Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how to cage the ghosts? I like the idea of all my little mental patients being surrounded by their dead forebears, but three angry ghosts a night really do a number on my guys. I thought I read somewhere that you can cage the ghosts by surrounding their headstone/urn with water, which seems to work sometimes. But not always....

Any thoughts?

An hour ago I started to play this challenge. Now all I have is an empty asylum with a kitchen full of urns.

Yep, it was the dreaded kitchen fire. My controllable sim left for her brand new Education job at 7am. At 1pm, some idiot in a pink gorilla suit decided to cook lunch, and managed to set the stove on fire. At 3pm, my sim arrived home from work (with a brand new promotion!) to find the stove gone and 3 sims on fire. While attempting to extinguish them, she caught fire herself. The inferno then raged on into the night, wiping out the rest of the kitchen and the inhabitants.

On the plus side though, I changed the lot zoning to community before I exited, so now my neighbourhood has a brand new haunted asylum to visit.

Controlled sim is a Pleasure sim with LTW of professional party goer or whatever it is. And he's a neat freak, so he's thrilled to clean up after everybody else.

Tips:
Put the sink, the toilet and the shower in seperate tiny rooms. I'm glad I thought of that. If they get really desperate, they can take a sponge bath without having to shoo sims out.

And when having your controlled sim serve a meal, stick to chef salad; they can't set that on fire. At least, I don't think so...

I think I'd prefer banning orchards altogether. These aren't supposed to be nice asylums, mind you...

Aargh! Stupid challenge!

I thought I'd give this another go, and because I bought an outdoor grill instead of a stove, noone's burned to death yet. It's all going pretty well, except for one thing.

I've *never* had an alien abduction before, in the whole time I've had the game (over a year). Last night, I had 3, to 3 different sims, all in the space of a sim week. And because I still have 8 sims in the household (like I said, nobody's died yet), not one of them came back pregnant!

This sounds like a lot of fun and I want to play, but I have some (probably) stupid questions:

1. How does the game calculate money earned for the lifetime wants? Is it all the money your sim has ever earned regardless of what you spend? Is there any way to see that total yourself?

2. Is there any way to tell how many days you've spent in game? I can't seem to think of a way you'd keep track, other than letting your sim age, which I'd think you wouldn't want to do in this case.

3. How do you see your sim's lifetime want? I know I've seen it before, but I can't for the life of me remember how.

Sorry for my noobyness.

1. I believe it's the total money they have earned, regardless of money spent.

2. I keep track of weeks; count one for each Monday morning. You can convert it to days when you're done.

3. Hover your mouse pointer over (or click on) the aspiration gauge on the left side of the wants/fears panel.

More noobness:

I clicked and I hovered, and I hovered and I clicked. I still can't get the ltw to show! :confused: All that pops up is that window that tells you your sim's current aspiration, like Bacon Bringer, er whatever. Argh. Does it take a while for your sim to get a ltw, or something? I read somewhere that they get them when they're teens...do they also get them when they're adults? Kind of negates the point of the challenge if I can't figure out what his dern ltw is.

I started playing last night. Since I didn't have a die, I wrote the aspirations and stuff on a piece of paper and drew them randomly for the sims. I drew popularity right off the bat for my controllable sim, and cringed inwardly. I extremely dislike the popularity aspiration. I thought, well, I'll cheat a little, I'll draw again. So I threw it back in there. Popularity again. Drew again. Popularity for a third time, even though I rustled my hand around in the cup for a long time. Argh! So finally I resigned myself to that aspiration for him. Must've been meant to be, LOL.

I'd read all the posts on this thread and I was especially worried about fire. It seems like it's guaranteed to happen, no? So I was dreading it happening with my asylum. But you know what, I'm on the 4th sim day and it hasn't happened once! The crazies have been cooking up a storm, too. Burned TV dinners everywhere! I think it may be because I didn't floor my house. They're living on bare ground right now, LOL. I just didn't have enough money to floor the entire house. Has anybody else noticed this? Maybe it's something about being in enclosed walls with a floor underneath that throws in the chance for fire. I'll floor the house when my sim earns enough and see if I have a fire then.

dfo you have any expansion packs, dulcet?

Yep, all up to and including Pets.

something is wrong, then. Maybe it's a hack?

For which, the weird lack of fires, or the ltw not showing up?

I don't have that many hacks...Pregnancy wear any outfit...no pee puddles outside...insiminator...and no free lunch. And I think that's it.

Hm. I've had a sim or two who didn't have a LTW. I have no idea what causes that. I've just used inSIM to roll them one, but that would probably be cheating for the challenge. But it's a obviously a glitch. Maybe it'd be all right to use inSIM just to fix it and get your controlled sim a LTW?

Maybe it's inSIM that causes it to happen occasionally? That's the only hack I have at all.

Also, fires; I haven't had as many as I thought I would. Which stove did you get for them? 'Cause I splurged and got them the medium priced one, I figured that would increase the value of the meals they made a little bit and they might not need to cook as often. I was wondering if maybe there's a difference in fire hazard between the cheaper and more expensive stoves.

Could be the InSim. I'll probably just cheat to roll him a ltw if I can't get it to show up again, haven't played that house again yet. I'm not planning on posting any scores anyway, I just wanted to do the challenge.

And I bought them the cheapest green Maxis stove. Didn't have funds for anything better. But yeah, I thought it was weird, not a single fire. I was expecting one right off the bat, you know? I haven't even invited the other sims to join mine in watching the yummy channel. The only skill they're gaining by now is from cooking itself.

And can I just say, I'm glad there's a neat freak in my asylum?? LOL, she's almost better than a maid. She's constantly going around cleaning.

I played this some time ago ( no cheating) and I found out this:
Before you leave for work(or just anytime you can), cook a group meal! They'll eat it instead of cooking themselfes

Some ideas that came in handy for me: To stop the uncontrollables cooking, fill up all the bench spaces with Gelatin (I choose this because it's quick and funny lookin'.) And the keep the sink, shower and toilet in separate rooms.

I know! (clueless) but I better ask, how do you know what your sims' life time want is? my keep achieving it, when they do, it just says they achieved their life time wants but before that, I have now clue where on the control panels is stated the sims's life time wants.

On the left side of the Wants/Fears panel, there's a gauge that fills up green or gold or white as your sim achieves wants. Hover your mouse pointer over that gauge and a box should come up telling you all about their life time want.

And when they've achieved one LTW, then they'll get a new one. Which is handy for those of use who hate to let our sims die, hee.

This tip is if you have OFB. Make sure your control sim knows a Servo. My sim fell in love with one. Servo's love cleaning and fixing stuff and gardening ... In exchange for small favours
Whenever the shower starts leaking,i phone Servo to visit.

This is my next challenge.

A thought occurs, this is going to be harder with aging on than off. Anyone else feel this way?

It took me a few days, but I've completed the challenge!

My final score: 194!

I lost two of the crazies (Adibus and Pidget died in a tragic stove fire)
However, my crazies did a LOT of skill building, one of them almost maxed out her cleaning skill. And some of them got quite a few aspiration points, one had 30,000! Don't know how she got them.
What a great challenge. I'm going to try it again soon with a grill so I don't have any dead crazies the next time.

Hah. First run resulted in Sim Death. Everything was fine for about 3 days (even had to go buy groceries) and then Santos I. Asylum (I names all the Inmates with an I middle initial and it's the Asylum family for simplicity) set fire to the stove. Not a problem, I was home and it was in a seperate room due to a tip above - so I thought. Seems Santos (whose affliction is that he thinks he's Santa due to a DMV typo on his license) was standing in front of the door to teh room and I couldn't get in. Repeated attempt to get him to move and/or get in eventually did result in getting in. Sadly, this resulted in Albert's (the playable character) death and the death of one of the other inmates (the one who thought she was in the Foot Clan). I let it run without control for a while, but the fire burned itself out without killing anyone else and there was enough food for a few more days so nothing much more happened. I decided to go back to the save I made when I moved them in.

I'll take another run at this tomorrow.

OK, so another attempt ends in death, although unexpectedly.

There was a fire 1.5 weeks in, and another herd if inmates swarmed around the flaming stove like moths, but no one died. Albert (the playable Sim) call the fire service and the responded - and couldn't get to the stove. As such, it became a pile of ash. Forward planning had nothing else in the room and nothing to either side of a 3x3 room so the ground burned for a bit and of course a Sim had to get into the fire. Fortunately she was extinguished (interestingly, this was the Sim who thought she was a reincarnated Joan of Arc) before she burned to death.
About 2 days later I decided a short-term solution to the mass hunger was to order chinese food and I'd get the groceries in the next day after work. Unfortunately the herd collected around the chinese food tray and 1 sim would stand in front of the food eating a box, blocking any other sim from getting to the food. This resulted in Billie, Le Chef Grande (thinks he's a spanish supervillian who dresses as a chef) starving to death in the kitchen 1 square away from food as other sims ate. Billy was a loss because he was a neat freak who did a lot of the cleaning as well as having recently discovered the easel and had made a painting. His points were going to be missed. I tried to get Albert to beg for his life from Death, but he couldn't get through the crush to get to Death (as it was, Death came through the wall to get to Billie).
The next day didn't start well, as Albert spent the entire morning in the toilet, being prevented from leaving by an inmate which wouldn't stop standing in front of the door (and so Albert wouldn't leave the stall). Fortunately, he had a vacation day. Unfortunately, he decided to wait until the shower room was available again by watching clouds. Wham. Hit by a satellite. First time that ever happened to me. Tried to get an inmate to plead for his life and failed (only cheat).

Should I have achieved the LTW at this point, the score would have been 83.


I think I'll add a new inmate and make a new controlable Sim, and then drop them into the Asylum with the rest of my exsisting freaks for the next time around. I could go back to last save, but then I do now have 2 dead sims on the lot for ghosts and I figure he was meant to go when I think on how he went (Albert). I think I'll keep the satellite on the lawn where it landed as a monument to Albert, with the tombstone sitting in front of it where it was left.

Satellite death of the sane sim = PRICELESS

There should really be a bonus for having such a spectacular end to the Challenge.

I don't have any EPs so I don't have lifetime wants. Does anyone have a list of what they are? I figure that way I'll just pick one and monitor it myself.