Ride the Wind: Travelling For Time Freezing

With only 20 days remaining until Ivy becomes an elder, and 30 Sims to train, it was looking bleak for the Admirable Adonis. But there was a solution: World Adventures!

Now, a cautionary note. Travel in the Sims is notoriously buggy. I wouldn't even attempt it without using Twallan's Traveler mod installed. And save frequently. It is risky, and things can get really badly glitched.

So why bother? Well, apart from a few minor things that are far from useless (like storage chests), the important thing to remember is that you do not age while on vacation - indeed, no time passes at all. So if you can unlock the ability to travel, you can arbitrarily increase the amount of time you have available. That can be very useful for restrictions that are not career based.

I'm going to go to China first, because I want to get Pangu's Axe.

Remember that the Apocalypse is world wide. All restrictions still apply. In particular, this means that I can't sleep on the ground (though inside a tomb is underground - that's OK). I'm going to need to get some visa points so I can buy a vacation home, but in the interim the Martial Arts temple has exercise equipment that I can use to train with.

Incidentally, in case anyone was still doubting Alien Technology, notice that the Motive Mobile comes with you when you travel:

Hop in that and all your motive problems are solved.

So I have Ivy training Karen in the Martial Arts Academy, James off an adventure, and I sent Lilandra to the market. The first stop is the book store, but remember: bought books do not count for the collection portion of the Copious Librarian. I'm after recipes, skill books, and the like. In addition I grab the Chinese specialities - a board breaker, a training dummy, and a Jiangzhou's Chest. (Fortune Cookie makers are too expensive with Architecture still in effect). I also grab a generous helping of high quality dried food, some showers in a can, and some tents.

James and Lilandra go off on adventures. Ivy trains Karen until she gets fatigued, then trains visiting Sims at the martial arts academy while Karen practices chess and waits for the fatigue to fade. It only takes two sessions to get the 10 hours with Karen:

But there's no point quitting until she is at 10 Athletics, really. The sessions with the visiting Sims are often short and interrupted, which was a major concern of mine for the 10 hours per Sim rule, but it is manageable since they tend to stay close by and I can usually get them into another session fairly soon.

The first trip to China was fairly average. I managed to train Karen, Lilandra, and James (sure he was already at 10 Athletics, but that isn't part of the restriction - useless training still counts) for 10 hours each. I also got 5 other random Sims about 19 hours and change between them. It's a decent start. It does demonstrate however that I definitely wouldn't have time without a trick like this - 3 days in China, and I only managed to score 3 Sims, so in 20 days one would suggest I would never make 30. And this is with the Motive Mobile allowing a quick trip to fully replenish my mood, mind you. Alien Technology - don't leave home without it.

I didn't manage to get the Pangu's Axe quest but I did get both James and Lilandra to the second level of visa, so once "travelitis" wears off I'll be able to come back for longer. (Unfortunately I kept getting offered the assassin bug adventure; I'm not allowed to collect insects yet anyway, but even if I was, without a Collection Helper I'm not even going to try that). Karen and Lilandra both need to get to 10 Athletics, but theoretically I could dump James at this point.

One thing I mustn't delay much longer is getting married; I decide to have Ivy hang out at the gym during hours she's not at work, and perhaps find herself a husband.

In the meantime, Karen has finished the reading portion of the exercise:

It's better to do the reading first, since the number of books you've read contributes to how much the royalties are for those you write. As you can see, as soon as the next royalty check comes, she'll be done, but I'll have her write a couple more anyway.

After completing a few quests, I was curious as to why the Confounded Boulder adventure (the one that kicks off Pangu's Ax) hadn't appeared. A bit of experimentation with Master Controller kicked Error Trap into a frenzy, and I was unable to find the adventure even with Master Controller. So I used testing cheats to delete the adventure board, and I'll see what happens when I return to China. But other than that, the second trip went OK; Ivy has now trained a total of 8 Sims for 10 hours each and has a bunch more partially complete. There's really no question that this technique will work, but it would work a lot better if I could get more Visa points and plonk down a vacation home.

Karen already has Athletics 10, and then she cleared the last of the writing challenges:

Along with James (who had Athletics 10 ages ago), I move these guys out. I've met a promising looking Criminal that will do as a spouse, but I want to get Lilandra to Athletics 10 first. This didn't take long:

As I get rid of Lilandra, I am having Ivy flirt with Wayne-the-Criminal. Now, normally Criminal is not exactly something that is high priority once Master Thief is lifted, but in this case I want to unlock Moodlet Manager, so that's what I was hunting for.

After I get him to 10 hours training, it doesn't take long to get to the proposal point:

And then I have Ivy marry him. Returning from the gym in the Mood Mobile, they immediately go to work on the next generation. Wayne is already a Con Artist which means he's one promotion away from the Criminal/Master Thief choice. He has Athletic 8, Guitar 3 (which I remove with Master Controller, as it is not legal for him to have that) and Social Networking 1. His traits are Disciplined, Equestrian, Evil, Light Sleeper, and Slob, and he comes with 4 books that go towards the collection. He's going to need some genetic resequencing, but the try for baby is immediately successful and comes with enough LTR points for Ivy to get Fertility Treatment without wasting her saved Moodlet Manager points. The bad news is that he's only 8 days away from becoming an elder, but that should be manageable.

At the point when I send the new couple to China (with Ivy not yet showing as pregnant), she has successfully trained 11 Sims for 10 hours each. Still keeping back enough LTR points for a Moodlet Manager, she has managed to get Prepared Traveller as well, so even with the level 0 Visa she's still able to score a 6 day trip. It would of course be handy to have a better Visa level, so I decide to have  Wayne try for that. But it appears that there is still nothing on the (newly spawned) Adventure Board except untouchables (meditating/finding bugs). This is very much on the "annoying" rather than "debilitating" list; I have trained 16 Sims by the time I return, with a few more started, and I am fairly confident reaching 30 will not be a problem. I'll just have Wayne work on his logic skill next time. In your game, and in future games of mine, I suggest having only one Sim at a time pursue adventures. There is a way to reset them outlined here but that is something I choose not to risk for the sake of this blog.

Ivy is now visibly pregnant, but still able to train people at the gym. Unfortunately she can't travel, but fortunately the window wasn't too long - a few hours after she would have been able to travel, she gave birth to Mary and Nicola. To celebrate, after getting pregnant again, she headed back to China (solo this time - I don't want to worry about infants while travelling, and I can't take both adults without them). There are 3 Chinese trainees that I want to finish with, and then the rest can hopefully be completed without further travel. It goes reasonably well; when I return I have trained 20 Sims, and by my calculations have about 46 hours or so to go of training to finish up, all of which can hopefully be done at home (since that way it counts as if I'm looking after the kids).

Shortly after Oliver is born, Wayne finishes Criminal:

He still has 2 more days until he becomes an elder. With Workaholic, Ambitious, Entrepreneurial Mindset, and Multitasker, he was able to manage this very quickly - useful, since Ivy only has 9 days until she's an elder as well, and she has 5 more Sims to train - she's not going to be doing any mothering, and indeed will be an elder before any of her offspring are teenagers. That's not necessarily a problem, though it's also not exactly ideal.

But now that she has a Moodlet Manager, she can Cure any Sim she's training to remove (amongst anything else) the Fatigued moodlet, so it should go quickly from here. It took another couple of days, and then the Admirable Adonis was achieved. This was more tedious than hard.

With less than a day to go before Wayne becomes an elder, I decide to move him out. The Emperor of Evil aura has a tendency to tank relationships, and as an uncontrolled elder that's a recipe for disaster. It does mean that Ivy must quit work, but that is acceptable.

As a single parent of multiple kids, things can get a bit hairy. Mary and Nicola's birthday announcement came, so I immediately got cakes for them. In the process of Mary having her birthday, I suddenly got "the baby is coming" - and all this while Oliver is yelling and screaming in his crib, and Nicola is complaining of exhaustion. It's just one of those things - it can be managed, as long as you're careful. The really tricky bit occurs when you're an elder, and before you have teens - I'll look at that next time.