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Archaeology makes it too easy to make money
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I see it as there is nothing to do with the money as being the main concern. I love the way the game is so ill assume they'll add stuff to buy in the future. OP the problem is if they do add lets say the ability to buy cars, boats, more bills to pay more vacations to take the ability to buy vacation homes ect. The amount you get from treasure hunting wont be enough to gain this stuff and live on it on a single visit. Of course you can go there many times but sims have other things going in there life for example kids, pets and jobs. If you spend more time looking for treasures because they are worth less $ you miss out on that stuff.
My sim barley has time to get married and have kids because there always looking for treasure to buy a better house or pay the high bills from the treasures I keep. Dogs and cats... My sims don't even have time to care for them. Most simmers will not revisit the jungle to dig up treasure if it isn't worth it. Once you have all the collectibles if its not worth the trip money wise why go back? You can just paint at home for and earn money and not even spend as much. You might go back for a honeymoon or 2 but other then that why bother?
OP I do think you bring up a good point but instead of nerfing jobs they should just give our sims more stuff to spend money on and more bills.
Right, and what I'm saying is each time the timer runs out, there seems to be a chance to just survive it. I have no idea if there's a chance to resist the poison each time a moodlet expires, but there's four seperate moodlets for poison and in total, together they take one week to kill a sim.
However, I do think it takes away a lot of the challenge, I could maybe see rare items drop amount being decreased since finding two rare artifacts in a week or even a month in irl is seen as extremely lucky (real life archaeology is so slow). Anyways not saying it should be that long in game, but getting two on the same trip seems high.
If it does take a week then how come I haven't experienced it?
Regarding poison death this is from Karlsguide link
So the moodlet gos away if it's not deadly otherwise you have 3 days (with a new moodlet) before it is deadly (I don't know how long the initial dazed moodlet is so I can't account for it)
So about half a week is how long it would take in game for a sim to die.
Interesting, my mistake.
Now I wanna find the guide where I saw the four, because I know I distinctly saw four seperate poison moodlets in a screenshot somewhere.
I haven't seen it my sim had a timer for a day and after it expired he lived then the next time they came his wife got poisoned but I cured her with the bone dust.
So maybe it's 4 days including the initial dazed moodlet? Like I said I don't know about that one, but in theory if that initial moodlet goes away and it's not deadly you wouldn't see any others. Guess you have been lucky
I don't use mods or cheats. My sims earned nearly 13,000 simoleans on a three day trip without completing the temple. All from archaeology. She had 84 simoleans going into the jungle after supply purchases and has went home considerably richer.
Cheating money is not always the answer, it's just incredibly easy to make money.
Actually to see what your sim really earned is you first need to deduct all the money the trip cost the sim - not start with the amount of money they had left before they ventured into the jungle - You need to deduct all the money they spent while they were there - including rent, food they ate and cooked, drinks, anything they spent money on. As I said my sim does not sell the good quality or rare pieces at all - she collects them as well as all the the fossils, the gems, etc she finds. My sim technically just about emptied her savings between the cost of a 7 day stay in a house there, plus purchasing a new tent, cooler, and all the gear for the trip. She spent money even cooking her own food for breakfast, and eating out for lunch and dinner the first four days there just making friends, learning the culture and dances - and mastering both of those and all the food and drink recipes (she got all but 1 secret recipe by the time she had to leave. She also purchase sprays and gear several times a day those first 4 days - so by then even her bank account was really low. When she got home she had less than 1000 simoleons in her savings and household bills waiting for her of 7600. On top of it - she had work in 5 hours and was in an exhausted state - so all she could do was go to bed a few hours and then go to work.
My sim spent the next couple days just trying to get to zero finances by cleaning up all the stuff she found. As I said all the rare and good quality relics she placed in display cases. All the copies and poorer relics she sold - and believe me - she did not make money off of them like that - in fact she came no where near even breaking even for the trip for all she spent.
Perhaps if she was not a collector with future plans for her rare collectibles - she may have made money - I don't know as I did not add up the value of those things she did not sell. As they were not for sell in my mind or hers. Sort of like real archeologists think of their discoveries - I guess.
So in my view - it is how you play the game. Like you starting off how you figure the money made - not from the money spent to start the trip - you totally erased the cost of the trip, money spent on the trip etc and did not deduct any of that from the money made from selling relics. So I can see how you think it is easy to make money if you over look the thousands spent before the sim even starts exploring.
(by the way that Villa you rented for 340 simoleons - that is per day of your stay there - so you stayed 3 days, then the villa cost alone is 340 x 3 days = 1020 simoleons. If you cooked food there or bought food anywhere - it cost your sim money. Everything your sim gets cost money and needs to be deducted from the money made. Also all collectibles you don't sell adds to your bills at home as assets and costs you money just to have your sim own them. Believe me - the money can be an issue and not always easy money. )
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I think this is a good thing. Most characters I would not play this way at all. But it's nice to have this for an option.
I see your point but I still disagree to a point. My sim stayed for three days, she went into the jungle with 3 grilled cheeses ready to eat and food she already ad her in her inventory. She bought one drink.
She still made way more than the cost of her trip and then some. Even without cheating it's very easy to make money.
Now she has maxed out her archaeological skill and is getting sent items to uncover she has the pontentiak to make more. But there is no need. From selling her finds she had 36,000 in the bank, her rent is just over a 1000.
I don't use money cheats. I definitely don't need too. My sim has a large supply of artificats waiting to be uncovered when the funds do drop. The biggest reward from your adventures is financial gain. She has kept two or three relics but like you only the excellent ones. Not keeping them all as her house is pretty small.
With poor artificats selling for over 350 simoleans she is making a tidy profit of them alone.
However, I think it depends on the mentality you take when approaching the subject of making money, or technically anything, in The Sims. Does it need to be balanced? Like, does it actually matter whether or not archaeology makes a ton of money from very minimal effort? The Sims 4, however more goal-oriented it may be over its predecessors, is not a traditional RPG. You don't have to min-max everything since you're not competing with anyone.
It's probably just me, but I can't see an objective reason as to why archaeology needs to make less money. Just like painting or writing, it's just one of many easy ways to get money that nobody has to choose.
As @Writin_Reg put it, it's how you play the game. I mean I suppose that if you wanted to tell the story of a struggling archaeologist who is barely making ends meet by selling his/her finds, then yeah it's pretty difficult to do that when everything is worth so much. Still, that's only one way to play. If you don't sell any of the things you find, then the value of these objects is going to jack up your bills back home.
Perhaps it's just a simple matter of whether the game should be easy or difficult, but then I don't think that archaeology is the problem there. That's more of the design philosophy of the game in general. The game isn't hard because not everyone wants it to be, so they kind of gave players the choice. Do you pick the careers/professions that make you rich easily, or not?
Maybe they should just make traps and chance cards more likely to fail so that there's more risk involved with exploring.
Excellent idea.
"Games Are Not The Place To Tell Stories, Games Are Meant To Let People Tell Their Own Stories"...Will Wright.
In dreams - I LIVE!
In REALITY, I simply exist.....
I can't wait for the next vacation trip. I'll likely forego the temple visit and concentrate on excavating and relaxing with the locals. My sim has more than enough money to pay the $3k weekly bills.
I can't speak for everyone, but whenever I download player-built homes off the gallery, they're priced way too high for any of my sims to afford without cheats. Earning crazy amounts of money through legitimate means would actually allow some of my sim families to move up in terms of homes within a single lifetime. So, to answer your question briefly, people who don't like to cheat have another avenue to earning the big bucks.
I'm like you too @Sim2Spore.. very rarely do I cheat in money so I like a way to earn it for my sims. Now and then I will though if I have them ready made in my mind and they are rich to start with.
I do agree it might suck if you want to tell a story of a struggling architect archaeologist.. or a struggling artist for that matter. So how do we get it both ways? One of us is going to have to mod the game or use cheats.
It's creative ideas like this, turning a potential problem around into a fun gameplay element, that makes me happy to be a Simmer.
Mine. I have never cared about money or how much my sims have in this game. Not in 1. Not in 2. Not in 3, and certainly not in 4. I motherlode each and every sim I create. This is a game. This is how I play it.
I was wondering: Is there a way to make this an official job? Or are you just going to the jungle, collecting valuable items and sell them?
Is there any money advantage if you skill your sim up? Mine is at 7, but I have no idea what to do other then using the table and checking items.
Anyone with some tips to make this more of a real job for my sim?