Mother Nature Challenge: Rules

Goal

Beginning with any unskilled, childless couple, townie or player-created, in which at least one parent has and achieves the Surrounded by Family lifetime wish, raise eight succeeding generations matrilineally, while adhering to nature-themed restrictions on traits, skills, and wishes.

The original childless couple forms the root of your family tree, but does not count as one of the eight generations. They’re the “foundation generation,” and their only responsibilities are to:

  1. Birth the first child by their 12th day of gameplay (Week 2, Day 5)
  2. Fulfill the Surrounded by Family lifetime wish
  3. Start the garden described below under (what else?) “The Garden”

The Garden

This is your family’s true legacy. A living garden with a minimum of 8 plants must be planted by the third day of gameplay (Week 1, Day 3), and continuously maintained throughout the duration of the challenge. Plants going seasonally dormant do not count as dead.

Dead plants must be removed from the garden within 24 hours of dying. If a dead plant has reduced the total living plants below the minimum of eight, it must be replaced immediately, though it need not be of the same species as the dead plant. In fact, the garden may contain eight plants of identical species, provided they are all living; but note that one heir will likely have the Perfect Garden Lifetime Wish (see below under “LIfetime Wishes”), so this is not recommended as a long-term strategy.

Scoring and Requirements

This is intended to be a pass/fail dynasty. It is considered complete when all requirements have been met by all eight heirs. In brief, these requirements are:

  1. Possess the Loves the Outdoors trait
  2. Maximize the Gardening skill before the next heir in line becomes a child
  3. Fulfill a unique Lifetime Wish from the list of nine eligible wishes (see “Lifetime Wishes,” below)
  4. Continuously maintain a garden of eight living plants, minimum
  5. Successfully pass the inheritance to the designated heir

Again, your Foundation Generation is not bound by these requirements–they have their own, as listed above.

Aging, Children, and Inheritance

Aging should be on and may not be exploited (see “Settings” below for further restrictions).

Whether they are heirs or spares, all children may be sent to boarding school. Teens who are spares may also go, but teens who are heirs may not attend boarding school.

Inheritance occurs when the next heir ages up to Young Adult. At that point, you may extend the life of the previous heir as you see fit, but active heirs cannot:

  • eat Ambrosia
  • drink from the Fountain of Youth
  • eat Life Fruit
  • use Young Again potions or Fountain of Youth elixirs
  • keep Death Flowers in their inventories

Prior heirs do not have to remain in the household–you can kick them out, if you prefer, once the new heir inherits by becoming a Young Adult.

Birthday cakes and parties are optional, but no aging up before the in-game notification that a birthday will occur in a few days.

Trait Selection

Random selection is the rule, with the following exceptions:

  1. Each heir must possess the Loves the Outdoors trait by the time they become a Young Adult
  2. If eligible to, each heir may select one additional trait from the following list only, upon either graduating University, or becoming a Young Adult:
    1. Angler
    2. Eco-Friendly
    3. Gatherer
    4. Green Thumb
    5. Natural Cook
    6. Perfectionist
    7. Socially Awkward
    8. Technophobe
    9. Vegetarian
    10. Adventurous
    11. Animal Lover
    12. Family Oriented
  3. Heir traits must be unique among heirs. If your generation 3 heir selects Natural Cook for her Young Adult or graduation trait, no other heirs may choose this. Should one of them roll it randomly, roll again!

Lifetime Wishes

These also must be unique to each heir, and only nine are eligible:

  1. Alchemy Artisan
  2. Become a Creature-Robot Cross Breeder
  3. Bottomless Nectar Cellar
  4. Celebrated Five-Star Chef
  5. Mystic Healer
  6. Presenting the Perfect Private Aquarium
  7. Renaissance Sim–note that one of the maximized skills will necessarily be gardening, due to challenge requirements (see “Skills,” below)
  8. The Culinary Librarian
  9. The Perfect Garden

Skills

Each heir must maximize Gardening before the next heir becomes a child. Other than that, it’s up to you what your Sim works on, though some skill gains will be dictated by the Lifetime Wish.

Heir Life States

No Plantsims or Fairies, please. Otherwise, the Sim world is your Sim oyster.

Settings

Autonomy on High, and use any lifespan you like. Just be warned that the longer you set this, the sooner you may get sick of each heir. Isn’t that right, Acacia?

The Starting Lot

I am notoriously lax on this because I’m bored with starting them on empty lots with only a thousand or a hundred to their name. We get it: Being homeless sucks. So the only requirements here are:

  1. The lost must have a total area of 1200 tiles or greater. (A 30 x 40 lot qualifies; a 35 x 25 lot does not. Obviously a 64 x 64 lot is allowed, too.)
  2. The finished, furnished lot cannot be worth more than 35,000 Simoleans. Within that budget, however, anything goes.

Scoring

There isn’t any–this challenge is pass/fail. If you want to invent some, of course, you’re certainly welcome to, but I dislike having to do any more math than is necessary to have fun.