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Paranormal Profiteer Lifetime Wish Walkthrough
By Tom "Metro" Schlueter
Some of my most cherished memories are watching horror films when I was a young boy with my father. Vincent Price and his total command of that genre was at the top of the heap. House on Haunted Hill is still a classic. So, despite the fact that my artistic recreation of Vincent leaves a lot to be desired (I did get the gender and mustache right), I thought it would be fun to use him as my springboard to show you the ropes on making money while pursuing the Paranormal Profiteer Lifetime Wish.
First of all, hats off to chief ghost buster Carl and his great Ghost Hunting Profession Guide Article. There’s obviously a lot of overlap here given the Ghost Hunter career is the path one takes for this particular LTW. So, let’s get started and scare up some money...
I moved Vincent to 99 Landgraab Ave in Sunset Valley. It’s centrally located. He’ll be doing a lot of running around town and the more jobs he can complete, the more money he makes. I quickly threw down some furniture so Vincent could live outdoors and experience that cheap Hollywood set feel he knows so well.
Vincent’s Traits:
Ambitious
Have I ever not picked this for a Sim? Win a prize if you can find any article I’ve written where this trait was not chosen. 25% more happiness points for all wishes fulfilled? Yes, please.
Bookworm
Vincent’s initial strategy is to cram as many logic books into his brain as possible to jack up the earnings of his Ghost Hunting career. The Bookworm trait in combination with reading at the library for the Power Study boost is a win-win.
Eccentric
This trait is really more for Inventors and boosting that skill, but it’s necessary for firing the Paranormal Profiteer LTW. Kind of seems like a wasted trait, but if you tire of your ghost hunter you can always trick him out later with a Mid-Life Crisis and turn him into an Inventor.
Genius
The Logic Skill is one of the 3 metrics that kick up the experience bar, so learning Logic faster as a Genius means faster promotions in the ghost hunter career.
Computer Whiz
What the...? Okay, here’s the deal...this trait makes perfect sense for a ghost hunter because when do ghost hunters work? The middle of the night. When do hackers work? The middle of the night. Logic benefits both pursuits, so your ghost hunter can make a lot of money hacking on his days off. And to top it all off, a Computer Whiz gains fun at a faster rate when playing computer games. So, you’re welcome.
Speaking of Logic, one thing I noticed very early is its lack of impact on the experience bar at the outset. When Vincent was working towards his first Logic skill and was only a Tarot Card Reader (lvl 1), Logic had very little impact on raising the performance meter. But, at the 2nd career level, a lvl 4 skill in Logic fed the meter much faster.
So, my main goal for Vincent on Day 1 was to read the entire first Logic book cover to cover. He did and knocked out 3 skill points. He also joined the Ghost Hunting profession at the Science Center. There are 3 metrics used to boost the Ghost Hunting career performance meter — Logic, Investigation and Spirits.
All ready for his first work shift. I believe Vincent told me he had just put in some volunteer time by teaching a finger painting class to Sunset Valley preschoolers. “Yo, Vinny, how did you get slimed already?”
Vincent got two jobs his first night. Both were Spirit Invasion jobs where your Sim simply shows up at someone’s house and then banishes the offending spirits by whipping out the Banshee Banisher. Ghost hunter Sims will autonomously banish the spirits themselves, but don’t put yourself on autopilot on go grab a cup of coffee because they will also get distracted by nearby objects (resident Sims or other types) and may choose to interact with them instead of doing the task at hand. So, I prefer selecting the spirits myself. Sometimes the spirits are hard to find and that autonomous AI that’s built-in is a nice feature.
Vincent hit Ectoplasm Cleaner (lvl 2) after the 2nd job at the Goth house and then went to the Library for some more Logic study. The Logic gain was significant and he cracked career lvl 3 (Spooky Noise Silencer) and then headed home.
On day 2 I opened up Vincent’s Inventory and all 8 spirits from the previous night’s work were nicely packed into their containers — what appears to be a cross between a salad spinner and some nice Tupperware. And as Carl says in his Guide article, sell these puppies quickly, otherwise they lose value at midnight like a lot of other game objects. You can sell them at the Science Center or just drag and sell right from inventory.
Night #2 offered up another two jobs, one of which was new — Poltergeist Haunting. As with the Spirit Invasion job type and its sole Banish interaction, with the Poltergeist Haunting job, you’re basically cueing up Exorcise on the floating objects.
A lot of people do not realize that mailboxes and poltergeists are like pigs and mud — they just go together. I know I was surprised. Heh...the funny things you learn at the United States Post Office web site.
Get on Schedule
I’ve mentioned in other walkthroughs the importance of a regular schedule for career Sims. Most of us in real life sleep at night and are awake during the day, so it’s easy to quickly establish a schedule for Sims that keep those type of “normal” hours given it’s second nature to us. For night owl Sims, like a hacker and ghost hunter it’s different. Ghost Hunters begin work at 5 PM, so that means you want to be up at 2 PM. Then, you need to backtrack 5 to 6 hours for when your Sim needs to hit the sack (depending on how tired they are). So, your ghost hunter should probably be in bed no later than 7 or 8 AM on work days. Push that a little later to 10 or 11 on hacking days since you do not begin hacking until 9 PM.
Selling Spirits to the Science Center
There are some enormous wishes connected with donating (selling) spirits to the Science Center — the 50 Spirit one nets you over 4k happiness points and the 100 Spirit one is huge at over 8k happiness. So, it’s worth your time. You’ll want to sell multiple spirits in one shot for convenience, so here’s what you do:
- Click on the Landgraab Industries Science Facility icon;
- Click on Sell Spirits for Scientific Advancement;
- Scroll through the list and click to highlight the spirits you want to sell.
Choosing Early Rewards
Entrepreneurial Mindset and Profession Simolean Booster really seem to be the only two critical rewards to grab early in your pursuits of Paranormal Profiteer. They’re both cheap at only 10k points each. I opted to grab Entrepreneurial Mindset first as I wanted to get more experience quickly. Netting more $$$ from Profession Simolean Booster does not speed up career advancement at all. It does in other careers, but not this one.
After night #3 Vincent went up to Spirit Sweeper (lvl 4) from his 2 jobs, and then hit the Logic books at the library immediately afterwards to reach Seance Holder (lvl 5).
This was totally my bad. I thought Vincent had woken up before I cued the music to boost his mood. As much as I admire Vincent Price, he has always been on my short list of people/characters never to provoke to the point of anger — the others are Oprah, the President of North Korea and Barney the Dinosaur.
I forgot to mention the mood music while a ghost hunter is on the clock— it’s great and reminds me of similar stuff from Makin' Magic in Sims 1. When your ghost hunter hops into the taxi to get to a job you’ll hear the eerie music when he arrives. It’s a nice touch. And many of the resident Sims are jumping up and down in chaos, so that’s pretty funny as well.
A new job type opened up at the Thibodeaux house on night #4, Ghostly Presence. Here you’ve got to first find the spirits via the Spook-o-Meter and then you have an option to socialize with them or simply play the heavy. I’m not crazy about this type of job because it can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There must be an art to finding the spirits in a Ghostly Presence job because I spent WAAAY too long in the Thibodeaux house. And then I opted to socialize on top of that. Wrong.
“I asked you to Move Along nicely and what did you do? Give me a big fat negative sign. What the heck is that about? How about some words? You know, “blah, blah...I don’t like you.” So, here’s how this is going down...I’m going David Orick on you.”
After leaving the Thibodeaux house after what seemed to be an eternity, Vincent got all warm and fuzzy inside with a nice bonus — a free parenting tip as he was walking out the door. Money can’t buy that kind of wisdom.
After Friday’s shift ended (early Saturday morning) Vincent was relieved to have a couple days off after five straight days of ghost hunting. My goals for him were to get some more logic so his next stipend at the beginning of Week 2 would be larger as well as finally begin some hacking on his nights off. Saturday evening of Week 1 Vincent did a hacking session but he pooped out at 5 AM because he was too hungry. I did not plan that whole sequence very well. He was mad at me. Again. Anyway, the whopping total was maybe $300. Whoop dee doo. But, the upside was at the end of that hack session Vincent had also accumulated another 10k happiness points, so he grabbed the Profession Simolean Booster reward.
I know a lot of other power players like myself take advantage of vacations with the skilling opportunities they present with the available “free” time— especially things like Cooking, Charisma, Logic, Athletic and Martial Arts. But, unfortunately, any Logic gained for a Ghost Hunter Sim while on vacation is a total waste and will not transfer to a career performance boost upon returning home. Boo hoo. I had my suspicions of this given the Career tab is grayed out while on vacation, so thank goodness for reloading without saving.
Sunday night (Week 2, Day 1) saw Vincent jump from Ghost Grabber (lvl 6) to Creep Seeker (lvl 7) thanks to some heavy duty logic gain in the library. Vincent is definitely stylin’ with his new uniform and shades. Nice to see that the slime has gone too.
A new job kicked off the second work week with Angry Ghost Invasion. The “invasion” was all of 2 ghosts and the fallback efficient method of dealing with the ghosts — breaking out the Banshee Banisher —is pretty much the ideal way to go as with the other types of jobs. But, it does seem like the banishing is quicker now.
On Week 2, Day 3 Vincent hits Rare Medium, lvl 8, and got quite a few happiness points in the process. Note the “new and improved” uber Banshee Banisher that Vincent now uses as a reward for hitting lvl 8. I lovingly call it the John Rambo model.
I had been wondering what kinds of jobs actually qualify to boost the Investigate performance metric and I quickly got the answer — rabbit hole types of jobs called Paranormal Investigation. Vincent got one right after he cracked lvl 8. These are jobs where you basically dive in for 3 hours and pop out with a performance boost. Nice and simple. In Vincent’s case, the location was the Catacombs in the Graveyard.
The end is near. At Week 2, Day 4 Vincent hits Outstanding Occultist (lvl 9). His stipend is $2208/week which means he also bags over 1k for every job completed. Not too shabby. Plus the sales of spirits on top of that. Oh, that reminds me — I experienced a weird bug. After I collected some service awards from City Hall I noticed my spirits were no longer deposited in my Inventory. Sure enough, that was exactly the problem. I left the awards at home on display to clear them out and then the spirits were put into inventory again.
The Spook-o-Meter in action and preferred weapon of choice for Ghostly Presence jobs. Vincent hit the jackpot on this job and got a two for one special. The nice thing about the Spook-o-Meter is it doubles as a handheld back rub machine. Plus, with GPS technology, a flick of a switch tells Vincent where the nearest Krispy Kreme is located.
Vincent opts for the Dr. Phil route with Pierre Depadi. Here’s the big problem with playing a headshrinker with spirits — a) it takes a lot longer than breaking out the John Rambo, and b) when you finally do Convince a spirit to Move On (it takes 3 socials — Talk About Full Life, Put at Ease about Loved Ones, and repeat one of those two to obtain Good Friend status), they just go bye bye and not in your pretty Tupperware. So, no progress towards the Science Center wishes and no moolah. So, yes, play Dr. Phil some of the time to change things up, but I’d keep it at a minimum and opt for the wrecking ball method. If you have aspirations of going into the Political career, then the sheer number of spirits/ghosts you are acquainted with and become friends with can help with raising the Charisma skill that's so critical to that career.
To the best of my knowledge you’re basically offered two jobs a night and both fire at 5 PM. Then, you’re really under the gun to get to that 2nd job before time runs out. You do not have until 5 AM to get to the 2nd job. It’s more like 2 AM or the orange icon in Map view will simply disappear. Vincent was offered a 3rd job one time, so I’m assuming that was pretty unusual.
My horror hero finally reached the pinnacle and now ranks as a Paranormal Expert (lvl 10). He achieved his Lifetime Wish on Week 2, Day 6. The big moment happened after a Ghostly Presence job at the Clavell house. Hey, what’s this in Vincent’s Inventory? A Spirit Positioning Device. Let’s go to Map View and activate it. Sweet! You can see where all of the hidden spirits are. It’s basically a Collection Helper for spooks. The big problem? A lot of spirits are in people’s homes and you won’t be able to scan them unless you ask to go inside. Who’s going to take the time to do that? But, with spirits that are out in the open you’re good to go. So, personally, I’d just forego the ones in people’s homes — you’ll get plenty of that action anyway with continued jobs. Here’s a little (very little, but it’s something) bonus — $25 received for scanned spirits. Another nice thing about the Spirit Positioning Device is you can use it 24/7. Just remember to deactivate it, then reactivate when starting your game from the Main Menu.
So, Vincent’s almost done. The only thing left to do is I want him to max Logic and get the Donate 50 Spirits to Science wish. That will give him nice additional happiness points to purchase some more rewards. Hacking on days off will see noticeably more profit with maxed Logic. So, long story short — I did that the last day of Week 2. The Mastering Logic wish granted large amounts of points, plus I had yet to cash in the points from the LTW fulfillment. Two more rewards were purchased — Meditative Trance Sleep and Hardly Hungry. HH is an important one for hackers because that 10-hour work shift is tough to get through without food.
Eulogy
Time for some final thoughts on this Lifetime Wish. I like it a lot. You can complete it very quickly which is always a plus for attention deficit players like me. And when it’s game over, you can morph your ghost hunter into a doctor or an Inventor with minimal overhaul to add extra mileage.
It would be nice if there were some more interactions possible with the spirits — maybe more ways of disposing them because I kind of felt forced to opt for the John Rambo method of approaching every single job to make fulfilling those big wishes more efficient. But, the bottom line is the entire Ghost Hunting and Paranormal Profiteer area of the game is new content and that pretty much trumps this single nitpick.
The fun really begins at lvl 10 when you get the Spirit Positioning Device and can haul in big amounts of spirits. I’m going to continue playing Vincent to see if I can find all of the different types of spirits listed in Carl’s article. Go crazy and get creative. Make a bingo card and play spirit bingo and put X’s in the boxes as you find certain types.
Navigation:
Lifetime Wish Guide | How Lifetime Wishes and Traits Work
Lifetime Wish List A-J | Lifetime Wish List K-Z | Lifetime Wish Walkthroughs
