Spells, Spells and More Spells!

 

There are three different types of spells in The Sims 4 that a witch can learn, namely Practical, Mischief and Untamed.  I have however noticed that Willow seems to use more of the Untamed spells such as Chillio and Inferniate as opposed to any of the others.  She has used Burgliate which is a Mischief spell but there are so many more that she can try out.  So, in this episode, we see Willow travel to Willow Creek's Magnolia Blossom Park to see what mischief and mayhem she can cause.

As it is now Winter, Magnolia Blossom Park is covered in a thick layer of snow and it is absolutely freezing - much to Willow's delight!

She proceeds to make a Snow Pal and wait for unsuspecting Sims to arrive on the lot.  Sure enough, a few Sims turn up and Willow starts to try out the other spells that she has learned.

As we already know, starting a fire on a community lot is rather futile as Sims are now equipped with fire extinguishers and all tend to have the "brave" trait.  So in order for Willow to stop them in their tracks, she uses the Morphiate spell on them.  One by one the Sims change into trees, bowls of candy, bunnies and suits of armor.  This enables Willow to light a few fires around them.  Of course, a couple of Sims get Chillioed as usual and some other Sims get into fights through Willow's Furio spell.

Now in order for Willow to attain the Lifestyle of Adrenalin Seeker which came with the Snowy Escape expansion pack, she must perform a few daring feats.  One of them being that she needs to have fights with other Sims.

The Adrenalin Seeker Lifestyle, if maintained, will mean that Willow will not panic during a fire and will find it exciting.  As she tends to produce a fire extinguisher during a fire when I'm not looking, I think this Lifestyle will be good for her, seeing that she's an evil witch and really should find fire exciting.

So Willow decides to have a fight with one such Sim at Magnolia Blossom Park.  Unfortunately for Willow, she lost the fight and immediately Strangeified the Sim with the Strageify spell, turning the Sim into what looked like a green zombie.  As this Sim became so abhorrent to all others, a few Sims threw up at the sight of her.

Having filled her boots so to speak with casting a few spells that she hadn't used before and causing mischief and mayhem at the park, Willow decided to return home to see what her little dust bunny was up to.

Maybe next time Willow will have another party...

- Minicart

Dust Bunny

 

In the last episode of The Glimmerbrook Witch, Willow went back inside her home after the party and found that her house was completely filthy.  To top it all, a Dust Bunny was sitting in the middle of the floor jumping around in a little pile of dust, squeeking.

Now, as last time was the first time I had played the game since installing The Sims 4 Kits, Willow didn't have a vacuum cleaner.  So before recording this episode, I purchased one for her, along with a couple of other items.

Before cleaning up however, I decided to let Willow interact with this cute yet filthy creature.  I had watched James Turner's video on YouTube where his Sim made over 25,000 simoleons in one night so I thought I would give this a try.  

Willow was able to ask the Dust Bunny to search for valuables in the home and the Dust Bunny gave her a few simoleons, not much, but a few.  However, after Willow had a few interactions with the Dust Bunny, such as "feeding dust" and "petting", she was able to befriend him.  She named him "Freckles" and now Freckles can live in his little pile of dust in a clean home without the vacuum cleaner vacuuming him up.  Of course you can still do so if you want to.  You can even step on him.  But that would be cruel, even for an evil witch.

The Dust Bunny came up trumps with finding Willow a couple of crystals which she copy pastoed and then he gave her a gold plate worth over 10,000 simoleons which Willow immediately sold.  Silly.  Why didn't she copy pasto it!!!???  Maybe next time....

Willow now has over 65,000 simoleons with what the Dust Bunny gave her and what she harvested from her money trees.  It won't be long before Willow will be able to afford to buy The Witch's House which I built for her.

This evil witch still needs to learn the ultimate Practical spell so she decided to go back to the Magic Realm.  She seeks out the Sage of Practical Magic but unfortunately she asks for the wrong thing and still doesn't learn the Rite of Ascension.  Of course, next time she will.

- Minicart

Hollyhocks

 

Building a Lot in The Sims 4 takes a lot of time and effort and creating a stop motion video for it requires a lot of patience, concentration and skill.

I watch other creators' stop motion videos and everything seems seamless, perfect in fact.  I really admire their creativity and the use of the in-game video to switch between rooms, floors and different parts of the build.

"Hollyhocks" is my seventh stop motion video.  I took a lot of care and concentration in making it and thought that this is the one that has no mistakes.  How wrong I was!

Piecing together the pictures in the video was a doddle and placing the video transitions went really well until I got to the living room.  I really don't know what happened but the video transition that I took in that particular part of the build just didn't go for some reason.  I reversed the video as normal but one minute I was filming the wall and the next minute the other wall and then the scene changed to the floor where the rug appeared.  I thought perhaps that I had got the photos mixed up but nope, they were in order and so were the videos.  There's something not quite right here and I cannot for the life of me figure it out.

So anyway, I rectified the video a little with a fade through so it doesn't look too bad.  I'm just annoyed that I don't seem to get it right.  I took my time and made sure (or so I thought) that I had done everything correctly.  I cannot see how I went wrong.

But never mind.  If I keep at it then maybe one day I will be able to create the perfect stop motion video!

Hollyhocks is a 2 bedroom, one bathroom property with a living room/dining room, kitchen, hallway and landing.  A swimming pool adorns the back garden for family fun in the summertime together with a swing.  This property is perfect for a small growing family.

As I made this build before bunk beds came out, the childs room has a small single bed but of course this can be changed to a loft bed or bunk bed if two beds are needed.

You can download this lot from The Sims 4 Gallery - my ID is TotallySimlish.

I would love to know what you think of the build - and the video!

Happy Simming!

- Minicart

Pure Filth

 

I have been racking my brains trying to figure out how Willow can get these last 3 spells, Rite of Ascension, Strangify and Duplicato, so much so that I had to search online.  I found out (I can't remember where, probably Sims VIP), that the only way Willow can get these spells to complete her collection is by learning them from the 3 sages at the Magic Realm.  The catch is however, that she has to have high relationship with them.  Of course this really isn't a problem for Willow as she has the Potion of Forced Friendship in her inventory that she can use.

Travelling to the Magic Realm, Willow searches out the Sage of Untamed Magic.  Now when I am playing The Sims 4 and recording as I go, I can sometimes get a little confused thinking on the fly.  I tried looking for the option to give this particular Sage the Forced Friendship Potion but couldn't see how.  I therefore got Willow to take the potion instead.  This actually worked out better as rather than using a whole bottle of potion on each person she wants to befriend by giving them the potion, she can take it herself and then hug each person individually thereby making BFF's with each one.

Willow was successful in befriending this particular Sage and was able to learn the Duplicato spell.

She then searched out the Sage of Mischief Magic, befriended her and was taught the Strangify spell.

Two down, one to go!

Willow then searched out the Sage of Practical Magic, hugged him and they became BFF's!  Willow then asked him to Teach Practical Magic.  Unfortunately the Sage told her that she was at the top of her rank and couldn't learn any more spells.  I thought perhaps that this was because she had already learned 2 of them  and that she would have to come back to the Magic Realm at a later date to learn the last one.  It was only when I edited this episode and watched it back when I realised what I had done.

Now, I record two Let's Play's at once and then edit them one after the other so unfortunately I made this same mistake in the next episode.  What I done was to ask the Sage of Practical Magic to "Teach Practical Magic".  What I should have done was "ask to Teach Ultimate Practical Spell".   Never mind, maybe in episode 38...

Willow decided to return home at this point to have a party.

Deciding on a Costume Party, she invited a few foes over (who all turned up of course) and lit the fire pit, just in case.  She also made some Pufferfish Nigiri so that they wouldn't get hungry.  She can be nice sometimes...

Of course, as with all of Willow's parties, something terrible happens.  This time, one Sim dies of Pufferfish Nigiri poisoning and another dies by fire.  But this wasn't Willow's fault.  This particular Sim was sitting too close to the fire pit and couldn't even be bothered to extinguish the fire with a fire extinguisher.  Neither did the other guests - they just ran away.

Once the party had ended, Willow went back inside to clean up and my goodness, what a mess!  Pure filth it was, pure filth! But then, an evil witch's house should be dirty, shouldn't it?

- Minicart

Gone Fishin'

 

Willow hasn't ventured out that much during her time in Glimmerbrook.  Although she has been to a couple of parks, Granite Falls and of course the Magic Realm, she has been more focused on learning her craft and killing other Sims, the latter being done more easily at home, especially whilst hosting parties.

Fishing is one skill that Willow has been learning.  Each time she comes to a body of water that she can fish in, she has given this a go and caught a few fish.  So much so that she has raised her skill to level 4.

There are quite a few places in all the different worlds where a Sim can fish, each one giving different varieties of fish that can be caught.  Of course, different fish can be caught with different bait such as flowers or fruit and Willow being a bit of a gardener has a variety of bait within her inventory.  As Willow is an outdoorsy type, she finds fishing most enjoyable.

In this episode, Willow goes fishing in the Magic Realm and catches a couple of Rainbow fish - a new fish that she hasn't encountered before.  This then gave her the idea that maybe she should visit Sulani.

Sulani is a beautiful tropical island with palm trees, waterfalls, a volcano and beaches.  

There are lots of different fish there where you cannot catch anywhere else so Willow decides to try her luck.

Visiting the bar, she chats with one of the locals and discovers that he is a witch too.  Afterwards, she searches around for a fishing spot but unfortunately there is none to be found.  But then Willow comes across a fishing basket laying in the water, ready to be baited for catching fish.  She decides to pop an apple inside to see what fish she might catch.  While waiting, Willow begins to make a sand sculpture on the beach.

After a little while, Willow checks the basket to see if she has caught anything but alas, no.  She goes back to building a sand sculpture and leaves the basket in the water, hoping that the fish will bite soon.

Maybe in the next episode, Willow will be lucky enough to catch some new fish and perhaps she should really buy a fishing basket of her own.

- Minicart

Fireworks Night

Fireworks Night comes once a year after Spooky Day.  Having a party where friends gather around the fire pit telling stories, roasting marshmallows and generally having a good time is what Fireworks Night is all about.  And then there's the added bonus of fireworks.  Watching the sky light up with all those pretty colours and sparks makes everything so much better.

Willow, as we know, is no stranger to parties and fire.  She loves to hold a party and get rid of a few Sims that she doesn't like either by poisoning them, setting them alight, keeping them out in the scorching sun or freezing them to death.  So this year, Willow holds a Weenie Roast on this special night, especially for her enemies.

Now, inviting your enemies to a party takes guts in the real world as no-one would turn up but this is Sim Land and all of the Sims that Willow invites turn up to her party.

Now Willow being an evil witch would usually make Pufferfish Nigiri for her guests or cast an inferniate spell near one or two or five of them but this time Willow plays it cool and casually walks over to the fire pit to light it.

They say that those who live by the sword die by the sword and this could also be said about fire.  Lighting the fire pit backfires a little and Willow is set alight.  However, she soon extinguishes it and goes on to light the large bonfire at the corner of the garden.  Unfortunately for her guests, the little fire pit starts raging again and sets 3 of her guests on fire.  Does Willow help them?  No, of course not.  As she cannot do anything else but either put the fire out, call the fire brigade or stand at the front of her house because of a fire on the lot, she opts for standing at the front of her house until it's all over.  A visit from the Grim Reaper is inevitable and he takes his time gathering the souls of her enemies.

Willow on the other hand is itching to light a few fireworks so she has no alternative but to call the fire brigade to put out the fire so that she can continue with her Fireworks Night celebrations.

Watching the fireworks was exciting and the Grim Reaper stood around watching them too.

Willow had a wonderful time this year and no-one can blame her for the deaths of those poor Sims as it was an accident and Willow was just an innocent bystander.

- Minicart

Making Friends

Willow has made quite a few enemies during the time she has spent in the little town of Glimmerbrook, many of which are now dead, although some still remain.  It is probably about time therefore, that she makes a few friends.

As Willow is evil, she tends to give a rude introduction to Sims that she is meeting for the first time.  This is not always advisable as there are many Sims that she has come into contact with who are either magical Sims, vampires or both.  

Willow is now able to talk about magic to other magical Sims and these options show up once the introduction has been made.  Similarly, when speaking to a vampire, options for enthusing about vampires and other vampiric interactions also show up.

Luckily for Willow, even though introducing herself rudely to other Sims causes a little animosity, she is soon able to turn this around with a few friendly interactions.  So much so, that she is then given gifts from these Sims such as crystals.

Even though Willow wants to make enemies, there is something to be said for making friends with certain Sims.  Not only does she obtain gifts from them, she also avoids any animosity from a vampire, which could be quite nasty.  I have seen this before in my personal game where the vampire suddenly appeared in it's evil form and attacked my Sim.  Needless to say, the vampire won.  It wasn't a pretty sight!

So, in this episode, we see Willow making friends with a few other magical Sims and also vampires, gaining gifts and perhaps, some more partners in crime.

Of course, Willow will also make enemies but only with non-magical Sims and non-vampires.  She needs to have some enemies too otherwise she wouldn't be the evil witch that we have all come to know and love.

- Minicart

Partners in Crime

 

Willow seems to have a little problem getting her Coven members to cast spells, be mischievous and basically mean and evil to other non-coven members.

During The Sims 2 years, if your Sim had a good relationship with another and had enough "influence" points, you could get your Sim to influence another Sim to talk to someone for example.  You could also influence other Sims to clean or cook.  Unfortunately this feature is not available in The Sims 4 and I don't remember it ever being in The Sims 3 either.  This feature, had it been added to The Sims 4, would have benefitted Willow enormously in as much as she would have been able to influence her coven members to cast evil spells and do all the mean and nasty things that The Coven members should be doing but don't do themselves.  It seems therefore that Willow, even though she belongs to an evil group of witches, is on her own.

One thing that she does have however are potions.  Giving a potion to another Sim will allow that Sim to drink it - no questions asked it seems!  One such potion is the potion of "Masterful Insults".  Giving this potion to one of her coven members seemed to Willow to be a good idea so as to make that Sim insult others.  How wrong she was!  This potion just made her coven member angry.  Maybe Willow should have hung around a little longer to see what else this Sim would do but after having spent too much time at Pupperstone Park already, Willow was ready to do something else.

That evening, Willow decided to have a party.  Of course, this wasn't just any party, this was a Willow Mendip party.  Music, Pufferfish Nigiri, and fire.

She invited most of the Sims that she was enemies with and, not surprisingly, they all turned up.  Even the Grim Reaper made a show and Willows vampire friend, Caleb Vatore decided to pay a visit.  This is where things became a little more interesting.

After the Grim Reaper had reaped a couple of souls, Willow chatted with Caleb amongst the frozen Sims in her garden.  It came to pass that an option to "Become Partners in Crime" came up with Caleb.  Of course Willow chose this and they sealed the deal by shaking hands.  Now it seems, that Willow and Caleb can plan some mischeivous stuff to do together.

I wonder what an evil witch and a vampire will do to cause a little bit of mayhem in Glimmerbrook.  We will just have to wait and see...

- Minicart

Pupperstone Park

There are three more spells that Willow needs to complete her collection.  Usually these spells can be learned by experimenting with the magic wand, i.e. waving it about to gain experience.  Unfortunately however, each time she tries this, a little notice comes up saying that she can no longer learn any more by doing this due to her rank.  Her rank is the highest that she can be so it has been quite confusing wondering how she can learn these spells.  She cannot experiment on the cauldron to get them as this only gives her the potions, which she has completed.  The only other way I can think of therefore is that she can only learn these spells through reading the magic tomes which she can purchase from a little shop in Casters Alley in the Magic Realm or by searching through the magical bookcases at HQ.

Willow therefore decides to go to the Magic Realm to see what she can buy.  Unfortunately however, these specific tomes for the spells that she needs, namely "Rite of Ascension", "Strangify" and "Duplicato" are not available.  After picking up a few other items, she then decides to search the magical bookcases but alas, nothing is found apart from a couple of orbs.

As Willow is on a mission to be able to learn these three spells, she will have to go back to the Magic Realm at a later date and maybe they will have these tomes on offer then.  Meanwhile she decides to have a little get together with The Coven at Pupperstone Park.

Now, Willow being Willow and an evil witch and all, decides to have some fun in the way of mischief and mayhem.  Her coven members are not really team players unfortunately so it seems that Willow is in this by herself.

She decides to chillio a few people and set off a few fires with no help from her friends but at least she gains another spellcaster experience point and some more points for The Coven.  She even gets into her first fight!

Having had a wonderful experience at Pupperstone Park making lots of enemies and doing some very successful spellcasting, Willow hangs around to see what else she can get up to.  I'm sure she will think of something.

- Minicart

The Witch's House

 

When I first created Willow Mendip of The Glimmerbrook Witch, I placed her in the empty lot in Glimmerbrook so as to build her a nice cheap "starter" home.  I knew that as time went on, she would need something a lot better and bigger.  Being able to afford to purchase something a little more expensive was obviously down to Simoleons.  Even though Willow doesn't go to work, the money trees in her garden will surely bring her enough to afford a more lavish home in time.

With this in mind, I went ahead to create "The Witch's House".  I decided to build this on a larger lot in Glimmerbrook so that Willow would have more room for gardening and of course her famous indoor and outdoor parties.

This build took me longer than usual, some 4 weeks in fact. I also had a little trouble with it at times, due to the platform rooms in the house.  At one point, the landing at the top of the stairs seemed to sink down a little so I had to fix that.

When I play tested it, everything worked fine except that my "test Sim" couldn't enter the conservatory/greenhouse outside.  I found out after a fashion that the little patio outside the door needed to be lengthened for her to get up the steps.  After pulling that out with the tools available in build mode, all of the windows in the greenhouse vanished so I had to put those back in and then re-do all of the vines that I had creeping up and around the windows.

Having finished the build, I took a few photos and then went ahead to create a stop motion video.

This consisted of 849 photographs and around 145 videos and took around 3 hours to do.  It then took me a further 2 or so hours to piece everything together.  Yes, it does take a lot of work to do a stop motion video but I do believe it's worth it in the end.

However, when I came to piece everything together, I found that on a few videos (there were 160 altogether), I had inadvertently recorded myself taking items away for the camera shots and then turning off the video for the transition from one room to another.  So there were about 15 videos that I had to discard and this also meant that I had no video on some parts when turning in a room or going to another room.  I therefore had to fade these through from one image to another instead.

Unfortunately, even though the build turned out really nice, parts of the stop motion video have no video transitions.

Maybe this build is cursed but then I did build it for an evil witch...

If you would prefer to watch a two minute montage of the build, here it is:

You can download this lot from The Sims 4 Gallery - my ID is TotallySimlish.

- Minicart

Spooky Day Party

Back in 2018 a Seasons Expansion Pack was released for The Sims 4.  This made an enormous difference to the game and gameplay with  of course all the Seasons that we have in real life.  Of course this also meant that weather was added, including rain and thunder and lightening, wind, snow and heatwaves.  Not every day was the same anymore.  Certain plants grew at certain times of the year and fish could only be caught usually in Spring, Summer and Autumn, the Winter making it too cold with ice covering the ponds.

Special days were also added to the game such as Easter, Halloween and Christmas (known as Winterfest) and the festivities that are associated with them.  In my game I have called them Happy Bunny Day for Easter and Spooky Day for Halloween, replacing the "Thanksgiving" holiday that is placed on the calendar in game.  I have also added Fireworks Night or Bonfire Night as it is also known in real life, the original name for it being Guy Fawkes Night here in England.

Many new objects for each holiday were also added to the game, such as a festive tree, pumpkin carving station and a bowl of candies for trick or treaters.  We also had related decor such as pumpkins and ghosts.  Being able to decorate the outside of your Sim's home with lights and banners was also made available, having chosen them from the little attic box of goodies that also came with the pack.

Now of course the best holiday of the year, especially for an evil witch, is Halloween or Spooky Day.  And Willow, being an evil witch, is extremely excited in this episode of The Glimmerbrook Witch, to hold a party.  Obviously, a Spooky Day party has to be very spooky and scary and with the new emotion of "scared" for Sims added to the game with the recent Paranormal Stuff Pack, this year's Spooky Day party is going to be the best ever!

Willow places a bowl of candies outside her door for the Trick or Treaters to help themselves and couples this with a very cool cauldron light that when turned on displays ghostly apparitions.  Of course a pumpkin also adorns her doorstep.

Once Willow has invited a few neighbours to her party, she puts on some spooky music on the radio and prepares fresh Pufferfish Nigiri for her guests.

Everyone arrives dressed for the occasion in fancy dress outfits.  Some dance and some partake of the meal, eating it with relish.  A little Trick or Treater turns up too, so that made it a little more interesting.

As you can guess, it's not long before the Grim Reaper turns up and joins in the fun, as usual.

All in all Willow "lost" three of her guests at this party so it turned out to be very successful.

The next party that Willow will be having is Fireworks Night...

- Minicart