First Dates & Rushing Things

Previously on the Silverdust Legacy:

• Alice learns the violin and improves remarkably
• Alice gets halfway through her young adult life

Let's See What Happens Next:

When TS4 first came out people were complaining about how hard the relationships were to nurture and have them grow. This was within the first week of play and there is a learning curve to learning how to make your Sims fall in love quickly and simply.

My first test subject was some red headed sim whose name I don't remember anymore. I do know that it took meeting and failing four other sims before Alice found a sim that would accept her affections. I thought for sure this sim would be the one for her. And the interactions for dating were so adorable that I couldn't help myself from taking a couple of pictures. The first kiss interaction that you get is so adorable and awkward. It reminds me of teenagers and how everybody does end up acting like teens whenever they get their first kiss with a new somebody. It is always a little odd and thrilling at the same time. It is the little details that make these sims feel so much more lifelike than their TS3 counterparts and I love it!

I didn't really get pictures of stuff that happened before the date because I didn't realize that the action of dating took you to a different spot. So, I had set everything up to happen at the nightclub, but luckily the lounge in Oasis Springs looked really nice for the shots above. I was mostly taking these pictures for the memory album so none of the shots are really good.

I was surprised to get a reward for having a silver date though. I was not trying to get the best date ever because for whatever reason, I had decided to take things slow even though Alice was inching her way into adulthood. The red rose looked rather nice on her table, but she refused to eat on it until I adjusted it to be at the corner. You really need bigger tables to set decorations on, but I was just so happy that I finally got enough money to get her a table that I didn't really care. She lived in a two room shack for a while.

Technically, I broke the Legacy Challenge rules by creating and playing with the Newbie Family and the Pleasant/Burb households for a little while. But I don't really care about that detail because I have aging on only for the active household. What I did find surprised me though. Even though you are playing with other households, your sims still gain relationships with other sims when you aren't playing them. This includes romantic relationships.

And that was how Alice met Conrad Gomez. I figured going on a little date with him wouldn't hurt, just so I could see what other sims were out there before committing Alice to a lifetime of monogamy.

It turns out that they were able to hit it off and flirt with each other so well because Conrad was a music lover. That's when I had the epiphany that traits really do matter in this game. The traits determine how they act and how they respond to other sims. Because Alice was a snob, she had a really hard time relating to other people that weren't snobs, but because she was in the Entertainment career and had a growing skill in the violin, that helped Alice relate to Conrad. I could queue up the interaction to talk about music stuff for hours with him and Conrad wouldn't get bored. It was a match made in heaven and it made their relationship grow very quickly and organically. So, if you are still having trouble with relationships a month in, look at their traits and find out what their interests are via skills.

So, that was when I decided that Alice and Conrad were going to get together instead of whomever the redhead was up in the top pictures. I hoped that Conrad felt the same way about Alice, so I had her propose boyfriend status to him and he said yes! They got so excited and kissed afterwards. It was just so adorable! They said goodbye to each other at the bar and I took Alice back home to plan a romantic proposal at the park on the weekend since she had to work for the next three days and there just wasn't enough time to get her happy and ready for a date after work. Next time there will be talk about engagements, weddings, and working on getting that second generation!

The Silverdust Legacy: Bare Bone Beginnings

Barely a day goes by and there is already a fire!

Welcome to the Silverdust Legacy Challenge!

I will be your disembodied host for the entirety of the blog. Unlike other challenge blogs that I have seen, I am uninterested in telling a legit story with this challenge this time and just more interested in playing the game. In fact, taking screenshots was an afterthought so most of the shots from the very beginning of my challenge will be very random and they probably won't fit together. I was halfway through my founder's life when I realized that I would like to make a blog for my challenge as just a fun way of documenting my adventures with The Sims 4. So, this blog will be more like poking through a family photo album kept by the family's eccentric long lost cousin. Either way, it should be fun!

Let me start off by telling you a little bit about my founding sim that you see putting out a fire in the picture above. I made her in the CAS demo that EA released before TS4 came out. She was my testing sim and I had fun with her body, so she is rather wasp waisted and has rather enormous breasts. She looked proportional during the demo, but when I brought her into the game she looks a little more extreme than I thought she would. Now that that is over with, let's move onto the actual meat of who she is.

My founder's name is Alice Silverdust. She is a blue skinned sim with black hair and grey eyes. Her traits are family oriented, bookworm, and snob. She has a family aspiration with carrying on the family line.

When they are new to the skill, the sims make faces at bad music.

One of the first things I got excited about was the violin. I decided that the very first thing I had to have Alice do was to learn how to play it. Boy, was that an interesting decision! The first few levels of the violin are really, really terrible. It is like hearing a child pick up a violin and try playing it in real life. I found myself scrolling away from her on the screen so I could watch other sims do other things while she was working on it. The sound was that bad, but I love that it was! Once you reach level two in that skill, it gets a lot easier to listen to while you are closer to the sim, but it doesn't really get good until around level five.

One of the cool things about choosing what song to play with instruments is that you can just have them play song after song. It takes some timing because if you queue up a whole list of songs then they won't play the full song before moving to the next, but if you queue up another song while they are still playing, then they will automatically play the song you picked after the finished the first song.

A concerto in the library?

I spent at least a week with Alice jobless before I realized that she needed to get money. So, I decided to put her in the Entertainer career track on her way to becoming a musician. I mean, I pushed through and had her play the violin everywhere to gain skill in it.

In fact, I even had her play her first concerto in the library. That might not have been the best spot to play, but I got so excited when I realized that other people would tip me extra money. At this point of time, they were only giving me about $8 each time, but every little bit helps in this point of the legacy. Besides, by the time the option to earn $100 in tips came up for my career, I already knew how to do it so that went by really quickly.

I love playing instruments in public spaces.

Alice was a little more than halfway into her young adult life when I realized that I really needed to get her a husband! Time just flew by while I was working on her career and I only made it to level four when I realized that she was getting old!

This is very important because of my succession rules for this legacy. I decided that the Silverdust Legacy would be a strict traditional legacy with a strict matriarchy where the heirs were determined by merit. This means that if I have two girls and like one more than the other, I can have that one work harder to gain skills or get higher in school or complete aspiration goals. The heir that completes the most goals gets to carry on the legacy. Or at least that is the theory. I might change my mind later and just stick with the strict traditional and strict matriarchy and just choose whomever I want to be my heiress.

Until next time, happy simming!