The Sims 4: Mixing my favorite TS4 challenges to make my own
For those who are not aware, for a while now (as far back as TS2 at least) the simmers community has been coming up with several different challenges to make your Sims games more... well, challenging. Some of my favorite ones are the Homeless challenge, Runaway Teen challenge, and the Rags to Riches challenge. However, I wanted to keep the elements that I liked from different challenges but drop or change the ones that I didn't like, such as:
- Homeless challenge: I think it's weird to only get a job after you already have a house. How am I supposed to keep up with rent? I thought that being homeless was the whole point of a homeless challenge. Also, while it may sound a bit weird to most people, it is actually possible for someone to be homeless (living in a shelter for instance) but still have a job. So, in my opinion, the job should precede the house, not the other way around.
- Runaway Teen: This challenge encourages you to have your teen skip school. While I understand the roleplaying reasons for it, I actually think that school hours are an increased time for me and, roleplaying wise if you're trying to lay low and not draw attention to yourself, the best thing you can do is try to keep living your life as normally as possible. If all of a sudden you stop going to class, that's exactly what will make the school community suspicious and start meddling where they shouldn't.
- Rags to Riches: R2R has a bunch of family-oriented challenges that I don't think fit what I plan for my sim's future. Instead, I decided to take advantage of the foster family mod to come up with an alternative challenge that suited my needs.
So, here's how I usually approach my "rags to riches homeless runaway teen" challenge.
The World
I haven't played TS4 in a long time, so I'm no longer familiar with the different neighborhoods. As such, I decided to move my sim into Newcrest and fill it with lots from the Gallery. I ended up getting an aquapark, a laundromat (this one includes a pet bath), a gym, a gaming arcade, a cheap motel, a wedding chapel, a camping park to go next to it, a library, a second-hand shop, and the Homeless Joe's Paradise as one of the mini-challenges rewards and a modified version of Starter House "Fresh" as her dream home.
[Update:] One thing that was completely overhauled (a few times, actually) since I posted the original article was the Newcrest map. So these are the lots I'm playing with right now:
- Bridgeview: dumpster (starter lot), restaurant, daycare, and middle school
- Ridgeline Drive: cheap motel, cinema, spa, and laundromat (pet bath included)
- Llama Lagoon: gaming arcade, medieval village, and aquapark
My biggest problem was deciding on which type of lot my homeless sim would live, so I ended up looking up and trying several of them. Should I move them into an empty lot, a park, something else?
You can free to sleep in the benches and cook on the grills that are around the world, but you're not allowed to have them in your home lot from the get-go of the challenge. The rules of these challenges give you a "move your sim into a completely empty lot vibe" but, personally, I find that a bit unrealistic (homeless people sleep in parks, underground parking lots, cemeteries, near monuments and wherever else they can in the cities, they don't just "exist" in a vacant plot of land). I kept thinking that, if it was me, I'd try to settle in a park, where I'd have not only benches available but also access to public bathrooms. However, not having a toilet in your lot at the beginning is part of the challenge.
I also considered having my sim live in the back of a community lot (by turning the lot type to Residential but then using a mod to lock the door for my sim, so that she couldn't actually use the stuff inside), but then I decided I wanted my community lots to actually be usable by the community.
In any case, having benches or picnic tables and grills in my lot from the beginning didn't feel like cheating when my lot was built only a couple feet away from an area that had them as well, so I eventually decided to live in some sort of park maybe with a pond and ended up going with this one.
As for the furniture you can buy later on, here's some cool CC in case you also want to give this challenge a try:
- aged desk
- aged doors and windows
- cardboard box shelter
- crap bucket
- dirty blinds and curtains
- dirty masonry wall
- dirty shower
- dirty stove
- dirty table
- dirty toilet
- dirty walls
- dirty wallpaper & flooring
- dystopian set
- glassless windows
- grunge bedroom
- grunge bed (double)
- grunge bed (single)
- grunge bed (single)
- grunge walls
- grunge walls
- grunge walls
- living room set
- sleeping bag (deco)
- sleeping bag (functional)
- slob decor
- smudged walls
Abandoned City also has a bunch of rusty sets you can download.
Looks restrictions & challenges
Most Sims challenges begin in CAS (Create-a-Sim) so the first thing I did was come up with my homeless concept. I wanted her to be dirty and to wear very simple - and, if possible, tattered and/or dirty - clothes, a reliable warm coat (homeless people usually invest in coats of blankets 'cause it's freezing at night when you don't have a roof over your head) and a loyal companion (it's not uncommon for the homeless to have dogs, and I hadn't messed around with the Pets expansion yet).
So, for the purposes of this challenge, the first thing I did (as the mods-obsessed simmer that I am) was to download some dirty-looking clothes such as this set (pants as pajamas & shirt as the main top for most outfits), this dress (formal, party), this loincloth (swimwear), busted sneakers and dirty sneakers (athletic, hot weather), and dirty boots and a warm jacket (cold weather). To add to the dirty look, I also got upper-body and dirty bare feet. Since I'd be playing with a dog I also got a TS3>TS4 conversion of the homeless pet set.
Here are a few extra clothes for these challenges, in case you're interested:
I wanted to recreate the "runaway homeless child" challenge I came up with for The Sims 3, but it turns out you can't have a child living by themselves in The Sims 4, so I had to make my lonely sim a Teen as her minimum age instead.
The rules from the Homeless challenge say that buying some new clothes and getting a new haircut costs $500. As an additional challenge, I decided that you can't buy new clothes unless you own a dresser where to store them (if you have folded clothes or wall-mounted dressers, you can use this neat tutorial to make your own functional walk-in closet -- this tutorial can also be used to make pantries; alternatively, you can use this script mod to change the behavior of Maxis' dressers instead), which means you need to have the house permit before you change your looks.
Money restrictions & challenges
All the 3 challenges mentioned above have one thing in common: you're supposed to start with nothing and climb your way up (go "from zero to hero" sort of thing) so, after having your sims already in their home lot, you're supposed to change their money to $0. If you have the UI Cheats Extension, this can be easily done by right-clicking your sims simoleon amount, typing 0 and setting their funds to that amount in the mod's console (you can use the same method to give/take more money from the mini-challenges).
You're not allowed to have a job until later on, so you need to rely on alternative ways to make money (sell collectibles and frogs found around the world, dumpster-dive, sell paintings, play/perform for tips, etc). In one of my test saves, I played around with the idea of selling crafted furniture as well but, after a while, having the huge recycler and fabricator on my mostly-empty lot was breaking my immersion of the challenge. Alternatively, I am considering simply having these in a community lot instead.
Speaking of test saves, my sim won the lottery in one of them and it was utter chaos. While it was fun to move to my dream house, redecorate it and play in it for a while, it killed the challenge. so no more playing in the lottery as well.
I also considered not selling things directly from the inventory (from the From Dumpster to Deluxe challenge) as well - I could instead sell my stuff at the Flea Market or start my own yard sale, which is apparently a thing you can do since City Living I never knew about. The problem with that is, as per my own rules, acquiring the table to do my own yard sales would cost not only the price of the actual table ($400) but also an extra $250 for the "sales permit" I'd have to pay the Townhall. That's a whopping total of 650 simoleons, which will take forever to get to early on in the game (which means my dog would've died from starvation by then). The other problem with this approach is that the Flea Market doesn't happen that often, which means my inventory would always be filled with crap that would just sit there wasting space because I wouldn't be able to sell it, and that would start triggering my anxiety. When it comes to selling on retail, it seems that in order to sell on retail your sim actually needs to own and run a retail store to be able to sell stuff. It's not like you can just download a shopping mall from the gallery, put it down, and then have your sims sell to the shopkeepers or something. I have no intention of running my own business so selling via retail is also not an option. Selling directly from the inventory it is... (for roleplaying purposes, I will only sell stuff when my sim visits the second-hand shop).
School/Job restrictions & challenges
The Runaway Teen says you should skip class, but I disagree. School-time, homework, projects... they all add an increased challenge to me. For that reason, and the reasons provided in the intro of this article, I decided to let my teen attend school.
The rules of the Homeless challenge state that you can't get a job until you buy some new clothes, get a hairstyle... and own your own house. That felt a bit odd to me so I changed the rule to "no full-time jobs" instead. Their "domestic worker" mini-challenge also hit me as being something odd. You can't get a steady part-time job, but you can volunteer to randomly clean the houses of people you've just met in exchange for some spare coin? That seemed weird enough on its own and felt even weirder when paired with the Runaway Teen challenge. So, I decided to replace that with simply getting an Odd Job (which requires having at least a $200 phone).
Since joining the Scouts counts as an after-school activity and not really as a job and you don't earn any money by being a scout, I decided to have my sim join the scouts just for the extra fun and to give her a roleplaying alibi for being at the park all the time.
AS for getting a regular job, I decided that my sim couldn't have a regular part-time job until she had new clothes, lived on her new shack-lot, and had a building permit (and maxed Scouting first). And that she couldn't get a regular full-time job until she aged into a young adult and moved into her dream house. I have also lowered the minimum skill-level required to get a job from 3 to 2 since I have a mod that makes it harder to level up your skills.
my homeless simself and her dog, Misha
Socialization restrictions & challenges
The Runaway Teen adds an extra challenge regarding who your sim can interact with: only children and teenagers. The roleplaying reasoning behind avoiding young adults, adults, and elders is that they will report you to the authorities.
As per the "the community wants to help" option from the Homeless challenge, if you can befriend 5 sims, the community will build you "an ugly shack with the cheapest furniture available: a fridge, counters, toilet, sink, shower, dining table and chairs, sofa and a couple of single beds. NO stoves, skill objects, TVs, computers, fancy decorations etc". To match the Runaway Teen, I decided that I'd have to befriend specifically 5 teens, since children are way less likely to have the means to help put together the shelter. For my shack-shelter I used the Homeless Joe's Paradise from the gallery and I decided that, as an additional challenge, my sim could save up the $7220 needed to actually move there and make it their new permanent lot.
I decided that there is a group of adults my sim could interact with - the stall merchants around the world and at festivals. Why? Because if instead of buying something yourself you always ask a friend to go there and purchase it for you, people start to get suspicious.
Another decision I made was that, after my sim had their phone and could finally accept calls and messages, they were free to accept going out or visiting someone, but they could never accept to have friends (or classmates) over to their lot until they actually had a proper house (aka, their dream home, not the Joe house), in order for other sims not to find out they are homeless. The exception here would be the 5 teens who will help build the shack ('cause how would they help you without knowing?)
The Rags to Riches adds additional challenges such as getting a boyfriend/girlfriend, getting married, and starting your own family. As much as I liked the extra challenge, I had no plans of getting my sim married; however, I did want to try to play with some kids (babies, toddlers or children) in the lot as well, for the extra challenge - but I didn't want to simply adopt them, 'cause I didn't want them to become part of my family. As such, I decided to use the foster family mod instead The plan is to foster a cat or kitten while my sim is still a teen and later on start to foster children as well.
Extra restrictions & challenges
The phone: The Runaway Teen states that you're not allowed to have a phone and suggests leaving it in silence mode. I disagree. Let's keep some consistency with our theme here and try to "live life as normally as possible" in order to not raise suspicion (I don't know many teens these days that don't have a phone). So, will keep our phone in silence at the beginning... until we buy ourselves a phone.
Different phones will have extra costs and, while phones with more and better functionalities can be quite useful, they can also be rather expensive.
- $100: phone can be used to make/receive calls and to send/receive text messages and plan social events
- $200: phone can also be used to play games, take photos and access the notebook
- $300: phone can also be used to access the internet (add to Simstagram story, check social media timeline, check total followers, check scholarship applications, find a job/odd job, buy a retail store/vet clinic restaurant, show bills information, purchase gifts, browse Plopsy, Simstagram pet)
The dog: Adding a dog to the family was a good way to make my sim feel a bit less lonely, but it proved to be an extra challenge as well. Not only the very first simoleons my sim made went towards buying pet stuff, I also had to endure the regular expenses of refilling the bowl with fresh food, as well as the vet expenses every time the dog got sick (which, thanks to the bush, was quite often).
The lot: In order to start building/buying furniture on your lot, you need to first get a building permit (-$500). However, I decided that my sim wouldn't buy any major furniture. Instead, they would move into the community-made shack and use their building permit to add just get some extra basic furniture that they couldn't carry on themselves, such as a laundry washtub and clothesline.
Rags to Riches has some requirements for the lot. One of them is for it to have a swimming pool. My sim's dream house is in a 20x15 lot, I don't have room to spare for a pool. Also, I have a massive aquapark in my neighborhood. Plus, pools can actually be dangerous when you have toddlers and tiny puppies/kittens crawling around. As such, I decided to replace this requirement by having a training area for the dogs in the back and a playground for the kids in the front instead. In any case, I might move it to a bigger lot later down the line, so that I can actually have enough space at the back to add the swimming pool.
Edit: I recently found out about two other challenges that caught my interest: the Orphan Challenge, the Raise Them Right challenge, and the Tiny Living Challenge.
From a storytelling/roleplaying perspective, the Orphan Challenge has some inconsistencies (if you're "an orphan but not a runaway", why do you need to start from 0 building your house and buying everything in it? Wouldn't you already be living at your parents' old house?) but the idea of having your teen start with a younger sibling that they need to take care of is a nice way to add a little extra challenge, so I might add that extra element as well. Another option, would be to simply incorporate the Raise Them Right challenge instead (sort of like the old Pregnant Teen challenge). So, instead of just starting with a child on the household right off the bat, I would need to get my sim pregnant and then raise the kid.
The Tiny Living Challenge also seems like another fun challenge I might add to the mix. It requires you to make a house that is only 5x5! This might work great to give my homeless kid(s) a "starter house" to own before they save up enough money to move into the Fresh dreamhouse.
Challenge Step-by-step
So, basically, here's my list of goals for my "runaway homeless teen" challenge:
- buy a cardboard pet bed (-$1)
- buy a food/water bowl (-$30)
- buy a dog bathtub (-$100)
- buy a sleeping bag (-$80)
- buy a phone (-$100)
- join the Scouts
- buy a guitar (-$600)
- get a sales permit (-$250)
- buy the Come and Get it Street Store table (-$400)
- buy a knitting kit (-$55)
- buy a yoga mat (-$125)
- buy a better phone (-$200)
- do some Odd Jobs for money
- buy an easel (-$40)
- buy The Street Gallery object (-$400)
- buy a camera (-$85)
- buy a bike (-$100)
- buy a smartphone (-$300)
- buy a laptop (-$1.000)
- earn 5 points in two skills (+$100) - repeatable
- earn 10 points in a skill (+$300) - repeatable
- befriend 5 teenagers & move into the "Joe starter" lot (-$7.220)
- get a building permit (-$500)
- get a laundry wash tub (-$100)
- get a clothes-rack (-$75)
- get a part-time job as a babysitter (after maxing the Scouting path)
- enroll as a foster family for pets & adopt a cat/kitty
- move into the remodeled "starter house Fresh" $32.237
- age into a young adult
- enroll as a foster family for kids
- foster and successfully raise a kid (with good grades/traits, etc)
And that's it. After all these steps the challenge is complete and my sim is free to do whatever.
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