The Perfectly Happy Challenge

[Metropolis Man]

Just my humble opinion but in that case I think Omni plants should be excluded from the total - there's no skill or strategy involved at all.

Let me think about it. A simple solution would be simply to give everyone a freebie 4k points for an Omni plant as long as the plant bears fruit before the challenge is over. If I forget to do this remind me.

Getting the rare grapes from france involves a huge amount of luck as it is but there is at least some strategy to it - unless I've missed something, the only way I know of to get those grapes is Tuatha's Garden (requires Pangu's Axe), Langraab basement quest (i think you can only get 1 of the rare ones there but I could be wrong - the others might have been there but not harvestable) or getting Visa level 3. For the 2 quests its pretty much a crapshoot as to whether you get offered them straight away afaik and for Pangu's axe, you'd definitely have to get the quest on your first day and you'd have to be pretty lucky with the fishing too to fit it all in.  I just took a sim to France for the first time as an experiment and he didn't get any landgraab quests the whole 3 days he was there.

You definitely missed an incredibly simple way to obtain all of the grapes. Carl's knows it. I know it. I'm sure others know it. If anyone spells out the strategy in this thread you will feel my wrath and I'll edit your post. But, it's right there in black and white in the Plant List Guide.

[Metropolis Man]

Edit

[NancyJ]

Final Score

TLHA: 252,015
Perfects 36 (recipes) + 31 (fish) + 27 (plants) =376,000

=628,015

[Metropolis Man]

Nice job finishing up, Nancy.

[Metropolis Man]

Okay, I hope you understand, but I am editing our previous posts.

[NancyJ]

There's another one on page 2.

Right, I'm going to have another go, see if I can improve my score (just for fun obviously) Got to do something to pass the time til the next one starts in March.

[Metropolis Man]

There's another one on page 2.

Right, I'm going to have another go, see if I can improve my score (just for fun obviously) Got to do something to pass the time til the next one starts in March.

The next challenge is slated to begin in 2 weeks. I'm not sure which one I'll choose, but there are several good options right now from the Proposed Challenges Sticky. Obviously, I'll go in a much different direction for variety. Maybe the careers one or a romance one. Haven't decided yet.

[Schipperke]

My Sim "Kissy de Schipperke" has just returned from France and she would like to pass along a word of encouragement to those who haven't been yet:  it IS possible to get all the exotic grape varieties!  I didn't think it was.  Now back to the garden ...

[Metropolis Man]

I added the following Special Note to the Perfect score:

Special Note: As long as you've completed the restaurant chain of opportunities and you have an Omni plant that has produced fruit, you're allowed to give yourself 4k points, no matter what quality the parent plant.

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EDIT:Paul Prudhomme is doing well. He's at Week 7, Day 1 right now so almost halfway done with the challenge. His happiness points sit at 142,923 but I don't have a definite tally on the Perfect score. I pretty much have netted Perfect varieties of all non-WA plants with the exception of the Omni plant. I'm in the chain of events now, but don't have the # of steaks yet for the next event to fire.

It's time for Paul to do some traveling.

[Schipperke]

Final score:
Perfect recipes 36 + Perfect fish varieties 31 + Perfect plant varieties 29 (includes a perfect Omni plant) = 96 perfect x 400 = Total perfection points 384,000 + Total lifetime happiness achieved 436,438 = 820,438 total.

This was fun!  I've never done the gardening before so it was a real learning experience.  Thanks.

[Metropolis Man]

Nice job, Schipperke. How in the world did you get so many lifetime happiness points?

[romagia]

kinda off-topic... but this is the best set of traits i thought of:
>natural cook, green thumb, angler, perfectionist, ambitious(for extra lifetime happyness)

meh

so i belive his sim is ambitious?

[Schipperke]

No, not ambitious.  I'm not sure of the etiquette regarding sharing strategies while the challenge is still going on.  I'd be glad to share my Sim's traits and stuff, and would really like to hear from others on this too.  But should it wait until everyone is done?  For now, I'll just say I followed the rules to the letter and didn't cheat.  I did take advantage of a Sims 3 quirk I discovered accidentally regarding getting wishes to appear, to make sure my Sim always had lots of wishes to achieve.

[Metropolis Man]

No, not ambitious.  I'm not sure of the etiquette regarding sharing strategies while the challenge is still going on.  I'd be glad to share my Sim's traits and stuff, and would really like to hear from others on this too.  But should it wait until everyone is done?  For now, I'll just say I followed the rules to the letter and didn't cheat.  I did take advantage of a Sims 3 quirk I discovered accidentally regarding getting wishes to appear, to make sure my Sim always had lots of wishes to achieve.

Good for you. Keep your mouth closed. I didn't intend on you laying out your strategy.

I should be done by tonight and will not top your score, so congratulations.

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EDIT: Paul is done. The last week was a complete waste of time. I finished all of the recipes and plants with 10 days still left to go — I had finished the fish long before when I went to my last foreign spot, Egypt, in week 10. So with 10 days left I took a gamble and went for the big money wishes I've seen before — Be Worth 250k Simoleans, etc. I had a Mid-Life Crisis and trained him as a tip playing guitarist, but the 500k wish never came. I would have thought it should have fired after he had 400k, but it never did. That wish is a biggie — I think it's worth over 10k Happiness points.

Oh, well. This was a fun one. It was so cool making a lot of recipes I had never made before and catching new fish I had not seen before. And the recipe side of the tourney didn't take as long as I had thought. When you're a lvl 10 cook and using perfect ingredients, the really good recipes pop out perfect on the first attempt. The lower recipes needed some remaking, but I got 'er all done.

[kat]

wow, well done to those of you that have finished!!
I am still on holiday at the moment, so haven't even been able to start yet 
am heading home in a few days though, with World Adventures, yahoo!!

[NancyJ]

wow, that's a lot of happy points Something I was wondering and maybe someone who knows doesn't want to say because they don't want to help people beat their score (feel free to PM though - I already submitted mine). Anyway, so when your sim is happy they gain lifetime happiness points continuously over time BUT do they gain points faster for mood > it takes to fill the bar - ie. it takes about 50 mood to completely fill the bar, if you have 100 mood, are you gaining happiness faster?

[Metropolis Man]

it takes about 50 mood to completely fill the bar, if you have 100 mood, are you gaining happiness faster?

Oh, yes. The more +to mood, the more Happiness points acquired. It's a strong correlation. But, that only goes so far — even over the span of 15 weeks. Fulfilling the big wishes and lots and lots of smaller ones is where you really rack up the enormous points.

[NancyJ]

I did a very limited test - 2 identical Sims in identical houses - trying to get it so that 1 Sim's bar was maxed and the other Sim's bar was beyond maxed and honestly it didn't seem to make much (if any) difference to the rate of gain. It's hard to test properly though, keeping one Sim's bar perfectly maxed and not over or under was quite hard.

[e^(pi*i)]

I'm incredibly curious as to Schipp's strategy.

If I promise to not enter the contest or share it with anyone else in any way, would you e-mail it to me?

[Metropolis Man]

Nancy just out of curiosity what was the approximate difference in mood between the 2 test characters? You may be right. There might not be a huge difference. I can't remember what thread it was but I did a very informal test for Carl with Happiness points gained over an hour with one Sim who got the deluxe Spa package over the following hour and one who didn't, and there was (I felt) a pretty decent difference given it was just one hour. I wish I could remember the thread. Maybe someone else will and the specific post. I want to say it was maybe an extra 30 or 40 happiness points accrued over an hour from that one mood boost. So, over a week you're talking +4000 points. Nothing to sneeze at in a tourney situation.

[Pam]

Metro,

Have you tried using the search function to find that thread?

[Metropolis Man]

No, Pam. I didn't try. I'm pretty sure on the figures I mentioned above. Would I search through my posts? How would I narrow it down?

[Pam]

I just thought that if you recall some of the exact wording you used in those posts, you might be able to do a search for them in the box in the upper right corner.

[Metropolis Man]

Sure enough I found it pretty quickly. I searched Spa Package Metro (Hmmm...how much would this cost if it were a game option?) and it came up —

http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=141.0

[Pam]

Excellent! I'm glad you found the thread you were looking for.