The posts got a little out of order. The original post is #117 by Scout.

Created by Scout this challenge has you stuck in a mental hospital with 7 other crazies, trying to get out as fast as you can. Getting out consists of obtaining your lifetime want - and you control only one sim in this challenge, while the others run free - perhaps to their peril. Below are the rules, feel free to post any questions, discussion, tips, pleas for help and strategy talk here!


Asylum

You have been committed to a run down mental health facility against your will. In order to prove that you are fit to rejoin society and earn your freedom, you must achieve the goal your psychiatrist has set for you – your lifetime want.

The catch? You need to achieve your goal as quickly as possible, while keeping 7 other patients, who you don't know and are out of your control, alive and as happy as possible. Add to that budget cutbacks leading to a lack of decent furniture and limited supplies, and your task gets harder.

SETUP

Create a group of 8 unrelated adult sims.

For the first sim (the only sim you will be allowed to control) assign them an aspiration using this chart and a die:

1 – Knowledge
2 – Fortune
3 – Romance
4 – Popularity
5 – Pleasure
6 – Roll Again

For the 7 sims you won't control use this chart and a die:

1 – Knowledge
2 – Fortune
3 – Romance
4 – Popularity
5 – Pleasure
6 – Family

You can choose the personality for the sim you will control, but must randomly assign personalities to the other 7 adults. Of course, if you really like randomness you may assign your controllable sim a random personality as well.

You can use the method from the Prosperity Challenge to randomly assign the personalities. Roll the die once to choose the set of astrological signs and a second time to choose the sign from that set. Keep the personality traits as they default for the sign.

Set Choice:
Odd (1,3,5) = Set 1
Even (2,4,6) = Set 2

Set 1:
1 = Aries
2 = Taurus
3 = Gemini
4 = Cancer
5 = Leo
6 = Virgo

Set 2:
1 = Libra
2 = Scorpio
3 = Sagittarius
4 = Capricorn
5 = Aquarius
6 = Pisces

Choose all other aspects of their personality and appearance as you want. Again, you may random it up if you want.

Remember you can never control the 7 other sims. You can't even look at any of their information after creating them. You can not know their ltw, their current wants and fears, or the status of their motives. In other words, once on the lot, never click on their pic. Also you may not ask them any questions or on a date, take them off the lot or get them jobs. They are heavily medicated patients and unlike you, they don't have day passes.

On the other hand, you may ask them to join you in activities or use influence (or as I like to call it – mind control) to get them to do things. However, there is a bonus if you never use influence.

You may only leave the asylum to work. You may have other sims visit. You can even date other sims as long as you don't leave the lot. You may influence visitors (you will lose the no influence bonus) to do anything, including cleaning, gardening and repairing.

No maid, no gardener, no repair person, no exterminator. You can not have a baby or move anyone else into the lot even if someone else dies.

If anyone dies (other patients or visitors) you must leave their tombstone on the lot and allow the ghost to roam freely. And congrats, you now have a haunted asylum. And if a patient dies, you must delete 1 bed and 1 seat (until you are down to 1 bed and 1 seat).

LOT/BUILDING

Choose any size lot you wish. You can also use a pre-made house if you want. Keep in mind, the design of the house matters more than it normally would in playing and you can’t redesign once you start. A little thought and planning will make a world of difference.

These aren’t free range patients so you must give them a building. All objects, excluding plants, décor and lighting must be placed inside of a building.

You may cheat for money to build but when you are done building before starting to play, you must reduce your funds to 100 simoleons. You may then NOT buy anything else from build or buy mode during the game except to replace stolen or repossessed items as long as you buy the exact same item.

If you do not cheat for money to build, you do not need to reduce your funds prior to playing and may continue to buy any décor items as the game continues, such as windows, flooring, wallpaper, pictures, plants, lights and pretty knickknacks. You may NOT buy anything that serves any purpose other than décor – including surfaces, seating, walls, doors and skill objects. The only exception is that you may replace stolen or repossessed items as long as you buy the exact same item.

OBJECTS

Custom content is allowed as long as it conforms to all other rules and has a reasonable price. All objects must meet certain requirements.

Beds – No bed may have over a 3 in energy or comfort. You may have up to

1 double bed and 3 single beds

OR

0 double beds and 5 single beds

Chairs/Couches – There can only be total seating for 6. That includes couches, lounges and chairs. If you have a dining table with 4 chairs then you may not use a couch that seats 3. You may have only 1 piece of napable furniture, so if you have a couch then you may not have a recliner and vice versa. No seating may have over a 3 in energy or 8 in comfort.

Plumbing – Only 1 toilet, 1 sink and 1 tub. For the tub you can have a tub or a shower or a tub/shower combo.

Skill Items – Only 1 skill building item per skill type. No different types of items that build the same skill or multiples of the same item. For example, you can have a painting easel or a piano but not both since they both build creativity. You can have one bookcase but not two bookcases. The only exception is to allow for a tv. You can have a tv and a bookcase even though both build cooking.

Entertainment - You can have a tv or a radio but not both and whichever you choose can not be more than 7 in fun. There can be no other entertainment items in the house – no mp3 player, no computer, no handheld games, no video games, no pool table, etc. This ain't The Ritz.

Electronics – You can have as many phones as you want. But due to the shoddiness of the asylum, no burglar alarm, no smoke detector and no sprinklers.

Appliances – You must have an accessible stove for the patients. How else can they play with fire?

Aspiration/Career Rewards – not allowed.

Misc – You can not use any lockable doors. And no rearranging of furniture to reserve or use something for yourself. For example, you can not move the tv into a bedroom and turn it on just to get an uncontrollable patient out of bed so you can sleep in the bed. Nor can you remove a door so others can't gain access to the bathroom so you can use it when you come home from work.

Most Importantly – You may not buy any objects that serve any purpose other than décor after beginning the challenge – including surfaces, seating, skill objects. You may buy windows, flooring, wallpaper, pictures, plants, lights and pretty knickknacks after starting. So choose wisely grasshopper. The exceptions being that you may replace stolen or repossessed items as long as you buy the exact same item.

Cheats/Hacks – not allowed with the exception of aging off.

SCORING

Once you achieve your ltw you calculate your score.

You begin with 100 points then:

The Good:

* never used influence = + 20 points
* each skill point your living fellow patients have at the end (you can look now) = + 1 point
* each 1000 aspiration points your living fellow patients have at the end (add them all together and then round up) = + 1 point
* each friend of the household = + 1 point

The Bad:

* every sim day that you remained institutionalized = - 1 point
* each roommates death = - 20 points
* each visitor death = – 30 points

Questions that have been asked:

1) When does a day end? 8 a.m. everyday equals 24 sim hours. So excluding that first 8 a.m. Monday when you start just count all the 8 a.m.'s you have at the asylum.

2) Can we buy a car? Sure, but remember you can only drive to work.

3) Can I cheat for money? The rules say no. But, you should also have fun. So if you need to do that to set up the place then go ahead. But once you've done your initial setup you should remove any remaining money. And if you post a score make sure you notate the money cheat at the beginning.

4) Can we keep date gifts? No. It really gives an unfair advantage to Nightlife players. So put them into your inventory and if you manage to survive and choose to play your sim in the land of the free you can take them with you.

original post

this forum is for tips, right? Well, I've got one- set the TV to the yummy channel, start watching, and ask the inmates who aren't doing anything useful to join. They'll be less likely to set fires later on, and won't stand in the hallway clogging up the paths.

I did this challenge a couple months ago and it was my favorite one so far. I don't usually stick exactly to the rules of challenges, but bend them a bit so that I'm still having fun.

I do have one piece of advice -- don't put a sink in the kitchen. Some sims will keep trying to bathe themselves with it, causing everyone to evacuate the kitchen every time, no matter how close to starving they are. Didn't have any deaths because of it, but it was super annoying.

Thanks sweet_cobun. I'm a rule bender myself plus I hate to keep score. Hopefully you didn't have to bend too many rules to have fun.

Nope, I think pretty much the only changes I made were giving everyone a bed and allowing my controlled sim to have her own locked suite. Well, okay, I guess I peeked at their wants sometimes, too. I might try doing it a bit stricter next time.

Ugh, I decided to give this a go, but not 12 hours in, my stupid lil sims decide to burn down the kitchen! I forgot to add a phone too, so they all tried to roast marshmallows while standing in the fire. (pic: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j...e3_f29efc3c.jpg - I know I can post it, but don't want to clutter the thread)

I did get lucky and my controllable sim is knowledge and has a Lifetime Want is to max his skills. I figured that would be an easy one, or getting to the top of a career track. But I either under estimated the destructive power of sims, or over estimated the "brain power" of sims. Man, my dog has more brains.

That being said, I'm going to re-start.

So I just re-built the place, and decided to add one thing to it - a banquit table! I didn't see any "don't use" so I'm assuming I can, if not, I'll take it as one of those "rule bending" things.

i have a question it says to create 8 people and not control them. So i am wondering how do i not control all 8? Since if i turn free will off to control my person then the rest of the 7 people will just stand around. And when i play with free will on i cant control my person they dont do what i want them too be doing.

sweet_cobun, thats not bad. In fact, the sleeping arangements really never mattered in my game so I don't think that would be much of an advantage. If you can control the fires and the bathroom then the rest is easy in comparison.

Dragonball161, nice pic. They do love fire don't they? Clever thinking on the banquet table, but I would consider it an entertainment item just like a bar. The idea was for it to be a shoddy asylum so that besides the few required items there would be only decor. But, if you find it more fun with it than you should do that. There are other ways to keep the inmates from cooking though. :D

MattieMayfair, you should have free will on. Then only ever play the 1 sim. You just play them as you normally would. As if they were the only person in the house. And never click on the pics of the other sims on the left menu so you don't control them or see their information. Your controllable sim will do what you tell them as long as its possible and they aren't currently needing something else.

I had one fire with the banquet table, and that was when my sim had a want to serve breakfast, he had 4-6 cooking skill points too! I got him to extinguish it though.

Everything is good, except the bathroom, one definitely needs to plan that out...

One little "rule bending" that I have been doing is that when my sim FINALLY gets a go at the bathroom, I use the menus on the door to lock the others out temporarily in order to do all he needs to do and clean the place up. Sometimes, I'll get lucky and one of the neat freaks will spend 6 hours in there cleaning and crying, but then my sim will leave a yellow puddle outside the door.

I had about 6/7 aspiration failures in 3 hours due to the sims obsessing over the roaches. It's a few bugs, get over it! I also love all the "manic" actions they have, the volleyball, mop, lampshade, so cute! Also have had a few fights, evidently sims in aspiration failure have shore tempers.

I have a question about this one. It sounds like a blast, and I can't wait to give it a shot. But I'm TERRIBLE at self control and I know that I'm going to want to look at the other inmates "profiles". Does anyone know how the cheat "make unselectable" works? If you make a sim unselectable using "BoolProp TestingCheatsEnabled true", what happens to those Sims, do they still live in the household, or will they leave? Is there any way to 'lock' a Sim so you can't select them?

Regardless, I'm going to give it a shot, but I'd love a way that would make it impossible for me to look at the other's information.

For those who are having trouble, I have one tip that has done wonders for me... a large open plan area for the items that do NOT cause problems/disasters/scare away other sims. So what if *ahem* the kitchen contains only the stove and the Fridge is sitting next to a bookshelf and a couple of counters in the open area... it works!

Question.

Do we have to have a room for each "patient"? Every time I try to "arrange" the 8 rooms, I get the price over $20,000, and I don't want to cheat for money.

-----

I just created a lot for $19,000 with a lot of useful stuff. There are 3 rooms: a big ward where the patients sleep, a very small bathroom and a huge living-room-plus-kitchen room with a lot of useful appliances. I also made the "family". In a few moments I'm going to start.

I used 2x3 rooms for the beds, but I don't think the rules say anything about the required rooms. The only thing I would suggest putting in different rooms would be the facilities, although yellow rivers are funny, the first time. The open plan is also a really good idea, and if you have hallways, make them at least two tiles wide, if not more.

I've been doing this one for a while now. My stupid Sim has a LTW of earning $100,000, so that kind of sucks. D:

My daughter started this too and that's what her sim rolled. I don't know if she ever finished or not. It shouldn't be too difficult, though, especially if your sim gets one of the big bonuses of the upper-level career tracks.

My sim was Knowledge with the LTW to max all skills. I totally lost track of how long it was taking to play through, and at one point he actually died (challenge lost) but I couldn't bear to part with him so I took control of another sim to plead with Grimmy. I had him first get about three cooking skills so he could cook for the other inmates, at least most of the time, then I set him to work on the skills for which he had to study. Since he was Virgo he could clean a lot so most of his cleaning skills were gained that way and most of his cooking skills were gained from food prep. It made more sense that way.

I also put the stove way away from any counters to try to save things going up in flames. I think I had something like a half-dozen phones in various places because much of the time my controllable character would have to get out of bed or out of the shower to call the fire department when one of the others started a fire. If he was home to call I didn't worry about them cooking. I had him prepare meals to leave out while at work and held my breath that no one would get the urge to fix their own food while he was gone.

Edit: took out a link to an old website that's long since gone.

Can you put the testing cheats on and make the other 7 sims unselectable then turn it off? because i don't like having that huge bar with all the sims pics that i can't touch.

I just fired this one up last night, and it's somewhat interesting. After a week, game-time, there's only been two fires, and only one couple has become enemies. No one is dead, and the characters seem to have fallen into a rhythm that keeps everybody reasonably content. The only exception is the one character who seems to be unable to sleep in a bed, and just sleeps where she falls.

Other than that, they're happy little inmates. Weird. I just hope that, sooner or later, they'll have a fire while "I'm" at work....

Mine do that all the time... They start a fire when I'm gone, next they start the 'panic dance'. No-one dies though... Once they started a fire when my sim just went to work... When my sim was home again the whole kitchen was gone, but all sims survived (strange enough).

One of my other sims, is friendly to everyone she see's (even visitors)... and had around 9 friends at the end... (I finished my Asylum challenge, so I was allowed to take a look), but another sims was figthing with everyone she saw...(at the end she had 11 enemy's, all with a relation of around -90)!

I'll try this challenge again as soon as possible!

I have a question...

...so of the 8 Sims we must create in CAS (un-related adults), we control ONE of them and the other 7 are the Sims we can't even click on?

That would be correct!

(Good luck with the challenge!)

xD Now this looks fun.

One question though, can your playable sim marry another patient? And have a child? (even though that would be incredibly difficult)

You do use "aging off", right? Get your sim into the Criminal career path and start building skills and making friends. Pay attention to the... third (Bookie, I believe), seventh (Cat Burglar), and eighth (Counterfeiter) levels of the career, because those have high-paying chance cards, if you can pull them off (the Counterfeiter one can pay $50,000 if you get it right!).

In case you're wondering how I know that? My controlled sim had the LTW of "become Criminal Mastermind" and had landed all three of those by the time she got there. Huge money.

That was awesome.

Everything was ticking along nicely until "I" got caught in a fire. I couldn't get out, and subsequently died, along with two other residents. I figured I'd play by the rules - since I'm out, I can't take control of the other Sims. So I'm watching them die and seeing things I've never seen before.

A bright red plumb-bob.
A Sim begging for money in his underwear outside the house.
Characters waking up because they're too hungry to sleep....

Am I a bad person for enjoying this?

:devil:

EDIT: The ghosts of the angry dead came out and did in the remaining family members. Aaaaallll dead.

i think i might try it, ive just completed a legacy challenge so this might be a nice new challenge for me

I decided to see how Seasons would affect the Asylum Challenge, so I tried it out.

QUESTION: Does the Seasons EP make it easier to play the Asylum Challenge?

HYPOTHESIS: Some actions are not undertaken autonomously. Others are. The actions of the uncontrolled sims make or break the Challenge, and if the uncontrolled sims can care for themselves more competently due to aspects of Seasons, then it negates the challenge of the Asylum Challenge. There is also the obvious issue of Plant-sims requiring much less maintainance than normal sims, needing niether food, sleep, the toilet, nor most other things.

METHOD:

I played the Challenge on a lot with six fruit trees, a greenhouse, and a fishpond. Some cheating as far as money and taking control of an "uncontrolled" sim to plead with Grimmy when my controlled sim got electrocuted. My controlled sim spam-sprayed the orchard (which, since it's supposed to be a shoddy asylum, didn't have a ladybug hut and still doesn't) and naturally became a Plant-sim.

OBSERVATIONS:

- It takes FOREVER to find a specific job by the paper alone. I'm wondering if the computer is allowed by the Challenge for the purpose of job-seeking.

- Uncontrolled sims will NOT garden unless influenced to do so (not that I've done so). They will NOT fish unless invited by a controlled sim who is fishing. They WILL put refuse in the compost bin instead of the trash can by the sidewalk.

- Uncontrolled sims WILL cook fish they have caught and have in their inventories. They will NOT touch the juicer. I haven't yet tried serving juice, but I imagine they would take what was offered (which could produce comical results if I could scrounge up enough boots). EDIT: No. Uncontrolled sims won't take juice that is served to them. The juicer, therefore, is largely useless within the context of the Challenge.

- Uncontrolled sims will not put away leftovers, nor will they take them out.

- Stocked produce/fish does not count toward the food total in the refrigerator. One must still buy groceries on a regular basis.

- Uncontrolled sims will play Catch and Water Balloon Fight at the drop of a hat. Since these are interactions like any others, I don't think they affect the challenge.

CONCLUSION: Since only the controlled sim really cares about gardening and fishing, incorporating these elements of Seasons into the Asylum Challenge doesn't have such a great effect. Uncontrolled sims will not touch leftovers or the juicer, so these things also don't affect the Challenge. The interactions Catch and Water Balloon Fight are simply new interactions, and don't affect the Challenge as such.

Plant-sims are indeed an issue with Seasons and the Challenge, since they don't have nearly as many needs and can spend more of their non-job time taking care of the other inmates or building skills/making friends. Possible solutions include banning orchard trees (preventing sims from becoming Plant-sims in the first place) or penalizing the player whose controlled sim becomes a Plant-sim.

EDIT: Uncontrolled sims WILL build snowmen in winter, and can presumably freeze to death doing so. It can safely be assumed they will spend 29814307+ hours in the hot tub during the summer as well, leading to heatstroke and possibly spontaneous combustion.