The Sims 3 Pets: Horseman Career

by Tom "Metro" Schlueter

One of the unique aspects of the large scale horse content in the Pets expansion is the new Horseman career. There are no different types of jobs to perform as in the varous professions...like the other self-emplyment careers, the Horseman career is simply a way for your Sim to track how much money they have earned with horses (racing and sales). And with the regular wishes that fire to advance in the career it is also a decent way to earn more happiness points.

Getting Started in the Career
The Horseman career becomes an option once you have earned a single skill point in riding. Since you register at City Hall for all the self-employment careers, I mounted Moe (yes, my 3 starting stallions are Moe, Larry, and Curly) and rode him to City Hall and picked up the riding skill in the process.

Making Money with Horses
To advance all the way to level 10 in the Horseman career takes a total of $71500 in racing winnings, horse sales (adults), and stud services. I offered the stallions as studs (stud service can pay upwards of 1k simoleans depending on the skill levels of the stallion), and opted to adopt quite a few adults, trained them, and then turned around and sold them for a nice profit.

While you cannot sell foals, selling adults is a major money maker and depending on the skill levels of the horse, it can fetch more than 10k simoleans. To reach the highest levels of the Horseman career there are significant earnings requirements to get from one level to the next, so selling my original 3 horses was in the plan.

The final way of making money with horses in Sims 3 Pets is via competition at the Equestrian Center. How you finish determines your payout.

Advancing in the Career
Race winnings are pretty nominal in comparison to what you receive for selling a horse. If you’re lucky enough to win at the International competition level, then you’ll receive around $2000 simoleans, but horse sales can easily top $10k. So, advancing in the early stages of the career where not much is needed to get to the next level can easily be accomplished via race winnings. But, once you get to the higher levels of the career and need more than $10k in earnings to get to the next level, relying on race winnings alone is impractical and too time consuming if you have hopes of getting to the top quickly. You’ll need to turn to either breeding mares, raising and selling the offspring, or doing as I did and simply adopting adult horses and training them over a few days to sell for a nice profit. A combination of the two methods is obviously the ideal route, especially if there are multiple Sims in the household to help with the workload.