Challenge Updates:

I had to update the challenge a little for a few reasons.

1. Plumbing: the handcrafted bath tub the challenge was formerly limited to just doesn’t always work off-the-grid. Sometimes it works and other times it just doesn’t. It must be a bug. Technically it doesn’t say it’s functional off-the-grid in its description, so I had to work under the assumption that that’s its default and it was a bug that it actually worked at all with that lot trait. The handcrafted toilet still works off-the-grid reliably though, so my workaround has been to update the challenge so that once 1 Sim from the household has achieved level 10 Handiness skill and has crafted a tub, the player is then free to purchase a tub or shower from the off-the-grid plumbing category in Build Mode. Since we broke the “nothing from the plumbing category” rule, I see no reason not to also purchase sinks, but I think in the spirit of the challenge, they should be limited to natural materials like metal, porcelain, and wood. And since the handcrafted wooden toilet still works for now, I think the challenge should be limited to using that for Sims to not have to potty in the bushes.
2. Careers: out of the blue, Faith got a call to join the Stylist career at level 5 and when I was trying to get the notification off the screen, I accidentally accepted it. Since the pay only amounted to $560/day and Faith was already making enough money to mostly keep herself and Gemma happy making $350 per crafted mirror, I didn’t think it would make a major difference in gameplay, so I decided not to have Faith quit the job and see how far I could get in a traditional career while living in an off-the-grid community. I’m still undecided as to whether or not it affected gameplay negatively or if that was the best decision, so I officially changed the rule on careers to reflect current gameplay. If all adult Sims in a household had careers that start at level 5, I think it would be too much money and make the game go too fast for me, so I’m limiting it to just Faith right now, or possibly just 1 Sim per household can have a full-time job.
3. Veterinarians: Faith & Gemma’s dog Abigail got really sick and started vomiting everywhere and wouldn’t stop for days. The amount she was throwing up took 1 Sim mopping up behind her the whole time to the point of exhaustion, until another Sim took over, in order to avoid a permanent negative buff on all Sims for having trashy surroundings. I didn’t care if the dog died, but the only way to get rid of the negative buff or prevent it in this scenario, was to take the stupid dog to the stupid vet. I downloaded a random vet clinic from the gallery and popped it into Newcrest, then pretended Charlie let Gemma drive the Moody Family’s psychedelic bus to take the dog to be cured. In all other instances of pet illness I’ve seen so far, they’ve eventually gotten better on their own and their symptoms, while often annoying, were surmountable. The dog vomit was impossible to deal with and making the game extremely unpleasant, so I broke my own rule and changed the official challenge rules to reflect that specific circumstance.

Challenge Tips, Tricks & Surprises

• I found an advantage to not having a sink: if you don’t have a sink, your Sims will put their dirty dishes in a trash can. If you have a kitchen trash can with trash in it, you can click on it and select “Rummage For Bits & Pieces”, which gives you bits & pieces you can use to make candles. Candles can be sold or used off-the-grid, so they could be valuable. If you have a Bee Box or several, you can collect and use their bee’s wax to make candles, rather than spending money on candle wax. As much as I hate the constant whims to buy Bee Boxes in warm seasons, I do like the idea of the bees and I’m very interested to see if you could actually make a functioning candle home business this way.
• Even better, if you let the trash get full before you rummage for Bits & Pieces, your Sim will leave a pile of trash on the ground that you can rummage through to find precious upgrade parts. Since Sims have no access to computers in this challenge, this is the only way I’ve found so far to get upgrade parts.
• I am obsessed with my bills now, and watching my water and power output to make sure my plumbing and appliances keep working. Each house is supposed to be fully functional off-the-grid, so buying things like dew collectors and wind turbines is necessary, as is upgrading appliances and plumbing to be more efficient. Also important is using eco-friendly building materials in the construction of your house to reduce your neighbourhood’s carbon footprint and your utility bills.
• I think the Natural Well and Geothermal lot traits might be too powerful for this challenge by making lots sustainable immediately and without challenge, but I haven’t changed the rule yet because I haven’t figured out what *is* needed for a lot to be sustainable yet.
• Faith has been increasing her writing skill for her job by writing in her journal. Slow, but effective.

Story Updates

Faith met Charlie this weekend while she was looking for signatures to repeal a Neighbourhood Action Plan and they really hit it off, so Faith asked Charlie to take her to the Romance Festival where they drank flirty sakura tea and had their romantic futures read by the Love Guru. They also had their very first kiss and Faith asked Charlie to be her boyfriend. She’s looking for her soulmate and thinks Charlie might be it, while Charlie’s just looking for another Moody Family Cult member and is likely monogamous to no one.

Shortly after Faith & Charlie’s outing to the Romance Festival, Faith came skulking around Charlie’s yard and started watering plants. Charlie thought it might be nice to have someone around to water his plants, so he asked her to move in with him. He didn’t know her teenage sister Gemma was part of the deal, and, disgruntled, he moved himself to the 2nd floor and put the girls in the basement. And that’s where things stand with them right now.

Cult Progress

I completely fucked up the cult/club mechanic by misunderstanding how it worked and inviting Sims to join willy nilly. I didn’t know there was a limited number of people who could be in a club and now I’m not sure how to kick them out without causing issues with their relationships. You can only have 8 Sims in a club, so I’ve gotta figure out how to delete the club and start over, only inviting the heads of key households to officially join the cult.

If Faith and Charlie end up being soulmates and getting married, then I’ll have Faith start her own identical cult/club on Charlie’s behalf to invite 8 more. It won’t be the whole community by a long shot but 16 cult members in white robes bowling will look fucking awesome once I get it all figured out.

To Do

• I still have to create cult holidays.
• I still have to play the rest of the families and make their homes self sustainable.
• I want Charlie and Faith to start a retail business to sell their handcrafted goods.

So that’s all the poop that’s fit to scoop right now! Follow along with the Moody Family on Twitter!

After debugging and repairing the game (the latter took ages), toggling the off the grid lot trait on and off, putting the tub in household storage and back again, we determined not being able to use the tub off grid except to wash the dog was a new bug. Someone suggested I try gathering water or snow, so I did both and it gave me enough stored water to bathe everyone.

So, the workaround for this bug is that my Sims are just gonna have to keep gathering water if they want to stay clean and hydrated. At least with gathering water, the tub works as if the lot had water and power, so you have the option to take a bubble bath, which gives your Sim a playful moodlet. You can also take a bath with “soaks” which gives various positive moodlets, but they cost $60 Simoleons each and currently that is not within anyone in the cult’s budgets.

As far as the rest of gameplay, Gemma has only been able to complete her homework ONCE in 3 seasons and is a “C” student, which is my worst performance to date. Usually when I play teenagers, I make sure they have an “A” average and do all of their extra credit assignments. Right now Faith & Gemma are so poor that I’ve actually been selling Gemma’s extra credit projects rather than doing them.

The main other thing I’ve had Faith doing to earn more money is crafting and selling mirrors. They cost $87 Simoleons to make and you get $350 Simoleons for selling them. I find this more profitable and easier than going off my lot to use the phone to take an odd job that may only net me $150 Simoleons and will take twice as long to complete as a mirror.

Faith & Gemma did end up voting in and getting the community garden planted…and then, because I misunderstood how the community lots worked, I tried to “add” the maker space by voting it in, but when I did that, the maker space REPLACED the community garden. Whoops! So now I have to go in and add all of the marketplace and maker space items to the community garden so the lot can be all 3. So annoying, but I have to do it before I switch families because saving $750 Simoleons to get a woodworking table for a new household is a massive challenge, especially if it’s a family, so I need to play Faith & Gemma until they can vote for the community garden again, and THEN they may need to replant all of the plants, I’m not sure. I really hope not.

There was a week in there where, every time I invited a neighbourhood Sim to Faith & Gemma’s house, that Sim would steal Abigail’s food dish and and Faith’s books. Every time. I couldn’t figure out why this was happening, so finally I just locked my front door and never invited anyone over because replacing those 2 items was costing me $85 Simoleons each time and when you’re scrambling for $20 Simoleons, that’s not an easy expense to just absorb.

Finally, I realized that the NPCs in the game had voted in a Neighbourhood Action Plan (N.A.P.) called “Sharing Is Caring” where all items are essentially communal and everyone can steal everyone else’s shit. Since none of my Sims actually have any shit, I figured out how to repeal that pretty damn quickly. Faith had to repeal the N.A.P. and get 5 signatures to get it to go through. Now, next Monday in the game, Faith & Gemma have to vote in a new N.A.P. and for the community garden. I think it’s currently Wednesday in the game, so until I can do those things on Monday, I’ll be playing Faith & Gemma and just improving their lives and house the best I can.

Faith hasn’t introduced herself to Charlie yet and Gemma has little interest in cult life. Gemma’s hard to keep happy because she doesn’t seem to be happy doing any skill building activity. Not swimming, not bowling, not reading a skills book, not knitting. All she really does is sulk, which I find hilarious.

This challenge is definitely a slow burn, I’ll tell you whut. I think it will be until I get all the households indoor plumbing and then I can focus on the actual cult part of the game. I’m terrified of playing my big families because I have no idea how I’m gonna keep everyone happy and functional with so few items and Simoleons. I’ve never had a toddler or child be taken away before, but I’m afraid it might happen in this challenge, which gives me a smidge of anxiety. Whatever happens, happens, though!

Well.

Today that handcrafted tub decided to glitch out and not work properly off the grid anymore. For whatever reason, I can give m fucking DOG a bath, but my Sims can’t bathe because there’s no plumbing off grid.

On Sunday when I was playing Charlie Moody, he crafted and used a tub with an off the grid option to take a “quick and tepid bath”, but now that option is gone? WTF is going on? How do I even begin to fix this?

I also found out today that my 1st community venue cannot be a garden/marketplace/maker space. I voted for it to be a community garden and planted everything, then I voted to make it a maker space and the garden disappeared! The maker space took its place! So, I have to go in and redo the marketplace/maker space on the community gardens tab and revote to create a community garden. I dunno if I’ll have to replant everything. I sure as hell hope not! UGH! Aggravation!

So, I’ve decided to take a break from the Sims Bunker for now because all it is at this very moment is aggravation. Instead, I’m gonna make Rice Krispy squares and either work on my knitted scarf or make granny squares.

I think it would be interesting and cool if I made everyone’s party outfits match, so then I can have social events where the cult truly looks like a cult. A couple of ideas I have are outfits of a single matching colour or everyone wearing the same piece of jewellery. It might be a neat idea to also have the Sims knit their party outfits, I haven’t decided.

Gimme your thoughts on this over on @SimsBunker Twitter!

First of all, giving almost every family a pet or two was probably a mistake, because not only do you have to worry about your Sim being uncomfortable because they’re stinky, but you have to worry about your dog being stinky too, because if he is, your Sim is gonna be DOUBLE uncomfortable. Charlie’s dog, Frances, would get sprayed by a skunk approximately every 12 hours, which gave Charle an additional +2 uncomfortable moodlet. When you have TWO +2 uncomfortable moodlets, it means your Sim is basically too uncomfortable to function; they won’t read any skills books, knit, craft any furniture, or do anything that might otherwise build any sort of skill. (I did not test yoga.) This situation sucked and basically I had to just keep needs fulfilled, sometimes resorting to Potions, and wait for Frances’ skunk stank to go away.

Even worse, Frances got sick multiple times from fighting with squirrels and he had green snot all over his muzzle. When he came in the cabin and laid down, he would leave big puddles of drool that Charlie was forever mopping up. It was super gross. And then one day, magically, Frances got better.

I started playing Charlie’s household in the fall and I played him until spring, when he finally crafted a bath tub and a toilet. Where I left him though, he could only afford to expand his tiny home by 4 tiles: enough to fit the bath tub indoors.

To be able to afford a woodworking table and eventually a tub and toilet, Charlie dug around Brindleton Bay for collectibles to sell and since he has a little community space next door to his house, I was able to use the cell phone to take odd jobs pretty easily. I also gave him a part time job as a manual labourer and then forgot about it. A week went by and suddenly I got the notification that work started for Charlie in an hour and I looked at his needs meters and his sleep, fun, and hygiene needs were in the red. Fuck. Good on Charlie though, he did his job both days even though I left him completely sleep deprived.

I had Charlie make a mirror on the woodworking table to gain Charisma skill because what kinda cult leader doesn’t have charisma? I created a club called The Moody Family and I added the maximum amount of Sims I could add which was maybe 6-8. I think I may have to start chapters of that club in each neighbourhood, headed by a Sim Charlie trusts, with Charlie in all of them so he can attend everyone’s club gatherings. I can apparently unlock 2 more spaces in The Moody Family club for 2 more Sims, but I haven’t looked into how I do that yet. Yesterday was dedicated just to getting indoor plumbing so Charlie’s needs would be better met. He’ll worry about leading people later.

As I suspected, Sims have to vote on Community Gardens, Marketplaces, and Maker Spaces, so right now the venue I made comprising all 3 is empty. Worse, much to my dismay, only Sims in the venue’s neighbourhood may vote on what the spaces should be. That meant Charlie couldn’t vote and kickstart the Community Garden, which would help everyone. Due to this, I decided to switch to my next family, one within that neighbourhood.

Allow me to introduce my 2 hippie sisters, Faith & Gemma:

Faith Moody is a young adult, looking after her teen sister, Gemma, after their mermaid parents were swept away during a storm on their home world of Sulani. Faith is cheerful, romantic, good, and wants to find her soulmate. She wonders if Charlie isn’t it, but she’s too shy to approach him yet. She wants to kickstart the Community Garden with Gemma and impress him. Since it’s fall, they may have to wait until spring to plant. In the meantime, their primary objective is to be able to bathe and pee inside.

I’ve never played a mermaid before, so I was surprised to find they have a “hydration” need instead of a hygiene need. It’s a good thing I built them a spring-fed pool at the Rec Complex because I’ve found the most efficient way to fulfill this need is by having them sleep in the pool as opposed to a bed. You can’t swim in the natural water of Brindleton Bay the way you can on Sulani, and if their hydration need goes unfulfilled, your mermaid Sim will start to smell like fish, which they’ll be super cranky about. Faith & Gemma don’t have a bath tub yet (or even a woodworking table yet), so I don’t know if mermaids can also sleep in the tub, but it’d be pretty handy if they could.

So, tonight’s goals are to (hopefully) plant the Community Garden before it gets too cold to plant, and craft at least a bath tub for Faith & Gemma. Hopefully Abigail, their Bernese Mountain Dog, doesn’t get sick or sprayed by a skunk because that super sucked with Charlie and Frances yesterday.

I changed/added a couple of goals to the challenge today. The 1st is that I want the commune to create some sort of weed economy using the Basemental Drugs mod where they grow and sell a fuck tonne of weed to afford their improvements. The 2nd is that I want them to get comfortable enough in their needs to explore their spellcaster abilities. Every Sim in Brindleton Bay is supernatural, either a spellcaster or a mermaid and I have one set of vampires. It would be good to finally explore that content since I’ve had it for ages and barely dented it. It’d add another dimension to gameplay after I meet the primary objectives. Finally, 3rd, I took out the rule that every adult and elder Sim must max out their Fishing, Gardening, and Handiness skills because it’s really only necessary for one Sim per household to max out their Handiness skill to craft tubs and toilets. Also, if the adults establish gardens, it’s gonna be difficult to get the kids’ Gardening skills to 10. Not impossible, but difficult and maybe too perfectionist. I haven’t decided how I feel about maxing out the Fishing skill because I’ve found fishing isn’t as profitable yet as foraging and gardening. Faith is just level 3 fishing though, I think, so maybe it will get more profitable as she levels up. I’ve never really explored this aspect of the game before.

So, that’s today’s update. Stay tuned to @SimsBunker on Twitter for more!

I was really inspired watching the Sims Spark’d reality TV show and how the contestants knew so many tricks to manipulating the game to tell different stories. After watching the 1st three episodes and watching some of the contestants’ YouTube videos, I decided I wanted my game to be a little more challenging and my storytelling to be more complex.

I’d been sharing my Sims’ stories on my Twitter through screenshots and gifs for my own amusement for a year, but after watching Sims Spark’d, I realized that my stories weren’t actually that interesting most of the time in comparison to the levels of complexity that go into an average YouTube series. My Twitter stories are generally just little touching snippets from my Sims’ lives and I’ve been working on the same story since the spring. It was time to shake things up.

I’ve always been really interested in the idea of Sims living off the grid and being self sustainable, so I made 2 spellcaster Sims, Xiamira and Betty Moody, decided I wouldn’t cheat, and moved them to an off the grid island on Sulani and began playing. It was fun but living off the grid has some challenges, so I googled “Sims 4 off the grid tips and tricks” and came across The Sims Community’s “Off The Grid Challenge”. This flooded my brain with ideas and logistics because that challenge was written 3 years ago, and we’ve had many expansions, game packs, and stuff packs released since then that could really enhance the challenge, most notably Get Together, Seasons, and Eco Lifestyle.

Get Together added a mechanic to the game where your Sims can create and join clubs. Seasons added weather, more gardening options, and holidays. Eco Lifestyle added candle making, voting on Neighbourhood Action Plans, and an “eco footprint” system. All of these things would make it “easy” to create an off the grid hippy commune, or, because I’d be using the club mechanic from Get Together, a cult, if you will.

So, using the “Off The Grid Challenge” as my foundation, I made my own challenge: The Moody Family Cult Challenge.

I bulldozed every lot in Brindleton Bay. Then I created 3 community venues and 13 very specific households of varying sizes, each with their own stories to tell within the cult. I gave them all meagre funds, gave them 4 walls, a roof, and a bush or 2 to pee in, and that is how our story begins.

Meet Charlie & Frances Moody

Charlie is a young spiritual drifter, originally from Strangerville, and he is accompanied in this life by his shar pei puppy, Frances. Charlie is a music lover and being a people person, he tends to be “in the know”. Self-assured and always confident, Charlie is the Moody Family’s enigmatic leader, leading his tree-hugging friends to resettle and start a community in undeveloped Brindleton Bay on their own terms.

Brindleton Bay enjoys all 4 seasons and has great fishing and good soil, but the whole town is completely off the grid, except for a small cafe at the Recreation Complex because no one wants to be in a cult with no coffee.

The Moody Family is still defining their values, but they know for sure they love each other, the earth and nature and want to do everything they can to make, and keep, Brindleton Bay pristine, which is why they all live off grid.

The current season is fall and Charlie will be the 1st household I play. I had him buy some vegetable seeds, so let’s just hope some of them will be in season or he’ll have nothing to eat. He only has enough money to fill Frances’ dog bowl once, so he’d better find a financial solution soon or they’ll both be up shit creek.

To follow Charlie’s antics in real time, please check out my Twitter! After setting this challenge up all week, it’s finally time to PLAY!