Sims 4 Creators camp is a full three day hands-on experience. There were about two dozen of us invited in total, simmers from across the spectrum. Some were machinima makers, some custom content creators, others builders and modders, and still others were Let’s Players and other Youtube figureheads. Everyone was given the same level of access to the game, but everyone approached their time with the game differently. After the break, I detail MY experience with the game from start to finish.

I was invited there as the creator of the Legacy Challenge, so my #1 priority was playtesting my own start of a Legacy. While three days would only scratch the surface of a Legacy Challenge, it would give me some very important framework to which I could mold the new version of my challenge. Like all good Legacy Challenge starts, everything began with a founder, Lady Cheshire Masque, given the creative aspiration with a focus on writing, art Lover, music lover, and delightfully insane.

There are two neighborhoods to start with, though they intend to add more. And sadly you cannot customize lot sizes. The largest lot size in the game is 50×50, a bit smaller than past Legacy Challenge lots, but still quite sizeable.

I was invited there as the creator of the Legacy Challenge, so my #1 priority was playtesting my own start of a Legacy.

There are four 50×50 lots to choose from in the game. My first inclination was to bulldoze one of the two parks which occupied two of the 50×50 lots. The game lets you change the lot *type* to whatever you want. So it was easy for me to convert the park-type lot to a residential lot. However, even after bulldozing the whole park, the lot still cost me $25,000 simoleans to buy. A starting CAS sim only has $20,000 in starting funds and sadly there is no Family Funds cheat that I could find (There ARE cash cheats like motherlode, kaching and rosebud that you can use once in game, but not from the neighborhood screen.) Not wanting to get too complicated with the steps needed to start a Legacy Challenge, I tried my luck with the two residential 50×50 lots. Both of these start with mansions pre-built on them, and in the case of Oasis Springs, the Landgraab family lives there…but I could easily bulldoze and evict. What was left was a 50×50 lot that cost me exactly $10,000.

That was both good and bad. Good that I was able to afford the lot directly out of CAS, bad in that the $10,000 lot would leave me with $10,000 in starting cash, which is WAY too much for a Legacy Founder to start with. With no Familyfunds cheat to artificially decrease my wealth, I had to find an alternative. Luckily one presented itself. There is a decorative set of armor that costs $8,200. Buying that and sticking it in your family inventory leaves you with $1,800 in starting cash and nothing on the lot: A perfect Legacy Challenge start. Since her aspiration was writing, I decided to enroll her in the new writing career. This wasn’t registering as self-employed, this was a full-fledged career. Both military and law enforcement are absent, so I wasn’t sure which careers paid the most in the early stages. In hind sight, writing wasn’t one of them, but I don’t regret going into it.

My initial purchases included a mid-quality double bed for $1500 and a crappy (haha) toilet for about 300. Off I went to the community lots to go build her skills, meet potential mates and friends and fulfill her needs. While she wasn’t famished I went off in search of cheap food. Notably absent were restaurants, but there were grills in the park. However, even a batch of hot dogs was $32 a pop! Luckily I found a source of free food: Bars.

You can walk up and order “Chips” from a bar for free. The bartender will hand you a bowl of bar snacks that your sim can casually munch on. It won’t fill the hungerbar all the way and my sim would sometimes not finish them if she got distracted by something else, but I did get a great preview of the new multitasking system. After getting her bowl of chips she would either grab a seat or just stand and munch on them. With a gaggle of other people in the bar, some eating, some drinking, others dancing, she was able to join in the conversation. I could even command her to do specific socials like flirting with potential mates and she was able do that without abandoning her snacks.

Bars aside, community lots are good for social interactions. If the time of day is appropriate, there is normally a gaggle of people coming and going. And whatever you came to the community lot to do, you can probably do that plus talking with nearby people as a multitasking action. Now, chatting DOES slow down your action, so if you want your Sim to buckle down and finish that book or finish that skill point, you may want to seek out solitude. In my visiting of the community lots, I found one of the most powerful uses for multi- tasking out there. At one of the gyms, there is a trio of treadmills setup side-by-side in front of a wall-mounted TV. While the writing career didn’t require any athletic points, I wanted to make sure Lady Cheshire maintained her figure. So she got onto a treadmill and started working out. I then told her to watch TV and she turned it on and started watching it WHILE ON THE TREADMILL. I could even change it to the cooking channel and build cooking skill at the same time as athletic. Then a townie wandered in and hopped on a treadmill next to her and while still working out and still watching TV, she was able to strike up a conversation with her fellow gym goer. So multi tasking is NOT limited to just two actions.

After her workout it was shower time.

And let me tell you about showers: They play a pretty big role in the Sims 4, and not just with hygene. So at base your sim can “Take a shower” “Take a brisk shower” “Take a steamy shower” and “Take a Thoughtful shower”. Just plain taking a shower is the fastest in terms of just getting your hygene up. A brisk shower only fills your hygene halfway but is very quick and it leaves your Sim with an “Energized” moodlet. Energized is one of the emotions. A steamy shower leaves them in with a flirty moodlet. A thoughtful shower takes MUCH longer than normal and very slowly satisfies hygene, but leaves them with the inspired moodlet. After all, we all do our best thinking in the shower.

As a funny side note, if your Sim is flirty already when they go to use the shower, they get the option to take a ‘cold shower’ which takes them OUT of the flirty mood.

After much searching and flirting, Lady Cheshire finally found her would-be mate. A scruffy art lover. Just like in past games, talking about their shared interest helped build their friendship faster. However, even with the shared interest, it took me awhile to build him up to a solid friendship. Worse still, it took me about three failed attempts to even start flirting. He was happily accepting interactions that were friendly, but politely turned down Lady Cheshire’s flirts.

It turns out that, as I learned from one of the developers, interaction acceptance and rejection now has a random element. Granted, it is heavily influenced by environmental factors, mood and current relationship. You aren’t going to get a life long loving spouse randomly rejecting a simple interaction with their mate, but on borderline cases, an interaction might be accepted OR rejected given similar circumstances. I actually find this a good thing, even though it delayed Lady Cheshire’s aquiring a mate. He even rejected her first proposal! She was rocking the embarrassed emotion for a VERY long time after that.

You aren’t going to get a life long loving spouse randomly rejecting a simple interaction with their mate, but on borderline cases, an interaction might be accepted OR rejected given similar circumstances.

I did have her invite him out on a date, and dates are now mini-events of their own. They give you goals to meet, such as sitting and talking, having a number of flirty interactions, playing together. All of which builds your date score. I was able to get a gold metal on my date and was rewarded with a free reward object, a champagne bottle in a bucket of ice. When placed in the world it could radiate an aura of flirty, making Sims who enter the room become flirty unless they had a stronger emotion present. Great for putting in the bedroom.

After the successful date and more poking and prodding, I got him to accept Lady Cheshire’s marriage proposal. There are two relationship bars, but the way they spin it is new. You have a friendly relationship bar and a 2nd romantic bar. The romantic bar doesn’t appear unless you’ve romanced that Sim before. Doing flirty interactions with a Sim builds the romantic bar not the friendly bar. Thus it is possible to have a woohoo buddy; a sim who is really romantically involved with someone but couldn’t care less about them as a friend. Lady Cheshire was at a full romance bar but only halfway friend bar when her first proposal was rejected. I built up the friendship bar more before trying and succeeding. A dev stated that her first proposal should have been accepted at those levels, but I probably got an unlucky roll.

At this point I could either have her throw a wedding party or elope and get married immediately. A wedding party costs $1,000 just to throw! She eloped as money was still tight. Which reminds me…speaking of money.

Bills. Let me talk about bills. They have teeth now. They are calculated based on the total value of the house, including objects in the family inventory. The only thing they don’t tax is cash on hand. Her first set of bills, back when she was just furniture on the lawn, came to $750. Yes, you read that right, $750. You have 48 hours to pay them from when they arrive or you get your power shut off and if you continue to not pay, the water gets cut. The Repo man no longer exists, having your utilities cut is now the punishment for bill non-payment.

After marrying her hubby, he brought in quite a bit of money. $19,000 and a few modestly priced objects. The devs indicated that the wealth brought in by townies is random, and that I probably got lucky in having her hubby bring in that much. Regardless it was enough for me to start building a proper house.

Now let me talk about build mode. At first, you’re going to hate it. You’re going to go in and try to build and half the things you want to do, which used to be pretty simple in the Sims 3, are now done in a completely different manner. I had to call over the devs a few times to help me accomplish some pretty basic tasks. This is because I was approaching building from a Sims 3 mindset. After a few times having things explained to me…I got it. You need to recalibrate your brain to build in the Sims 4. The whole “Block building” methodology requires new techniques. Until you get “block building” you are going to have a tough time building and probably declare Sims 4 inferior. But once you ‘get it’ and wrap your brain around the new system… you’ll find the Sims 4 a lot more powerful and flexible.

I was able to build what I had a vision for… a house with a double story theatre built into it. I had to be skimpy with furnishing to have enough for all the walls and such. That said, I could easily see the insane artist deciding that form trumped function. That said, it had the basics. One of its hallmarks was an “Inspiration Room”

Certain objects, mostly career reward objects, radiate an emotion. With Lady Cheshire being a writer and a painter on the side, being in the ‘inspired’ mood was VERY benefical for her. If she went to work inspired, she’d get a performance boost, her books were higher quality if written while inspirired and she built writing and painting skills faster if she was inspired. This inspiration room was full of every inspiration boosting object I could get. It also had the toilet and shower there. While squatting on the toilet, she chould look at an inspiration boosting painting, and thoughtful showers just further served to increase her level of inspiration. If enough moodlet points were stacked in favor of inspiration, she would become “Very Inspired” which seemed to amplify the effects even further.

This ends the first half of the tale of the Masque family. In the next part, learn what happened after the knot was tied as we explore the ins and outs of growing your family and bringing in the next generation.

(Part Two is now up! You can read it here.)