Big Dreams Dynasty - Hints and Tips

[GlazeyLady]

This thread is not for questions - please ask any questions in the Big Dreams Dynasty thread.

[GlazeyLady]

For Rancherino:
@oshizu made a "Canned Goods and Animal Treats" thread which lists all the canned foods and their ingredients as well all the animal treats, their ingredients, and their effects. You can find it here.

[oshizu]

Magical Artifacts and Magical Tomes

One of my founders is currently working on the Magical Maestro Big Dream, which requires two collections from; brooms, wands, familiar orbs, and magical tomes.
I made a list of them all (in the forum's Realm of Magic section) to help me track what my sim has and doesn't have.
If you're interested, go the lists by clicking here.

[Granny Lawlor]

I'm sharing this, in case others get the same problem I had.

Nell, one of my Big Dreamers needed to get a Drama Club Accolade for Internet Celeb. She maxed out the progress bar on level 3 of Drama Club as a child which is the limit for children.
When she aged up to a teen, with the progress bar at max, she spent a week going to Drama Club before I realised she should've been promoted. Googling the problem, it is a known glitch.
To get around it without cheats or mods, the advice is to drop their performance by Taking It Easy or Leaving Early and then it triggers the promotion.
I had Nell Leave Early and, straight away, she got the promotion!

It's possible this might be the same in other careers - the original poster reckoned that any career promotion is triggered by a change in the progress bar. If it's maxed out, there won't be any change unless it's downwards.

[oshizu]

Rancherino's "Raise an Evil Chicken" task

This task of the Rancherino Big Dream was the most difficult, time-consuming one for me.
At one point, I was puzzled why the farmer's wife was throwing away the incubating Obsidian Eggs then later realized that only Hatchable Eggs can be incubated without spoiling.
If one of your sims decides to try the Rancherino Big Dream (which i quite enjoyed), here are two tips to make the Evil Chicken task a speedier process.

Tip #1: As soon as your rancher gains a Midnight Treat, give it to a young adult hen to create an Evil Hen
Don't worry about saving that first Midnight Treat, like I did.
Your new Evil Hen will lay enough Obsidian Eggs for you to later make your own Midnight Treat and Spicy Treat for the Make All Animal Treats" task.

Tip #2: To get a Hatchable Obsidian Egg faster, move your Evil Hen into a separate coop with her own rooster.
Background: At first, I had a coop with one normal rooster, 2 Golden Hens, 1 Evil Hen, and 4 normal hens.
Despite giving Flirty Treats (to promote rooster breeding and increase a hen's chance of laying a hatchable egg) to both the rooster and Evil Hen, she only laid non-hatchable Obsidian Eggs.
Yes, the rooster had a higher chance of breeding, but he was apparently not breeding with the Evil Hen.

Hatchable Eggs!: The day after I moved the Evil Hen and a new rooster into a new coop with its own fenced-off yard, the Evil Hen laid a Hatchable Obsidian Egg.
The very next day, she laid two more Hatchable Obsidian Eggs and several more since then, without Flirty Treats.
I also turned the Evil Hen's rooster into an Evil Rooster, but I don't know if that's why the Evil Hen produces only Obsidian Eggs.

Aging Up; My first Evil Chick took nine days to mature into a young adult, thus completing my Rancheringo Big Dream.
I'm sure the wait wouldn't have seemed so agonizingly if I'd started the task earlier and gave the Evil Hen her own breeding grounds from the start.

[Granny Lawlor]

Kleptomaniac Sims will swipe things while at school and work as well as when they travel to venues and other homes. Some of these things can't be set for sale in their retail store.
Unsurprisingly, the piles of empty dishes are not saleable but so far, the other things my Sim has been unable to Set For Sale are:

swiped from school: books, a miniature doll

Metals need to be sent to the Geo Council and the resulting elements can then be sold.
Crystals can be set to be refined by jewellers and the returned item can also be sold.
Stolen fossils can be sold without modifying.

(I'll update this post if I find any more)

[Granny Lawlor]

In doing the Dark Side Lord/Lady Big Dream you have to rely heavily on the stats page (found by clicking on the bar chart - upper right in the personality screen) to count the number of Fights Won and the Whims Completed

Each time you load your game the numbers on the stats page always reset to 0 so this can cause a few near panics.

It can take a little while each time but eventually they process and show the true figures. I guess it speeds up the loading time if the numbers are processed in the background during gameplay.

All the best if you go for it! I believe we owe gratitude to @Metropolis Man for the 666 whims aim! I'm nearly there, lol!

[oshizu]

Secret Society, Rank 3

I am finding the Life-Long Learning aspiration quite time-consuming.
Besides the coursework, the Academic aspiration requires additional campus time for attending guest lectures (6 hrs) and tutoring (25 hours).
You can imagine why I wanted to reach Rank 3 in the Secret Society ASAP.
This was the first time having a sim join the Secret Society.

My Secret Society tasks were glitched and never refreshed after the first two times, so we focused on the Sprite Celebration Rituals to increase the "rank performance bar."
During a 4-hr ritual, making a half dozen offerings then socializing with the other members raised the bar around 25%.
My sim's fourth ritual (with his bar at 75%), he spammed high-quality offerings without any socializing and maxed his bar in 65 minutes.

Other tips:
*I emptied my Life-Longer Sim's personal inventory so that it contained mostly offerings, so we wouldn't have to do so much scrolling.
*Papa helped out by both cooking and baking excellent offerings.
*Rare metals and crystals are hard to obtain; my sim mostly offered excellent baked goods and perfect Birds of Paradise.

[Nandarelle]

I'm struggling to actually join the Secret Society.
My Sim has left gifts at the statue several times and got a surreal focus moodlet form them. He used rare crystals and metals.
Is there more to it? Does he or the household need te be asleep? Do they need to be in Britechester?
Or is my game being buggy?

[oshizu]

My sim was living in StrangerVille and the whole household was awake when the Secret Society members visited (sometime between 10pm-11pm).
I believe he made an offering at night, so he wasn't visited until the following night.

I don't know what else to tell you because my game is extremely buggy these days (T pose, anyone?), but my Life-Long Learner sim still got invited to join the Secret Society.
Have you tried repairing your game?

[Nandarelle]

Thanks Oshizu. I have not yet repaired my game, but that will be the next step.
I was really mostly wondering if I was doing something wrong, since I somehow haven't joined the secret society before.

[techiechick]

I'm struggling to actually join the Secret Society.
My Sim has left gifts at the statue several times and got a surreal focus moodlet form them. He used rare crystals and metals.
Is there more to it? Does he or the household need te be asleep? Do they need to be in Britechester?
Or is my game being buggy?

My sim got that surreal focus then was visited the next night in the dynasty house, located in StrangerVille, by Secret Soceity members.
The entire household was awake at the time.
I don't know what else to tell you, because my game is very buggy, but my sim still the visit sometime between 10-11 pm.

I've only joined the secret society once before this challenge... It took my Lifelong Learner three or four tries this time to get a visit from the society. So I don't know if it's a bug or if the society is usually picky, but it also happened to me. My first offering was a cowplant berry and I figured, being valuable, it was sure to bring them. But I think it was a pretty low-level baked good that finally did it. I tried a sourdough loaf, a plate of fudge bars, and something else I forget.

Speaking of gardening items... I was thinking of having a spouse complete the Master Mixer dream since the adult requirements aren't too complicated. But the requirement of "make every kind of drink available to you" might be tough unless you also have a gardener in the household, or get a packet of rare plants somehow. I forgot about the one drink that requires a death flower.

[Nandarelle]

Good news, he got in! The secret society showed up during his sister's wedding.

[oshizu]

Speaking of gardening items... I was thinking of having a spouse complete the Master Mixer dream since the adult requirements aren't too complicated. But the requirement of "make every kind of drink available to you" might be tough unless you also have a gardener in the household, or get a packet of rare plants somehow. I forgot about the one drink that requires a death flower.

@techichick
Do you own Realm of Magic? Death flowers show up often in Casters Alley at the potion ingredients shop.
(One of my founders did Rancherino, so he grafted a Death Flower.)
If you wanted to make the Shadow Realm (forgot the name) drink with your own Death Flower, you can buy one, plant it, then harvest a mature plant to make your drink

[oshizu]

Good news, he got in! The secret society showed up during his sister's wedding.

Yay, that's great news. 
What did you do different? Or did the Secret Society just want you to make multiple offerings first?  How weird that they arrived during a wedding.