To be clear, "You are not allowed to place items outside the walls of your home or use seeds until you finish the Mandatory Steps for Building a Garden. ":

This makes sense for the seeds and perhaps decorative trees and shrubs but is this disqualifying decorative items, furniture, terrain tools, recreation (pools/play sets), etc.?

Will I be able to start building a garden even if I have all the required items in ONE room? As in, not sectioned off into separate spaces.

I'm thinking with a few tweaks that this could be tailored to fit sims 3 as well.

I am doing this challenge right now If any of you speaks polish this is a link to my Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9q...L6PKgJW_Pn29h5E
I absolutely LOVE this challenge

So I found this challenge today and decided to start it. I am hoping I am posting in the right spot. Please let me know if I am not.

Tonya is a young adult living on the streets for now. She has some property but not enough funds to start building and still needs to complete her Mandatory handiness skill to level 5 (we are almost there), & logic is level 3 but we are still working on getting some more done. I have all expansion packs and all but one stuff pack so I am doing everything I can to follow as if it was a basic game. I have been in game play with Tonya for 1 year now it is starting to snow once again, so she is napping @ the library or the gym when she can. Energy is staying low so I am hoping I can start building the house soon. Collecting ad selling like crazy is all I am doing at this moment. Enjoy the photos.

I love this challenge! I've done it so many times and I love adding my own spin to it! Would it be alright if I posted my own version of this and kept a lot of your basic rules and formatting? I'd love to create my own variation and add some things that I enjoy doing in my game! <3

This challenge inspired me, and I decided to add modifications I thought of. My household is made up of four related sims that are merfolk. Sulani is an interesting environment because of all the water, and I noticed that things like a pool can get complicated when you have an ocean front property. The other thing I added was degrees from the University Expansion. Because I'm starting with a family, every sim needs to meet the skill requirement before construction can be completed. Each room costs more money because each sim brings additional income into the household. Each sim will not have their bathrooms or bedrooms until they develop the skills to unlock them. I also modified the levels to better reflect what each skill unlocks and the corresponding room.

Mandatory Steps
Before you can complete the main goals for this challenge you must meet the qualifications listed below. Once you have completed one of these goals you can move on to the main goal it is paired with.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Bathroom :
• You must have a level 2 in the handiness skill and 3 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.

Level 2 Handiness Unlocks the first Bathroom Upgrades.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Bedroom:
• You must have a level 4 in the handiness skill and 4 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.

Level 4 is an Upgrade Milestone

Mandatory Steps for Building a Kitchen/ Dining Room:
• You must have a level 5 in the handiness skill, a level 5 in Cooking, and 6 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.

Level 5 Handiness unlocks the first Kitchen upgrades.
Level 5 Cooking makes cooking result in minimal fires with better quality food. Gourmet Cooking is unlocked.
Level 6 Logic is an experience milestone.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Family Living Room:
• You must have a level 7 in the handiness skill and 7 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Study:
• You must have a level 8 in the handiness skill and 9 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Pool (or Hot Tub and Bar):
• You must have a level 10 in the handiness skill and 10 levels in logic.
• You must pay a fine of $500 to the city for noise disturbances before you begin building.
(In Sulani with a waterfront property that does not allow the construction of pools below ground) Hot Tub and Bar:
• You must have a level 10 in the handiness skill, a level 4 in Mixology, and 10 levels in logic.
• You must pay $500 for the blueprint.

Mandatory Steps for Building a Garden:
• You must complete the Mandatory Steps for Building a Home. (For me, it would be every room at least once.)
• You must have your handiness skill up to level 7 and your gardening skill to level 5 before you can begin building or placing items outside.
• You must have at least one bedroom with a bed, a bathroom with a toilet and shower, a living room/kitchen (this can be one room but you must have these basic items) fridge, counter, sink, stove, table, chair, fire alarm and a couch.
• Blueprints cost $500.

Mandatory Steps for Getting a Job:
• You must have a home address before applying for a job. Complete the Mandatory Steps for Building a Home.
• Have one of each in your home: a bed, a toilet, a shower, a sink, a stove, a counter, a chair and a fridge.
• Pay $1000 for a college degree to begin your career.
(With University, I would get a degree from the university first).

Because my sims are mermen, I might ignore the bedroom and substitute it with acquiring: Cold Acclimation, Heat Acclimation, Storm Chaser, Heatproof, and Iceproof. The idea is to make them immune to weather conditions so they can use their ability to sleep in the ocean as a substitute for a bedroom. They do have the ability to change the weather however they want in the ocean, but I figured that this could work. The acclimation traits can help buffer the effects of weather while other lifetime rewards are acquired.

Also, I think it would be acceptable to drop the financial cost because weather immunity costs 6000 lifetime rewards points per sim.

The other thing I noticed was the self employment option for a career aligns with most of the ways you can make money without a career. Self-employment levels require becoming self-employed to gain career levels.

Edit: Debating on whether or not new clothes from CAS should cost something. Maybe $100 per sim.

So, I've managed to get 4 sims to level 2 handiness and level 3 logic. The merfolk ability to sleep in a body of water whether it's a pool or the ocean itself has been a tremendous boost to energy. All four of them have cold and heat acclimation with two of them with the storm chaser trait. I've built two bathrooms while deducting $500 for each bathroom. I've also deducted $400 per outfit updates. That's $100 per sim, and I think that's relatively normal when it comes to buying new clothes.

I'm trying to follow my inspired idea, and I won't consider their home lot to be a proper home until I have all the weather adaptation traits and rooms.

It's actually fun and interesting to see how things play out. All 4 have brought in income, but because I'm requiring every sim in the household to meet the requirements before developing the lot, deducting more for new clothes and every new lot development, and requiring the lifetime rewards to advance, my income hasn't been able to stay high for too long. When I built the bathrooms, I lost like 90% of what I saved up.

I've also decided that my sims can only sleep on their home lot or a lot connected to the ocean. The only exceptions would be if my sims are barred from leaving a lot because of an event that prevents them from leaving. Certain party locations have bodies of water they can sleep in, and these events usually happen late at night. For merfolk, any body of water can count as a bed and fill the sleep need more effectively. The only limiter to this is how they respond to weather. Cold Temperatures and Thunderstorms without reward traits can make this more of a problem. In other words, I would say building a pool on a public lot can be considered creating a bed on a public lot.

It turns out that Microscope Slides can be used to make money via the creation of prints. I think this is true for the Telescope as well. $220 per uncommon and $95 per common. The slide creation gives logic experience. It's something that can be done by taking plant samples while harvesting. There's also an option to do this with Fossils as well.

Are there any requirements to fishing? Can I fish for money at start?

Are there any new rules or mandatory steps that include the university expansion pack?!

Hi there! I've recently started this challenge as well and am having SO MUCH FUN, especially with the game continuously making it so much harder for me! Recently I had triplets when I just wanted a second kid to complete the family and keep on getting filthy rich! But now I just have no clue how they'll manage keeping up with a family of 6 (4 kids, 1 toddler... 3 babies... HELP!!) when only the spouse has a career while mum is... selling fishes at the beach^^
Anyway, the struggle is both fun and stressful which is great

I thought I'd answer some of the questions I saw on this topic and maybe ask some of my own..





For me, the rules meant that you couldn't build or put ANYTHING on the lot before completing the Steps for building a home, including just putting movable objects like tents and stuff on the lot. You could have them in your sims' inventory, put it just cannot be placed on the lot before completing the Steps for building a home. But that's only for the first stage though, in my opinion. After which you can use whatever decorative items you want on the lot, trees, grass, whatever, as long as it's not related to gardening (you most likely cannot plant seeds, place flower pots and stuff, or start building a greenhouse or some type of indoors garden). It makes sense to me that you can use decorative items and landscape because it doesn't produce any income, while you can't start building you futur garden because that will in fact be a future source of income.
To start building/planting/harvesting a garden, I figured you had level up the gardening and handiness skills, pay 500 and have three separate rooms in your house. It makes sense to me because you already need a "starter house" to have a spouse move in right, or to get a job, but it can pretty much be a 1 room studio apartment at that point as long as you have all the required furniture. So to me, the Steps to building a garden are about improving the house a little bit and making it bigger which is why it states that you need three or four distinct rooms: bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen (possibly combined). In other words, you house can no longer be a cut little studio shed type of thing. Keep in mind that this is the "rags to riches" challenge so you sim should aspire to a bigger house lol.
I hope this helps you guys!

Now, my question is actually regarding the spouse. So, I married my starter sim and moved the husband in, respecting all the steps. But then I got a bit confused when I wanted to get him a job because it said he needed to complete the Steps for getting a job, and one of the steps is completing the Steps for building a house, which to me doesn't make sense. In fact, why would he need all that skill when the house is already built (handiness and logic), why would he need to pay for noise disturbance when we're not particularly extending the house... See where I'm going with this? So I just thought, well maybe he doesn't need to complete that part of the steps to getting a job right, maybe that's only for the starter sim (but nothing actually says that in the rules so I might have cheated!)... So I just ended up paying the tuition fees and calling it a day, but what are your thoughts on that? Do you think the spouse (and in my case maybe the next spouse 'cause I'm actually sick of the current one) should have to complete every single stage exactly like the starter sim? And what storytelling logic do you find there if he does?

So I think only a Simmer could appreciate the irony of this...

I have been Simming for many many years, I always try to play a "legit - no cheats" game, but usually start to get bored, give them money and wheeee!
Last week my 18 yr old daughter was very sick (not Covid as we feared) so I decided to try this challenge and again do it legit, so far so good, she was at the point of living in an apartment, has a career in Culinary, getting her gardening skills up with plants inside, has a bf etc. So today in her world, it was Lottery Day and guess what, she won the lottery! Rosebud, $1,000,000.00!!!
So she has ditched everything, gone to live on an Island off the grid, is going to become a Conservationist and maybe a Mermaid too!

I'm doing this now, though I'm also doing the 100 baby challenge at the same time with another family. My matriarch is an elder now, so while I settle the family into a new home in Selani (new Matriarch was a toddler and a mermaid, so i thought that would be the best place to raise her), I"d start this challenge with another sim.

My rags to riches sim is named Haven Camp. She lives in Sulani near the volcano. I know it's not the most expensive lot but it was empty and the most expensive one she could afford with starter funds. I also thought it would be interesting to deal with volcano fallout. It just so happens there's a waterfall she can shower in and the crashed plane lot was empty, so I made it into a public park, but removed the beds and shower from it. Other public areas have a fridge and stove, so I left those, but she's mostly grilling. I bought her a tent to sleep in and removed the funds from what she's scavenged. She's mostly gotten money from gardening and fishing and digging up fossils/whatever from finding them in her adventures.

I'm at the point where she's made herself a starter home with a toilet, shower, bed, bedside table (she made this with the woodworking table), mini-fridge, and microwave, counter, and sink and a living room chair. Working on making more money so she can extend her house so she can get a job. I applied for a scholarship to University, so I may send her there first before getting her a job rather than paying the 1000 Simoleans.

I don't think a challenge has ever made me as angry as this one did. Nearly every aspect of it goes beyond fun gameplay right into annoying territory.

I love the idea of the Rags to Riches challenge!
I noticed on Youtube that someone actually adapted Simish Gamer's original rules and is trying to recreate it with the new Journey to Batuu pack. The videos are called Rags to Resistance.

I came up with another optional challenge for this challenge (love it btw).

I wanted my sim to have only everyday clothes and be pushed to buy every other outfit (slowly going form raggedy clothes to pretty ones as well). I built a clothes store for another one of my sims however you can only buy full outfits there which doesn't really work for me. So now whenever I want a new outfit I delete 200 out of my sims' account as if they bought it it makes it really cool becaude now clothes are something you have to earn as well.

I've seen this done on youtube by our favourite simmers. We going to try it now we know the rules. Thank you all for posting the rules. I'm going to try the Rays to riches with the designer pack.

Hello! I am redoing this challenge to add in more features and tasks. Would you mind if I adopted some or most of this idea??

To anyone still doing this challenge I have an updated version here that I may be tweaking parts of very soon https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/di...-updated#latest

I’ve just started the challenge and saw you’ve done an update so I’m excited to give that a go too!
I’ve got a completely monkey brained question to ask you- do we build the home with what simoleons you have at a time and as you earn more you build more until you complete that goal? I’ve got my logic and handiness skills and ready to build but stupidly the question stumped me
Thanks for your work on the challenge!

I'm doing it with a young adult with the last name Schepman.

I'm starting challenge on February 6, 2022 - I've looked at SimmishGamers tweaks linked in her comment above. I'll do my best to update.

Anyone still playing this?