I know it's not exactly helpful to say that my strategy was "work only towards the goals and get through them as fast as possible"... but that was pretty much it! Since there were no restrictions on life state, Nithin and Whitney were both vampires; they have easier needs, a bucketload of easy satisfaction points, and (in Whitney's case) immunity to emotional deaths. They were both Good and Bro sims, for the two easy +1 Happy moodlets, and Nithin was Creative while Whitney was a Goofball, though neither trait really made much of a difference. They kept a little cottage on the Bargain Bend lot with a large covered outside area, though they only really had a bath, a rocking chair and a computer at a desk for most of the time. I chose the lot partly 'cause you get a three- or four-person Welcome Wagon there, and partly because I chose to start in Winter and so I hoped that I would get some overcast Willow Creek weather to make it easier for my sims to go roaming round when needed... it was almost constantly sunny and windy, obviously. The cottage itself was a tier 3 micro home, for all the buffs that entails, and it had the Study Spot, Registered Vampire Lair and Vampire Nexus lot traits, though I only needed the first for the faster skilling and the other two were just to fill the blanks.
The challenge was short enough that I've got almost play-by-play notes, which I'll reproduce below in a rather tidier version than the original, which eschewed things like sentences and punctuation in the main:
- With the game immediately paused, I flick Whitney between aspirations (she started with Joke Star): she earns 900 points from being a vampire, 150 from Leader Of The Pack T1 (picking up the Inspired vibe for the club perk purchase) & 75 for having 10k simoleons... then she picks up 600 more points from vampire research on the computer, before getting in some guitar practice while waiting for the Welcome Wagon arrives.She tells jokes to all four sims in the Welcome Wagon (Summer Holiday and three randomly generated neighbours), then drags Lily Feng in off the street to be the fifth "victim" for that Joke Star T1 goal. I don't have her disturb Nithin, because...
- ...he's confined to a rocking chair to knit beanies until he completes Lord Of The Knits T1 at 1:55pm. I have him stick all his hats on Plopsy, then he gets to socialise with the Welcome Wagon for a bit. He's able to verify that neighbour Julianna Jeffers is unemployed ("Ask About Career" locks their employment status in, at least until the game starts running out of available sims), so she gets added to the club.
- Whitney performs ten club activities (read: jokes) on the Welcome Wagon members to get the points from Leader Of The Pack T2, then keeps going with the funny business until she reaches Comedy level 3, completing Joke Star T1 at 4:01pm. Only once all the visitors have cleared out does she get the chance to level up her Vampire Lore enough for Good Vampire T1, and then drinking one of Vlad's gifted plasma packs nets her enough points for Connections. She joins the Writer career for the Inspired decor, plus the Style Influencer and Secret Agent careers for the high-value rewards that I immediately sell, before signing up as an Opening Act to complete Joke Star T2 at 6:52pm
- Now that Whitney's acquired the Rock Of Ages Stereo, Nithin can complete the goal that requires him to knit while listening to music; he knits two more beanies for Plopsy while Whitney practices the guitar for both her Daily Task and her promotion requirements. When she's finished, Whitney pulls in Minor Vampire Antoine Saunders off the street (courtesy the Vampire Nexus lot trait) and submits him to a barrage of hilarity until she reaches Comedy level 6. I buy a Wishing Well and have her offer §5,000 (those career rewards, man!) - and, unlike in practice, she just gets a bonus. I am not unprepared for this; she has two days of work ahead of her, which is plenty of time to secure the all-important promotion...
- Finishing Encyclopedia Vampirica Vol. 1 and getting training from Antoine nets Whitney enough extra satisfaction points from Master Vampire for her to buy Entrepreneurial, and I get Nithin Creative Visionary too. I have absolutely no idea if it helps with knitted items, but frankly he's got more than enough points knocking around that I figure I might as well. Ever since he finished knitting for Plopsy, I've been having him get ~90% of the way through beanies and socks before shelving the project for the later tiers. It's just a waiting game, seeing how long it takes for someone on Plopsy to bite.
- Whitney writes three short routines for Joke Star T3 in the morning, then settles in to prep for work: she takes a Milk, Honey & Oatmeal soak bath, becomes BFFs with Julianna Jeffers, has a first kiss with her, opens a (positive) present and then batters Julianna into submission with so many jokes that she maxes out the timer on both the Playful moodlets one can get from conversation. By the time she leaves for work, she's Hysterical, but as a vampire that's no issue, and all the jokes she's told have got her to Comedy level 8 and earned enough club points for the Networked Club perk. Her Playfulness lasts her entire shift, and somehow she very nearly maxes out her performance bar... so at least I don't have to go so overboard with the prep tomorrow!
- Finally, at 12:19pm Tuesday, JudithWard5Evr decides to buy a beanie on Plopsy. To add insult to injury, it's the one that Nithin accidentally completed when I wasn't paying attention to him in the small hours of that morning, not one of the original five from back on Sunday. Ah well. Once he's sent it off, he cracks on with the knits that I'd been having him start, including a mustard-yellow sweater that he dons to show off to Antoine when I swap him into the club later that afternoon. Julianna's needs were clearly tanking, you see, and she was all out of Welcome Wagon fruitcake...
- Nithin gifts one pair of socks to Summer Holiday when she swings by for a visit, slogs through two failed attempts to give beanies to Whitney before she heads off to work, then has two successful sock giftings to Antoine and new club inductee Marcus Flex, who Whitney dragged in off the street earlier while levelling her Comedy. As mentioned in my score submission post, he chalks up six Excellent knits and four Legendary, one of which actually counted, because reasons. Whatever, I'll take it - he completes Lord Of The Knits T3 at 7:53pm. I have him make one charity donation for the T4 goal now in order to get the moodlet, then have him get cracking on the rest of the incomplete projects he's got stored up.
- Whitney arrives home with her promotion to complete Joke Star T3, then immediately settles in to deliver her three short routines while Very Playful. After that, she still needs to tell Marcus Flex a few more gags before she maxes Comedy, thus completing Joke Star at 12:03am, Wednesday. He also becomes the first victim of the trio of reward jokes before he's kicked out of the club due to his lack of other use. The cooldown on the Weaponised Joke is the limiting factor here, but given how long Nithin will be still it doesn't entirely matter. Still, she fires off the other two jokes to Summer and Antoine when she can, then settles in to a marathon dancing session, entirely of her own accord.
- Of the six partial knitting projects Nithin had left upon completing T3, three of them turn out Legendary, so he doesn't have to keep knitting for much longer - it takes three more projects for him to get the last two Legendary items, during which time I keep him supplied with Inspired Potions, plus the moodlet for donating objects to charity. Then all he has to do is teach Antoine to knit, and thus at 10:58am he completes Lord Of The Knits. Forbidden Sweaters each take about 200 minutes to knit, so he'll be stuck in that rocking chair for another ten hours yet...
- I actually manage to forget which of Summer and Antoine I tell the second Weaponised Joke to, so it's not until 8:02pm that I can confirm that Whitney has definitely delivered it to them both, thus completing the Wit requirement. That's fine, 'cause Nithin doesn't finish up the third Forbidden Sweater until 9:31pm (only slightly off schedule!), and that hour and a half is more than enough for Whitney to change out the club members for three sims who aren't about to pass out: Julianna, her sister Selena (from the Welcome Wagon) and mail carrier Tamati, who she cornered when he dropped off a free plasma pack from having the Registered Vampire Lair lot trait.
- Tamati doesn't particularly enjoy his gift, but Selena and Julianna are much more receptive - the final gifting action finishes processing at 10:09pm, shortly after I took the following screengrab to commemorate the occasion. Yes, neither Nithin nor Whitney should really have been allowed to dress themselves, a statement that I know is incredibly bold given that I was the who actually dressed them, but still... vampires, eh?
I'm intrigued to hear how much the RNG on Plopsy held people up: in practice, Nithin got to ship a beanie out a bit after 11pm Sunday, but he didn't have any partially-completely projects to resume work on afterwards and his skill level wasn't super high by that point...
