Rags to Riches -Vet.A challenge that has been recreated so many times. Here’s my Cats and Dogs take on it.
Goals To have a fully functioning veterinarian clinic with maximum staff and all perks purchased** and a 5 star rating
To have a house on a separate lot worth $350,000
Complete the Mansion Baron, Fabulously Wealthy and Friend of the Animals Aspirations
Max Vet, Charisma, Handiness and Training skills
Become Companions with your pet
To have fun and explore the new content.
World Set UpYou need:
One empty residential lot in any world
One empty lot in Brindleton Bay for your vet clinic
Fill Empty Homes, or not, up to you.
Lot TraitsThis is up to the player. Using a lot trait such as Cursed could potentially make your challenge a little harder, using a lot trait such as Training Ground will make your challenge a lot easier. Using lot traits are a good way of manipulating the difficulty level of your challenge.
Aging SettingsOn or off up to you. I hate seeing my sims die so I’ll be playing with age on for my played household but will be using Potions Of Youth to keep my sim a YA and vet treats to keep my pets age the same too.
The Potions of Youth and any vet treats etc must be earned by your sim, no cheats so if you don’t have enough points and it’s your sims birthday, you just lucked out.
Money Rules:Allowed Methods of Wealth AccumulationVeterinarian Clinic
Gathering any wild harvestables in any world
Breeding frogs
Fishing
DJing (ha! Good luck with that one)
Dig sites in any world, including feathers in Brindleton Bay
Using your pet to find/dig/hunt/discover items/perform tricks for tips
Banned Methods of Money AccumulationInviting other sims to join your household, painting, writing, handiness, charisma, busking on any instrument, karaoke competitions, festival competitions, any club activities, selling any paintings off easels, gardening (so you may plant most plants and evolve and harvest these etc but the produce can never be sold. Exception is the Plasma Plant which can never be planted, only harvested), rummaging for spare parts, selling CL posters, snow globes etc. I could go on but basically no making money from anything but methods on the allowed list!
Game PlayStart a new game.
Create a young adult sim (vampires and aliens ok) and one dog or cat. This might be a new sim from CAS or from cloning. Your pet may be a puppy or kitten but be aware that they take a bit more caring. Any traits/aspirations.
Move your sim and their pet onto an empty residential lot. Pause your game and buy one pet bowl. Check to see if your sim has earbuds in their inventory, if they do place those in the world and then go into buy mode and sell them.
You may cheat the needs of the household to max as sometimes even new sims needs are depleted on entering the game.
Next purchase your veterinarian clinic lot ‘Sporting Space’ in Sable Square, Brindleton Bay. You will slowly build up over time as your sim makes the money. Purchase this as ‘unfurnished’ and the trees on the lot can never be sold. Purchased as ‘bulldozed’ and you can always add trees/landscaping later.
Go back into live mode – leave the venue incomplete and cheat away all your sims funds. (testingcheats on followed by money 0)
Turn all cheats off
By 9am of day 8 (Monday week 2) your sim must open the vets clinic. You’ll need certain items for the lot to be completed and to function as a vets so hopefully you worked hard at money making during this first week.
For the 1st opening the vet clinic must remain open for at least 6 hours. After this shift you may open when and for how long you like but as this is your main way of making money don’t be a slacker! If you have enough money to open earlier in the week on a completed Vet Clinic Lot then go for it.
Moving Money Before You Open Your Vet ClinicYou may move money freely between your household funds and your vet clinic funds. This is so during the very first week of the game the funds your sim and their dog makes is able to go towards buying the items necessary for opening a vet clinic.
Moving Money After You Open Your Vet ClinicMoving Money is only one-way. Vet Clinic > Household.
After the first Week or Once you have Opened the Vets Clinic for the 1st Time:You must manage your household and retail funds carefully. At the end of each vet clinic shift you must move half the money earned into the household fund. The goal is to always have both funds with equal amounts of money in them.
You want to buy something for the vet clinic but don’t have enough money? Tough, you’re not allowed to ever move any household funds into the business.
You want to build another room onto your house and don’t have enough money? Tough, you’re never allowed to move sums of money over to the household funds apart from half the earnings of each days vet work.
Use of Other LotsCommunity Lots. Your sim can shower, use the bathroom, eat free food already cooked and nap on a bench if they need to. No cooking until your sim owns their own means of cooking at home. Can listen to music, use the bubble blower, play chess and all those other items that are placed on a community lot/venue by Maxis or yourself. Just be aware of not placing too many skilling items as this will make your game play much easier and may basically take away much of the challenge.
Other Sims Residential Lots Your sim may chat and eat food if the non-controlled townie sim makes any. No cooking or bathing for your sim or their pet on residential lots apart from your own. If the house has skilling items you can use them but try to keep it ‘life like’ after all, it would be pretty weird to visit a friend in real life and then spend the next 18 hours playing chess or talking to yourself in their mirror.
The exception to all of this is that if your own sim already has an item on their home lot then they can use it anywhere else. Think of it as being ‘unlocked’ by purchasing and placing it on the home lot so therefore it is now in the ‘free to use anywhere/anyhow’ category.
AspirationsAny aspiration can be completed or partially completed during the challenge. Remember no money can be made from certain skills though so you may need to make a large storage basement if you plan on completing aspirations like the Painter Extraordinaire.
Avoid aspirations requirements that require you to make money in banned ways i.e. the later levels of the Bestselling Author and Musical Genius
TraitsAny traits including any gained from completing aspirations are allowed.
PotionsAs long as they are earned by the sim who is going to drink them, all are allowed
Traveling to Granite FallsAllowed
ClubsAny/all type of clubs allowed. No money is allowed to be made through any club interaction.
All club meetings must be ended before opening the vet clinic.
For added challenge: No club skill boosts to charisma or handiness, no using the Club Networked boost or Rally The troops interaction. (
Highly recommended.)
CheatsApart from set up, no cheats at all for your sims and pets unless for some reason you need to reset a sim/pet or to cheat away money from moving in a spouse (See Aging On Option below for more details on spouses etc.)
However MOO and sizing up/down and bb.moveobjects on are all allowed for building.
CC/ModsKnock yourself out, go to town and have fun just don’t use mods that will make your game play easier, the more difficult the game play the better.
Adopting AnimalsSure, the more the merrier, as long as your sim has the money to purchase all items needed for their happy life.
Once any pet is added to the household it must remain until the pet dies a natural death (old age).
No selling unwanted pets.
Your pet ran away and came back pregnant? Congratulations, you just gained some new pets for your household.
For every pet removed due to neglect subtract $5000 simoleons from your retail and household accounts. You bad person you... yep, I’m judging you
Added Challenges - VampireIf your sim is a vampire they may only drink from plasma packs made from the animals they treat in their vet clinic. They may not drink from their own pets or from any other sim. (The exception being the free plasma packs your vamp will get from Vlad's initial phone call, your sim may sell or use these.)
They can also drink Plasma Fruit, only allowed 10 in their inventory/fridge/lot at any one time.
No planting of plasma trees on home lot allowed
Must also max Vampire Lore Skill and have purchased all 3 levels of sun immunity.
Age On OptionSo you’re playing the long game. Your sim better get married and have one child to continue the challenge. The spouse can earn no money at all, ever. In fact, you even must cheat away any money they bring into the house, so you better take note of the household funds before inviting them to move in.
Moving the spouse in is not necessary but marriage is. So, it is perfectly ok to have the spouse outside the household and move the toddler in using Manage Households menu.
Your sims child can earn no money until they become a teen and only then if they have had an A at School and at High School and have maxed 2 adult skills and 2 child skills and 1 child aspiration.
Final ThoughtsKeep track of your vet clinics money before each shift, you’ll need to transfer half the days profits to your household account when you close the clinic and it is easy to lose track of how much you have earned.
Failing but enjoying the game play? Cheat yourself just enough money - hey, this is about having fun and enjoying the new content. No need to ‘fail’ a for-fun challenge when you’re having the time of your life, right? I won’t judge, promise. You could always write this sum down and pretend it’s a loan and pay it back through cheating it away again when your sim makes some more money.
** Depending on how you wish to play you may not want to purchase all the vet perks so as an alternative you may just accumulated enough perk points to buy all the perks. Or a combination of buying some and enough accumulated perk points to buy the rest.
Carl's guide to Running a Vet Clinic*Edited to Add: Currently there is a bug with the vet clinic that occurs when you have your household pets with your sim at the clinic. Your vet sim will not be paid for the work they do. This is 'fixed' by not having your pet with you at the clinic.
This has a rather unfortunate negative effect on this challenge really as the whole point is that your sim and their pet are always together. Until there is a developers fix all you can do is leave your sims pet on the home lot and then travel to be together as soon as the clinic closes each day.
