tasted of fridge, presumably as a result of the ghosts having the old one.
The Dents could now move freely around Lucky Palms and even go abroad. Prezzie was the first to take advantage of Martina lifting the final restriction on travel, spending three days in China in pursuit of a political opportunity. While she was there, she bought a cheap tent, a much-needed storage chest and some martial arts equipment – and then spent the rest of the time looking for Telescopic Metals.
Stu, the eldest child of generation four, had probably the hardest task of the challenge – lifting Naturalist. This meant reaching the top of the mausoleum and science careers, in addition to completing both Perfect Garden and Perfect Aquarium from scratch. (The Naturalist rules were changed while I was playing and there is now an alternative method involving animal training, but since I had Pets disabled I stuck with the base-game method.)
Because his mother had lifted espionage, Stu was able to complete the part-time mausoleum clerk career as a teenager. Now he had to wait until he started work as a scientist to begin gardening and fishing. He filled in the time by maxing the athletic skill, thanks to coaching from various older family members, and by becoming the first Dent to be abducted by an alien.
Early on, I’d been seriously worried about abduction. If Arthur had gone off with the
Vogons aliens and become pregnant, there would have been a difficult choice to make: should I send the baby back to its home planet or make Arthur give up his career to care for the nooboo? Alien Tech is a powerful (if optional) lift and the baby would have been eligible to become heir and lift another restriction. On the other hand, Arthur might well have run out of time to max a career and complete a lift.
On the whole, I was glad that there was no sign of aliens during Arthur’s lifetime.
Now, though, I was beginning to wonder whether they’d ever show up. Did living in a bunker make Sims alien-proof?
Stu proved me wrong. He was too young to become pregnant – but at least I had proof that aliens were around in this universe. Maybe I would get a chance to lift Alien Tech before the game was over.
Stu was originally going to be the heir. No, correct that. Stu
was the heir. He’d almost completed Naturalist and had a daughter who was about to age up to child, with a second kid on the way. Then my computer, which had been increasingly dodgy for a few weeks, crashed in a very big way. I ended up losing everything in My Documents.
When I set up a new account and retrieved the game from the latest save on the external hard drive, Stu was back at the beginning of young adulthood. To minimise the repetition (which was going to be considerable whatever happened), I chose a different heir.
Disconcertingly, Stu’s boss at work this time around was Ashlee Tanner from next door, who’d been his wife in the previous reality. At least he knew what conversational topics to choose when getting to know her. (Don’t enthuse about art, whatever you do!) They were best friends very quickly.
Gardening when the ground is mostly frozen is a little challenging. The top floor of the bunker was extended again to include a plant room.
The seeds that refused to be planted in pots were sown instead in the slightly expanded car-parking compound at ground level.
Other family members were roped in to help with the watering but the main responsibility for caring for the plants was Stu’s.
I’m normally pretty relaxing about gardening (in Sims, anyway). With the requirement to reach perfection so quickly, this game had to be different – as soon as a plant had been harvested once, it was deleted and replaced by one of a higher quality. Sooner than I’d expected, Stu had ten plants that were excellent or better. Indoor plants, that is – it was going to be a while before any of the trees improved their quality.
It was time to change focus and concentrate on fishing. On the other hand, it was winter again: almost all of the water was frozen. He turned to his younger brother for help.
Indy Penn didn’t have it much easier than Stu. The obvious way to lift Gamer if you’re playing with UL is via the Video Game Developer career. With Late Night, film directing is the way to go. Despite having both of these expansions enabled, I decided to use the base-game method. I must have been mad.
As it was, I’d let myself (or rather, Indy) in for maxing two part-time jobs – at the bookstore and supermarket – and reaching level 4 in the business, politics, police, criminal and science careers. In addition, he had to get to level 5 in logic, athletics, cooking, writing and handiness. And hack a minimum of §5000. Easy, really
.
Indy did amazingly well. Thanks to the toddler books and a series of snow days, he reached level 5 of writing and level 8 of logic as a child. The other skill requirements and both part-time jobs were in the bag by his mid-teens. He couldn’t start on the other careers until after his next birthday. What now?
Well, if you’re called Indy, the answer’s obvious. He took a couple of trips to Egypt, did some serious tomb-raiding and earned a level 3 visa (which meant that the family could buy a plot of land for a future holiday home, giving everyone more skilling time). Oh, and between trips, he came close to maxing street art and picked up another trait.
Stu accompanied him on his second trip, leading to possibly the maddest micromanagement so far. It was worth it, though. By the end of the holiday, Stu had fifteen different perfect fish.
I really regretted picking Perfect Garden as his lifetime wish
.
