The Sims AHQ January Highlights and Recap!

Sul Sul everyone!

@EA_Cade here to start us off. Welcome to the January edition of our Sims AHQ Highlights and news recap. Thank you all for being here with us as we revealed this season's road map, the community vote kit winners, and hosted our first shell challenge over on the official Sims Discord.

That's not all we'll be covering though, we've also got some tongue twisters and community spotlights from AHQ we'll be getting into below as well. 

I'll let @EA_Solaire take over from here.

Happy Simming!

-EA_Cade

This month's news and announcements:

• On the 11th, we got a look at this season's roadmap, Sensationally You, which will include 4 new kits, a new stuff pack, and a stunning new SDX drop! You check out the details on this season here.

• On the 18th, our two newest community vote kits dropped - Castle Estate and Goth Galore 🖤 Be sure to show off all your new highly-fashionable Sims and your majestic new castles with us!

• On the 22nd, the official Sims Discord announced a Castle Estate shell challenge - you can download the lot here, design the interior, and share your screenshots in the official Discord channel for a chance to win a kit of your choice!

• And on the 25th, we had a Discord Developer deep-dive (try saying that 5 times fast...) into the Goth Galore and Castle Estate kits. If you missed the stream, you can catch up on the full recap here.

Patches and updates:

• On the 16th, a patch was released that included a number of bug fixes - be sure to read up on the full patch notes here.

Notable threads:

• We'll kick this month off with this very detailed Divergent inspired gameplay challenge, written by @scsnm179. For this challenge, you'll start by creating 5 different couples that represent the 5 factions. Each faction has their own specific set of rules and guidelines for CAS, careers, traits and even housing. If any of your Sims end up breaking their faction's rules, they'll need to be evicted from the house, so be sure to choose your Sim's faction carefully. So if you've been looking for a creative new gameplay challenge, you'll definitely want to check this one out!

• Up next, let's do a bit of reminiscing with @rrichard12468 who wants to know about the first time your heart was stolen by a Sim. I think for most of us, Bella Goth was our first Sim love with her kind and friendly demeanor and stunning sense of fashion - she absolutely stole my heart the first time I saw her in Sims 2. But who was your first Sim love? Were you just as captivated by the lovely Bella, or was it another Sim like Nina Caliente? Be sure to share your stories with us!

• And finally, we have a fun gameplay question from @LadyAofPineapple who's asking what your favorite lot traits are. With so many to choose from, it's always difficult to pick only 3 for each lot, but my personal favorites are Cat Hangout, Penny Pixies and On Ley Line. I do love a little chaos in my game though, so for challenges I almost always pick Cursed, Quake Zone, and Volcanic Activity. So tell us which traits you typically go for- do you pick traits based on the lot type, or do you choose your traits depending on what type of gameplay you're doing? However you decide on your traits, tell us your favorites to play with and why! 

And to wrap us up, the results from this month's polls:

Do you prefer to play as a tenant or landlord? 

Homeowner took the win here at 40% - as much fun as it is playing both a landlord and a tenant, buying and owning your Sim's dream home is always a classic way to play.

Which new For Rent aspiration are you working towards?

Five-star Property Owner is the current go-to aspiration winning at 38%, and with such a great reward trait for completing this aspiration, it's certainly no surprise! 

And that's all for another month of highlights! Stay tuned for all the exciting news and updates for next month. Happy Simming everyone!

-EA_Solaire