So I’ve done a bunch of homeless challenges, and here’s how I made a lot of money and eventually built a home and all that .
Sims’ Needs
Food
It’s pretty easy to get free food actually, and in a lot of cases you don’t even have to buy a cooking grill or stove to get through the challenge. The secret to this? Foraging. Explore your lot and check out what the clickable options are, usually they’re either flowers or edibles (mushrooms, carrots, onions, apples, pears, strawberries etc).
You’d have to spend a certain amount of time in the area for the plants to grow, and when they do, either take a cutting if your gardening skill is high enough (read gardening vol 1 for levels 1 to 4, and then buy gardening vol 2 for 5-8) or simply harvest the fruit/vegetables, and now you have a pretty much endless source of food. The best part of this is that these fruits NEVER go bad, even if you just keep them in your inventory.
The other way is to check out the public barbecue areas. Sometimes if you’re lucky, someone’s made a bunch of food and you can easily grab a serving–you might as well since the food WILL go bad as there’s no refrigerator around to keep it longer. If you have sufficient funds, you could also grill a huge serving of hot dogs, tofu dogs, veggie burgers or burgers to share with other homeless people, or people just looking for free food.
If you have a refrigerator but want to keep your costs low, have your Sim whip up a quick meal, which never costs anything.
Hygiene
When you have enough money, one of the first things I suggest you buy is a bench (for sleeping) and a shower. It doesn’t have to be enclosed, but it is necessary for you to keep your sims’ hygiene levels up.
Otherwise, head to the gyms in Oasis Springs or Willow Creek. If you need to get your handiness skills up, the showers will break occasionally and you can rush to the rescue.
Social
This is one of the things I bothered least with. There were times when my sim’s social levels were in the red and I didn’t really care. But you can always bring your sim to the library and they can work on their skills while talking to the other sims.
Fun
You can get their fun level up by playing chess in the Willow Creek library, or reading all the skill books.
Energy
If you can’t buy a bed, there are benches you can sleep on around the town, like in the park etc. However, because there are usually other people around, your sim won’t have a complete (or quick rest) because you can’t speed up time. I’d recommend buying the top right land in Willow Creek because there’s a bench on the right side, beside the lake, and you can sleep there to your heart’s content.
Another option you might want to consider are the sofas or seats in the library, which is usually good for a quick nap.
Bladder
This may be one of the easiest needs to handle since there’s usually a toilet nearby most of the time. You can also use the public bathrooms in your neighbourhood’s parks.
SKilling Up
You don’t need to buy anything for the first four levels of most skills, instead head to the library and have your sim read all the books necessary to level up the skills. The library in Willow Creek has all the Vol 1 books you’ll need to level up to at least 4. If it’s a practical skill like piano, guitar and violin, or programming and writing, you won’t even need those books. Just head to the nearest nightclub (Willow Creek for piano, Oasis Springs for violin and guitar–make sure your sim doesn’t pocket the instruments though), or the library and learn away.
Earning Money
The quickest way to earn a bucketload of money is by gardening or fishing. Start off with fishing until the plants in your vicinity are ready to be harvested, save some fruits/vegetables for your daily meals and then plant all of the rest, which you can sell every day. You can also dig for treasure–I suggest selling the treasure chests and maps when you get them, and also the frogs, unless you’re doing the collector aspiration.
Programming is also a great way to earn money, once you can hack and make plugins and video games etc. Performing for tips is also good (you earn 2x your skill level, and you get tipped quite generously if there’s a lot of people around).
Other, slower ways to generate a sizeable income are to write books, or paint. You’ll get royalties from writing books, which start off at about 3 simoleons and then increases depending on the quality of the book. You won’t get any royalties for painting, and you will need to be able to afford the canvas as the base price, and your first few paintings may net you a loss, but once you’ve levelled up your skill you could make up to 10 times what you paid for the canvas.
Aspirations
Most of these, like the Fitness, Artist, Writer, Musician aspirations are fairly straightforward and easy to achieve. The Rocket Scientist one too, except it takes FOREVER to build the rocket ship. For the Freelance Botanist, you’ll probably have to either 1) go around to the specific locations to get a clipping of the specific flower/fruit/vegetable, or 2) buy loads of seed packets until you get those that you don’t have. This is a bit of an RNG, so it may take several seed packets. As for the Angling Ace, Carl’s Sims 4 has all the secret locations that you can head to. It will also take some time to collect all the varieties, but it’s pretty doable.
Kimberly.sg 