Just a fair warning, folks, but today’s update is gonna be a long one!
Before we go any further, it’s important that we cover a few things I glossed over initially. First off are
Wants. Some people may claim that they’re supposed to be called Wishes, but these people can be safely ignored. They are Wants.
It is important to understand the anatomy of the
Want Grid if we are to understand how to capitalize on Wants. Any number of passing fancies will queue up in the top portion, known as the
Wanna Box. For example, “I wanna learn the writing skill.”
By left-clicking on such a passing fancy we can shunt it to the
Gonna Quadrant, where it will occupy one of our four squares until we accomplish or give up on our dreams. In this way, our previous example becomes “I’m
gonna learn the writing skill.” Make your sim do the thing, and hey presto, you’ve got some points in the bank! Carrying out your sim’s Wants is the key to making them OP as fuck, and a little happier along the way too!
Starting in Sims 3, sims get
moodlets from any number of objects, interactions, happenings or environmental circumstances, which have a positive or negative effect on our Mood, measured by that thing on the left what looks like a personal massager. They also offer some nice flavor text, honestly. I call them buffs and debuffs just as often as I call them moodlets.
Stack positive moodlets and your sim will be more succcessful at their career, as well as building skills faster. If you’ve got a high enough Mood score that the business end of the massager-looking gauge is filled, your sim will passively generate Lifetime Happiness Points.
It’s important to know how to prevent negative moodlets, but that’s really something that just comes with far too much experience. The moral of the story is take care of your sim and be lucky, and you’ll be in good shape.
All of this is to say that mood, along with reaching certain skill levels, is important to earning promotions at work. Yaoi’s job doesn’t start until tomorrow, though, so more on that later.
Tanegashima wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:44 pm
Also attempt cooking as often as possible.
nice clipping, idiot
The Flying Twybil wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:51 am
I vote for doing this, in by which I mean
heading to some public place to mingle. See if we can find ourselves a werewolf or vampire to start.
Edit: Let's also bring along our ghost friend!
In the hopes of adding some supernatural spice to Yaoi’s life, we’ll check out the ol’ alchemy shop. Sadly, our watery Texan friend ceases to exist when he’s not haunting us. He’s not even in our relationships tab!
With no car to our name, we travel by taxi. It beats walking, I guess.
It’s worth noting that, for whatever reason, The Sims 3 refuses to acknowledge newer graphics cards. It’s a known and apparently fairly widespread issue, and I cannot be bothered to do the copious text editing that would actually be needed to fix it. In short, the game runs like shit at times, and when we hurtle across town into another lot it can take a
WHILE to load things in.
That’s better.
Yaoi’s first order of business is to chat up this lady, for some reason. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but at some point Yaoi senses the full moon and freaks out, which is...certainly a thing that happens. It’s worth noting that a full moon gives
all sims a +40 moodlet, so that’s nice.
It’s always a good idea to check the stock at the alchemy store daily, as unique stuff tends to pop up. The Bottled SimBot Converter is tempting, but seeing as it would stop Yaoi from breeding, it’s a non-starter.
I opt for an entry-level alchemy skill book that ends up languishing in Yaoi’s inventory for roughly two weeks and counting. But what’s that over there?
I’m sure that’s fine.
Neat!
In the base game, the only way to get gems cut was via paying a mail-in service. The gemcutter lets you cut out the middleman AND the fee for the low, low price of 975 Simoleons, or in Yaoi’s case, the low, low price of going to the alchemy store. Every cut gives us some gem dust, too.
We’ll unlock more gem cuts to cut gems into as we cut more gems with the gemcutter, but for right now we just have the plain jane emerald cut. I opt to save the Vampire’s Eye for when we have more options.
Oh hey, I’ve seen those before. Never used one, though.
hrrg loading
“Hmm...money.”
Yeah, that’s zombies for ya. They come out of the woodwork on full moons to be a general nuisance and can apparently turn other sims into zombies for 48 hours, but I’ve never seen the latter happen.
We make our way into the club, which, uh...sucks? Yeah, sucks is the word I’d use. There’s nobody around, despite the game insisting this is a “Hotspot”.
This kid believes this is a safe and secluded spot to do his homework. That’s how dead it is here.
Yaoi goes home and feeds his pet lizard, displaying more joy and wonderment than he did at the club before crashing into bed.
Usually a sim will sleep until their energy is full, but if you have a job it’ll automatically jostle them awake two hours before work.
The carpool always arrives an hour before work and your sims will always try to hop in the moment it arrives, but you can let the damn thing wait until the last minute if you really need to eat like Yaoi here.
The tight timing of it all leaves us no time to stack any buffs, and it makes us late, but not by much. The only real consequence of this is our job performance taking a minor hit, and since it’s our first day it’s empty anyway, so big whoop.
Oof. Thanks for reminding me to adjust sim lifespans, game.
You can shift your sim into one of several gears while at work, which I think are all fairly self-explanatory. I opt for the one that will let us make some friends.
Free job performance? Of course we’ll take it!
At some point in the workday we are interrupted by a flowery little jingle to tell us that we have met someone the game deems us to be compatible with. Cool.
Aaaaaaaaand by the end we’ve left with some dollars in our pocket and a debuff on our soul.. Funnily enough, I always thought this one was just caused by working at all, but I guess the description wasn’t ham-handed enough for my deafening intellect.
We spend a little time cashing in mundane tasks for good boy points,
jazz up the computer desk a bit, and
oh
Fucko here wakes up starving at midnight, so I put on some of
his favorite music.
Fitting. Yaoi wants to improve his cooking skill as a result of this failure, which is pretty cute.
The morning is still young, so we crack open our job book. Yaoi seems to find it riveting, getting the Entertained moodlet as his fun levels climb.
It even digivolves into a stronger version of itself since we’re having so goddamn much fun. The duration of both of these buffs extends the longer your sim is having fun to a maximum of eight hours, so it’s actually a pretty darn good idea to have your little dude or dudette blast video games into their eyes before work.
Brushing your teeth isn’t the most powerful buff, but every little bit helps that performance bar go up.
As does completing opportunities!
We’re still falling short in the skill department, though, but we easily put a dent in that at work and manage to polish off that last bit of progress as soon as we get home. Promotion, here we come!
There’s a little green outline around our co-worker, and if memory serves, that means…
Ah-ha!
The ol’ daily grind can lead to some uneventful days in The Sims, particularly when it’s a one-sim household. Jobs are goddamn time vampires in this game.
Yaoi’s hard work finally pays off, though, and we reward him with a bedder bed. In addition to not being a heinous piece of shit, the higher energy rating on this bed means sleeping won’t take up quite as much time.
After work I punt Yaoi over to the alchemy store and he ends up meeting a vampire, but he’s clearly got other things on his mind, like sticking his dick in a fairy.
I’m starting to hate these ghosts.
As a complete side note, never trust the time estimate the game gives while sleeping. Sims are absolute weenies about sleep and will invariably linger for far too long even once their energy is full, so just cancel that shit.
Case in point.
Oh, dear. Yaoi’s going to take a bit of a hit to his mood for the next few days, which is fine because it’s the weekend.
We also nab a handy, dandy flying vacuum. Sure, it’s silly, but it’s also a ridiculously fast vehicle.
I decide to drag Yaoi out to the park in hopes of meeting some spooktacular types, but no such luck.
Doesn’t stop us from getting a tan, though.
Desperate for thrills, chills and spills, I decide to send Yaoi into the catacombs at the local graveyard for a bit.
Neat! We won’t be able to plant this unless we get to level 7 in the gardening skill, but it’s bound to be something good.
Sun rises, sun sets.
A ghost wakes us up at 1am, so I have Yaoi be a good Yaoi and work on his writing.
There’s no better day than a day off to socialize, so we attempt to invite Victoria over.
Yeeeeeeeeah, we’re gonna need to cultivate our relationship a little bit more.
Fine. We’ll check out a park instead. It’s wildly uninteresting and we immediately go home. The Sims 3, everybody!
A good chunk of time is spent chatting Victoria up on the phone.
With his cooking slightly improved, I decide to have Yaoi feed himself a pot of goopy carbonara, just a few rungs up the pasta ladder from mac and cheese.
Absent-minded sims have a small chance to literally forget what they were doing at any time. This includes cooking.
Yaoi is definitely not going to put out this fire without some nudging.
That’ll cover the counter, but not the oven. Thanks, insurance.
I fucking hate ghosts.
Despite all this bullshit, Yaoi goes to work in a pretty good mood, and we take the opportunity to get a little closer to our co-workers.
Socialization is performed, bars go up, and we learn that Victoria has a mate. I think this might also be when we learned that she has the Hopeless Romantic trait?
In-roads have been made, but we should probably play it safe. Get that friendship bar scooted way, way up before we risk making a move.
On the other hand, free fairy dust!
Fairy dust: gives you the get-up-and-go to fix your computer so you can play Madden.
An extra wrinkle is added to the job in the form of stories - just interview sims and then sit down at the computer to write about ‘em.
We also get an opportunity that involves reading five days’ worth of newspapers. The newspaper kinda sucks.
What doesn’t suck, however, is fixing the sink that we left spraying all day at work and earning our first handiness point.
Our next day of work is as eventful as ever, but
does give us a spiffy new outfit.
At this point I decide to be cheeky and try to land an interview with a vampire, who immediately leaves. Okay then.
Vicky’s more interesting anyway.
Work, work. We really need to finish that article if we want promoted.
Eh, what the hell.
Awwww.
All right, Yaoi, do your thing!
Yaoi wants to see a movie, and who am I to deny him that?
Good times are had by all, and a smooch shared outside of the theater.
lmao
Who says daily drudgery doesn’t have its benefits?
....where’s Agama?
Great. Apparently Yaoi shoved his lizard into his pockets while I wasn’t looking.
Work isn’t super eventful, but at least Yaoi makes up for spilling an embarrassing amount of his own pet lizard out of his pockets by earning a skill level.
It’s been a hot minute since the trip to the alchemy store, so I-
Hell yeah, free honey.
Oh, word?
get out of the rocking chair you fucking dunce
Yaoi has the Inappropriate trait, which among other things lets you get away with a lot of things while visiting another sim’s house without being kicked out. Thus the sponge bath.
Oh hey Beau.
Let’s just ruin this guy’s day real quick.
“Fuck you, you uninteresting sack of shit. You look like the developer hit the random button in Create-A-Sim and called it a day.”
“I’d interview you, but houseflies are more buzzworthy. Now have at you!”
Okay, maybe fistfighting was a bad idea.
Look at this disgusting man just packing away the burnt macaroni.
Yaoi desperately needs to feel clean after that.
Y’know what, Yaoi, you’re right. You do deserve a nice rest after that relaxing bath.
Begone, cuck.
We do get up after an hour or two to ask to spend the night- otherwise we’d get kicked out in the wee hours of the morning.
Oh hey, it’s our boss.
I do not blame you one bit, buddy.
“What say you and me take this party somewhere a little more upstairs?”
Well, that’s that pesky pre-existing relationship taken care of. Yaoi ruins yet another marriage.
Move it, Brownie Bites, we need to get our sleep on.
Thank you.
In the morning, Yaoi decides to raid this poor man’s fridge so he can get up to some cookoldry, because at this point, why not?
Beau seems to want to sleep. We can’t have that.
Move it or lose it, Pillsbury Beau Boy.
Now, shall we?
I have nothing to add to this.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the coup de grace.
Yaoi Handel’s life is rapidly becoming a wild success.
Oh, uh...sure? I mean, it’d be hard not to at this point.
Hi, Beau.
Hey, where’d Beau go?
Yaoi’s work here is done.
The next day, I send Yaoi out to buy some recipes. We’re not qualified to make cobbler yet, but that won’t stop me from buying the recipe!
This, however, we can make.
In theory. Do it again, doofus.
Maybe a better oven will help you not fuck up.
Haha, nope!
Disaster cookies aside, we invite Victoria over for a private wedding ceremony, because apparently you can’t get married in someone else’s house. Believe me, I tried.
Fairy: married.
Since Beau is one of our worst enemies (we even declared him a nemesis during our little visit), you’d think I wouldn’t want him around.
Leaving him alone, however, means we don’t get to take all his money!
We are going to keep this man exhausted, starved, and out of our house.
Shush, Beau, we’re trying to sleep.
This update is getting a wee bit long (partially because I played too much goddamn Sims), so from here on out it’s just gonna be a few highlights.
Looking at Vicky’s skills, I wind up jumping to the conclusion that she should switch jobs and join the athletic career. I did not, in fact, realize that several of her traits lend themselves nicely to the journalism career.
Also, y’know, the lifetime wish might’ve been a bit of a hint.
I also buy her an easel, not realizing that Artistic helps with writing as well as painting. No harm in keeping it, though.
Yaoi, you dunce.
Hell yeah. Journalism.
In addition to various magical pranks, one of the more interesting things fairies can do is project auras. One of the more useful ones currently at our disposal is the Aura of Creativity, which boosts skill gains in creative pursuits such as writing, painting and any number of musical instruments.
Here we see Yaoi digging through an unloaded texture for something to write news about.
I was not joking.
Yaoi also managed to make some good cookies for once!
Put a little honey on any dessert, and…
Bam!
Unfortunately, Beau managed to eat something, and I’m not gonna send him out into the world and wait for him to starve
again. The first attempt already took three days, for pity’s sake, so fuck it. Deathtrap time.
C’mon, pal, die already. We don’t have all day, here.
Fuck that guy.
...I think Beau did that.
Time flies and flies, and Yaoi earns yet another promotion at work.
And Victoria starts her new job!
...uh, Victoria? Did you forget you were at work? I’m pretty sure that would be Yaoi’s thing, if anyone’s.
OH. Okay, yes, that makes sense. This tiny haunted crapshack is no place to raise a child, though.
The Handels are movin’ out!
...phew, that was a long one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to unwind from writing this gigantic Sims 3 update by playing some more Sims 3.
choo choo.