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