It feels like we're actually starting to get somewhere now, so that's fun. Uh... don't check the list of goals over there if you don't wanna be spoiled. Does that count as a spoiler? I dunno. I feel like whether we've maxed out this or that skill is like the least interesting thing about a legacy from, like, the spectator's point of view.
Opened up the game and immediately got concerned because I don't think I've seen this dialogue box before. I don't think I've had my sims kids as A students? Not that I've paid attention to, at least.
Like I thought the game was about to tell me she was illiterate or something. No. She's just come home with an A.
I had Ellie do some more writing to pass the time until the kids and Raaj were back home. Didn't take a screenshot, but apparently she was nominated for an award for this book of short stories she's working on here.
Which is weird, because I only get, like, §7 royalties after publishing it, but I guess we can hold off going on vacation until the awards ceremony thing?
Warms my heart to see my sims actually using the furniture I bought for them. 🥰
When I send Ellie out fishing she catches some more new fish, meaning we only have to get to fishing level ten to complete the Angling Ace aspiration. Or whatever we're calling them now.
Eight of the fish we've caught are not base game, so they're not really the ones we're going for? I'm going to count the collection as done if we've gotten all the fish from base game + outdoor retreat. I don't want to treat the challenge as essentially penalizing me with a harder goal for having more expansions, so that's how I'm gonna do. I'm sure we'll get all the fish eventually, anyway.
Even the economy within the sims is in fucking shambles. You hate to see it.
I think it's cute that the girls each have their distinct thing they like to do on the computer. A little less cute that their hobbies are 'cyberbullying' and 'games about bombing cities,' but you take what you can get.
While we wait for the awards thing Ellie was nominated for, I had a thought that maybe we weren't finding some fish because they're in a different world/neighborhood, so we headed over to Newcrest.
It's Saturday, so Purnima and Prunita came along and went bowling. I feel kind of bad that they only really have their dollhouse and a single computer to play with. And Ellie's using the computer half the time for writing. And the dollhouse has been broken for............
A while.
So the rewards ceremony wasn't in the calendar like I thought, and I wasn't sure where to actually go since there was no prompt or anything telling me it was starting. So no pictures of that; we're starting our first Granite Falls vacation instead.
Ignore what's going on in that tent.
Prunita: Believe me, I'm trying.
I tried to have Ellie harvest around the camp area, but most of the plants were still 'out of season' and the ones we could harvest weren't making our 'harvest unidentified plants' counter go up.
Ellie: Because these are clearly strawberries. Obviously.
Bug! Bug! BUG!! Ellie, bug!!!
Ellie: Okay, hold on a second...
What if they leave?? Go catch them!
I'd started this challenge once before that fizzled out because I realized I do not like doing legacies as a video recording, even though it's a bit of extra effort to get the speech bubbles in the screenshots sometimes. But I did not find a SINGLE insect in that attempt, so I was VERY excited to finally see them.
And then we found some bees that Ellie... caught with her bare hands.
Ellie: Oh, some mantes!
Mantes? Not mantises?
Ellie: They're both accepted.
I.... actually learned something from this game.
Ellie: Science!
Hehe. Low-poly chipmunk.
Ellie, Ellie, Ellie!!! This plant over here is literally labeled 'unidentified plant!'
Okay, so that's how we get herbalism skill. I guess.
I then stopped really taking pictures of what Ellie was up to, since it mostly consisted of making her go fishing while I panned around looking for bugs and plants.
But when I get bored of looking for bugs she gets to spend time with Raaj. 🩷
First bowling, now horseshoes. I'm spoiling them.
Purnima: Please don't make us go back to the empty box.
Prunita: When we build our own campsite, there should be an easel so people can paint all the nature around here.
Purnima: You know there's a bathroom here where people can shower, right?
Something else I didn't take pictures of is all the times Raaj kept eating things with meat in them. Unprompted. I think at some point. Maybe you are just not a vegetarian if you keep going for the meat dishes. But every time he does it I get a notification that he's got a tummyache.
Oh... ohhhh no, game. Don't give me this level of power.
And we've finally gotten to the second tier of outdoor enthusiast. I apparently have not found beetles yet, so we can't do that one.
Also, both 'eat 10 plants' and the hover text telling you what to do make it seem like we should be able to eat any harvestable we've collected, but the number only goes up when we eat the unidentified plants?
Ellie: It also went up when I ate a false morel. Which is not a plant, but a fungus.
Purnima went off to talk to a stranger in a bear costume.
Purnima: So you just... hang out in the woods roaring at people?
Bear: Yeah.
Purnima: Cool.
Raaj?? What are you eating?
Raaj: It's a veggie dog, relax.
Okay. Glad to see you've learned your lesson.
(He had not learned his lesson.)
It got too cold to fish in Granite Falls and we apparently had bills waiting for us back at the house, so I decided to end the vacation a bit early.
Ellie: Granite Falls is so beautiful, Harvey! You should come with us on our next trip!
Harvey: I'm not sure if that's going to be possible...
Ellie: Why not? We're going to get a lodge next time; you could bring a laptop if you want to write. And Jerrilyn would love all the birds.
Harvey: I mean I'm not sure if I technically can come with you if I'm not in your household.
Ellie: Oh.
It's warm enough to fish in Willow Creek, though, apparently.
Ellie: Look what I caught!
Pretty sure that's not new. Keep fishing. We need to fill up our collection.
I bought Ellie some herbalism books so she can get better at it before we go back to Granite Falls.
It's really such a shame there are no places to sit in this house. Not like I spent good money on desks and a couch and a dining table. And beds.
Where'd we get this?
Ellie: Picked it up when I was using a telescope for the time travel event thing.
Nice. We can keep it because it is on-theme.
I had to buy the first Herbalism book again, since Ellie stopped reading it and it vanished. And we can't bring her skill up by brewing herbal remedies since we're missing at least one ingredient for everything she knows how to make. At least she's sitting down this time.
Okay, we're at a new level and have a new recipe. Maybe we can make this one!
(We cannot.)
Since buying this light, we haven't had an issue with the kids waking up and waking up everyone else in the house to deal with the monster. Best purchase so far.
I was hoping some of the plants we need would be available at the park, but they still can't be harvested. I even put a roof over all of the planters, since I found somewhere saying that would stop the plants from being affected by the seasons...
It's only been a few days in-game, but we started in late fall and it's now summer. And I've only managed to harvest from a handful of these plants once. It's weird. I'll have to look into how to fix that back in the 'base' save of this world.
Someone else apparently died at yoga class. That's something else I might change on this lot. Or maybe not. It's kind of funny.
Ellie, I am trying SO hard. You have no idea.
I did a bit of research on where to find elderberries, since that's the missing ingredient for most of the herbalism recipes we have. It turns out elderberries are one of the 'unidentified plants' we have to identify. Although I don't think they're even among the unidentified plants we currently have?
We're kind of at a standstill, since we finished the first book but the second book is still too advanced to increase our skill level. We need a higher skill to identify the stuff shoved in our pockets, apparently, but we can't brew anything to increase our skill until we've identified something as one of the ingredients we need.
We might just have to go back to Granite Falls to keep finding unidentified plants? Assuming those will even let us harvest from them again.
And now our kid has anxiety. Great.
I decided just to focus on fishing for a bit, since the herbalism thing's giving me a headache.
Harvey invited Ellie back out to the club. I figured she could use a break and-- hold on, someone just walked by.
Mama!!!!!!!!!!!
I think I've mentioned having characters from my D&D campaign in this save. This is my PC's mom. I'd die for her. If something happens to her I am going to cry in real life. And it's a Curse of Strahd campaign so like. Obviously something's going to happen to her.
But she's at the club!!! Good for her. She deserves everything.
Ellie: Yeah, I just came here with my friend Harvey over there. My husband's at home with two kids and out baby. He's smokin' hot, though. What about you?
Anne-Sophie: I had sex with a vampire and had to raise my half-vampire child on my own, terrified that a human might learn of her true nature and try to kill her, equally afraid a vampire might find her and pull her away from the Morninglord's light.
Ellie: ... my kid just learned to put his foot in his mouth! 😀
I felt kind of bad about ignoring Harvey, but he's over here doing sit-ups on the grody floor, blocking traffic in and out of the building. So we're gonna pretend we don't know him for a bit.
Don't read anything romantic into this; I just love my D&D mom and she deserves to be danced with. She didn't even kick me out of the house for drinking blood.
Ellie, did you just steal that drink from my Mama??? That was hers!
Ellie: Er. Someone might have put something in here while we were dancing. Yeah, that's it. I'm protecting her.
We should probably head out, anyway. I'm pretty sure that's a randomly-generated townie.
Tiffani: How'd you know?? 😀
Did a lil' more of the Emit event thing and, uh... are we really making a time machine? At level 2 logic and handiness??
I tried to get the interaction to work, but Ellie kept completely dropping the command from her queue when the chair was there. But when I moved the chair she started to complain about routing.
For some reason moving our butterfly out of the study fixed the issue.
Ellie: Well, duh! Butterflies and time travel don't mix! Obviously! That's why it's called the butterfly effect!
I should have known.
Womp womp.
Ellie: Must have been the residual butterfly ions.
The event says we need to get some food and then exercise for an hour, so I guess we can do that.
Are you... jogging with the infant.
Ellie: Yes. Jogging exercises the leg muscles, while holding a child will be weight training for my arms. You can't neglect any muscle groups.
Apparently jogging doesn't count?
Did you expect you'd be hitting the gym when you signed up for this science legacy, Ellie?
Ellie: I never signed up. You tricked me.
Got a call from this guy who I vaguely remember seeing at the club last time.
Ellie: I've never spoken to you in my life and I have never heard of this Lisa person. Please go socialize with her. Hopefully it will occupy you enough that you will not contact me again.
Then Harvey invited us to the spice festival because he's, like, obsessed with us.
Our neighbor from the rat cult was selling food there, for some reason.
Sandrine: Step right up and try some spicy food! Definitely not drugged!!
Ellie: Hi, Sandrine. I'll have some of that not-drugged food. But actually don't drug it, because I do have a GPS tracker embedded in my body and I'm not telling you where.
Sandrine: Oh, Ellie. When are you going to be moving so we can have that awful house of yours bulldozed?
Ellie: Um... I think the current plan is for us to stay around for 28 generations. Maybe more.
Sandrine: Le sigh.
Ellie and Raaj were both stressed when we got back to the awful house, so I thought woohooing would be a great way for them both to get their fun up.
I... don't want to think about what she's saying right now to get him into bed. You can use your imagination if you want. Like a New Yorker caption contest.
I think we're caught up with the event, now? And we didn't even go back in time yet! Disappointing.
It's also Chickie Day, which I think I made a holiday purely because I saw there was a chicken icon and I thought it was funny.
While I was having people search for eggs, the herbalism book we lost turned up in Purnima's inventory! Little thief! At least I don't have to worry that it was a glitch.
Since barbecuing is one of the holiday traditions for... some reason... I built us the patio that was on the original floorplan I'm working off of.
It was pretty late at night when I was getting the calendar for this save file organized. Is... is barbecuing one of the traditions because you're supposed to cook the chicken??? I really couldn't say.
We have a foundation now! And a porch! No reason for the neighbors to complain.
Anne-Sophie invited us out, and I was curious if she was seeing anyone currently which apparently offended her. And then every attempt at fixing it made the relationship go down even further. Um. Whoops.
We're officially expecting baby Helium!
Tried to send Ellie home from fishing around the community lots and she wound up chatting with this handsome bartender for some reason? At 2 AM? Ellie, you've got a handsome chef at home. That's better than a handsome bartender; he can make a wider variety of things. Also you're pregnant.
Back near the house we catch a new fish! Another one I never even knew existed. A tree fish! I think we have like... seven more base game fish to catch.
And we get to level ten of the fishing skill which means...
... we completed one of the aspirations! Yayyy!
I'm giving the tree fish a place of honor on our weird fish wall.
Raaj decided to be squeamish... We're technically supposed to be dating/married to a squeamish sim, so I decided to let him pick up the trait. Why not. It's not like he has to be the one going around collecting bugs and such.
Now that it's summer, we can finally see Ellie in her hot weather outfit.
Ellie, what's up? I thought we made a lot of progress; why are you upset?
Ellie: Well, now that Raaj is squeamish, I'm going to be the one cleaning things, aren't I? And changing the new baby's diapers.
Oh, um. Whoops. Didn't think of that. ... and apparently squeamish sims also get uncomfortable around mounted fish. So. Um. Didn't think that one through.