I based my strategy on the fact that each house depreciates as soon as you move in. If I had bought the highest value house my Sims could afford, I would have lost over $300,000 in depreciation over the course of the challenge. Secondly, if I was “improving” lots as much as possible, I would have lost money buying violins or other high ticket items. Each violin depreciates by $3000. That adds up quickly to a lot of money lost. Instead, I focused on the least expensive houses—fewer buy mode items in a house means less money lost to depreciation. Instead of losing over $300,000, I lost only $33,462. I “improved” all but the second to last house by either adding a couple of the $525 columns (no depreciation on build mode items) or leaving something I transformed (more on that later).
The houses I moved to and their final values were:
1. Nookstone 13,550
2. Proprietor’s Square 13,524
3. Crick Cabana 15,567
4. Streamlet Single 16,335
5. Daisy Hovel 16,897
6. Rustic Residence 16,934
7. Sandtrap Flat 16,731
8. Havisham House 18,002
9. AgaveAbode 19,014
10. Widowshild Townhome 19,265
11. Bedlington Boathouse 24,678
12. Slipshod Mesquite 191,916
13. Hound’s Head 5,261,309
I chose Hound’s Head as my final lot because, despite being relatively expensive, it only loses $17,907 to depreciation. In contrast, Yuma Heights, the game’s highest value lot loses $47,994 as soon as you move in. When improving Slipshod Mesquite, I just left a bunch of stuff I transformed on the lot rather than wasting money buying stuff.
Now, here’s how my challenge went. Initially, I was going to do the painting club. I rejected that strategy because one of your played Sims has to sell the paintings and that took time away from transforming.
My Sims were a married couple. Their traits were Loves Outdoors, Loner, Cheerful. Both Sims started with Fabulously Wealthy. Lot traits were Private Dwelling and Sunny Aspect. As soon as they moved into Nookstone I had them both join The Good Timers and then they also started a home club. Good Timers already has Rally the Troops, so by joining that club I could start using it on my home club immediately. They started a club gathering and began working on Soulmate, which they completed at 10:52 Sunday night. Both bought connections and joined and quit all careers except Astronaut, Tech Guru, and Scientist. The Sim that was going to enter the Scientist career joined that last and the other Sim joined Astronaut last. They used Astronaut and Tech Guru for vacation days. Neither Sim ever actually went to work.
Once the career joining and quitting were over, the Sim in the Science career started working on breakthroughs by reading, tinkering, fishing, and showering while the other Sim dug up the necessary metals and crystals. By Monday at 5:30PM both Sims had completed several levels of Fabulously Wealthy (money from joining careers and selling violins via personal inventory) and were able to buy Carefree. This was a vital reward trait because it would prevent tense moodlets from fires and low fun. At 9:20PM Monday, the transforming began. I bought the Colorblock lockers ($200) for transforming. By Tuesday at 8AM, they already had $286,457. I made an average of around $500,000 a day.
I timed the completion of Fabulously Wealthy to the first Friday at 10AM because I wanted the payout to be based on my highest cash amount. On the last Friday at 10AM, my Sims got $243,308 and $255,473 in interest. I spent Friday transforming until just before 8PM, when they were due to age up, and then just bought Schmapple fridges and columns with all of their cash. I didn't sell anything they transformed but left the items to increase lot value.
I didn’t keep track of how often we got a Schmapple fridge, but if I had to guess, I’d say we got anywhere from 2 or 3 to as many as 8 or 10 in a day. The Sim Ray caused 8 fires over the course of the challenge. I rarely transformed anything more than once except in the cases where I got the cheapest shower or fridge or if the locker did not transform at all. Sometimes I would re-transform the spa day shower if I got it because it seemed like it had a higher chance to give me the fridge, but mostly I just transformed, sold, set up again, and so on. I set things up like an assembly line and had my Sims just move down the line transforming, only taking breaks for Rally the Troops and showering. I bought Antiseptic on the first Friday but I think I may have done better to get Steel Bladder. Even though Rally the Troops fills the bladder need, it’s also the one that decays the fastest, so I had to do Rally the Troops most often for low bladder.
Whew! I think that’s everything, but if anyone has any questions I’d be glad to answer them.
