Sunday, July 5, 2009

Meet Gardenia Grower

This is Miss Gardenia Grower. Because Gardenia loves to spend time outdoors, she has a tan, and quite a few freckles.

(Fortunately, though, her hair doesn't have much sun damage, at least not yet.)

Gardenia loves Latin music and Autumn Salad, and her favorite color is green.

She is a Young Adult who would like nothing more than to have a Perfect Garden sometime in her life.

Gardenia has heard about a "Gardener/Angler/Cook Challenge" being run by the town of Sunset Valley. The challenge is arduous, and requires contestants to master Gardening, Fishing, and Cooking, and to make as much money as possible, all without ever having a job (and with several other restrictions; the Rules can be found in the July 4 post of this blog).

But in addition to having several specific Traits that would benefit her in such a challenge, Gardenia is also Lucky:

so she's determined to give the challenge a go.

She has thought long and hard about how to spend the $16,000 she's been allotted, and has decided to purchase the smallest and cheapest lot she could find, way up in the hills near Pinochle Pond.

Her tiny lot does, however, have a heck of a view:

Gardenia bought such a small lot so that she could spend most of her funds on nice furnishings and appliances that would keep her in a good mood. She knows this will reduce the points she can add at the end of the challenge, but she thinks the tradeoff is worthwhile.

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NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Join us next time, when we see how Gardenia has furnished her new lot.

11 comments:

  1. I think this will be a good blog to read, from the playing around I've done with the challenge. I miss Yelena and the gang though..

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  2. Thanks so much for your encouragement, Colleen. Yelena and the Million Dollar Challenge gang are still there (and I'm still playing them; I just want to move the story along and not do a day-by-day report). Thanks for reading.

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  3. Ah, I finally get to see Gardenia whom I've heard so much about in the Yahoo Group. You can be sure I'll be following her progress with great interest.

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  4. This is Gardenia version 3.0, Nyadeni; I started her just yesterday. Gardenia v. 1.0 died, and Gardenia v. 2.0 completed the challenge in her very late elder years. This Gardenia hopes to do a bit better....

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  5. Ah, cool :) I'll be routing for her then, and hoping she beats the other Gardenias.

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  6. Very interested...I just discovered this lot by the fishin' hole today when I sent a husband up to fish to get fertilizer for his wife's garden. I truely think for that LTW it would take two Sims to do it. I also think one would HAVE to have the Prima Guide to do this. I never would have thought to send the husband to the ocean to fish with...grapes...to get jellyfish! LOL! Err...that just hit me. Get it...Grapes...Jelly Fish....GRAPE JELLY! lol

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  7. No, Wen--both Nyadeni and I have achieved the LTW of Perfect Garden before our lone Sims died (though in my case it took 2 tries!). The Prima Guide is not particularly helpful for gardening (except for the fertilizer chart); I think N. and I both figured out independently, after trial and much error, that it's better to start out with only 1 plant of each type till your Sim can produce a Perfect plant (at which point multiples of each type can be planted, and without fertilizer, for money-earning).

    The Prima Guide would have been helpful for fishing for the "preferred bait" chart, if it were correct. It's not, and I had a post about this a few days ago on Rachel's S3 site.

    The Guide is truly helpful for collecting/scavenging, at least until your Sim has earned the Lifetime Reward of the Collection Helper (at which point the Guide is much less helpful than that LTR). Gardenia 3.0's plan is to get that LTR first this time around (before Super Green Thumb or anything else).

    Grapes - Jellyfish? I didn't even think of that. And Gardenia 1.0 never did figure that out (I think she caught the beast without bait, or at least with the wrong bait), and Gardenia 2.0 figured it out very late in life.

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  8. Gretchen, my first all-gardening gal, caught a jellyfish once, but I know she wasn't using the right bait for it. I think the only reason she knew the correct bait was from reading the fishing books. She bought and read them all so I'd have a complete list in-game to refer to.

    With my new gal, Harriet, I think I'm going to save the money on books and just let her figure it out "naturally". With help from what I remember or look up elsewhere of course ;)

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  9. I put the husband to fish for jellyfish and forgot about him. By the time I remembered about him, he had caught 4 of them. ha. I am not really playing the challenge with my couple, I am letting them make a living with the garden and with collecting things because he was too hot tempered to do well at his job. NEVER did get promoted, so I decided to let him fish. The wife scavanges and gardens. They also have a toddler that takes up quite a bit of their time. Fussy little thing.

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  10. Wen, is this the couple you wrote in about to Rachel's podcast where the wife was sweet and nice and the husband was awful and ill-tempered, and still they heart-farted each other? Is this THAT couple??

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  11. YES. LOL They are modeled after me and my worse half. hehe

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