Death at the Fall Festival

 

In this episode of The Evil Witch of Dragon Valley, we see Willow up to her old tricks again.  In fact, she never really stopped.  Being evil is Willows speciality.  Not only does she annihilate Sims, she laughs at their misfortune and demise.  It's a wonder that Willow has any friends but of course the Friendship elixir helps with that.  Being a friend of Willows means that you stand less of a chance of getting burned to death.

As it's Autumn in Dragon Valley, the Fall Festival has come to town.  Full of Halloween fun things to do such as pumpkin picking and the Haunted House, the Fall Festival is also a great place to start fires.  Especially near the haystacks which lay conveniently by the Haunted House attraction.

Willow, being evil, takes advantage of this and proceeds to light a couple of fires.  Four in fact.  Just little ones which turn into an inferno.  A few do-gooders come by and try and put out these fires to no avail.  Even a ghost tries to help.  However, Willow has got this!  And before long a poor Sim who just happened to be in the vicinity of an evil witch perishes by the blaze.

Another Sim therefore bites the dust and the flames are put out with the grand entrance of the Grim Reaper.

The Grim Reaper reaps very quickly in The Sims 3 and with a wave of his scythe, he is gone in a puff of black smoke.

So Willow has struck again and goes on to create more devastation.

- Minicart (Jules)

Building a Car

 

When The Sims 2 Freetime was released, we were given the One Man's Junk Car that Sims could build from scratch.  This was a hobby item which allowed Sims to gain the mechanical skill.

The Sim had to work on the car engine and body parts and in the end gained a totally usable car which the Sim could take to have a car alarm installed.

It took a long time to build the car and sometimes whilst working on the engine, the car would backfire and set off black smoke at the Sim.  It was well worth it in the end though, to have a totally usable car to get around in.

This car was reintroduced in The Sims 3 Roaring Heights pack which was only available from The Sims 3 Store, albeit it looked a lot different.

This video takes you through a Sim building the One Man's Junk Car in The Sims 2 and as it took a long time for him to build it, I have edited it through.  However, you can see that he worked on it through day and night and the seasons!

Cheers!

- Minicart (Jules)

The Ancient Writings of Qin Shan Hu

At the Resolute Fist Retreat in China, John is on a search for the Ancient Writings of Qin Shan Hu.  He has been given a keystone which unlocks a door in the depths of the retreat and is faced with a large room containing stone statues and yet another locked door.  There is however another door which is unlocked so John proceeds to venture through this one first which leads him into a corridor with many doors which, one by one, he enters into. 

After finding a secret door and taking what treasure he could find, he decides to advance further into the depths of the Retreat by entering the other, previously locked, doorway and descending the stairs.

John is now faced with a dive well and three more doors, each with a plaque which contains a helpful message.  John decides to take the middle door.

Now, as a player, you can place your cursor over things that, if there are secret doors or traps, will give you a little starry thing to let you know that something is there.  This room contained many traps but only on the dark tiles of the floor, not the lighter coloured ones.  However, John doesn't know where these traps are and I, as the player, didn't want him walking into them so I decided to let him inspect them one by one, just so that he knows not to walk into them, after all, they were fire traps and could kill him.

Well, there was an easier way.  I could have just guided John over the lighter coloured tiles to lead him to the statue which he could have pushed to the tile in the middle of the floor, breaking the traps on the way.

I should have done that.

Burning to death, John's quick thinking of using a shower in a can puts out the flames, only to be consumed again by more fire which rages up instantly about him.  Ignoring my instructions to walk away, I lost count of the amount of shower in a can's that he used.  Luckily, I was able to cancel out the use of these shower cans and get him to safety.

Looking back, this was quite an easy quest, made harder by the players inability to take note of the writings on the plaques by the doors.

John now enters a room behind which houses a treasure chest containing the Ancient Writings.  John takes them and puts them in his backpack.  However, this adventure isn't over.  There are more rooms to enter and possibly more treasure to find so John stays and searches further before returning the Ancient Writings.

- Minicart (Jules)