Vacation Homes in Sims 2

I Played a little more Sims 2 over Christmas. The Fugg family has made its way on another vacation. This time their vacation was to a new vacation home. There are many advantages to owning a vacation home in the Sims 2 for both Legacy Challenges and for the normal game.

The primary advantage is that while staying at a vacation home your Sims can build up their skills as if they were home. Given that the aging clock is on pause while they spend time on vacation, this can give many extra days of skill and badge building in your Sims’ life, It makes it possible to max out all skills before even starting college.

Additionally as you meet new NPCs while on vacation it is easy to spend one or two days of a seven day vacation and throw parties at the vacation home. This helps to build up relationships and gain new friends during the Sims holiday.

Family & Friends fishing on Green Thicket Manor vacation home lot

The most recent Fugg family vacation had a number of highlights. A few new family friends have been added, fishing badges have been advanced for most family members, some slight modifications and additions have been made to the vacation home, and Albert learned to teleport from a ninja.

The teleportation is going to come in handy. It’ll be neat to add some sections to the Legacy Lot that don’t have any doors. Albert will have his own Fortress of Solitude away from other pesky sims.

Over the next few game days I’ll focus on building up the family business. They have purchased a large park lot in the center of town because it had a lot of land and was inexpensive. Now I’ll be developing it and trying to create a level 10 business out of it. It’ll be a shame to wreck the look of the center of town by adding a bunch of buildings but there are luckily no zoning laws for Albert to deal with.

Eventually I’ll have to decide which of the three sons will become the official heir of the family. Once I figure that out that character will move off to college and the others will move out on their own. Looks like I’ll have to keep the offspring down to one or two each generation, at least if I want to continue breeding dogs.

This whole Legacy Challenge thing is taking longer than I thought, but I just don’t want to push it too much and get burnt out.

Another update will come soon.

Sims in Business

Continuing my Legacy Challenge:

Albert Fugg has opened his first business. I only had about §50,000 available so I had to find an inexpensive site. Since this will be the core family business I want it to have room to expand. I picked one of the four park zones in the town; they are large and give me plenty of room to do what I want.

Putting up big stores in one of the central park areas is not the most appealing thing. I believe I'll be selling various outdoors-type statues and plants. Many of them will bring in big bucks and they will add to the look of the park more than setting up a department store.

In an isolated area I might set up a small workshop area for some employees to create additional items to sell at the park or for me to keep until I set up additional business in town. All of this and a nice playground and picnic area for the locals. Nice.

Albert is about 8 days away from becoming an elder. The two youngest kids, Xeno & Cody are going to have a birthday soon leaving toddlerdom to become youngsters and starting school. Hopefully they will become teenagers before Albert dies so they along with Bobert will have a chance to become the 'official' heir of the family line.

However, before those birthdays Albert will be taking Bobert, Venus and a family friend on a third vacation to Three Lakes. It will be a long vacation giving the kids time to work on maxing out more skills and for Albert to generate some more money for the family. All this while making new friends and trying to get the last vacation memories in that destination. I really hope one of our next vacations is to another destination... but we have to save up for a vacation home in the other vacation destinations. Staying at hotels is too expensive and has other drawbacks.

Anyway, I hope to work to develop this first family business to a high level and use the revenue to buy some additional business property. I may focus on this since breeding dogs is becoming a major task.

There will be another update soon.

The Last Week on Sims 2

After the September 15 deadlines at work I've had a little bit of extra time. I spent a little bit of that playing Sims 2 and continuing my Legacy Challenge.

First off, little Bobert Fugg has grown into a teenager. We threw a party for him and everything. He's turning out pretty good, a couple of his skills are maxed out and most of the others are more than half-way there. The problem is that I randomly rolled the Pleasure aspiration for him. Luckily his lifetime aspiration is to reach the top of the Slacker career path, not the worst he could have gotten. Still, I'd prefer an heir with the Finance or Knowledge aspirations, even Family wouldn't be too bad. Oh well.

The night after the party Albert spent the night stargazing again. And again he was kidnapped by aliens! Strange thing is this is the fist time I've had a sim kidnapped and haven't heard the little tune warning you that your character has become pregnant. I have slots for two more sims, unless having four dogs in the family is eating into the slots available for human characters. The large family size might make it more difficult to keep my dog legacy going as well. I'll have to look into that.


The final event of note in the recent playing of the game was a penguin invading the house. I hadn't even realized that winter had arrived, no snow on the ground and our family tree hadn't become dormant, I just tended it before nightfall.

Venus took a break from studying and went upstairs to pet the little critter. It seemed to like it, but then pissed on our floor and ran away. Silly bird.
I'll be back with more updates in the future...

Overdue Legacy Challenge Update

I have been ignoring my Sims 2 Legacy Challenge updates in recent weeks. I’ll have to make it a point to update one a week from now on. Needless to say I don’t have all the free time I’d like, so after six months I’m still playing the first generation of the game.

After graduating college Albert Fugg moved to Belladonna Cove into the game’s Legacy Lot. He even adopted his first dog to begin the pet legacy as well. Money is tight this early in the game so nothing too fancy is purchased. He quickly invited Zoe to move in and married her.



After both Albert and Zoe each give birth (to Venus & Bobert) the game begins to pick back up. An old gypsy woman stops by and drops off a genie lamp! Albert is able to use his three wishes to get a ton more money for the family. After fixing up the house he used a portion of the money to buy a vacation home in Three Lakes. Once the kids are old enough, they will have their first family vacation there.

I’m not having any luck in getting Albert into the Criminal career track; he and Zoe are both in the Paranormal track right now. He has an aspiration to become a Criminal Mastermind… I don’t know if that will be really necessary since he earned his permanent platinum in college.

The family vacation is a success. I’ll have to be sure to upgrade the vacation home each time they visit it. During the Legacy Challenge I see frequent vacations being a useful tool.



In the time after the vacation Albert gets abducted by aliens again and gives birth to Xeno and Zoe get pregnant again giving birth to Cody. On top of that the family dog also has it’s first offspring as well.

A lot happened, and I’ve skipped over some details. That’s why I’ll have to give weekly updates on the game. On the weeks I don’t play much I’ll post character profiles or tips on playing a Legacy Challenge. I’ve even set up a page on this blog to organize all the Legacy Challenge posts into one place.

At this point the family has a value of §170,413.

Current Score: 17.25 (11.5%)

Legacy: 1.0	Ghosts: 0	Free Time: 1.5
Money: 1	Business: 0	Collections: 2
Friends: 3.25	Family Breed: 0.5	Master: 1
Impossible Wants: 1	Seasons: 0	Handicaps: 0 (3 potential)
Platinum Graves: 0	Bon Voyage: 4	Overflow: 0
Penalties: 0

Legacy Challenge: College Years

It took some time but Albert Fugg has now graduated from college. It was a very successful experience for him. Not only did he met his future wife, Zoe, but midway through his junior year he reached his lifetime aspiration of maxing out all of his skills.


(photo of Zoe accepting Albert's engagement proposal)

On top of all of that he managed to keep a 4.0 GPA in all semesters and was brought into a secret society. With all of that, and the freetime he had, going to town and getting a job while trying to set the ground work for the Legacy Lot; life out of college will become very challenging.

Science is the family hobby, and the favored hobby of Albert. He also currently has 8 family friends.

Now that Albert has moved into the Legacy Lot he has gotten a job in the Paranormal career. He has also adopted a dog to create a family breed. The marriage to Zoe was quick and didn’t involve a wedding party or vacation.

Albert is also expecting his first child… just not with Zoe. Albert was abducted by aliens and was impregnated!

Next Goals:
• Develop the family breed
• Establish a family business
• Buy a vacation home
• Give birth to the second generation

Current Score: 6 (4%)

Legacy: 0.5	Ghosts: 0	Free Time: 1.5
Money: 1	Business: 0	Collections: 0
Friends: 2	Family Breed: 0	Master: 0
Impossible Wants: 1	Seasons: 0	Handicaps: 0 (3 potential)
Platinum Graves: 0	Bon Voyage: 0	Overflow: 0
Penalties: 0

Sims 2 Legacy Challenge Beginning

Well, since City of Heroes is getting to be too much for my feeble old computer to run I had to find a new game to play. I've decided on Sims 2 for a couple of reasons. The primary one is that I can do other things while it is running, such as catching up on my reading or taking care of other odds-n-ends. Civilization takes all my attention and eats up entire weekends of time since it is so addictive.

So, I'm going to play Sims 2. While it fits my busy schedule it has no real end goal or scoring. A few years ago I ran a breeding experiment in Strangetown, but that's about it. Well, that's where the Legacy Challenge comes in.

For my Legacy Challenge I started with a student aged sim named Albert Fugg. I tried to make him as ugly as possible just to see what the 10th generation would look like. I picked three handicaps: Patriarchy (each generation must have a male heir), One Way Street (can't use elixir of life), and Storyteller (the first nine generations must have a book published). Below is a picture of poor old Albert.



Albert is in college right now. Once he graduates (or gets kicked out) I'll be moving him into his legacy lot.

Playing out nine full generations of Sims and having a baby of the 10th generation born is going to take some time. It might take me a couple years of real life time. I'll post updates when interesting things happen. Chances are I'll get bored of this after a few months.

Now, some of you might be thinking "Hey, isn't Sims 2 just a virtual doll house?" Well I wouldn't know. I played with action figures as a kid.