Ranking the Best Money-Making Activities

[sixofour]

I am curious why no one has mentioned buying food from the grocery store and selling it in the consignment shop. With the right traits and life time rewards, you can get loads of money. And the reason why it is better than [in my opinion] most everything listed so far is, it only requires really 1 trait [born salesman], and it takes like an hour out of your day every day. I believe I have reached like 100k 4-5 days after making my sim... He had ambitious and be worth more than 50k life time wish, so he was able to get haggler and suave seller pretty early.

You could probably make millions in a couple weeks since the growth is exponential. And it leaves you with 22 or so hours per day to do... what ever you want. Depending on the distance between your house, the grocery store and the consignment shop.

I generate so much money with it that I almost consider it cheating lol. I think I was buying steaks 1000 at a time, for 16 dollars a piece, and selling them for 59 dollars. You spend 6k and get 59k back... with a 1 dollar consignment fee. [Thats after a couple iterations]

[Schipperke]

Sixofour, I've used the consignment shop of course but mostly just for selling Sim-made items like paintings, etc.  It never occurred to me to have a Sim make a living selling stuff from the grocery store, but your numbers make it a very attractive proposition.  Thanks for sharing your experience!

[iCastl]

I've made plenty of money through pets. Dogs in particular. A dog with a high hunting skill can earn lots of simoleons by selling the rocks and gems he finds.
And while he does this, your sim is free to do anything else

[simone23]

I think there's a big difference between the best simolean producing activity overall and the best way to make money fast in a new game.

Having said that, the guitar thing is awesome (as a tip to help you grind performances, get your sim two instruments and put the sim on a different lot than your camera, then start queuing up performances. The sim will automatically cut each performance short, and you can keep the queue refreshed with the second instrument in the sim's inventory).

Sign me up to track numbers on vacationing for profit.  My current family are multi-millionaires from relic hunting and transfiguration. I'd be happy to start a new clan and keep notes.

[simone23]

Adventuring for profit:

Started with two sims (this really works best with a household of two)

Sim 1 (Simon)
Adventurous, Athletic, Brave, Charismatic, Handy - this is my dungeon crawler

Sim 2 (Ginny)
Adventurous, Angler, Great Kisser, Loves the Outdoors, Virtuoso - all that's really important here is that she's Adventurous.  Loves the Outdoors is so that when she's excavating relics she gets a nice motive from being outside.

Mods: Error Trap, because WA doesn't work without it (Twallan, you are a Prince among Men)
Premium Content used: MultiTab, which is so awesome, it's almost a cheat.

The goal: cut the money grind by making a truckload of Simoleans in the first calendar week.

Day 1: Simon & Ginny get an empty lot and do a little kissing and a little shopping.  Bought them each a MultiTab, plus got Ginny some instruments (she never earned tips on them, but they made her happy).  Did not build a house or purchase furniture.  Wait for the first wish to travel (it doesn't take long) and then we're off to China for three days.

When we get to China, there are 9,420 Simoleans in the bank.

Day 1: he runs off on a dungeon dive adventure while she skills up on martial arts
Day 2: she collects metals and rocks for his adventure and finds relics, too!
Day 3: by day 3 at the Hostel, sims are usually hurting (and who can blame them?). She did a little fishing, he did a lot of adventures

When the vacation is over, they come home with metals, gems and insects worth a little over 15K (after cutting and smelting, with the cost of the cutting and smelting already subtracted from that total) plus 1,657 worth of common relics and 1,691 in Chinese Vases and another 900 worth of space rocks.

Bought some things at home: a display case for transfiguration, an outdoor shower (comes with Sunlit Tides, very handy thing to have, especially for sculptors and inventors) a fence to put around my little home campsite.  A table, a couple of chairs, and an outdoor kitchen set me up for the next few days at home (although I will have to be creative about finding places to use the toilet).

More importantly, my sims have been skilling up with the MultiTabs like mad, and they've gotten enough points for each of them to get a Lifetime Reward.  He now has Opportunistic (making his adventuring rewards more rewarding) and she has Prepared Traveler.

After two days at home, she's got Jetsetter and he's got Prepared Traveler.  They've also done their first transfiguration and gotten a Soulpeace worth 2,847. Sadly, it doesn't occur to me that an emerald cut would make this Soulpeace the perfect foundation for a tiberium transfiguration, so we are going to Egypt with a lot less cash than we could have.

Because both sims have Prepared Traveler, they get a 9 day vacation in Egypt for the price of 3.  Again, she fishes and excavates while he adventures.  Using the MultiTab, they both skill up to 8 in Photography extremely quickly.  She really hasn't done serious fishing - I had her use various baits in quick succession to complete the Catch Every Fish wish to get the 7,500 lifetime happiness points, but the total number of fish caught and the value of the fish weren't extraordinary - the most valuable fish she had were some Great Crocodiles. She had enough fish to get about 1K Simoleans for them from the food merchant, which gave her enough to buy the expensive camera.  A few photos around the market later, and she's level 10, a quick vintage panorama each of a pyramid and the sphinx, sell all photos, and buy a second camera for him.  For her, this means that she gets called a lot with requests to bring a picture of a treasure chest or a floor switch for visa points and Simoleans.

By the time they returned home, without selling anything else except a few skill max certificates (so just by filling opportunities) my sims had 19,382 in cash, plus 3,697 in money bags.  My adventuring Sim had a level 2 visa, they both had quite a few more LTRs, and enough gems, relics and metals to make plenty of tiberium.

On Friday of week 1, transfiguration of metals, gems and relics have yielded a balance of 217,131, using none of the collection relics in the process, plus a 32,359 compendium in inventory and another 23,000 Soulpeace gem (value after cut) on its way back from the gem cutters.  My sims had acquired a variety of skills, and maxed out several, and had put together a nice package of LTRs.

Overall, this isn't something I'd do as a long term strategy, say instead of playing guitar for tips, but my second sim could easily have been grinding performances (or writing, or fishing) off camera while my adventuring sim was dungeon diving.  For getting a household jump started, adventuring can be a way to make some pretty good money very quickly, plus collecting enough objects to make your house beautifully decorated.

[Shimobe]

Midas Touch from Supernatural makes my sim 200,000 a hour - that's 3 weeks 'till you reach the money limit and it's a lot easier and faster to start making the big money than guitar.

Oh, yeah - and you can also fill all your businesses with double-value items.

[jestina]

That's a level 10 alchemy isn't it? It also requires special ingredients which are usually a pain to find unless you have collection helper.

You don't need ingredients to play a guitar...and you can be making great money with it long before level 10 of the skill.

[Esther1981]

I don't know personally what ingredients are needed, but I've seen that potion in the elixir shop, so if you have enough money to get it it might be worth it, although a guitar is only $600 and the potion is over $1000.

[smartburn]

I finally managed to get a tiberium gem in my game twice, and the second time is when I realized how valuable those puppies truly are - I was impatient when I acquired my first and I didn't wait long enough for it to grow.    Between those and the gem cutter, it may not be quite as lucrative as sending a well-practiced musician to the subway for tips, but it's certainly rewarding. Next step is the display case, hehe.

[Shimobe]

Update on the Midas Touch thing - it takes 8-11 days to get 99 million using it (not including preparation time). It requires Gold, Yellow Sapphire and Luminous Salamander(4 Fishing i think) which are actually pretty easy to acquire now since werewolfs can hunt for gems. Also you have to have level 10 Alchemy, yes (you unlock skill booster at level 4). The above is an estimate, i might test this with a new family, provided there's more interest.

A single potion makes about 3 million (requires 900,000).

[simone23]

I would love to see a write up on Midas Touch - how do you make 200K an hour with it?

I haven't played with Midas Touch potions yet, but it sounds like I need to.  My family already has more simoleans than they know what to do with, but it would be fun to get some new simmies started with a financial boost.

[bubbles]

This doesn't make a huge amount of money, but I'd you send your sims to the tombs and collect everything you can find, you can make quite a lot of simoleons. In Champs Les Sims, my sim found 3 magic gnomes and sold them immediately and got 3000 simoleons. Sell everything else when you get home, consigning every item you can if you have ambitions. Sell the rest via the inventory. I reckon you could make 10,000 simoleons at least that way on a three day trip to Champs Les Sims. Remember to check for the inventory selling Easter egg where you often having to sell items twice to get them to disappear (double profit!).

Sorry if it has already been mentioned!

[Wai]

Bubbles, if you really want to hit the money highs, do not sell the WA loot from your inventory.  Buy a Large Carter's table and transfigure the items.  All gems, metals, artifacts and meteors can be transfigured.  I usually go for tiberium.  10,000 worth of loot will transfigure into two tiberium with 3,000 left over towards a third.  The tiberium when grown (usually just one day later) will be worth in excess of 60,000.

If you then take advantage of the money glitch (which is, in my personal book, cheating) your "take" could be unlimited as that glitch will keep respawning the sold item indefinately so long as you keep your game paused and as long as you have at least one wall segment on your home lot.  Just press the up or down arrow key after selling from the ground, and the item will reappear.  Sell it again, press up or down, it reappears.  And so on to infinity!

[bubbles]

Will try that next time, Wai! I've already sold it and saved (Whoops!).

[mappam]

My currant Simmie is doing the Alchemy thing. She has a dog she trained for hunting. Between the two of them I have just entered my first Spring Season and she has gone from $67 to $52,000 (plus/min). The only "cheats" I have used are the sliders for tired/bladder/sleep etc. (testingCheatsEnabled).

This money amount is AFTER upgrading the fridge, bed, bath/shower and expanding the house.

I find that if I make too much money too fast I then get bored with the game. It is fun to EARN the money and to see what the dog can find etc. Part of the fun (for me) is the challange of being able to upgrade and advance.