Joining the Scouts can earn your children and teens a great reward trait that will help them in adulthood.
Scouting is a new after school activity for Children and Teenagers in The Sims 4 Seasons Expansion Pack. Scouting can provide lifelong benefits when you master it, so it's a very worthwhile activity. This works very well with The Sims 4 Parenthood Game Pack, in that a lot of the things that make scouts great also level up character values like responsibility, empathy, and manners. This guide to scouting will teach you how to excel in the career and what you can expect once your child has grown into an adult.
A badge icon appears over a Sim's head when they are making progress. You'll be notified when it fully unlocks the badge. Claim badges at the badge board.
Joining the Scouts is a matter of selecting your Child or Teenager, using the phone and selecting 'Join After School Activity' or, as a Teen, 'Find a Job'. Teenagers have more options, but Scouting appears as an option for both. There are no Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, just 'Scouts'. Although it's listed as after school for a child, Scouts meet on the weekends from 2PM to 4PM so there's no need to worry about any conflicts with weekday activities. There is no need to buy a scouting badge board unless you need a new one. When your kid or teen joins the scouts, they will automatically get both a scouting uniform and badge board. They'll also learn the Secret Scout Handshake interaction.
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| Rank | Scout Title | Schedule | Daily Task & Advancement Requirements | Reward for Promotion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Llama Scout | Sat-Sun, 2PM-4PM | Check Badge Progress, Earn a Scouting Badge | Scouting Badge Board to track progress, Scout Uniform, and Secret Scouting Handshake Interaction |
| 2 | Griffon Scout | Sat-Sun, 2PM-4PM | Check Badge Progress, Earn 3 Total Scouting Badges | Scouting Manual |
| 3 | Unicorn Scout | Sat-Sun, 2PM-4PM | Check Badge Progress, Earn 6 Total Scouting Badges | Bronze Scouting Trophy (Decoration) |
| 4 | Pegasus Scout | Sat-Sun, 2PM-4PM | Check Badge Progress, Earn All Nine Scouting Badges | Silver Scouting Trophy (Decoration) |
| 5 | Llamacorn Scout | Sat-Sun, 2PM-4PM | None. You're an Expert Scout! | Gold Scouting Trophy, Expert Scouting Uniform, and the Scouting Aptitude Trait |
You'll find that when you have joined the Scouting club, the careers tab for your child will now scroll. You'll see school at the top, and Scouts at the bottom with their current rank, daily task, and advancement (promotion) requirements. The ideal mood for Scouting is Energized, though this is a useless bit of trivia, because attending Scouts is merely to retain membership as far as I can tell.
A variety of activities will unlock badges for your Sims. Sometimes you only earn 1 credit for a very long interaction. Other times, you get 5-6 points from one try. It's rather inconsistent.
Completing tasks enough times unlocks a badge. While you can view badge progress by clicking your Sim, you do need to click the badge board to collect them. Once you've earned each badge, you can move on from those types of activities. While you're working on badges, switch your kid/teen around to different aspirations where applicable. You can make a super Sim in this way, because the bonuses for skill gains for childhood aspirations and the scout reward stack. This isn't possible with a Teenager but you can, of course, work on their adult-level aspirations as well.
When you unlock badges, you'll automatically rank up in the Scouts if you have met the ranking requirements. Promotions are instant, and it's possible to get a couple of badges each day. Reach the highest rank, and your Child or Teen gets the lifelong Scouting Aptitude Reward Trait, which boosts all Skill gains by 25%. This is super potent and stacks with other skill gain increases like ideal mood and Childhood Aspirations.
Really, there's no challenge here, and that is a disappointment to me. It's worth knowing this exists and is much more important to a Sim's life than part time jobs for Teenagers (which are largely pointless in my eyes) because the reward is so great. Now, for completion's sake, let's look at the badges and the actions you can take to receive them.
In the table below, 'Tasks' states how many 'ranks' there are to earn the badge. This is basically a count of interactions that must be performed. For tasks that take a long time, sometimes you get multiple ranks for every 30 mins of that activity. It's not consistent, at all, however. Homework can earn you a badge just doing it 1x (I hope they patch this, it's stupid easy), but you'll need to draw six pictures to earn the Arts and Crafts Badge, for example.
| Badge | Badge Name | Tasks | Badge Requirements: What to Do to Earn Them |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Arts and Crafts | 6 | To earn this badge, make crafts, drawings, or paintings. Use the kids' creative table and knock this one out in an afternoon. |
 | Civic Responsibility | 8 | To earn this badge, perform cleaning or repair actions. You can, technically, click the ground and make a mess and clean it up and earn this badge. It's a break-even on Responsibility (the Character Value from Parenthood). Otherwise watch for clean interactions to pop up around the house. You can use the parent to tell the child do do so under the influence menu, which is easier than visually inspecting the whole house. If something can be cleaned by a child, the option will be available. |
 | Give Back | 5 | To earn this badge, donate items for charity from the Mailbox and Computer or perform the friendly social to Give Gifts. Make drawings, put in the child's inventory, and give them to friends and family and you can knock out two badges at once! |
 | Good Deeds | 6 | To earn this badge, entertain a toddler, make someone laugh, take out the trash, or help someone with their homework. Perform funny interactions, otherwise catch a sibling or another school-age Sim doing homework and click them to get the help with homework option. |
 | Keep Fit | 6 | To earn this badge, perform dance or exercise activities. Flip on a stereo, and have your child dance or play on children's jungle gym type equipment. |
 | Outdoor Adventurer | 6 | To earn this badge, perform outdoorsy activities like catching fish, finding frogs, or grilling outdoors. This one is easy enough - just fish at any low level fishing spot (takes a few hours) or scan the neighborhood for logs (don't look for toys in logs, that doesn't work). Digging did not give me badge progress (seems like a bug to me). |
 | Scholarly Aptitude | 5 | To earn this badge, perform studious activities like reading books or completing homework. Broken, as doing 1 session of homework got me the badge. I feel you should need to read a couple of books at least, or complete homework 5x. That's not unreasonable. |
 | Sociability | 12 | To earn this badge, perform friendly socials with another Sim. This one seems to require the most input from the player, and can be done in just a couple of hours queuing these up. |
 | Young Scientist | 5 | To earn this badge, perform scientific activities like computer programming or using the microscope and telescope. School science project didn't count for me. What did, was the junior wizard set for raising mental ability as a kid... sadly, this can be queued, done for one second, cancelled 5x and you're done. |
Click to see the scouting uniforms in more detail. The Expert Scout uniform would not unlock for me, after multiple attempts.
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Comments (11)
My sim was able to get the Outdoor Adventurer badge almost immediately because the progress is given at the start of the fishing activity -- just start fishing, cancel as soon as you see the icon, then start fishing again.