House 003 Chapter 1 | House 003 Chapter 3

Goal check:

House 003 Building Goals:
40,000 value home (2 bedroom, 1 bath minimum) (shell built as of now, about 20k in value)
Build a Park (after gardening and fishing lvl 10)
House 003 Generational Goals:
Complete the Angling Ace aspiration (complete)
Gardening skill level 10
Fishing Skill level 10 (complete)
Grow a Cow Plant & collect at least 5 unique essences (1 happiness collected)
Young Adult heir (not born yet)

The Wall o’ Fish and the house is getting better. Couldn’t quite afford a TV yet, so the cowplant is still their main source of entertainment.

Well, that and this.  HAHA. Sure is nice to have a better bed, though.

Welcome to our heir, Caitlin. Yet another girl heir. Wonder how long I’ll keep getting girls.

Aha.. an Inspiration essence. Thanks, Daichi!

Aww.. Daichi looks like he’s going to be a great dad.

Playful essence.

The kitchen is finally getting better. Still wary of getting them a stove since Daichi really seems to like cooking when we have leftovers in the fridge.

Mara is pregnant again, and with a baby on the way plus a toddler… let’s just say she’s a busy mom. Barely any time to get things done, especially not fishing.. so the garden keeps her occupied while she’s a homebody.

Some fun.. and another look at my Wall o’ Fish. Gotta say I love that thing. I really hope I can get it done.

Second baby on the way. She gets named Kierra.

And finally… Mara isn’t pregnant so we can get back to work on essences. Fairly sure this was the last unique essence needed.

… Or not. Looks like I still need one. Of note: one happiness potion somehow got deleted and isn’t shown.. but I got a duplicate thanks to Daichi and his obsession with the cowplant.

Adulthood! Poor Mara’s starting to age.

Oh, no. I accidentally killed the cowplant.  🙁  And I didn’t save a berry for just in case.. so I’ll have to wait until I can 1, catch one, and 2, get it to grow up.

A very unhappy Kierra. That cursed lot trait strikes again. And somehow this is one of the very few pictures I have that shows Caitlin as a toddler. Guess I was just so run off my feet that I forgot about pics.

And Caitlin grows up. She’s definitely going to need a hair change.. but I’ll wait until she’s grown up.

Picking flowers. And a reminder picture for me so I can remember…

That Mara just finished a goal: 10 fishing and 10 gardening. That means it’s about time to put in a park.

The front of the house gets some very minor landscaping.

The gardener working.. and I add a Woodworking table to the back porch.

Daichi’s birthday. And I actually remembered it this time.

… He doesn’t seem happy about it.

Another trip to Sylvan Falls… and some more money earned.

The house is finally coming along. No new wall fishies, but got the two kid’s rooms done and the kitchen has upper cupboards.

A better shot of the kid’s rooms.

Playtime with daddy.

Here I take a break to “build” a park. I use the park I designed for my Settler’s Challenge, and tweak a couple things (like the pond) to set it up as a desert park.

I think it looks pretty good.

A shot of the living room with walls up. As you can see if you look closely, I got the unique essences completed. Being brave this time around, I’m leaving the cowplant there and seeing how many I can get.

Mara is now working on handiness in the background while everyone else lives their normal life.

Finally. No more toddlers – Kierra ages up.

She apparently loves the outdoors.. and her glasses.. haha.

Kid’s room transferred from toddler to child. Of note: once again, I forget the anti monster light, so I get woken up the next night.

Caitlin pretty much ignores the cowplant.. apparently Kierra isn’t the same way.

… Haha.. Caitlin has a bear phase. Too funny.

Another essence from Daichi.

… And one from Mara.

Mara still working on handiness.

.. And yet another essence.

Just before aging up, Caitlin gets her grade school “A”.

The house value is now well over the 40k requirement.. the park is built.. our heir is a child – nearly teenager.. and the fishing aspiration is done. Oh yeah, and I have all the essences. Next goal: handiness to 10 so I can open the grotto and get those fishies… then I want the Granite Falls fish as well as the Selvadorada ones, so we have a couple of vacations in the future. I’m still hopeful I’ll be able to finish my Wall o’ Fish… but we’ll see. I’ve never finished a total collection in Sims 4, so this should be interesting.

House 003 Chapter 1 | House 003 Chapter 3

House 002 Chapter 2 | House 003 Chapter 2

Sorry the picture is a little dark.. that just happens to be when Mara moved out. So here’s a better one:

Mara’s stats to start with: (She’ll change to Angling Ace when play starts, this is what she rolled as a teenager.)

The hunger might pose to be a problem, but everything else is okay.

And the dreaded money shot:

Two last things to do before we start: One, roll for house traits. We got Cursed, Romantic Aura, and Great Acoustics. That should be fun. Not.

And Two: Lets check our goals for this house:

House 003 Building Goals:
40,000 value home (2 bedroom, 1 bath minimum)
Build a Park (after gardening and fishing lvl 10)
House 003 Generational Goals:
Complete the Angling Ace aspiration
Gardening skill level 10
Fishing Skill level 10
Grow a Cow Plant & collect at least 5 unique essences
Young Adult heir

Looks like we have our work cut out for us. This house always scares me because of the cow plant. I lost so many sims to it back in The Sims 3 that I’m especially leery of it in Sims 4.

Now, before I start posting pictures I have a little story with a moral. So I started playing, and taking pictures…. and I really got into it. After playing through most of Mara’s Young Adult stage, including building the house, getting married, massive amounts of fishing trips and hungry cowplants, and even into her first pregnancy… my game bugged out. One of those bugs/glitches that means you can’t recover from. And. I. Had. Forgotten. To. Save.  *facepalm* Luckily I had a pretty good idea of how to rebuild the house.. but everything else was gone. I restarted back from my backup save at the beginning of the house, and played at least enough to re-frame the house.. and I DID manage to find the same guy…. but he has a different job. and the joke’s on me because this job:

….turned into this job:

HAHA! Oh well. He’s still a pretty good hubby to have around (other than his singing practice at all hours).. and he should make cute kids. So.. the moral is.. save your game, kiddos. Often. (Why I wasn’t doing that already I don’t know, I’ve had this particular bug quite a bit and for a while had been saving every hour or so of game time… I guess I just got too busy building and playing to remember that tonight!) For those curious, it’s the bug that someone is “stuck” aging so you can’t save, travel.. well pretty much anything. And there’s no sim anywhere that needs resetting.. and no way that I’ve found to get the game out of that particular state other than to return to the main menu without saving… so you lose everything that’s not saved. I’ve done some research on it, and it’s a known bug, but it’s still incredibly annoying. Not as annoying as the very buggy Sims 3 .. but still annoying. Anyway.. back to our regularly scheduled post.

First order of business: lots of fishing.

A night on the bench with stinky clothes (from what, you can probably guess.. getting enough money for a toilet just from fishing is pretty tough.)

But by mid-day on the second day, she had the beginnings of a camp. With her social need really low, I set about trying to find a hubby.

And oh happy day, I find Daichi again. Too bad about the above mentioned job difference, but a romantic first kiss by the pond makes everything okay.

The next day, we invited Daichi over and had the two go out on a date to my restaurant. Before sitting down to dinner, got them to “Boyfriend-Girlfriend status”.. they seem happy about it.

After dinner, finished up a few more date goals (namely, a massage and some deep conversations).

..And got a gold date score.

Another invite over to our house… a passionate kiss that looks rather painful (haha)…

….and a Proposal. Is it accepted?

Yep! They make such a nice couple. They hurry up and get married, and I cheat away the 20k he came with (rather sad about that, because money from fishing is such a luck game.. and I rarely have the luck.)

The wedding night. Luckily no one was around, so the woohoo didn’t fail without walls. And while I’m thinking about not having walls, I remembered another difference in this time playing rather than the save fail game. I don’t have to deal with mom’s (Carlie’s) gravestone. In the first attempt, Carlie had visited in the first couple days and died on the lot so I had her ghost in addition to the “fun” that the Cursed lot trait gives us.

And since I already have the 1000 simoleons for traveling, I send Mara out to Willow Creek to get some Bluebells. The flowers that are around the current lot (Tulips) have that annoying Energizing mood aura which makes getting the correct mood for the cow plant elixirs next to impossible. I remembered how much it made things a mess in my first playthrough of the Drifter challenge.

After getting the Bluebells needed for the start of a money garden, I send her off to look at the Sylvan Glade tree.

Getting through all the options.. and Mara is off to fish.

Sylvan Glade is so pretty.. and I luck out with a bunch of Sturgeons and Cowplant Berries for money. Probably one of the very best trips I’ve had to Sylvan Glade ever.

Back home, I spend what I made (except for the last 1000, of course) and start on the house shell.

… And I start in on my “Wall o’ Fish” I told myself I was going to make. I’d like to get the fish collection completed this generation, but I’m not all that sure it’ll happen being that there’s a lot of expansion fish I need to get to complete it. We’ll see, though.

… And it begins. Shortly after this fix (and the toilet breaking) I buy the unbreakable toilet to save me some work.

House shell mostly complete. Just missing the last two bedrooms and the wall for the master bath. (I’m going for a 3 bedroom 2 bath house). The green area in the front right is a split level living room to showcase the Wall ‘o Fish. For some reason, I like doing split level rooms (although it’s much harder to do so in this Sims as opposed to Sims 3.. but whatever.)

The Wall o’ Fish is growing!

Another trip to Sylvan Glade for money fish…

And apparently Daichi loves the Cow Plant… I’ll have to keep an eye on him.

.. See? First essence of Happiness acquired.

Another trip to Willow Creek.. this time to try to get the Bass fish from the river outside the tree to Sylvan Glade.

…Got it!

The beginnings of a kitchen. And if you’re looking closely, you can see I’ve got the windows in on the shell, as well.

Daichi is busy playing with Big Buford again.

While a very pregnant Mara takes care of the garden. With her aspiration points, I buy the Frugal trait and the Free Services, so I can get a gardener to take care of things on weekdays, at least.

And not have to pay him.  Yay!

.. That’ll be a big help while I work on other things.. like cowplant essences and Handiness skill (I’d like to open up the Grotto and get those two fishies for my wall). Will the heir be a boy or a girl? .. We’ll just have to wait and see!

House 002 Chapter 2 | House 003 Chapter 2

House 002 Chapter 1 | House 003 Chapter 1

House 002 Building Goal: 40k value home (2 bedroom, 1 bath minimum) (complete)
House 002 Generational Goals: Marry in an NPC (complete), Outdoor Enthusiast
Aspiration complete, YA aged heir

Now that Mara is a child… it’s time to work on that aspiration. So we head off to Granite Falls, and start collecting.

Fishing… and collecting some more.

Beetles to eat…

And cute animals to spy..

We even found some time out to play horseshoes with Mara.

We headed home, spent a few days working on Herbalism (which I have no pictures of because it’s just spamming making things on the grill behind the house) while Mara worked on her homework every night and got up to a “B” in school.

Our next trip out to Granite Falls the next weekend found us meeting the Hermit (who is walking away in this picture while Carlie cooks up some fruit for her and Mara.)

We managed to find all the rest of the plants for her Herbalism, and sent both back home so Mara could attend school and Carlie could work some more on her Herbalism and identifying the last plants for her aspiration.

Yay for Mara, she got her “A” in school!

Shortly after, she aged up into a gorgeous teenager. I will put her back in glasses, but keep her hair.. it looks right on her, I think.

… Why did I take this picture?

Because I forgot to take a picture of Carlie coming out of the tent on her last morning after sleeping in the tent.

Mara gets an “A” in high school. Hooray!

… And Carlie ages up to Elder.

.. But at least she does it gracefully.

Since I have everything done.. I only have a few random pictures while I wait for Mara to get to Young Adult.

I spend a lot of time having Carlie work on Handiness and upgrading things in the house.

.. Mara finds the bar and seems to love it.

… She also likes giving me heart attacks when she heads off during her picky eating phase to cook on the grill.

… See??

Then she comes home mortified and I’m left watching her in terror as she hid in her bed … leaving me hoping she makes it through the phase.

Later, she gets lonely (I guess) and heads outside to chat to random people passing by the house.

I still keep up the Herbalism garden that’s out front of the house, if nothing else, because it gives Carlie something to do.

We chat up the new gardener when Carlie’s lonely and Mara is at school.

..Then I get this message. EEKS!

So I hurry and take all my stat shots of Carlie (which are included here in a little while). I figure out that I can age Mara up with a cake that I bake ahead of time and stick candles on in the fridge. Also figure that I won’t be in trouble with bills because she’ll age up before they’re due again.

Helping Mara with homework. Her performance at school is getting rather low.. since I stopped picking on her about homework she pretty much stopped doing it.

.. Not sure why I took this picture, but it at least it shows the “new”-ish chessboard I put in upstairs.

.. It’s time!! (And yep.. Carlie even lived long enough to see her move out!)

The end bank account… (dang it’s easy to make money off archaeology .. I only ever took two trips out to Selvadorada!) – Well, and the two trips to Granite Falls.

The stats pictures I took ahead of time…

She maxed a lot of skills!

And as mentioned earlier, she finished both Outdoor Enthusiast and the Archaeology Aspirations.. although I apparently never bothered to spend any of her points… hehe.

The house final value: (I didn’t add much since the house was finished last post)

And pictures of the house: (sorry the outside pics are dark, that’s when Mara moved out so that’s when the shots were taken.)

Time for house 003!

House 002 Chapter 1 | House 003 Chapter 1

House 001 Chapter 2 | House 002 Chapter 2

We start this post by showing off our new restaurant I built: Blue Moon Seafood. (yeah, I know, not very original)

Stats on the restaurant: (Traits: Romantic Aura, Convivial, and Chef’s Kitchen)

And getting to know our heir: Carlie Rambler. So pretty.. I can see good things coming from her already!

Her rolled want:

Her skills:

Stats:

Her Traits:

I also rolled the lot traits for her: (Great Soil, Party Place, and Homey)

And… here goes nothing:

House 002 Building Goal: 40k value home (2 bedroom, 1 bath minimum)
House 002 Generational Goals: Marry in an NPC, Outdoor Enthusiast
Aspiration complete, YA aged heir

Since she’s starting off with pretty good stats, she can get right to fishing while we wait for the plant and rock nodes to spawn…

After hours upon hours of fishing for little to no gain, and picking up all the rocks I can find… this is what I’m reduced to.

Another day of fishing/gathering, and we’ve got us a little start. As you can see, I’m thoroughly un-confident that I will actually be able to earn enough to pay for the house with just archaeology. Time to start looking for a mate.

Nope. Not starting with an elder.

Another bust. After trying a few more, I realize I’m going to have to pick an Adult.. there just aren’t any Young Adult ones that are spawned. I tried gardener, Pizza people, maids, mailpeople… sigh. Finally I settle on a possible… who you’ve seen before. He’s the guy that Brianna corralled on the street when she needed socialization. I figure mom would have approved.

By this time, I’ve made enough to afford to stay a few nights in the Jungle Adventures neighborhood, and still keep my 1000 simoleon buffer for traveling. First order of business… checking out the local market.

Since we can’t afford our own table yet, we’re using the one in the market.

Trying out the local food….

I finish the temple exploration and get all the treasure I need just before heading home to continue wooing our NPC, Alessandro. I realize he’s older than I’d like, but hopefully I can pull off earning all the money for the house before getting the heir out of him before he heads into Grimmy’s world.

Traits are good, at least. First kiss!

First woohoo.. not trying for baby until the house is closer to done, though, because she’ll need to do another vacation out to Salvadorada to work on more archaeology.

And.. the proposal. He accepts, thank goodness.

Married!

At which point, I upgrade the house a little bit (bigger bed) and get back to work on those artifacts I brought back.

In the (nearly a whole) week that it takes Carlie to go through all the loot she acquired on her trip to Selvadorada, I find a moment where Alessandro gets bored enough to go take care of the dying garden. Apparently he got tired of me ignoring it and headed out to water the plants. Shortly after this, I become confident enough in my ability to make money with artifacts and I delete the garden which ended up half dead anyway.

Shell of the house complete! Still missing windows and stuff, but those will come.

Uh oh, he’s already an elder.. and we still have so much to accomplish. I quickly finish up on her existing artifacts and plan their next trip.

Since he’s with me, I go ahead and have him help out with artifact finding, so he gets a few points in archaeology. Cue trip spam…

Oops, sorry Alessandro.

With that, I finish up the temple exploration for the trip and head home. Shortly after that, I get this message:

ACK! He’s sleeping, though, so I wait to try for baby until the morning.

Is that a baby bump? .. You bet! And one happy archaeologist as she gets her ultimate reward..

.. Finishing her aspiration.

By this point, I’m making money like crazy, so I take a moment to finish up the house exterior while Alessandro lazes on the couch on their new front porch.

The beginnings of a real kitchen!

And even a study area upstairs.

While still working on all her artifacts from the second vacation trip, Alessandro breathes his last.

Right after this photo I have her stop working on authenticating… and have her go plead for Alessandro. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.

… And apparently the stress of losing him triggers her labor, because just minutes after Grimmy leaves, she has her daughter, Mara.

… Who is SO adorable!

Mara likes pancakes, apparently. But then who doesn’t?

Bath time!

Carlie ages up…

… Making silly faces while still working on artifacts.

Time out for Mara.. and Daddy is haunting the bathroom fixtures.

.. So cute! I just can’t stop takign pictures of her. LOL

And finally.. it’s time to grow up!

Her upgraded room:

And here she is, all growed up. Well, partially grown.

Oh.. and one last thing.. house value check reveals:

We’re done. Just in time. See you in the next chapter!

House 001 Chapter 2 | House 002 Chapter 2

House 001 Chapter 1 < | > House 002 Chapter 1

House 001 Building Goal: 30,000 value home
House 001 Generational Goal: YA aged heir (currently toddler)

Fair warning: I had two options for this chapter. Split it or have one really long chapter. Since I was already done with the play time, and just wanted to move on to house two, I went ahead and made it a longer post. So here we go. We start from a picture of what I spent a lot of time looking at this challenge… Brianna gardening.

Toddler skilling. I have yet to figure out how to max a toddler on skills without a whole lot of pissing off the toddler, so I don’t typically bother trying anymore. I just spend some time when I have it on teaching Carlie, and leave it at that. Oh.. the other reason for this picture.. Brianna is expecting again. (if you look closely, there’s definitely a baby bump showing)

Unfortunately, burning the candle at both ends leaves poor Brianna on the floor.. again.

And the finished outside look of the house.

I think it looks pretty good. Took the floor plan from a house I found online, and was able to replicate it pretty closely.

Here’s the upstairs starting to get some color and furniture:

And the same for the downstairs:

Carlie grew up without anymore face to floor experiences for poor Brianna. She’s stinky in this picture, but it’s her choice at this age. LOL.

The new pack got me all excited to take pictures of the hamster.. SO CUTE!! Best ten bucks I’ve spent in quite a while.

Say hello to little Macy, Carlie’s sister. How she got the blonde I’ll never know.. but at least I tried, right? Getting blondes in sims is so hard to do in my opinion. Also, don’t know how I managed to miss getting a baby pic of Macy, but that’s ok. All babies in sims 4 look pretty much the same, anyway.

Shaurya is now elder.. and he really loves spending time with his girls. It was about this point that I decided two kids was enough, even though Brianna’s want is to have more.

The other new pack. They have an upstairs utility/laundry room. With the fact that I’ve had bad luck with sims 4 dryers, I stuck in a clothesline instead. I also found a place for the much-abused dollhouse. I can’t tell you how many times I repaired the thing.

Getting Carlie some skills for school. Who knows what little Macy is doing in the corner of the couch there.

There’s so much going on in this picture, I don’t even know where to start. Macy is escaping up the stairs even though her dinner is on her high chair… Carlie is playing peekaboo with daddy in the closet.. and off frame Brianna is cooking dinner for everyone other than Macy.

The above-mentioned clothes line. Turns out sims will autonomously use it, too. Which is awesome.

Brianna’s lonely birthday. I’ve made a little pact to myself to try to avoid tubby sims this game, and dutifully destroy all cakes before they get eaten. This one included.

Macy and daddy. At least she actually ate dinner this time.

… While Brianna is still hard at work outside. Gardens are so much work!

And this picture is just to prove to myself that Carlie got an A in grade school. (Spoiler, she gets an A in high school too but I forget to take a picture. Macy does too, but without me trying. Go figure.)

And this is a first… never had a Drifter abducted this early in the challenge. Poor Brianna. My son was laughing at me for this for quite a while.

Proof that sims autonomously take care of laundry:

AND they take care of the little pets too!  <3

Helping Carlie with homework. If I influence a kid to do their homework, the least I can do is help them finish it. If I don’t, sometimes it just doesn’t get done, negating the whole point of influencing them to do homework in the first place.

Cuddle time!

The family watching the kids network (why oh why!? I’m so tired of that tune!) on their bigger TV.

Coincidentally, it turned out to be the last time they were all together. Grim shows up whether I was ready or not.

And, just because I can, I pled for him. Didn’t work. But I did try!

Grim apparently likes watching the news….?

Turns out even kids will autonomously take care of their pets. Sweet.

Time to grow up!

… Not too bad. She’ll be run through create a sim before she takes over as heir in House 002, so it’s nice to know she’ll look so much better. I don’t change looks other than hairstyle and the clothes.

Getting the skills for Carlie’s school grades. Macy is cheering them on, too.

With both kids at school and nothing but the garden to work on, Brianna makes some friends. This guy is apparently a mail carrier, but he worked for what I needed.. which was socializing.

Awww.. darn I wish Macy was the heir.. she’s adorable!

And apparently I didn’t see any other noteworthy pictures until the very end.. so here’s Carlie’s birthday.

Proof of the house value:

And finished house shots:

Brianna’s ending stats:

And now on to the next house…. yay! I’m going to try something a little bit differently, I think.. and try to make my money by archaeology. Definitely going to save before attempting it, but it should be fun.

House 001 Chapter 1 < | > House 002 Chapter 1

Introduction < | > House 001 Chapter 2

House 001 Building Goal: 30,000 value home
House 001 Generational Goal: YA aged heir

So.. here we go again. Meet Brianna Rambler.

She wants to have a big happy family (not going to happen, since it requires things with grandkids). But that’s what she rolled randomly, so that’s what she has.

As for the lot, it rolled Romantic Aura, Great Acoustics, and Homey. At least the Homey part will help!

And since we start out with nothing, we’re off to start earning money.

First order of business: Fishing.

And lucky Brianna already caught her first fish.

Followed closely by catching a cowplant berry… which means she has enough to buy some essentials.

And by this time.. they were definitely essential!

The rocks and frogs are finally up, so we made our first day rounds, and started her in on frog breeding.

After all that hard work, a snack of granola before bed. This is by far the farthest along I’ve ever been in just one day of Drifter play.. Brianna just seems to be lucky!

Day two: time to start looking for a mate. Perhaps the mail man?

He doesn’t look too bad in his everyday wear, either.

Then we discovered he’s Mean. So much for that one. We meet several other eligible bachelors, but nobody seems to be just right.

At least the plants are finally harvestable. Now we can start our flower garden to really start making money.

After looking and looking, the best trait set I could come up with is on this fella, Shaurya.

So we move to the next logical step. A sleepover! .. I’m not sure that’s logical, but it seems to work that way on Sims.

The next morning, they get married and he moves in. He moves in with 20k which immediately gets removed. Poor Brianna must work for her cash!

With what little we have, we build a bathroom, and buy a TV so Shaurya has something to do other than just stand around.

The next day, we build the “rest” of a small house, because they won’t woohoo on an open lot with people walking past.

And the breaking of the bathroom fixtures commences. Homey sure helps on handiness skill, though! (No idea who was standing at our door in this screenie.. I never bothered greeting him. LOL)

The beginnings of a kitchen. For some reason, despite being lazy, Shaurya doesn’t like sleeping at night. So here he is keeping watch over the bed again.

Might as well get started on the heir. Here is Brianna telling Shaurya the good news. He seems happy about it.. if a little shell shocked that it’s happening already.

About this time, I start thinking about what the final house will look like. So I go look up some house plans, find one that strikes my fancy.. and spend their meager bank account on building the shell. Windows will have to come later.

The downstairs to start with. Note Brianna spending all her time on the garden. Pretty much her typical day is outside in the back yard.

And little Carlie has arrived. Saving up some money to build her toddler bedroom (which will be upstairs) so the house is still pretty bare.. although I bought them their closet because that little room looked ridiculous without the closet part.

Carlie finally grow s up. At least partially. And she rolled fussy. Great. Just what I needed!

The beginnings of a kitchen and dining room…

And Carlie’s room upstairs with random bathtub for bathing a dirty toddler.

Poor Brianna.. I worked her too hard. Toddlers with a full garden is hard work!

This seems like as good a place as any to stop .. and let Brianna get some rest.

Introduction < | > House 001 Chapter 2

I recently decided to re-start my Drifter Challenge due to a long hiatus (among other things). I created a new family, the Ramblers, and am sending miss Brianna out into the sims world to make her fortune and start a legacy. I elected to bulldoze everything except the special lots in Windenburg and the Pet Vet Clinic and deleted all pre-made townies. I’ve played enough with the townies and their houses that I have no intention of having them in my Rambler save, too. I didn’t make any sims to join into the save (other than Brianna), electing to let the game spawn them as it will.

I am also running this on “random”.. basically all traits, aspirations, and lot traits will be rolled on createarandomsim.com … the Drifter rules state changing aspirations can be done at any time, so it works out.. but the first aspiration picked as a teenager (that gives the trait) will be random. Being that vampires are disallowed, those three aspirations and the lot traits relating to vampires are excluded from the list of randoms.

Update: I am still working on this. Since I’m more than halfway done with the challenge, it seems silly to stop, because I SO want to say I completed it. So, yeah.. It’s on my list.

I found this challenge on Mod the Sims.. (here) and liked the look of it, so I started playing. I found it 1.. too easy.. and 2.. lacking in rules for the expansions. So I’m modifying it for my uses. I don’t plan to blog the story of my “colony” (town), but I may post some build pictures and stuff as I go. I’m almost done with the first generation currently and I have 3 families (14 total sims) living in my town. Anyway, Back on topic. I wanted to write down my variation of the rules.. mostly so I don’t lose them. I ended up changing more than I originally intended to. However, it’s a fun challenge, and one that I think others would enjoy, so I’m leaving the rules up here. 

My attempt at the challenge was mostly done off-blog, so I didn’t take a lot of pictures, and I didn’t really start taking great records until the second generation. Eventually, I got tired of it. I think maybe part of it was due to not blogging it fully. Will I go back to it? I honestly don’t know. We’ll see.

Generation 1 & 2 | Modified Settlers Rules | Generation 4

And here we go with the next generation! I am thinking it removed the two families because they weren’t set on played, so I put everyone back in the “played” category.. and so far so good. Early on in this third generation, I had some glitches where my game got stuck and said there was a sim aging up when there wasn’t one.. so I had to play the same three or four days over and over again. I almost got so frustrated I didn’t want to keep going.. but then I pulled an all-nighter building new lots for my vampire-y sims and the community lot.. and that got me right back into this challenge. For the rest of the generation, I was obsessively saving each sim day so I wouldn’t have to replay much if it glitched again…. haha.

Generation 3

First, the proper vampire house (since I never bothered to take screens of the starter home.. the oil strike happened so early I just upgraded the home right away):

Shot of the kitchen I added:

And the family:

Heir: Alec Newcrest (Loves outdoors, Mean, Active, Vampire Family, Responsible)
Partner: Aanya Srinivasan (Good, Goofball, Perfectionist, Party Animal) – I also turned her into a vampire

I rolled a 2 for their kids, and a 1 for the first kid being the heir.

• Heir: Ashlyn (Perfectionist, Dog Lover, Music Lover, Bestselling Author)
• Sibling: Dylan (Dog Lover, Glutton)

Events that happened during this generation:

• Oil struck +50k (used to build a proper vampire home, hence the no pictures of his starter home)
• Spring fest add a baby. Rolled 1-5 for eligible families (the master vamp is not eligible, imo) got a 2, so added a little girl Mackenzie to the Callaway family
• Fire! 5000 paid to recover the community lot.
• Alec completed Vampire Family aspiration (..that was a lot easier than I expected. Their heir is still only a toddler!)
• Built the third community lot (the Museum), thereby lifting the medicine restriction.. no more unexpected woohoo accidents! YAY!
• Our first Casanova moves in! (Yay! Finally!) There are seven eligible females (oops eight.. forgot the heir’s wife.. yikes!) … I rolled a seven, which means the single newly vampired Laila Ashton gets a new man. I decided he’ll stay with her. Let’s see.. heads he’s a vampire, tails he’s human… tails wins. (gee, I wonder whether the baby will be human or vampire?!) The Casanova’s name is Kyle Sears and he rolled Clumsy, Materialistic, Romantic (oh… nice one.) and Computer Whiz. The best part? He moves in just in time to see her transform into a vampire… haha! A few socials, some romancing, and voila… baby on the way! (I cheated a bit and let them be boyfriend and girlfriend… since the game won’t do it on it’s own.) .. update.. baby is a boy named King.. and yep, he’s a vampire (and SO glad it’s not me playing him because he rolled Clingy!)
• Family moves in (Valentine). Rolled a 3 for number of members. Going to put them in one of the empty homes from Gen one and two. (ended up putting them in the Frantz house with a makeover.)
• Alec ranked up to Grand Master Vampire. Woot! My first one ever! And just to make sure he sticks around, he’s immune to sunlight. haha!
• And here.. is where I went a bit off the rails. I got so bored I sent Ashlyn (the heir) and Alec off to the lounge I edited to add in a bowling alley in the basement. I hadn’t tested it yet, and I figured why not send them out to a night of bowling. Turns out I am so woefully lax on actually playing with the new features the game and stuff packs bring… I didn’t even know there was a bowling skill! 0.o EEK! I guess you can say I wasn’t bored anymore. I even took it off of fast speed to watch their epic fails and gutter balls. And so now I bring you some shots I couldn’t help but take before we get back to the challenge as a whole. Oh, and for the record. Alec unashamedly won with a score of 58…. poor guy (then a 90.. I guess that’s better… lol) Anyway, excuse the pic spam. Back to our regularly scheduled challenge in a moment.. the last pic is of some really cool flaming ball action that some other sims were doing.. I will definitely be doing more bowling!

• Building permits fail, have to gain two points in logic. .. Done.
• Ashlyn becomes an “A” student in grade school! First Newcrest to do that!
• Ashlyn rolls Dog Lover! Yay! Next generation will unlock pets. Also, just to make things easier, Alec and I went ahead and cured her vampirism since she won’t need it next generation.
• Oh, no…!! The next event roll was for a family to leave town. I can’t tell you how tempted I was to pretend I hadn’t seen it and reroll. Rolled a five, which made Vampire Lestat de Lioncourt be the one chosen. I guess that’s no so bad, since Alec can be the town master vampire now. I deleted his house, too, since I hadn’t built it. At this point, I also decided that since his house was gone and Alec was taking over, I would build them a new house. I had a ton of money sitting around (some 70k) from Alec’s gardening and painting, so I decided that the clunky house I built was going to be deleted. I moved them out to the lot where I used to have the master vampire in (up on the hill) and started building. Built the entire shell and had about 20k leftover for painting and such. Because it’s such a BIG house, I have a bunch of empty rooms, so Alec is going to be back to painting non-stop to furnish the rest of the rooms in the 12 days I have left before Ashlyn grows up and is ready to move out. Anyway, here’s the house as it is now… more pics when it’s “finished” at the end of the generation.

• Ashlyn gets another “A” in high school. Another first!
• Another first… Ashlyn and her mother, Aanya got into a knock down drag out fight in the living room. Ashlyn won, if you’ll believe that.. why the fight got started? Who knows. Aanya was in a mean mood swing, though, so that definitely brought the fight about.. but I’ve certainly never had a free will sim get into a fight. Took me completely off guard.
• And the last event for the generation… adding a baby. Rolled for the 7 eligible female sims in town… got a four, and the Valentines got a little boy named Korbin.

Lots Built/ Families Moved in:

• Lioncourt family (master vampire downloaded from gallery since I deleted all the town’s vampires before starting the challenge.) – Genius Bookworm, Neat, and it looks like he has practically the whole powers list learned.. Someone put some time into this guy. LOL. His house is downloaded from the gallery, I explored it a little bit, but not much more. It sure looks cool at the top of that hill though.

• Ashton family (from Charisma 6) – Laila (Genius, Creative, Mean, and wants to be a Good Vampire) – somehow she rolled a vampire want when I already planned to turn her into a vampire with my heir. Since I rolled a lousy one she’ll be moving into town all by her lonesome. I built her a fabulous mansion with a big hedge maze in the back yard in Forgotten Hollow.

• Valentine family (event roll.. got a 3, and moving them into the old Frantz house since it’s empty.) – Maritza (Materialistic, Jelous, Snob, Big Happy Family), Diego (I admit, I rerolled his traits twice because of his look. The traits he initially rolled totally were alien to this man.) (Outgoing, Music Lover, Bro, Fabulously Wealthy), and Child Billy (Rambunctious Scamp, Glutton). Since somehow the furnishings got erased, I went ahead and custom designed the shell of the Franz house to fit with this family. So the house will look familiar, but with completely different furnishings.

• The Royal Museum – (Natural Light, Sunny Aspect, and Home Studio) This is built off a shell I got from the Gallery. I took one look at the big lot for the Willow Creek Museum and hit a big blank wall. So I ended up downloading one called Royal-Shell that was a big, rangy-looking house with a lot of charm (read: it’s all colored and decorated and landscaped outside, I only had to figure out what to do with the insides). I spent hours on it. Literally. (and when taking screenshots I still noticed four little things I overlooked. Oh well. It’s still awesome. And, yes, I uploaded it.

Town Stats: Three community lots (park, lounge, and museum), 7 families and 19 sims total.

Oh, and an update on the two community lots from Gen 1 and 2 – both now have lot traits. I’m not using lot traits on my sims’ homes, but since I rarely go to community lots, I made them more enticing in the hopes that I’d actually use the lots. The jury is out on whether or not that will work, though. (It hasn’t yet…)  Anyway, the park is Party Place, Bracing Breezes, and Sunny Aspect. The Lounge is Convivial, Great Acoustics, and Party Place.

And, as promised – pics of the finished house. (they ended up with some 60k unspent after the 20k for move out, so Alec was definitely on a roll with his painting!) The main floor – where all of their rooms are, and where they spend almost all of their time:

The upstairs has two virtually identical suites designed for a human servant and or butler, left locked to the household:

And the downstairs Master Vampire lair (since Alec needs a coffin to sleep in), and the home bowling alley that I think they used all of twice:

Ashlyn, The heir for next generation:

Oh, and I have decided to start doing the event roll twice a week. Wednesday and Sunday. I’m just finding the population hard to keep up, and getting all lots filled will be really tough as it is now. Also, changing one event that just isn’t feasible MOST of the time and adding three more events to the 12 to make raising the population a little easier.

• 3 – another Casanova (female, this time) moves in
• 13 – add baby to a MALE sim household
• 14 – add a family (4 sims)
• 15 – the second female Casanova to round out the total

I am currently working on the fourth generation with a Vet Clinic (which keeps things interesting, I will say!) and the next heir is a child, so I’m moving right along. It took me a bit longer than I expected to get all of the screenshots for this post in order, hence the delay getting this published.

Generation 1 & 2 | Modified Settlers Rules | Generation 4

I found some other pictures to add to the post about generation 1 and 2, so reload it if you’ve already read it for more pics!

Other than that, I’m working on generation three now, and loving my little vampire family. I’m glad I chose to make up “rules” for vampys. I’ve had to add in a clause for getting the non playables out of the sunlight, and to feed them.. since they don’t readily do either when on free will. Such a pain, but it’s working for now! Oh, and the new heir, Ashlyn.. is freaking adorable. I have no idea where she got her red hair, but it’s too cute. I just had to put a sneak peek in here: