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!
This week continues my streaming like a crazy person as I try to complete Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood in one month as well as keep up with my “normal” schedule and getting my Builder Games Build done (which I will be doing regardless of whether I get through the first round or not, since I won’t know until later in the week if I did.) The scores for the first build won’t be known until Thursday, I believe, and I’ve almost gotten the second build done, so I hope to start the third build this coming week.
I HAVE to finish Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood this month. Because of this, I will NOT be doing much in the way of posting stories on my blog. I do have a few that I want to get done if I have spare time, but.. if I don’t have the time, it just won’t happen. So, in other words, don’t expect it. I WILL be back to posting the First week of September. The first full week of September will also be a vacation from streaming for me, and the week after that will be when ESO nights with Brujj comes back, as well as my regular stream schedule, challenge writing, and work on my Save files.
This week starts my basically streaming like a crazy person as I try to both complete Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood in one month as well as keep up with my “normal” schedule and getting my Builder Games Build done (which I will be doing regardless of whether I get through the first round or not, since I won’t know until later in the week if I did.)
I HAVE to finish Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood this month. Because of this, I will NOT be doing much in the way of posting stories on my blog. I do have a few that I want to get done if I have spare time, but.. if I don’t have the time, it just won’t happen. So, in other words, don’t expect it. I WILL be back to posting the First week of September. The first full week of September will also be a vacation from streaming for me, and the week after that will be when ESO nights with Brujj comes back, as well as my regular stream schedule.
This week, as you can see, is the beginning of the Builder’s Games schedule, which will involve a lot of building. I want to try to build on-stream for as much as possible of my Builder’s Game builds, so you all can participate in this journey. Depending on when I get eliminated from the Games – we may see the August schedule change drastically.
There are three major things happening in August. One and Two involve streaming… a LOT. Listed below:
Finally, because of all the craziness happening that I just listed, I will be taking the entire month of August off of posting blog stories on here (and also doing ESO streams with hubby on Tuesdays and Saturdays). Never fear, however, they WILL be coming back in September. I have set up a rotating schedule that has me posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays starting in the first full week of September.
SimNaNo is still going well – as of this post I’ve got almost 14,000 words officially published (on my blog) out of my goal of 25k. (I did drop my goals to reduce my stress).
This week has some interesting changes: if you notice, I’ll be doing two games this week for Thrall Game Awards (to give me a spare week which I will explain later) – because, let’s just say.. I’ll need it. (You’ll see why below) Also, Taking two days off this week due to the concert I’m going to on Wednesday, I have no idea when I’ll be getting home, so taking the day off after it, too.
There are three major things happening in August. One and Two involve streaming… a LOT. Listed below:
Finally, because of all the craziness happening that I just listed, I will be taking the entire month of August off of posting blog stories on here. Never fear, however, they WILL be coming back in September, and I have set up a rotating schedule that has me posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. I will be continuing to post through the end of SimNaNo in July, then August will just be a break. I might take some time during the month off to work on the newest story, Sliding Sideways, so there may be some random posts from this, but we’ll just have to see if I actually have any free time to do this in.
SimNaNo is going amazingly well – as of this post I’ve got almost 10,000 words officially published (on my blog) out of my goal of 30k. I’m sure you’ve noticed the influx of fun catch up posts on a lot of my stories… which has me very very close to being 100% caught up on all of my post backlog (I believe there’s only one post left in that list). I will say, though, that I had planned on my new Sliding Sideways story making up a good portion of the posted stories, but I have recently come to some realizations about that story, and it may unfortunately be a little longer in coming than this month.
This week should go off without any interruptions, because the tooth is fixed… but we’ll see how that works out! 🙂
SimNaNo is off and running successfully – as of this post I’ve got 2846 words officially published (on my blog) out of my goal of 30k. Included in this total is my brand new story’s “Sliding Sideways” Prologue, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!
Hopefully this week’s schedule will work without any interruptions due to tooth pain, but since I STILL haven’t gotten the stupid thing out of my mouth yet, it’s possible it could interfere – so just be aware, and watch Twitter for last minute updates.
First off, this past week was a resounding success. The stream-a-thon was hugely successful, and I made a ton of new friends and had a wonderful time! Will definitely be participating in further stream-a-thons! This week will be back to my usual schedule. I hope next week to bring back the end of Season 1 Asylum on Wednesday (by finishing up the in-progress channel point builds this Wednesday). There also may very well be an Honorable Mention stream sometime on Sunday. Also, note that July 1st I will launch the next shell challenge (#thrallshell13) called “Underwater Paradise”. (Don’t forget to read the “more” section below, I do have news about this blog as well!)
If you hadn’t noticed, my writer’s block has finally left my head. Which leaves me SUPER happy, and writing furiously to take advantage of the inspiration. Which means two things: One, that you will be seeing more story posts in the near future, and Two, that I’m feeling brave enough to try to actually plan ahead for a blog schedule.
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Another Project? Of course. I can never have enough. This is an idea that has grown over time, and is seriously exciting. And yes, the featured image is one of the completed houses included in the project. I’m already a good way into the project, and so inspired it will probably take far less time to complete than most of my projects do… anyway. By now you’re asking what the heck I’m talking about.
A full base game save file!! Yes, you heard that right… it’s BASE GAME… that means everyone can use it no matter what packs you have managed to acquire. The idea started as me doing some “spring cleaning” in my save files. Initially I wanted to pull out a handful of special builds that I have never published nor finished… to turn into shells to pick from for the next shell challenge. But then, I ran into a problem. Instead of my target 3-4, I had 15 shells that all had something special about them, and there was no way that was going to work for one of my monthly shell challenges. Frustrated, I stared at my game, flipping through the worlds, making sure I hadn’t missed any, or maybe picked one that I could drop…. and while doing that, it occurred to me that Newcrest has 15 lots. Coincidence? Maybe… but it was a nice one. So the idea of a “Grab Bag” of shells with no due date began. I started painstakingly turning each of the selected builds into base game shells (which generally takes 2-3 hours per build!!), and I mentioned the idea to a few people, who loved it.
While this was all happening, I had already been looking for a safe, secure way to get any save file I make hosted for everyone to download. It turned out that my blog host has no way to upload that type of file…. and I have put so much time into this blog at this point, I don’t want to switch hosts right now. I could, conceivably, get separate web hosting and install my wordpress blog on there… but to do that, what I’m spending on my blog hosting would take a rather large jump upwards, which is something my budget isn’t going to handle anytime soon. …. Then I remembered Sim4FileShare. However, there was a problem there, too. I couldn’t get an account to upload save files to their database without having a personal invite. So I put in an application, and nothing happened.
So here I had a wonderful idea and no way to get it to people. I continued to work on the shells in the background, and time passed. While I was waiting and working, Sims started putting out these interesting scenarios – that I love the idea of, but NEVER have time to play. Unfortunately, most were time-gated. So if you didn’t start the Scenario while it was active the only way to get to it was a mod. However.. the catch here is … if you have a save with that scenario – the scenario doesn’t go away until you either complete it or do something against the hidden “rules” of the scenario to get it cancelled.
At almost exactly the same time as I finally got my invite to Sims4FileShare… the idea occurred to me that if I put together a base game Newcrest.. what was I going to do with Willow Creek and Oasis Springs?? One of my Twitch community members suggested adding some sims I created to make the shells playable once furnished, and while that sounded interesting, I didn’t want to influence players’ furnishing choices by giving them a pre-made family for each house. However, Willow Creek and Oasis Springs had plenty of room… and plenty of townies that many players are, quite frankly, pretty tired of. So, I started thinking about adding families and houses to Willow Creek and Oasis Springs and deleting everything that is default when you start up a new game – the houses, the commercial lots, and the townies.
Somehow in the middle of all this, the Scenarios came back into my head… and the very beginnings of an idea started. What if… I could put more than one Scenario family into one save. They could be played rotationally with the correct world settings, provided that it was possible. After some testing, I discovered that there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the number of scenario-based families you can have in a save! And, even better than that – the scenarios are available to base game… and if you start a past timed scenario under the mod I use, you can save the file, and load it up without the mod with no issues and the scenarios remain intact.
Suddenly I put everything together. Willow Creek and Oasis Springs could be dedicated to families designed to play each of the EA Scenarios (there are 17 different ones currently, plus 2 that are near duplicates). I could build some base game commercial spaces to replace the default ones, and make the save playable with the correct settings for playing each family separately. The other “played” families don’t age or progress (again, with the correct settings), so their scenarios will be ready to play whenever you are.
So, at the end of this long story.. we have a whole new beginning. Thrall’s Grab Bag save file was born. I’ve been obsessing over it ever since. Every spare moment I have has been going into working on it, and if I’m not at my computer, I’m thinking about it. Today, I decided I needed to actually write down all my plans for the save. If you know me, you know I love playing with spreadsheets to organize information. So I put one together, which took a few hours, but was ultimately worth it. I now have an easy way to see what I’m planning, and a not-so-simple-to-make graph that shows me how far along I am in the project.
Those who are good at reading charts can see that Newcrest is 2/3 finished, and that I’ve already made some progress on Oasis Springs and Willow Creek… making my total progress until publication at exactly 1/4 of the way along. Obviously, this only tracks the stuff that’s actually finished and checked off – I have several builds that are only partially done, so they cannot be checked off (yet). I also have picked out floor plans and designs for all of the homes I have to build, and about half of the commercial venues. So, there’s quite a bit more “done” than actually shows up on the above graph. (The “Current Total Completion” takes into consideration that Oasis Springs and Willow Creek do not need to be filled up to be “finished,” and that I have to make the families separately.)
Now, obviously, EA will likely continue to publish scenarios. I will continue to add to the file in the future with the new scenario families and their homes until Willow Creek and Oasis Springs are full, but I will not wait until the towns are full to first publish the file.
For those who like spreadsheets, I will provide the link to the spreadsheet I used to get that graph, although, quite frankly, I don’t know how much is understandable without the notes I have in my notebook that go with all the information. Link below: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nMi3PksthPlj4hDPHSkrbwN0uIBO7WW_8Zx4Jz6mb5g/edit?usp=sharing
I do hope to have the file up and ready to download sometime within the next month, but – as anyone who’s ever started a new project knows – timetables are ridiculously hard to pin down when you’re already a busy human with other responsibilities. *smile* I will continue to post progress updates, pictures, and the spreadsheet I linked will have the actual current completion percent on it. (The above graph is just a snapshot, it will not change.) … Wish me luck! (Oh, yeah, and I’m not going to quit work on my other projects, they may just go on a little bit of a hiatus…)
I fixed the chart, made it easier to read. You’ll need to click on it to see it full size, though.
So, I’ve been teasing about this new links & tools section for a while, but I haven’t really explained what it is I’m going to be adding… so I decided it’s about time I did that. Basically, I want to collect all my sims knowledge into one place, and make it available for everyone. I’ve been playing for a long while, and have so much knowledge in my head, it’s past time I started sharing it. Plus, having everything catalogued into one place will be super helpful, not only to me, but to everyone else.
I’ve done some brainstorming, and come up with the following list of things that either I’m already working on, or that will be coming to the site. I can’t promise how long this is going to take, but I’m hoping to have at least some of the pages up within the next week or two. Also: if you have any ideas of what might be some other pages or things I could add in, please comment and let me know! *(One thing I will definitely NOT be adding is a recommended sims CC page – because I have no knowledge of it, and no desire to learn about it. Sorry, guys..)
*already in progress (so will probably be coming sooner rather than later)
Lastly, I wanted to point out that I have added this to my “to-do” list (in my recent “Site Update!” post) – so if you’re ever curious about how things are coming along, that’s where I’ll be crossing things off the list. (also, sorry to be posting this literally in the middle of the night, but that’s when the inspiration struck and I wanted to write everything down before I forget about it as soon as I wake up in the morning!)
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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
