Sims 3: Xenon Legacy

[JeminiZero]

I wouldn't worry too much about ticking Biological Clocks right now. I don't think* the game is smart enough to decide that Dorothy being in a mid-career position should be of older age. Nor is there any garuntee that Alma is young (she could be older than Dorothy for all we know). In essence we're flying completely blind here.

Well most of you seem to prefer Dorothy, so I'll close the vote for now.

*Caveat: My grasp on how the game generates random NPCs to fill job positions is kinda shaky. But not nearly as shaky as the random generator's fashion sense.

[Asheram]

Hmm.. Why not both? :P
Fun for everyone involved.

[Sipex]

I agree with this, have them both. I don't know if you can marry both but at least keep them both around and try until you know what you're going to go for.

You don't need huge monies right now anyways, just enough to live off of. You have 10 generations to help build up your place.

[Fluff & Napalm]

Go for Dorothy. At least you know she has a good job.

[Toric]

Too late to make a difference but I'd say go with the mailwoman. Mad scientist + girl named Alma = match made in heaven your darkest nightmares.

[Fri]

Love triangle made in nightmare!

Mad scientist/Carnivore Plant Tender/Alma

[JeminiZero]

The short answer on "Why Not Both":
1) Much like real life people, Sims 3 display jealousy. And it is all but impossible to conceal an affair like that if both women live in the same lot.
2) Why would we want both women be on the same lot? The Legacy Challenge states that for a child to count as an heir, the mother must be a resident of the Legacy lot at the time of birth.
3) Further to that, the mother of the heir, is considered to be part of the family bloodline. And thus counts towards the Legacy score. So we should try to keep her on the lot and try to fulfil her lifetime wish (which gives 1 point).

Friday

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The day begins as it usually does, with gardening. And then its off to work.



Victor gets promoted to Usless Contraption Manipulator (Science level 3, they really have the funniest job titles). This time I remembered to get a shot, so here he is doing his "YES!" pose.



A quick bath and... Hello! Whats this? Another girl?



Bah! She's another highschool student. So we're still limited to Alma and Dorothy. Anyway, Victor now decides to invite Dorothy over for shameless flirting.



Like Alma, she's also impressed with the scenery.



This is the 2 of them gossiping. One of the interesting bits of Sims 3 is that when you use the gossip interaction, the game ALSO tells you who they are gossiping about. Apparently, word has it that one of the other random NPCs (whose name I have completely forgotten), has some unspeakable secret...



Anyway, what follows now is the entire Sims 3 courtship process shrunk down to a handful of pictures (and split over 2 days). First there is the amorous hugging.



Although Victor looks like he's going to bite her head off in this one.



And then comes the holding hands.



You might think that holding hands normally comes first, but not in Sims 3. But the hour grows late, so Victor sends Dorothy off for the night.



Yes, he is dreaming about unicorns. You will notice that I saved enough to upgrade his bed. It might seem crazy to burn money on a new double bed, when he doesn't even have a toilet yet. But in Sims 3, higher quality beds recharge your Sim's energy faster. In other words, a Sim with an expensive bed spends less time sleeping, and has more waking hours in a day to play with.

Saturday (part 1)

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No work today, so we can focus on the rest of the Sims 3 mating rituals. We begin with Victor inviting Dorothy over once more.


In this shot, she is thinking about money... an ominious sign of things to come.



But anyway, skipping past the hugging and holding hand bits, we finally come to...



First Kiss! So engrossed is Victor, that he completely ignores the fact her cowboy hat is now embedded in his Right Eye (and skull, and frontal lobes). Truly, love is blind. Anyway, continuing with the courtship cycle. First Victor must propose going steady.



Once she accepts that, he can go down on bended knee and propose marriage.





Happily, she says yes. Note that this only makes them engaged, they aren't actually married yet. At this point, you can opt to throw a wedding party and invite guests, and marry before them in a public ceremony. But since we're racing against the Biological Clock, we'll skip all that jazz and use the quick alternative: a private wedding between just the 2 of them. There is no need for any sort of Priest to officiate this, just a simple exchange of rings.





You may now kiss the bride. Although, watch out for the hat.



And for those of you wondering: Yes, Victor just proposed and got married in his bathrobe. With the completion of the marriage, you get to decide what happens to the 2 households. The newly wedded couple must obviously stay together, either in the current Player house, or you could marry off a Sim to the NPC house, in which case you lose control of him/her, and continue running the remaining members of the current household.



But beyond that, you can also move in various other members of the NPC house into the current house. This is permitted as per the legacy rules. At the time of marriage, Dorothy's household had only one other person: Narcissa Vatos.



Nacissa is apparently just a friend/roomie that Dorothy splits the rent with- no blood relations or anything. We move her in as well, simply because if she turns out to be redundant, we can move her out again with ease (in game, this is as simple as making a phone call). The stats for our 2 new household members are:

Dorothy Xenon
Age: 15 Days to Elder
Traits: Brave, Perfectionist, Schmoozer, Snob, Ambitious
Lifetime Wish: Accumulate $50,000 in cash

Narcissa Vatos
Age: 15 Days to Adult
Traits: Great Kisser, Natural Cook, Perfectionist, Good Lucky
Lifetime Wish: Become Celebrated Five-Star Chef (Cooking Career Level 10)

Yes Dorothy has only 15 days of fertility left. Hopefully, that should be enough to produce an Heir and a Spare. I suspect she won't live long enough to see them mature, but its better to have some kids, then to die old and alone right? Plus, I'm not worried about manpower anymore, as we have just managed to recruit Narcissa as a live-in nanny.

I am however, worried about Dorothy's lifetime wish. Its going to be extremely difficult to accumulate 50k. within her lifetime, especially seeing how we have a half-complete house that still needs further renovations, as well as an incoming baby, who will need another bunch of new furniture.

[Toric]

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Aaaalways! I want to beeee with you! And make belieeeve with you! And live in harmony, harmony, oh looove!

[Eldonauran]

Aaaalways! I want to beeee with you! And make belieeeve with you! And live in harmony, harmony, oh looove!

Robot Unicorn FTW!

Loving this LP.

[Fri]

What... a fast courtship

[JeminiZero]

RE Courtship length: Its actually about average by Sims 3 standards. The normal courtship process can be pulled off within 3-4 days from scratch, and this would probably have been the time required if we went for Alma. In Victor/Dorothy's case, because they started off as friends (from knowing each other at work/prior interactions) it could be shortened to 2 days.

Note that 1 Sim day is roughly analagous to 1 real life year. Sims normally live for 90 days/years, so if it wanted to reflect Real-Life more closely, you'd be able to complete Courtship from scratch within one day/year. And Preganancy would last 1 day rather than 4.

Saturday (part 2)

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The merging of the households has brought in some cash. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough that we can build Victor/Dorothy a room so that they can have some privacy.

As for Narcissa, we get her to quit her current job (Test Subject), and then buy an Easel for her to start painting. The Legacy challenge awards 1 bonus point, for each portrait of family members. To be able to paint Still-Life (i.e. snapshot) at all, you need 5 ranks in the Painting skill (although the Artist tends to muck up the image with her own intepretation). Outright true Portraits require 7 ranks. So until then, Narcissa has a lot of practicing to do.



At the same time, we have enough household members that it now makes sense to buy a counter to start making meals*, and a fridge to store them**.

*Meal preparation massively magnifies the cost efficiency of food. Take the lettuce Victor has been munching on all this while (he bought a rather hefty supply on day 1 thats lasted all this while, although the actual act of eating was mostly not captured on screen). A single leaf fills his hunger bar by about half. In comparison, cooking turns that 1 leaf into Autumn Salad, a group meal that serves 8. Each meal completely maxes out the Hunger Bar, and furthermore, well prepared meals can boost a Sim's mood. Obviously, with just 3 Sims we can't finish an 8-Sim group meal. But leftovers can be kept in the fridge and eaten straight without needing to reheat or similiar. In fact, I frequently prepare meals before hand and store them in the fridge, so that they can eat whenever they want to.

**Incidentally, food stored in the fridge goes bad over time. And again, more expensive/better fridges slow this process down. Hence, the fridge in the screen shot, is the best commercially available, although not the best in the game. The best in-game fridge is a career reward for those who reach the high echelons of the Cooking profession.



Unfortunately we don't have the cash to buy tables and chairs just yet, so they'll have to eat their meals standing up. (Don't mind the gridlines, I just happened to take this shot in construction mode)



We also buy a dishwasher to clean their plates when they are done eating.



And this is Narcissa's first completed painting. We are in desperate need for cash right now, so we sell it right away for $31. We will pretty much do this to all her paintings except for the family portraits.



What are Victor and Dorothy doing in the meanwhile? The short answer is: Trying to start on making an heir, and failing horribly. Unfortunately at this point, my game bugged out or something, and the Mood Meter kept resetting to zero for whatever reason*. In the end I give up and just sent them to sleep.

*As much as I would like to be an omnipotent being who can induce Sims to mate at will, it doesn't actually work that way. Instead, you have to build up the 'mood' before your Sims will do the deed.



Their first night as a couple.

Sunday

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No work today either. Victor first takes a bath, while Dorothy watches a bit of gardening TV.





Once both of them are ready, its off to try for a baby again.



SUCCESS!



Well sort of. We succeed in getting them to TRY for a baby, but the first attempt yields nothing. However, we get lucky on the second shot*. Anyway, with that out of the way, Victor gets down to reading a book on mutations, for an opportunity (i.e. Sims 3 quest) to get promoted faster at work.

*To let you know when you actually succeed in conceiving (and thus when you can stop trying), a short rock-a-bye-baby lullaby will play.



Meanwhile, Narcissa is working on another painting.



The rest of the day is spent skilling up. Now that a family is on the way, I want to have one of them crank Handiness to level 6, for reasons you shall see later.







They go to sleep, but in the middle of the night, Dorothy suddenly wakes up, and walks outside to vomit. Yeah, she's definitely pregnant.



Finally, when it is almost the next morning, Narcissa finishes her second painting before hitting the hay.



A somewhat appropriate piece, if you consider how we're essentially running a small farm in the front yard. This painting fetches $88. Because she doesn't have a conventional job anymore (now shes pulling in money by selling paintings), she can pretty much ignore the day/night cycle. This will become immensely useful once feeding and changing colicky babies in the dead of the night becomes important. But in the interim, it helps deter burglars*.

*In that she can call the police if one comes along. Ideally, we would want a Burglar Alarm, which automatically casts Summon Police 1 when a burglar breaks in. I hope to eventually afford that at some point. The very best deterrance would be to have the Burglar Alarm plus multiple Sims on your lot, who can fight off Burglars (requires either the Brave Trait, or sufficient advancement in the Police career), and have high ranks in Athletics, so you can gang-pile the fool who dared break into your place.

First child incoming! Time to start voting on Names. Since we are uncertain of the gender, you can cast 2 votes: One if the child is a boy, and one if it is a girl.

[Deme]

Let's see.... Helen if a girl, Dave if a boy. I'm on a Narbonic kick, even if they can't be mad scientists.

[Fri]

Building your mansion, one room at a time.

[Toric]

I take it you're not going to make Dorothy binge on kids' television and music? I suppose there's more important things for her to do.

I like opposite-initial names. If it's a boy, another vote for Dave even though he won't be a scientist. If a girl, name her Valerie.

[Trazoi]

Let's see.... Helen if a girl, Dave if a boy. I'm on a Narbonic kick, even if they can't be mad scientists.

They can be a scientist and also be mad. My first Sim in Sims 3 was an insane sci-fi author.

I'll recommend Mell if it's a girl, Artie if it's a boy.

[Mewtarthio]

I feel just awful for Narcissa. Her friend gets married, and then suddenly she's forced to quit her job and become the new husband's slave for life. The cooking, cleaning, and babysitting is bad enough, but where it really goes into insane supervillain territory is where Mister Xenon forces her to teach herself how to paint so she can create a magnificent portrait of him. Poor girl.

Back to the Baby Names:

Gabrielle. Or Gabriel if he's a boy. I have no idea why I'm dong this. I never even watched that show.

[Deme]

I feel just awful for Narcissa. Her friend gets married, and then suddenly she's forced to quit her job and become the new husband's slave for life. The cooking, cleaning, and babysitting is bad enough, but where it really goes into insane supervillain territory is where Mister Xenon forces her to teach herself how to paint so she can create a magnificent portrait of him. Poor girl.

Back to the Baby Names:

Gabrielle. Or Gabriel if he's a boy. I have no idea why I'm dong this. I never even watched that show.

Yeah...It's a little sad...

[Trazoi]

I feel just awful for Narcissa. Her friend gets married, and then suddenly she's forced to quit her job and become the new husband's slave for life. The cooking, cleaning, and babysitting is bad enough, but where it really goes into insane supervillain territory is where Mister Xenon forces her to teach herself how to paint so she can create a magnificent portrait of him. Poor girl.

When I played Sims 2 I turned the game into a giant multi-household soap opera, and that was how one of my soap villains make the heroes miserable. Except in my game the villain was Ganondorf and the woman was Chrono's Mom. The most awesome part of that game was when Chrono stormed Ganondorf's mansion, got into a yelling match with him, and stormed out with his mother in tow. (Of course the rules of drama dictated she was pregnant at the time. And because I modeled them after the characters, let me tell you that genetics were not kind on the resulting baby girl).

I miss that gameplay. The Sims 3 isn't geared for it.

[snoopy13a]

I have Sims 3 but I haven't played it that much (and in the limited times that I have, I've played with aging turned off).

However, if you want to maximize game time in a 10 generation format so as to accumulate wealth wouldn't the best plan be to hold off producing an heir as long as prudently possible? Especially if male Sims can father children as elders (which I'm not sure of due to my extremely limited gameplay. )

[Fri]

Yeah...It's a little sad...

If by sad you mean hillariously appropriate, yes, it is.

[The Glyphstone]

It looks like Narcissa could stand to lose a little weight anyways. Can Sims make changes in their physical appearance from factors other than getting older - i.e., would advancing in Cooking make a Sim more fat from all the food they sample, or spending lots of time Exercising have the reverse effect

[JadedDM]

It looks like Narcissa could stand to lose a little weight anyways. Can Sims make changes in their physical appearance from factors other than getting older - i.e., would advancing in Cooking make a Sim more fat from all the food they sample, or spending lots of time Exercising have the reverse effect

Yes, they can change their basic shapes. If a sim eats when they are all ready full, they get fatter. Working out can slim you down (jogging, aerobics) or bulk up your muscles (weight-lifting).

[Eldonauran]

Gabrielle. Or Gabriel if he's a boy.

+1. I vote for this

[JeminiZero]

if you want to maximize game time in a 10 generation format so as to accumulate wealth wouldn't the best plan be to hold off producing an heir as long as prudently possible? Especially if male Sims can father children as elders (which I'm not sure of due to my extremely limited gameplay. )

Thats an interesting thought, but it would only work if you can garuntee your elder male has a young wife, or someone else who can take care of the kids after he is gone...

Hmm... actually I just might be able to try that. Seeing how Dorothy will be shuffling off this mortal coil rather quickly, Victor will have the chance to remarry. It would be unusual, but it is possible for Dorothy's children to look after their half-siblings once Victor is gone.

It looks like Narcissa could stand to lose a little weight anyways. Can Sims make changes in their physical appearance from factors other than getting older - i.e., would advancing in Cooking make a Sim more fat from all the food they sample, or spending lots of time Exercising have the reverse effect

Yes, they can change their basic shapes. If a sim eats when they are all ready full, they get fatter. Working out can slim you down (jogging, aerobics) or bulk up your muscles (weight-lifting).

But keep in mind that Sims tend to spend almost all their time raising skills to gain promotions/earn more money/fulfil lifetime wishes, such that they have very little left to spend on frivolous things like exercise (unless it was part of their job, like if they were in the miltary or police).

but where it really goes into insane supervillain territory is where Mister Xenon forces her to teach herself how to paint so she can create a magnificent portrait of him. Poor girl.

Thats Doctor Xenon, if you please.

For those of you feeling sorry for Narcissa, here are a few things to keep her situation in perspective:
1) You have to consider the side-benefits she gets from living in Castle Mansion House Shack Xenon. Such as... er... well it will become more apparent as the place actually develops.
2) Her last job was as a Test Subject (Science Level 1). Whereas her lifetime wish was to be a Level 10 Cook (due to the 'Natural Cook' Trait), an entirely unrelated field. Right now, she gets to produce Art for a living, which is still an unrelated field, but it sure beats getting experimented on*.
3) When we first moved her in, she didn't even have a single rank in the Cooking skill. In fact, since she is doing all the meal preparation now, and levelling up Cooking along the way, I'd say she's a bit happier.

Once Dorothy's children enter child-stage (as opposed to being time-sucking toddlers), and the portraits for the first generation are done, we'll see about starting her off on her life dream, because I'm not entirely heartless**.

*Now that I am reminded of this, it has suddenly dawned on me that she wasn't actually Dorothy's friend. She was her live-in Guinea Pig.

**Or maybe, I just want the Ultimate Fridge they give you at the top of the culinary career.

[Sipex]

Has the legacy challenge been adapted for Sims 3? There are some key points which are missing, like platinum grave stones.

[JeminiZero]

I posted a link to the rules on the first page.

Platinum gravestones no longer count, only the number of UNIQUE lifetime wishes you fulfil. E.g. if 2 family members (not necessarily within the same generation) had the same lifetime wish, fulfilling it for one or both of them still only counts as 1 point.

[Sipex]

Ah, that is my problem, I'm at work so many links don't work for me.

...don't worry, I actually do work too.

[EvilJoe15]

Joel if it's a boy, Miranda if not.

It's been awhile since I've played 3 so I don't remember, but do sims that die come back to haunt the place like in older games?

[Volthawk]

Giving my vote to Dave if it's a boy. For a girl, Rebecca.

[AgentPaper]

If it's a boy, name him after yourself. If a girl, throw her in the river name her Agatha and give her a nice necklace and then get back to work making the REAL heir.