Cottage Living: Prep and Plans

I am not going to do a lot of prep. My plan is to take my fav occult family (Vlad, his added wife and five daughters) and have him decide to buy a house in the countryside. He'll fight with her (as usual when he is autonomous, their friendship bar always ends up red even though the love bar is strong) and pack up his kids and move there (with the fox and raccoon I made for them back when there was only four daughters). His eldest daughter will then become the country vet and I will play through each of their struggles embracing rural life.

I don't want to do too much prep as I'm not sure exactly when I will buy it (I want the bonus items, but I also want to bundle it, just hoping they don't become super greedy and withhold it from bundling that long).

I'm going to convert the 64x64 in Brindleton Bay to a farm lot so I may start building that as I won't need so many new items as I want it to fit in with Brindleton Bay still.

I also may build some shells with basic furniture/layouts and the terrain done so I can have a headstart in building in the new world.

I'll want to make new sims (or maybe some of my sims will have kids that move out), but probably will wait as I'll mostly want to use new CAS for them.

I have the perfect sim for this pack which for ages I have had no storyline for. He lives in glimmerbrook (is not a spellcaster) as a reclusive, outdoorsy gardener who spends more time alone on holiday in granite falls around the nature so maybe moving to henford on bagley may inspire more of a storyline for every day to day play and finally breathe a bit of life into his character as I have no enthusiasm to rotate to play him at the moment.

This is an awesome idea for a thread! Looking forward to hearing everyones ideas! :)

Lol about the bookstore, that was kind of off topic (and sorry, I did contribute to that).

I do not usually prep for a new pack, I just plonk it into my game and go forth from there. I will probably be reviving a previously played couple though. I used to play them in Glimmerbrook in an OTG lot and do a mini version of farming crops, so they will be happy to move to the English countryside and farm for real. I will do the lot challenge with them that requires fresh ingredients.

I don't have any specific plans. I'll make a test save first, and then I'll move in a spellcaster. I recently created a magical shop for Glimmerbrook. If it doesn't look too odd I will move it to the new world as well. With all the swimmable water one of my mermaids might also end up there.

A library sounds like a good idea too.

I've been wanting this theme for a while though I don't have completely specific plans. More recently, I've played with DHD and sent my established decorator on a vacation to Mt. Komorebi. I'll probably rotate to different households as my schedule allows.

In terms of farms, I had one farm at Rustic Residence with a greenhouse. It's inhabited by an elderly Lucas Munch who runs it as a family hobby farm. He's a vegetarian who eats his own meals with veg so he was an early adopter of this style. I also installed a swimming pool. While he will probably continue his farm, he was always off on his own. I could see him competing in garden contests.

About the pack, I'd look at the world at first to get a sense of it. I'd look over the households living in the world but I'd probably move in someone new to an available house to learn the pack. That may be someone moving from another world like San Myshuno to start farming. I also have a household that is half-British, so it may be that they would move there. They have been living in a download that has a cottagey look but some functional issues and small hallways. I could see moving them and turning their current lot into something else.

I would customize the village over time. The main thing is that we haven't actually had a world like this. I turned StrangerVille into a dusty rural town but it's one without a lot going on. For this, I'd explore the pack and then develop the village over time. I would roughly relate it to Glimmerbrook which is like a hamlet.

Since there's no new occults, I don't need to worry about impact on my main storylines. I'm going to wait and see what the world/gameplay looks like before I start mentally moving sims in. I've got a gardener whose story is kind of stalling now that her kids are grown; I may move her into the new world and give her a big farm. I also have a mermaid who is kind of outdoorsy who may be perfect for llama farming (her human mother was super into knitting). Or I may make a new family and go from there. Some of the kids I've got now may also be grown enough by release to move them into the new world. I've got a save for testing random stuff so I'll poke around in there for a few days while waiting for the big mod updates.

I'm not a builder, so I won't make any builds in advance. Even if I was, I'd wait to see all the new build/buy because I'd renovate everything anyway. I'll just wait for a few of my favorite builders to start making stuff for the new world and download my favorite lots.

The biggest prep I did was putting in for vacation time off the two days after release so I can play. Got waitlisted (coverage based job), so fingers crossed I won't have to wait for my weekend to play.

I've been having odd random thoughts but have made no plans, as yet. I'm pretty sure I'll be getting it either on release day or soon afterwards (requesting it for my birthday is just not gonna cut it - December is way too far away LOL). Over the weekend I considered a hermit living in the woods who snuck out to steal his neighbor's eggs/crops. Yesterday I thought about the Pirate King and his band from Pirates of Penzance. This morning I thought about creating Miss Marple (from the Agatha Christie books) and have her wander around solving murders...

I'm actually looking forward to seeing what everyone else is doing. Everyone here is so creative, lots of ideas to steal! :D

I booked time off for release week (starting Mon 19 June).

I'll be adding the premades to my rotation (except any with special roles), so...

I really have to finish my base save so that all the premades are up to date with seasonal outfits, pack related character development and more activities/voting boards etc added to the open street areas.