Table of Contents: Sunlit Tides

01-18. A Post-Challenge Wedding

Maxwell Abbott, the sim I've been playing for the last while, just finished his 112 Day Challenge and was ready to move on to other things. I went back to the save just before he sold everything for the Challenge and picked up his story there.

The first thing was to upgrade his resort with expanded amenities. Now he's making scads of money. Max and his fiancee Kirby moved into their new home together. And Max did the honors of making their own Indulgent Bakery wedding cake at home.

That very day, the two got married at the resort with their staff in attendance.

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Later, I changed the room because I noticed that no one sits in the lined-up chairs. But they do sit down at the tables to watch the wedding. I also put a Bakery rug under the cake table. This guy ended up buying the cake leftovers at a discounted price!

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Max and Kirby both studied Bot Building and created a plumbot for their household helper. These guys make perfect maids, butlers, gardeners, nannies, office drones--with very little needs. Love them. 

4-Bitz will be sent to upgrade all resort appliances to unbreakable. She can also work shifts at the bars and front desk, help maintenance with repairs and cleaning.

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A couple of sim days later, the resort reached 5 Stars and Max earned his Lifetime Wish.

01-17. Challenge Complete

The End of Max's Challenge

Maxwell Abbott's Challenge Goals:

• Met the Skills and Career requirements.
• Did over 100 hours in community service.
• Worth over 900,000 simoleons.
• Spent all the lifetime points he was able.
• Spent most of his time on the tent lot, but not all of it.
• Did not join another household or have another sim join his active household.
• Sold everything at Challenge end except the few starting items on the home tent lot.
• Prepared and ate ambrosia.

Personal goals:

• Got to know and became friends with a sim in Business, Culinary Service, Barista, Shop Clerk, a sim with the Handy trait.
• Cleaned several appliances.
• Repaired many appliances.
• Gained level 4 in Mixology.
• Invested in several venues for a huge profit.
• Stayed at a resort and talked to the employees. Tried all the amenities. Bought the resort.
• Earned the Lifetime Reward of Hotel Mogul.
• Earned 400/400 in every category on the University Aptitude test. Then purchased an honorary degree in Business.

 

  

01-16. Resort Tycoon

Only 4 more days for Maxwell. Here are a few highlights of his activities.

Electrified by a jelly bean.

Revitalized by a mud bath.

And this one really cracks me up. I've never seen the Walk of Shame before. Kirby turned him down for woohoo.
Max went to her place late one night. She let him in and said he could stay, but I saw by her thought bubble that she was exhausted. After she rejected him, Kirby fell asleep and I just had Max go home. Poor slob!

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Big news is that Max bought the resort. It was already at 4 stars at the time of purchase. I did have Max upgrade the Tower right away to increase the number of rooms and to toggle on spa services (to increase revenue). But I'm holding off doing any other improvements because it would probably kick the reviews to 5 stars and Max would have his Lifetime Wish. He's very close!

Max spent a little time tending the bars and practicing his mixology skills.

He had to deal with the inevitable roaches. They always spawn with resorts. Maintenance or owner has to stomp them to get rid of them...until they show up again.

Max upgraded a couple of things (unbreakable) while maintenance spent time cleaning and repairing.

I recently installed a mod to turn off zombies spawning during the full moon. But the resort had an encounter of another kind. (And notice the spring snow!)

Here are the resort reviews at the time of purchase. They're fun to read. Silly, but they do offer suggestions for future improvements.

Income and expense after the Tower upgrade. The difference would be daily profit (1530) for an owner without the Hotel Mogul reward.

But since Max has the Hotel Mogul lifetime reward, he gets 50% more in profits (2295/day).

Notice that the Tower upgrade put a second story on the rabbit hole building. That was kind of cool to watch.
I didn't know that the building would change like that.

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Maxwell also purchased the Honorary University Degree Lifetime Reward (Business). He also got to choose a 6th trait. I wanted to give him something different, maybe to round him out a bit more. I chose Family Oriented. It's a trait I don't pick very often, but I thought it would go well with Max's life plan.

01-15. Bachelor Party

Challenge Feedback:
Maxwell is doing fine and has already completed all his goals. The only "fail" was that he spent some time not living on the tent lot when he moved into his second residence, and the tent lot then became the second home. He never added Kirby to his official household though, just had her as an NPC roommate for a short time until I set her up in her own apartment.

I thought what I'd do was make a special save where Max sells everything according to the challenge rule, but not use that save afterwards when I play his household post-challenge. Since I'm going to continue to play him at least until he marries Kirby and establishes his resort, I want to keep his investments going for that long-term play.
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Max's Bachelor Party

Smustle

The Toast

Sprayed with Fizzy

Barb the Dancer

Kirby cheers for the dancer too! (Yes, Max invited her to the party!)

Have a drink, Barb

Max sprays Kirby with fizz

Jammin'

Getting Rowdy

Goodnight

Max and his friends ended up getting kicked out of the bar around 5 am-- 2 hrs after the employees had left at closing time. The party had started at 4 pm the day before! A big success.

It really helps with parties in general to have the Legendary Host lifetime reward. I gave Max that right before he arranged the party. The description on Sims Wikia says: Everyone will show up to the party and have a great time - it will be legendary. (Guests have a 100% chance of coming to a Sim's party and being positive higher than the party's level of fun.) It's only 5000 pts.

The other thing that I had Max do was bake some things ahead of time and set them out at the bar. That way, the guests didn't have to rely on bar food. Everything was eaten. BTW, the only girls at the party were the bouncer, the dancer, and the fiancee.

01-14. A Proposal to Remember

Now, for the crazy news. Max wanted to propose to Kirby when he had some time off from work. Unfortunately, his timing really sucked. Oh, there were some beautiful romantic moments, but...

First of all, it started pouring down rain right after he invited Kirby out. He had thought about proposing to her in front of the house they would live in or by the waterfalls, but the rain spoiled any outside conversations. He settled on the Butterfly Pavilion.

They arrive:

Maxwell proposes:

She accepts:

Then...the romance turns into a horror movie! Max gets a notice that the Foreboding Full Moon had arrived! Yes, Max proposed on the dawning of the Full Moon. And guess who gets zombified.

I couldn't believe the game did this to Kirby! Then I was just ROTFL. Not sure how long zombification stays in effect, but I decided to tell the story with how Max would react.

Max rushes to the elixir clerk and begs him for help:

The store didn't have any Cure Elixirs, but did have an alchemy book and the necessary ingredients. Lucky for Max he's a Fast Learner!

Level 2 in Alchemy and he starts researching. Manages to make the Cure Elixir he needs.

He tracks Kirby down and throws the elixir at her:

And the cure works!

01-13. Nearing the Finish

Challenge Feedback:
Max is awash in cash! And he's just mainly kept it to partnerships, not full fledged ownership. Great returns. Almost too much money to know what to do with it!

I've toyed with the idea of having Max quit his Business career, but he's a Workaholic and not sure he'd be happy doing that. He gets wishes to Work at Home and would probably not like being technically "unemployed." And if he wants to work, he might as well get top dollar. Max gets raises at work almost every day.

Max does have the Charisma trait, so though he's no Party Animal, he enjoys being around other sims. I guess I just don't know what I'll do with all his income! Maybe he'll have to become a grand philanthropist and make Bridgeport the wealthiest city in Simland. 
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Still early spring. I think he has about 20 more days to go.

He visited the graveyard again to catch more deathfish. He was able to catch 6 more, 10 in all for some wish points. Then he talked to the vampire mixologist there. He wanted to moonlight, but isn't high enough in his mixology skill to do that yet.

Lala's ghost appeared.

"Lala, you're looking real ghastly!" "Why, thank you, Max. So sweet of you to say so."

"Take care of yourself, Lala." "You too, Max. And let me give you some advice: stop working so hard!"

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Max took the University Aptitude test and aced it:

He made some particularly high profits on some metal sales:

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I did some more Edit Town stuff. Since I have celebrities turned off, I needed to go in and change the VIP ropes in all the clubs. Nobody was able to get past them since there were no celebrities! I replaced a couple of those ropes with the Barrier to Entry gate and the Ticket Machine too, which I haven't had a chance to try out yet.

Max and Kirby went to a couple of clubs to make sure the ropes and gates were working ok. they checked out a few of the amenities.

While I was in Edit Town, I also added the gem cutting machine and bee hive to the Coop lot. Max now saves gem cutting fees by using this machine. It's very noisy and everyone on the lot covers their ears when he runs it, even though I put it in a small back room.

Bees are tricky little creatures. I let Max get some honey because he had a wish to try it, but he's got enough concerns without trying to keep finicky bees happy. The NPCs can tend the bees!