Mid-Season Major: Self-Employed Expert

[december22]

I really need to get back into this. Wonder if I'll be able to finish this in a weekend?

[HelenP]

That was fun, not actually played with any of these features before so I really enjoyed it.

Finished on week 2, Sunday, 7.12am for a score of 10032 minutes.

[LenaLJ]

Remember to put in your scores today

[Metropolis Man]

I need some motivation to do this challenge.  Anyone got any for me? 

I am sending you motivation while on vacation in Florida. Here it comes! *ZZZzzzzzzzaaaaaaappppp!* Good luck finishing up.

[sdhoey]

Unless I can get some mojo going, this one be a no go for me. 

[SueDenim]

I may end up DNF'ing this one.
I'm stuck at 4.5 stars on the stupid vet clinic from hell.
Really looking forward to finding out what went horribly wrong here.

[MarianT]

I'm not going to make it with this one either -- my experiences with vet clinics have not been encouraging.

[LenaLJ]

I finished up Week 1 Saturday 5:42 PM
That should give 9222 minutes.

[IronicBeauty]

Been away for awhile so thought I would give this one a try. Attempted the vet clinic twice but on the second round an old-man cat decides to croaked right after surgery. Then the next day some random old-man sim waves to the air and folds down and dies in the middle of the lobby. So both vets were stuck mourning for days and the clinic couldn't get past 4 stars.

The vet clinic was quite the challenge. I'll be very curious to find out how it was done.

[SueDenim]

FINALLY!!!

On Saturday afternoon of week 2, Beard & Harriet James had 5 stars in their restaurant ATB&B, 5 stars in their $#*&(&$-ing vet clinic Creatures Great & Small, and two large perks in their store Wisdom/Wonder.

I guess I now have to learn how to train pets.

Edit:  it was 19063 minutes

[workingmum8]

I failed this challenge.  I thought I might because although I've had my sims use these venues they've never owned them.  I actually did okay with the store and the restaurant - by day 10 I had both perks and a 5 star restaurant, but my vet clinic was stuck at 4.  I tried absolutely everything and was getting all the positive little reviews above the customers heads but that rating just wouldn't flip to 5 for me. I played it for ages until it became just too frustrating.

Can't wait to find out where I went wrong, and major props to all those who've finished.

[Metropolis Man]

Awwww....sorry about that, workingmum8. Thank you for participating.

This event is now closed.

Just got back from vacation ---- looooong day with some botched flights involving the need to rent a car. So tired right now. I'll get to the world ranking after some sleep. But, thanks to everyone who participated. I wish a few more had given this a shot? Was it too much work, everyone? *scratches head at the low numbers*

[Rinkils]

Awwww....sorry about that, workingmum8. Thank you for participating.

This event is now closed.

Just got back from vacation ---- looooong day with some botched flights involving the need to rent a car. So tired right now. I'll get to the world ranking after some sleep. But, thanks to everyone who participated. I wish a few more had given this a shot? Was it too much work, everyone? *scratches head at the low numbers*

I hope the traveling troubles were well worth it, after all. 

I am not sure about the low participation either. It seems to me that at least some players had problems knocking down the vet clinic. Personally, I think the vet clinic is a tiny little bit mistuned the way it works now in vanilla game. Many players (not just in this forum) had noted that. It can be almost impossibly hard to max the ratings, unless you employ some tricks, which may not be so intuitive (and which you perhaps should not have to employ). If I have a chance to sit down at a computer, I will post my notes on the vet clinic later today, if you are interested, along with general strategy. I am also looking forward to find out what other players did to tackle the vet clinic. Maybe there is a straightforward way after all.

[Nomac]

Hey.
I actually tried this, too, but while I managed to level the restauarant (despite my awesome cook dying early on) and purchase the required store perks, like so many of you I ran into an extraordinary amount of bad luck with the vet clinic.
It was glitchy, some pet would always be throwing up all over the place, I had a sim AND a pet die right there in the lobby - it was almost funny.
It was stuck at 4 stars for ages, and I just gave up on the day my sims would have died. I guess I should have posted that?
Sorry, here it comes: DNF.
Better luck next time.
Looking forward to the analysis of this one!

[simemie]

As you already know, I had problems with the vet clinic too and couldn't get it beyond bouncing between 3.5 and 4 stars. I did some googling at the time and a lot of info coming up was telling me it could be an ambiance issue - which it was sometimes because pets were making mess faster than I could clean it up, but as far as I could tell decoration was fine (I bought the premade clinic in Brindleton Bay). I had 6 robot vacuums that were set to run every 2 hours during the day, but they were unreliable and would miss the mess 50% of the time. I had my vets clean it between patients but there's only so much they can do.

As it happens though in the end of day summary sheet it often didn't label ambiance as an issue, except on the days in which it seemed like every single pet was being sick everywhere. Mostly it named quality of treatment and value of service as issues. I changed the options to the top quality treatment and knocked the price down to 75%, the lowest possible, and the quality of treatment was still an issue (the little info box in-game told me to increase quality and/or lower prices, and I did both to the max and it didn't help). As for value of service, I just diagnosed the pets and treated them, I'm really not sure what else I could have done. As soon as I knew the illness I treated it correctly and didn't waste more time diagnosing, I never administered the wrong treatment or anything. Perhaps I should have been treating them by eye without bothering with diagnosing? I haven't played the vet career long enough to know the illnesses by the symptoms I can see as well as their required treatments yet, so if I had done that I would have been giving wrong treatments all the time. I also did the "call a good pet" action after every single treatment.

Oh, and in the last couple weeks I had 3 pets die at the clinic which I'm sure didn't help ratings haha.

All that being said it was fun before it became frustrating and I hadn't had a chance to play with vets or restaurants before this, so thanks for this challenge.