Mystery Mansion Challenge

By Kadu-McFadu

Inspired by the famous Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, the Mystery Mansion Challenge is a build challenge that encourages you, the player, to construct the largest, most eccentric and intricately designed house imaginable.

It begins with a matriarch who is cursed with an irrational fear of gnomes. Having watched her father get electrocuted by a lightning bolt when she was very young, after he failed to appease a mischievous garden statue during one of its visits, she believes that the only way to keep herself safe is to perpetually build an elaborate maze of a home in order to confound and confuse any gnomes that may come to harm her. 

GETTING STARTED

The Matriarch:

First, set aging to normal in the options menu, then create one young adult female sim in Create-A-Sim.  You may give her whatever name you’d like, but her first name must have the word “Lady” in front of it.  For example: Lady Jane.

Give her the aspiration of Mansion Barron and assign her with the following two traits: “Erratic”, and “Creative”.  You may choose any trait you’d like for the third trait.  At no point can the matriarch’s aspiration be changed before it is completed－and it must be completed before she dies of old age (No potions of youth, turning her into a vampire or anything else that might extend her life)－after which, you are free to choose a new aspiration for her while she’s still alive.

Your matriarch may never have a job or, if you have Get to Work or Dine Out, run a business.  She must start earning money to build her mansion by either fishing, collecting, and/or gardening (no money trees!).  Later on, when she can afford it, she may earn additional income through the creative arts such as painting, writing/publishing books and creating/publishing music, crafting jewelry (Crystal Creations), making and selling food (Home Chef Hustle), but nothing else.  The more she earns, the more she builds.

Your matriarch is allowed to marry another sim, but her spouse can only move in after they are married!   She may also keep whatever money her spouse brings with them when they move in as well as any furniture from their old home.  You are not allowed, however, to invite any other sims to come and live with you (butlers from the Vintage Glamour pack are fine).

Spouses and teen children, should she choose to have any, are also not permitted to have a part time job or career.  They, like the matriarch, can only earn income through digging, gardening, fishing and using their creative skills.  Once her children become young adults, they must immediately move out of the house.

BUILDING RULES

Buy an empty lot of land 50 x 40 or larger.  If you need to evict and bulldoze another sim’s property for your mansion, feel free to do so.  Use the Set Household Funds money cheat and set household funds to zero.

You are free to build her mansion in any architectural style you’d like so long as her home contains ALL of the following details:

• 3 hidden passageways
• 3 balconies.
• An altar for the matriarch with a painted portrait of her hanging above it (have a spouse or family member paint it for her)
• 13 windows on interior walls
• 13 total stairs
• This can include porch stairs, deck stairs, main staircase, stairs that go nowhere, etc.
• 13 total rooms
• Listed below each type of room are items that need to be included in each room in order for them to be considered “complete.” So long as the rooms contain those specific items (a.k.a. the “bare minimum”), you are free to add more furniture and decorations as you see fit.
• 3 bedrooms
• Bed
• Dresser or closet
• Side table
• Table lamp
• Downstairs bathroom & upstairs bathroom
• Toilet
• Sink
• Tub or shower
• Kitchen
• Stove
• Refrigerator
• Sink
• Counter
• Dining room
• Dining table
• 4 chairs
• Living room
• Sofa
• Fireplace
• Coffee table
• Television
• Ballroom
• Piano or organ
• Stereo
• Bar
• Seance room
• Altar
• Matriarch’s portrait
• Dining table with 4 chairs – if you have Paranormal Stuff, set up a seance table
• Study
• 2 bookshelves
• Desk
• Office chair
• Computer
• Conservatory for gardening
• 4 Garden pots 
• Activity room
• Easel
• Child’s art table
• Woodworking bench
• 13 dead ends
• These can be halls that have no exit, doors that open to a blank wall, corners that turn toward nothing, etc.  
• A “door to nowhere”－a randomly placed door that opens to the outside but isn’t connected to any porch, balcony or stairs.
• A gazebo

BONUS

If you have Seasons installed, create a holiday in each season called “Gnome Attack” with the Holiday Gnomes tradition applied to it.  When that day comes, the matriarch will have to defend herself from the attacking statues by kicking and destroying them when they come to visit.

If you don’t have Seasons, don’t worry.  Just hide 13 gnome statues in unusual places throughout the build instead.

FINISHING THE GAME

The Mystery Mansion Challenge is won when the mansion contains all the items from the list above, everything that is involved in the Mansion Barron aspiration, and wallpaper and floor tiles have been applied to more than half of the building’s walls and floors before the matriarch dies of old age.   

Upon the matriarch’s death, all building and decorating must cease immediately  and her urn must be placed on the altar you created for her in the Seance Room.  If she has any family, move them out of the house and change the lot type from Residential to Museum in build mode.

Should you choose to upload your mansion to the Sims 4 gallery, please do so under the hashtag #mysterymansionchallenge.  

Thank you and good luck!