The Perfectly Happy Challenge

[Metropolis Man]

Sounds like you were the victim of a nasty bug, ik. I would be willing to allow you to delete your file and try one more time with a fresh character.

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EDIT: Incidentally, ik, are you playing with the latest EA patch?

[DLSpurlock]

... . she still can not click on any pond. this means she will miss out on approximately 80k points from missing fish and not achieving her lifetime wish . i guess that means i am out of the running for this challenge.

A couple of things to try to get by that bug. If you have a Death Flower in your inventory get rid of it. I found that carrying a death Flower around causes my game to do all sorts of weird things, including not being able to fish.

Second, try selling all the fish in your inventory, fridge and other storage containers. I think sometimes a particular fish gets bugged. That cleared this problem up for me a couple of times. The same thing can happen with produce and gardening.

I really love this game, but the bugs can drive one to drink sometimes.

Dave

[Metropolis Man]

Thanks for those tips, Dave. ik, please exhaust all of Dave's suggestions before canning your character and trying again. I want a restart to be an absolutely last resort and do not want to establish some kind of precedent where players will abuse that privilege. "But, Metro, you let player Y restart , remember?" That kind of thing. I realize this is totally not your fault, but restarts will have consequences for me too.

[Twinmum]

Not too late to be added for this is it? I have a feeling that I'm not going to do so great, but it should still be fun and a different way to play from what I'm used to.... now off to remove my mods and get this started :-)

Norma

[kat]

Right, Metro, I'm back in! So sorry to mess you around, it's not like me, I was just feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything that was on World Adventures, but I managed to complete my Sim who had the full visa in all countries life time wish, and I am feeling a lot more at ease with it all now, and ready to have a crack at this.
I have started the challenge with a male sim called Phillippe LeFerve, he is a French style sim and currently living like a bit of a bum on his front lawn! so far have got a little garden growing, but havnt caught/grown/cooked anything better than a 'very nice' yet :-(

[LenaLJ]

Just wanted to share that I've started this.   My Sim, Rose Cuisine, is in week 2 now and so far she got 5 perfect fish, I think, and her 1 perfect fruit. As soon she's got enough money, she is going to make her first travel out there. Right now, my biggest problem is to get many LHP, but I hope I'll learn how to do it before it's to late for her. But I enjoy the challenge.

[Twinmum]

OK, I said I was going to do this challenge and I will, but I think I need to play a test subject for a few real days to test the waters and get used to playing a vanilla game. Who knows, I might enjoy it so much, I might dump my mods for good!
One question though, when you grow a perfect plant or catch a perfect fish, is it permanently recorded.. do I have to have that plant or fish in my inventory (well in the garden or an aquarium) at the 100 day mark?

Norma

[Metropolis Man]

OK, I said I was going to do this challenge and I will, but I think I need to play a test subject for a few real days to test the waters and get used to playing a vanilla game. Who knows, I might enjoy it so much, I might dump my mods for good!
One question though, when you grow a perfect plant or catch a perfect fish, is it permanently recorded.. do I have to have that plant or fish in my inventory (well in the garden or an aquarium) at the 100 day mark?

Norma, welcome to the tourney. You definitely need some kind of system to keep you organized, so you know what work still lies ahead. I think Pam actually made a spreadsheet which is smart. I just wrote down the list of all plants, fish, and recipes in the game on paper and when I accomplished Perfect varieties, they were scratched off.

To answer your question, no. You do not need to keep Perfect items in Inventory.

I'll add you to the leaderboard, Norma. And welcome back, kat — you're back on as well.

Looking at the leaderboard, this event is shaping up to be the most popular event to date. Pretty exciting!

[Twinmum]

Thanks Metro. I have a plan of sorts. I have a word document that I made up this evening when I decided to join the tourny. It has all the plants, recipes and fish (in different tables) and what levels I need to achieve/get them, it also has a collumn so I can check off each one as I do it. Tomorrow, I'll sit down and study it and draw up a plan including what order I should take my holidays and when.

Norma

[LenaLJ]

One little question, what is the easiets way to see if a meal i made is perfect??

[Metropolis Man]

One little question, what is the easiets way to see if a meal i made is perfect??

Just hover your cursor over the dish and the quality will be shown.

[jmz95]

One little question, what is the easiets way to see if a meal i made is perfect??

Just hover your cursor over the dish and the quality will be shown.

Somehow, reading this made me think of something that may or may not be obvious, but I want some clarification before I start the challenge this afternoon. With the Natural Cook trait, you get the option to "Kick it up a notch". Are we allowed to do so in this challenge?

[Metropolis Man]

With the Natural Cook trait, you get the option to "Kick it up a notch". Are we allowed to do so in this challenge?

Definitely. But, you know what? I'm not sure if you can go from Outstanding and kick it up a notch to perfect. If you can, great. But, I think I've tried it and it didn't work. For the lower levels I know it raises things one level.

[jmz95]

Ah okay, thanks. Just making sure. I'm now finally going to make my sim and get started on the challenge.

[simfulicious]

I would like to give this challenge a try as well.  Thank you for coming up with new and exciting ways to play.

[Metropolis Man]

Simfulicious, you're in. And welcome to the forums. I love your forum name. Almost sounds like a quality above Perfect.

[simfulicious]

Thank you, I'm glad to be here.  Hopefully my choice in forum name will give me luck...I've gotten alot of perfect fruits/veggies and fish in the past...but i haven't played too much with cooking...so that's where the challenge will be for me.

[Pam]

Definitely. But, you know what? I'm not sure if you can go from Outstanding and kick it up a notch to perfect. If you can, great. But, I think I've tried it and it didn't work. For the lower levels I know it raises things one level.

I've tried many times to go from Outstanding to Perfect and it's never worked.

[jmz95]

Okay, I started the challenge (you can go ahead and put me on the leader board) and got to day 2 with no problems. I thought I was doing really well, as I had amounted a pretty big amount of happiness points within 30 hours of sim time. I even gained 6 skill levels, when all of a sudden my game froze. I went to the task manager, and the Sims 3 was not responding. So now I have to start over and recreate as much as possible as I had not quite saved yet (and I was just about to when my game froze. Literally, it froze the second I thought about saving). So yeah, I'm not going to do anything with it for a little while, but I have noticed my game freezing a lot lately. I try to close everything else to help bring down the CPU usage when I play sims, but I guess I'll have to change the graphics settings a little as I think I have been playing with them on the highest setting. Oh well, my fault for not saving as often as I should  

Oh, one other thing. Is the "Kick it up a notch" unlocked only after a certain skill level, or what? I had made several autumn salads when I played, they were normal quality, but I never got the option to kick it up a notch, and my sim never did it autonomously. I know for sure he had the natural cook trait. What's up with that?

[Pam]

Okay, I started the challenge (you can go ahead and put me on the leader board) and got to day 2 with no problems. I thought I was doing really well, as I had amounted a pretty big amount of happiness points within 30 hours of sim time. I even gained 6 skill levels, when all of a sudden my game froze. I went to the task manager, and the Sims 3 was not responding. So now I have to start over and recreate as much as possible as I had not quite saved yet (and I was just about to when my game froze. Literally, it froze the second I thought about saving). So yeah, I'm not going to do anything with it for a little while, but I have noticed my game freezing a lot lately. I try to close everything else to help bring down the CPU usage when I play sims, but I guess I'll have to change the graphics settings a little as I think I have been playing with them on the highest setting. Oh well, my fault for not saving as often as I should  

There's a discussion going on about this in another thread with helpful suggestions on how to make it better:  http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=478.0

Oh, one other thing. Is the "Kick it up a notch" unlocked only after a certain skill level, or what? I had made several autumn salads when I played, they were normal quality, but I never got the option to kick it up a notch, and my sim never did it autonomously. I know for sure he had the natural cook trait. What's up with that?

It doesn't show up until you're about halfway through the levels.  I haven't noticed exactly when it starts, but definitely not in the early levels.

[jmz95]

Okay, I started the challenge (you can go ahead and put me on the leader board) and got to day 2 with no problems. I thought I was doing really well, as I had amounted a pretty big amount of happiness points within 30 hours of sim time. I even gained 6 skill levels, when all of a sudden my game froze. I went to the task manager, and the Sims 3 was not responding. So now I have to start over and recreate as much as possible as I had not quite saved yet (and I was just about to when my game froze. Literally, it froze the second I thought about saving). So yeah, I'm not going to do anything with it for a little while, but I have noticed my game freezing a lot lately. I try to close everything else to help bring down the CPU usage when I play sims, but I guess I'll have to change the graphics settings a little as I think I have been playing with them on the highest setting. Oh well, my fault for not saving as often as I should  

There's a discussion going on about this in another thread with helpful suggestions on how to make it better:  http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=478.0

Oh, one other thing. Is the "Kick it up a notch" unlocked only after a certain skill level, or what? I had made several autumn salads when I played, they were normal quality, but I never got the option to kick it up a notch, and my sim never did it autonomously. I know for sure he had the natural cook trait. What's up with that?

It doesn't show up until you're about halfway through the levels.  I haven't noticed exactly when it starts, but definitely not in the early levels.

Okay, thanks for the cooking tidbit. Also, I  don't know if you noticed but I have actually posted a couple times in that thread, but thanks for directing me to it again.

Also, will the stuff mentioned in that thread help for just random freezes? I know it helps with crashes, but my game hasn't really been crashing, just freezing. Unless, of course, not responding is considered a crash.

[Pam]

Okay, thanks for the cooking tidbit. Also, I  don't know if you noticed but I have actually posted a couple times in that thread, but thanks for directing me to it again.

Oops!  Sorry about that. 

Also, will the stuff mentioned in that thread help for just random freezes? I know it helps with crashes, but my game hasn't really been crashing, just freezing. Unless, of course, not responding is considered a crash.

I can't say for sure, but I think it would probably help with a freeze.  If the game freezes and won't respond, that's like a crash, in my opinion.  You can't recover from it, have to shut down the game with Task Manager, and lose your progress since the last save.  If cleaning out those cache files helps with crashes, it might help with freezes, too.

[Tealeaf]

Coming in late, but not too late I think.  I'm pretty new to these forums, and this challenge sounds like it might be fun to try.  I'm not particularily organized and wouldn't be making spreadsheets or anything, but it might be interesting to see how I do just winging it.  I'm thinking about what traits and career, if any, I'd want my sim to have.  Maybe living off my fish and garden would be the way to go.  Yes, this could be interesting to try, even if I don't end up anywhere near the top of the list.

[Metropolis Man]

Hi, Tealeaf. You're on the leaderboard. Good luck in the tourney.

[ik]

good news: i am back in business. first of all thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions to my problem. unfortunately, getting rid of all death flowers, produce and fish did not help either, but i did find a backup of a savefile that was just a couple of sim days back and did not have the pond problem. i had to replay those few sim days four or five times before i managed to get past that time in sim-land with the ponds still working, but i tried to recreate what i did first time around as closely as possible, so i hope that is ok. i now save frequently to different save games, and so far (two sim weeks on) i had the bug reappear only once (but lost no more than a couple of sim-hours fishing thanks to more frequent savegames).

i still have no idea what triggers that bug (which is annoying me especially since figuring out bugs in software is what i do for a living ), but i hope that i will make it through to the end of the challenge without any more major problems. on the positive side, somewhere between trying to navigate around that bug my sim finally regained the ability to fish using bait, so fishing has become a lot more comfortable again . she is now well into the second half of her time, so i am hoping to be able to post a final score soon.