Reflections

I began this challenge way back in July.  It’s taken eight months, in which time I’ve gotten through 15 generations of legacy families!  I haven’t seen any other completed TS3 apocalypses so I thought I’d share some thoughts on how the challenge was for me.

I want to say a massive thank you to Ashleigh for adapting Pinstar’s rules for TS3 and for inspiring me and several others to start blogging after she started her own challenge.  I just hope the Burnums also get out of the apoc some day!

The challenge is not an easy one, not least because in the early days when the sims can’t go anywhere it can get very boring.  I’d recommend having another game/story/challenge on the go to stop you getting fed up, but maybe that’s just me 😉

I began the challenge on the long lifespan, but I moved to normal when Alf and Shana had four toddlers and I couldn’t cope with it.  I think I then switched back to long for a while before realising normal was the only mode I could cope with.  I *think*, however, that Byzantium probably lifted the comforting children restriction while I was playing long.

The hardest parts include making sure the sims make their car pool in a morning.  I had to watch them like a hawk.  Had the journalism restriction also relied on kids getting to school on time, I’d have failed many times over as they were often late because I was watching the adults.  Making sure sims don’t sneak illegal foods from the fridge is also difficult and after testing it with the Dayes, I’d recommend the hardly hungry LTR.  The Lazaruses all had dirt defiant in the early days but it’s not really worth it – once their hygiene drops, it’s dropped for good until you get that medical restriction lifted!

I chose the order my restrictions were lifted in for gameplay at first, and then for the story.  I’d advise lifting medical, military and comforting children as soon as you can, as they have a huge impact on the game (and you can’t lift some things, like gardening, without military)  Lifting ghostly encounter early on made things work well for me, too.

Lifting master painter early on is good so your musician sims can prosper, and you’ll need to lift master thief before your police or journos can rummage, and hit movie composer before your politicians can hold fundraisers.  I hadn’t planned to do movie composer and master thief as early as I did, it just kind of happened that way (Gloria married in with Master Thief as her LTW!), but they were good options to do when I did.  I also found lifting athletic early a good call because the inventory thing was really annoying!

If I were starting over and weren’t playing for a story I’d maybe advise lifting Emperor of Evil earlier so the protection money thing gets dealt with.  Super-spy is also handy given the number of fires sims cause on those blasted grills (get used to the sight of hot dogs).  Lifting journalism a little earlier might also have been useful.  Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the decisions I made about the order to lift things in.  Though politics, science and gardening were left til the end for the story’s sake (and cooking because it’s not that great without gardening and science lifted), they didn’t have a massive impact on the gameplay and were good to leave late.  Rock star is also one you can leave til late as it has very little impact.

If you’re reading this story looking for the perfect by-the-book apoc, don’t – I made a couple of accidental rule breaks (sending Oscar to work as an elder when he wasn’t at level 10 athletic and having cakes before I should have done are the main ones) and one deliberate one (I planted stuff outside of the 8X8 area before politics was lifted because it fitted the story better, though it wasn’t that long before I lifted politics so it didn’t give me any major gameplay advantages).  Other than that I tried to stick as close to the rules as I could, but there are probably other little slip ups I missed.

One freeing thing with an apoc, after playing an intense legacy, is that I didn’t have to worry too much about LTH or LTWs.  In the later stages, when my sims were happy and I could choose their traits, their’ LTWs were linked to their restrictions, but in the early days when they got horrible traits as babies, they got given any old LTW if the one I wanted for them didn’t come up.  Though LTH never hurts, it’s nice to know it doesn’t matter too much (unless you’re NightRowan who’s turned the middle generations of her legacy into an apocalypse and is playing the apoc rules and the legacy rules alongside each other!).

I don’t think I could have finished this challenge if I didn’t have a story to tell and I didn’t have all of you spurring me and the family on.  Thanks so much for all your support and I look forward to seeing more completed apocalypses in the future!

R x