Comings and goings

We’ve been buying some more lifetime rewards.  Sindy has a steel bladder and her bladder bar always seems to be maxed, which seems like a result to me.  Harry has ‘eye candy’ which gives the others a +10 moodlet when they’re around him, although weirdly their panel text claims it’s them that have the LTR.  Oops, EAxis.

Remember in the last update that Grimmy zipped off quickly?  Well, that’s because I was pinching the maid’s gravestone to save us a trip to the cemetery, and he vanished as soon as we’d snatched it.  I’ve been having Harry chat her up to see whether a white ghost is a possibility for babies.  My theory is that a white male ghost will be able to produce children but a white female ghost will still show as being old and therefore won’t be able to.  But we’ll see.  If it doesn’t work out with her he can go after a mail deliverer or repair lady instead.

I have a soft spot for Harry, mainly because he’s going to be my first ambrosia experimentee, but he is a bit boring to play.  His traits aren’t that exciting and he spends all his time painting and writing.  He’s about level 8 in both I think now, so making decent progress on his LTW.

We’ve also been testing out incense.  We had some outside but it was doing nothing, and I heard from one of you that bringing it inside would help – indeed it does.  The French incense gives a ‘love is in the air’ moodlet, which I think is hilarious given the screenshot (more on that later).

The Chinese one gives ‘Neuronic synergy’.

And the Egyptian one gives ‘totally mellow’.  All of them are +10.  My next experiment will be to see if the mood boosts stack if I put multiple burners in a room.

It’s my plan for the house to give each sim a unique bedroom and bathroom in their favourite colours and to fill their rooms with relevant skilling equipment as well as mood-boosting things like art, stereos, TVs and incense.  Harry’s room therefore has an easel and computer in.  I’m working on being able to afford the stuff to get all the rooms nice but in the meantime, the two large communal rooms have nice art and stereos in so they can also skill/cook etc in there.  The couples currently share two-tone spaces but that might change if it works out better for them to have separate rooms.

Yes, I did say couples.  Hilda Mooney, the babysitter, is Eddie’s romantic interest and has now moved in.  She is a flirty, frugal, charistmatic, family-oriented loner who likes fruit parfait and hot pink.  She is also 14 days off becoming an elder, which is very annoying since at one point she and Eddie were both teens.  Stupid aging glitches.  She will probably be chowing down on some life fruit to extend her baby-making years.

Being a loner means she gets a +15 moodlet whenever she’s alone, so I’m wondering if she and Eddie should have separate rooms except when it comes to the baby-making times.  Stacking her up with positive decor and solitude moodlets seems a good plan to boost her happiness.

Babysitter’s LTW is currently Leader of the Free World but I don’t fancy my chances on that one given her age and need to be popping out sprogs so I have a cunning plan of what I want to change it to – I won’t reveal it yet in case it doesn’t work out, but I’m very excited about trying it.  She will also be a candidate for ghostification at some point – probably before she becomes an elder in case she can’t have babies as an elderly ghost.  She’s been making good use of her frugal nature to use discounted spa packages to get her LTH up to the all-important 10K for changing her wish.

She’s working in politics for now just to bring in some pennies and I’m half-heartedly getting her to do some martial arts in case I go for a while different change of wish than the one I’m planning, because the athletic skill is easy to build and there’s a LTW that involves martial arts and athletics.

By the way, I haven’t abandoned the whole Chinese Fire Ghost plan, and Hilda is only Eddie’s romantic interest, not his girlfriend or wife right now…

What’s this?  Is there a surprise Gen 4 baby on the way?

Oh no, it’s just Evel being a rubbish vegetarian again.  Sims are clearly thick.  Evel knows what is in all the food, as she cooks it.  So why she keeps eating stuff she knows she put meat and fish in is beyond me.  The vegetarian trait is a little odd, I have to say.  Some dishes have veggie substitutes and some don’t, so she can cook everything but not eat it all, yet she autonomously goes to eat meat-containing food even when there are veggie options.

Evel has maxed the cooking skill challenges now, and here she is reading ambrosia, so we’re good to go with the Harry revival whenever we need to.  She’s at level 7 in the cooking career, which is good, steady progress.  As soon as she reaches level 10 she’s going to have to go as we need the room for babies, but it should still be a little way off.  Hmm, I probably need to get someone else cooking to replace her when she does leave.

Eddie is still trying to do his photography challenges.  One of them is ‘places around town’ and he’s got them all except the theatre.  Every time we go to photograph the theatre it just shows as a place around town rather than a named place, so I’m going to assume it’s a glitch and declare that we’ve completed that one.  Another category is plants – this should theoretically be easy as it involves taking photos of flowers and growable plants, and we have most of the latter category in our garden.  Unfortunately, the camera keeps wanting to take pictures of the money trees and apple trees and none of the other things.  Maybe we need them spaced out more.  There is one category that is impossible on normal mode without cheating, and that’s ‘best in class’.  We took our swanky stereo and money tree and they fit into this category so I looked at what else was in it – people who have reached the top of all the professions.  How on earth can you do that without cheating/epic mode?  Hmm.

He is also gardening and his skill is building quickly, which is very good because we’re going to need him to be at level 10 as soon as he can get there.  Thomas has maxed all the gardening challenges now, but he is 86 years old and even with his allocated five pieces of life fruit, I’m not sure we’ll have him for that much longer.

That’s a real shame, because here he is going into the diner to collect his cheese to plant.  Yes, we are on the long road to omnis!  I can’t see it happening within Thomas’s lifetime but at least we have some cheese plants to help Eddie on the journey.

I also noticed this weird thing when he was at the diner.  It’s a Papergirl clone!

Speaking of Papergirl, she needed to boost up her charisma to get to level 10 of journalism, so after she did a diner review, I had her comforting this griving sim, when next to them appeared a pregnant elderly member of the Bunch clan.  Very odd.  Yes, she is elderly, not just an adult with white hair – she has all the wrinkles etc.

When I gave Piranha the lucky trait it was because I wanted to see what effect it had having a lucky and unlucky sim in the house.  At the time I couldn’t really tell, but since she’s gone, I notice the difference massively.  Objects are back to breaking all the time on Papergirl’s unlucky day, whereas when both of them were in the house they only broke occasionally.

And here is our Star News Anchor.  Hooray!  I don’t need Papergirl here any longer, not with having to make room for Gen 4 babies, so it was time to say goodbye to her.  She’s at the end of her life bar but that’s no guarantee she’ll die of old age any time soon.

I heard that unlucky sims get resurrected when they die accidentally, and this IS a try everything legacy, so as much as I love Papergirl, I then spent several sim days trying to kill her.  She was set the task of fixing and upgrading everything she could, and playing with the fire.  All that happened was that she got to level 7 in handiness.

So I sent her away to live out her remaining few days in the time stream.  Poor Thomas, I know, but I need the space, and it’s not like they won’t be reunited in the family graveyard in front of the library soon enough.

Speaking of old people, Sindy is 98 now and getting on my nerves a bit.  It’s not that I don’t like her, but she outlived her usefulness a long time ago so now she just paints, goes to work and autonomously eats dirt.  She’ll probably live to 120 or something.  Hmmm.  Maybe I’ll get her playing tag with Koi – that seems to kill everyone else.

And yes, with Papergirl gone, we have a new member of the family on the way!

The Dayes and I wish you all a happy new year.  Join us in the next decade for the first member of gen 4, more on how our omni plant plan is coming on, and to find out whether Sindy will ever die!