In brief: photography for BFFs, clubs for skills, parties happened whenever I remembered to hold them, and scouting trivialised the job requirement.
In not-so-brief? Well...
Top priority was getting the teens a house, so I mashed together what I'd learnt from the Making Money & Skillathon challenges. Rojo rushed both Charisma level 4 and 3,000 satisfaction points, the former feeding into the latter courtesy Serial Romantic and Friend Of The World. This let him purchase Great Kisser at 12:09am Monday, after which he smooched the teens I'd run into, Wolfgang Munch and Morgan Fyres, until he hit Charisma level 9 and could Ask For Large Loans. Throughout the challenge, the teens used photography to make BFFs (and, at this point, selling them produced the cash required to buy food) - later on the Popular Club perk, Incredibly Friendly and a Pristine Reputation meant that only the most stubborn sims needed a selfie session as opposed to a compliment or two. Still, this meant that Rojo had a way to get very strong relationships with other sims very quickly and could thus get loans off of them: combined with photo cash and the prize from Esme leading the Jokesters to victory at the Humor & Hijinks Festival, they were able to buy Slip 42 at 1:09am Tuesday. That's actually later than the practice run of mine that worked, but ho hum.
For the record, the teens used Waterside Warble's conveniences and napped upstairs in Discotheque Pan Europa on Sunday, then downed moodlet solvers an hour before heading off to school. Burners & Builders provided the mirror to calm Esme's +50 tense moodlet and the toilets and sinks for ablutions, and though they were all pretty spent by the time they arrived in Strangerville they were all still upright! The adults they'd ensnared into their club were used tohelp them through the school projects they'd been assigned, and having a house meant a good-quality bed to share. It also meant they had a bath in which they could have Citrus Soaks with incense in order to get +2 Focused for 12 hours, ideal for doing well in school. And I didn't even have to lock an unemployed club member in the house so that the Focused club vibe would persist while the teens were away - L. Faba hung around of her own accord! Seriously, she was an absolute trooper and remained the only townie that figured out how to use the coffee machine. Admittedly, drinking the coffee she made sometimes seemed a bit beyond her, but she made an effort!
Once the teens were housed, selling the rewards from two incognito parties netted them enough cash to get them most of what they needed, and said parties were mainly homework/extra credit sessions under the tutelages of their guests as it was. They all earned a B after Tuesday and their As after Thursday, with four vacation days each; setting up two holidays (on the Fridays) was thus enough to keep them out of school for the rest of the challenge. My focus then turned to having them all earn more satisfaction points, aiming to have Savant, Night Owl, Morning Sim and Incredibly Friendly for all as soon as possible. Eventually, they also got Seldom Sleepy, but that was well into the second week. These bonus traits plus the skill-boosting club perks helped immensely! Eventually, things settled into a rough routine: skilling during Night Owl's 8pm-3am window, a brief break to tend to needs, then more skilling through Morning Sim's 5am-12pm, with the 12pm-8pm period focused on BFF-making and, y'know, sleeping. It wasn't until Friday Week 2 that they switched to a Moodlet Solver regime, 'cause they all had to get Potions Of Youth first...
The job requirement was just as easy to cheese as the BFF requirement with the ruling that Scouts counted as a career - I mean, it makes sense and all, but reaching Unicorn Scout is a darn sight easier than holding a part-time job. The Escalantes all signed up Monday week 2 so that they'd only have to attend Saturday's meeting in order for the career to count, and all three made it to Pegasus Scout as it was. It was quite late on that I remembered that the Scouting Aptitude reward trait was, well, a trait, and so would be applied the moment it was achieved: +25% to all skill gains would have been incredibly useful! I did try for it, but I couldn't figure out a way for the teens to earn the Keep Fit badge without sinking an inconvenient amount of time - with forward planning, I could have arranged things to try and combine it with levelling Fitness and Dancing, but I don't think that would have been sufficient. Rojo made great use of IronicBeauty's fantastic tip from the skillathon and used the Dream Big basketball interaction to max Fitness super-fast, so that would have contributed little, and he was also the group's Dance Machine so that he could take Disco Naps during those oh-so important first two days, thus maximising the amount of time he could spent working towards housing him and his siblings... oh, and he took on yoga duties for Wellness too. Ah well.
Uh, that's about it for overarching strategy, bar the fact the teens later moved to Daisy Hovel in order to have better townie walkbys and so that Rojo could use the three nearby fishing spots. I didn't hold anywhere near enough parties, really, 'cause with Pristine Reputations having them go gold is often very easy, and though I arguably could have had them make more BFFs I honestly don't think my (frankly tenuous) sanity could have taken it, despite having set up my spreadsheet so that I could keep track of hundreds of townies. Seventeen hours in Selvadorada absolutely frazzled me, let alone my sims, but it did mean 0.41 + 0.05 for the multiplier...
I leave you with the break-down of my final score, with the (somewhat arbitrary) contributitions for Hero Status in bold:
Gabriel (Insider, Good): 0.75 (BFFs) + 0.81 (skills) + 0.03 (parties) + 0.04 (job levels) = 1.63
First BFF: Laurel Library's first shift librarian Meilani Vainu'upo
Skills: Acting 9 | Archaeology 2 | Handiness 10 | Logic 8 | Media Production 5 | Mischief 10 | Mixology 6 | Photography 5 | Piano 5 | Programming 7 | Research & Debate 5 | Selvadoradian Culture 5 | Singing 4
Gold medal parties: Incognito + Incognito & Dinner
Job: Pegasus Scout (level 4), all badges bar Keep Fit
Esmeralda (Cheerful, Loves The Outdoors): 0.76 (BFFs) + 0.81 (skills) + 0.08 (parties) + 0.04 (job levels) = 1.69
First BFF: Foxbury Physics student Annabelle Grey
Skills: Bowling 3 | Comedy 10 | Cooking 10 | DJ Mixing 7 | Gardening 10 | Gourmet Cooking 10 | Guitar 8 | Herbalism 3 | Painting 10 | Pipe Organ 2 | Rocket Science 8
Gold medal parties: House + House x3, Dinner x3 & Fan Meet And Greet
Job: Pegasus Scout (level 4), all badges bar Keep Fit and Young Scientist
Rojo (Outgoing, Dance Machine): 0.76 (BFFs) + 0.90 (skills) + 0.04 (parties) + 0.04 (job levels) = 1.74
First BFF: L. Faba
Skills: Baking 10 | Charisma 10 | Dancing 5 | Fishing 7 | Fitness 10 | Flower Arranging 3 | Robotics 2 | Vampire Lore 15 | Video Gaming 10 | Violin 6 | Wellness 7 | Writing 5
Gold medal parties: Incognito + Dinner x2 & Fan Meet And Greet
Job: Pegasus Scout (level 4) with the minimum six badges, missing Arts & Crafts, Keep Fit and Young Scientist
From the base of 1, then, that's 1.00 + 1.63 + 1.69 + 1.74 = 6.06, for a final total of 300 x 6.06 = 1818.
