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The Sims 3 - The Centurian's Solo Challenge
This is my only current completed challenge. More Sims 3 Challenges will be listed as they come up in the forum. When they do, this page will gradually expand to list logs of my experiences with them.This Sims 3 Character Walkthrough will serve as my log to completing the The Centurian's Solo Challenge created by Metropolis Man from my forum. My Sim's name is Zeke Tolliver. He'll pursue the professional author lifetime wish.
About the Centurian Challenge
This Sims 3 Challenge is to create a Sim as a young adult, and set the life span of the game to long. The Sim's goal is to accumulate as many lifetime happiness points and net wealth as possible in 100 days. This comes out to the challenge ending on week 15, day 2. 14 entire weeks would have passed (98 days) + 2 days. No cheats or mods are permitted in completing the challenge. Additionally, you must complete it with a single Sim and can never move anyone else into the household. Your score is calculated based on the total of lifetime wealth + happiness. To determine wealth, you add the lot's furnished value with cash on hand. To read more about the challenge, or post your score, click here. Note that you can hover over the treasure chest in the lifetime happiness tab to see total points accumulated, so spending points is not a problem.
I created Zeke with the following traits, to aid him in making lots of money as a writer:
Bookworm
Bookworms make better authors, plain and simple. This will deliver a better boost to wrting ability than the artistic trait, which only serves to give a 10% boost to learning speed -- something this Sim doesn't need.
Couch Potato
With the Couch Potato trait, my Sim will receive a better comfort moodlet when he's sitting. With the best chair, and the over-emotional trait, he'll receive a +62 boost to mood just from his comfy chair.
Over Emotional
He'll be happy almost constantly, and this wil ensure a full mood bar because of the 25% increase to all moodlets.
Loner
I don't him to be interrupted by loneliness. He'll require much less social interaction due to his loner tendences, saving him some time overall.
Perfectionist
Perfectionists spend more time on their projects, and this leads to a better end result. This should boost the likelihood of hit and bestseller novels.
Lifetime Wish: Professional Author
This will be a simple wish to complete, to snag a fast 30,000 lifetime happiness points. He wants to earn 4,000 weekly from writing, but he will later make 50x that amount.
His house is small, but I chose a location at 2500 Pinochle Point so he could have the beautiful vista moodlet. Zeke will always have +12 mood while on his lot (10 normally, 2 extra from his emotional "problems"). His home has the best of a couple of items. He gets the best desktop machine, and the best bed. Unfortunately, the lot and house costs, along with the desk, bed and computer have made it so that Zeke's only item in the kitchen is a refrigerator. He'll need to begin earning money immediately for more decoration and appliances.
He wants to both learn the writing skill and take a class in it. This will give him a jump start on his lifetime happiness points. He has $500 simoleons remaining, so I send him to a class. He scores 1500 happiness points right away doing this, then heads home to write a non-fiction novel (one of the shortest kinds of book). He makes it to the third level in writing from creating this book, and will earn $40 a week in royalties. This fulfills multiple wishes. This means that at the end of the first day he's already accumulated nearly 5000 points.
The days would be bleak, boring and dreary for any other Sim, but all Zeke needs to be happy is a computer and a seat. He eats a quick meal from the fridge to satisfy his hunger, grabs a shower and heads back to his computer. He plays games for a bit, after all the first day was a bit stressful, then returns to writing. This time, he has a wish to write a sci-fi novel and I think that's a great idea. He manages to finish the book, while taking a break for a quick meal. They just aren't as filling as the real thing. He also collects his book from the mailbox and pays the bills.
The Sci-Fi Novel will give him another $115 a week in royalties and he's at writing level 4. He writes pretty slow at the moment, and the number of books read reportedly increases the speed at which writers produce books. It may also affect royalties. Some serious testing would be required to test all this, but I'm confident it has an affect. It is a tracked statistic in the writing skill journal. With this in mind, I send him to the library. I don't have him read his own books yet. I'd like to save them up for a while. Instead, he raids the library shelves with a full tuesday ahead of him. He manages to read four books. I took note of which shelf he'd read, and how far he made it. I skipped the book he wrote, which made it to the library shelves already. This completes multiple wishes and 10,000 happiness points is in his sights.
So his fourth day on Sim Earth will be spent writing again, after reading those books he's able to write two non-fiction novels a day. And where he was originally getting $8 per "few chapters" he is now getting $9. The second of the two books earns him $57 a week in royalties, much higher than the original $40. I'm sure this is due to the writing skill increasing in part, but reading the books must have helped. During the day, his computer broke down and he read the two novels he'd written while the repair man came to fix the PC. Again, more lifetime happiness points are awarded for reading books and he can now afford the steel bladder reward. I sell his toilet. He'll never need it.
That thursday, bladder needs permenantly satisfied, he writes yet again. I don't want him to specialize in a genre yet, in fact, I'd prefer if he specialized in masterpieces. So he'll write one final non-fiction book. His social need has finally reached the point I think it should be satisfied, so I have him chat on the computer. I want him to meet someone, as after chatting is over the social need will be filled faster while talking on the phone.
He gets an opportunity that friday to write a drama novel for a Sim. I'm happy to have him do this because it will set him at over $500 a week in royalties, fulfilling yet another big wish. He writes about 80% of it in one day, then finishes it that saturday. He then makes a fiction novel to supplement his income further and increase the number of books written. He'd like to reach 10 total.
He wakes up that Sunday morning and it's time to tally up his points for the first completed week: 13637 in net wealth + 17597 lifetime points = 31234 points. If you're doing this, and keeping track, it's easy! You can simply hover over the time clock to see what week/day the game is on.
He now wants to write a total of 10 books. He's at 7 currently. He has only written one fiction novel, so I'll have him complete three more. He gets one of them done but the computer breaks down. I have him sleep while the repair technician does his thing. This is a challenge after all. He wakes after he's gone, grabs some bread and jam and writes the second fiction novel. He's up until the next day, but manages to finish a third, as well.
He gets yet another opportunity, this time for a sci-fi novel. His days are staying mostly the same, and probably will until the hereafter. Since I'm doing a challenge, he needs to make as much money as possible so his days will be very bland.
He's made some great strides in income, so I buy him some counter space. He can finally get a mood bonus from eating autumn salad from time to time. I purchase the best counters possible, to add to the room's decorated moodlet bonus. He also takes his second lifetime reward, hardly hungry. This means he'll last a long time on a single meal.
By the end of the second week, he's making $2731 a week in royalties and has written a total of 17 books. This puts him at a total of $18,519 in net wealth + 39,280 in lifetime happiness or 57779 in total points for the Centurian Solo Challenge
Beginning his first week, and having a nearly empty wish selection, I send him to the library with the 15 books he's written. The plus side here is that I've always written the shortest books available. Because of this, he manages to read all of them, reading a total of 20 books read. I sell each book. Zeke is doing awesome. I then send him to the day spa, after all that reading, to take the great escape package for $1000 simoleons. This is a one time thing. From this point forward, he's going to try to save as much money as possible. I have plans for all that money.
He continues to save money that week. His writing skill reaches the tenth level, and he manages to complete several wishes. This includes the lifetime wish, and he's now got about 45,000 points to spend. He buys the acclaimed author reward, along with the dirt defiant reward. Now three of his needs are either eliminated or dramatically reduced. He spends the rest of the week writing, and when sunday's royalty check comes I again tally his score. On week 4 day 1 he has now accumulated 17,500 in total wealth along with 89,533 points bringing his centurion solo challenge score to a total of 107,033 points.
My Sim rolls through the next week, saving money. He manages to get up the 12,500 simoleons needed to buy the little corsican bistro. He'll get his first payment on monday. The unfortunate part of my plan, is that my Sim can only buy businesses up to week 9, because he will not see a return on investment in his 100 day challenge run. By week 5, day 1 he manages to accumulate a total net wealth of 23461 by week 5 day 1 and 109,872 lifetime happiness points bringing the score to 133,333. He had started his first masterpiece, but will finish it that the next day.
On week 5, day 1 he completes his masterpiece, which will earn him 12,211 a week for the next 6 weeks. He heads to the library after a computer breakdown to read all the books in his inventory. He's reading his own work, but he can learn a lot from it. He crosses the 30 books read threshold, then continues writing.
My Sim has cemented alll three writing challenges at this point. I accidentally specialized in non-fiction earlier, but he works on masterpieces to overcome that. During the week the buys more businesses. He ends up in partnership with a total of 6 businesses by week 6, day 1. His happiness points end at 138,183 and wealth is at 32,609 bringing him to a grand total of 170,792 Centurian Points. Buying the businesses and writing masterpieces is paying off.
This week, my Sim purchases the moodlet manager lifetime reward. Now he can write indefinitely with short breaks to cure himself in between. He manages to write two masterpieces this week. On that Sunday, after receiving the royalty check he heads out and buys the rest of the businesses in town. Now owning all but the science facility, he'll have a great payday on Monday and be able to begin to enter full ownership. On Week 7, day 2 he gets his payments, including back payments from some previous weeks from some businesses he owns.
He continues writing and collects his payments from all the businesses he's in partnership with. He uses any spare money to move up to full ownership in several places. He buys the tenth and final property, and now has a partnership in all businessess in Sunset Valley. His wealth now stands at a week 8, day 1 total of $37,823 in worth with 177,336 happiness points, bringing him to a score of 215,859 Centurian Points. Unfortunately, the deeds he owns do not count toward his wealth at all.
Of course we can see where the next week is going. Much more writing and accumulation of wealth. He finishes another masterpiece, and it's finally his specialization. I see this as a chance to complete a couple of wishes and an opportunity to write a non-fiction novel. Since his masterpiece specialization is set, he can now write up to seven of any other novel type. I write a number of novels throughout this week, and when Sunday's huge $107,000+ royalty check arrives, I send him to buy out both the stadium and science lab. This will end his investment spree. From here on out, he won't spend a single Sim penny!
Week 9, Day 1 Centurian Solo Tally: $16,136 Property Value Furnished + $22,155 cash on hand + 234,245 Lifetime Happiness Points = 272,536 Points. He owns all businesses and has enough time to surpass the break even point on all of those investments. He writes a few more small novels, but completes yet another masterpiece. With a 139,724 check he's at $203,776 cash on hand with a property value of $16,141. He's also hit 265,000 lifetime happiness points. I'll not do the math this time, but will save it for next week which should be most impressive.
Another week of writing boosted by the moodlet manager. He gets a massive royalty check on week 11, day 1 and has $539,792 on hand with a property value of $16,101 (as usual). 286,690 lifetime happiness points have been awarded at this point, bringing him to a grand total of 842,583 points
By week 13, day 1, Zeke is now an elder. He's hit a high of nearly 240,000 simoleons a week in royalties. Upon collection of all the business properties this day he has a total of $1,215,148 cash on hand with the usual $16,246 in property value. Why it changed slightly I do not know. Regardless, with his 314,148 lifetime happiness points he has a total of 1,545,542 points.
His final two weeks are phenomenal. I push him to 80 books completed to fulfill a wish. He reaches a peak of 322,000 a week in royalties. When week 15, day 2 arrives, and I can collect the final business investment payments, he has a total of $2,089,050 cash on hand, a lot value of $16,156, and 343,753 lifetime happiness for a grand total of 2,448,379 points. I look foward to seeing your posts on the The Centurian's Solo Challenge thread on the forum. If you beat me, I'd like to know how you did it, but I'd be honored to be clobbered! This one was long and I know there are many opportunities to do better than I did on my first run.