IllusoryThrall's Sims 4 Hub
- Challenges, Tips & Stories
I started this WordPress Blog back in 2012. At the beginning, I assure you, I had no idea what I was starting. I posted a few things… but it wasn’t for several years that my blogging really took off. I dabbled in a few Sims 3 stories (which are still accessible on this site – just check my retired & completed simlit section). By August 2016, however, I was well and truly hooked on blogging, although at that point, I was still waffling between Sims 3 and 4. The waffling didn’t take too much more time, though, before I was thoroughly addicted to Sims 4. Once I hit this point, I’ve never gone back. I still had (and have) periods of writer’s block and inactivity, but I always come back.
Sometime in 2023, this blog really tripled in traffic. And it did so on a very consistent basis. Which made me really start seriously considering the thoughts and ideas for it that I’d had in the back of my head for YEARS. The host I was on prior to this one, wordpress.com .. was great. It was cheap, it was reliable, and it was easy to use. However, the amount of customization and control I had over the website design and add-ons was, well.. very very low. And even if I doubled the cost of the plan I was on, it was going to remain virtually the same…. which is exactly the opposite of what this growing blog needed. With my challenges gaining in popularity, and my livestreaming, I really wanted to be able to upgrade the graphics, layout, and things that the website offered… By October, it was clear my blog was getting 25,000 to 30,000 hits per month on a very stable basis – so when I noticed that my two year subscription to wrodpress.com was ready to renew on the 26th, I decided, spur-of-the-moment, that there wasn’t going to be a better time to upgrade. So I immediately started looking for a way to pay for a new webhost, and researching where I wanted to go, as well as finding out exactly what upgrades I wanted and needed for the site. Originally, I was going to do a fund-raising stream for the money, but a very lovely friend of mine kindly donated the full amount I needed to pay for the next THREE YEARS of hosting. When that’s almost up, I will certainly be looking for ways to raise the money for the next web-hosting fee, but that’s a problem for future me. (If you’re interested in helping to support this site and my streaming, check out my Support Me page. 100% of donations will go to the website and my streaming.)
All that being said, I do try to be pretty transparent on the effort that goes into this website – the background work, the time for upgrading, the work involved in moving the site, as well as what it takes to keep my challenges updated. I’m also in a long process of adding a knowledge database to this website to share the Sims 4 knowledge I’ve accrued over the years (expect that to start happening by January 2024 – I do have a few other major things on my list before I start devoting a ton of time into the toolsnlinks section, but it’s coming.) This transparency led to the need to have a page devoted to collecting the posts about website news and information…. so that’s where this page comes in. Obviously, there’s no real reason to go back to the news I was posting at the very beginning of the website, but it’s there buried in the archives if you’re ever curious!
Okay, it’s a bit late.. but it’s here now!
Continue reading →Starting now… I plan to be a bit more transparent with what’s going on in my Creating World. Going forward, I will be publishing these at the beginning of each month, so everyone can have a better view of what’s going on. The other reason I’m doing this is simple. It gives me a chance to re-evaluate what I’ve done, what I still need to do, and where my priorities need to be – whether they need to be readjusted or changed. So this is as much for me as for you!! Please, enjoy, and I would love comments or questions! You should be able to comment on this with any questions or concerns, if not, my email is [email protected] … Enjoy, and have a great November!! (also, because I haven’t done this before, if you have any trouble with seeing the document here, you can also download it from my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/142912395.)
Continue reading →I know, it’s been a while since I posted here. However, I wanted to just check in with everyone to let them know that yes, things are still in progress. Now that I have most of the back-end work done for Timeline Adventure and the Extended Not So Berry to get them to 2.0, things should start moving faster. I have added a progress bar to the top of the main rules pages so you can always see how far along I am in updating the website’s rule-set. For reference, at the time of this writing, the Extended Not So Berry is at around 45% complete, while Timeline is taking a bit more time, hanging at around 16% complete. Still, I’ll be honest, things look SO GOOD. I couldn’t ask for better.
On another note, for those who hadn’t noticed, the trackers for the ENSB and the Timeline Adventure are in beta form, and are really quite nice! If you have had any issues with them, please, comment on this post, and let me know what’s going on, so I can report it to Calendula Petals and we’ll get it fixed ASAP.
For anyone know noticed today’s Faux Pas where my entire website decided the color White was IN this year… I apologize. It should be 98% fixed now. The only issue I can still find is a leftover one from when I coded the website. When I set up the sidebars, I didn’t know how to properly use the templating software I used to program the site…. and by the time I knew of a better, faster way to set things up, it was too late, they were already there. So I never went back and made them correct. Now, my logo has decided it’s missing in the sidebar recent posts. I could go in and fix the 25-30 INDIVIDUAL places where the link needs fixing… and it would fix it. But the smarter thing to do would be to go in and change all 25-30 places to the way they SHOULD be set up (which, obviously, would take more time than just changing the links on each)… so that in the FUTURE, I would only need to fix 8-10 sidebars to fix a breakage. Which is annoying beyond belief… but I don’t see much of a choice but to do one or the other, because I utterly despide broken images. And I’m working to fix all of them on my site… eventually.
Anyway, enough of my complaining. Hope you all are enjoying the new rule sets!! Let me know what you think so far!
Continue reading →I apologize profusely for any hiccups we’ve had the last few months… but the site is moved, and safe, and faster than ever now. Please, LET ME KNOW if you find any broken links!! I’m still hunting them down, but I think I found most of them so far??
That being said, it’s been an absolutely hellish couple weeks of trying to figure out what/ where/ how / etc of this host migration. I was sick and tired of my previous hosts’ downtime, lack of customer support, and just generally being a place I didn’t want my precious website to be at anymore. The whole thing culminated in this past weekend – where I alternated between twiddling my very nervous thumbs to just outright crying or yelling at anyone and anything in general. I took tonight off of streaming simply because I HAD to. There were still URLs to fix, and a security error to fix… ugh. It’s been a DAY.
However, it is done. My stomach will probably still require another few hours to finally settle down, but I’m going to make something to eat here in a little bit (barely even been eating lately) and just relax for a while, I think.
The hero of this whole shitshow is my hubby, Bruj. I’m going to cry again just talking about it, but he has worked his TAIL end off this last two weeks. First, for the $250 I needed for the site transfer. Then, another $150 was needed for a pro to actually do the move, because I tried.. and I couldn’t. I cried, I raged, I simply lost it. To the point, that the new webhost discounted the price for the pros to do it for me, and I was able to pay less than the quoted $150. Thank goodness.
Then.. as if to add insult to the injury, the migration took what felt like AGES – the old webhost has so many security measures in place, they couldn’t even get into my files. I had to retreive them myself and upload/ share them to the migration team. Then there were URL issues to fix, and a wonky SSL/site security .. and just plain old waiting.
While doing all that waiting… my secondary monitor decided to die. Just. DEAD. (My browser also died.. which is another story. I broke it with too many tabs, and had to find another…. but.. back to the story at hand…) Which meant the hero of our story, Bruj, went out yesterday and busted his butt to earn yet another $150 to replace the monitor because I wasn’t going to be able to stream without that second monitor. I expected it would take a few days, and he came home with that monitor… and I just simply burst into tears. Please, if you have a Twitch account, give the man a follow. https://twitch.tv/bruj … because he deserves that… and more. So much more. Give him a round of applause, or a subscription, or some Bits.. or just a genuine thanks. Because this would NOT have happened without him.
The site is faster. The site should not go down as often. And more, there will be more fun things coming to the website. I’m making a commitment to spending more time on the website going forward, and on my Sims challenges, which are my top priority at the moment to get all updated and prettified for you all. Again, if you find screwed up links, let me know, please. This site is so huge it’s super hard to catch all of them!
And so we come to the end of this post. This is where I humbly ask, if you have the ability to (DON’T go putting yourself out of house, home, or food!!) .. please, my kofi is available. Also, my paypal is [email protected] … so if you want to donate to the future of this site, or even just help defray the costs that this move has incurred…. Those are the places to do it. I don’t ask for money as a rule. But in this case, I’m making an exception simply because there are other expenses I have coming up related to Content Creation… and times be rough. I know, they’re rough everywhere. I don’t deny that!
And that’s enough of that. Thanks, anyone who got to the bottom of this post… and … if you did, I have a present. Meet hubby’s cute curly rat, Sebastien! <3
As many of you know, I’m updating my Extended Not So Berry and my Timeline Adventure … at the same time. Probably not the best way to go about it, but that’s okay… it’s how I’m doing it anyway. I fully expect the ENSB to be finished first, because it takes less time to update overall.
>> Currently, the ENSB is FULLY updated and ready to play through generation 15! <<
By the end of today’s Co-Working on Twitch (https://twitch.tv/illusorythrall if you wanna join the fun!), I hope to have it complete through Generation 20 and ready for the next ten to be added.
If you’re interested in seeing the progress, check out this page: All Packs ENSB 2.0 – Generations 11-20.
This one is a far more complex and difficult challenge to update. It takes a TON of behind the scenes work to put this challenge together and is by far and away the most complex challenge to update that I have. But, as you know, it’s also my “baby.” It’s the challenge I love the most out of ALL of my challenges. It’s the one that I love to play, the one I think about constantly, and am always coming up with new ideas for. Hence, it goes to the top of my priority list no matter what anyone else’s priorities are.
Currently: the Main page, and the first page of Generations (Gens 1-5) are both completely done. After getting the ENSB to Gen 20, my NEXT priority is to get Gens 6-10 completed for Timeline and ready to play. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start making inroads on that task today, too! In any case, keep an eye on the main page, the changelog at the bottom will tell you when generations are ready to be played.
For those of you who are planning to start the Timeline Adventure soon (I know there’s a whole bunch of us – including me – planning on starting a brand-new playthrough to go with the new 2.0 rules…
>> The first five generations are absolutely ready to play at this time!! <<
If you are playing, and you get to a point where I haven’t updated yet, you have two choices:
Final note: I have been informed of some … er… Creator Network news that I cannot share (yet – August 26th cannot come soon enough!!) that WILL be affecting the currently planned Timeline Generation set-up. At this time, the plan is to add a gen in before the planned gen 9 with the coming stuff (so, in other words, you are STILL safe to start play, because hopefully you won’t be all the way to that gen before said upcoming stuff comes out. (… if you’re wondering about this affecting NSB, it will, but I add generations for ENSB at the END of the challenge, not by where in history they fit the best…)
Yes, they’re on the list!! Currently my priority is these two really big challenges. Then my priority list is as follows: (in order)
On a Collab front, I have three “Challenge”-ing projects underway: (not including the Tracker partnership with Calendula Petals)
Also, I have ideas and plans for SEVERAL coming challenges that I will be working on AFTER the updates are complete! This list is NOT in order and will obviously depend heavily on inspiration and levels of creativity at any given time.
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. You have no memory of how you got here, either. Staring blankly at the building, you probe your head for injuries, but none seem to exist. Perplexed, you try to remember anything. Wait. Your name. You remember that. And for some reason, you still remember things you like and don’t like. But you have no idea why you liked them. You search for reason, striving to hold down the panic bubbling in your chest. Turning around, you see an old mailbox. Curiously, you open it, and – in shock – you find a yellowed envelope inside. WITH YOUR NAME ON IT. Gulping, you open the envelope carefully so as not to damage it. You slowly, shakily, open the single sheet of paper, only to squeal as a key falls out of the paper and clinks on the gravel driveway. After absently picking up the key and shoving it back into the envelope, you finally get to read the letter.
“I’M SORRY. I doubt you’ll ever remember me… or where you’ve been. And for that I’m sorry. However, I have tried to do what I can for you. This land. This house. They are now legally yours. You can start over. I know you’ve always loved painting. Tomorrow, you will get an opportunity to do something that will satisfy the urge to create. Meanwhile, there is a fishing rod in the shed behind your house, and a pond of fish near that. I suggest you catch something to eat. You have running water and electricity.. although the house may be in need of some repairs, and the pantry and fridge are bare. I suppose you’ll figure that out, too. Enjoy your new home. Your new life. And again…. I’m sorry.”
Confused, you check the envelope for anything else other than the key. It’s frustratingly empty. Your head whirling, but finding not answers, you sigh, pocket the key and turn around again, your stomach growling. Dinner seemed like as good a place to start as any. And fish seemed like the best option since you were clearly out of money and food.
The shed did, indeed, have a fishing rod. A bright, shiny green one that stuck out like a neon light against the dust of the shed. With a clean metal tackle box beside it and some suspiciously fresh tracks leading up to where it was placed. Glancing around nervously, you assure yourself you are, indeed, alone. There was no-one there.
After your short, paranoid search, you end up back in the middle of the tiny shed. Finally resigned to your new reality, you reach down, grab the jar of bait, and head to the little fishing pond. Hopefully this fishing thing wouldn’t be too hard… Right??
Beyond that, I also have some changes coming to the website – mainly, I will be making every attempt to fix all of the Stories pages so they’re readable. Currently, the ONLY one that is fully readable is “Adventures With Jaz”. Fixing will happen sooner rather than later on some of the others, as some are going to be coming to either my Youtube Channel – or to my Twitch channel! YES!!! THAT MEANS my STORYTELLING is COMING to TWITCH! So… stay tuned for that. Another thing on my list is to finally flesh out my Tools & Tricks section – starting with finishing the guides for Collectibles in Sims 4.
So… yes. Lots to do. Wish me luck!
Continue reading →The tracker will be coming as soon as possible, and the rest of the generations are also still coming. HOWEVER… If you want to see what things are going to look like… check out:
All Packs Extended Not So Berry 2.0 – Main Rules
https://illusorythrall.com/challenges/updated-epic-challenges/extended-not-so-berry/generations-1-10/
I, personally, think it looks amazing. But I’d love to hear your opinion on the changes. Especially (hopefully) before I start pushing these changes into the rest of my challenges. SO PLEASE, COMMENT on this post, let me know what you think of the new accordion, colors, and tabs on the rules page. My main purpose was to make things clearer, more concise, and easy to follow… as well as shortening the overall page length so I can do 10 generations on a page instead of five. I have also specifically worked to make it as spoiler-free as POSSIBLE… you can now play an ENTIRE generation without ever opening the next generations’ information – so the next generation can be a surprise if you’d like.
Now…. on to the next thing…. finishing this:
(and then back to ENSB!!)
Continue reading →I have been slaving away on several projects at once – as usual… One being getting a spreadsheet template together for use as a free tracker for all of my challenges. Well, I don’t need to anymore!! Because (drumroll) … I have a partner now!
After some discussion and negotiation, I now have a partner in Crime for my Sims Challenges. Not a co-author… although there will be more collab challenges coming up in the future… but a programmer who has a WONDERFUL tracking website she designed for tracking her challenges. It’s SO cool. It’s free, and you can sign in, add your saves that you want to track, as well as track all the goals, see the rules, and even add and save pictures and information about your sims’ stories. I cannot speak more highly about this tool, and the programmer who has spent the last 8-9 months of their life getting it working from the ground up. When I first saw it, I knew right away it was something that I wanted to be a part of. Either I needed to take the time to learn how to program one of my own, or I needed to find a way to get my challenges up on this site.
Well, I’ve done it. All of my challenges are now officially “on the table”. I am updating the rules on ALL of them, sending every single one from the 1.0 version they’re in into an updated, and upgraded 2.0 version. The first one will be Timeline Adventure that will be updated on the website (and my companion tracker for now).. then I’ll update Extended NSB, and help Calendula Petals (my new partner) get it up and working on the tracking website. Once it’s ready, it’ll be linked directly from all my NSB pages, and you’ll be able to make a free account on the site and have a SUPER way to track your entire Not So Berry extended playthrough!!
After Not So Berry is up and running on the tracking website, we will be working to get Timeline Adventure up on the tracker, then, each of my other challenges individually will be also getting added. I will keep you all informed of what’s going up next, ect…. so you have a good idea of what’s coming. Actually… no, I’ll go ahead and post the priority list for updates as it stands right now: Stuff in red is updates… blue is coming collabs I’m working on… and green.. is challenge ideas that are still coming.
So, with all that being said, let me introduce my new partner, CalendulaPetals! First – some history. I was looking for a challenge to play on stream that wasn’t one of mine, and would require little setup to start.. because I wanted to get playing ASAP… and I ran across two challenges by my new friend… and the tracker they programmed. I was blown away immediately. I registered, played around with the tracker, and I literally COULD NOT STOP myself from messaging this mysterious and amazing Simmer who, seemingly, had performed the impossible: a web-based tracker for challenges that was both FREE, and super easy to use. I just had to know what language it had been programmed in, or what program, so I could put learning that language on my list of future me projects. Turns out, Calendula had spent the last 8+ months painstakingly learning and programming the entire thing by themselves in the Ruby language. Immediately, my heart sank. Not only did I know NOTHING about Ruby, I’d never even heard of it. So that would mean I’d have to start from the VERY VERY blank slate of knowing absolutely nothing.
Eventually, I dropped the idea, and settled on one of Calendula’s challenges (Townie Achievement Challenge) to play on stream.. and I figured, what the heck, I’ll message them again to let them know I would being featuring both their website and their challenge on my stream. One thing led to another… and now I can officially announce our partnership!!
Calendula Petals (she/they) is a long time Simmer and web developer with a deep interest in data and the semantic web. They built Sims Challenge Tracker as a way to track Sims 4 Challenges, and they use it themselves to track their own games. They also wrote some of the challenges on Sims Challenge Tracker — the Urban Founder Challenge, and the Townie Achievement Challenge. They are a proud geek, gamer, parent, and spouse.
Okay, so full disclosure. One of my very best friends in the world has passed on.. and I sorta took a mental health break away from doing everything other than just recovering and finding my feet again. However, I am FULLY back.. and wanted to give a sneak peek into what I’m working on.
I am setting up some templates to make spreadsheet trackers for ALL of my challenges, not just the big ones. As soon as the templates are fully set up and working, I will be able to put together and update ALL of my existing spreadsheets, and all my challenges for the new packs they’re missing. I will be starting with the Not So Berry and moving on to Timeline Adventure, I think… then one by one through my other things, INCLUDING the Super-Sim tracker some of you seem to really enjoy!
Anyway. The plan is, all of my challenges will REMAIN FREE, and will have a free spreadsheet tracker available for you to copy and use at your discretion. (Pics below) – Missing from the pics is a “tracking and Trivia” page, which I still have to make.
BUT… THAT’S NOT ALL!! On top of the free spreadsheets I showed the starting templates for above… I will also be offering for a small fee (probably through patreon, maybe etsy as well) spreadsheets with even MORE info for you to track your sims with. These will be basically the same as the free version with the notable exception – they will have a linked, working, fully functional Sims Story page. It’s detailed, it’s gorgeous, it’s amazing, I cannot say enough about it. And not only is it amazing in it’s full form, EACH SECTION will be able to be minimized so you can reduce scrolling if you’re on later generations. I will be making a “Storyteller’s Dream” tracking version for ALL of my challenges, as well as for Super Sim, and a plain old 10 generation legacy. If enough people are interested, I may even make a sheet for longer legacies. Now, before you complain that it’s going to be paid… I’ve put so many hours of work into this, it’s not funny… and also, there will always be the free, fully functional version without the massive story tracking page(s).
I still have some arduous work to do on the templates (namely, finishing finding ALL the icons for the story page and setting up the data page… and making all of it WORK with formulas and such….), but I should be back to working on the Not So Berry updating and UPGRADING in the next couple of weeks, hopefully…. and since I’ve already done about 2/3 of the prep work for that update, the NSB update shouldn’t really take all that long at all. I hope. Anyway. Comment away, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s going on, and if you have any suggestions or comments.
Love, Thrall
Continue reading →Just a side note: Today I began fully updating my Extended Not So Berry, including authoring a new, updated and upgraded tracking spreadsheet for it, and adding new pack generations. The tracker will remain free and will be available… well, as soon as I finish it! <3 Hehe. Just wanted everyone to know that I was now actively putting the NSB on my todo list and working on it as a priority! So yes, the updates… are COMING!
ALL MY IMAGES ARE BACK!! The problem is, I have no idea why and because of this, I have no idea how to prevent it from happening again. However, the good news is that they are back!! So, Enjoy!!
Update: They’re gone again. Sigh.
Continue reading → 
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!
Chapter One – Starting Anew
November 2025 Dev DiarySuperSweetBot Commands for Mods & BroadcastersOctober 2025 Dev DiaryProgress Report!Hacking Situation ResolvedHey all…
Welcome to my new webhost!!
Progress Report on Not So Berry & TimelineExtended Not So Berry 2.0 is coming!!
OMG A Thrall Post?? What?Not So Berry Updating
Jaynie’s Gems: By-The-NumberToday
