First, the general set-up:
- My elders were human Gilbert Huxtable (Geek, Good, Loves The Outdoors) & vampire Eikichi Hirano (Geek, Insider, Dance Machine), though their traits were mostly irrelevant. Towards the end I wondered if I should have made them both Gluttons, but I don't know if that would actually have made them eat quicker?
- They moved into Bargain Bend as opposed to my favourite Pebble Burrow as it gets walk-bys on two sides and is a much more compact neighbourhood overall - the dig sites, wild plants and fishing spots also form a nice loop that made collecting easier. I built a tier 3 microhome to reap the full benefits of Tiny Living that was really just a single multi-purpose room, a small bathroom and a large covered area out the front that was painted terrain and not precious tiles. It got the Study Spot, Peace & Quiet & Natural Light lot traits, and though I think I intended to swap out the last as and when required I never bothered. In terms of initially purchased items, the main ones were two easels, two sketchpads, two drones, a present pile and Patchy.
- Eikichi founded a club (called Team Twilight, cough cough) whose activities were friendly, funny and romantic socials, alongside painting and working out, but those last two were gradually dropped. Working out seems to be good for earning club points through uncontrolled sims, from my admittedly limited experience, and a lot of painting got done throughout the challenge. Like, a lot a lot...
- I scheduled a holiday for every day that I remembered to do so... which, to be fair, was most of them! Doing them all in advance would have stopped any and all pop-up holidays, and I didn't want to miss out on New Skill Day if it happened to come around. It didn't, and I got Talk Like A Pirate Day and Rebate Day instead; at least Rebate Day happened to fall at the point I wanted to get Mansion Baron done... but yeah, sims earn satisfaction points for successfully completing holiday goals, and the Happy moodlet's not to be sniffed at either! I always had my elders Open Presents, Wear Costumes, Be Thankful and Make Resolutions as they're all easy enough to do - on day two, they also dealt with Holiday Gnomes for the seed packets, and on a different day they went Egg Hunting... more on that later.
- To build up fame, both elders were streaming near-continuously, though mostly it came from selling their paintings and (eventually) the Giving Back fame perk. Turns out, Geeks get a +10 Happy "Gadget Friends" moodlet when using a drone?! I found this out in testing while wondering how to tackle The Curator rather than from stumbling across that link, for the record, but blimey. So long as I could ensure that Gilbert never got Playful for too long (vampires are immune to emotional deaths!), I didn't really have to work towards getting him into the "Very" state for any other emotion... and a +5 Sad moodlet when the drone breaks is more an inconvenience than a penalty...
The fortnight of the challenge was roughly split in three - first, a general earning of satisfaction points through easy aspiration goals in order to buy reward traits to make life smoother (Savant, Antiseptic, Morning Sim, Night Owl, Creative Visionary & Marketable for both plus Steel Bladder for Gilbert). Next the focus turned to getting Gilbert through as many aspirations as possible before he croaked, meaning Eikichi's progress took a back seat while he helped his companion out. Finally, once Gilbert had passed, Eikichi had his time to shine, finishing all bar one of the same aspirations Gilbert did plus three more of his own. Aspirations must have accounted for >98% of all their satisfaction points, but that was very much the idea! Here are Gilbert's thirteen aspirations in order of completion, with commentary; the first four are the ones he and Eikichi worked on together at the beginning, though Eikichi did also track his progress on The Curator:
- Leader Of The Pack - Eikichi bought Rally The Troops with the initial 100 points plus the first 400 earned, then Gilbert purchased the capacity upgrades once enough points had been earned. As the leader of the club, Eikichi completed the aspiration first, but he then kicked everyone out bar Gilbert before leaving himself, thus passing on the leadership mantle. T4 is the only tier of the aspiration that requires you to be a club leader, so Gilbert had been able to polish off everything up to then and thus insta-completed the moment he added seven members... who he immediately kicked out so he could pass the club back to Eikichi.
- Serial Romantic - the boost to relationship gains you can get from Tiny Living is immense, and the new "Send Home" option made this even more trivial! The guys were literally picking people up off the street; flirt flirt flirt etc., kiss, ask to be boy/girlfriend, ask to just be friends, off you go. They kept their last relationships active for Soulmate later and did all the dating at home while the other elder got on with something else...
- Friend Of The World - the relationship gain boost again... though I think technically taking photographs of/with the desired friend is still the fastest way to max out the relationship bar if you're starting from scratch, if you're going to be doing interactions for aspiration goals/skill levelling/whims anyway there's no contest. Meeting people in different locations for T2 was combined with City Living T1's goal to meet people in three different neighbourhoods, but that was the only goal in that aspiration my elders completed. You'd think not having an aparment was the main impediment to doing this aspiration, but since moving was permitted I would have just had them flit back and forth between the microhome and a penthouse. No, the problem is the goals that ask you to do things at certain festivals, meaning they have to occur in a specific one of their possible orders - namely, the one in the second column but starting in what it says is the second week. It's the pattern I've got in my long-neglected dynasty file, for instance, so it is possible... but, since I got GeekCon first in the challenge, I knew the aspiration was impossible and thus never pursued it further...
- Painter Extraordinaire - tier 3 microhome + Study Spot + relevant skill boost club perk = super-fast skilling in any field, painting or otherwise. Sketchpads are quicker than easels, especially once upgraded, but you can only paint emotional paintings on easels so you will need them. Once Eikichi finished the aspiration and had Creative Visionary & Marketable, he was forced to paint pretty much any time he wasn't busy with something else, building up a gigantic stash of incredibly valuable pictures...
- The Curator - an early lap around the neighbourhood got Gilbert through T1 and frog breeding + gardening sorted Eikichi out later. For T2, crystals can be ordered off the computer and fossils can be found in gifts from the present pile, though not too often; even having two sims getting a gift every four hours, it still took until just after Gilbert received his first notice before he got a third. T3 was a doddle - he just sent the Geo Council the crystals he'd ordered off the computer, plus a few more for good luck. To complete a collection for T4, I added Egg Hunting to the next holiday so that he and Eikichi (who'd caught up in the interim) could ransack Magnolia Blossom Park... though actually here's the rub about listing these aspirations in order: Eikichi totally got some of his eggs from shrubbery outside the houses where Gilbert was clogging sinks...
- Party Animal - ...and this aspiration was started on the very first day of the challenge! I used a strategy based on one used by mismck in the Hobos to Heroes challenge - basically, if a party's host has a Good Reputation, it automatically starts at Bronze and only needs the main goal to be completed in order to go Gold. But, for a dinner party, the main goal is to simply "Call To Meal" - the guests don't even have to eat anything! Almost every party either elder threw was a dinner party, though they each had a Fan Meet And Greet and Wedding to their name too, and Gilbert got to throw an Incognito bash to get the spaceship jungle gym, partly for Mansion Baron and partly for the easy points in the Family aspirations.
- Chief Of Mischief - another skill-based aspiration that was loosely combined with the enemy-making required by Public Enemy's T2 & T3, though neither sim finished that. To that end, Gilbert sent a lot of chain letters once he unlocked the ability to do so, but finished levelling Mischief with various pranks on whoever happened to be around at the time.
- Renaissance Sim - Gilbert auto-completed it after earning Connections and swapping between jobs; his level 8+ skills at the time were Charisma, Cooking, Logic, Mischief, Painting & Rocket Science. Eikichi didn't get to the career aspect until after Gilbert had died, so he had a whole raft of maxed skills by then.
- Grilled Cheese - this is why I want to know if Glutton sims eat faster! All other goals here were easy to achieve, even at T3. Nerd Brain meant the pair had a rocket ship on the lot (built as part of an early club gathering with Gilbert's then-boyfriend Simeon Silversweater), and as for needing the Grim Reaper... well, while Gilbert was levelling Logic one night, Eikichi embarked upon a marathon WooHoo session with Keala Hoapili. She wore him out the first two times (hence the need for a bathroom with the shower from Island Living that has Discomfort Relief 5), the third time did nothing, the fourth time finally got her tired, the fifth time did nothing and thus it wasn't until the sixth trip to the bush that she finally kicked the bucket. I knew I should have got Dennis Kim in instead...
- Soulmate - Gilbert married Summer Holiday at a small, late-night ceremony where most of the guests ignored them to play with the cowplant and Eikichi literally spent the whole time painting in front of the wedding arch. I had considered getting the two elders together, but that would have been far less efficient; while Gilbert was busy dating and spamming romantic interactions, Eikichi had other things to be doing, like rocket upgrades, painting, cooking grilled cheese, painting, levelling skills, painting and... uh, painting. Towards the end of the second week, he got his chance to marry Salim Benali (I will remind you that they literally dragged their spouses in off the pavement) and did much of his schmoozing while eating grilled cheese... and, yes, okay, he was still painting then too.
- Nerd Brain - the rocket ship's already been touched upon, and beyond that and the trivial skilling requirements there wasn't anything interesting involved in getting this aspiration done. Another reason for having a bathroom at home was that it could all get upgraded/fixed, but actually the drones got most of the attention.
- Fabulously Wealthy - this is (not quite) why Eikichi's first love had to be his sketchpad! Gilbert sold a bajillion and seven of Eikichi's paintings to complete this, and then Eikichi had to paint a whole bunch more, partly so he could complete it himself...
- Mansion Baron - ...and partly so that they could both complete this. Turns out, a §350,000 tier 3 microhome with 15 pieces of art, §5,000 worth of landscaping, 30 columns and 20 windows is... architecturally baffling. In the end, it needed thirty-two knight statues and a camping mascot. Yes, I did the maths before purchasing. I am not proud.
Gilbert also got points from Public Enemy (T2 complete, nothing in T3), Joke Star (T2 complete + level 6 Comedy), World-Famous Celebrity (all bar the selfie requirement of T3, which is wholly random and snubbed Eikichi too), the research bits of the Vampire aspirations (including reading the first tome), all of Freelance Botanist bar having ten excellent plants (Patchy provided the cowplant, and I totally forgot about bees!), Master Mixologist (T2 complete and some of T3, apparently didn't note what), Master Chef (T2 complete + cook three excellent types of food), and bits of Big Happy Family & Super Parent. This last source was entirely unplanned, but occurred to me about 1am Tuesday Week 1 and so was just about viable. Liliana Holiday was born at 7:54am, Saturday Week 1, and barely became a toddler in time for Gilbert to spent his final few hours with her at Desert Bloom Park while Eikichi resolutely failed to lure anyone indoors so that he could turn them. He had tried for a baby with Lilith Vatore, but by the time I realised they hadn't conceived it was too late to do anything about it...
They returned home from the park at 2:15pm, giving Gilbert just enough time to buy Eikichi a Moodlet Solver with which to get over his death before it occurred at 2:21pm. He had all the reward traits bar Forever Fresh, Forever Full and Never Weary, and I do really mean all. Eikichi would eventually go on to get all bar Never Weary by completing all of the above aspirations bar Grilled Cheese and pulling off three more:
- Vampire Family - though he got points in all three vampire aspirations, this was the only one that was achievable in the fortnight timeframe. He turned Don Lothario, Summer Holiday, Penny Pizzazz, Makoa Kealoha & Salim Benali, mainly because they made themselves available, and of course he'd developed the No Touching quirk beforehand so I had the same battle as I did back in the turning challenge... also, Eikichi only ever won one out of about a dozen spars. I can only presume Salim let him win because he was his husband by then... and then trounced him the next two times just because.
- Joke Star - apart from wanting the Established Name fame perk to make more valuable paintings, I also needed Eikichi to get Easy Street so he could start at level 4 in careers and get daily promotions. He started his sole shift as an entertainer three hours after Gilbert died, downing a Happy Celebuserum beforehand so that he could work while Hysterical. Once again, vampires are immune to emotional deaths! Once promoted, he picked the Comedian branch for the aspiration, then quit - T4 doesn't actually require you to still be in work, so he could finish levelling the skill and performing his comedy routines while otherwise employed...
- Master Mixologist - ...okay, he actually entered the Criminal career for Public Enemy next, but... you may recall that I whinged about having to deal with an inconsistency of the game when I submitted my score? See, the goal in Master Chef that says "Reach Level 4 in the Culinary Career" has a progress tracking x/4 next to it in the aspiration panel, and completes just fine when you join the career at that level courtesy Easy Street. I tested this to my satisfaction beforehand and assumed that the "Reach Level 4 of the Criminal Career" goal in Public Enemy would do just the same. It doesn't. Worse still, this is apparently intentional: "With the trait you have to advance to the next level for it to register." But, uh, the Master Chef goal worked? The difference, as far as I can tell, is that Public Enemy doesn't have that progress tracker, so legitimately doesn't trigger if you don't prod the game by going in to work. Eikichi had to do just that, wasting the precious hours he would have otherwise spent eating grilled cheese both on the ground and in space. Still, uh, I was ostensibly explaining how I completed Master Mixologist, and the answer really just is "Eikichi worked as a mixologist for two nights"...
Eikichi's other satisfaction point sources were much the same as Gilbert's, plus the aforementioned vampire aspirations. Having the time to poke careers meant he got to the final tiers of both Public Enemy and Master Chef, though, and thus achieved all their goals bar the career-related ones. When it came to Grilled Cheese, I repurposed a fleeting club I'd used to drag vampires to him as an elders-only club that gathered near-constantly outside the (locked) microhome, with the intent to inflict hysteria on one of them using the Comedian career rewards if it got down to the wire. Fortunately, Oasis Springs resident Jamari Clark popped his clogs just after Eikichi finished his final shift in the Culinary career. Unfortunately, by the time he'd persuaded the Grim Reaper to listen to him proselytize, he didn't quite have enough time to squeeze in the rocket trip alongside his maxing of Mixology. I mean, he touched down at 8:06am. If I'd had those extra few hours, he could have done the flight before leaving for work instead...
...uh, I think that's everything I need to say? I absolutely should have prepared more of this beforehand (sorry, Metro!) and I'm pretty sure my tone's slipped significantly since the beginning, so if there's anything you want to pick my brains about please do holler and I'll try and expand. Otherwise, ta for the congrats, thanks again for the challenge, and good luck to all when it comes to the next!
