Not strictly HP related-mods but if you are not against CC objects in general you might be interested:
1) "Magic" broom which is actually item based on the Hoverbots from Discover University and combines the functionality of the Cleaning, Repair and Gardening bots. - HERE on MTS
2) Brooms which actually allow flying around also in groups and for children as well - HERE at Patreon (free)
Those are really awesome.
I wish they were part of the game.
Okay, I am having too much fun with this.
I am currently playing my sims in a competition and I put a little more effort into it than it deserves.
I've have decked out one of the courtyards for a competition.
And this crystal broom is the prize.
Our contestants are suited up and standing by.
Slytherin!
Hufflepuff!
Ravenclaw!
And Gryffindorrrrrr!
Our first match is between Michelle Brooks of Gryffindor and Nanami Ito of Slytherin.
These students are new to dueling and no knows what to expect.
Nanami Launches a powerful energy burst
And I would make a terrible sports castor, but this all looks exciting enough without me blabbing over it.
I did not think I could pull this off in this contained space. Other than Cedric crowding the duelers, it's not so bad.
And there goes the balance of power.
It belongs to Michelle Brooks.
Enthralled or Terrified?
That always looks painfull.
And the match goes to Grrrrryffindorrr!
"We will meet again, Brooks."
Dumbledore was visiting, so I had no control of him.
It was cool that he walked up to Michelle right after she won.
I still have to play through quite a few matches.
This all counts towards my House Cup competition. I will have one of these duels near the end of each term.
This was a fun read. Thank you for posting it all.
Are you willing to use mods to help with the immersion/set piece scenarios?
MCCC can be used to take the teens out of school and can also slow the game time down so you have time to do the detail such as invited staff before students, etc.
I have one or two 'mass training of sims' setup for different purposes - mine is more Factorio than Harry potter tho
To do this I increase the amount of sims allowed in a household as well as the settings above, turn autonomy off and then set the scene up and the let the game roll. Looks great as all the sims are doing what they should. You can also get very precise schedules together doing this
My approach to a day/rsidential period of 'training/school/uni day/etc' is to invite the sims I want to the lot and then shift-click them and use 'Add to Family' (UI Cheats mod). Make sure that when you invite sims from other households to join the family, you leave one sims behind - parents in the case of children/teens or spouse etc. If you want the whole household to undergo training, then keep a few 'house watcher' sims on hand. I have a handful of sims I have created for this purpose (skilled in handiness and usually with the neat trait)
So my performance doesn't tank, I set the amount of sims allowed on a lot and then use that number for adding to my large household (You won't get any walkbys). I find I can get away with about 35 controlled sims, before I start getting lag (5 year old desktop PC).
The sims (ie the trainees) I invite live in their proper homes in normal play and I have to rotate to their proper household and add them back to their proper household once the training is complete. This can take a while if you have a lot of students, but it does give you a chance to tweak the back stories of the students/trainees.
Training institution staff are always resident and when you add in ancillary workers then all your sims slots are mostly gone - hence the increase in the household size. I usually add a cook, caretaker (high handiness), receptionist/greeter/gopher/etc as well as training/teaching staff.
The final mod I use is Lotharihoe's Sims Spawn Overhaul mod - locks all sim walkbys and venue visits to only sims in that world. This means that you can rotate away from your HP setup and play some normal sims for awhile and then come back to it when you feel like playing it again.
It is a bit of a faff to setup, but actually looks more complicated than it actually is and it works brilliantly.
Final tips:
If you want to use uniforms - set them up on a mannequin and then once you have added your sims to the family, they can theno btain the uniform from the mannequin (part of induction process should you want that detail).
You can't directly edit sims in a household larger than 8 sims, but MCCC provides a method for doing this, by loading an individual sim into CAS so you can directly edit them.
Hope the above makes sense, its a bit of a ramble I am afraid. My head is a tadge fuzzy this morn
Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity.... The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
I got a little ahead of myself with the Dueling tournament.
I will post the results after this post.
My sims have received a couple of packages containing useful magical items.
I am rewarding the leading students with brooms and now they can fly like graceful birds.
"Oof!"
Eventually.
Wand
Earbuds
Heavy Metal music station LOUD
Dueling Practice: Epic.
"Hah!"
Having the Spellcraft and Sorcery aspiration my students need to go to the Magical Realm's HQ to achieve the given goals.
Dueling being one of those goals.
Emilia Ernest suddenly found herself needing to be somewhere else after losing to Marielle.
Khloe Purcell has been in my game a long time.
I thought it would be nice for Marielle to meet her.
She could teach her a few things.
Of course if she really knew Khloe...
...she wouldn't be dueling with her.
Marielle suddenly found herself needing to be somewhere else.
Rita Skeeter
It's Friday, just after 3 O'clock and our Hogwarts students are relaxing at the Three Broomsticks inn.
Things are going much better than last Saturday, thanks to no festival going on at the small park across the way.
Having them sating their appetites, it was time to do some serious socializing.
Imagine my surprise when Rita Skeeter walks through the door.
I had forgotten about her. I needed a human sim to load with Fang from out of CAS, so I could give him to Hagrid.
I chose the Rita sim and gave her a house. I then transferred Fang to Hagrid.
Okay then, Rita.
I got back to my sims. I really wanted them to get to know the other students outside of Hogwarts.
I still have two more seasons to go before I can rotate Harry, Hermione, and Ron into Hogwarts.
This is certainly long term play. I will see how I feel about it when there time comes.
The first thing Ron does is get some food.
The Foodie trait is working.
The Hufflepuffs only have each other.
I was wondering if maybe I should focus on having one house here at a time.
Too much going on, and friendships levels are hardly moving. Maybe I should work on their charisma skill.
It was annoying to have Harry leave so early, but I found I could simply disband and then call another gathering to get any sims back.
I was wondering where are the Slytherins and started looking.
Then I notice Ron and Blaise in the small kitchen... with Rita Skeeter. Odd.
But then she starts baking.
And then sets them out.
Okay, meeting with Draco in the kitchen, baking Chocolate Souffle... for the Slytherins.
All right, so I called them to eat up.
What are you up to, Rita Skeeter?
Are you trying to get in good with Draco Malfoy's father?
Are you trying to get an interview?
Leave it to Marielle to invite herself for a treat.
"Mmm... These smell so good!"
"Gryffindor house thanks you, Skeesy."
"We sure do."
Hagrid made a cameo appearance.
I guess he ordered take-out.
Ron left too.
Perhaps I should focus on getting to know one HP character at a time, or use a friendship potion.
Nah, it looks like I have plenty of time to get to know them. We are still on first term.
This fun evening had to end.
Curfew was coming up. Although, I do have to try breaking curfew just to experience it.
Monique has a broom, and it set to ride it, but decides to run on foot for some reason.
She doesn't mind small flights to the front door.
This was really nice.
I can imagine all kinds of head canon stories popping into my head when the game is full of HP characters.
The setting, all the characters, and everything, it's all very impressive!
Some times ago I tried to make something similar too, but in TS4 I found that too hard to have all sims in the classrooms or in the great all sitting for long enough, or to keep students from other houses in their respective common rooms (in particular when loading the lot...)
In the past I tried that with TS2, making an apartments lot in which each common room was an apartment, and it was so much easier...
But maybe I should try again, because this seems very funny to play!
I forgot to mention that I have to turn autonomy off during classes.
Loading up the game does cause annoyances because the ignore all the rules and you will find them in rooms they don't or on computers they are not supposed to be using. Other than that, it has been a great help. I turn it on when they are free to do as the like.
I wish we had an autonomy on/off button on the User Interface instead of having to dig for it three layers deep.
They are all progressing well with the magical skills! I admit having laughed a bit when reading that the professors didn't know any spell or potion, it makes sense game-wise but it was a bit out of character XD The potion failure instead looked quite scary, did someone get cursed from that?
To have many students prepare potions other than the Plentiful Needs one also sounds challenging, finding ingredients for everyone doesn't seem easy...
No one got cursed that time, but I have had a couple of curses, nothing horrible.
The greenhouse is starting to produce Ingredients now.
Getting it started is the problem. When I do this for real, I will certainly have a formation year where I only play the professors and get them and the school ready for students.
The inability of sims in TS4 to remain sit on a chair for the whole length of a meal, study session, book reading etc... makes me want to turn off sims autonomy quite often, I struggle with that also when playing smaller households...
As for the potions instead, I tried only once with a sim running a potions shop (so he had to produce at least once each one of the available potions to have something to sell), but it really took ages to collect all the ingredients and learn all the recipes... But at least now I have a place where all the sims in that save can easily purchase any potion XD
Anyway, you seem to manage your (objectively) hard to handle saving very well, also the duel tournament sounds like a very funny idea for this kind of setting! I'm also a bit worried by Rita Skeeter appearance, she is definitively the kind of character who can make trouble in any storyline...
You can follow the Legacy Miller from my blog and the forum thread, *Chapter 8.17 posted on the 18th of April 2024*
The inability of sims in TS4 to remain sit on a chair for the whole length of a meal, study session, book reading etc... makes me want to turn off sims autonomy quite often, I struggle with that also when playing smaller households...
As for the potions instead, I tried only once with a sim running a potions shop (so he had to produce at least once each one of the available potions to have something to sell), but it really took ages to collect all the ingredients and learn all the recipes... But at least now I have a place where all the sims in that save can easily purchase any potion XD
Anyway, you seem to manage your (objectively) hard to handle saving very well, also the duel tournament sounds like a very funny idea for this kind of setting! I'm also a bit worried by Rita Skeeter appearance, she is definitively the kind of character who can make trouble in any storyline...
Oh yes that does drive me nuts.
Also sinks, garbage cans, glasses of water, and the need to be near another sim whenever they do anything.
This Rita Skeeter in particular.
For some reason the creator thought it would be great for her to have all the skills and have them at the maxed out level.
I intended to remove her and find another.
However, I guess she wouldn't be going around making Chocolate Souffle if she hadn't.
I will find a new Skeeter and decide what skills besides writing would make her an interesting character. Just not ALL the skills.
This was a fun read. Thank you for posting it all.
Are you willing to use mods to help with the immersion/set piece scenarios?
Thanks. I am interested in MCAA, but I have been putting off using mods for quite awhile, but that is getting harder and harder to do as the this game gets dragged out to 10 years.
It certainly has features I want, particularly slowing down the flow of time.
Right now I am feeling that I don't want a whole bunch of students constantly there. Visitations and calling in groups for visits can be enough for me to help with immersion. Basically I am now back to playing like how I am running my Uni Prep School.
It's kind of funny though. I did not intend to use the current students in the actual playing of this, but I have come to like them so much, I want to keep them as the main characters and use the actual Harry Potter characters as NPCs.
The dueling competition was fun, but not exactly easy.
I did enjoy the results of going the extra mile with decorations and dueling outfits, and having the professors present, but it was a tedious process in the way I went about it.
First I wanted each student to play all the other students.
6 Students with 5 matches each. (6x5)/2 is 15 duels. An easier way is just to select a house champion (4x3)/2 is 6 duels.
The biggest problem was keeping all the spectators out of the way. They constantly wanted to stand next to, or even into the duelers.
So Autonomy off and making the group of Professors "Go Together" to a corner of the arena had to be done at the start of every match. And also telling one or two of the watching students to take a seat.
Barring all that, I loved it.
Monique, Marielle, and Michelle dominated the competition.
The three MBs, as their last names all start with B. Coincidence.
I actually thought she was going to win it.
Miss Super Student does need a little humbling, I believe.
And it got really interesting near the end where they started to go against each other.
The event is too large to cover in detail, so lets cut to the chase with the winner and I will add photos to check out if you like.
Michelle Brooks won it, defeating everyone she battled.
I was surprised because she was the one lagging all the other students for much of this term, but she caught up and won the prize.
Marielle also defeated everyone she battled, except Michelle. And Monique did the same, but lost to Michelle and Marielle.
She claimed her prize in a very Sims style.
Marielle has completed all her subjects for the Fall term.
I had her invite Hermione over so they can become better friends. I was surprised when Hermione came storming in.
And attacks Nanami Ito.
She lost, but proceeds to attack Nanami two more times.
Nanami is like, "WTH, why are you attacking me?"
"Blah, blah, blah."
I had to have Marielle group up with Hermione and take her out to the courtyard to cool off.
I was wondering if this had something to do with their outing at the Threee Broomstick.
The Slytherins were giving mischief to the Gryffindors.
Nanami, being Slytherin, wasn't about to let this incident go.
A lesson needed to be taught.
She challenged her to a dual.
Hermione was all for it.
Marielle was like, "Hermione, this is a bad idea."
"Come at me!"
"I told her it was a bad idea."
Hermione and Nanami had some serious negative sentiments for each other now.
I had Marielle suggest they reconcile and work this out.
Hermione agreed and preceded to apologize to Nanani.
Nanami wasn't feeling it.
But she gave in and accepted it.
And just like that, they were no longer enemies.
I realized that maybe I should have kept this drama on the boiler.
I later realized why Hermione was attacking her.
Nanami became cursed from losing so many matches at the dueling competition.
The curse caused sims to attack her on sight. No one from the household, which was why I had not realizes she had been cursed.
I found myself disappointed a little because I thought the game was tracking and incident that occurred a couple days ago and it was finally playing out. Nope, just a curse. But it was nice to have a surprise for once.
It is finally the end of the Autumn/Fall term in my game.
My seasons are set for the longest amount of days at 28.
Despite the long length, it did take them all of those days to acquire the 5 spells, 3 potions, and 2 levels of Divination (Medium skill).
This is because of the seven hours of school each day.
I am going to try a mod that let sims come home early or late, depending how well they are doing in school.
My students will come home at 1:00 instead of 3:00.
The end of term is when my students competitions are held.
They already had the one for magic dueling. Today it was potions.
The first attempt was a fail
I thought I could have them make a simple potion and the differences in yield and quality would determine a winner.
These two are sitting it out because, this time, one student is allowed the represent their house.
The problem here is everyone had high yields at excellent quality.
There was no winner. Other than the school with all the surplus potions that were made.
So I decided to have them all learn an advanced potion, one they would all be making for the first time.
I thought there would be some failures and variation in yield and quality. Nope, same as with the basic potion. High yield, high quality by everyone.
My second attempt was better, using experimentation instead of brewing a particular potion, but it has flaws.
This time I had three criteria: speed, the first one to make a potion. Value, the cost of the potion, and whether the potion was simple or advanced.
The main problem was it was partly down to luck.
A sim could have been previously experimenting with potions and will finish in a few second because of where they where when they last experimented. While a sim who had not would be starting the process from he beginning and take a long time. That's why I added the value and potion level criteria.
The prize this time are wands.
There is a first,second and third place prize. I should go back an award Monique, and Marielle brooms too for their places in the competition.
As before, Michelle and Nanami are on the sidelines.
Monique finished first with an advanced potion, 11th in the spell book.
That's pretty good, considering she also did it first.
Pressure.
Go away, Irma Pince.
She is in the middle of a competition.
Who knows how that might effect things.
Cedric finished second and looks very surprised that he did.
Edgar finished his soon after.
He also produces the same potion that Monique made.
Which means our super student is last.
I don't believe she is taking this seriously.
She needs to brew something astounding to win this.
Finally!
She makes the same potion as Monique and Edgar.
Lucky for her Cedric created a Nausea potion which is less advanced and puts him in last place.
Monique places first and Miraelle places third.
Enjoy your new wands.
I prefer the crystal wand.
With the first term and competition complete, I crunched the numbers to discover where the houses stand in pursuit of the house cup. Hufflepuff is in the lead. Thanks to Monique's ability to stay out of trouble while also doing well in the competitions.
I am using the shields to show house cup progress.
The house that is in the lead has a large version of their shield placed in the center.
The house that is in second place is at the top, while third and fourth are at the bottom, left to right.
I have set my Hogwarts sims aside for now, as I am on a bit of a TS4 break, and I probably need to get back to my main sims.
Half of them need to get through University, and now that a wedding pack is coming, I feel the need to progress them to the point where my university grads with get their careers started and get married to their love interests. Hopefully chemistry and attraction is coming in a patch.
It will be a real shame is if doesn't
But anyway, I do have one last happening to share.
Professor Minerva McGonagall is now substituting for Dumbledore.
The school has a new problem. The schools bills are crazy high.
All those lights and candles are hurting the budget as well.
Marielle has taken upon herself to come up with a solution to save Hogwart's from bankruptcy.
It's time to begin Operation Copypasto.
With a little help from her friends.
First, they will make copies of the originals.
And then snatch up the copies with a the Burgliate spell.
Nothing is really stolen, but they'd better get out, because the Muggles probably wouldn't understand whats happening here.
They will simply store them in this chamber and make copies of the copies.
No more money trouble.
I don't know when I will begin my official playing of Hogwarts.
I just might wait for Werewolves, so I can make Lupin, assuming that we ever get them.
What a moneymaking idea! Definitely easier than finding them in the jungle and much faster. Hopefully the amounts for the treasures holds, I tried to make copies of high priced masterpieces and the price drastically drops for the copies.
Great update! I am going to have to watch the trailer for this wedding pack, weddings are not my thing, more my sims eloping in the bathroom in their underwear, lol. But I love the windows and curtains, so we will see.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
What a moneymaking idea! Definitely easier than finding them in the jungle and much faster. Hopefully the amounts for the treasures holds, I tried to make copies of high priced masterpieces and the price drastically drops for the copies.
Great update! I am going to have to watch the trailer for this wedding pack, weddings are not my thing, more my sims eloping in the bathroom in their underwear, lol. But I love the windows and curtains, so we will see.
I've only had one elaborate wedding in TS4 and that was when I first got it.
I've had a couple of elopements. Eventually my large group of sims will start tying the knot. I will find out if this new pack will change how I do weddings.
So, I am a Ravenclaw.
I think I will use this to play a sim-self through Hogwarts in The Sims 4 and these results will be my play order for the Hogwarts Legacy game.
I am so putting Luna and Cho in the game.
And this just reminds me that I don't have Delores Umbridge.
How could I forget her?
Playing Hogwarts is still on the roster, but it's behind playing my main save, which is also on hold, because of bugs.
The High School Years pack doesn't really fit with this game play, so I will continue to send them to rabbit hole school and pretend they are off for muggle studies. The headmaster will have to write excuses if I need them to spend a full day on magic studies.
Hi CK! I took the house quiz and it seems as though I'm a Ravenclaw too. Much better than Slytherin, lol.
I hear you about the bugs, gah! I deleted every single one of my saves and started with a brand new clean slate, again. I had so many sims that I had had for ages and just wanted to get rid of all the bugs and glitches that had accumulated in these saves.
I will be watching for the updates, and pictures!
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
Comments
Those are really awesome.
I wish they were part of the game.
I am currently playing my sims in a competition and I put a little more effort into it than it deserves.
I've have decked out one of the courtyards for a competition.
And this crystal broom is the prize.
Our contestants are suited up and standing by.
Slytherin!
Hufflepuff!
Ravenclaw!
And Gryffindorrrrrr!
Our first match is between Michelle Brooks of Gryffindor and Nanami Ito of Slytherin.
These students are new to dueling and no knows what to expect.
Nanami Launches a powerful energy burst
And I would make a terrible sports castor, but this all looks exciting enough without me blabbing over it.
I did not think I could pull this off in this contained space. Other than Cedric crowding the duelers, it's not so bad.
And there goes the balance of power.
It belongs to Michelle Brooks.
Enthralled or Terrified?
That always looks painfull.
And the match goes to Grrrrryffindorrr!
"We will meet again, Brooks."
Dumbledore was visiting, so I had no control of him.
It was cool that he walked up to Michelle right after she won.
I still have to play through quite a few matches.
This all counts towards my House Cup competition. I will have one of these duels near the end of each term.
Are you willing to use mods to help with the immersion/set piece scenarios?
MCCC can be used to take the teens out of school and can also slow the game time down so you have time to do the detail such as invited staff before students, etc.
I have one or two 'mass training of sims' setup for different purposes - mine is more Factorio than Harry potter tho
To do this I increase the amount of sims allowed in a household as well as the settings above, turn autonomy off and then set the scene up and the let the game roll. Looks great as all the sims are doing what they should. You can also get very precise schedules together doing this
My approach to a day/rsidential period of 'training/school/uni day/etc' is to invite the sims I want to the lot and then shift-click them and use 'Add to Family' (UI Cheats mod). Make sure that when you invite sims from other households to join the family, you leave one sims behind - parents in the case of children/teens or spouse etc. If you want the whole household to undergo training, then keep a few 'house watcher' sims on hand. I have a handful of sims I have created for this purpose (skilled in handiness and usually with the neat trait)
So my performance doesn't tank, I set the amount of sims allowed on a lot and then use that number for adding to my large household (You won't get any walkbys). I find I can get away with about 35 controlled sims, before I start getting lag (5 year old desktop PC).
The sims (ie the trainees) I invite live in their proper homes in normal play and I have to rotate to their proper household and add them back to their proper household once the training is complete. This can take a while if you have a lot of students, but it does give you a chance to tweak the back stories of the students/trainees.
Training institution staff are always resident and when you add in ancillary workers then all your sims slots are mostly gone - hence the increase in the household size. I usually add a cook, caretaker (high handiness), receptionist/greeter/gopher/etc as well as training/teaching staff.
The final mod I use is Lotharihoe's Sims Spawn Overhaul mod - locks all sim walkbys and venue visits to only sims in that world. This means that you can rotate away from your HP setup and play some normal sims for awhile and then come back to it when you feel like playing it again.
It is a bit of a faff to setup, but actually looks more complicated than it actually is and it works brilliantly.
Final tips:
If you want to use uniforms - set them up on a mannequin and then once you have added your sims to the family, they can theno btain the uniform from the mannequin (part of induction process should you want that detail).
You can't directly edit sims in a household larger than 8 sims, but MCCC provides a method for doing this, by loading an individual sim into CAS so you can directly edit them.
Hope the above makes sense, its a bit of a ramble I am afraid. My head is a tadge fuzzy this morn
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
I will post the results after this post.
My sims have received a couple of packages containing useful magical items.
I am rewarding the leading students with brooms and now they can fly like graceful birds.
"Oof!"
Eventually.
Wand
Earbuds
Heavy Metal music station
LOUD
Dueling Practice: Epic.
"Hah!"
Having the Spellcraft and Sorcery aspiration my students need to go to the Magical Realm's HQ to achieve the given goals.
Dueling being one of those goals.
Emilia Ernest suddenly found herself needing to be somewhere else after losing to Marielle.
Khloe Purcell has been in my game a long time.
I thought it would be nice for Marielle to meet her.
She could teach her a few things.
Of course if she really knew Khloe...
...she wouldn't be dueling with her.
Marielle suddenly found herself needing to be somewhere else.
Rita Skeeter
It's Friday, just after 3 O'clock and our Hogwarts students are relaxing at the Three Broomsticks inn.
Things are going much better than last Saturday, thanks to no festival going on at the small park across the way.
Having them sating their appetites, it was time to do some serious socializing.
Imagine my surprise when Rita Skeeter walks through the door.
I had forgotten about her. I needed a human sim to load with Fang from out of CAS, so I could give him to Hagrid.
I chose the Rita sim and gave her a house. I then transferred Fang to Hagrid.
Okay then, Rita.
I got back to my sims. I really wanted them to get to know the other students outside of Hogwarts.
I still have two more seasons to go before I can rotate Harry, Hermione, and Ron into Hogwarts.
This is certainly long term play. I will see how I feel about it when there time comes.
The first thing Ron does is get some food.
The Foodie trait is working.
The Hufflepuffs only have each other.
I was wondering if maybe I should focus on having one house here at a time.
Too much going on, and friendships levels are hardly moving. Maybe I should work on their charisma skill.
It was annoying to have Harry leave so early, but I found I could simply disband and then call another gathering to get any sims back.
I was wondering where are the Slytherins and started looking.
Then I notice Ron and Blaise in the small kitchen... with Rita Skeeter. Odd.
But then she starts baking.
And then sets them out.
Okay, meeting with Draco in the kitchen, baking Chocolate Souffle... for the Slytherins.
All right, so I called them to eat up.
What are you up to, Rita Skeeter?
Are you trying to get in good with Draco Malfoy's father?
Are you trying to get an interview?
Leave it to Marielle to invite herself for a treat.
"Mmm... These smell so good!"
"Gryffindor house thanks you, Skeesy."
"We sure do."
Hagrid made a cameo appearance.
I guess he ordered take-out.
Ron left too.
Perhaps I should focus on getting to know one HP character at a time, or use a friendship potion.
Nah, it looks like I have plenty of time to get to know them. We are still on first term.
This fun evening had to end.
Curfew was coming up. Although, I do have to try breaking curfew just to experience it.
Monique has a broom, and it set to ride it, but decides to run on foot for some reason.
She doesn't mind small flights to the front door.
This was really nice.
I can imagine all kinds of head canon stories popping into my head when the game is full of HP characters.
I forgot to mention that I have to turn autonomy off during classes.
Loading up the game does cause annoyances because the ignore all the rules and you will find them in rooms they don't or on computers they are not supposed to be using. Other than that, it has been a great help. I turn it on when they are free to do as the like.
I wish we had an autonomy on/off button on the User Interface instead of having to dig for it three layers deep.
No one got cursed that time, but I have had a couple of curses, nothing horrible.
The greenhouse is starting to produce Ingredients now.
Getting it started is the problem. When I do this for real, I will certainly have a formation year where I only play the professors and get them and the school ready for students.
As for the potions instead, I tried only once with a sim running a potions shop (so he had to produce at least once each one of the available potions to have something to sell), but it really took ages to collect all the ingredients and learn all the recipes... But at least now I have a place where all the sims in that save can easily purchase any potion XD
Anyway, you seem to manage your (objectively) hard to handle saving very well, also the duel tournament sounds like a very funny idea for this kind of setting! I'm also a bit worried by Rita Skeeter appearance, she is definitively the kind of character who can make trouble in any storyline...
Oh yes that does drive me nuts.
Also sinks, garbage cans, glasses of water, and the need to be near another sim whenever they do anything.
This Rita Skeeter in particular.
For some reason the creator thought it would be great for her to have all the skills and have them at the maxed out level.
I intended to remove her and find another.
However, I guess she wouldn't be going around making Chocolate Souffle if she hadn't.
I will find a new Skeeter and decide what skills besides writing would make her an interesting character. Just not ALL the skills.
Thanks. I am interested in MCAA, but I have been putting off using mods for quite awhile, but that is getting harder and harder to do as the this game gets dragged out to 10 years.
It certainly has features I want, particularly slowing down the flow of time.
Right now I am feeling that I don't want a whole bunch of students constantly there. Visitations and calling in groups for visits can be enough for me to help with immersion. Basically I am now back to playing like how I am running my Uni Prep School.
It's kind of funny though. I did not intend to use the current students in the actual playing of this, but I have come to like them so much, I want to keep them as the main characters and use the actual Harry Potter characters as NPCs.
I did enjoy the results of going the extra mile with decorations and dueling outfits, and having the professors present, but it was a tedious process in the way I went about it.
First I wanted each student to play all the other students.
6 Students with 5 matches each. (6x5)/2 is 15 duels. An easier way is just to select a house champion (4x3)/2 is 6 duels.
The biggest problem was keeping all the spectators out of the way. They constantly wanted to stand next to, or even into the duelers.
So Autonomy off and making the group of Professors "Go Together" to a corner of the arena had to be done at the start of every match. And also telling one or two of the watching students to take a seat.
Barring all that, I loved it.
Monique, Marielle, and Michelle dominated the competition.
The three MBs, as their last names all start with B. Coincidence.
I actually thought she was going to win it.
Miss Super Student does need a little humbling, I believe.
And it got really interesting near the end where they started to go against each other.
The event is too large to cover in detail, so lets cut to the chase with the winner and I will add photos to check out if you like.
Michelle Brooks won it, defeating everyone she battled.
I was surprised because she was the one lagging all the other students for much of this term, but she caught up and won the prize.
Marielle also defeated everyone she battled, except Michelle. And Monique did the same, but lost to Michelle and Marielle.
She claimed her prize in a very Sims style.
Random pictures from the event.
I had her invite Hermione over so they can become better friends. I was surprised when Hermione came storming in.
And attacks Nanami Ito.
She lost, but proceeds to attack Nanami two more times.
Nanami is like, "WTH, why are you attacking me?"
"Blah, blah, blah."
I had to have Marielle group up with Hermione and take her out to the courtyard to cool off.
I was wondering if this had something to do with their outing at the Threee Broomstick.
The Slytherins were giving mischief to the Gryffindors.
Nanami, being Slytherin, wasn't about to let this incident go.
A lesson needed to be taught.
She challenged her to a dual.
Hermione was all for it.
Marielle was like, "Hermione, this is a bad idea."
"Come at me!"
"I told her it was a bad idea."
Hermione and Nanami had some serious negative sentiments for each other now.
I had Marielle suggest they reconcile and work this out.
Hermione agreed and preceded to apologize to Nanani.
Nanami wasn't feeling it.
But she gave in and accepted it.
And just like that, they were no longer enemies.
I realized that maybe I should have kept this drama on the boiler.
I later realized why Hermione was attacking her.
Nanami became cursed from losing so many matches at the dueling competition.
The curse caused sims to attack her on sight. No one from the household, which was why I had not realizes she had been cursed.
I found myself disappointed a little because I thought the game was tracking and incident that occurred a couple days ago and it was finally playing out. Nope, just a curse. But it was nice to have a surprise for once.
Poor Hermione, I felt it personally when she lost that duel...
Yeah, and the whole situation wasn't even her fault.
It was the curse placed on Nanami.
My seasons are set for the longest amount of days at 28.
Despite the long length, it did take them all of those days to acquire the 5 spells, 3 potions, and 2 levels of Divination (Medium skill).
This is because of the seven hours of school each day.
I am going to try a mod that let sims come home early or late, depending how well they are doing in school.
My students will come home at 1:00 instead of 3:00.
The end of term is when my students competitions are held.
They already had the one for magic dueling. Today it was potions.
The first attempt was a fail
I thought I could have them make a simple potion and the differences in yield and quality would determine a winner.
These two are sitting it out because, this time, one student is allowed the represent their house.
The problem here is everyone had high yields at excellent quality.
There was no winner. Other than the school with all the surplus potions that were made.
So I decided to have them all learn an advanced potion, one they would all be making for the first time.
I thought there would be some failures and variation in yield and quality. Nope, same as with the basic potion. High yield, high quality by everyone.
My second attempt was better, using experimentation instead of brewing a particular potion, but it has flaws.
This time I had three criteria: speed, the first one to make a potion. Value, the cost of the potion, and whether the potion was simple or advanced.
The main problem was it was partly down to luck.
A sim could have been previously experimenting with potions and will finish in a few second because of where they where when they last experimented. While a sim who had not would be starting the process from he beginning and take a long time. That's why I added the value and potion level criteria.
The prize this time are wands.
There is a first,second and third place prize. I should go back an award Monique, and Marielle brooms too for their places in the competition.
As before, Michelle and Nanami are on the sidelines.
Monique finished first with an advanced potion, 11th in the spell book.
That's pretty good, considering she also did it first.
Pressure.
Go away, Irma Pince.
She is in the middle of a competition.
Who knows how that might effect things.
Cedric finished second and looks very surprised that he did.
Edgar finished his soon after.
He also produces the same potion that Monique made.
Which means our super student is last.
I don't believe she is taking this seriously.
She needs to brew something astounding to win this.
Finally!
She makes the same potion as Monique and Edgar.
Lucky for her Cedric created a Nausea potion which is less advanced and puts him in last place.
Monique places first and Miraelle places third.
Enjoy your new wands.
I prefer the crystal wand.
With the first term and competition complete, I crunched the numbers to discover where the houses stand in pursuit of the house cup. Hufflepuff is in the lead. Thanks to Monique's ability to stay out of trouble while also doing well in the competitions.
I am using the shields to show house cup progress.
The house that is in the lead has a large version of their shield placed in the center.
The house that is in second place is at the top, while third and fourth are at the bottom, left to right.
Hufflepuff is gunning for you, Slytherins.
Half of them need to get through University, and now that a wedding pack is coming, I feel the need to progress them to the point where my university grads with get their careers started and get married to their love interests. Hopefully chemistry and attraction is coming in a patch.
It will be a real shame is if doesn't
But anyway, I do have one last happening to share.
Professor Minerva McGonagall is now substituting for Dumbledore.
The school has a new problem. The schools bills are crazy high.
All those lights and candles are hurting the budget as well.
Marielle has taken upon herself to come up with a solution to save Hogwart's from bankruptcy.
It's time to begin Operation Copypasto.
With a little help from her friends.
First, they will make copies of the originals.
And then snatch up the copies with a the Burgliate spell.
Nothing is really stolen, but they'd better get out, because the Muggles probably wouldn't understand whats happening here.
They will simply store them in this chamber and make copies of the copies.
No more money trouble.
I don't know when I will begin my official playing of Hogwarts.
I just might wait for Werewolves, so I can make Lupin, assuming that we ever get them.
Great update! I am going to have to watch the trailer for this wedding pack, weddings are not my thing, more my sims eloping in the bathroom in their underwear, lol. But I love the windows and curtains, so we will see.
I've only had one elaborate wedding in TS4 and that was when I first got it.
I've had a couple of elopements. Eventually my large group of sims will start tying the knot. I will find out if this new pack will change how I do weddings.
I am actually more interested in the new world.
Either my TS4 Hogwarts simming will either be inspired by this new game,
or forever put to rest, because I will not want to play them anymore.
https://www.gotoquiz.com/results/pottermore_sorting_quiz_all_possible_question
So, I am a Ravenclaw.
I think I will use this to play a sim-self through Hogwarts in The Sims 4 and these results will be my play order for the Hogwarts Legacy game.
I am so putting Luna and Cho in the game.
The burn!
And this just reminds me that I don't have Delores Umbridge.
How could I forget her?
Playing Hogwarts is still on the roster, but it's behind playing my main save, which is also on hold, because of bugs.
The High School Years pack doesn't really fit with this game play, so I will continue to send them to rabbit hole school and pretend they are off for muggle studies. The headmaster will have to write excuses if I need them to spend a full day on magic studies.
They put the simmy versions to shame, but I still like my sim versions.
I hear you about the bugs, gah! I deleted every single one of my saves and started with a brand new clean slate, again. I had so many sims that I had had for ages and just wanted to get rid of all the bugs and glitches that had accumulated in these saves.
I will be watching for the updates, and pictures!