Starting Out

Welcome to The Adventures of Harriet Homebody. In this blog we shall follow the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of Ms. Harriet Homebody as she seeks to master the skills of gardening, fishing and cooking in The Sims 3, following the rules set out by r_veil from the Sims3Challenges Yahoo! group in her Gardener/Angler/Cook Challenge (GAC Challenge for short). The full rules of the challenge can be found here, but in brief, the object of the challenge is for a single sim to:

• master all three skills
• satisfy the "The Perfect Garden" lifetime wish
• complete the "Amateur Ichthyologist" in-game fishing challenge (catch at least one of every type of fish)
  
• complete the "Menu Maven" in-game cooking challenge (learn every recipe, both learned and acquired, that's in the game)
• Earn the "Super Green Thumb" Lifetime Reward
• Make as much money as possible solely from gardening, fishing, cooking, collecting, or investing in/owning businesses

All of this before a deadline decided upon by the player. In this instance, I'm going to go with the easiest option and set the deadline as "before she dies". As further restrictions, she will start out with $0 in cash and may not purchase anything from the grocery store, ever, except links to use as fishing bait. All other food and bait she must grow, catch, or harvest in the "wild" herself.

But enough of the rules. Let's meet our intrepid heroine, shall we?

Here she is at the end of CAS, looking ready to take on the world in a cute little peasant top, Daisy Duke cutoffs, and stylish gladiator sandals. She'll likely be wishing they had knee pads in the game before long. Or that she had chosen to wear jeans. She will be living in the town of Riverside.

And here's a look at her stats:

Harriet purchased a lot at 750 Old Farm Road on the outskirts of town that had a run-down old stone barn that was still intact enough to use as living quarters, a large pond toward the back of the lot, and ample room to the side of the barn for a garden and orchard. An overgrown cobblestone path leads from the sidewalk to her, er, front opening. Here is an overview of it:

And here is Harriet, proudly posing in front of her new, er, house. She looks like she might be having a few second thoughts here.

And another view of the lot, taken after the addition of more terrain paint. The terrain paints have been applied to correspond to the reach of each sprinkler, and are there mostly for my own reference as the player so I don't have to guess if a plant will be covered by the sprinkler, hence the very squared off edges.

The darker soil area will be the first area planted, and will be the main part of the garden throughout. The lighter area will be used for expansion when needed, and possibly as the "testing ground" for planting unknown seeds until they've matured enough to be identifiable, at which point they'll be moved into the main section, provided there's room for them. The dark grass area will be the orchard area.

For later scoring purposes, Harriet had $4452 left in cash after I'd finished setting up her lot, and before funds were reduced to $0.

Will Harriet be able to make it on her own and become the gardening/fishing/cooking queen she dreams of being? Stay tuned to find out.