What is it?
It’s a challenge in Sims 4, where you make one matriarch and she’s supposed to have 100 children, which is rather impossible unless you have twins all the time. So if she has to pass the torch right before she ages up, the oldest daughter in the house takes over the mantle, whether she wants to or not. I did mine using the base game in two generations: the first matriarch had 52 kids (it could have been 53 but I wanted to let her live her last day as an adult peacefully), and the second had 47. The rules are here.
This has been the longest challenge so far, and I found I needed to take several breaks in between because raising virtual children is just soooo hard, especially when they’re toddlers. I did age up some babies prematurely before I saw the rules in full and I did give my matriarch a couple of sleep replacement potions, just to be transparent. But if you’re looking to play it on your own, here are some tips and tricks I’ve learned.
Babies cry all the time.
Especially once you’ve made a meal and your Sim wants to eat it. I usually just use Bottle Feed the baby, Change Diaper and Change Dirty Diaper every time the baby cries. If the baby has a smelly diaper, there’ll be stink lines and the Change Dirty Diaper interaction, but if not, use Bottle Feed and Change Diaper.
Your children will want to help, but all they can really do is Talk and Coo at your toddlers, which don’t help at all. You can lock Specific Sims out of the room so I suggest you do that so they’ll be out of the way. Teenagers can also help with crying babies, so your matriarch doesn’t have to do it all.
Toddlers learn everything twice as fast if A Young adult/teenager/child teaches them.
This makes things easier and harder at the same time. If your mum/adolescent/teenager has all his/her stats green, get him/her to teach the toddler things like how to potty (“Potty Train toddler”), teach shapes/flash cards for Thinking (“Teach toddler shapes”/Flash Cards”), read books to level Imagination, teach blocks for Movement (otherwise make the toddler climb up and down stairs–it seemed to work quite well when I did a Rags to Riches challenge), and talk to the toddler for Conversation–this is usually the fastest to level up.
Handling Your Toddler’s Needs
Don’t buy a high chair. I recommend always cooking a party-sized meal of Garden Salads (if you don’t want them to get fat when they age up) and putting that in the fridge, so it lasts A LOT longer, and then click on the fridge, “more…” and Open. Drag the salad to wherever your toddler is and then have them Grab a Serving. Once they’ve taken the food, they’ll likely head to the sofa in your home and eat off the plate. Remember to put back the salad in the fridge.
I suggest potty training them once they’ve aged up from a baby to make sure they reach level 2, so they can go on their own. If they’re trying to reach level 3 (that’s the max), it helps to have a teenager or their mum aid them in going potty to level up faster. If you have a toddler with the Independent trait, good news: no potty training needed. Your toddler can go on his/her own.
The two other needs that require an adult/teenager to help them with is Attention, and Hygiene. The way to get both of these sorted at once is to get the adult/teenager to bathe the toddler. Just make sure they actually complete the action, sometimes my adult aborts the action before the toddler’s actually clean.
Remember to put the Defender night light in the toddler’s and child’s bedroom, so you won’ t have to meet the Monster Under the Bed.
Childhood
Once your toddlers have gotten level 3s in all their skills they’re ready to be aged up! Bake a cake and then click on “Help … to blow out the candles”, and they’ll be on their way to a new phase of their lives. To age a child up to teenagerdom, they need to have one skill at level 4, and A’s in school. When the toddler is aged up, the child will immediately get almost max skills in creativity, motor, mental and social.
The easiest skill to reach level 4 is social, so you just get the child to talk everyone to death till he reaches level 4. Or you could put your kid at the chess table…but fair warning, they might be so engrossed they don’t even want to go to school.
One trick I learned with kids that will help toddlers is that they can make a quick meal, so I usually get them to make a bowl of applesauce if there’s no food in the fridge and your toddler(s) is/are about to have a meltdown–it will happen. Once they’ve done that, cancel the action so they’ll leave it on the table, the perfect time for a toddler to swoop in.
Teenagers
Need extra money? Great news–your teens can get jobs. They’ll also double as second parents to all their younger siblings. To age them up to young adults they need a level 3 skill and A’s. Young adults can help teenagers and children with homework, which speeds up their completion. The skill I favoured most regardless of aspiration was cooking, because we always always need food.
You could either cook three batches of food, (always party size), or watch the cooking channel or read a book on cooking to level this up, but I favour the first and second (which also helps their Fun levels). Video gaming is another one they’d probably love.
Once they age up, move them out of the house and then continue aging up the rest of your kids.
Earning Money
Your matriarch can’t get a job to support herself as she needs to be around to take care of the kids–this makes it easier for the toddlers to level up skills actually since there’s more time in the day–if you send them to daycare they can’t work on their skills.
From my other challenges, gardening is by far the fastest way to get money…just check out the nearest plants around your home (I recommend snapdragon and roses…they earn 16 simoleons and 29 simoleons each when harvested). However when you have a larger family (maxed out at 8 sims total), this kinda becomes super difficult to maintain.
Try writing a variety of books, painting, and programming to earn money. Programming gives you an option to work on a side job, which can be quite helpful, books earn royalties (the gift that keeps giving), and you can eventually create masterpieces with painting that could net you a thousand dollars per painting.
Finding Almost 100 Men to Try For a Baby With
It’s a race against the clock as your sim has like 48 days to be “fertile” before she ages up to be an elder. The good news is that every time your sim is pregnant, the clock stops for her and she doesn’t age up a day more till she gives birth. If you’re determined to try and end the challenge with one matriarch, make your lot trait fertile and as soon as you can, get the fertile reward. I don’t have that lot trait, but I did get a couple of twins during the challenge (probably about 10 or less) so this helped a lot.
You can build a household of eligible baby daddies, meet them out on the town, or zoom out and look for any potential around the area. I’ve done all of the above. The key is to meet your next baby daddy while your matriarch is still pregnant, and then once she’s given birth, call the baby daddy to make another baby so your matriarch is always pregnant. If she goes into labour at 10pm, wait till 12am to get the baby delivered so you save her from aging up a day. (and you have 24 hours to get pregnant).
The fastest way to get the men (you can also mod female sims to impregnate your matriarch, if you’d like) into a romantic relationship is to start off with Flirty Introduction and then all the flirty interactions will follow from there. Just don’t do the flirting in front of other baby daddies or you may get slapped. (Or the baby daddy bursts into tears).
I’ve also gotten the men from the baby daddies households to come over to her place and introduce themselves, and then she takes it up from there.
Be sure your home doesn’t have another entrance in the mum’s bedroom. If kids/teens walk in on the mum doing the deed it can be quite scarring.
Miscellaneous
All the spawn of my second matriarch.
Deaths
If you want your entire family to still be around once you’ve hit 100 babies, turn aging off for the other households (although the game might cull other sims from other households which would leave all your children/siblings if you have a second matriarch walking around). Otherwise, be prepared for deaths. ALOT of them. First your children and your siblings will age up faster than you, so you’ll see your children as elders, and then they’ll die of old age.
When this happens your entire household will go into collective mourning for about three days, even if the kids from this household didn’t know the sibling who died. It irritated me a lot because I’d be like “you didn’t even know them!”
FIT TO FAT TO FIT
So you might have tired of giving your children garden salads, and tried other foods. You’ll notice that your matriarch will start putting a lot of weight, and it’s not just from the pregnancy. Start her on runs on the treadmill and boxing, and you will see her lose weight. My sim became scarily thin after a while so I made her eat fattening foods and then coupled that with weight lifting. By the end of the challenge she had rock hard six pack abs and muscly thighs.
Anything I missed? Let me know!
Kimberly.sg 