Creating an “Inspiration Vortex” in Sims 4

vortexRecently, I’ve been doing a Let’s Play on Euphorial Queen’s Rosebud challenge. The challenge, at its heart, is to start with nothing and make it to $1,000,000.

During my series, I have chosen to focus on artistry and authorship to aid me in rapid money production. As the series went on, I found my basic “Inspiration Room” lacking, so I went on to create what I call the “Inspiration Vortex”

So what does the Inspiration Vortex do? Once all of the spots on the walls under the lights are populated with normal paintings, the desks decorated with decorative objects, and all the mood auras turned on, the room will provide everybody in it a +3 inspired and +3 happy environmental moodlet.

You may ask “Pinstar, what’s the big deal? You only need a +1 inspired moodlet to become inspired. Why go through all the trouble?” There are many reasons why having a +3 inspired and +3 happiness moodlets are powerful.

When a highly skilled artist or writer finishes a high quality painting or book, they will often gain a +2 confident moodlet. This moodlet is great if you are fine with your sim taking a break and going off to town to socialize…but if you wanted them to continuing painting or writing, that confident mood isn’t going to do their efforts any favors.

The solution? A +3 inspired moodlet will still retain inspired as a sim’s dominant mood, even when they gain a +2 confident moodlet (Barring additional confidence moodlets). This allows your sim to continue painting or writing under the effects of the inspired mood, despite their confidence without wasting time trying to get a temporary extra inspired mood to compensate.

The +3 happy moodlet also helps in several ways. Since Inspired is a good mood, the +3 happy moodlet will always be turned into 3 extra points of inspiration, leaving you at +6 inspired. This gives you a very strong emotional wall against negative moodlets that would otherwise sour your sims efforts. Even after immediately peeing themselves (Which causes a +5 embarrassed moodlet) a sim in an inspiration vortex will ignore that embarrassment and feel inspired instead.

Being at +6 inspired is important for another reason. At +8 inspired, a sim will enter the “Very Inspired” mood. This elevated version of inspired ratchets up the benefits of normal inspiration. You get even faster creative skill gains, higher effective skill, and thus even better chances for creating masterpieces and best-sellers. The extra +2 needed to push you up to the limit can come in the form of happiness moodlets or more inspired moodlets,

You can download the Inspiration vortex room for your self from the gallery here.
(Just make sure you make/buy paintings to place under all the lights and turn on all the mood auras).

If you want to see the Let’s Play that inspired the Inspiration Vortex, and see the concept evolve, check it out on my youtube channel here.

Happy Simming!

Posted by Pinstar Legacy in Featured, Other Challenges, Sims 4 News, Strategy & Tactics

The Europa Legacy – Chapter 5 – Married Life!

Hello and welcome to Chapter 5 of the Europa Legacy! If you haven’t read the previous chapters, they can be found here.

In the last chapter, Geneva and Graham tied the knot after dating for a couple of days. Now I think it’s high time to start working on getting generation 2 started!

10-08-14_3-23 PM-2

Geneva: So… you wanna?

Graham: Teehee!

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Posted by Mystic in Featured, Legacy Challenge Stories, Sims 4 Stories, The Europa Legacy

Featured Legacy of the Week – The Melodia Legacy by JudeSims!

Melodia

JudeSims’ founder, Rhapsody Melodia

Welcome to another Featured Legacy of the Week! Each week we will randomly select someone from the pool of Simmers that sent in their Legacy’s info on our “Share Your Legacies with Us!” post. Those of you that haven’t sent in a Legacy yet are still more than welcome to do so. The more the merrier!

This week’s Featured Legacy is the Melodia Legacy by JudeSims. This is a written Legacy and is currently up to chapter four. JudeSims had to recently restart due to a corruption causing them to be unable to play their previous Legacy. Luckily that hasn’t stopped JudeSims from writing!

Happy Simming!

Posted by Mystic in Featured, Featured Legacy of the Week, Sims 4 Stories

Sims 4 Career Top 3 Charts

business careerWith the introduction of two new Sims 4 careers and the rebalancing of the existing ones. I took some time to do some deep analysis of the new career landscape. Many of the nitty gritty details of the careers can be found on the Career guide I wrote for SimsVIP right here.

However, while I was writing up the guide for the trees, I began to notice some things. If you take a step back and look at all the careers, side by side, you start to see patterns. It was from this further analysis that I present to you my guide to the Sims 4 Top 3 Charts! I will give you the top three career/branches for each category. Some of the choices are based purely on hard data, others have some subjective components to them. Without any further ado. Here are the Sims 4 Career Top 3 Charts! Note that all of these rankings are based on reaching the top level in that given career/branch.

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Posted by Pinstar Legacy in Featured, General News, Sims 4 News

Merry Christmas from The Sims Legacy Challenge! We Have a Present For You!

12-24-14_4-30 PMHello everyone! We hope you all have an amazing holiday season! We just wanted to take a moment and thank you all for the amazing support that you showed Pinstar and I this year. We had a bit of a rough year in real life, but being able to interact with all of you and share our love of Sims with you has been amazing and has helped us get through the tough times.

As a bit of a Christmas present we wanted to let you in on a little (ok, it’s not really that little) secret project that Pinstar has been working on. He is working on bringing the popular Apocalypse Challenge from the Sims 2 over to the Sims 4! We know a lot of you have been clamoring for this challenge since The Sims 4 was released. This challenge is huge in scope, moreso than even the Legacy Challenge, so it takes some time to get written up and playtested, but it SHOULD be up in the next month or two. So keep and eye out, I will try to update you on Pinstar’s progress with it when I can!

In the meantime, if you want to play the Apocalypse Challenge for the Sims 2, check out the rules here.

As an aside, if you don’t already own the Sims 4, it is currently on sale on Amazon for $20 off the regular retail price. So get it while you can!

 

Posted by Mystic in General News, Sims 4 News

Legacy Challenge Rules Update (for the November & December patches)

Legacy rules change

Happy Chrismahanakwaanzaka! Here are some updates and rulings for the Legacy Challenge in response to the changes made in both the November and December patches.

 

  • The 11th death type, death by drowning, is now required to finish the “Collect every death type” point.
  • * The Athletic and Business branches are now required for the “Get a sim to the top of each career” as well as the “Have a Sim reach the top of every branch”
  • After it was found that ghosts were guzzling potions of youth built up for the Deviance score, you may release their spirits if you don’t want to risk a thirsty ghost finding your potions.
  • You may fully utilize the new time off, vacation days, and family leave system introduced.
  • Note that job promotion requirements and aspiration requirements have both changed…but the rules and scoring for these has not (Besides the additions of the two new careers mentioned earlier.)
  • Added a new heir law to the heir selection page – Democracy. With Democracy you can have others vote on your heir.
Posted by Pinstar Legacy in Featured, General News, Legacy Challenge Rules, Sims 4 News

We Now Host the Sims 2 Apocalypse Challenge!

littlenemo-nuclearHey everyone! I just wanted to let you know that we are now hosting the rules for the Sims 2 Apocalypse Challenge! They were originally hosted by the Apoca-Borg website, but the owner of the site has recently asked that we take it back over. Currently I have Pinstar’s original Sims 2 Apocalypse Challenge core rules up, and I am working on adding the additional rules for the expansions. It’s a HUGE challenge so it will take some time to get it all up, but if you are interested in checking out the core ruleset for the Sims 2 base game, then head on over to the Sims 2 Apocalypse Challenge rules! I will also be adding a scoresheet in the next couple of days as well.

This is rather appropriate timing too… I won’t say more than that though 😉

 

Posted by Mystic in Featured, General News

The Legacy Challenge and Game Updates

Granite Falls

A lovely teaser shot of the upcoming world, Granite Falls.

With the recent announcement of the upcoming Outdoor Retreat game pack coming to the Sims 4, you might be wondering how the Legacy Challenge will fit into the game changes as they are released.

During the Sims 2 days, Pinstar worked hard to bring updates to the Legacy Challenge as the updates to the game came out. We were unable to keep up with that in The Sims 3 due to real life demands, but we are hoping to be as active with the Sims 4 and its game updates as we were with The Sims 2.

We will be trying to implement challenge changes within a couple of weeks of the game being updated, but it may take time to playtest all of the changes.

As for the upcoming game pack, not much is known about what it will add to the game, so we can’t say for sure how it will affect the challenge, but we will keep you posted as we learn new information and HOPEFULLY give you an idea of some of the changes that will be made to the Legacy Challenge to accommodate it!

What do you all think the new game pack will include? We’d love to hear your speculations!

Posted by Mystic in Featured, General News, Legacy Challenge Rules, Sims 4 News

Eat Like a Sim’s Month of Cookies – Sims 2 Santa Cookies (with an Announcement!)

 

If you’ve played The Sims series for as long as I have, then you probably remember the Sims 2 Santa Cookies recipe. This recipe was available through the Sims 2 Holiday Stuff Pack, and if you were lucky enough to receive the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection for free from Origin, then you already have this recipe available. If your Sims made these cookies and then went to bed, Santa would appear to bring them gifts (and also pee in their toilet several times).

It was always fun to decorate my Sims 2 Legacy family’s house for Christmas, bake the Santa Cookies, and then eagerly await the arrival of Santa in the middle of the night. Sure there was a chance the Christmas tree would catch on fire, but hey, the anticipation was worth it!

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Posted by Mystic in Eat Like a Sim Recipes, Featured

The Europa Legacy – Chapter 4 – The Courting of SimGuruGraham

Hello and welcome to Chapter 4 of the Europa Legacy! If you haven’t read the previous chapters, they can be found here.

Sorry for the lack of updates with this family lately everyone! Let’s just say I went a bit insane with YouTube and ended up burning out a bit. So, I’m back to writing for a while because if I have to look at my video editing software for another minute I’m going to need a straight jacket.

*clears throat* Aaaaaaanyway, back to the topic at hand! The Europa Legacy! In the last chapter, Geneva met a rather handsome man by the name of SimGuruGraham. For those of you who were wondering if moving Graham into the family was Legacy legal… it is. I downloaded him from the gallery in a family of other Gurus (just like I would have if he were a #LegacyLove) and didn’t know his traits beforehand, so he’s fair game!

10-08-14_3-11 PMGeneva: So umm… reading together was… fun. But I was wondering, would you be interested in… going out for a drink or something?

Graham: Sure, that would be fun!

Geneva: Ok, great!

Continue reading →

Posted by Mystic in Featured, Legacy Challenge Stories, Sims 4 Stories, The Europa Legacy