So, now I have time to describe my strategy. Thanks to Elinoee, it will be easier for me because she covered a lot of the points I also used.
Actually, the funniest fact is that it was my very first time playing with Social media path/gaining subscribers
As usual, before I started, I examined the past similar challenges and found Social Media Star from 2017 (
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=28574.0;all) which was very similar to this one, except for the Fame (because it didn't exist yet). GlazeyLady won that one and shared her strategy (
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=28574.msg468224#msg468224) which had the following crucial points:
- Max Charisma as soon as you can because it lets you Upload Viral Video that gives over a million followers each time and can be used every 8 hours;
- Wishing Well for promotions (which I always do in all the challenges anyway);
- Club with Rally the Troops (also do it every time);
- “Shout Out” at a venue as often as you can (every half an hour).
I actually skipped this point when reading because, as I mentioned earlier, my game is not in English and I never played with gaining subscribers before, so I had no idea what this point means and how to perform it, so I just read it and forgot. But when I was playing, I discovered it by myself and heavily utilized it;
- Other means of gaining subscribers, used as soon as they become available (Start Funny Meme, Share/Promote Image, Prank Streamers, etc.).
Also, when I was preparing for some past challenge that involved gaining fame, I found somewhere in the web a large list of all ways to gain fame (265 entries!). I filtered it to find what I will naturally do during the challenge and found out that, besides the Social Media career, a nice way to gain fame is to perform certain romantic interactions with a celebrity on public. So that is what I chose to do.
I created a female Sim with the following traits: Cheerful, Insider, Ambitious + Quick Learner. I chose the cheapest apartment because she wasn't going to spend time there anyway. But choosing an apartment gives you a possibility to gain some quick and easy points in the City Native aspiration (and I needed to get 3,000 points as soon as possible to buy the Great Kisser reward and Max charisma quickly). So, my first steps were:
- Join the Good Timers club and make the leader (Bjorn) leave its leadership (I always do it in all my games) - this way I can use Rally the Troops from the very beginning and also get to choose club activities that I need to earn points quickly;
- Start my way to 3,000 satisfaction points by partially completing some easy aspiration milestones (City Native, Good Vampire, Leader of the Pack, Master Vampire);
- Find a celebrity to perform romantic interactions with. I chose Judith Ward because she's quite easy-going, is a 5-star celebrity and is for some reason always available to get added to your club (so you don't need to try and catch her somewhere, persuade her to get introduced, etc.). After adding her to the club, I started spending time with her on famous lots, performing romantic interactions (not all of them raise your fame level though, so I chose the ones that do). Eventually I married her, and knowing that you can't add to the household but there is no prohibition on moving this time, I switched lots with her - she went to my tiny empty concrete-walls apartment and my sim went to her luxurious mansion (oh, so close to what happens in real life...)
I earned quite a lot of fame while doing this (don't remember for sure, maybe close to 2 stars, but I'm not sure here really) and maxed Charisma with the Great Kisser reward. Now it was time to start working on my career and subscriber count.
My sim joined the Social media career as soon as the game started, and wished for promotion immediately with the Wishing well, but got no luck on the first try. Now, when she had a lot of Judith's money, she could gamble with the well as much as she wanted to - and obviously she wanted to do it every 8 hours. And now, the wishing well was super generous this time - I don't know, maybe it liked the fact of standing in front of a wonderful house?
But it gave my sim an instant promotion every time she asked for it! Thus, making it to level 9 took maybe about four days only. After level 9, it refused to promote her for the last degree no matter how many times she tried - so I just got the last promotion the normal way. This fact helped me greatly, because the higher your career level, the better opportunities for subscriber gain you get - and, as you can guess, I got all of them really fast. I chose the Internet Personality branch and used the following options as soon as they appeared, over and over:
- Start funny meme (career level 6);
- Broadcast status (career level 6);
- Promote image (career level 7);
- Prank streamers (career level
;
- Charity stream (career level 9);
- Upload viral video (career level 9, but I got it much earlier when I maxed charisma).
All of those are under Social on the computer, not the Games, so I hope I didn't break any rules here.
Besides the subscribers, all these actions raise you fame level, so I got to level 5 quickly.
One more super useful action was Shout Out from venue/Announce appearance at Venue (which I mentioned in the beginning). It's available every 30 minutes, and it gave me over 100,000 subscribers every time! I kept doing it in the library too, along with all the other above-mentioned computer actions. This was actually extremely boring
I tried using a drone, but it kept running out of battery charge. I bought several to switch between, but soon realized that they're not worth wasting time on.
So that's pretty much it.
Nothing clever, just pure luck with the well.
This actually makes me feel bad because the well is so unpredictable and unreliable, and it definitely doesn't work by normal probability theory, nor does it depend on amount of money granted.
My suggestion for the challenge team is actually to ban using the well for the future, at least in the challenges where it can really be a game changer. People with brilliant strategies, patience and precise micromanagement shouldn't lose to a rigged item.
Hope I didn't miss anything valuable. If I did, I'll add it as soon as I recall. Please ask questions if you have any.
Oh, and here's the Fame list I mentioned, for everyone to use:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tlI-t7ZUTMbuJpFtas1HVSOE8f67JBlj5Bn6AjhwGpw/edit?usp=sharing It used to be a tiny bit messier, so I fixed everything I could find so that all data belongs to corresponding columns and is unified
