Tips & Tricks

When reading this keep in mind these are things that worked for the people who suggested them. What works for one person might not work for you. Feel free to suggest a counter tip. Like slob vs neat. Each has it’s own pros and cons.

This page is separated into sections so if you’re looking for a tip on some restriction, search the page for it. If the restriction comes up empty, it just means there’s no tips posted yet. But keep checking back, we might have a tip up at some point.

General

  • Save often and in different files. Glitches happen and this will help keep your challenge alive.
  • Prioritize the needs and wishes of those who are lifting a restriction.
  • Don’t fret if you realized you broke a rule. Just correct it if you can and try to avoid doing it again. There are a lot of rules and you’re bound to miss something. It’s the intentional rule breaking that causes you to fail the challenge.
  • Join the Facebook page if you have any questions. We’re very helpful and if you have a question about something, chances are someone else does as well.

Traits

There is no wrong set of traits. Go with what you find would be fun to try, even if it won’t aide the technical side of the challenge. The main goal of this challenge is to be fun. If setting up your founder with the perfect traits would be boring, then don’t do it.

  • Founder Traits:
  • Workaholic and/or Ambitious are good for getting the progress bar to rise faster in rabbit hole careers.
  • Inappropriate and/or Slob are good ways to handle the lack of running water.
  • Neat helps with the laundry problem if you have Ambitions.
  • Bookworm will help get through skill books as well as books required for career opportunities faster.
  • Charismatic and/or Friendly will help make and keep friends for socializing as well as spouse hunting.
  • Athletic helps with a number of skills and will help elders still be allowed to go to work if you can’t quite top the career before they hit elder.
  • When you can choose traits, keep in mind what you have and haven’t lifted.

You only have 5 traits to work with, choose wisely, especially if you can’t just choose a career yet.

Is there a walk-through?

Sort of, yes. Instructional Apocalypse is a blog that attempts to explain the concepts of the challenge while completing it. If you’re curious on how to get started, it might be worth checking out.  The first page is here.

It was done using old rules that are no longer in place. However, it does still have good pieces of advice, especially on starting out. Like what traits, LTW, etc for the founder. As well as job picking strategies.

Starting Out

Build your house before creating your founder. Then save the house to your library. Saves a step for future apocalypse attempts unless you like building.

Keeping Track

  • Spreadsheets can work wonders.  [Link to the one by Audrey]
  • Make sure you write down who you have going for what just in case you take a break from the challenge for a while.

Forensics

  • While this restriction is in place, remember that there are ways to get elders to do what you want without directly controlling them.
  • Call over can bring them inside if they are freezing. Or outside if you want them to die outside.
  • You can have controllable Sims call everyone to a meal. This will get the elders to eat.

Fire Fighter

  • Don’t start the career with high athletic or handiness since raising those skills while on the job boosts your performance.
  • It is however doable if you have entered with high athletic and handiness, you’ll just take most of your young adult and adult life to do it.

Culinary Tips:

Managing Hungry Sims (that you want to keep alive) and keeping to one meal per day:

  • Lock your fridge away. It is legal to lock your fridge behind a door.
  • Get Retuner and adjust it to keep Sims from autonomously making food.
  • Save your leftovers
  • If you have a houseful of sims and culinary is not clear, you can only cook once per day, so save all leftovers even after they spoil. Your sims will eat them. If you stop them just before they have cleaned their plate they won’t throw up. Save those scraps too. If you have 8 sims, weekends and no school days can be rough. Getting a little to eat and vomiting is better than getting nothing.
  • Feeding those uncontrollable Elders
    • Feeding Elders (that you aren’t intentionally starving) can be a challenge. Have a controllable sim call everyone to a meal and the Elder sims will eat the spoiled food – and throw up – but who cares – at least they will stop stomping their feet because they can’t get to the fridge.
  • Hoarding Food
    • To keep sims from automatically cleaning up the spoiled food, if your sink breaks, don’t fix it. Or just simply never get one. However, the fresh breath moodlet might be worth it if you are having a hard time with moods.
    • If you have an inappropriate sim they will want to sponge bath. So if no sink is not an option for you, then use the ‘Hand of God’ and move the spoiled food just out of reach. Under a stairway works well (but no move object on cheats are allowed for this).

Criminal Tips:

Dealing with losing your money every week

  • Write books – While your royalty checks will be useless, you do get money as you write chapters. This money can be used for food or bills.
  • If Business is lifted, remember that you can sell paintings that you paint.
  • Try to keep one Sim in a career that generates money during the week.
  • Ambitions and Showtime Professions have weekly stipends. They are handed out on Sunday. This can get hairy if the job glitches and doesn’t give you a paying job that week. Some professions may be more prone to glitching out in this regard than others. Plan accordingly.

Paranormal

  • Lure your elders outside to die. This will keep the grave away from being in the middle of the house.
  • Or kill off your Sims when their still an adult.
  • Remember that you can not kill of a spouse until they have either lifted something or aged to elder.

Its the Little Things……posted by Jenny Lea Fields

  • Take a taxi to work for the first few job levels. It’s faster than the carpool.
  • Read while rocking while your fun meter is not full, will allow your sim to keep skilling even if they are hungry
  • You can play kicky-bag no matter what mood your sim is in.
  • If your sim is sitting, you can call a sim over from just about anywhere (unless they are also sitting).
  • Enthuse about X career never gets old. This also works for some traits (enthuse about outdoors, enthuse about exercise, coo over children). If the option disappears, use ‘discuss work’ and it usually comes back. There’s almost no need to waste a trait on charismatic/friendly just for relationships.
  • Writing negative reports in the journalism career gives career experience, positive reports do not.
  • Napping in the rocker is the fastest way to gain energy early on. Top it off with a quick sleep in bed to get a rested moodlet too.
  • Workaholic trait does not increase the progress bar, but keeps your sim in a better mood while at work. Neurotic is better because it will stop your sim getting stressed, and freak outs immediately remove stressed moodlets and give a positive buff for 8hrs.
  • If you have playable ghosts, the Eyes of Horus make getting around MUCH faster and easier – it is restricted by Military and Paranormal