I just read your HOF entry. Very creative Drift999
I tried doing the nectar opps but had no luck because I found that when I exited and re entered the game, the opp would be reset and ask for only two or three bottles. I saw other reports on the board that said the same thing happened when you travel. I guess you must have not traveled or exited the game from the time you got them until the last week? Mine wouldn't have been worth as much as yours anyway since I didn't transfigure for the nectar. I was just trying to age it up and turn it in later. I also had no luck with sculpting opportunities because I kept getting $0 for them, so I decided not to go with sculpting in my actual. Anyway, here's what I did do:
My scoring sims were two painters (Salvador Dali and Hugh Green), one angler (Salmon Fischer), and one gardener/photographer (Rose Gardener). Since painting and photography both raise their values as you do them (even after level 10), my main strategy was to keep these sims doing these skills as close to 24 hours a day as possible. The gardening and picture taking sim had some free time, so I had her do all the miscellaneous things like going to the consignment shop, and getting a job to try to get nectar opps. With my value of nectar, however, I'm not sure the nectar opps would have helped me anyway. They all finished their LTW on the first day by having my gardener marry a rich sim (Mary Baker). This allowed me to get the motive mobile for them to share and get extra creative for both artists, as well as getting opportunistic on some of them (I got it on the others soon after). The next lifetime wishes I would try for were the moodlet manager (Because it saved time over the motive mobile), steel bladder, a teleporter, and finally hardly hungry and then dirt defiant to allow them to cure themselves using the moodlet manager less often. I saved dirt defiant for last because it was easy enough to have Rose do the laundry and have the rest of them change clothes when dirty.
I decided to further take advantage of the fact that household additions were allowed by moving in two sims to help with fishing (Gwayne and Chase Bayless), and having two others help with painting (Buddy Bailey and Newton Gardener, formerly Newton Baker). Mary Baker no longer lived there because I drowned her and had her son wait around to get the Oh My Ghost opportunity before getting any skills, which he managed to get after a couple of days. Lincoln Baker I moved out, and waited to move in a replacement for (Chase Bayless) until after Newton got the opportunity, in case he couldn't get it with a full house. Because of the value increase of their goods after death, I decided to kill all my painters, and Rose Gardener (the photographer/gardener). Mostly I killed them using a fire in the basement, which I achieved by having them cook in a very small doorless room and then stop cooking while something was on the stove. I did this because they didn't gain a skill point while using this method, and they would while drowning, unless they were couch potatoes. The couch potatoes I drowned. Killing them wasn't fun, but since I was bringing back all of them except Mary Baker, it didn't truly feel like killing them. After killing Newton I had to have Rose get the Oh My Ghost opportunity, which she did the next day. I also made sure to wait past the first midnight while killing Rose, because otherwise her photographs wouldn't appreciate correctly (found this out during trials). I also had her travel to various landmarks (Dragon Cave, Abu Simbel, the Sphinx, a pyramid, five very valuable French photographs including two relic collections) and take all the photographs she might ever need for opportunities after she was resurrected, because photographs only appreciate one time upon their taker's death. Of course she was level 10 at the time with photographer's eye, photog, and architectural eye so the pictures would be as valuable as possible. The painters I killed and brought back right after Newton got the Oh My Ghost opportunity because I found that once they were brought back every day at midnight their paintings appreciated, as if they had just died. Anyway, I used my extra household additions in the following way: Gwayne Bayless I had catch dragonfish at home, in order to turn in the most valuable fish I could for the opportunity To Hunt a Dragon. Chase Bayless caught the bait needed for these at home (Tancho Koi), as well as catching angelfish needed by Salmon, who was constantly fishing for deathfish, and at the beginning she also caught the alley catfish which were needed as bait for the angelfish. Once she could catch perfect angelfish using the normal alley catfish bought from the store, I got lazy and had her use these instead. Newton I had always painting small paintings and Buddy always painting medium, since apparently size does matter. A painter who always paints smalls will be much better at smalls than mediums or larges. Once they had level 10 and all painting skill achievements done my two scoring painters always painted larges, since these were the big money makers.
During the last two or three weeks I had a painter and my angler hang on to large opportunities they got (Painting the City and Heaps of Fresh Fish) so they could turn them in on the last day. Heaps of Fresh Fish ended up being the most valuable opportunity, reaching over 4 million on its own.
Anyway, here are some of the things I learned during my practices and applies to my actual for this process, which I haven't already mentioned:
1. Most of the time it is worth doing an opportunity, even if it isn't going to be one of the final four, because most of them will not come back after being completed once. I even went so far as catching a crocodile and frogs to turn in so that these annoying opps would stop popping up, which they seemed to do a lot otherwise. This main strategy allowed me to get all the opps I was shooting for on my sims, with the assistance of #s two and three
2. If it is a repeatable opp or opp you're not ready for, accept it and cancel it rather than just declining it. If you just decline it it seemed to come up again much sooner than accepting and declining.
3. If it is a single time opp which you want to do but are not ready for, also accept and then cancel. If you have enough time left in the game there's a great chance that these opps will come up again (such as Painting the City)
4. If a painter gets the opportunity Local Artists Gallery (which is repeatable), which supposedly boosts the value of their next painting, take advantage of this bigtime. If they start 30 or 40 portraits after completing this opportunity before they finish their first painting, they will all count as their next painting and all have seriously boosted values. All of the opportunities that I ended up using as scoring ones for painting involves these paintings with boosted values.
My gardener/photographer only ended up with one scoring photography opportunity (French photos, since you can turn in five pictures for that one) because of how valuable the gardening opps were when you turn in deathfish as "produce." I found that each of my scoring sims had a one time opportunity which gave celebrity points, but was only obtainable if they were not already celebrities. If they were not celebrities, however, it seemed to come up fairly often, so the more valuable of these I made sure not to turn in until they were ready (Great Greens and Fresh Fish). I also made sure they did not become celebrities before I wanted them to.
I think that about covers my strategy, which is good since this post is super long already. Please let me know if something is hard to understand.
Edit: Oops, I forgot to mention that I got as many omniplants as I could as fast as I could, and used them to duplicate my most valuable deathfish and single most valuable dragonfish at the time. This upped the value of the fish I was turning in for opps by a fair amount.
