I’m back with another Rags to Riches, this time the focus is the new expansion Snowy Escape.
Link is here and the first part starts Sunday, Dec 6, 2020 at 1 pm
In this Let’s Play we are following our teens Alice Barker and Celeste FitzRoberts, both are spellcasters who were born in my Life After Foster Challenge LP. They’ve decided to set out to the new world of Mt Komorebi and take on the challenge of starting with nothing. Their parents have given them the summer (2 sim weeks) to get established (ie get a small home) and if they do they can stay and continue to pursue their dreams.
Goals for this challenge:
Get a small home by the end of the summer (two sim weeks). All days are vacation days so they do not need to attend school during the summer.
Reach the top of the drama club that they are currently in before they can quit.
Maintain their positive character values (at least 4).
They must have/get a grade A in high school.
Both must max the rock climbing skill and at least one of the other two new skills (snowboarding and skiing).
They both must complete the two new aspirations.
Complete the new Simmi collection.
Vacation in at least two other worlds.
Reach a total value of 200,000 at a minimum (ie total of the home’s value and their money).
At least one must marry and have a child when they become a young adult.
Someone in the household must join the Salaryperson career and at a minimum reach the point where they choose their branch (this can be a spouse/significant other that comes in later).
See how famous they can be as skiiers/snowboarders (requires Get Famous).
Rules/Guidelines for this challenge:
Our sims start with no money on an empty lot and they must pay off the value of the items they brought with them, excluding the homework books, before buying anything (two journals & one crocus, value is 53). Generally to follow the rules from my Rags to Riches guidelines, link here: https://maplesimmer.video.blog/2020/05/05/sims-4-rags-to-riches-guidelines/
Note the lifespan I’ve chosen is ‘long’, if you’d like to play along you can choose the lifespan you want.
If our sims want to go to other worlds they must vacation there (exception is using glimmerstone to go to Magic HQ, visiting a vet clinic if they get a pet and it’s ill, going to the hospital & if they start university, visiting the campus or library). For the purposes of this challenge, Willow Creek, Newcrest & Magnolia Promenade are considered one world and Oasis Springs & Del Sol Valley are considered another world. Rental lots have been placed in one of every world except Strangerville, Forgotten Hollow & Britechester.
If anyone moves in they can’t bring any money or furniture with them. If they do, use cheats to remove the money.
Character Background & Related Let’s Plays:
Alice & Cecile were born and raised until they were teens in my Life After Foster Child Let’s Play if you’d like to see them when they were younger.
While that let’s play focused on their parents as young adults, their parents were originally from my Foster Child Challenge Let’s Play.
Alice’s mother is Jasmine Barker (father is Darrell Charm who came with Realm of Magic) and Cecile’s parents are Eviee Roberts and Clark Fitzgerald. Please note that both Jasmine Barker & Eviee Roberts were provided as toddlers by BeckyXD (Origin ID) and raised to young adults in my Foster Child Challenge. Evie met her now husband Clark as a teen & he joined the Foster Child family and was raised to a young adult and they then married at the end of the challenge. 😊
If you’d like to play along, here’s a link to where they are on the gallery or if you prefer to play with my save, which has their family and the Foster Child Challenge sims. It has been updated to add rental lots to many residential worlds as noted above in rule 3 and updated commercial lots. This save may use items from all packs up to and including Snowy Escape. Maple Simmer Snowy Escape Save
If you do play along I’d love to see how they do, come join my new Facebook group and share their adventures, or any of your sims, sim builds and their adventures! Sims Sanctuary
It’s also a great place to ask me any Sims related questions you may have. 😊
We are continuing with our seven children from Super Kids Challenge (before that, they were the toddlers in my Rags to ‘Riches’ 7 Toddler Challenge😊), in a new Let’s Play Challenge series as teens.
Here are the finalized goals for what is now called ‘Super Teens Challenge’ (draft name was ‘Life Skills Challenge’).
The children have all completed their child goals and this Let’s Play started on Friday, September 25, 2020.
Here are the goals for all seven when they are teens:
To become grade A high school students,
To get to level six in the following skills: * cooking, handiness, gardening, fishing, charisma, fitness, logic, one instrument (FYI, level four allows them to continue with their emotional control), research & debate (requires Discover University),
To do the first & second tiers of the following aspirations: * Friend of the World * Nerd Brain * Athletic * Music
To max a part time career or their odd job rating (the latter requires Island Living)
To keep at least 4 character values in a range to be positive, though preferably all 5, when they age to Young Adult, these must include Manners & Responsibility (requires Parenthood).
At a minimum, get to level 3 of their chosen aspiration (or their secondary aspiration, if as teens they can’t reach level 3 of their chosen aspiration)
At a minimum max one skill (this will be determined up front, but will depend on the teen & their interests/chosen aspiration, see their pictures below for chosen skill )
We will also see if any of them make any friends and/or start any romances. As such I’d love to have your teen sims (if they are part of a family and/or have been played with, even better) in my save. Use #MaplesLifeSkillChallengeS , #MaplesLSChallengeSims or #MaplesSuperTeenSims when sharing to the gallery. Please no custom content.
Goals for Norah
While the children are working on those goals, Norah will need to finish the fortune aspiration, complete the gardening aspiration and she plans to start university and perhaps work on her cooking aspirations while attending university.
Also, after raising seven children it might be nice for her to find love so her nest isn’t that empty when the kids eventually leave. I’d love some sims to place in my world for her too, use any of the same hashtags as above. 😊
Pictures of each of them as Teens:
Abigail
Bonnie
Colleen
Declan
Edward
Freddie
Picture of each of them as a Child:
Here is a gallery link to the family (& home when it’s available) if you’d like to play along.
If you do play along I’d love to see how you do! Please come join my new Facebook group and share how you do in this challenge, or in anything sims related, be it sim creation, build creation or your sims stories or challenges! It’s also a great place to ask any sim related questions that either I or other members can try to answer. Sims Sanctuary
I’ve asked if viewers would like to see the seven children from Super Kids Challenge (before that, they were the toddlers in my Rags to ‘Riches’ 7 Toddler Challenge😊), continue in a Let’s Play as teens. So far the consensus is yes. As a result I’ve come up with some goals for them as teens in what I’m tentatively calling ‘Life Skills Challenge’, though I’m open to other name suggestions! Timing of when it will go live will depend on when the kids have completed all their child goals, but we’re getting close on that!
I’m thinking of the following goals for all seven when they are teens:
To become grade A high school students,
To get to level four in the following skills: * cooking, handiness, gardening, charisma, fitness, logic, one instrument (that allows them to continue with their emotional control), research & debate (requires Discover University),
To do the first tier of the following aspirations: * Friend of the World * Nerd Brain/Renaissance Sim (the first tier is the same) * Athletic * Music
To max a part time career or their odd job rating (the latter requires Island Living)
To keep at least 4 character values in a range to be positive, though preferably all 5, when they age to Young Adult, these must include Manners & Responsibility.
To get to level 2 of their chosen aspiration (these will be picked based on ones teens can do)
At a minimum max one skill (this will be determined up front, but will depend on the teen & their interests/chosen aspiration)
We will also see if any of them make any friends and/or start any romances. As such I’d love to have your teen sims (if they are part of a family and/or have been played with, even better) in my save. Use #MaplesLifeSkillChallengeSims when sharing to the gallery. Please no custom content.
Goals for Norah
While the children are working on those goals, Norah will need to finish the fortune aspiration if she hasn’t already done so and she plans to start university and perhaps work on her cooking aspirations while attending university.
Also, after raising seven children it might be nice for her to find love so her nest isn’t that empty when the kids eventually leave. I’d love some sims to place in my world for her too, use #MaplesLifeSkillChallengeSims, same as above. 😊
Let me know in a comment, either here or on the Super Kids Challenge Let’s Play, if there’s anything else you’d like to see added to this challenge or in general for the Let’s Play.
Once the children have aged up to teens I will add a link to the family and their home if you’d like to play along.
The vote results were to go ahead and do the Super Kids Challenge with our 7 toddlers from my Rags to ‘Riches’ 7 Toddler Challenge. First part will go live Friday, Jul 3 at 1 pm Eastern.
The goals for all seven children will be as follows:
To max all four childhood aspirations;
To complete all their scout badges; and
To get all their character values in a positive range.
While the children are working on those goals, Norah will continue to work on her fortune, painting and gardening aspirations. We’ll also see how green we can make their Newcrest neighbourhood. Of course her long term goal is to complete her cooking aspiration, but that may have to wait.😊
I’f you’d like to play along with the same family, here’s the gallery link to the family just after the children aged up: https://tinyurl.com/y7b8bvsw
The Drifter Challenge is a challenge created by the lovely Vihisha Tak’Nai and if you plan to do all, or most of the challenge, you start with both Willow Creek and Oasis Springs empty, ie you delete all the lots from those two worlds (one exception, if you have Dine Out you can add one restaurant to the museum lot in Oasis Springs).
The challenge can be thought of as a generation challenge as well as a building challenge, with each generation, or ‘house’, starting with no money on an empty lot and each ‘house’ having its own set of goals. As you meet certain goals over the generations, or ‘houses’ as they are called, you can also start adding certain community lots (which you can build, download from the gallery or add back the original lots if you’ve saved them in your library).
The only way I’ve ever managed to play for multiple generations is when playing the Drifter Challenge.😊 I find it to be a great way to examine a lot of different elements in the game, and you can skip any generation you do not want to do. Alternatively you can just do any house as a stand alone challenge; each house’s rules explain how to start each house, both if you are continuing or doing it as a stand alone challenge, along with the goals and rules for each house.
As an added challenge for most houses you can only control your main sim, ie the ‘Drifter’, apart from a few exceptions, one main one being aging up on a cake (and before we had the ability to assign beds, claiming beds was allowed). However, there are some houses where that varies and you can control more than one sim. In all cases each house always indicates who can be controlled.
Alternatively, you can come join my new Facebook group and share how you do in this challenge, or in anything sims related, be it sim creation, sim builds or your sims stories &/or challenges! It’s also a great place to ask any sim related questions, including questions about Drifter or other challenges, that either I or other members can try to answer. Sims Sanctuary
I have been doing this challenge on my YouTube channel and I am currently on House 6; as I start individual houses I will add links to each playlist and a summary of the goals for each house here. 😊
Starting Lot: Sultry Springside, Oasis Springs (30×20) Controllable Sims: Drifter * (heir from prior house) (*main exception is directing non controlled sims to ‘eat cake’ on the cow plant, see goal 4 below)
After living a fairly sheltered life, our new drifter Charity Driver returns to her grandmother’s world of Oasis Spring to start her first day with nothing in an empty neighborhood.
Here are the challenges facing Charity:
To max both the fishing and gardening skill.
At a minimum, build a 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom Home worth at least $40k Simoleons (after Depreciation)
Complete the Angling Ace Aspiration,
Raise a cow plant and collect five unique essences, and
Produce and raise an Heir to the Young Adult life stage; this Heir will become the Main Sim in the 4th House Mini-Challenge.
Starting Lot: Riverside Roost, Willow Creek (30×20) Controllable Sims: Drifter (heir from prior house)
After living a sheltered life, our new drifter Dominique Driver returns to her grandmother’s world of Willow Creek to start her first day with nothing in an empty neighborhood. She is fascinated by aliens, since her grandfather was abducted late in life and came back pregnant with her aunt Bridget.
Here are the challenges facing her:
To max the scientist career (if you don’t own Get to Work (‘GTW’) you can instead max the astronaut career).
At a minimum to build a 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom Home worth at least $50k Simoleons (after Depreciation)
To achieve level 10 of the Rocket Science skill
To travel to space and bring back 3 unique Space Rocks or Aliens *If you own GTW, items acquired from Sixam count
To Befriend and Move In a Co-Worker (*If you own GTW, you may befriend and move in an Alien instead, so this will be my goal)
Produce and raise an Heir to the Young Adult life stage; this Heir will become the Main Sim in the 5th House Mini-Challenge.
Sims have been added to the world from the following creators (*Origin ID at time they were added):
EuphorialQueen ndsmith1689 gamersims101 mistycleo nikinicole1234 Siriusly_Black20 (uses CC eyelashes) Mewsage86 KristalSparrow Lisabeesims Rogueokie and The Smith Family by Maxis
Starting Lot: Arid Ridge, Oasis Springs (40×30) Controllable Sims: Drifter (heir from prior house) and Secondary Sim (newly created)
After living a sheltered life, our new drifter Emmeline Driver along with our secondary sim Edward Quin, returns to her grandmother’s neighbourhood in Oasis Spring to start her first day with nothing.
Here are the challenges facing them:
Max the painter career (Lvl 10) for both sims: (Drifter: Patron of The Arts branch Secondary Sim: Master of The Real branch)
Achieve level 5 of the Photography Skill on either Playable Sim
Complete the Photography Treasure Hunt *A completed collection should yield a total of 10 photos with all items and colors used only once
As a minimum create a 3 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom home worth at least $100k Simoleons (after depreciation)
Produce & raise The Heir to the Young Adult life stage; this Heir will become the Main Sim in the 6th House Mini-Challenge.
Starting Lot: Oakenstead, Willow Creek (50×50) Controllable Sims: All Sims, starting with the Drifter (heir from prior house) and Secondary Sim (newly created)
After living a sheltered life, our new drifter Fleur Driver along with our secondary sim Felix Juno, returns to her grandmother’s world of Willow Creek with the goal of building a mansion after starting with nothing* ; how will they fare?
Here are the challenges facing them:
As a minimum create a house worth at least 350k simoleons, must include a total of 8 beds (at least one needs to be a double)
Complete the Mansion Baron Aspiration**
Produce & raise The Heir to the Young Adult life stage; this Heir will become the Main Sim in the 7th House Mini-Challenge.
(* Three starting options: Standard – start with 100k, Difficult – start with 50k, Extreme – start with nothing)
**Upon completing Goal 2, access to the following Lot type has been unlocked: Nightclub Lots Those playing the full 24 house challenge may now place a Nightclub Lot on Blue Velvet in Willow Creek world
The winning bachelor will join our heir from house 6, Gabrielle Driver in the second part of this challenge. In the second part, Gabrielle will have the following goals for her house:
Starting Lot: Vista Quarry Lot, Oasis Springs (30×20) Controllable Sims: Drifter (heir from prior house) and Secondary Sim (newly created).
Disguise their home (example: underground lair that looks like a park above ground)
Achieve level 10 of the Diamond Agent branch of the Secret Agent Career on The Drifter*
Achieve level 11 of the Villain branch of the Secret Agent Career on The Secondary Sim
Produce and raise The Heir to the Young Adult life stage**
*Upon reaching Field Agent (level 4) of the Secret Agent Career, access to the following Lot type has been unlocked – Gym Lots. Those playing the full 24 House Challenge may now place a Gym Lot on Burners and Builders in Oasis Springs world
**Select at least one of the following Traits on The Heir: Active, Vegetarian Trait (City Living no longer needed, this is now a base game trait), or Adventurous (Snowy Escape needed)
As a minimum create a 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom home worth at least $50k Simoleons – include a pool and a designated personal workout area.
Achieve level 10 of the Fitness Skill
Produce and raise the Heir (see my notes on this*)
Note that I will be adding goals from House 11 to this house, so here are the additional goals that will be required, note House 11 also requires you to raise an Heir:
In addition to the house requirements noted above, it will also need to include a designated party space.
Complete the Master Mixologist Aspiration.
Achieve level 10 of the Mixologist branch of the Culinary career.
*Re the heir, usually the goal is to raise the heir to the young adult life stage, however, with the changes to life stage lengths that came with the July 26, 2022 game update, I plan to end this house when either A) all the goals are complete or B) the heir ages up to a teen, whichever happens second.
I will be doing a blog post with more details on this house, including optional goals I’m adding for me to do & exceptions noted re non controllable sims, I’ll add the link when it’s available.
While there are 24 houses in total, this is going to be the second last house of this challenge for me. I will be finishing with House 24, which will also include goals from House 13 & as mentioned above, we will hopefully be starting it during the heir’s teen life stage.
Complete the Successful Lineage aspiration (optional, which we will be doing, we will also complete the Big Happy Family aspiration and the Super Parent aspiration from Parenthood).
Produce and raise the Heir
Note that I will be adding goals from House 13 to this house, so here are the additional goals that will be required, note House 13 also requires you to raise an Heir:
In addition to the house requirements noted above, it will also need to at a minimum have 2 Bedrooms, 1 Bathroom & be worth at least $100k Simoleons with a designated gaming area.
Achieve level 10 of the EASports Gamer branch of the Tech Guru Career.
Achieve level 10 of the Start Up Entrepreneur branch of the Tech Guru Career.
Score 1st place in a Pro-Ranked Tournament on both the Hillock II and Sims Forever games.
Please see my blog post with more details on this house, including additional optional goals I’m adding for me to do.
Link to house 24 rules on Vihisha’s blog post and link to house 13 rules on Vihisha’s blog post.
Note that House 24 is the final house of the Drifter Challenge, however, I ended up doing a Mash Up of some of my missed houses with our Drifter Katie’s two oldest children while we wait for them to complete the required goals for Katie and her husband Gabe, to complete their three family aspirations.
Starting Lot: Garden Essence Lot, Foundry Cove, Willow Creek (40×30) (House 15 Lot) Controllable Sims: All Sims
As mentioned at the end of my House 24 section, I skipped from House 10 (which did include House 11 goals) to House 24, though I did also include the goals for House 13 when I did House 24.
Also as noted above, goals/optional goals for House 24 are to complete the family aspirations, however the two base game family aspirations (Big Happy Family Aspiration and Successful Lineage Aspiration) require a child to get married, max a career & for the sim parent to be friends to 4 grandchildren. We will also be doing the Super Parent Aspiration that comes with Parenthood. Getting the children of House 24 to complete everything needed for their mother (and father) to complete these aspirations is going to take some time and the House 24 household is very wealthy and also quite laggy.
I’m hoping that starting over with the two oldest (Lily and Luna Driver), who are currently teens, with Luna just having aged up to a teen, with nothing on a new empty lot with both help with the lagging and also be more interesting than playing a wealthy household.
As mentioned, in true Drifter tradition, they will start over with nothing except a few miscellaneous items in their inventory (mostly for fun, nothing of much value).
They will take on the some goals from House 15, 16 & 18 plus an element of goals for House 17 that need to be completed in House 16.
Note their younger sibling Lee Driver, who is currently an infant, will eventually join them once they are established, though I plan to move him out sometime after he becomes a young adult.
The main focus of this challenge will be on Lily and Luna.
While I often provide an overview of goals here, since this is covering three (and a partial) houses, it’s quite long so please see my blog post with more details on this mashup challenge.
This is just a short little challenge that I recently did because I wanted to compare earnings from guitar🎸vs violin🎻 in a Rags to Riches challenge. Rules are in the screenshot. Please note that you can licence music you write with your instrument of choice; that is included in ‘making money from that instrument’.😊
I chose to do this with a teen, but you can use any age, teen and up. I have Seasons so I made the school days holidays so my teen didn’t have to worry about skipping school.
Please let me know if you have any questions! I’d love to see how you do! 😊
Here’s the sim I used, she’s a teen who is creative and a music lover and has the muser trait from choosing a creative aspiration (Musical Genius):
Here is how I set up the calendar since I have Seasons:
One of her first whims won’t be able to be completed for a while since she has no house, never mind a door, so I promptly dismissed it!
Perhaps one day in the not to distant future! Stay tuned to see how she did…
I really enjoy doing challenges when playing the Sims. While I’ve been playing since the first Sims came out, I only learned about them in the early days of The Sims 4. I have since gone back and played some Rags to Riches, which are my favourite type, in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 but I’ve done many more types of challenges in The Sims 4. That said, here’s my overview of challenges in The Sims 4 for anyone interested in attempting them.
I also have a tutorial playlist for the Rags to Riches challenge; here is a link. This is a new version and currently has one video with the guidelines. I had planned to add more that focused on various packs, but haven’t had a chance. I do however have many Rags to Riches LPs that focus on different packs and that covers what each pack adds. 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyPCBQSeZfrL4ZdeQlOSRsdmqOMz7D0Ql
Many people like to do challenges to keep their game interesting. Challenges can be a fun way to explore the game and find out new things about it that you didn’t know before.
There are many types of challenges, while many focus on game play, there are also some build and CAS challenges.
If you are just starting out, I recommend starting with a shorter one but the best challenge for you really depends on what you like to do.
However, there are many more challenges to choose from. I find Runaway Teen is a shorter challenge, so can be good for starting out if the rags to riches concept interests you. If you like to combine building with game play the Build Newcrest Challenge (legacy) and The Drifter Challenge are good challenges that combine both. My new legacy challenge also combines building with playing (see below), if you’re interested in playtesting it, more details on it are below and my contact details are at the bottom.
Frequently Asked Questions I Commonly See:
1) DO THEY REQUIRE THE USE OF MODS? Most of the popular challenges don’t require the use of mods. For example, teens can easily live on their own and you can even create a household with the teen as the oldest member in the household (this includes younger siblings). If anything, most challenges state that mods shouldn’t be used to create an unfair advantage over someone who doesn’t use them. 2) DO CHALLENGES HAVE WINNERS? Challenges are usually done just to challenge yourself to complete the goals of the challenge as opposed to it being a competition, though some challenges have scoring so you can compare how you do to others.
Keep in mind that the main goal of a challenge should be to make your game enjoyable, so you should play it as you like. Many people ‘tweak’ the rules to help suit their game play style, so if that means you want to change it up by using mods to make it more fun, that’s what you should do.
Another way to do some challenges that are now built into the game are to do scenarios. Some scenarios were time limited, if you can use mods, Twisted Mexi has a mod that let’s you access all scenarios.
I’ve done many and have quite a few scenario challenges on my channel:
Maple’s Rags to Riches Legacy Challenge (working challenge, still being play-tested, but I’ve started the founding generation on my channel & am looking for playtesters):
The founding generation has an optional ‘Castaway Island‘ prequel challenge that can also be done as a stand alone challenge. As a stand alone challenge, this is a short challenge originally created by Nando (name has changed over the years), however I can no longer find their version of the challenge on line. I have updated the challenge to account for Seasons and subsequent additions to the game, a link to my version is here: https://maplesimmer.video.blog/2021/12/31/castaway-challenge-seasons-edition/
Homeless Children Challenge: (this takes advantage that as of Jan 2024 you can use a cheat to remove the teen or older sims from a household leaving children to live on their own, no mods required, but you do need to use cheats to do this; not sure if this is a bug or by design). https://maplesimmer.video.blog/2024/01/07/homeless-children-sims-4-rags-to-riches/
Rags to Riches focused on Specific Packs (medium challenges), note while these all have your sim, or sims, start with no money, and usually no home, the focus is on the packs, not necessarily getting ‘rich’ :
Maple Simmer 