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

I fuckin love my crazy suit you guys are nuts.

You heard the man terrible skeleton monster. The outfit stays.

Wow... Those are some expensive burgers.

Get swole! (with evil)

Also, did the alternate dimension get destroyed by the temporal/spatial anomaly?

Hang on, what about a skeleton suit? Does the game have a skeleton suit? Can you put BEAT in it?

Basements give me enough space underground to do that thing. You know, that thing you guys wanted in the first place.


...to put your domicile inside an inactive volcano. It's a hell of a climb up to the caldera to get into the house, but even if basement levels clip through the outer walls of the mountain, it's not possible to put a door in it and call that the front. You gotta enter at "ground" level, and when you live in a volcano, ground level starts at the very top.


This is the aerial view. A tiny shack with not much more than a stairway inside. And Vixen flattened some terrain on the ridge to put in her garden and a couple little fishing ponds. Why are ponds on the highest level of terrain? Because fuck your rational thinking, that's why.


Since there's no reason to try to clip through the mountainside for easy access or egress, the first basement level is in a weird shape based on the mountain outside. That concave wall behind the stairs is where the stairway leading up the mountainside is, for instance.


Later updates will probably have better details, but here's the first basement level. The rec room, gym, and kitchen are here. There's plenty of room for new furniture to be put in, too.


Everyone gets a private bedroom! There's space here for a third bathroom, but with all this remodeling work I couldn't afford another Shower of Power/Bargain John/Plain Basin to put in so it would match the others.


Living exclusively in a basement inside a mountain has its own strains on the game engine, but overall it's a liveable space (and you guys are saving a fortune on windows and curtains). Decorating the walls with paintings has turned out to be a tricky prospect, as illustrated by this piece that's supposed to be one level below ground...

Floating paintings?

SORCERY!

I DEMAND A WIZARD HUNT! NO SKELETON IS SAFE!

#KILLALLWIZARDS

I approve tremendously. Have to say this shot reminds me of a certain game.

DETAIN WIZARDBABY

But no seriously, our new vocano diggs are fucking fantastic and also beautiful.

This is glorious.

Can we put some pushwalls in?

What, like, sliding walls and secret passages and traps? I could vaguely evoke them with the decor, but... Well, the sort of wall that you move out of the way to pass through is commonly called a "door", and that's all the game has.

More door.

This actually happened during the remodel, in the span of time it took Vixen, Trar, and M'dair to climb the stairs into the house and go back to bed. But I was busy talking about the remodel and didn't want to distract. So here you go.


Beat's on his way home from work.


...Only to find that his home has been replaced by a mountain.


This causes him, for reasons unknown, to run to jail and have himself locked up. No "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM" message came up; he just decided to dash for the station and turn himself in.


Apparently they let you keep your cellphone in jail, because Beat still gets an Opportunity inside. Someone smuggles in a device to track how far Beat has jogged, and once he does it for an hour, there's a cash reward. The money's fine and all, but dude, that thing's been in somebody's rectum.


Furthermore, prison is not a place where people are allowed to eat or sleep.


Once Beat gets home, he walks past Wild on the way to bed. Wild immediately remembers that shambling undead tormented by a cruel mockery of their former lives are a thing that exists, and wants to go look at one.

Well, another one.

I think I mentioned last time that Trar gets the weekend off, but his report-writing is falling a bit behind. He spends rather a lot of time over the weekend digging in garbage, then writing about it. Unfortunately, no additional ducks are found.


Writing reports does not require or exercise the Writing skill. Oops.


What's this? Wild, you scamp.


Say what you will about volcano lairs, they don't leave much room for lawn decorations.


Wild can return stolen property via the mailbox for some out-of-character warm fuzzies. I think in the future I'll just pawn off whatever he swipes and can't use for cash. (Speaking of stolen goods, the flowers in his bedroom twenty feet below the surface of the ground are fine; potted plants in this game require no care and never wilt, even if there's no sunlight.)

Oh, right!


I never showed off the deck I built for the telescope. The telescope has a big footprint, like the beach umbrella, so it doesn't fit on the narrow walkways left over from the sheer cliffside. But just carving out a space for a telescope at the bottom of the mountain doesn't make any sense...


M'dair, who has not yet appeared in this update, has been busy out on the town. He stops before coming home to befriend a small child by telling jokes about bicycles.


Meanwhile Beat, who slept all day after being released from jail, goes almost straight from bed back to work.


The carpool for characters with day jobs -- including the criminal path -- shows up an hour before they're supposed to clock in. It leaves without the Sim if they can't reach it within half an hour of it showing up. There's a message that the carpool is coming an hour before it arrives, and with all the stairs between home and street, that's not a warning, it's a demand that the Sim drop whatever they're doing right at that moment and start their descent of the mountainside. The volcano lair is awesome and intimidatingly tall, but that comes with its practical drawbacks.


Vixen's been reading skill books most of the day, but pauses to repair the dishwasher when M'dair explodes it.


She then upgrades it so that it never breaks again. Hands-on experience trumps book-learnin', anyway!

Hey, I got a painting to stick to the wall!


Hey, Wild got promoted again! He's finally on the path he wants, and keeps a different work schedule than Beat despite them being at the same level of the same overall career path.


This doesn't stop Wild from taking a wrench to the shower once he gets home, since M'dair blew that up too. I'm not sure if the patch upgrade just added the "breaks the next time it's used" flag to everything in the house -- Bronto house suffered from breakage more than Tyrant house -- but showers and toilets and the dishwasher all broke during this update. The computer seemed okay, though.




Wild and Beat are bros, but I doubt that is the birthday present Beat really wants.

Once again, Trar and Vixen are both invited to abandon their dreams of career success.


But why would you do that when you're fine where you're at?


Vixen also picked up a Life Fruit somewhere, which may be a big deal later on. Maybe she swiped it from work? Wild is a bad influence on you! (Don't let me forget to plant this thing in the garden to grow some more of the same.)


Speaking of doing fine, Beat's in better shape than ever. That's a big influx of LAPs for his wish to master Athletics, too!

Eventually I get sick of the toilets constantly breaking and upgrade those to the best model in the game, one that needs no upgrade to be unbreakable and has enough oomph to flush a toddler without clogging. The second downstairs bathroom is now functional, with both a commode and a shower.


I buy a mirror for one of the downstairs bathrooms, while I'm adding fixtures.


M'dair just noticed he's balding! This calls for a dramatic comb-over job.


Yeah, that's the stuff.


He even takes a minute to gloat about how all the ladies are gonna want to settle down with this.

Oh, and was the carpet in the upstairs hallway always off-color?




Or was that a side-effect of turning one panel of it into a trapdoor that leads into a featureless stone shaft filled with water, so that any Sim who defies you meets a watery grave in the depths of the volcano cavern?


Oh well, just throw a rug over it. Can't have people figuring out where the traps are.

(Caveats: the trapdoor isn't actually functional. The water at the bottom is a swimming pool, because ponds can't be built underground -- and that's a problem because it's ponds, not pools, that can be stocked with piranha and sharks. Oh well! More deathtraps to come as I think of them.)

Beat: LAPs 27,749, Attractive, Professional Slacker
Wishes: Donate $250 to Undermine Charity +500, Work Out for 10 Hours Straight +3250
Skills: Logic 5, Athletics 10

Wildkin: LAPs 22,185, Opportunistic
Wishes: Improve Athletic Skill +1000, Master Athletic Skill +7500
Skills: Athletics 9, Handiness 8
Opportunity: No Sweat! (Work out for 3 hours with the "Don't Break A Sweat" option.)

Madhair: LAPs 6,527, Fast Learner, Never Dull
Wishes: None, Madhair got 'em all!
Skills: Painting 8, Charisma 7, Cooking 8

Trar: LAPs 21,825, Steel Bladder, Observant
Wishes: Earn a Raise +750, Improve Painting Skill +1000, Paint Something Worth $500 +500, Reach Level 10 of Career +9000
Skills: Logic 6, Painting 7, Writing 1

Vixen: LAPs 19,830, Multi-Tasker
Wishes: Grow Flame Fruit Bush +1500, Upgrade 10 Objects +1250, Reach Level 8 of Science Career +1750
Skills: Fishing 3, Gardening 8, Handiness 6
Opportunities: A Pig Too Far (having read book, go to work), Handiness How-To (teach at the school, time restrictions mean she has to do it on her Wednesday off)

Cash on Hand: $2000
Lot Value: $50308
Skill Challenges Completed: 0 (and the Bronto team has two! Get crackin'!)

Meanwhile, in another dimension...

This is fantastic. I'm glad you got the technical issues worked out.

We must continue expanding our lair into a giant tower of Babel. Are there any supercomputers? Buy 10 if there are.

I took one look at the floating painting from the last update and knew immediately that there were wizards around. Had to lay low.

As for the cell phone, i just hid it in my hat! WHY DO YOU THINK I WEAR A HAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

That thing is sweet.

Loving the volcano lair!

Question: if the swimming pool deathtrap can't be stocked with piranhas and sharks, does that mean Vixen's fishing ponds can?

Yes.

Minimum post character count elaboration: Right now, Vixen can catch trout, minnows, and anchovy in those ponds, and those only rarely. If she can manage to catch ten of the same kind of fish elsewhere, she (or any Sim, really) can stock the home ponds with that fish, making them easier to catch there in the future.

It's why there are two ponds; one is exclusively for the tough-to-find but valuable Deathfish, the other is for everything else.

I hate it when LPs go inactive and then pop back in with "Sorry, life stuff came up!"

But sorry, I've been dealing with a bedbug infestation this week. So instead of updating two days ago I was assembling a new bedframe and putting a polyester mattress cover on my bed to keep from having my precious, delicious blood drained out of me while I sleep. It seems to have worked okay as stopgap measures go.

Anyway.


Beat starts this update as he did the last: in the slammer.


That... may be wise. Alternately, Beat might need it if he ends up getting shanked.


Don't forget, Beat is the oldest of the group and a day older than Wild. Beat's birthday comes first.


And while Beat's drumming on the bars with his tin mug and Wild is thinking about his birthday, Trar gets yet another call from the hospital asking him to join up.


As before, jail is a place where no one is allowed to eat or sleep. Beat is so exhausted from his long night at work and day in the slammer...


...that he quite literally passes out on the sidewalk in front of the police station.

Which gets him arrested for vagrancy.

And put back in his cell.

Where he can't sleep.

It's a vicious cycle.

Nah, I kid. After a brief sidewalk nap, Beat runs home...


...and makes it up the stairs, and down the stairs, and into his room, and into bed before he passes out again. I'm actually a bit surprised he made it.

(Normally he'd sleep for about half an hour before getting up to grab a nosh out of the kitchen, since his hunger meter is also empty. But foreseeing this, I had Vixen teleport him a couple of apples through the magic of a group inventory system, and he ate them before running home. That'll keep him satiated until he can get up and have a proper meal.)


Vixen is also having a crappy day.


But if you think about it, this is actually a pretty effective demonstration on the importance of safety when maintaining your household appliances and gear. Vixen heads straight to the seminar she's supposed to teach as soon as she gets off work, without bothering to go home and shower off the scorch marks first.


I don't know if I'll always mention the hard-earned victory of getting a painting to hang on the wall, but hey, look, I got a M'dair's new painting to hang on the wall.


I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but Vixen and M'dair totally dig each other. Even the briefest contact -- such as Vixen walking downstairs while covered in ash and in doing so passing by M'dair as he cleans the kitchen -- is enough to make their hearts go pitter-pat and give them each the "Attractive Company" moodlet.


Wild gets a thiefly opportunity at work that evening.

Beat manages to shamble out of bed, take a shower, and chorf down a couple of Vixen's home-grown tomatoes before rushing out of the house to work in the evening.


But things start looking up, since he gets a chance to bring home a bit of loot.


...only to find that Wild's love of ill-gotten floral arrangements has beaten him to the punch.


I manage to get the paintings to hang on the wall in Beat's bedroom, so he can admire them if he ever gets to go home and sleep again. (Wild gets the flowers in his own room.)


This is the promotion Beat was supposed to get yesterday, except he got arrested instead. Going through a whole work shift with a full career meter seems like such a waste of good advancement.




Up next on Beat and Wildkin Play The Sims 3: shower repair for Claire.

Masterpiece-grade paintings by a Sim with the Painting skill at level 10 can be worth $5000, maybe $6000. But M'dair and Trar aren't to that point yet, and in fact don't even have a painting around that's worth the $1000 needed for this Opportunity. This one might take a while.

(I think some paintings of that value got sold when I realized they didn't hang on basement walls properly. Oops.)


Vixen's progressing steadily at her job, but her Fishing skill has fallen behind a bit in favor of Handiness and Gardening (mostly because Gardening is something that needs doing every day, so even if any one session only gives a little bit of skill progression, it adds up). So as we wait for Beat's birthday party, she gets a little relaxation in on the mountaintop ponds.


Beat's so antsy about it that he put his dinner down in a different spot, then sat and stared forlornly at his cake.


Only instead of waiting for the prompt to do so, Beat interrupts a bathroom break to celebrate aging up.


M'dair and Trar humor him about his questionable lifestyle choice.


And then it's over in a shower of sparkly light, and Beat looks exactly the same. Oh well, that's adulthood for ya, after you turn 18 there's basically no point to celebrating anymore.


But this will not stand, no sir. Crimebros don't let crimebros celebrate their birthdays in the bathroom. Beat immediately makes the phonecall to schedule a party for Wild.