After a husband was secured I thought it would be smooth sailing for a while. Oh, how wrong I was! I am getting ahead of myself though. So let’s start from the beginning.
Due to the wedding, Benjamin got two paid days off. Since it happened on a Thursday morning that gave him four days without other obligations to work on his painting skill. The first point he got from a painting class. Then another two just by practicing on small portraits in the fireman station. He pretty much spent all those days there. He also got a couple opportunities related to handiness since that was the highest skill he had, prior to his marriage. Not the kind of opportunities I wanted but the money from it was good.
Meanwhile Samantha kept working on her fishing skill. By the time the events of this post ended her fishing skill was level 7. It is finally starting to pay something decent, about $200. Still lower than a regular job but better than what she was earning in the beginning from her catches. She also got a fishing related opportunity that netted the family another $1,000.
Amidst all the skill leveling Samantha got enough Life Wish Reward points to get Steel Bladder which I got for her so she could go on longer for those fishing trips without having to take a break. With her ability to just conjure apples her hungry needs weren’t much of an issue, a bath in the morning took care of her hygiene needs and just fishing took care of her fun needs. 🙂
Then Sunday came and the first family crisis happened. Sort of. Ralston, the family’s dog, became stinky. I couldn’t figure out a free way to get her a bath though. It seemed like I would have no choice but to finally start to build a house. By then I had almost $10,000. I was aiming to get $15,000 before building a basic house but given the situation I had little choice in the matter.
Not the best of places and I run out of money before I could purchase anything more than the essentials. Even the wedding gifts didn’t add much, unfortunately. While I was building I decided to send Benjamin and Samantha on a date since both of their social bars were getting low.
Then as soon as Monday came, Benjamin had his birthday. Since the family was broke his birthday party consisted of him waking up in the middle of night to celebrate it. The only guest was Ralston since Samantha was too busy fishing. Someone has to bring money to the house after all!
Apparently he wasn’t ready yet to go from Young Adult to Adult since he had a midlife crises. In The Sims 3 terms that means he got a moodlet that lasts for a few days. If left alone it does nothing. But he also gets some special Wishes related to it. If the Wishes are accepted they stay there until they are fulfilled or the midlife crises end. There is no other way to get rid of them. Plus while those wishes aren’t satisfied the midlife crises moodlet gives a negative mood to the Sim. Satisfying them can give bonus points to Lifetime Rewards, depending on how many you satisfied, when the midlife crisis ends.
If you don’t intent to deal with those Wishes you can just not accept them and wait until the midlife crisis is over or send the Sim to the hospital to get some therapy, ending the midlife crisis earlier. I decided to let tit run its course naturally to see what kind of Wishes he will get. Some of them might be easy/cheap to satisfy after all!
The first midlife crisis-related wish was to change jobs which I ignored since his currently one as at bussiness seems to be a pretty good and easy. The second one is to buy a car that costs more than $10,000. Impossible to fulfill given the family funds. Not much later Benjamin finally gets a wish I can finally satisfy! He wants to get a tattoo which seems cheap enough for the possible rewards.
I decided to give him a tattoo* of a broken heart in the middle of his chest. You know, just in case he turns into a vampire and the hunters need a good target of where to put the stake in. The other tattoos he already had previously to his marriage.
After the tattoo Benjamin got a Wish to flirt with someone which was also pretty easy to fulfill. I just sent him to visit one of his friends, flirt, then leave. Probably the quickest flirting in history!
Not everything is fun and games though. Amidst all this, Benjamin’s painting skill is growing very slowly getting only to level 4. Meanwhile the clock is ticking to Samantha’s birthday and if I can’t get a painted portrait of her as a Young Adult then one of the requirements for the challenge won’t be met thus ending the dynasty right there!
In a desperate move I sold the Leaf Shelter which was a wedding gift then used the money to buy a painting easel as well as some paintings and sculpture for the bedroom. My hope was that if Benjamin has the decorated moodlet it might help raise his skill faster. I also used some of the money to buy a cheap couch and TV just in case they need something to refill the fun bar.
Unfortunately that strategy didn’t work out. His skill gain was still pretty slow. If I could get the Fast Learner as a Lifetime Reward for Benjamin things would probably work better. However most of his wishes end up being related to handiness or meeting people. Stuff that would take too much time away from raising his painting skills. So earning points for Lifetime Rewards have been going pretty slow too!
Another option I could use would be to send them for a travel. This would buy some time to build skills as they wouldn’t age while travelling. However the rules forbid any kind of travel until the 2nd generation is a Young Adult.
Things at work aren’t much better for Benjamin either. He gets his first promotion easily enough since he was already halfway there from before the wedding. But the bar for the second one doesn’t even move due to his overall bad humor.
It seems like some drastic measures will be required to make sure this dynasty succeeds! I have some ideas on what to do but I will talk about them in the next post. Just to end this one on a slightly happy note, Samantha found a black unicorn while fishing.
Not the best picture, sorry! Unfortunately Samantha didn’t have much time to befriend the unicorn since her energy bar was getting pretty low requiring her to head back home. Hopefully they will meet again in better circumstances. 🙂
* Well, I found out just now that getting tattoos is also against the rules! Ok. I will let that one slide too because I really forgot about it at the time the tattoo was made and had no idea if it had any other effect besides being cosmetic! This is the last time I will let a rule breakage slide though. Any other that happens for whatever reason will be game over!