The Sims 4 community is a little sadistic, and it’s completely unabashed. The sandbox capabilities of EA’s otherwise family-friendly life sim have always encouraged us to explore these morbid oddities with proud irresponsibility. You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who didn’t enjoy clearing pool ladders in The Sims 2, and it’s a unique kind of fun to install some of the best Sims 4 mods like Life’s Tragedies, trigger random acts of violence, and let chaos reign.
Fan-made community challenges are another way to make life harder, both for our digital toys and for ourselves. My own attempt at the 100 Infants Challenge ended in starvation, thanks to some recent base game updates that made that regular gameplay on its head. To that end, I caught up with a fellow Simmer to share her experiences in completing one of the most intense, expansive, and difficult challenges of all: the Ultimate Decades Challenge.
“My challenge started with my young adult first generation founder: Thobian Wielder,” Flamestormer said on Reddit. “In 1300 he married Lilith Wielder and they began life on the estate of 2 Olde Mill Lane in Henford-on-Bagley where they owned only a small farm and house.”
Out with the Wielders
(Image credit: Flamestormer)
The first thing to know about the Ultimate Decades Challenge is that it will take you a very long time to complete it. The original challenge called for Simmers to methodically play through each decade from the 18th century to present-day USA, but the revised version of Flamestormer begins in the 13th century instead.
This is the third Sims challenge she’s been a part of, but the litany of major base game updates in the last two years alone has introduced a new state of life, in-game social media apps, and a compatibility system to accommodate one enabling conditional gameplay much harder. Flamestormer has found it particularly useful when role-playing historical stories.
“I have an override for the phone that makes it look like a book instead of a phone,” says Flamestormer. She doesn’t use cheats, but certain mods have helped her bypass the game’s modern leanings, including a Religion mod, a Ye Olde Cookbook, and a Medieval Activities mod. Another allows the children to cook for each other and ensures they are not picked up by social workers because they miss school. Who even had time for school in the 1300s, especially when the kids were way too busy trying not to die of a cold?
(Image credit: EA)
“Cottage Living was definitely a nice addition,” Flamestormer says of how newer Sims packs like The Sims 4: Cottage Living have taken some of the fun out of their monumental challenge. “It gave me a world with the aesthetics I wanted, the Simple Living lot challenge also made the gameplay more challenging and fun, and the option to have a proper farm with livestock also made it more fun for me, my Sims.” too busy.”
“Simple Living” is a feature of private lands that requires all food to be prepared with freshly grown, gathered, or purchased ingredients and that no electricity be allowed to enter the home. Therefore, Flame Striker can only use items and furniture marked with the Simple Life trait. It might be a frustrating limitation, but a roaring fire sounds far more medieval than bathrooms with automatic lights.
Another recent expansion, The Sims 4: Growing Together is a valued addition when it comes to the Ultimate Decades Challenge. “It has the nice benefit of letting kids develop skills like fishing and charisma sooner than before,” says Flamestormer, “which makes it more interesting to have them do more ‘adult’ tasks.”
Hard times
(Image credit: EA)
However, when Lilith gave birth to the family’s third child, things quickly became more difficult. “Around the time her eldest turned 1.5 years old, in the year 1303, Lilith gave birth to a new baby. Unfortunately it was stillborn,” Flamestormer reported sadly on Reddit. “Thobian and Lilith nevertheless decided to call him Henry before burying him in their garden. Their oldest children, now toddlers, surprisingly made their lives a little easier, and they both got to really grieve for the child they never knew.” Ouch.
Death in the family only became more difficult to cope with, when accidentally acquired quirks and childlike traits set in. “One of my toddlers had the Picky Eater, Light Sleeper, and Hates Bedtime Quirks. This caused their need for sleep and hunger to be almost never fully and caused them to easily fade to orange or red without my noticing. I don’t mind a challenge from time to time, but it got to a point where I had to focus on her almost constantly just to make sure she was actually eating or actually sleeping. Thank you for parenting and growing together.
The children don’t seem to be the only ones who were fundamentally unwell. As the whole family was intended to have a short lifespan, the five-day infancy period meant that Lilith had to nurse the twins constantly and consequently starved to death forever. “Either she had to go hungry for a while, or I ended up making extra food just for her because the others weren’t hungry enough.”
(Image credit: EA)
“Also, there was the annoyance of Sims constantly ‘looking’ after toddlers, infants, and newborns on their own, even when autonomy is turned off,” Flamestormer says of another occupational hazard of updating Sim parenting after the birth of toddlers. “Whenever I looked at another Sim for a moment, my male Sim would either bottle feed the baby, put him on the ground somewhere, take him to the whole other side of the lot and leave him there, or have my other Sims do it not being able to interact with the baby. Because bottle-feeding didn’t really matter until the 16th century, it was a historically inaccurate taboo for flamestormers.
She went on to describe how the terrible twos just kept kicking. “Sims refused to cook or sleep on their own because their actions were constantly being overshadowed by the need to check on the baby, making my Sims nearly impossible to properly play with while they were anything toddler-aged or younger in their household.” This is something I experienced in-game myself; Parents will neglect all of their own needs to care for the babies, even if it means collapsing from exhaustion in a pool of their own urine. Again, ouch.
We’ve only just started
(Image credit: EA)
One of my toddlers had the Picky Eater, Light Sleeper, and Hates Bedtime Quirks. This caused their need for sleep and hunger to be almost never satiated, and they easily turned orange or red without my noticing.
Flame Striker
In 1309 there was an even more dramatic turning point. Both Thobian and Lilith succumbed to the flu and died. Their six children were orphans and were cared for by neighbors.
So what’s next for the Wielder family, whose oldest heirs are only eight years old? “I do think the next 10 years will be a lot harder as part of it will be played without teenage or older sims,” says Flamestormer. “I plan to keep the religion mod and make all Sims worshipers of the Warden until there comes a time when it makes sense for them to convert to another religion or become an atheist.”
It seems that newer Sims packs have had their pros and cons when it comes to the Ultimate Decades Challenge, but going forward it won’t just be about wool breeding and lord praise. Following historical canon, Flamestormer anticipates that the devastating effects of plague and famine will greatly reduce the amount of time she can feed her Sims, and possibly even result in her having to kill some of them. For reasons of accuracy, of course.
Check out some other games like The Sims 4 for more life simulation antics, from Animal Crossing to Yonder.
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