Vampires or Casters?

"CelSims;c-17252068" wrote:

"darrenfroggy;c-17252013" wrote:

"SimTrippy;c-17251765" wrote:

"LiELF;c-17251744" wrote:

"To7m;c-17251675" wrote:

"scoed;c-17247400" wrote:

"OEII1001;c-17247248" wrote:

"Hermitgirl;c-17247228" wrote:

I understand what you mean with it takes longer to make vamps powerful... but for me gameplay is playing all aspects of the game and I don't plan on limiting my witches to just being all powerful witches and done.

In fairness, it is possible to simply have your sim research vampires on the computer to level them up in about 36 sim hours as well, so it is more how you play it. While not doing that will take a very long time for a vampire to level, playing your spellcaster without dueling for knowledge or just having them practice magic and going to make yourself a sandwich will produce similar results as far as the time to mastery.

But you can't complete all the aspirations in that time as well, you can with casters. I have went from a non-caster to a supermax caster with everything, both aspirations, all spells learned, all potions learned, and all perks earned in just under 60 sim hours, taking care of every need along the way and maxing relationships with all the sages. No bloodline trait, no cheats. Sad thing is I know faster min/maxing is possible as I spent some time gathering ingredients and exploring the worlds as it was my first play through and mistakes were made. I will be honest though my sim was a "super starter sim" meaning I raised her up well as a kid and did all the childhood aspirations, earned the parenthood traits, earned top notch toddler, and the scouting aptitude trait as well. This may have contributed to faster XP gain or maybe not. Testing is needed to see if any of that mattered.

60 sims hours is 60 real life minutes. There is no way. You can only ask for a new spell and potion once a day, the stores do not change stock until the next day either.

Anyone saying they’ve maxed their spell caster in an *hour* is flat out lying imo. I’ve played this pack thoroughly since release and my current sim *still* doesn’t have all the tombs or ingredients as they haven’t shown up in the store yet.

—T

Yeah, I have to question the honesty of these claims as well. I just don't see how max advancement is even possible in such a short amount of time without cheats. In fact, I don't see how it's possible even with cheats. One hour? Nah. The time it takes for a Sim to "practice" anything is kind of long and not guaranteed to be successful, spells go wrong, potions backfire, the shops need to refresh, Sage teachings need to refresh, ingredients need to be foraged or found or successfully dueled, dueling is never a guaranteed win, Spellcasters get overcharged, and searching for tomes takes forever, plus time to study them, plus actually finding the right ones for your spell level... I just can't see it happening.

Although I would like to see how they did it if someone wanted to throw a video up on Youtube of a turbo advancement without using any cheats. That would still be interesting to watch.

Totally agree with you two. Every time I see this claimed I feel I must be exceptionally bad at this game and I just don't think that's true xD it took me a good 20 RL hours to have one sim learn all of the practical magic spells and all of the potions. Okay I'm sure it can be done faster than that but everything in one hour? It just doesn't seem very realistic to me unless you use some extremely cheaty gameplay, in which case I'm not the least bit surprised that it was boring.

I think the big point here that those people aren't telling is "I did everything I personally care about in an hour" rather than everything the pack actually has to offer. I'm sure learning all the spells and potions can be done in an hour, on max speed and just grinding away on the learning and refilling needs with the appropriate potion.

And also missing is the point that just because it's possible to do something that way, it's the only acceptable way for everyone and makes the pack useless. I have one spellcaster who's learned all the potions and spells and it still took me 20+ hours because there were other things to do besides grinding. But well, if one has a point to prove, one will find a way to do so, even if it's tweaking things to fit said point.

Speaking of proving a point, I was curious so I tested, From loading game to max level with all spells and potions known took me 41 minutes and that included stopping to see to a sick cat twice, fighting the gardener, (Thanks curses), and paying the bills. Guess I'll carry on and see how long to max all the perks.

I haven't seen ANYONE who did it quickly saying its the only acceptable way. I can do it quickly, but with some of my casters I'm choosing not to. I understand that while I can slow down, other people may be unable to speed up and frankly I don't consider the speed the issue.
The comments I have seen from people saying it's quick seem to more be complaining that the difficulty is too low. While I powered through it I completely ignored that I had 2 curses - one of which was the night wraith which I just drank potions through until I knew decursify. I never stopped to discharge and never overcharged. That is my only gripe with the pack, the ease and lack of consequences. I do love it and am really enjoying it.

I also haven't seen anyone saying it was quick pointing a finger at the people who took longer to look around etc and telling them they're lying about it either....

Apologies, I hyperboled. However, people did say that because it's possible to max out a spellcaster that fast, it means the pack is useless and not worth buying. As a general statement about the quality of the pack, not just as how much they think the pack is worth for them. The ease of achieving specific goals was very much used to call the pack bad.

It takes 41 minutes to learn all the potions and spells, but not create a Sim with the new CAS assets, build a house in the new world, go through the gameplay and find all the ways to use the newly learned spells, grow a garden, brew all potions after finding all the necessary ingredients, duel some of the other spellcaster Sims and more . All that I said was that people who said it takes an hour to do everything didn't actually do everything that the pack contains.

For whatever it's worth, the first Caster SIm I played? Ended up with the Scrambled Spells and Uncontrollable Charge curses, both while I was trying to be careful with magic and he was still at a low level. That made for interesting navigation around magic until he learned Discharge (and even that is a risk to cast if you're at the danger level of charge). So the consequences are there, imo, though I understand that some people find them not enough. But while you still enjoy the pack, there are people on the forums for whom it's a reason to bash the pack (and dismiss those who do enjoy it). That's who I meant by people with points to prove.

(Edited for typos)