#i love that my sim style just completely switches up whenever i make male sims

[butteredfrogs]

"our paths diverged long ago... it was affection that held us together."

my attempt at making viktor from arcane (specifically season 1 viktor bc he was so sweet and precious back then) i suck at making male sims so hes not prefect but im pretty happy with how he turned out!!

[simplicityts]

100 Baby Challenge Guide | Part I: Overview & Matriarch

Objective

The objective of the 100 Baby Challenge is to give birth to 100 children in as few generations as possible, and successfully raise them to Young Adulthood.

Rules

No cheats or mods, except for ‘bb.moveobjects on’ and ‘reset sim’.

No help from nannies, baby daddies, or free services. Daycare is allowed only when leaving your lot to woo another donor.

You can’t use the same donor twice.

You can’t change pre-existing lot traits or lot traits that you choose, so choose wisely.

A child must reach Young Adulthood to count toward the 100 -- therefore they can’t die or be taken away by social services.

Your matriarch can’t get married until she becomes an elder, and must move out of the household after she is married.

You can’t have a career that takes you out of the household. Example: rabbit-hole jobs.

Only Young Adults can be moved out of the household.

You can’t influence your child’s gender or traits. You must use the randomizer for traits. You can't eat carrots or strawberries. You must avoid Pop and alternative music.

You can only age up:

-> Babies on their actual birthday;

-> Toddlers once they reach level 3 in all skills, or on their birthday, and;

-> When Children and Teens get an A in school.

TIP: Toddlers who reach level 3 or higher in their skills will have a head start in their skills when they age up to children, so don’t just let them languish until their birthdays. (I will go into more detail about this in Part 3: Babies and Toddlers.)

Step 1: Create your Matriarch

According to the official challenge rules by Snarky Witch, your Matriarch can be male (as long as he can become pregnant) or female, but I’m going to use female pronouns for simplicity sake. You can make her look and sound however you want, but she must be a Young Adult.

Choose her traits and aspirations wisely!

1. Aspirations

I highly recommend either the ‘Freelance Botanist’ or ‘Painter Exraordinaire’ aspiration to begin with. I’ve done both, but I personally prefer the former rather than the latter, because you only have to tend to your plants once a day and are therefore not tied to an easel. The problems I encountered with painting are that it takes awhile to finish one painting, and my matriarch would have to start and stop every time she went into labor or had to do anything else (like eat or take care of kids). You can still paint until your plants start generating simoleons (§), but the lot I chose comes with blooming herbs, so I don’t have to wait.

TIP: However, I also recommend switching back and forth between aspirations, because meeting aspiration milestones will give you satisfaction points which you can spend on helpful reward traits (see the Reward Traits section below). In addition to the ‘Freelance Botanist’ (if you choose to garden at all) and the ‘Painter Extraordinaire’ aspirations, you’ll want to complete the following ones as well:

-> Fabulously Wealthy:

You’ll earn 5% interest on your household funds every week. More § for doing nothing? Yes, please!

-> Nerd Brain:

Instantly fix or upgrade any object. Super useful when stuff breaks, and trust me, they will. Completing knowledge based aspirations such as this one will also give you the Quick Learner bonus trait, which will help you learn skills faster.

-> Big Happy Family:

You’ll boost your children’s skill gains whenever you’re nearby, which means they’ll age up faster, and the faster you can age them out, the faster you can make more kids and finish the challenge.

-> Mansion Baron:

Get 10% back on any build mode purchases added to your household funds once a week. You’re going to be buying stuff to furnish your house, so you might as well get some of your § back, no?

-> Serial Romantic:

You might find this handy for the Alluring bonus trait, because it makes you more successful at romantic interactions.

You can still do career based aspirations like Master Chef without actually joining the career. You just won’t be able to complete them once you get to the career based goals. For Master Chef, you can go up to Milestone III. That’s 1,425 satisfaction points right there! Just be sure to switch to this aspiration before you cook anything, and you’ll easily blow through these goals and milestones (same with the other ones).

TIP: I’ll leave you with this last note: don’t bother with children’s aspirations, EXCEPT for your successor! Completing children’s aspirations just wastes time getting them out of the house, but completing these for your successor is beneficial because it means they can buy bonus traits sooner.

2a. Traits

Check out Carl’s Guide to The Sims 4 Traits if you need help narrowing down your traits, but I highly recommend the following:

-> Creative: your sim will become inspired more often, in turn increasing the quality and value of their paintings (higher quality = more §). Choose this one only if you plan on painting being your primary source of income. Otherwise choose something like Cheerful, which will make your sim happier in general, or any of the other traits instead. For instance, I’ve chosen ‘Loves Outdoors’ for my gardeners.

-> Romantic: your sims will be flirty more often, and will gain romantic relationships faster than other sims. This will help you woo and bed donors faster.

-> Family-Oriented: your sim will gain happiness from being around family, which will honestly be most of the time.

2b. Reward Traits

Reward traits can be bought with satisfaction points from the Rewards store. To get to the Rewards Store, press G and then click on the present. 

IMPORTANT! Save your matriarch’s satisfaction points for traits; don’t waste them on potions. However, exchange your Young Adults’ satisfaction points for the ‘Moodlet Solver’ or the ‘Re-Traiting’ reward potion, and then transfer them to your matriarch’s inventory before you move the kid out of your household.

The Moodlet Solver potions will come in handy whenever your sims are mourning the death of someone they know, because it removes all negative moodlets. Don’t mistake this for the Happy potion, which is only a temporary fix.

The Re-Traiting potion, however, is best used on your next matriarch only. The rules of the challenge dictate that you have to randomize all of your children’s traits, so you will inevitably end up with a successor that has unfavorable traits. This potion will allow you to change their traits to more suitable ones. However, focus on stocking up on the Moodlet Solver potions first, and only purchase this one if and when you need it.

I’ve separated the Reward Traits I recommend into 3 categories: general, painters, and gardeners. They’re then ordered from most to least important in each of their categories. If you’re matriarch is a gardener or painter, I recommend buying Never Weary first, then skip to your specific categories, and finally work your way down the rest of the general list. However, anything after Great Kisser really isn’t necessary.

In general...

-> Never Weary (10,000): never have to sleep again! Trust me you’ll want to buy this first, because you’ll get more done if you’re not wasting 6+ hours sleeping.

-> Night Owl (1,000): gain skills 25% faster between 8PM and 3AM. You’re not sleeping any way, so this is great!

-> Frugal (2,000): reduces bills by 25%. Who doesn’t like saving money?

-> Beguiling (2,500): this is my favorite way to woo donors, because it makes it so easy.

-> Great Kisser (3,000): this one increases your Charisma skill every time you kiss, and charismatic sims are more successful at wooing donors.

-> Fertile (3,000): increases your chances of twins and triplets. I don’t recommend this early on. You definitely want to get comfortable with this challenge, and in a groove, before you start popping out multiples.

-> Forever Fresh (8,000): never need to shower or bathe again! Honestly, after the Toddler stage, showering is faster than bathing and isn’t really that much of an inconvenience.

-> Forever Full (10,000): never need to eat again. I like to make my Matriarch and Teens watch the cooking channel while they eat, because it raises their cooking skill, and satisfies their hunger and fun needs at the same time. Therefore this reward, like the previous one, is a very low priority.

For Painters...

-> Marketable (1,500): increases the value of paintings by 10% to triple the usual value. Choose this one, and the next one, if painting is your primary source of income. Otherwise, skip to Night Owl.

-> Creative Visionary (2,000): 20% higher chance of painting Masterpieces, which are worth A LOT of §.

For Gardeners...

-> Morning Sim (1,000): gain skills 25% faster between 5AM and 12PM. This one is great if gardening is your primary source of income, because your plants will need to be tended to and harvested at around 7AM.

For more information on reward traits, check out Carl’s guide here.

Step 2: Choose How to Make Money

I’m not going to spend much time on this, except to clarify which sources of income/careers are allowed. Only Careers that allow you to choose to ‘Work from Home’ are allowed as long as you always choose that option. I’ll try to list all of them, but I’ve only actually tried the Freelancer and Gardener careers with this challenge.

 Work from home careers are as follows:

-> Freelancer (Basegame): including Digital Artist, Programmer, Writer, Fashion Photographer (Moschino Stuff), and Crafter Branch (Eco Lifestyle). I don’t recommend this career, because I found it difficult to manage a work-life balance.

-> Critic (City Living): Art or Food Critic.

-> Style Influencer (Basegame): Trendsetter or Stylist.

-> Gardener (Seasons): I prefer Botanist over Floral Designer, because I have no interest in creating flower arrangements. This is also the career I choose, because my Matriarch’s are usually gardeners.

-> Civil Designer (Eco-Lifestyle): Civil Planner or Green Technician.

-> Military (Strangerville): Covert Operator or Officer.

-> Social Media (City Living): Public Relations or Internet Personality.

Keep in mind that you DON’T have to do any of these careers, but make sure they compliment your Matriarch’s traits if you do. I’d even recommend avoiding these altogether if you’re starting this challenge for the first time.

I choose to pursue the Gardener career, because I get bored with just gardening on its own. This also gives me an additional source of income on top of my side hustles (i.e. gardening, selling collectables, etc..)

Other sources of income include:

-> Painting

-> Gardening

-> Fishing

-> Digging for collectables

-> Selling honey (beekeeping in Seasons)

There’s probably more, but I only have experience with Basegame and Seasons, because, up until recently, those were the only ones I owned.

If you have Seasons installed...

I recommend you get at least one Money Tree, but you don’t have to spend 5,000 points in the rewards store to get a seed. You can easily get a fully grown tree from the Gallery if you have the § , and don’t consider this cheating. Perfect trees are available, but I prefer to download the '3 x Money Fruit Tree’ from SimBuilder20 instead. As I’ve said before, I prefer to make § gardening, so starting with a lower level tree helps me build up my matriarch’s gardening skill and complete the ‘Freelance Botanist’ aspiration quicker.

TIP: You don’t have to keep spending points or simoleons to get more money trees.

Here’s how to get 5 more Money Trees for FREE: go into build mode and put your money tree into your household inventory when it bears fruit. When you do this, the fruit (i.e. seeds) will be separated from the tree. You can then take them out of the inventory and plant them (and your first tree) somewhere on your lot.

Conclusion

Please do a Google search for more information on anything mentioned in this guide. Carl’s Sims 4 guides are a great resource, but so is Youtube, etc..

If you have any additional tips regarding the topics covered in this post, please include them as a note on this thread. Otherwise, stay tuned for Part II: Your Lot wherein we will discuss things like: choosing which lot to purchase, applying lot traits, and saving money in build/buy mode.