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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 20th Jul 2019 at 6:24 PM
Default Build your own "Not So Berry" Challenge!
Many of you may be familiar with the Not so Berry challenge. The goal of this challenge is to experience new gameplay with some fun twists. However, these new experiences are tailored around the challenge creator's unexperienced gameplay, and therefore isn't right for everyone. So with this in mind, I was inspired to create a new challenge; the Build your own Berry challenge!

The idea here is that YOU set the rules, traits, careers, goals, and aspirations for every Sim--and you get to pick their colors, of course! (Or choose not to play with berry Sims at all, that's fine too.) This way, you essentially create your own challenge that forces you to play with aspects of the game that you personally haven't played with. Of course, there are some guidelines on how to set it all up so that it is still challenging and interesting, all of which are outlined below!

This challenge has five sections for you to customize--Traits, Aspirations, Careers, Skills, and Achievements. As with the original Not so Berry challenge, your Sims must complete their aspiration and career. Skills and achievements are goals that your Sims have to complete in addition to their careers and aspirations! You should try to pick 3-5 extra goals (skills and achievements) per Sim. More information on how to choose these is below!

I built this challenge by sorting every trait, aspiration, career, skill, and achievement into one of five different categories. I tried to keep the selections dispersed fairly evenly, and not everything matched just one category perfectly, so there may be a few things that seem a bit oddly placed. Just give it a try, and if there's anything that seems inherently wrong to you, let me know! These categories are:
  • Red - Self
    - Selections in this category will be self-serving (but not always bad!) in nature.
  • Yellow - Community
    - Anything that is social or communal in nature will be found here!
  • Green - Others
    - Here you'll find selections that are selfless or helpful to others.
  • Blue - Knowledge
    - Knowledge-based selections and those that support a curious lifestyle are in this category.
  • Purple - Passion
    - These are the things your Sim is passionate about! Be it art, music, or just strong emotions, this is where you'll find it.

    * Something to note, these colors aren't meant to decide your Sims' berry colors! They're simply a visual indicator of the category differences.

Having everything sorted into categories helps us to make more interesting and well-rounded Sims. Sure, you COULD make an artist who loves art, is creative, a perfectionist, and lives and breathes art 24/7, but where's the fun in that? The goal here is to step outside the box, and we'll do that by enforcing some parameters with our new categories.
  • Sims may only have one trait from each category.
  • Try to select skills from at least two different categories.
  • Try to select achievements from at least two different categories.
  • Completing collections counts as its own category.
  • Aim for 3-5 total goals between your skills and achievements.
  • Keep the lifespan on "Normal".
  • Every Sim must complete the aspirations and achievements, and max the careers and skills assigned to them.
  • You have to give Sims the traits selected, and cannot use the re-traiting potion.
Lastly, you can choose from four different starting conditions for your challenge. Choose one that is different from what you normally do!
  • Rags to Riches
    - Start your first generation with Rags to Riches rules. Move them onto an empty lot, and use cheats to set their money to $0!
  • Standard
    - Start out with the normal money that the game gives you, no cheats allowed!
  • Free Real Estate
    - You can use the Free Real Estate cheat to buy your first house, but can't use money cheats afterwards!
  • Motherlode
    - Use money cheats all you want!

Now, you may be thinking that this is a lot to keep track of--and you would be right! That's why I made a little spreadsheet on Google Sheets to help you out! Use of this spreadsheet is highly recommended, since that's the original idea I had in mind for this challenge. If you really don't want to use it, then read below for the list of where everything falls in each category.

When using the spreadsheet, you have to first make a copy for your personal use. The link will take you to the master copy, which can only be edited by me. Please don't send me messages or e-mails requesting access, I won't respond. To make a copy, simply click "File" and "Make a Copy". If you want to use it in another program, choose "File" and "Download As >".

The first page of the spreadsheet, "Overview", is where you can look at all the different goals, traits, etc. at once. This is set up to automatically fill in as you set up the other sections, so check in on it last! Due to how this page is set up, you cannot click and drag selections if you want it to work correctly. If one of the boxes on the Overview has "#REF!" in it, it's likely because you moved cells around instead of copy-pasting them.

You may notice that the spreadsheet has space for 20 Sims, even though the original challenge only has 10 generations. This is just extra space that you can fill in if you want to. Feel free to make as many (or as few) generations as you want! You can also use it to make spouses who are part of the challenge, which is a great option if you find you have a LOT of new things to try!

And... that's it! This challenge will take some time to set up, since you're basically creating an entire challenge. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions! A huge thanks to lilsimsie and alwaysimming for creating the original Not so Berry challenge that inspired this one! Thanks for reading, and happy Simming!

Spreadsheet link: Here
Placement of traits, aspirations, careers, skills, and achievements:
Traits:


Aspirations:


Careers:


Skills:


Achievements:
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Test Subject
#2 Old 25th Nov 2019 at 5:11 AM
This sounds like a ton of fun! I'm so going to try this, thank you making this challenge! Have an amazing day!
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