It has been a while since I won an event!
Happy!
So, now onto my strategy.
I created a male sim with a Knowledge aspiration so he could level up more quickly. Traits were Genius, Ambitious and Geek - but I don't think any of them really made any difference.
And now - what really DOES make the difference:
First of all, I managed to find a greap tip in
Nutella's winning strategy of the 2016 event named 'Cloning around'. The tip was:
'DO NOT JOIN YOUR SIM AT WORK. This means no going to the Science Lab. Why? I found that sending your sim to work alone, use work hard while very focused nets a bigger career performance improvement. Even if you perform all the daily task in Science Lab, your performance will not compared to sending your sim to work alone.' And this is true. My sim only went to work on the very first day and on the very last, where it made no difference. The only reason to go to the lab was to collect enough metals required for the inventions.
Second thing was making a Tiny home instead of a regular home, since Metro
confirmed that it was okay in this challenge. I made a 32-square lot which gives great bonuses in terms of skill gains and romantic relationships. So, on the first day which doesn't require going to work since it's Sunday, my sim joined the Good Timers club, took over the leadership, found a wife-to-be and switched to the Soulmate aspiration. Completing this aspiration is easy and not only gives you satisfaction points, but also provides the opportunity to Renew Vows at the wedding arch which gives a +3 Happy moodlet for 2 days each time you do it! Also, I purchased club perks to give my sim a constant +3 Focused moodlet, and I bought him a massage table and invited a massagist every day to give him a deep massage which also gives +2 Happy for 24 hours if there is an incense stick burning nearby (which I also bought and placed). Together, it gave me Very Focused all the time which helped greatly with career performance.
Since we weren't allowed to use Fame perks which boost career performance, I used the Entrepreneurial reward, the Networked Club perk, the Ask for Bonus opportunity which is granted for Charisma lvl 10 (I maxed Charisma easily while working on the Soulmate aspiration), and Hack Work Performance after I reached Programming level 8 (at this level, a sim becomes more successful at hacking). I used asking for bonus and hacking work performance on the same day for a maximum boost so I could get a promotion in one day, and on the times when I couldn't do it, each career level took two days. I got quite lucky, I guess, because none of my hacking/asking for bonus attempts failed (although there weren't that many in total). Maybe that is what brought me a win.
Inventions and serums were nothing special, I guess pretty much everyone had no problem with those. Of course, I just bought all the equipment from Buy mode, because I couldn't use it at work.
I think that's pretty much it. If you have additional questions - please ask.
