The Watsons start out in a challenging spot. They have 27k on hand in savings, but they have a giant lot set up as a farm, their bills are 5k a week, Thomas is farming full-time and Rahmi is a low-level stylist. Their relationship is a mess. I decided to add a few restrictions of my own and treat it as a genuine challenge. Feel free to play along!
Victory condition: All 3 Watson kids make it to Young Adult AND the family's savings are increasing from week to week instead of decreasing.
Defeat conditions: - Death of both Rahmi and Thomas before victory is reached, or death of the parent remaining at home if one moves out - A basic household necessity is repossessed due to failure to pay bills
My additional restrictions: - Normal lifespan, no Potion of Youth, no early aging up - People can move out. If anyone new moves in, they can't bring any money in with them. - Simple Living challenge, in addition to Wild Foxes which comes with the lot - No gardening or livestock-raising outside the obvious designed farming areas of the lot - No raising crops that don't make sense in their climate (dragonfruit, quill fruit, growfruit, money tree) - No painting - No Copypasto - I don't have Jungle Adventure or Knitting, so no archaeology or Plopsy - No selling into the void, except for selling off furniture if needed. Items can be sold from a sales table, recycled in the recycler, or sold at the grocery stand in town. - If the house is downsized to save on bills, cheat away the money gained by deleting walls and rooms. The demolition crew doesn't pay their customers to do a job :) - If their household funds fall below 15k the financial stress will prove too much for the parents' marriage and one of them will have to move out, splitting the remaining funds 50/50
So, will their farm join the graveyard of ruined farms that comprises their neighborhood, or will they beat the odds and succeed?
I spent just under 2k setting up the farm. The family members have different jobs to keep me from going crazy. Thomas and Rashidah planted the garden together. The first planting was about 50% oversize crops and 50% starter vegetables. There is also a row of apple trees.
He makes cheese too. There was going to be only a cow, but Kim Goldbloom smiled at him and asked if he could find any llama wool for her, so Thomas quickly got a llama too. https://i.postimg.cc/cJLnjzJ4/two-sheds.png
The reward for the llama wool errand was a free grocery delivery. That was a very nice reward. Thanks Kim. They were able to stock up on flour, sugar and other ingredients for their kitchen, plus a few berries and cherries that they'll be able to plant.
She's a stylist. Her sense of fashion is either extremely avant-garde or just terrible https://i.postimg.cc/jqwztB4D/rahmi.png But when she's home she cooks, cans, and fixes things.
Their marriage has taken a serious hit before the beginning of the game
From the sentiments and relationship scores you can tell that Rahmi had an affair with the mayor Lavina Chopra, Thomas discovered it, and then Rahmi broke up with Lavina. Also, Lavina's son Rahul and Rashidah have a mutual crush on each other. Which is not weird at all.
Because of the negative sentiments Thomas and Rahmi can't seem to have a normal conversation. Thomas is sad all the time and also constantly has a whim to woohoo with his wife. Sounds about right actually. Meanwhile Rahmi, who is romantic, is flirty all the time, but won't give Thomas the time of day. For the first few days they just stayed out of each other's way https://i.postimg.cc/SsXzQz8B/staying-out-of-way.png
Between the fishing, the starter vegetables, the milk and eggs from the animals, the grocery delivery, Rahmi's very high cooking skill that allows a lot of meal options, plus the ingredients she makes by canning, Simple Living is not a hard challenge to overcome with this family. It's a good subsistence farm already. But how to get it to bring in enough money to pay the bills?
Rashidah really got into growing the oversize crops. They work well with livestock since almost every time they clean the animal coops and sheds they find oversize crop fertilizer. She started keeping bees as well, though she isn't having much luck with them, the honey is poor quality and they're enraged most of the time and only occasionally is it because of mites.
Rashidah also got to spend some time with Rahul and they're together now
And she applied to college. I think she'll go off, get a degree and then come back. She got the Henford resident scholarship and... the E-Sports scholarship? Who knew.
Rahmi has bonded with Cecilia Kang, Thomas talks to Kim Goldbloom and to the lads down the pub, Maira has a bestie Jace Laurent from school, and Imran has a little group of school friends including Orange Bailey-Moon.
The wild foxes are a nuisance. I heard the llamas are supposed to defend against them, but not this llama. Maybe it's not placed close enough to the chicken coop. I didn't see it happen but a fox must have gotten one of the hens-- she mysteriously disappeared.
Kim Goldbloom randomly stopped being the grocery owner.
It may have been when she called Thomas and asked if he should change careers. He said she should follow her heart. Maybe it's for the best that he won't keep trying to impress her by doing errands. Though Rashidah should be grateful- the final errand taught Thomas the recipe for Veggie Treats, which is how you get your cow to make Mighty Plant Milk, a necessary ingredient in many lactose-free recipes. Rashidah is lactose-intolerant.
On Friday, Rahmi took the day off work and she and Thomas stayed home and had a long talk. I decided either they were going to make up, or if I failed to get them to do that then they might separate. They made up. They have about 50% green and pink bars now so that's an improvement.
On Saturday, Imran took a freshly laid Orange Egg to the fair. The fair was pretty boring and all he won was a Participation award. But he's cool with that, because the Participation award comes along with the recipe for Chocolate Treats and now his cow can make chocolate milk! At least, he thinks that is what will happen. They do have a chocoberry in the fridge from the grocery delivery. Let's see if someone can plant it before Imran gets his hands on it.
The important thing that happened at the fair was selling the whole week's produce (minus some saved for ingredients) at the grocery stall, which pays extra during the fair. They earned 2,556. Not too shabby for week 1. They earned back the money it cost to set up the farm, and then some. On the other hand, they didn't get charged bills on the first week-- if they'd had bills to pay they would have lost money overall. https://i.postimg.cc/05T7QZVc/sales.png
I was surprised at how much the fertilizers can sell for. We already planted a similar garden this week for the second week of spring (I have 2-week seasons in this save), but now I'm thinking of doing fewer oversize crops in future seasons. I didn't notice how much the oversize crops sell for, I'll have to look next week, but it might not be as profitable as the regular crops since you only get one harvest every 5 days. And then if I just sell the fertilizers that might be better.
And Maira didn't take long to fill the fridge with fish so I think she's going to need another job as well. Maybe when she becomes a teen I'll make her a baker.
The large vegetables are coming along nicely too. This was one thing I'd been wondering about after Week 1, whether the large vegetables are worth the space they take up as well as the fertilizer I put into them from the animal sheds. Is it more cost-effective to grow the large vegetables, or to grow regular crops there and sell the fertilizers?
The people are growing too. Rashidah got into the Biology distinguished degree. It was the only distinguished degree she got into. I guess the gardening skill helped! She's off to college and she wants to come home and become a farmer too when she grows up.
Either Rahul is going to college too, or else he just missed Rashidah too much
Imra had the idea to start growing flowers in the garden alongside the vegetables. Their neighborhood has a little garden where she was able to harvest some roses, snapdragons, and tulips to plant. https://i.postimg.cc/Kc3R0rmJ/06-village-garden-flowers.png
Caring for chickens can be sad too, when they get older and have to be sold or traded for meat... https://i.postimg.cc/V6rLHmPd/sold-chicken.png (This dialog is actually from before Imra's birthday, hence the old name and pronouns)
On Love Day, Mom and Dad managed to get some time to themselves for a date.
Oh! They get a bonus from the NAPs! I think this was Green Gardening and Upcycling Initiative. (They have a home recycler to cope with my restriction on selling into the void-- anything that can't be used or sold at a stand gets recycled) https://i.postimg.cc/cJJJwfD7/nap-bonus.png
Well that's pretty cool. This is a big difference from the 5k and change that they had to pay before.
Let's say we had a normal crop there instead, selling for 4 simoleons an item. We'd have 4 plants on the garden patch, giving 4 items per day for 5 days. That's 320 simoleons. Then if we also kept one regular and one super fertilizer instead of putting them into the oversized vegetables, we'd have another 199 simoleons. It's a bit of a gamble how much the oversized vegetables sell for, but do we have any that total over 519 simoleons? https://i.postimg.cc/hvV4csjn/total-oversized.png
We do! Two out of the four, by just a bit. However, the other two sold for really far under that mark. So on the whole, we would have been better off growing basic vegetables on those plots. I think we'll carry on with maybe one oversized vegetable per season to use as ingredients, but otherwise, concentrate on growing regular crops. Especially flowers, in seasons where we can grow more expensive flowers. We only had 2 days' worth of flower harvest in here, and it really changed things.
1. the NAPs (kinda by accident, I really didn't remember that they had a financial impact on bills) 2. Flowers, even the basics harvested from the neighborhood, sell for way more than vegetables.
Oof, this challenge sounds like a difficult one to keep on top of- especially making all the odd jobs around the farm amount to enough money to keep on top of the challenge. High Cooking skill makes all the difference in challenges. It's the first thing I raise! Pretty good profit on Week 1 though, at least they managed to make profit on top of what they paid to set the farm up.
Maybe a Bio degree will give the Rashidah the edge when she becomes a farmer after. Applying a bit of nifty science to growing plants and looking after animals might win a couple of fairs too! And woo for trans rep! Imra is so pretty and it's cool that you're doing her transition bit by bit as well. It's fun watching the family grow up as the challenge goes on, because when you're busy trying to stick to rules and hit targets I find it's easy to miss the actual family growing up and such too.
Ohhh gosh yeah, bonding with the animals must be difficult when you know what you'll inevitably have to do to keep your farm flourishing and your family fed. Nearly 10k in one week is pretty darn good though!
Thanks @SnowBnuuy glad you are enjoying it! Yeah, no matter what I do I seem to gravitate toward "kids growing up" and/or "weird stuff" in all my saves :) those two areas are what makes the game fun for me. Good thoughts about Rashidah's degree!
So I'm about ready to wrap this challenge up. I didn't make it to the victory condition since Imra and Maira aren't young adults yet, but I think it's pretty clear that we're headed in the right direction and now that things are easier I'm sort of losing interest.
Here are the things that have earned us our probable victory 1. The NAP bonuses for Green Gardening and Upcycling Initiative 2. Gardening flowers (and as of this week, bonsai buds) 3. Minimizing gardening of oversize crops, except perhaps in the winter, and selling the Vitality and Super Vitality fertilizers from the livestock
Anyhow some fun things did happen this week with the Watsons so here are some delightful moments.
Maira is still fishing but I decided she needed another hobby. She's making and selling candles. Unlike Thomas, she would rather use a protective suit than go through bee bonding https://i.postimg.cc/Gmt1tzfq/maira-bee-suit.png
I haven't been attending active high school with these guys because Thomas has too much farmwork to do during the day, but they've gotten to have some teen fun at least. Imra sneaked out to a party (in a fierce black dress) https://i.postimg.cc/BZCWCd9m/sneaking-out.png
