Cross-Forum Fervor! Let's Play The Sims 3!

Should Madhair pick up fast learner to speed up his quest to become Leonardo da Vinci or is he saving for something in particular?

Also, how robust is the lot editor? Can we build a volcanic lair in the backyard for Beat and Vixen to perform mad science and interrogate James Bond?

Fast Learner would be a good investment for the guy who needs to master a lot of skills, yes. If he doesn't chime in with another idea, it's probably what I'll spend his points on.

The lot editor isn't all that robust. I can make hills and ponds, but not much in the way of detail, and there's no building below ground level (in this vanilla version; later patches/expansions add basements). Magma is unsurprisingly not included.

Damn it, now I REALLY want a basement. What could be better than a seedy, bare concrete basement?

I will, of course, accept a separate room of the house filled with bathtubs to store all rubber duckies until the time comes to put them to use.

Whatever comes next, it starts with taking every piece of furniture -- including doors and windows -- out of the house as it stands.


Conveniently, bulldozing everything gives a refund on the investment of wall construction, floors, paint, and so on. And landscaping is free (as a sharp contrast to SimCity, where you can easily go broke by planting trees).


However (and much like SimCity), you can only build on reasonably flat ground, and the terrain smoother is... not good.


...so scrap that idea. I'm messing around for a bit when I discover it's possible to construct some very imposing cliffs. Who would ever need a lot that high?


Well, it's no volcano, but it's a giant face of terraced cliffside. That'll do.


Next challenge: figuring out how to get up the cliff in the first place. The stairway builder is somehow even worse than the terrain manager.

This tiny victory took almost half an hour.




It's no volcano lair, but you can have an elaborate mountain base. Good enough?






Separate buildings, by function. BFFs Beat and Wild still share a bedroom, but everyone else gets their own.

On to gameplay progression.


The medical field calls for Vixen, but she politely declines.


After her promotion...


...they call again. This only seems to happen to Sims who have a Lifetime Wish to reach the top of a career, presumably to distract them from their overall goal.


The corporate towers call for M'dair, and he accepts. There are already over ten paintings in the house, so he collects all the worst ones and delivers them.


Selling those paintings individually would have netted $2000, maybe $2500. The reward for this Opportunity was over $12000. That... very nearly replaced the household budget after all that remodeling work. Well done, M'dair!


He gets back to work redecorating the base.

Vixen's doing so well, she gets recruitment calls from a completely different career path. Beat and Trar both get to choose their career path with their latest promotions.




Wild, it may not surprise you to learn, just can't catch a fuckin' break.

: "I got another call from the hospital today. They still want me in there performing experime-- I mean, surgery on people."
: "I got promoted onto the forensics team, it's pretty great."
: "I sold a bunch of our earliest work to the corporate towers and they paid about six times what they were actually worth."
: "LOOKS LIKE EVERYONE HAS HAD A GOOD DAY."
: "...I hate you all."

The next day, M'dair goes out to the park to meet some new people.


As soon as he starts getting flirty with Autumn, she runs away. Maybe she just had an awful breakup, or something?


M'dair tries again with Pauline.


There's usually a penalty to repeating social interactions, but it doesn't even get close to outweighing the bonus from appealing to someone's traits or career. Once M'dair learns that Pauline is a musician, it's just a matter of ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC, ENTHUSE ABOUT MUSIC until they become friends. The new friendship boosts M'dair's Charisma skill!


Whoa there, tiger.

Beat has two passions in life: looking at ghosts, and DOLLA DOLLA BILLS Y'ALL


Wild heads back to work, and boy is he in deep doodoo with his career progression from missing a day.


The Work Hard option gives a lot of progression for the time it takes, but the Fun meter drains away like nobody's business from all the stress.


He's asked to stay late, too. By the time he gets home, it's in the shittiest mood imaginable from busting his hump all day.


: "Whoops, the dishwasher's busted. Wild, could you help with that?"
: "........fine."


: "Whoops!"
: "............................."

With the cash influx from M'dairs Opportunity and everyone's promotion bonuses, it's easy to afford two of the best showers in the game.


It's not too farfetched for the ducks to have a place to sit now.


Taking a bath now gives a positive moodlet.


There are only two video games available: a console that hooks up to a TV, and a virtual reality helmet. So I get a console, and a flatscreen, and a sofa to sit on while you play. The rock is a meteorite that Vixen found. I think it looks nice on display!


Beat: LAPs 12,405, Attractive, Professional Slacker
Wishes: Master Athletic Skill +8500, Reach Level 8 of Criminal Career +2000, Befriend All Coworkers +1500, Be Worth $100000 +3250
Skills: Logic 5, Athletics 8

Wildkin: LAPs 14,624, Opportunistic
Wishes: Earn a Raise +750, Join Thief Career Branch +975, Earn a Promotion +1000, Master Athletic Skill +7500
Skills: Athletics 8, Handiness 7

Madhair: LAPs 1492, Fast Learner, Never Dull
Wishes: Decorate House With 15 Paintings +1000
Skills: Painting 8, Charisma 6 (will advance to 7 as soon as M'dair makes another friend), Cooking 7

Trar: LAPs 17,304, Steel Bladder, Observant
Wishes: Trar currently has no wishes -- he got 'em all!
Skills: Logic 6, Painting 6, Writing 1
Opportunity: Tutor Me Please (Tutor Malcom Landgraab for a bit)

Vixen: LAPs 15,509, Multi-Tasker
Wishes: Grow Flame Fruit Bush +1500, Grow Lettuce +1000, Grow 20 Fruits or Vegetables +800, Reach Level 8 of Science Career +1750
Skills: Fishing 3, Gardening 8, Handiness 6
Opportunity: Absolutely Great Produce (have at least three "Great" quality things to give Red Silvers)


Cash on Hand: $7667
Lot Value: $51285

I have to stay evil.

I HAVE TO STAY EVIL.

Also I have to bro out with wild some more because bros need their bros when they're down.

Sims 3 has started crashing in new, exciting, truly majestic ways. Action queues empty themselves, player characters vanish from existence, and the speakers emit a high-pitched squeal before the game crashes to desktop or does a total system freeze. It's really amazing!

But it also makes it impossible to play. The LP is on indefinite hold until I can figure out what's going on and how to stop it.

: ( Aw

This was the first LP I've ever read from the beginning. It was fun. I am sad.

Patching up to version 1.6 fixed the crippling crash issue and replaced it with all the usual crash issues. I'll be keeping save backups from here on out, but there may be some progress lost when a crash happens in the middle of a game save, corrupting the data.

On the upside, there's some new shit like fountains and basements you can have on your house, and minor tweaks like being able to unsubscribe from newspaper delivery.

Next update will be up when I'm done with it.

Yay basements!

Not only do we get a mountain base, but we finally get basements. I vote we hollow out the mountain.

Yes, "basements".

Stuff the update did:


It fucked up everyone's Opportunities, first of all. Trying to complete the ones each character had before the patch didn't accomplish anything, so all of them got cancelled.

It deleted a couple of promised Wishes, but I don't think anyone in this game was affected.


There's a window to remind me of characters' active Opportunities now, which is nice.


Sleeping Sims now dream, producing a rapid-fire procession of random thought balloons. It's a nice visual effect but doesn't do anything.


There are more explicitly vegetarian recipes.

Just after she got the Opportunity to read a book on how to handle the lab's carnivorous plants, Vixen got a promotion and doesn't have to work with carnivorous plants anymore. (She reads the book anyway, and it gives her a career boost towards her next promotion instead.)


Beat: rapid job progression, like he do.


Trar has also worked his way up to a promotion.


Keeping his skills and partner relationship at a good level is easy. Cranking out the reports he needs remains tricky. Graphic glitching aside -- I told ya the game still has its usual v1.6 problems -- this is Trar digging in someone's trash for good report dirt.


M'dair: still paintin'. The patch seems to have added a few new images for Sims to paint.


This picture doesn't illustrate any gameplay progression but I like the occasional nod to the evil criminal bros broing out.

Trar's been working on building an independent case for a while now, because why wouldn't he?


The payoff is his second promotion in as many days. Wow!


Now his report-filing is far enough behind par that it's a detriment to his career progression. He has the next two days off, though, and the weekend is likely to be a carousel of digging through garbage and writing reports. In the meantime, he's dug up a couple more rubber duckies to take home.


I'm not sure if Vixen is sad she had to dispose of a couple dead garden plants, or if she's crying because she knows it's only a matter of time before Trar pulls them back out of the garbage as evidence.


Whatever the new position that makes Beat wear this uniform is, they're not paying him enough for it.

(It's a short update, but my renovations of the base were interrupted by a game crash while I was hanging curtains. But hey, the game's mostly functional! The LP goes on!)

Don't hate me because I'm FABULOUS

Hate me because I'm SWAGULOUS.

Oh and also because I'm an evil monster hellbent on global domination.
You can hate me for that too.

Can you change BEAT's default work outfit, or was that an expansion thing?

AFAIK you can't change work uniforms. They're stuck the way they are.

Some quick experimentation indicates that any given level of terrain can have up to four basements and sub-basements below it. I'll try to figure out something interesting to do with this information next time I remodel the mountain base.

I'm on to you and your wanton disregard for plant rights and life.

That, or a sacrifice for our new high tech titanium basement altar.

If you're running Vanilla Sims 3 I don't know how true this is but if you have a mirror and a dresser (they don't have to be next to each other, just somewhere on the property), you can click on the dresser and under the Plan Outfit option you can add a second Work Outfit.

Found it! It was in a patch rather than an expansion, so BEAT should be able to wear different work duds if he so chooses.

Skeleton suit. Skeleton sout. Skeleton skut. Skeeleton sut.