Playing The Sims means keeping a delicate balance between money and mood. In my haste to earn a minimal amount of money, I pushed Betty and Bob too hard and ended up in a classic Sims cascade failure:
- Mood and needs get too low.
- Refuses to go to work (day 1) because mood and needs are too low.
- Needs take longer than expected to refill. Still low the next day.
- Refuses to go to work (day 2).
- Repeat for a third day.
- Sim gets fired for missing work.
- Everything gets worse.
- Money starts running out.
- Unable to make Sims do anything to earn money. Start selling “unnecessary” windows and doors.
Around this point, most players would give up and use the rosebud cheat to add money to the household. But I was determined to play this through without cheats. So I sat at my computer, growing increasingly tense and irritated, trying desperately to get someone’s mood up high enough to get a job.
It took a lot of work to finesse them back into reasonable moods. I’m glad the Makin’ Magic expansion pack is included in the Sims Legacy because it provides a world you can visit for free without waiting for a cab. This lets you easily socialize with other Sims and do fun things like… whatever this is.
I sent Betty off to work and made Bob stay home and keep house. Things started to look up. Betty advanced in her career, which meant a welcome pay raise.
Then we stalled out. Betty’s next promotion required her to have three friends, and is that even possible in this game?
I socialized with other Sims like crazy but couldn’t make a single friend. Having three friends started to seem like a wild fantasy. And that’s not even the final boss. I looked it up and found that to get to the top of her career, she would need to make 12 friends. At once!
Meanwhile, Bob’s mood improved enough that I was able to convince him to make nectar in his free time.
Based on your Cooking skill, you can earn up to $500 per batch of nectar. And you don’t need friends!
I had Betty quit her job and set them both to studying.
Next thing you know, the two of them are out there making nectar like crazy, raking in the big bucks. Well, not the big bucks. Actually, the most they can hypothetically make is $2,000 per day because I can only manage to get them to do two batches of nectar apiece per day. On a good day.
I started The Sims with the idea of playing a “Rags to Riches” challenge. That’s where you start with nothing and play until you have earned $1,000,000. I knew this would be ambitious in The Sims, but once I started playing, it seemed downright impossible.
For example, at $2,000 per day, it will take Betty and Bob Newbie 500 days to earn $1,000,000. 500! And that’s the bare minimum. Realistically, it would probably take 600-750 days.
Sorry, all. I just don’t have it in me.
It was fun to dip back into the nostalgia of The Olden Days (February 2000). But like most nostalgia, things weren’t always as great as we remembered.
Next week: Back to The Sims 4!