I made my sim an alien for the simply fact that a vampire bite my practice sim. LOL I don't know if vampires can bite aliens or not but they didn't in my next practice so I stuck with it. I didn't even think to do Nerd Brain but I did pick it for start just for the learning boost. I chose loves the outdoors, loner, and genius. First thing I did was went to the library and read to 30% of level 3 in handiness then switched my aspiration to the vampire ones and studied on the computer and leveled to 3 in vampire lore. Once finished at the library I sent my sim home and bought a toilet, sink, fridge, computer, and the upgrade-able item I wasn't able to find around the towns. Switched the aspiration to Leader of the Pack and created a club just adding randoms. I worked on upgrading everything I could on my lot until I completed the 12 hours in a club gathering by then I was past level 7 in handiness so I went to Granite Falls for the schematics. Then I started visiting for upgrades I went to the Bro house, Rasoya house, Lobo house, and then places around the towns that had all the items I needed. If I couldn't go to a house for upgrades or ran low on money for the parts I would just make some mascots and go when I could so I was easily maxed in handiness when I was ready to focus on mascots and I literally just sat there and queued up as many make mascots as I could. When my sim was almost finished with the last one the mascot would disappear from the bench even though she was still working on it and I would queue up a bunch more drinking moodlet solvers when I needed them so needs weren't a worry. That's pretty much it that I can think of. I had to play on normal speed the whole time because my game got all glitching if I fast forwarded which was one of the hardest parts for me.