The aim is to explore the game – over the generations, to live in every town, max every skill and every career and complete every LTW. The length of the game will depend on the number of expansion packs installed but it’s going to be many generations.
Moving to a new house unlocks one skill. All household members must max the skill and someone must supermax it before the next heir can move to another house. One Sim in the last generation has the Renaissance Sim LTW and tries to max every skill. Is this possible in a normal lifetime?
RulesGeneral- Lifespan set to normal, free will to high.
- Weather, season and moon phase settings are up to you and can be changed at any time.
- Sim Game Selector 3.0 (or patch 1.69) can be used to choose which expansions/stuff packs to play in a given town. Pets, celebrities and occults can be switched off at will.
- Age Freeze Potion is banned. Young Again Potion may be made but not used.
- No life-extending tricks (other than strategically-timed pregnancies). EXCEPTION: if running out of time, the Renaissance Sim may use Ambrosia (made by them from ingredients they have personally grown/caught). N.B. Don't worry about gaining the odd day here and there, e.g. by Sims taking mud baths when you take your eye off them. Similarly, tattoos, plastic surgery and makeovers are all allowed in the first 24 hours after a birthday. It's systematic life extension, e.g by Ambrosia or genie wishes, that's banned.
- Death flowers may not be carried in inventory.
- Apart from the last-generation exception noted above, Ambrosia may only be used to revive ghosts.
- The Midlife Crisis reward is banned.
- Travelling is banned for the first household.
Start of gameCreate a young adult founder (free choice of traits). The founder must be a normal human Sim.
Move them into a small, unfurnished house (and delete ALL furniture – no fridge or plumbing allowed – leaving only a cheap light in each room)
or build a small, unfurnished house on an empty lot.
Use the familyfunds cheat to set household funds to §1000.
Having moved into a house, the founder is free to start learning ONE skill and working on their moving requirements.
Moving requirements (for the founder and heirs)The founder/heir must buy:
- two unique LTHP rewards
- a building or property (properties must be fully upgraded).
Every Sim in the household must have maxed the household skill and one must have supermaxed it (i.e. reached level 10 and completed all related challenges). This means that the founder must supermax a single skill while avoiding learning any others.
All household members apart from the one who is moving must have completed their lifetime wishes and maxed their careers. (The founder/ heir can finish both after moving).
Once these requirements have been met, the founder/heir is free to move to a new house and start learning a new skill.
Moving- Moves can be to an empty lot or uninhabited house.
- The family must live in every available neighbourhood at some point, so unless you only have Sunset Valley, some heirs will have to move to a new town. Since the release of patch 1.55, Sims can move to a new town using their mobile phones. Note that the whole household will move, so it's only a possibility if only the heir is left in the house. I'd recommend the old method, which reduces the file size much more effectively.
- Objects (including those bought with lifetime happiness points) may be taken to the next house.
- Pets can also move but other Sims must be left behind.
- The founder and heirs can only marry and have children AFTER moving. Note that this restriction does not apply to SimBots, even though the game counts them as the inventor's children.
- The founder and heirs must marry NPCs (all of different types). Reproducing without a partner is also allowed. Ghosts count as NPCs only if already present as a non-playable ghost when the town is first loaded.
Skills - Only one new skill can be learnt by each household. EXCEPTION: since the skill challenges for all of the musical instruments are the same and the ‘Star’ challenge is hard to complete, music counts as a single skill. At least one Sim in the household must master each instrument but only one has to be supermaxed. Alternatively, you can play all of the instruments as separate skills if you want/are mad enough.
- Skills unlocked by earlier generations can also be learnt.
- Collecting, consigning, driving and hidden skills are free – any Sim can build these skills.
- Skill challenges that fail to register (e.g. Vizard of Vine or photographic collections) can be counted as complete if the requirements have been met.
CareersAt some point in the game, every available career (rabbithole, part-time, profession and self-employed) must be maxed by someone. For branching careers, this means both branches must be followed (this includes the Video Game Developer career, whose two branches join again at the top).
Lifetime wishesEvery available lifetime wish must be completed during the game, with the exception of Home Design Hotshot, which is probably impossible in a normal lifetime – however, there must be an architect (if you have Ambitions installed) and they must earn the empirical building model as well as reaching level 10.
Lifetime happiness rewards These rewards are restricted:
- any object bought with happiness points (collection helper, teleporter etc.)
- inheritance
- clone voucher.
Restricted rewards may only be bought as a unique reward by one heir (or the founder) – but the same Sim can buy more than one of the same type of object. Non-heirs cannot buy these rewards.
Household- Children can be added to the family by birth, adoption or cloning. Time-travel and alien abduction babies and PlantSims are also permitted.
- Gender and traits of children can be selected – but…
- Every trait must be allocated at least once.
- Each Sim may use a birthday cake to age up early ONCE.
- If Generations is installed, at least one child must attend each boarding school.
- If University Life is installed, at least one Sim must complete each degree.
- The heir can be anywhere in the birth order of a family.
- At least one of each type of occult Sim (ghost, vampire, imaginary friend etc) must be part of the active household at some point – not necessarily at the same time. They are subject to the same rules as the other household members.
- All heirs must be normal human Sims.
- Heirs' spouses must have a normal lifespan (i.e., may be a normal human Sim, witch, ghost, imaginary friend etc - assuming you can find one doing an NPC job.)
- Spares and their spouses can be any life state.
- Non-heirs (housemates, spouses, spares and former heirs) may move out after completing their LTW (and maxing a job, if appropriate) – but cannot be kicked out.
- If a non-heir marries and their spouse moves in, rather than the non-heir joining the spouse's household, the spouse will also have to max the current skill before the heir can move.
- Pets can be added to the household at any time.
- All of the pet skills and tricks must be mastered at some point. (Go for supermaxed pet skills as well if you want to make things really tricky!)
Permitted cheatsAny cheat, custom content or mod that doesn't give you an advantage in game play is fine.
- Familyfunds is only allowed at the beginning, to set the founder’s household funds.
- Missing skill books can be added to libraries when starting to play in a town. Auto-placed lots may be moved, deleted or replaced. EA or custom community lots can be added as long as they don't give you an unfair advantage (e.g. a fire station with high-quality beds in the starting town wouldn't be in the spirit of the rules
). - Cheats can be used to reset stuck Sims and to fix trait drop - but NPC spouses with fewer than five traits can’t have extra ones added.
Optional rules If any Sims are left behind in the old house, the heir will lose ownership of buildings and properties (this will also happen when moving to a new town). There are two ways of dealing with this:
either stick to each house owning a single building/property
or sell everything before moving and then buy them back immediately after the move. (If your family has become insanely rich, you could miss out the selling stage.) When moving to a new town, if a ‘combined’ rabbithole was owned in the previous town, e.g. supermarket/diner, and the new town has separate buildings, then BOTH buildings must be bought in the new town.
After the first household, you may combine two skills in a single house. There are some obvious pairings, e.g.
- gardening and fishing
- martial arts and athletic
- handiness and inventing
- painting and photography
- charisma and social networking
- advanced technology and bot building...
...but the details are up to you. Each Sim must max at least one of the skills and both skills must be supermaxed by someone.
Edited 31/12/2012 to add note about Seasons/Supernatural settings.
Rules updated for University Life 18/3/2013.
Edited 18/5/2013 to clarify rules about life states.
Edited to reflect new (Patch 1.55) method of moving to a new town 26/8/2013.
Updated Sept/Oct 2014.
Edited 26/1/2015 to expand the choices for combined skills.
Updated 21/7/2017 and reproduction rules clarified (SimBots do not count as their inventor's children).
