Friday, January 7, 2011

The Werewolves of Baton Rouge—Alicia Round 7

The last house in this round belongs to Alicia Winchester, her husband Connor, and their daughter Selene.

Alicia Winchester

  1. Loves the Outdoors
  2. Excitable
  3. Ambitious
  4. Friendly
  5. Flirty

LTW—Reach the top of the Medical Career

Connor Baum Winchester

  1. Loves the Outdoors
  2. Flirty
  3. Schmoozer
  4. Athletic
  5. Snob

LTW—Perfect Nectar Cellar

Selene Winchester

  1. Perceptive
  2. Disciplined
  3. Athletic

Let’s check in on this house.  Alicia is doing great in the medical career.  Now that she’s no longer off for maternity leave or trying to teach a toddler in her down time, she’s getting promotion after promotion.  First she gets a promotion to Neurosurgeon (level 9) and then all the way to the top to World Renowned Surgeon (level 10).  This also completes her lifetime wish.

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Connor’s doing well at work too.  He got himself promoted to CEO (level 8), but he’s so very exhausted, he passed out on the street!  Working long hours at the office, coming home and gardening, and then nectar making has taken it’s toll on him.  Gardening and nectar making should be fun as his hobby, but they just drain him.

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Still Connor worked hard and sucked up to the boss and schmoozed his coworkers and got himself promoted, first to Chairman of the Board (level 9) and then to Power Broker (level 10), all the way to the top of business career.

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Selene is doing well in school.

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Although I don’t see her as much of a cook, I set her to making the family muffins and cookies with the toy over because of very high mood boost it gives sims.

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What she really enjoys is running around playing tag with her cousin Daniel and playing chess with her cousin Christopher.  She’s really developed a taste for logic and chess.  I’d planned to make her lifetime wish Physical Perfection but I might have to reconsider and go for Martial Arts Master or Perfect Mind Perfect Body.

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Here she is dreaming of the football player she’ll marry some day.

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With everyone at the top of their careers, it was time for a vacation.  Connor booked them a trip to France so he could get better French grapes and makes better, more expensive and complex nectars.

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My family lands at base camp.  This should be easy, right?  I’ve never wanted to play with World Adventures because I know there’s a lot of tomb exploring and traps and things, but I just want Connor to run around and pick up a few exotic seeds, and then he can have a nice romantic vacation, right?

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Uh, wrong.  Here Connor’s harvesting some grapes from the nectary.  That was the only easy to find fruit available.  I searched all over for seeds only to find none.  I searched house after house looking for gardens, but wouldn’t find any, or would find that they only had common household vegetables.  It was so frustrating.

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I discovered that there was a little island with the exotic, expensive, rare grapes on it.  But you can’t easily get there.  You can teleport, which my sim can’t do.  Or you can go through a tomb.  Tomb adventures I guess it is.  Only after endless tomb exploring did I read online that you have to have an axe from China to even enter that tomb.  Dang it!  World Adventures is frustrating!

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I found that I do actually like the tomb exploration, but I like it as a totally separate kind of game than sims.  It’s like playing Zelda, which I also like, but it’s nothing like sims really.  But I liked it enough to get both Connor and Alicia to level one visas, and Alicia accomplished the Rubble Excavator Challenge.  I think I’ll come back again.  It’s like playing Mario in that you get addicted to it, trying again and again to defeat something or find and achieve something, but it’s not my traditional sims play.  Maybe it’s good, though, to break up my traditional birthday party, wedding, baby born style play.  There are a lot of challenges like the skill challenges to achieve while traveling, so I’ll have to be sure I achieve all of those as well as all of the skill challenges in my hood.

I spent a LOT of time reading forums online to find secrets and did eventually find a garden where Connor could find some more exotic plants, but unfortunately once I found that none of the rarer plants were at the harvest stage.  Drats!  Blocked again!  But Connor did reach level 10 gardening and level 7 nectar making while in France.

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The real advantage of having Connor travel to France was the number of premade nectar bottles available.  He found quite a few expensive ones while adventuring, and he purchased from the nectary their most expensive bottles daily.  My intent was for him to take them home and try to learn the recipes and recreate the nectars in mass quantities at home.  I honestly didn’t keep track of how many bottles Connor was buying or how much money he was spending.  Connor likes the expensive nectar bottles, and his family has the money, so I let them buy them.  When he got home I placed the bottles in his nectar cellar.  To my amazement, he completed his lifetime wish of Bottomless Nectar Cellar, which is 10,000 simoleons worth of nectar and at least 50 bottles.  I had no idea I’d bought so much, and that was not at all my intention to just buy them, but it worked.  He achieved his lifetime wish.  Oh well, I still intend to play around a little more with nectar making, but now some of the pressure to make the most expensive bottles is off.

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Once home, Alicia decided she wanted to get into better shape to get faster at clearing rubble piles and pushing statutes, so she started jogging with her athletic sister Christy. Christy was full of ideas to help her get into shape.

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They jog to the consignment shop every day.  I love the consignment shop that came with Ambitions.  You just never know what you’re going to find there.  Sometimes she finds interesting nectars for Connor.  I’ve also gotten in the habit of buying any interesting not of Sim Valley gems available.  I have this plan I’m not sure will work of buying the gems, passing them along to a sim in Tommy’s family, having that sim put them up for sale at the consignment shop, and then having Tommy immediately buying them and thus discovering them.  It might be a way to get him gems not available in the home neighborhood.

Anyway, a couple of things I was so excited to buy at the consignment shop are a Magical Gnome of Invention and a Little Leon French Gnome!  I can’t wait to see what mischief those little guys get up to.  If you remember at the beginning of this round Tommy had found my very first ever in game gnome, and in the course of a round I now have five of them!  Oh well, they’re going to be fun to watch.  Gotta say, though, that inventor gnome looks creepy.

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I love visiting other sims’ houses and seeing my other sims out and about.  Connor visited the main legacy house and saw Amber trying to comfort a very cranky and lonely Rita Duboise.  I guess Daddy Toby and Mommy Allyson were at work, but Amber looks so cute cuddling her niece.

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And here’s Christy out jogging with little Elyssa in her arms.  Awwwww!  Love seeing them.  Connor made sure to invite them all to Selene’s birthday party.

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Party time!  Love seeing all my sim ladies from different houses together like this.  Here we have the triplets, Sam’s new wife Holly, and Toby’s wife Allyson. The only adult females missing are Alcide’s wife Frances and Matty’s wife Brenna.  I really wish there was some way to get a large group of sims like this to pose for a picture.

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Selene Winchester

  1. Perceptive
  2. Disciplined
  3. Athletic
  4. Brave

I’m a little disappointed to see her age to a teen. She was just perfect as a child.  She’s still very pretty, but not 100% perfect like she was as a child.  And she almost looks like an adult to me, not a teen.  She looks a lot like her mother, I think, with the black hair and green eyes.  She has her mother’s nose.  But she has her father’s fuller face and closer to his darker skin tone.

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Accomplishments for this household this round:

  • Alicia achieved her lifetime want of reaching the top of the medical career.
  • Connor reached the top of the business career.
  • Connor achieved his lifetime want of having a bottomless nectar cellar, something I never thought I’d accomplish.
  • Connor brought back three type of grapes from France and started growing them in his garden so my neighborhood now has a source for them.
  • Alicia accomplished the Rubble Excavator Skill Challenge.
  • Connor accomplished the Botanical Boss Skill Challenge.

Accomplishment Tracker

Lifetime Wants Accomplished:

  • Top of Military Career—Jessie
  • Raise Six Children from Baby to Teen—Morgana
  • Perfect Aquarium—Matty
  • Visionary—Allyson
  • Have a household net worth of 100,000 simoleons—Brenna
  • Illustrious Author—Amber
  • Creature-Robot Cross Breeder—Toby
  • Superstar Athlete—Alcide
  • Top of Medical Career—Alicia
  • Bottomless Nectar Cellar—Connor     

Top of Careers Accomplished:

  • Military—Jessie
  • Forensics—Morgana
  • Medical—Matty, Alicia
  • Rock Music—Brenna 
  • Firefighter—Andres
  • Business—Connor 

Skill Challenges Accomplished:

  • Athletic—Fitness Nut (Cardio)—Jessie
  • Athletic—Marathon Runner—Jessie
  • Athletic—Strong Man (Strength)—Alcide
  • Charisma—Celebrity—Frances, Allyson, Sookie
  • Charisma—Personable—Frances, Allyson, Rene, Sookie
  • Charisma—Super Friendly Sim—Frances
  • Fishing—Amateur Ichthyologist—Matty
  • Fishing—Commercial Fisherman—Matty 
  • Gardening—Botanical Boss—Toby, Sam, Connor
  • Gardening—Master Farmer—Toby
  • Guitar—Master Guitarist—Brenna 
  • Handiness—Plumber—Jessie, Matty
  • Handiness—Tinkerer—Jessie
  • Logic—Celestial Explorer—Alicia
  • Painting—Proficient Painter—Allyson
  • Writing—Speed Writer—Amber
  • World Adventures—Rubble Excavator—Alicia  

The other major accomplishment I’m really proud of is that my first ever fourth generation sim was born this round.  I played my sims 2 prosperity for years and may still continue it, but playing so many families I only got to generation three born in game.  Jessie now has six children, twelve grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.  I’m soooo proud of this.

It seemed like a good idea to look at the family tree.  Here’s the in-game one showing my four generations.

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That doesn’t really do it for me.  I want to see the full family tree.  So I made my own.  I’m really proud of this too!  Click to see it bigger.

Winchester Family Tree copy

The little circles next to their names show their eye colors since that’s hard to see in the picture.  I love looking at the genetics.  I think my family tree clearly shows the inheriting from grandparents genetics.  It’s fascinating to me that all three of Christy’s triplets (Drostan, Elyssa, and Raelin) inherited Jessie’s eye color when that’s only about a 20% chance.

5 comments:

  1. This update is the best yet! I love all your sims they are incredible, and I love the way you manage to explore basically every aspect of the game with them. I was so happy when I saw these posts :) Best day of the new year so far :D

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  2. Lauren--Thank you so much! I was beginning to wonder if anyone even read my blog, but I'm so proud of all my sims I just have to keep doing it. Your comment made me feel so great! I'm glad someone else loves my sims too. Thanks so very very very much for the comment.

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  3. I love the family trees, so I get some sense. I just can't remember it on my own :)
    Genetics in the Sims is the best, but I actually liked it more in Sims2 since the game remembers the original haircolour and your bay won't end up with hair dyed blue!

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  4. I liked sims 2 genetics better too. But it's interesting to see all the sims 3 genetics at work actually with my family tree! Thanks for commenting.

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  5. Love the site!!!!!!

    I just got the game, cant wait to play it!!!!

    ReplyDelete