I've spent the last week or two trying to maximise my score for a slightly adapted version of this challenge: I noticed @katoregama musing about updating the rules to allow careers provided you didn't leave the lot and I ran with that. I did only allow myself to join a career in order to complete an aspiration milestone, however, and once the milestone was complete I quit the career.
In order to give myself an extra challenge, I decided to shrink the allowed playing space to 32 tiles (partly as that's the tile requirement for micro homes) and start the challenge with the cheapest medium-height fence enclosing that space, 4 blank floor tiles to reach the minimum tiny home requirement, 1 easel, and 50 simoleons (to start the first painting). I allowed myself to purchase any reward traits I wanted and use the rest of the lot freely as long as my sim and any objects he was interacting with were entirely inside the allowed area, and I also used move objects to cram in the items I needed.
My first attempt (with a sim I called Michael Angelo because I was starting the challenge with painting) was going well and I decided to try and finish it in 9 sim weeks - so before the start of his third summer as I'd started in the spring. I did manage to complete everything and get the money I needed for the mansion, but then decided to build him a castle and ended up going in and out of build mode quite a few times as I built it across multiple sessions. That meant I got clobbered by depreciation costs and summer rolled around with a house valued about $320,000 (despite the fact that it's $370,000 ish when placed from the gallery) and no money left to increase the value.
After that I had multiple other attempts, this time trying to complete the whole challenge in 8 sim weeks. I finally managed it with a sim I called Leon Wolfe (Creative, Perfectionist, Cheerful). I started him out with the Archaelogy Scholar aspiration as it gives you the 'Quick Learner' trait but you can't actually complete any of it so can immediately swap to something else. I started with the study spot, homey and home studio lot traits, and swapped home studio for great acoustics whilst I was working on the musical aspriation (and then back to home studio for the writing aspiration). I also had all the micro home benefits, crucially including double skill gain.
I had all the skills (including vampire lore) maxed by Wednesday of week 8 (day 53) and checked off the final aspiration except mansion baron on Thursday (day 54), but I still needed to earn well over $100,000 in the following 2 days to have enough to complete mansion baron before my self-imposed time limit kicked in.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it, but I got Leon very inspired and switched between painting large abstract paintings and making the most expensive type of flower arrangement, ending up with a comfortable $421,70 by 6pm on Saturday of week 8 (day 56). Fittingly, the final painting I sold boosted Leon to a 5-star celebrity. At that point I placed the castle I'd built for the initial attempt and completed mansion baron, leading to a total score of 665 points with the following breakdown:
Started with 100 Skills maxed 350 Aspirations 270 Days elapsed -55 Other 0 Total points 665
The above score includes 10 points for vampire lore and a total of 45 points for aspiration levels that require a career to complete, so if you remove those the total score is 610. For the aspirations which have an identical first level, I only gave myself points the first time I completed the level.
If anyone is interested, the spreadsheet I used to keep track of my final attempt (having got tired of rewriting my notebook page whenever I decided to start over) is [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Msa58pJfAPHK4tIqqlvtW-EfovoIBWFzgpZvJj7mwk/edit?usp=sharing). The aspirations are arranged in the order I intended to complete them, but I did end up making a few changes to the plan but didn't bother to rearrange the spreadsheet. If anyone wants to make a copy of the spreadsheet and use it to track their own attempt then feel free to do so.
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In order to give myself an extra challenge, I decided to shrink the allowed playing space to 32 tiles (partly as that's the tile requirement for micro homes) and start the challenge with the cheapest medium-height fence enclosing that space, 4 blank floor tiles to reach the minimum tiny home requirement, 1 easel, and 50 simoleons (to start the first painting). I allowed myself to purchase any reward traits I wanted and use the rest of the lot freely as long as my sim and any objects he was interacting with were entirely inside the allowed area, and I also used move objects to cram in the items I needed.
My first attempt (with a sim I called Michael Angelo because I was starting the challenge with painting) was going well and I decided to try and finish it in 9 sim weeks - so before the start of his third summer as I'd started in the spring. I did manage to complete everything and get the money I needed for the mansion, but then decided to build him a castle and ended up going in and out of build mode quite a few times as I built it across multiple sessions. That meant I got clobbered by depreciation costs and summer rolled around with a house valued about $320,000 (despite the fact that it's $370,000 ish when placed from the gallery) and no money left to increase the value.
After that I had multiple other attempts, this time trying to complete the whole challenge in 8 sim weeks. I finally managed it with a sim I called Leon Wolfe (Creative, Perfectionist, Cheerful). I started him out with the Archaelogy Scholar aspiration as it gives you the 'Quick Learner' trait but you can't actually complete any of it so can immediately swap to something else. I started with the study spot, homey and home studio lot traits, and swapped home studio for great acoustics whilst I was working on the musical aspriation (and then back to home studio for the writing aspiration). I also had all the micro home benefits, crucially including double skill gain.
I had all the skills (including vampire lore) maxed by Wednesday of week 8 (day 53) and checked off the final aspiration except mansion baron on Thursday (day 54), but I still needed to earn well over $100,000 in the following 2 days to have enough to complete mansion baron before my self-imposed time limit kicked in.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it, but I got Leon very inspired and switched between painting large abstract paintings and making the most expensive type of flower arrangement, ending up with a comfortable $421,70 by 6pm on Saturday of week 8 (day 56). Fittingly, the final painting I sold boosted Leon to a 5-star celebrity. At that point I placed the castle I'd built for the initial attempt and completed mansion baron, leading to a total score of 665 points with the following breakdown:
Started with 100
Skills maxed 350
Aspirations 270
Days elapsed -55
Other 0
Total points 665
The above score includes 10 points for vampire lore and a total of 45 points for aspiration levels that require a career to complete, so if you remove those the total score is 610. For the aspirations which have an identical first level, I only gave myself points the first time I completed the level.
If anyone is interested, the spreadsheet I used to keep track of my final attempt (having got tired of rewriting my notebook page whenever I decided to start over) is [here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Msa58pJfAPHK4tIqqlvtW-EfovoIBWFzgpZvJj7mwk/edit?usp=sharing).
The aspirations are arranged in the order I intended to complete them, but I did end up making a few changes to the plan but didn't bother to rearrange the spreadsheet. If anyone wants to make a copy of the spreadsheet and use it to track their own attempt then feel free to do so.