Okay so I’m planning the rags to riches challenge but my experience of playing with zero money sims, which I have done a LOT, is that it’s super easy to make money quickly. Collecting, breeding frogs, buy an easel and you are pretty much done.
I am looking for ideas that don’t use mods. I know there are mods out there that increase bills and so forth, but I’d prefer in game ways where possible.
So my thoughts are:
You can collect but not sell from inventory. Only at retail store or by the flea market.
I’ve not got much experience with plopsy yet, anyone have any idea of how much money it can bring in? So if you paint a painting and list it on plopsy will it sell for the same amount as if you sold from inventory?
Bills seem to be much lower too, you can have a big house and bills get to about £500?
I am considering making skilling only possible by attending sim skill classes via the phone that came with DU. That would cost £250 a time.
Any other ideas for in game, making money harder to come by?
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And then kind of like your skills class idea, you could think of more things that count as expenses to add into your game. For example, having a pet who’ll need food or if they get sick.
You could also restrict yourself to the resources directly around your lot if you go the harvesting/collecting route. For example, if there’s only one frog log and one dig pile then that’s all you get to work with. This then limits the source of your source of income.
And then another thing you could try is playing around with the lot traits and maybe give yourself negative lot traits or give your Sim negative personality traits. This way there’s also something in the universe working against them. So maybe it’s not affecting directly their income but it’s affecting them in daily life that adds an additional challenge.
At the moment I have a rough plan for my unlucky little sim. She will start with nothing and an empty lot, cannot use the travelling screen at all except for flea market, so just the area around the lot. She will not be able to build a house bit by bit, she will need to save $10000 simoleons which will buy her the basic bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lounge and dining room blueprints from build mode with $1000 left over for any windows, doors and outside wallpaper.
Once she has done this she can get a job, however she will have to pay for skill classes to get to certain skill levels depending on the job she wants to apply for.
If she wants to get married she will need to buy the basic double bedroom $4800 and have a minimum of $1000 for a honeymoon.
If she wants to have kids she will need to buy the sweet dreams basic bedroom and the basic nursery, plus a high chair and potty and attended parenting skill classes to level 3. This in all will cost her another $10000.
Then she can start on the fabulously wealthy aspiration.
I will have a look at the city to see if there is a lot I can delete and have her live there as that does sound great to minimise money made from collecting. Cheers!
Although to be fair, i haven't ever played my sims for very long, not even back in sims 2. I have always played around in cas for about an hour making a family. Put them in a house. Played for a few in game days and moved on Im not even sure why ive stayed with the sims other than....habit?
Anticipating Sims 5.... : P
My TS4 sims are always poor lol. I’ve never liked making lots of money in this version of the game.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." ~ Mark Twain
I add a little extra to my rags of riches also. I sometimes give my Sims a tent before taking all money away. My Sims can't buy anything out of the catalog until they have 20 k.
Otherwise the only thing they can buy is a wood working table and other things that create things to sell. So my Sims have to make all their furniture including a bathtub and toilet. Only then they can buy a sink and a sofa until they have 20 k.
Since EL I don't let them buy anything but the woodworking table. They have to make it or get it out of the dumpster. When they have a complete functioning one bedroom house they can use the catalog to buy stuff and sell stuff from their inventory.
I have a system for gyms and other places that you probably would pay membership for. I place little kiosks, a food vendor or beverages on the lot and every time my sims go there they have to pay to bring a service-sim to work there.
A fancy gym of mine has a food vendor a coffe-vendor. The scruffy place has only food. This way your sim cannot get to use public lots for free anymore and you don't have to type in cheats to remove money as taxes.
I had a trial run this evening, started on the residential lot on the spice market in san Myshuno. Posters can’t be sold via the sales table or the street art gallery. Snow globes are fine. My sim got a crafted violin out of a junk box and once she reached level 4 I had her busk but she didn’t once get any tips! So then I had her play concerto just on the street and sims didn’t go near her either. I think there is so much going on in the centre, the other sims are usually on their way to do something.
I then tried again with the biggest lot in Newcrest. I had her fish and sold any fish from her inventory as I couldn’t see any other way of selling them. Once she reached $300 I bought her the selvadore craft sales table and she is slowly making a bit of money with that and holding street sales. I don’t mind her selling her collectibles that way as each sale is about 2 hours long and she has to stand there tending the table so can’t be doing other things. No mark up on what she is selling either.
When she bought the biggest lot, I checked bill information and it was only $130 so I spent her remaining starter funds on sculptures and put them into household inventory. That increased them to $300.
I think I like the Newcrest trial better and there are plenty of empty lots to do silent kitty’s idea!
Thanks all for the help!
don't get scheduled job (full time or part time) at most do odd jobs
you can perform, lend money from other sims, steal things and craft for own use etc.
but you simply can't sell anything at all
or have stable job
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For starters, you can restrict movement to the starting neighborhood and slowly expand as you reach new levels. This could effectively prevent your sim from collecting certain items.
Things like logic and handiness could be effective limiting skills. Imagine which skills your sim would need to build a room with their own hands.
Access to certain skill items could be limited to whether or not you can build a room for that type of skill item. Music Rooms and Art Rooms come to mind.
What I'd like to see them do in general is to provide a much more detailed game option menu and perhaps even player defined "win" conditions
Some of the toggles could even be packaged in bundles for various types of challenge play such as "rags to riches" "7 toddler" etc...causing certain items to gray out in inventory and pre define certain game conditions such as the one you describe (Is your Sim allowed to sell items from inventory?) Perhaps easy/ medium/ hard toggles for item expense, and bills....options for toggling the "friends" requiements which made some of the earlier iterations so challenging. Options for needs decay...etc
Maybe in the next iteration?
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I actually was playing yesterday with this kind of mentality in mind. My Sim lives in a forest off the grid but she harvests nearby plants and digs up stuff. She found some time capsules and instead of opening them right away I decided she needs level 1/2 handiness to open them. But the thing is she needs a workbench to get the skills. To get the workbench she needs to get enough “building material.” I haven’t decided which harvestable or collectible will represent the wood for building it yet.
Default Simoleans 0
Sell from Inventory on/off
Allow teens to own lots Y/N
Weather On Y/N
Tips Low med high
Friends requirements On/Off
This could be bundled into one macro or you could have the option to set it manually from the options screen.
Wood comes from trees so it could be a harvestable that comes from a tree. I play with merfolk, so my mersims would start out on a beach. The he ocean itself acts as a bedroom, but it comes with discomfort without acclimation and immunity to the elements.
I did a High and Dry style rags to riches challenge in Oasis Springs. The Hydration Motive merfolk have affects how much of their power they can use. Each stage of the challenge involved new ways for them to meet their hydration needs in one of the hottest and driest worlds. Eventually, they make enough to choose to move to Sulani or live in their Oasis.
I really like the idea of using collectibles to get certain items. I might try to calculate how much of a collectible needs to be collected before selling it allows the purchase of the item. Of course, growing a garden might require the ability to make a pot for the plant. This would force a sim to ration their food until they gain more sustainable options. You could even limit food to what you can make using the ingredients you collected. No quick meals. A sim has to put effort into what they use, and that means most of the house and items will be things a sim made. A sim can’t own an instrument until they can make an instrument. Other things might require creating or collecting enough items to sell and buy it.
The collectibles would have to be restricted to something specific. If you aren’t actively selling items, creating an item to buy another item would be a financial drain. This means certain items would need to be collected and sold to meet this need. Because market stalls and retail allows for price mark ups, this should only be done in a way that results in a flat rate. Harvestables might need to be the lowest quality.
Trees were my first thought, but there aren’t many harvestable trees that grow on the Crumbling Isle and it looks like none of them grow in Spring. I mean it adds another challenge, but it’s gonna be a long spring if I decide to go that route. I play 28 days and Windenburg has a cooler climate so each day is cool or cold or snowy. I mean it’s definitely a fun challenge tho.
Also yes you get the idea of how I’m going with this. Essentially because you can’t get rid of the money system in the game, I’m trying to work it out so selling harvestables/collectibles break even with the purchase of the item I pretended was made from those materials. For example, I decided that treasure maps supply the material for a tent. Treasure maps cost 80 simoleons each. A tent is 460 simoleons or thereabout. So I need at least 6 treasure maps which would exceed the cost of the tent, or I could do like 5 treasure maps plus some flowers (pretend they offer some support for the tent or something).
I also decided that certain activities can’t be done unless there are a minimum amount of Sims. For example one Sim can’t sustain an entire farm so until I have maybe 3 sims, they will have to forage and harvest the world. And to travel to other worlds there needs to be a certain amount of Sims to make the journey. But in order to add new Sims, I need to either have a surplus of food or an additional tent for them to be housed (or maybe both). I’m kind of playing like a civilization building adventure survivalist kind of Game.
I’ve been playing a sim living on the old salts lot in San Myshuno. Somethings I have discovered are:
You cannot sell posters from the sales table or the street gallery. In other words, without a retail shop, posters are out for selling.
Because the game counts the spice market as part of your home lot, you cannot make tips from singing or keyboard playing (I got a keyboard from a junk box)
The only way you can make tips is by unlocking the living statue and using the busking for tips option which works correctly.
The flea market came around and not a single sim came to my sales table. I figure there must be a bug of some sort. If I have the sales table on my home lot and choose start yard sale, sims DO appear and will buy. Just not at the flea market festival itself.
So here is what happened in my game play. For one whole week my sim had no money. I was hoping she might get a crafted violin from the junk box which can be used on the buskers platform which may or may not result in tips with the home lot issue, but no such luck. I did fish up some voodoo dolls and completed the snow globe collection, however I removed the 500 simoleons you get for completing the collection.
Flea market came around and as said above no one bought a thing. I then was lucky and pulled a portable keyboard out of the junk boxes tv at spawn in the city. As soon as I started practicing a sim randomly tipped 5 simoleons. I got excited thinking tipping was working but after FOUR sim days of playing as much as I could, no tips.
So I watched the living statue and then tipped him my only five bucks, unlocking the living statue costume. I had to go to the karaoke bar next door to put it on, only time I used the travel screen. Then started busking for tips in the spice market and finally, after nearly two whole sim weeks, made a whole $15. At least the tipping actually works!
On a funny note, I dumped all the fish I caught but can’t sell on my home lot, then the repo man came and took them away due to unpaid bills! Did me a favour!
So I wanted an extreme rags to riches and I certainly have it! Because there are no harvestables in the city, I have had to rely on either fishing up the odd cherry, finding a seed packet in a junk box, or lying in wait for an unsuspecting sim to order food from the vending shop, so I can distract them and take the food. Very precise timing you know!
Ways for a home to be more expensive:
-Don't use auto lights in your houses and keep all the lights on always. Keep radios on unless your sims can't sleep
-if you have seasons, always have the thermostat set to whatever setting is most expensive!
-I believe pools make lot value skyrocket, might do the same for taxes.
Ways to spend/lose money
-deduct money (using the money cheat) every time you travel off your home lot as a taxi/gas expense
-deduct money for every new outfit you give a sim (ah, sims 2, where you had to buy all your own clothes)
-play the lottery if you have seasons. You could probably even set it to every day. You might even eventually end up winning which is hugely counterproductive but you could use the money cheat and "donate it all to charity" or something
-make your sim a donator/benefactor for other sim's businesses, clubs, your resident starving artists, etc.