World Handyman Championships

[LenaLJ]

Done with the first challenge of the year and even a day early wich doenst be my kind of doings.

Number of upgrades: 436
Unique %: 100

Total: 436

A nice start of this years journey and the upcomming challenges all look good. Thumbs up Metro.

[Jinx13]

Objects Upgraded   111
Unique Objects   79%

111 x .79 = 87.69

Total   87

[Metropolis Man]

Great score, LenaLJ. I would not expect anything else from you.

The clock is ticking for those of you still hammering away on those objects. We're down to the wire so get those scores in. Just a reminder that you must submit your score no later than January 29 (whenever January 29 for you is).

[crth]

Handy Manny finished!  He upgraded 237 items and completed 96% of the unique upgrades.

237 X .96 = 227.52

Total = 227

[07dparte]

Think I did quite badly in the end

97 objects, 63% unique .....

97 X 0.63 = 61

Great challenge looking forward to the next one.

[mammabec]

Harold ManOfHandy finished 75 upgrades and 81% unique which equals a very meh 60.

Think I practiced too much and still didn't get it.  Can't wait to hear the strategies.

[MomOfMany]

I finished! I was hoping to do better but I'll take it!
I had 119 objects upgraded and 96% upgrades completed.
119 x .96 = 114.24
Making my final score 114!

Can't wait to hear the strategies tomorrow. I honestly have no idea how people did it with 400+ upgrades or even the 100% upgrades. I thought I had a good strategy for getting 100% but it didn't work out quite as I had intended!

[Sunnysabjes]

Aaaand I didn't make it My computer is getting to old and slow to run the sims properly... I hope I can enter other chalenges when I have my new computer.

[Metropolis Man]

And that's a wrap to our first challenge of the 2012 Tournament, folks. Great job to all and a special tip of the hat to Chuckles. Wow, those scores in the 400's is really amazing. Heck even I have no clue how they did it, believe me. Or I would have done it too! Lol.

The Motive Mobile was a big thing for me. I had my guy get that asap so he could hammer around the clock. The whole Tinkering vs choosing regular upgrades seems so inconsistent. Sometimes Tinkering took way more than 3 or 4 hours and was maddening. What seemed to work best in the end is buying sprinklers and Tinkering on those -- 75% of the time the upgrade was done in an hour or hour and a half.

[CSquared2]

I also used sprinklers.  Once I got to the point that I decided pursuing a higher percentage of unique upgrades was not going to bring me the same results a higher quantity of upgrades would, I bought ten at a time, set the speed to 4 and watched him go.  I did not purchase the motive mobile, though I did go for the lesser, single-need LTRs, though he never got to stop showering.     I purchased meditative trance sleep first, figuring sleep takes up the most time.  I really didn't think I had the time to concentrate on wishes to the extent I would have liked to.

The worst thing I did was play in Bridgeport.  I use it a lot for challenges because the starter houses are my favorites, but it backfired this time.  A lot of the nicer things were in nicer houses and I simply didn't want to give my sim time to try and make friends with someone.  There's really just one family that isn't a) rich with a gate or b) in an apartment that takes too long to access (this was a problem with clubs, too); that one family saw A LOT of my sim as he upgraded everything in their house.  I also was unaware that the single public hot tub in town was really upgrade-able, but because my sim wasn't actually on the lot with it, it didn't show up as an option.  I thought something was wrong and that particular tub was a no go.  Money turned out to be a real problem in the end since I wound up buying him a hot tub (and a tattoo machine) to upgrade.

I wrote this part and deleted it, but then I thought I should be honest and re-post it.  It occurred to me that I might have unwittingly cheated; I only just thought of it that way now.  I hadn't known what all the upgrades were and thought and thought about how I could find out.  I thought it was too bad that I didn't have a sim who'd already done them; then they'd be in that sim's skill journal.  Then I remembered Max (thanks Leto!)  Sure enough, they were there, and it definitely made a difference.  I doubt I would have gotten more than 50-60% of the unique upgrades otherwise.  I just did it at the time, I didn't even think that he would constitute custom content that would give me an advantage.     I didn't win, or even come close, but if that means my score should be disqualified, I understand.  I hope everyone knows I didn't intend to skip around the rules when I did it.   

[drift9999]

The strategy I used (though my score was the lowest of the 400s) was basically to quickly pull together LTH points from the start, grab the prepared traveler and opportunistic rewards and then head to France for a six-day vacation. During the 6-day vacation, I focused on the adventures to get a level 3 visa and also to earn enough money for my sim's LTW, Swimming in Cash.  The traits I had were Handy (obvious reasons), Ambitious (the food replicator and teleportation pad have upgrades as well), Over-Emotional (same reason as Ambitious), Loves the Outdoors (as again to collect lifetime happiness points) and Adventurous (to help with the level 3 visa). I also remember joining the firefighter career early on as you'll need to do the extinguisher upgrade which occurs at level 5, I think, and I didn't want to waste possible handiness-related time with emergencies. (I feel a bit disturbed writing those last few words...)

Following this, I bought the motive mobile and, after clearing the required stuff to attain as high a unique % of upgrades as I could, focused on changing doorbells. At home, I built a room next to the road with a single door so that access to the motive mobile would be very fast. In France, the base camp door is near the road and thus allows for pretty quick refreshment of needs as well. The level 3 visa allowed me to take two 15-day vacations (though those with 100% upgrades had something else in mind as they'd have to visit China for the fortune-cookie machine, I think).

It basically became a game of just hammering away, changing the bell to a haunted scare-chord and back to the usual tone over and over again until the time ran out. I didn't get enough LTH points after that to buy the Teleportation Pad as well, so I missed out on that.

[Metropolis Man]

The level 3 visa allowed me to take two 15-day vacations...

Oh, my gosh. Of course. I'm kicking myself right now.

[CSquared2]

I also remember joining the firefighter career early on as you'll need to do the extinguisher upgrade which occurs at level 5, I think, and I didn't want to waste possible handiness-related time with emergencies.

This was something I found out in perhaps the third week.  I was totally not going to go for it then!

[annieb]

My strategy was basically the same as drift9999's. First thing I did was join the firefighter career and ask for a 5 day unpaid vacation. Just by learning the handiness skill I was able to get to level 5 without working a single day and was able to get a lot of LTH happiness.  My big thought was that I needed to get as many LTH points as fast as I could. I gave my sim the neurotic, ambitious, over-emotional, handy, and adventurous traits. Her lifetime wish was super popular. I got the Attractive reward and after that it was just a matter of introducing herself to 40 sims (20 to get the super friendly challenge and after that she became friends with every person she met). I tried some other lifetime wishes, but I liked that this one also helped me get her level 3 visas faster (travel opportunities that involve talking to people or convincing people). After getting her lifetime wish fulfilled, my sim kept earning points until she saved up for the motive mobile. Once she had the mobile she just kept upgrading things until she had enough points for the prepared traveler reward and opportunistic reward (to get her level 3 visa faster).

I spent almost the entire first vacation in France getting her level 3 visa. I was also able to get the certificate of partnership with France for an additional 3 days each vacation. From then on it was just a matter of continual upgrades until she had to hop in the motive mobile. I tested all the upgrades for time and found the doorbell to be one of the fastest, plus the benefit of only having to have one door was nice.

[tara1727]

Yes, you can take two 18-day vacations if you can get enough ancient coins for certificate of partnership during your first visit. And you really don't need to go to France as you can buy a community lot and buy a nectar register on it to get a nectar maker. All this I realized too late for my own good lol.