So first up I get through the next few days. There's nothing new here - I no longer even have any feeding problems at all. To occupy 6 teens I have a chess set and a domino table, plus there's an easel and where I have the radio placed two of them can work out. So no real problem keeping them busy.
Since I've lifted Culinary, I'm having Derek prepare a bunch of meals and stash them in the Minus 1 Kelvin Fridge reward. (What happened to the old fridge? You'll see). This fridge preserves food indefinitely, and since Cooking will only be a hobby skill from this point on, I might as well make use of him while he lasts. Besides, he can maybe get his Cooking skill to 10 - though I doubt that, the last couple of points take a long time to get "manually".
Note that even though the Minus 1 Kelvin is not one of the "cheapest appliances" that Architecture would otherwise restrict me to, it cannot be bought from the Buy menu, and so it is legal for me to place it. Some career rewards cannot be placed immediately, but most can.
Monday passes. Here's my set up on my new basement level 3:
It's difficult to see, but basically what we have here is a cage on the right (with the old fridge in it), and another on the left (with the grill at the end). There are gates that go in, but that is a temporary situation.
We're not quite ready yet - there are 3 more days until Barbara and Charles become young adults. But I'm sure the more astute players will already seen what dastardly plan I have here. The rest of you - the suspense won't kill you, I promise.
A few days later, I'm waiting for this:
Because I've lifted Culinary, I can use the cake to age them up, but I cannot do this until I get the message that it is their birthday. I believe this usually happens at 0700, as in this case. (And of course there is a similar message for Charles, but you get the idea). (I bought a cake yesterday just before midnight as my one item for the day and put it in Barbara's inventory; Charles gets the cake from the one item today). I chose Renaissance Sim for both of their life time wishes, for much the same reason it was Anna's. Their current stats are...
... wait, what? You want to see me kill somebody? Well, if you absolutely insist.
First, I walk Anna and Derek down into the new basement. Careful placement of objects ensues.
So what we have is, from left to right:
- A grill
- Anna
- A fridge (facing towards the grill - in other words, Anna can access it). This is the one that we had before Culinary gave us the Minus 1 Kelvin.
- Derek
- The hamper
- A gate
Now, usually, this is about all you have to do. Put the Sim in a cage, and remove or move the gate. Within a little more than 48 hours they will starve to death.
Unfortunately, Anna is Hardly Hungry. And from previous experience such Sims take ages to starve to death. And who has that sort of patience?
The next step is for her to prepare hot dogs, and then cancel the action once they're on the grill. To do this I need to manipulate the counter. First, get the hot dogs from the fridge, then move it out of the way and put the counter where the grill was:
Note that since I've already moved the gate, they cannot escape if I get careless. Anyway, she can now prepare the hot dogs on the counter. Once she picks them up, pause it:
And then swap the counter for the grill. You may have to get the Sim to move a bit (I did):
Continue cooking if she puts them on the floor. As soon as they are on the grill, cancel the action.
Now watch the Sim carefully. They will likely try to do something like continue to grill; cancel that immediately. Something else to keep in mind: if you have Twallan's Overwatch installed, disable the stuck check and stuck check autoreset:
Make sure you toggle both of those to false. Otherwise our cunning plan to trap the Sims will be undone; they'll get reset automatically when it is noted that they haven't moved.
After a little while, the grill will change its appearance:
So to anyone who is not yet with the programme, here's the plan. I'm starting a fire. The fire will consume both Anna and Derek, as well as the grill, the old fridge, and the hamper. This is solving several problems at once - getting rid of now surplus-to-requirements Sims, as well as getting rid of unwanted objects (especially the hamper - I have lifted Medical, I no longer need one).
Not long to wait after the grill changes graphic. It will briefly go black, and you might think that it's gone out. But sure enough, a few moments later:
Now I have a frantic bit of micromanagement. Here's what the Sims will attempt to do:
- Any Sim adjacent to a fire will either panic or try to put it out (if they are Brave).
- Any Sim on a lot with a fire will immediately, suicidally, run to the fire so that they can stand around and panic.
Fire is dangerous to play with - it's a lot safer to starve Sims to death - but if you have a Hardly Hungry Sim you have few options if you're impatient like me, and besides a cleansing fire to get rid of unwanted objects can be handy. If I was less capable at micromanagement, I could just remove the stairs so that my other Sims can't get there, but I don't really want to buy new stairs every time I burn something to death. Think of the economy.
Unfortunately, this is one of those things that is difficult to be precise about. When you want to burn a Sim to death, they will often just stand right next to a grill and not catch light themselves. Another time when you are just trying to make breakfast you'll burn the entire house down. In this case, it was the former case:
I realise that when I promise you a burning and fail to deliver it lacks a certain punch. What can I say? Sometimes the dice don't roll the way you want them to. The good news is that this is just a stay of execution. I move the fridge out into the other enclosure, and then I can just leave them to it. End of the day, they're still trapped in a small corridor with no escape - and I'll just have to be patient.
With that as a complete failure, I return my attention to the other Sims. Consider first Barbara:
Barbara grew up to be Athletic, Frugal, Grumpy, Neurotic, and Over-Emotional. She has Logic 10 and Athletics 8. Business will be at least a mild challenge; she has no traits that will help her make friends. I immediately set her to reading the Charisma book.
With Charles, when he checks the newspaper the first job is already taken (by Barbara, 5 seconds ago). So he can look at the next job in the paper:
We can skip that too, because it's already lifted. What's job number 3?
RIIIGHHHTT. It is not my night, obviously. Retired is not a career, it is not supposed to even appear in the paper. There are only three jobs per day; it looks as if Charles has to wait until tomorrow. In the interim I get him reading the Cooking book, as we're about to lose the two people in the family that know their way around a fridge. Derek has stocked us up, but it won't last forever. Cooking 1 opens up PB&J, so that's really all that's necessary; at 4, you can get Veggie Rolls.
While I am allowed to buy a stove now, there really isn't any good reason to do so until I get someone that can't start a fire with it (a Natural Cook, in other words). Fire is a fickle lady as we've seen; I don't want to start a fire unintentionally.
I'm really not having a good run here. As soon as Barbara wakes up to get ready for work, I'm informed that it's graduation day today. There is really only one chance; it is a Thursday, so she is allowed to call anybody. She has until the end of the day to try and makes friends with her boss (who, fortunately, appeared in her relationship panel as soon as she got the job). That's the good news. The bad news is, he's likely at some point to say he's not available because he has to go to work, which means I have a lot less than a full day to pull this off, with a Sim that has no traits that help:
Why even bother for a career that isn't what I would like? Well, the rules are clear: I am not allowed to intentionally arrange to be fired. The spirit of the rule says that I have to make a good faith effort here to make the necessary connection so that I can avoid it.
The above happened at 0807. The way Sims counts, that means that he'll be available at 1400 again (which is when her shift would have ended), and hopefully will remain available until midnight. That's a reasonable amount of time - I would say if my Sim were Friendly, or had a few Charisma points, we'd be in business. As it is? I'll do my best.
Note that you can cancel graduation as soon as it comes up, but you still miss the day. There's only one way to avoid that: don't play with Generations which is a surprisingly tempting strategy.
Anyway, after graduation, I have Charles look in the paper:
My luck may be changing. Education is a great lift, especially early in the challenge. Of course he isn't necessarily perfectly suited. He is Absent Minded, Insane, a Loner, Socially Awkward, and Unlucky; he has Athletics 7, Cooking 3 (from the book, since he became an adult), Logic 7, and Painting 5. He's going to need some Charisma, but I foresee no serious problems there.
Indeed my luck seems to hold; at a little after 1900:
Her begging her boss all day apparently has done the trick; she's allowed to keep her job. The time limit is that you must make friends before their next shift starts. Obviously if there are no Mondays or Thursdays before that point, you're probably going to be unable to do this, unless they live close by. So I guess it could have been worse.
A reasonable question at this point is, "Why don't I try to burn Anna and Derek to death again?" The answer is because as soon as a fire starts, it will occasionally make Sims come back from work to see it, and I don't want to have them lose their job. Other than making sure that they aren't doing anything illegal autonomously, they can't really cause any mischief. While Barbara and Charles are at work on their first day, Derek succumbs:
To put Hardly Hungry into perspective: when I first imprisoned these two, Derek had a full Hunger bar, and Anna had 17 hours left of the Very Hungry moodlet. He has just starved to death and she is still only on Very Hungry. I think it takes at least 3 or 4 times as long to die; she will, in all probability, be an elder before she succumbs (2 days to go for that).
The "cage technique" of killing Sims has two main benefits. Firstly, it makes sure that the method you're using to kill them cannot be interrupted: they can't escape from a fire, find their way to a fridge, or whatever. Secondly, it ensures that their tombstones appear in an out of the way location, where they cannot block your living Sims. If you insist on having your Sims die of old age, you have a much harder job. Essentially you have to take a guess as to how long they have left, and then have a controllable Sim lure them some place their tomb stone won't block access to something. It's tedious, it's error prone, and I cannot recommend it; the Apocalypse Challenge favours those with the intestinal fortitude to prune the tree now and then.
A death in the family will tank everyone's mood. This is never a good start to a new job, of course. But it must be borne. In my case it's actually not so bad; it happened on a Friday, and both Barbara and Charles have the weekend off. The Mourning moodlet only lasts 2 days, so they'll be fine by the time they go back to work (unless Anna dies in the interim).
It's not about needless cruelty. You can only have 8 Sims in a house. If you want to have more kids, someone else has to go. So I had Barbara invite over Obgu:
A cane is a pretty unambiguous method of indicating an elder. This is not ideal. Marry an Alien is the easier method to lift Alien Technology - but not in this case, since he would be completely uncontrollable. That means I must fall back to Alien Baby. It would be foolish to have her get pregnant before lifting her restriction, which means that we now have a very definite time limit: she must clear her job and get pregnant before Obgu dies of old age. There's nothing I can really do to affect that, of course - it's not as if I was going to be be slacking about clearing her restriction as fast as possible. But there is an alternative: I can have Diana, Eleanor, or Gabrielle get pregnant instead. This is not ideal, because the alien baby would then be unable to lift any other restriction, but we're in a situation where no solution is perfect:
- If I have Barbara bear the alien baby, then Obgu might die of old age before she can get pregnant.
- On the other hand Diana and Eleanor will be young adults in 2 days. Either of them can get pregnant effectively before they start on their lift, but the resulting child will be dead weight.
I cannot stress enough how powerful Alien Technology is. The mere possibility of letting this opportunity slip away is enough to persuade me to go with the second of these options. Obgu will be invited over on Saturday and introduced to Diana, who will make friends with him as a teen and then bear his child as soon as she becomes a young adult. I will just have to trust that at some point another alien will make their presence known to complete the lift.
You can admittedly forestall and make this easier by having lifted Artist, which can be done in theory by any Sim, but Artist is not generally a great lift; the only way for me to have lifted it this earlier would be via Video Game Developer (Artist branch) and I certainly would not have wanted to give up Culinary or Medical for that opportunity.
When the triplets age up on Sunday, Francis gets Military, Diana of course does not look (no point getting her a job if I'm going to get her pregnant), and Eleanor had a choice of Business or Retired, and took neither. It's very difficult to be upset if you get Military, as it is a very strong restriction. Francis has the traits Couch Potato (they'll whip that out of him I'm sure), Friendly, Insane, Slob, and Virtuoso. Not exactly ideal traits, but he does have Athletics 7 already (and Logic 9). He'll be working on lifting his Handiness skills.
Diana is going to stay unemployed until the alien baby is born. She's Athetlic, Artistic, Over-Emotional, a Party Animal, and a Snob; she has Athletics 9, Logic 7, and Painting 2. Finally, Eleanor is a Couch Potato, Good, a Schmoozer, a Slob, and a Snob; she has Athletics 7, Logic 10, and Painting 2.
Diana calls over Obgu again. She puts the moves on him, and in an hour or two:
Remember, listen for the "Rock a bye baby" tune. Anyway, she doesn't want to get tied down with this guy, so after a quick Try for Baby she asks him to leave - there are skills to learn, can't be wasting time.
The next day, the options for Eleanor are Education, Medical, and finally Politics. So we will have a politician in the family.
The day after that, Anna finally dies:
You can see what I mean about how long it takes. Hardly Hungry is basically something to be taken very sparingly, unless you've lifted Military. Anna will actually probably be the last Sim I kill, which is disappointing I'm sure, but there's really no need to if you lift Military, and Francis is already level 3 after 3 days, so that's well on target. (Admittedly aided by a "stay late" opportunity).
Next time, the alien baby will be born, Gabrielle will join her siblings as an adult, and I'll discuss how you can make the friends you'll need for so many jobs - I already have Education and Politics here, and Business sort of counts as well. Limited phone? Limited problem!
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