Author Topic: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge (Complete!)  (Read 25442 times)

Offline JudesSims

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #15 on: February 02, 2016, 09:37:41 PM »
I will link back !

Offline officialghosts

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2016, 09:25:49 AM »
Thanks everyone! I'm glad you're enjoying reading about my strategies, because I love sharing them!

Also, @Magpie2012 , I checked it out and you're right! I never knew that. Thanks for the tip!

And sorry It's been so long since the last update. I've been really busy lately, and still am. Hopefully I can get in an update fairly soon, and I should be able to finish up during spring break in a few weeks.



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Offline oshizu

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2016, 12:11:41 PM »
Yay! I'll be looking forward to more about your Piagets!

Offline Magpie2012

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #18 on: February 29, 2016, 10:33:35 PM »
Lol I only found out because I wanted to use the mascot in my Skill of the Week Tournament Challenge to get some (lots) more cash, but alas, my poor simmie never reached the required skill level in time during her handiness week :-(

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because... Math *Pippin The Most Tenacious Simmer*

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Offline oshizu

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #19 on: March 02, 2016, 10:52:59 PM »
@officialghosts
I'm preparing to start the Wonder Child Challenge, so I re-read your thread today. Your discussion of your previous attempts and current strategies is extremely informative.
One thing I can't for the life of me figure out. In your image of Petre painting, there are dozens of brown horizontal things on the walls of his room--are they wall shelves?
No rush, just wondering.  :)

Offline Tigerskin

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #20 on: March 07, 2016, 05:26:20 PM »
@oshizu I believe they are the light you receive in the painting career - I think it gives an inspired environmental boost.

Officialghosts mentioned the connections reward was purchased to get the low level rewards within the careers and once you 'earn' one, from then on you can buy more.

Offline oshizu

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2016, 05:45:07 PM »
@Tigerskin
Thank you for the info! I'd only ever seen/used them in gold, so didn't recognize them looking so brownish.
Also, I never knew give off an Inspired aura. I usually go for postcards or Prose/Pop. 
Appreciate your response.  :)



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Offline Tigerskin

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 2: Social Clock (1/30/16)
« Reply #22 on: March 08, 2016, 02:06:11 AM »
@oshizu, no worries  :)

I have to admit I tend to stick to the shower & prose/prop combination as well. Usually my sims tend to have painting as a hobby, so I tend to forget the career rewards.

Offline officialghosts

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@Tigerskin Thanks for helping oshizu out, haha. You're correct, they are career rewards. Prose n' Pop and postcards are both nice, but also time consuming to obtain, at least relative to career rewards.

Wow, it’s been a while! Sorry about that. I got a good part of the way through this post, but then exams started approaching, and they’ve been pretty much holding me hostage for the last month. But the worst of it has passed, so hopefully I can start getting these done!

Chapter 3: Industry vs. Inferiority



Philappa is immediately aged up. I could've had her earlier and left her as a baby for a while, but it would probably waste more time than it saved. Here she is as a child, looking quite serious about the task in front of her. Like her parents before her, she aged up to Love the Outdoors. Her first aspiration is to be a Whiz Kid, but we'll be switching so much between them in the early days that it's not important.



You see, I had a little issue on my hands. Obviously I wanted the parents to start assisting Philippa on her mission right away, but I also wanted Paisley to get pregnant and give birth to a spare as soon as possible (I'll explain why when they're actually born. Which may be this update! SPOILER ALERT FROM THE FUTURE: It is not this update.) So I switched to Social Butterfly, and had to finagle Philappa's actions in such a way that she didn't interrupt her parent's babymaking. Emotional scarring (or an Embarrassed moodlet) is not part of this Wonder Child strategy.

(At this point I tried again to use adding people to the club to meet my goals, but if I remember correctly, Philappa became acquainted to the people in the club but wasn't registered as meeting them under the aspiration. Boo.)



Ah, Social Butterfly. The dread of sims players everywhere. I don’t know whether the jury’s out on this or Whiz Kid being the most difficult child aspiration, but I tend to lean towards this one. Mostly because things like Incredibly Friendly and a lot of the more powerful interactions that make the adult social aspirations easier aren’t really accessible. Also, because I tend to have my sims be total recluses unless they’re aiming to complete one of these aspirations. At least this isn’t the Sims 3. I still have no clue how making friends works in that game.



While it can still be a force to be reckoned with, Social Butterfly isn’t nearly as threatening now, thanks to the use of, you guessed it, clubs. The purchase of Popular Club and Friendly Bonus made friend making much easier, and Popular Club seems to be just as powerful as Incredibly Friendly. Not only that, but I get very lucky and actually had people around for Philappa to befriend. Often when trying to complete this aspiration, I have to scramble around the neighborhood to find people to talk to. Especially the children, as school always seems to interrupt the process and I have to look for stragglers. But not this time, as it was the evening, and not one, or two, or even three, no, four kids walked by the Piaget residence, eagerly snatched up by Philappa’s (friendly) claws.



And so, about 7 or so hours after becoming a child, Philappa completed Social Butterfly. I was amazed. I had known the clubs were powerful, but I hadn't realized just how effective they were. With a start like this, I couldn't wait to see what the rest of the challenge would be like.



Philappa was switched back to Whiz Kid, and immediately sat down for a few games of chess. With another bun successfully placed in the oven, Petre was glad to be her opponent. He had around the same Logic level that Philappa had (meaning none), so he was perfect for the job. Paisley provided a keen eye over the proceedings, mentoring her daughter in a game she herself had never played. Her advice seemed to be sound, though, as Philappa's Mental skill shot up with remarkable speed.

After her chess games were done, Paisley sat down and read to Philappa, then assisted her with her homework. Then it was back to chess until school was about to start, at which point I started to pile on the happiness moodlets to assist in keeping Philappa Very Focused throughout the school day. I won't go through the trouble of listing all of the moodlets she was packing (some clubs, needs, and rewards related ones), but I will talk about some of the less obvious ones.



The first is the fairly well known Brighten Day. It's a quick, easily accessible interaction that builds both relationship and charisma quite decently. It only provides a +1 moodlet, and only for 4 hours, but don't underestimate it, as sometimes that one extra moodlet is the difference from a normal emotion and a "Very" emotion. Another +1 4 hr moodlet I used was Reveal Deep Secret. It's another quick one that's unlocked when the sims are good friends.

Other than that, I had Philappa re-become best friends with Paisley, which gave a nice “New Best Friend” +2 bonus for 10 hours. Not the most powerful, but that time frame should cover most work periods (I think the only one it doesn’t is the higher levels of Diamond Agent, but it may also not cover the Villain branch or some levels of the Astronaut career.) If you have at least three sims in a household, it’s a nice idea to keep them at a high relationship so they can switch around being BFFS and get the boost. One thing to note, however; I’m pretty sure if you have two people become best friends, then have one of them become best friends with a different person in the 10 hour period, the one who no longer has a best friend will lose the moodlet, no matter how much time was left. Just something to keep in mind if you try this strategy.



Philappa returned home from her first day of school as a B Student. This is a good sign, though not too exciting as of yet. Even without the clubs I could get kids very close to getting from a C to B on the first day, so I’m not surprised the clubs could cover that minute a difference. It’s still nice, though.

As you can see in the image above, I also had Paisley and Petre start building a rocket while Philappa was at school. This won’t be important until her teen years. In retrospect, I should’ve continued to level their Rocket Science skills after they finished. My failure to do so will come back to bite me in the butt later.



Philappa quickly completed her homework and extra credit in the hopes of getting an A the next day. After that, she’s switched over to Rambunctious Scamp. She joked around with Paisley for a while to get Playful, sat on the playground for about 2 minutes, and then hopped over to the computer to practice typing and play Keyboard Commander. Because nothing says “Motor Skill” like sitting around at a computer all day.

I feel like I should point out the $10,000 or so painting above her head. I’m pretty sure it’s an instant +3 environmental boost, but it’s been a while since I played. I also have one of the incenses from Spa Day by her side for the extra Energized moodlet, although it’s hard to see with the chair blocking it. While they’re kind of risky, what with the fire and everything, I find them quite useful for pushing someone into the “Very” version of an emotion. This is especially true of Energized, which can be difficult to build up due to most of the sources being very circumstantial, time-consuming, or unreliable.



The rest of the night was spent working on Rambunctious Scamp, with great success. Only one incense fire! As morning (and thus class) drew nearer, Philappa gets close to maxing Motor. She’s then moved over to the monkey bars once more, and, with one hour left before school, maxed Motor and completed Rambunctious Scamp. She then went through the same process she did the morning before…



...and came home an A Student. Which I don't actually have a picture of. Welp. Here's spoilers for next time?

With 11 days left until aging up, Philappa had
  • Gotten an A
  • Completed Social Butterfly and Rambunctious Scamp
  • Gotten to the last stage of Whiz Kid and reached level 7 of Mental
The power of clubs, everybody.

And with that, I think I should leave it off here. Will the next eleven days of Philappa’s childhood be as successful as the first two? We shall see, and hopefully we won't have to wait three months to do so. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!  :)

Offline oshizu

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How great that you are back!

Offline officialghosts

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Re: The Piaget Wonder Child Challenge- Chapter 4: Critical Period
« Reply #25 on: May 14, 2016, 12:37:41 PM »
@oshizu Thank you! It's great to be back!

And with another update, no less!

Chapter 4: Critical Period

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Piaget Wonder Child Challenge! Last time, Philappa aged into a child. She then got an A, completed 2 aspirations, and almost completed a third, all within 2 days of aging up. Quite an impressive start, if I do say so myself! Anyway, in this chapter, I hope to possibly get through most, if not all, of the rest of her childhood, so we've got quite a lot ahead of us.



After earning her A, Philappa returned to wrapping up Whiz Kid. All she needed to do was make a few potions and get those last few levels of Mental, and then she was done. By the way, I'm pretty sure Paisley is working on her Programming skill in the background. She needed to get it up to a certain level so she could mod video games to get the extra "Epic Game" +2 moodlet when Philappa later worked on the skill. We'll get back to that soon. Very soon, since the only thing that stood in the way of Philappa working on adult skills was Artistic Prodigy.



I didn't mean to save the easiest aspiration for last, it just kind of happened. But seriously, Artistic Prodigy is a joke if you have somebody with maxed Violin skill, and that was before the existence of clubs.  She maxed Creativity about 7 hours before she completed the aspiration proper. Maxing skills much quicker that completing aspirations will be a running theme in this challenge, to the point where I'm wondering now if it would have been a better strategy to just go all out on maxing skills instead of focusing on aspirations. That's something I'll have to reexamine as we continue on.



Anyway, the giant divide between maxing creativity and completing Artistic Prodigy allowed Philappa plenty of time to work on Violin. This is one of the strategies that I developed during last year's Baby Boomer challenge independently of everyone else, even though they had the same idea. One of the great advantages of having a kid max Creativity before grinding out their 5 hours of playing was that they could gain Violin skill when they ended up doing so. Mentoring further facilitates this growth, and Petre was glad to help, especially once Philappa stopped sounding like a dying cat.  She maxed the skill early the next day.

(Also, since this is one of my favorite pictures of her, I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that I'm quite happy with how Philappa turned out. Many of you may have seen her adult appearance in JudeSim's latest Apocalypse Challenge, so this isn't really spoiling anything. I would say she's quite pretty, but also rather unique looking. I mean, I spent a lot of time making the parents, so I didn't think she was gonna turn out to be a troll or anything. But I was rather surprised when she turned out as a pale blonde, since I figured the game would lean towards giving her Petre's color scheme. In the end I think it was a good thing, since her appearance worked quite well with the preppy new Get Together clothes.)

Speaking of genetics, though...



Meet Paxton Piaget, the Piaget family's newest addition and Philappa's little brother. I know it's a little jarring seeing him just pop up as a kid, but he's aged up pretty much immediately and his birth isn't really exciting. (By the way, he also Loves the Outdoors and is a Whiz Kid.) Just take the images of Paisley giving birth to Philappa from a couple of chapters ago, make them a little darker, and change the kid's clothes to green, and that's pretty much it.

So, why do we need a spare, exactly? Well, there's plenty of reasons. Having an extra set of hands around the house is nice, if both Paisley and Petre are occupied with something else. But the main reason is that, if it looks like Paisley and Petre are about to kick the bucket and Philappa isn't picking up their mentored skills fast enough, they can teach them to Paxton so he can mentor Philappa if they happen to die. A little morbid, but extra insurance is nice. I also originally intended for him to become Club Leader ASAP, so that the rest of the family was at less risk for getting hit with the club glitch. However, in the end I left Petre as club leader, since he had already learned all the skills he needed to and Pax would benefit from the boosts more.



For now, Pax was mostly shoved to the side to keep him out of my hair. He even had a little room built, with a bed and a toilet and everything. Truly, he was living a luxurious life, at least compared to the rest of the family. But his birth did act as a good measurement system, since it showed that Philappa completed all of her childhood aspirations within three days of aging up. Pretty awesome, but it left me with a burning question: what was she supposed to do with the rest of her childhood?

The first thing, obviously, was work on other skills. There are quite a few skills that can be learned by children once they've maxed the main child skills: Violin, Piano, Logic, Fishing, Video Gaming, Charisma, Mischief, and Photography. I wish there were more, though, for reasons you'll soon find out. The three strangest ones are Comedy, Guitar, and Writing. Comedy and Guitar since you can learn the other Social and Instrument based skills, and Writing because you can Write a Dollhouse Story on the computer. Despite the name, it doesn't give you any Writing points, which seems dumb. I've already mentioned her progress on Violin, which her work on Artistic Prodigy gave her a head start on. After that she picked up Piano, which she maxed even faster than Violin.



What followed was a period of nice, peaceful skilling. Once done with Piano, Philappa moved over to completing Logic under Paisley's watchful eye. She even helped Pax complete Whiz Kid by thrashing him thoroughly at chess, like any good older sister. Completing Logic was followed by starting on Video Gaming. This couldn't be a straight skilling session, however, as after a few hours of playing sims get a moodlet (I believe it's the "Great Gaming Session" moodlet or something along those lines) that makes it so they can't play Video Games for a certain period of time without getting Bored. Whenever that moodlet appeared, I'd have Philappa run over to the pond next door and work on Fishing until it faded away.



When Philappa maxed Video Gaming, we moved over to working on Fishing full time. Here I used a strategy I came up with for last year's The Skills Dilemma: If You Get Help It'll Cost You challenge. I bought Bargain Bend as a retail lot, then set up some decor to boost the area near the fishing spot to giving a Very Focused aura. (I don't believe the image above is the final design, but it's the best picture I've got.) This was just more skilling with a new location. Not very exciting. One thing of note: you can't have club gatherings on incomplete retail lots. Complete ones are fine, though. I also had Paisley work on Wellness, to see how fast it could be learned and for all the moodlet boosts it can provide.

I think I'm gonna cut it off here. I wanted to get through the rest of Philappa's childhood in this post, but I still have so much to talk about that the post would probably end up twice as long as it already is, and I don't want to make every post a giant beast. Besides, this way, I should be able to get out the next one sooner! It helps that I only have one week left of school where I'm doing basically nothing.

Tune in next chapter to see us get those last few skills and finish out Philappa's child years! I promise next update won't be all skilling like this one was; we'll also be throwing a birthday party. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!  :)

Offline oshizu

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Brilliant idea about renting the Bargain Bend lot as a retail lot. I remember reading about your strategy in the relevant challenge thread but never tried it out myself.
It's great to actually see your setup.

Offline Joria

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Amazing reading all this.  Hmmm, maybe I should go and read all the finished challenge write ups.  So much I never knew.  So, AC is going to be your next endeavor?
What?  Grannies can't play games?
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Offline oshizu

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Quote
This is especially true of Energized, which can be difficult to build up due to most of the sources being very circumstantial, time-consuming, or unreliable.

Do you have Spa Day? When she's a teen you can do the yoga routine and aromatherapy massages at home. (You already knew that, I'm sure)

Offline officialghosts

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@oshizu I do have Spa Day, but I didn't know that, as I've barely explored it. Once she's a teen there's no problem, as almost whenever she needed to be energized she was being mentored and got the extra moodlet.

Also, sorry it's been so long since the last update everyone! The last 2 weeks or so have been very busy; school, graduation, parties, a wedding, family gathering, and moving! Also, pretty much all my free time has gone to the Apocalypse Challenge (I guess that answers your question, @Joria- I am playing the challenge, but not with Philappa, for reasons I explained in the support thread.) I'll hopefully have an update within the next week, now that I have more downtime.