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@oshizu!! Awesome job! I just couldn't get those last two toddlers past the potty training! I agree that it's the least fun part of this challenge.
I did a lot of the same things as
@Tynynounours and
@oshizu, but a few things I don't see:
- In my planning I lined up the aspirations and skills that would go together - some were obvious, some not, and I moved some around as I played. But for aspirations that had no obvious skill, I chose something that could be mentored as much as possible.
- I hired a violinist right off the bat, added him to the Boomer Club, made playing the violin a club activity, and locked him in a room with some inspiring non-usable items and a violin. I made playing violin a boosted club activity to raise his skill quicker. Every so often I pulled a violin out of family inventory and had a family member play it and check to see if he could mentor yet. Occasionally I saw the little broken heart in his thoughts, but I pretended not to notice.
Once he mentored that skill, I let him go. Then I hired a pianist, and the same guy came back, so apparently he didn't mind being locked in a room with only an instrument for days and days.
- For Renaissance Sim, I used all mentorable skills, but only to level 8, except Handiness, which was the unique skill for that sim. I lost some time on this one because I didn't realize that skill books don't count toward the number of books read, so my sim spent a lot of time reading the logic book when reading a fun book would have been faster and being mentored in logic would have grown the skill faster.
- I built out the house enough to get Mansion Baron very early, and then sold off one column - as each child aged up, I assigned the aspiration they'd really do to get the trait that came with it, but then immediately switched them to Mansion Baron. That got them most of the points for that immediately and let me buy whatever rewards would be best - mostly Night Owl and Morning Sim, but Connections for anyone who needed to get a job for their aspiration, Incredibly Friendly for Friend of the World, etc.
- My first child was an adopted boy with the Serial Romantic aspiration - he Tried for Baby with all of his girlfriends, and there were 9 because for some reason the game didn't count one of them - the goal was to get Mom and Dad grandkids for Big Happy Family. Every girlfriend had twins and one had triplets - 19 kids in all. Since I had no control over those moms to have them listen to kids' music, watch kids' tv, get the fertile reward, or get Fertility Massages, I'm thinking doing all that with my mom might have been wasted effort/time. Perhaps Ley Line is all that's needed for twins every time. But I wasn't willing to risk it and got the Fertility Massage every time. My mom (Eve Boomer) skilled up wellness and gave a Fertility massage to dad (Adam Boomer) just because she could. But they never had triplets - just twins every time - almost always a boy and a girl.
- For the kids that needed a job, I got them Connections and had them join and quit all the careers. I kept some of the emotion-inducing items, but sold a lot of them.
- I set my Seasons setting at 28 days per season (which kept the whole challenge in one season) and started in Summer - in my practice I discovered that it will still rain in Spring, sometimes a lot, on Mysterious Weather days even with Rain and Snow options of "None". It never rained during the challenge with these settings; it got really hot some days but since the temperature effect on sims wasn't enabled, they didn't care. The only reason I even noticed the weather was because my sims occasionally changed autonomously into their hot weather clothes, so I made sure those were extra-cute. (As opposed to the who-cares winter outfits that they never wore.) Also, no holidays were added to the calendar by the game after the first week or so - I think I only had to cancel 2 holidays in the first week and a half and no more spawned, so managing that was easy. Overall, the experience was very much like not having seasons.
- I made extensive use of the Wishing Well for school advancement and job promotion - I made sure all the tasks were done, and had my sim drink a Moodlet Solver before wishing. If the Wishing Well wasn't already happy, gave him a $5000 offering. In that situation, the response was almost always green or white (green = advancement after next school day or work shift; white = immediate advancement). I had my sim wish as soon as possible so there'd be time to wish again if need be. If they got the green the first time, meaning the bar was full and the box was checked, they often got the white when they wished again. So several of my kids never had to go to school.
Now a couple questions:
@Tynynounours - is there anything special you do with gardening? I didn't even try that because ever since Seasons came out I really struggle with getting my plant quality up. But you were able to get to Excellent in a little over 3 weeks. What fertilizer do you use? Do you leave everything in a greenhouse? Or do you move the plants that are "In season" outside? Do you use Patchy to help? Does he maybe have magic fertilizer? I used to love gardening in Sims, which is funny since I don't like it at all in real life, but since Seasons came out, I don't like it much in Sims either. Any suggestions you have would be much appreciated.
@oshizu - we moved out the same number of kids, but I didn't try the Writing Aspiration, so I'm wondering what aspiration I did that you didn't. Computer Whiz was my longest and Musical Genius was second, although not terrible since she was a Creative Prodigy as a child and other than the drawings and toys that the aspiration required, advanced that skill playing the violin. I did Renaissance Sim, which was faster than I expected with all the mentoring and mom or dad in the room. I also did Grilled Cheese, which is really fast since they don't have to eat the entire grilled cheese serving for it to count. I just had to get ol' Dominic Fyres in the swimming pool at the right time to get Grim there when I needed him.
Did you do both of those?
