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The Sims 3 Guitar Star
By Tom Schlueter
I’ve made a lot of Sims 3 guitarists. So, I set out to create the ultimate guitarist—the Sims 3 Uber Guitar Star. I’m going to show you what I did and teach you all of my tricks. So, grab your guitar and here we go...
Mr. 3000‘s Traits:
Ambitious, Artistic, and Virtuoso. This is the core trinity trait choice for any self-respecting guitarist. The Ambitious trait is golden for all Sims no matter what they do because of the happiness points boost. Artistic and Virtuoso will increase the learning rate for guitar. The latter also boosts tip size. I’ve typically gone the Rock Star route with all of my former guitarists and chose Loves the Outdoors and Over-Emotional as the other 2 traits. Not this time. Mr. 3000 is a pure guitarist (i.e. no career). I chose Charismatic and Friendly to round him out. When you think about it, the Super Popular Lifetime Wish really makes the most sense for a pure guitarist, so that’s what I chose.
Mrs. 3000’s Traits:
Handy, Natural Cook, Bookworm, Artistic, and Ambitious. In retrospect, Artistic was kind of a dumb choice. I originally wanted her to paint to get the Nicely Decorated moodlets for Mr. while he was learning and training with guitar, but once I got into the game I mainly wanted her to provide good meals. So, for the first week all she did was cook. Her LTW was Culinary Librarian so it made sense anyway.
It was pretty much a necessity to create a utility Sim for Mr. 3000 because of the fact that the Guitar Star Challenge is whacked out and forces you to limit your guitarist to only the guitar skill. So, having another Sim cook and do the repairs was key. Accomplishing the Guitar Star Challenge is an important part of my mission—it’s a very difficult thing to do, and it does add a significant boost to tips.
I planted the 3000’s at 99 Landgraab Ave. This is one of my favorite Sunset Valley lots because of its central location. And at only $1800 the price is right for a starting couple. After some quick Woo Hoo and sleep to get the nice moodlets going, I immediately tasked the couple to their initial skilling. This won’t be the last time you see Mrs. in her underwear.
As soon as a guitarist hits lvl 5, forget about the Play interaction. Immediately head to the bookstore and purchase “Yes Ma’am, I do.” Learn the song and then always choose the Perform (full length songs) interaction until the skill is maxed. Perform builds the guitar skill at a faster rate than Play. Once you have the guitar skill maxed, it’s time to turn your attention to...
The Exploit.
Open your Guitar Skill Journal and you’ll see a key statistic: Number of times compositions have been performed. The higher this number, the greater size in tips. But, here’s the big trick: As soon as your guitarist starts performing a song, you quickly cancel the cue and it still registers in the Skill Journal. Cue up 8 Perform interactions, and it only takes about an hour and a half to get through them via quickly canceling. It takes a little practice becoming accurate in timing the canceling. This should help:
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What you’re looking for is him bending his knees. That’s the telltale sign. If you can cancel right before the notes appear, you’re good. If you do it much before that point then you won’t hear any audible portion of the song and it won’t register in the Skill Journal. So, it’s a fine line between jumping the gun and waiting too long and wasting the training time. If you’re using the electric guitar it’s actually a bit easier because the proper time to cancel is right when the amplifier appears.
Key Lifetime Rewards for Guitarists.
Meditative Trance Sleep is really the most important reward for a pure guitarist requiring endless training for the big money. Steel Bladder, Hardly Hungry, and Dirt Defiant will all provide a little more available time, but don’t purchase any reward until you have Meditative Trance Sleep. That’s my go-to reward for any round-the-clock skilling Sim. And by “round-the-clock,” I mean that skilling is all they really do. I didn’t use the Moodlet Manager at all in this walkthrough. Believe me, I was tempted towards the end!
The Sims Guitar Star: When Opportunity Knocks....
The reason the Guitar Star Challenge is messed up is because what you need to do to accomplish the skill challenge doesn’t match the description at all. The official description is that you need to play at 10 different parties and venues. So, you’re thinking, “I’ll just pack up my guitar and throw some parties at 10 different locations.” Wrong. That’s what it should be, but this challenge is all about completing guitar skill opportunities, like “Raise the fun(d). Or Local Musician Showdown. Tons of Tips and Sorting the Section are other common ones. And you can do certain ones multiple times. It all counts towards the magic number of 10. Whether or not you actually play guitar in the Opportunity doesn’t matter.
Yes! At Week 7, Day 1 Mr. 3000 finally bagged the Guitar Star Challenge. Here’s the funny thing: I always tell players on the forum, “Don’t do anything but guitar. No other skills.” Did I follow my own advice? NO! I blanked out right before my very first tip session at the start of week 2 and just had him read a Charisma book to gain 1 skill level. I did it because of his LTW, Super Popular, and thought if I had the Charisma Skill Journal available, then I could see the progress. But, the problem is half of the skill opportunities he received after that point were Charisma ones. So, my advice is still the same—nothing but guitar and you’ll achieve Guitar Star quicker. This challenge has been bugged since the game was released last summer, so I have no clue as to why EA can’t fix it.
Advanced Crowd Control Techniques. You could just set up shop in front of the Theater on a weekend and put yourself on autopilot. And chances are if your Sim has hundreds of performances in the Skill Journal, you’ll still make a huge amount of money. But, you can be more actively involved by paying attention to two things: Inattentiveness and Hunger.
The other thing a guitarist has to face late into the evening is his crowds’ inevitable hunger and sleepiness. You can’t do anything about their energy level, but you can offer a quick remedy for their rumbling tummies—high-quality dried food. Look closely behind Mr. 3000 and you can see I dropped a couple pieces on the ground. And it’s classy, right? You can issue commands to the Sims as if they were stray pets: “I know, you’re hungry, Tamara. Come here, come hear. Good girl.” Poor Tamara Donner actually looks like her appendix just burst. Yeow!
Week 7, Day 6.
My brain is ready to explode from this insanity of training a guitarist far beyond anything I had done previously. I pushed the performance count to 2600. So close. It’s Friday night and I really want to end on Sunday for my final Theater tip session stats. But, how am I going to get 400 more performances in the time left? Ahhhh...make like the Griswolds and take a vacation! I had Mrs. 3000 cash in some happiness points and she got the Prepared Traveler reward to extend the trip to France to 6 days.
Since the sole purpose of the vacation to France is for Mr. 3000 to do his final guitar training, I immediately seek a nice spot to plop down a Colesim 2br tent. I suppose I could have just kept the couple at the base camp, but the Town Square area looked more attractive. I decided on the 2nd floor above the general store. It was wide open and perfect—nice and close to the park for the guitar training, and also close to the bookstore for Mrs. to keep herself entertained with lots of reading. She’s got a thing about parading around in underwear, doesn’t she?
Mr. 3000 finally earned his name on the 6th day of the vacation and logged his 3000th performance of a composition. Time to head back to Sunset Valley for one final tip playing session to see just how big of a tip he’ll see! Oh, speaking of tips...here’s my official tip for tip-playing in World Adventures’ locations: don’t. It isn’t worth it because of the lack of traffic. Grinding with the exploit to pump up the tips at home is a great idea since time stands still. But, don’t waste your time with playing for tips in France, Egypt, or China.
Tip Stats.
The following information is from Sunday tip playing sessions in front of Sunset Valley’s Theater. The figures are the largest single tip received in the entire session. Performance #s are also listed for reference.
Session 2. Performances (466), $3,839.
Session 3. Performances (794), $4860.
Session 4. Performances (1252), $11,289.
Session 5. Performances (1720), $11,176.*
Session 6. Performances (2194), $19,804.
Session 7. Performances (3000), $42,484.
*Yes, it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s what happened. My only explanation is that any given tip falls within a very large range and Session 5’s largest tip obviously never hit the top end of the possible range given the performance count.
Coda.
Let me be frank about training guitarists for weeks on end—it’s not for everyone. To make a $42k single tip requires a certain level of fanaticism. You have to have a cast iron stomach to handle taking the exploit to the absolute limit of your sanity. But, honestly, the end result for me is still playing in front of Sims and developing relationships. The huge amounts of money is the icing on the cake. It’s my Sim interacting with other Sims that makes it all worthwhile. And I think that’s why I enjoy guitarists more than other high-income making activities such as writing, painting, or transfiguration—I feel more involved.
I hope these tips help you take guitar to the highest level possible. Now go out, learn some songs, and then head to the Theater to crank it up to 11!
