Situations that trigger Lifetime Wishes as a child/teen

Some kids want to be the Emperor of Evil after seeing someone die. Like yeah if that's your first thought it's a good fit!

I can reliably get my sim kids to roll one of the three base game money-related wishes—Swimming in Cash, Living in the Lap of Luxury, or CEO of a Mega-corporation—by having them active when items of a certain worth are sold. Not all items count: I don't have an exhaustive list, but home-grown produce, paintings, gems, and metal do, while fish and seeds do not.

Whether I want those LTWs or not, the "buy something worth at least X" wishes are a convenient way to earn kids some points quickly, so when a toddler ages up to child, I usually have an adult go to the grocery store with an inventory full of produce, queue a bunch of Buy commands, and switch to the kid. (It also works to sell gems and metal directly from the kid's inventory.) The sequence goes like this:

• Adult sells §500 of produce -> kid wishes to buy an item worth at least §100
  
• Adult sells §1,000 -> kid wishes... §250
  
• Adult sells §2,000 -> kid wishes... §500 and also rolls one of the three LTWs
  
• Adult sells §3,000 -> kid wishes... §1,000 and/or to buy a piece of exercise equipment worth at least §750 or §1,000
  

Other situations where kids often roll LTWs:

• Toddler ages up and has read all three writing and all three painting books -> Illustrious Author (almost always)
  
• Child's younger sibling is born -> World-renowned Surgeon
  
• Child eats perfect meal -> Celebrated Five-star Chef (but not Culinary Librarian for some reason)
  
• Child catches perfect fish -> Perfect Private Aquarium
  
• Child discovers a star -> Astronaut
  
• Child reaches level 7 logic -> Chess Legend
  
• Child reaches level 7 of another skill -> Renaissance Sim
  
• Child/teen attends concert -> Rock Star
  
• Child/teen has 5 friends -> Super Popular (almost always rolled for teens, and will trigger again every single time the kid makes a new friend until they're assigned a different wish)
  
• Teen makes X amount (not sure how much) as self-employed writer -> Professional Author
  

The other skill-based ones, and most of the career wishes, seem to show up much less often and more randomly, although they still roll occasionally when a child or teen hits a certain level (I think it's usually 7) in one of the involved skills. I don't know as much about how teen wishes work because I've usually picked a LTW for them before too long.

One last wish that I can't be sure about due to an extremely small sample size, but that I still distinctly remember appearing more than once, is that when a child or teen witnesses a house fire put out by firefighters, they will also wish to be a Firefighter Super Hero. That seems undertsandable.

"telmarina;c-17421228" wrote:
@puzzlezaddict thank you for this super insightful answer. I was going to ask you if you have noticed if non base game LTW also trigger like this...? I can see you mentioned the firefighter one, but have you noticed if any of the others are also triggered?

Honestly, I have no idea. I've played with Ambitions since I bought the game, but other than that, I only know World Adventures a little bit. (I own the others but have barely spent any time with them.) I can't remember the other Ambitions professions' LTWs triggering, ever, although it's hard to imagine what would make a sim kid wish to be an architectural designer or a private eye. I believe two WA ones—the Martial Arts and Photography wishes—rolled for a teen and child, respectively, in my last sim family, once they had the requisite skills.

So the EP LTWs probably behave the same way the base game ones do, at least up to a point. This recent comment by @Turjan sounds like the same thing I've seen with money wishes, but expanded to include some EP LTWs too. It's always possible EA stopped adding the triggers for wishes from later packs, and it's possible that some wishes' triggers are so obscure you'd probably never see them.

I've occasionally spent the 10k LTR points to assign a child or teen's LTW if I know what I want for them and it hasn't rolled. Even though the reward is expensive, the 50% bonus in points they get for completing intermediate wishes related to the LTW more than makes up for it in the end, and it keeps me from getting annoyed or spending time wondering whether the wish I'd like will ever show up.

I think one time I had a Sim roll the wish to see the ghost of her dead mother, specifically the "Burn to death" ghost, after there was a fire at their house.

To be fair, that Sim had the Evil trait, so that may have been a possible factor

One of my child sims wished to become a vocal legend when she sang with the karaoke machine.

My current teen Sim rolled LTWs for both Deep Sea Diver and Grand Explorer. For Deep Sea Diver she was catching fish and collecting seashells while diving in Isla Paradiso, and for Grand Explorer she had just discovered one of the hidden islands.

I think skills in general are a good way to trigger all kinds of LTW, like my teen witch sim for instance reached about Lv. 3 or something in alchemy by messing with the alchemy station and then rolled the Alchemy Artisan LTW

Other essentially 100% guaranteed triggers:
1. Child Sim sings to their imaginary friend=Vocal Legend
2. Child takes on the gather “x” amount of gems/metal/insects opportunity=Zoologist or Ark Builder

I honestly love when these triggers happen because it seems like a more natural way for a kid to acquire their LTW. With my current LTW challenge I’ve been trying to get these sort of triggers to determine my heirs’ LTWs as often as I can.

"xXMajesticDreamz;c-18018714" wrote:
My sim child just got the “International Super Spy” Lifetime wish. Which I think is because both parents are evil and going after the same criminal career path haha.

A very similar thing happened in my save a while back. Dad reached level 10 of the criminal career, thief branch, and the three kids each rolled a LTW at that exact moment. One wished to be an International Super Spy, to chase down criminals like his dad; one wished to be a Dynamic DNA Profiler, to analyze and present the evidence to put them away. The other child wished to be a level-10 politician.

...

I'm going to have to keep an eye on that kid.

@puzzlezaddict thank you for this super insightful answer. I was going to ask you if you have noticed if non base game LTW also trigger like this...? I can see you mentioned the firefighter one, but have you noticed if any of the others are also triggered?
I ask this because Im always afraid to leave behind all the eps LTW if they are not triggered at all... and waiting for my sims to be adults to choose seems to me like a long time without having a big goal in their lifes, specially for teens...