My strategy was essentially to maximize unique fish and non-fish items the first week and household funds the second week.
- Both my Sims had Loves the Outdoors, Insider, and Genius traits. Starting with Angling Ace aspiration also gave them the Collector trait.
- They lived on the cheapest lot in Oasis Springs and only bought one fishbowl, 7 aquariums, a storage box, and a wall (to display the mounted fish).
- With Rally the Troops (acquired from joining Good Timers but used in their own Fishers Club), Loves the Outdoors trait, and the ability to socialize while fishing, the only need they had to worry about was Hygiene (used the Oasis Springs gym showers).
- I used the Fishing Locations pdf on the forum to help identify where to find various fish, and started with common areas to build fishing skill.
- After they each caught all the base game fish I was trying to get, my Sims went to Sulani and fished in Lani St. Taz. They traveled to Sand Simoleon Beach because being on a public lot allowed them to keep the club going.
- They caught all but two of the Sulani fish - those two require going out on a boat, which I didn't bother with.
- During the first week, the most valuable non-fish items they caught were Voodoo Dolls ($950), Stringvarius Violins ($425 each), Cowplant Berries (which I planted and then sold for $475 each), and a few Sulani artifacts (worth between $100 and $295).
- My Sims spent the entire second week in Selvadorada, where they "Angled for a Big Catch", sucked down Moodlet Solvers (having already completed Angling Ace), and fought off all manner of horrible jungle attacks. The jungle area to the right of the temple entrance has a fishing spot where the "Angle for a Big Catch" can result in fishing up two varieties of Omiscan Gold treasures. Together my Sims fished up 14 Omiscan Gold Calendar Plates ($8,041 each) and 13 Skull Diamond Gold Pererecas ($10,092 each). After saving 1 of each for the collection box, the others were sold for a total of $225,637.
- In total, my Sims had 43 unique fish each and a total of 28 unique non-fish items.
Regarding whether it's better to focus on funds or multiplier . . . I find that there is always a need to focus on both to a degree, but at some value, one becomes more important. So when I start a new challenge, I make my copy of the spreadsheet and plug different numbers into the spreadsheet to try to get a feel for where that breakpoint is. I also consider which of the numbers has a finite limit.
In this case, there is a limit on the number of unique fish and unique items you can fish up - with all the packs, there are 53 unique fish - I decided not to go after the ones in the Oasis Springs hidden lot (didn't want to spend time leveling handiness), the ones in Granite Falls (didn't want to spend additional vacation money and time) or the Moonwood Mill Luna Fish (time-dependent). The only other base game fish I didn't get were the Anglerfish (saw some in the water, but couldn't entice them onto the hook), the Wolf Eel (which can sometimes be caught in the middle fishing spot in Oasis Springs but requires getting frogs for bait) and the Red-Tailed Black Shark (although trying for this one yielded 4 Voodoo Dolls and quite a few violins).
My target was to get my multiplier as close to 2 as I could by the end of the first week. The second week was all about the money. I knew about the fishing spot in Selvadadorada thanks to
@oshizu who clued me in to it a few months ago when one of my Dreamers in my Big Dreams Dynasty was working on the Omiscan treasures collection. I didn't realize there were only two varieties until this challenge and hadn't paid attention to how frequent they were, but they were the most valuable item that could be fished up that I knew of.
