Overstuffed

I didn't plan the nursery very well.

None of the children are happy, because all of the toddlers are angry (and loud, for that matter). I'm also realizing that it's going to be really hard to keep everyone happy, and more importantly, busy, once the toddlers age up. The good news is - well, there's not a lot of good news, but the children will become teens before then, and can work on their athletic skill (and, with a recent rules change, charisma).

For once, Generations is a boon: after checking the mail, literally every single one of the children got an imaginary friend doll. That'll shut 'em up, and since the house is stuffed full, there's no chance of unwanted supernaturals invading.

This is literally the first time I've stuffed a house completely full, and it is something of a challenge.

I'll manage, though.

The children became teens with little incident; they developed decent traits this time.

Abigail:

Virtuoso
Genius
Light Sleeper
Artistic

Emily:

Hates the Outdoors
Virtuoso
Childish
Athletic

Jacob:

Loves the Outdoors
Schmoozer
Athletic
Mean Spirited

And the second set of triplets eventually grew into children:

Yes I failed to catch her playing pretend in time.

Felicia (the blonde):

Couch Potato
Loves the Outdoors
Loves the Cold

Danica (the bald kid):

Neurotic
Brave
Disciplined

Zoe (has black hair):

Slob
Insane
Genius

I've also decided to kill Janie off, as she's no longer necessary. This will take quite a while as she barely eats at all.

Callous as it is to say, she's superfluous to my needs, and I think eight sims is a bit too much for me. I'll be cutting down the family size in the future.

Once they've outlived their usefulness.

Make sure if you have Overwatch to turn off - temporarily - checking for stuck Sims. When it notes she hasn't moved, it'll move her someplace safe - exactly what I don't want.

I deleted the teenagers' IF dolls the moment they hit teen, but I'll let the children keep theirs a little longer.

One other thing: apparently some of the extra packages for Story Progression caused some pretty impressive stupidity. One of them caused all that paternity leave, and I think another eliminated snow days, since I immediately started seeing them after removing the extra packages.

Paternity

Aliens.

Man, they're intrusive. Emil's got the unexpected weight gain on his second abduction - but since he's not an heir or spare, he'll have to give it up. Annoying, a -5 moodlet, but whatever.

I feel kind of bad. I wasn't paying attention, so he spent the day:

Getting food poisoning because he ate rotten food and finished,
Having a baby,
and going to work.

Poor, poor Emil.

He can't catch a break, either. The next day he catches the flu - or whatever - from his kids.

So that's nice.

I decided to throw caution to the wind and have another set of babies. I didn't figure that anything bad would come of it.

I was very wrong. Three new babies, and he gets paternity leave again, five whole days of it. I've been playing with Generations on despite my better judgment, and apparently - after a quick search - paternity leave is a Generations feature.

I knew there were a number of reasons I despised Generations for apoc challenges ....

The proof is in the pictures, I suppose.

Note: After posting I discovered it wasn't Generations. Check the comments for details. It's an addon to Story Progression. -.-;

Children!

So, the triplets are now children.

This is problematic.

Due to my shoddy parenting skills, none of them developed any kind of good traits when aging into childhood.

Jacob:

Loves the Outdoors
Athletic
Mean-Spirited

Jacob on the left, Emily on the right.

Emily:

Virtuoso
Athletic
Hates the Outdoors

Abigail.

Abigail:

Artistic
Genius
Light Sleeper

It could be worse, I suppose. I've got Abigail working on Artist, though she'll need to make friends with an elder. Hm. Maybe I should leave that for a later generation?

Hopes and Dreams

So I finally ended up moving them to Lunar Lakes to continue the challenge. This little kid validates everything forever.

I have never been so happy to see a child in my life.

Emil has the wish to become a rock star - well, he's going to get half his wish. He got Music for a career - I'm naturally pushing him down Symphonic instead. Two -very- nice lifts to start, and all I need to do is keep him happy, his guitar skill up, his logic skill up, and his bandmates happy. All within his remaining 26 days. 

I figured that he'd be fine to continue to work throughout Janie's pregnancies, but, well, it doesn't work like that, and so he has six days between him and going back to work. Note to self: no more babies until he's maxed his career.

We can do this. These extra days are just skill up days, then.

Despite getting paternity leave for it, Emil is quite content to continue working on his logic skill while his wife struggles with labor in the bathroom.

And then he ignores his wife as she goes upstairs, still in labor, to drop all three babies off in the cribs I have prepared.

The babies age into toddlers. On advice from Gary's blog, I'm not going to bother to train them to do - well, anything, but toddler skills. It's like an apocalyptic concentration camp nursery.

Pictured below: 

Jacob on the logic books,

Abigail on the painting books,

and Emily on the writing books.

Not pictured: All three children have dirty diapers and are okay with it.

Meanwhile both Emil and Janie have been abducted by aliens, barely a day apart. Fortunately, no sign of unexpected weight gain. I really, really want to lift symphonic.

On Emil and the Bugs

So I got Emil to:

Break up with his spouse,
Marry into the house,
Move into the house because glitches are stupid,
And finally, make a baby,

all in the span of a single Monday.

Tomorrow he'll be looking in the paper for a job - I don't have time to be overly picky with Emil; he only has six days left until adulthood, himself.

Except ... the paper kid and the mailman have both been MIA for at least a week by my count.

I have two extremely out of date mods that haven't caused any trouble before this - the scribbling pad and the moodfix mod. (I sometimes see persistently elated sims, rather than perpetually depressed sims).

So, off with their heads, I'll just hope an EA patch has finally addressed the mood issue completely. I somehow doubt it though.

Nnnnope. No such luck.

Bugs: The only thing besides you that can ruin a challenge with an excellent start.

So what I'm going to do about it is, I'm going to bulldoze the house and rebuild the lot.

Only I can't place a lot where I want to, so I go a little bit out of my way. I grab a 40x40 lot, which is handily adjacent to two residential lots (I apocalyptified the housing) and a place I can turn into a park. So I do.

As a little treat to myself to assuage the pain of having to go to extremes to fix things, (including, due to how I had to fix it, losing all of Janie's friends, classmates, and ex-accomplices from her relationship menu) I finish the building. I don't intend to build anything more for a while, anyway, and it's only about two weeks worth.

So here's the floor plan:

Maddeningly, this, too, did not fix it. I've got one more option, we'll see if this works. If not, I'll be restarting.

Sigh.

Giving Up on the Locals

Made the mob payment. I use Master Controller to do them, now that Gary's shown me how.

I've built a little more onto the upper levels. I'm using the method where you build everything on Monday, which means I can place 14 of any build item, and buy seven total things, but I can only do this on Mondays.

My first seven things? Two cribs, a Scary Bear (Witch), three bunk beds, and a light for the upper level.

Both of the criminals Janie knew are now retired oldsters, making them unfit for my purposes, but people in foreign locales don't seem to age, other than this one time when Mom's game glitched and everyone was dying of old age in college.

So in college, I had Janie use the Sim Finder app to bring her a male. All I know about him is that he's blond (I hate blonds, so hard to tell how old they are!), family oriented, has a good sense of humor, and is a party animal. I'm a little fuzzy on his other two traits, but Janie and Emil hit it off pretty well, and he's one of her only college friends to still be a friend.

Janie's now a cat burglar - only one more rank to go, but it's Friday of week 3. She's not even an adult yet; I should have no problems topping this career and moving on to the joys of pregnancy. Plus, since it's Master Thief, she doesn't have to quit for being pregnant. Truly, one of the most powerful lifts in the game.

I'm feeling good about everything right now.

I made Janie max her writing and start churning out Romance novels - they take forever to write (praise the stars, something for her to DO) and they generate a ton of income. For whichever of her children I task with Artist, I most certainly won't be waiting until 10 to start writing, nor will I start them on romance novels - children's books sell well enough, and you can churn out ten or twenty of them much more easily than you can do a romance series. Since I have a ridiculous amount of free time with my founder, though, giving her a task I can just pretty much leave her at all day is a good thing.

I'll be dealing with lots and lots of multitasking and micromanagement soon enough.

This just in: Sunday, Week 4, Janie is now a Master Thief. So much could have gone wrong Saturday night - primarily the possibility of getting arrested - that I'm extremely relieved. Janie, being the over-emotional girl she is, was openly crying. Too bad the lighting was so poor I couldn't see it well.

Unlocks:

- Master Thief

- Hopelessness

But what does that give us?

LTRs Unlocked:

- Professional Slacker

- Vacationer

- Change of Taste

- Nerd, Rebel, and Jock Influence

So not much, but not bad regardless. Besides, we're not in it for the LTRs at this point.

Unlocked actions:

Slacking off at work.

Not taking the first job in the paper/computer/die roll. (Still need Journalism, Science, or Military to select second, third jobs)

Quitting.

Missing a day or two of work without being fired.

Being pregnant and not getting fired.

Marrying

Cooking meals/group meals once married.

Elders and Teens may seek new employment (10 athletics to leave the lot though)

Elders and Teens may be self-employed

Aaaaand a bunch of other stuff, actually. Master Thief is widely agreed to be the best possible founder lift, with Military coming in as a close second.

So the first thing I do is invite Emil over; he'll be around at nine on Monday.

Annnnd finally, I'm building a starvation death cage.

Starting in Earnest

There was a bit of a hiccup during the graduation ceremony - Janie didn't get her university trait, so I used Master Controller to 'change' it. She did, however, get credit - she starts as a Getaway Driver.

$11k doesn't sound like much, especially not compared to what it was reduced from. But by apocalypse standards, a two story house on stilts, with a car port underneath, is practically a mansion. I've furnished it with most of the important skill building items, and I'm pretty confident I'll be able to make the mob payments by next Monday.

I'm already planning ahead; due to the LTR's I've picked, she starts as friends with pretty much everyone. Her boss is a con artist, and if he, like everyone else in this town, is a lazy slob and doesn't advance, I can push him up the Criminal branch (assuming, you know, marriage, spouse, babies). That'll be one awesome lift and one annoying lift taken care of all at once. Yay!

A can of soup and a quick rest later, and I have to figure out what to do with her now.

I set her to practicing writing for a while, then send her to bed, since she's going in at 9PM.

She gets a promotion, a little bonus, and standard pay.

Things are looking pretty swell right now!

I speed through the 'weekend' - Wednesday and Thursday - on ultra, with a lot of writing practice and then on Thursday, a lot of chatting up everyone she's ever met.

Week one's mob payment comes and goes, and Janie steadily progresses up the career ladder. By Sunday of Week 3, I've concluded that Criminal is the single buggiest career path I've ever encountered. Being forced in on days off, not getting credit for days that are required - there's a lot to hate about this career. But it's definitely one of the more valuable lifts.

My plan was to marry her boss, but since he's gone down the same career path it'd be pointless. There's another male who's just become a Getaway Driver who's somewhat promising, at least, however ....

Note to self: Because of arrest, unable to make mob payment of $2953. Do so on next load. After serving jail time.

College, Week Four

So a little bit of a surprise - if you only need 12 credits and you get a distinguished award in whatever you're shooting for, you don't automatically test out of college.

Damn shame, because I've run out of things I care to do -at- college.

Maybe I'll see about getting all that extra cash I didn't get before now. I'm sitting on nearly $20k without trying; what's another $80k between friends, right? It'll take quite a bit of work, but I've got a plan that might do the trick.

I'm not going to mess around with the job board for this - there are few enough decent day jobs, and frankly they're not worth the time, not really. I don't have a high enough skill to consider writing, painting, sculpting, or playing for tips - in point of fact, almost none of the skills I have maxed do a single thing toward making money if you're not in a career. I mean, there's searching for constellations but ... it's not fast or efficient.

But I can work with it. I'll see about maxing Science quickly and abusing plasma bugs - that's my plan, and since I still don't need to sleep, I think it'll work well. I'm going to buy a bookshelf with skill books, take some science books to the library, and study science. I'll also trade in some of my LTR points for "Fast Learner."

I picked Martial Arts as my Brain Enhancer skill - I feel wrong ignoring the Brain Enhancer since it's basically free skill points. Sure, I may never use those skills, but they're there.

By Sunday at midnight, Janie has a high enough Science skill to correlate scientific data, analyze insects, and start up the radiation experiments. She's also given a cockroach and a ladybug to work on.

The cockroach succumbs after three experiments, becoming the ultra-rare plasma bug. Score! Now all I have to do is level my science a little more - obviously no challenge at all - and then I can clone infinitely many plasma bugs - for fun, profit, and the American way. Or something. Mostly profit, though. Plasma bugs sell for 3k apiece, give or take. Mostly give.

By Tuesday morning, Janie's maxed Science and is ready to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of the big simoleans. She spends most of Tuesday cloning the plasma bug, and nets a little over $21k. Glad to see I'm probably right - this looks increasingly doable.

Her grades are suffering - or well, not advancing. So I have to choose - do I work on keeping my straight A's, or do I work toward getting more money than God?

Well, by Thursday evening, I've managed to clone up to $104,970. Not bad at all. Now to get those grades up to snuff.

I send Janie off to the library to study (hard) and read the social networking books in hopes that I can push that grade meter up high enough to succeed.

I'm absolutely shocked when she gets a 'flying colors' pass on the first of her two tests this semester; she'd been at maybe 3/4 a bar, and that brought her up to 7/8. The second also says 'flying colors,' but I don't get a chance to see what the meter reads.

Janie finished the term with a B, but her overall average is an A. I will definitely take one sub-par semester and $11,036 to start (after selling off a few more worldly belongings like the dragon, all of her course materials, and some gifts she'd received for some unknown reason. Every penny counts, and I've managed to put together quite a few pennies. It's pretty great.

So, that was college!

Janie's finishing stats:

10 Athletics
10 Charisma
10 Science
10 Handiness
10 Logic
7 Social Networking
4 Cooking
3 Martial Arts
1 Mixology

Rank 9 Nerd

Fast Learner
Attractive
Multi-tasker
Hardly Hungry
Meditative Trance Sleep
Bookshop Bargainer
Fertility Treatment

College, Week Three

Winter has fallen on campus. At least at the very beginning, it's kind of nice. Some several generations down the line I'm going to be very, very tired of snow, especially since I'm giving Generations another chance.

On the other hand, I don't seem to get snow days without Generations installed, so there's that.

Unlike Gary, I tend to prefer lifting Artist early because until Military is cleared - admittedly that's going to be easier to get since I'm starting with Master Thief - you still have to deal with elders. Usually I slap the most artistic child with that challenge.

Now, regarding the college experience.

The reason Week One was all on its own is because I like to take advantage of my scholarship credits, and that gave me more time to do -everything- else. 

Doing Week Two and Three together means that Janie didn't lose any academic progress over the weekend, and will have minimal challenge in Week Three. I'm having her use the 'Suck Up to Professor' tone, because 'Work Hard' is pointless when you're already the best.

I'm also taking literally every opportunity I get to 'Talk to Charcoal about Logic.' I figure it'll either be Logic or Handiness that rounds out my third skill for Renaissance Sim. She's at 9 logic, but I'm also boosting Handiness with the Brain Enhancement Machine - which, notably, can boost neither Logic nor Social Networking.

Janie is constantly bursting with happiness, more than normal sims even, thanks to the Over Emotional trait. This means she's constantly racking up LTR points, which is pretty useful now - it'll next show up as a useful trait when more LTRs are unlocked.

Maybe I overestimated the simplicity of keeping Janie's grades up - after a day of doing nothing related to her major except for going to class, there's a noticeable gap between her current progress and the top.

Well, that's nothing an hour or two at the books and the business planner can't fix.

And there's logic maxed, which nets me Meditative Trance Sleep and Hardly Hungry.

The baby dragons are sincerely, intensely overpowered. Most of that logic skill was from chatting up Charcoal, which is in itself pretty powerful. Then there's the part where Janie doesn't need to eat or sleep for pretty much her entire college career. Granted, I spent real money on Dragon Valley - and a little more on the Renaissance Faire - but I liked and wanted these things anyway.

A note about the different kinds of dragons: 

I feel the baby black dragon is the most useful. Logic is a fantastic skill to raise quickly, and not having to worry about hunger or sleep is really, really powerful.

You can find more information about the other flavors of dragon here. They're all pretty good, depending on what you want them for.

Long story short, though - if you have this content, I can't encourage you enough to grab a dragon for your easy mode college career.

Janie rolled the wish to discover all potions - not especially hard, I figure, so I buy a chemistry set and get to work. A day and a half into discovering potions, and she's got 6/10 discovered; by the end of the semester she's learned them all.

Not needing to sleep is pretty awesome. I see why Shank endorses insomnia; you just get more done.

Janie's stats at the end of week three (obviously she passed with flying colors):

10 Charisma

10 Athletics

10 Handiness

10 Logic

4 Cooking

4 Social

1 Mixology

Multitasker

Fertility Treatment

Bookshop Bargainer

Meditative Trance Sleep

Hardly Hungry

and 19k-ish LTR points.

College, Week Two

To open up the semester, I checked the job board for anything 'social group' related. Fortunately, the very first social job available was to level nerd status - beneficial when that's the social group I'm working on maxing, isn't it?

Due to a little bug where Charcoal (the baby black dragon) decided to be inoperable, I had to sell him and rebuy a new egg. So, I dragged out the Sleep Slave bed a little bit earlier than I intended to, and Janie got in her once-a-week nap. The new egg hatched into a new baby black dragon without incident.

This semester, I'm taking two classes, and yay, they're in the early morning. Not that it matters terribly when you don't sleep, but it's a bit annoying when you do.

Managing to keep grades up this semester will be harder for two reasons. One, with Charisma maxed out, there's not much on that front Janie can actually do to improve - and get credit for it, at least.

Secondly, social networking doesn't seem to actually do much to improve academic performance. In an apocalypse scenario - where you won't be allowed to use social networking beyond college - it's basically useless, too.

What I did to address these concerns was, essentially, work hard, study immediately before class, have fun between classes (where possible), and spend a lot of time with the business study aid. Studying immediately before her finals netted her flying colors on the first test and that pushed her performance meter from 7/8ish to full.

In short, I had Janie bust her hump and she managed to ace this semester, as well. In celebration, I had her shoot for that 'work out for ten hours' wish, which incidentally gave me time to write this!

Janie's stats as of Sunday at 7 AM:

- Athletics 10
- Charisma 10
- Cooking 4
- Handiness 4
- Logic 7
- Social Networking 2

Multitasker
Fertility Treatment
Bookshop Bargainer

Also she made rank 8 of Nerd, netting her the Over Emotional trait. Happy sims are happy.

College, Week One

This is an apocalypse challenge, and I'm planning to stick it through to the end!

I'm starting with the easy university start, where you're completely unrestricted until you leave college.

I'm doing this as kind of an informational blog, observing the strategies I take and why I'm taking them (in part to keep myself on track). If you want a purely instructional blog, Gary's doing a fantastic one here.

So, Janie McRae is the randomized name for my founder. I rolled her up with:

- Slob

 This is one that pretty much everyone can agree on; it makes it so your sim doesn't care about being stinky, plus you can eat rotten food without vomiting.

- Workaholic

 Also pretty obvious; workaholics can work hard for longer.

- Ambitious

 Raising skill in school and work faster and more efficiently since forever. Also more LTR points!

- Genius

 Get me some scholarship money!

- Friendly

 Making friends is good for basically everything ever.

Not a bad set, certainly. As predicted, I get a scholarship for Business that knocks 6 credits off of what I need for it. I rolled a 4 on Founder Option 2, which gives me - as no surprise to anyone - Master Thief. One of the best possible lifts for a founder, I certainly am not going to complain that a business degree does little to nothing toward skilling you for the Criminal career path.

Incidentally, I prettied her up a little bit, but beyond the first outfit, she's one of the more stylish sims I've had come out randomly.

So then it's time to buy me a dragon!

It took me a couple of tries to get the dragon I wanted (precisely three) because I didn't pay enough attention. I went with the armored black dragon because you waste a lot of time in college sleeping. In the Easy Start, you're unrestricted - so I'm choosing not to sleep or eat.

Pretty awesome stuff, and I'm using Dragon Valley, to boot!

With my first 10k LTR points, I buy Multitasker late Wednesday. This is a good all around LTR. I'm planning on snagging Bookshop Bargainer and - well, the rest will be decided later on. Probably Fertility Treatment, though, since I'm planning this one to be pure 'normal' humans (despite the Amazing Technicolor Population of Dragon Valley). Apparently Elves come in all kinds of colors. Crazy.

I'm deciding to put absolutely zero effort into making money - it's more effort than it's worth to crest $83,080 (having successfully done so without duplicating plasma bugs) and with bookshop bargainer and - hopefully - three skills already maxed by the end of college, I won't need more than $8308 to get off the ground.

I have enough money by Thursday to have bought the Sleep Slave Double Bed, three different copies of the dragon egg (selling back the two purple dragons I spawned), a brain enhancement machine, and the Vorn truck without even budging my profit meter, thanks to hitting the academic center and applying for funds a couple of times. I occasionally get this bug where my Sim can't check the job board for anything - that's struck again, which is part of my decision to not bother with cash.

On Friday, Janie breezes through her (singular) final exam, lands on the Dean's List, and scores an A grade for the semester.

Her final stats for the semester are:

4 Logic

7 Athletic

10 Charisma

1 Cooking

1 Social Networking

Rank 4 Nerd

Multitasker

Fertility Treatment