Part 1: Daniella Begins
Right! Time to play the game proper.
Cheap and secluded. That’ll do.
Oh. I guess it’s time for a tutorial.
Wishes! These are pretty danged important. Essentially, our Sims will want things, and we can fulfill these desires for valuable points which can then be spent on things.
Wishes come and go via that smaller window up at the top. If we see one we feel like we can do, we promise it, thus putting it into one of our four active wish slots. We can then do the thing and get Lifetime Happiness Points, which can then be spent on rewards.
The tutorial has decided that we want to buy a couch, and it was even nice enough to give us $500 with which to do so. Hey, free porch couch!
Next, we’re taught about Mood and Moodlets.
Mood is that little green gauge you see there. The higher it is, the better our mood. Being in a good mood passively generates Lifetime Happiness Points, and probably has other effects that someone else knows better than I do.
Moodlets are, plain and simple, modifiers to Mood. Moodifiers. They can come from all kinds of sources, and can be positive or negative. Right now, Daniella has a nice big stack of positive ones from being outdoors, having bought a couch, being in a well-decorated area, and being clean. She’s in a good place!
Satisfied with her performance in the tutorial, Daniella kicks back on her bed and fantasizes about becoming a criminal.
In traditional Sims fashion, we check the newspaper for our desired job…and curiously enough, we find it! I can only assume we subscribe to The Daily Burgle.
Doing well at our job - and thus getting promotions - is a matter of performance, which is a matter of meeting those performance requirements you see there on the right. Generally it’s a matter of going to work happy and having high ranks in certain skills. I’ll let you figure out which one’s which in this screenshot.
Craving advancement, Daniella wishes both to gain her first point in Athletics and attend an exercise course of some kind.
Not only will this earn us our first rank in Athletics, but it’ll let us pull off a sick 2x wish fulfillment combo as well.
So we depart. And this brings us to one of the very cool things about Sims 3 - it’s a seamless, open world. Unlike previous games where you’re confined to your house unless you want to sit through a loading screen, you can just up and go places! It’s pretty great.
And no, we’re not going to learn about achievements.
Daniella disappears into the stadium for what I choose to believe is an hour-long seminar about the importance of hydration. And she emerges with her first skill point in Athletics!
After class, Daniella decides to call Sinbad and chat him up. Turns out Sinbad is her boss.
She wants to put her newfound skill to use by jogging home, so we do so. Along with that first skill point she’s unlocked the ability to…well, you can read the tooltip yourself.
On her way home, Daniella gets her
SECOND skill point. That blue gauge above her head signifies her progress towards the next level of whatever skill she may be improving.
Take note of the skills tab, too. As you can see by the pips, we have two out of ten levels in Athletics. The white outline indicates any requirements for job promotions - in this case, level three in Athletics.
Now, before Daniella gets home, I’m going to do a bit of renovating.
What’s this? A smoke alarm? Daredevils need no smoke alarms.
I also shift the furniture around, buy a bookshelf…
…and put a boombox out on the back porch next to the outdoor washing machine this house came with for some reason.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she likes her new boombox.
Looks like she’s happy to have the reading material, too.
She’s getting fairly peckish, though, so I have her make her first meal.
The mac and chee is prepared successfully and without incident.
After a bout of Extreme Dancing, it’s time to go to Extreme Sleep.
Handily, highlighting a sleeping Sim’s sleep action in the action queue will tell you just how long they’re going to be in slumber.
After a nice morning shower, Daniella goes to make some-
…are those your work clothes?
One can only hope our heroine is better at crime than she is at waffles.
She already wants to get away from it all, but that’s definitely not in our price range for the time being. She also wants to visit the summer festival, seeing as it’s, well, summer.
Oop, carpool’s here. Best of luck, Daniella!
