Cult Challengefor The Sims 4

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to lead a group where you decide the rules? The Sims 4 Cult Challenge gives you the chance to live a unique experience, where you can form and lead a self-sufficient commune or a cult with ideas that challenge social norms.

If you have ever wanted to experience community life, farm the land to survive, or create a group of people with alternative visions, this challenge is for you. Here, you will have the freedom to recruit followers, set your own customs, create a distinctive dress code, and collect treasures that symbolize your legacy.

You will also be able to learn new skills, explore romantic relationships, and found a family that carries on your ideals. So create your leader, gather your community, and decide the course: will it be a cult or a commune? Destiny is in your hands!

Note: I saw this challenge on the Sims Forums. The creator is LibrarianSimmer. However, I added a few things to make it much more interesting and up to date; everything else is the translation of the original challenge.

Short rules of the Sims 4 Cult Challenge

• Cheating is not allowed, unless it is to fix a bug or something similar.
• You may not cheat with money or with needs.
• You must start with a tent (or a bed), a grill and one activity item, and wait until day 3 to buy bathroom items. Until then you must use the bathrooms of other houses or community lots.
• You cannot travel to other worlds until you have lived 6 days in the world you chose.
• You cannot have a traditional job, and none of your members can get traditional jobs either.
• You must get people to move in with you without calling them on the phone.
• You MUST live off the land: plants, minerals, rocks, crystals, fish and treasures you dig up. At the beginning you cannot earn money by painting or writing, because it is too much money.
• However, you can earn money by writing songs with a guitar or a violin (or a piano, once you have built a house).
  Set your money to 0 after buying your lot, your tent, your grill and your activity item.
• Do your best to stay within what is realistic for the era you live in.
• You must have at least three women before you can start inviting men (or vice versa, if you choose to have a female leader).
• You must wait until each weekend to add additional community lots, skill-building items or fun items.
• You can create your own holidays; it is important that these holidays reflect the ideology you have chosen.

Sims 4 Cult Challenge: where to start?

You can create your cult or commune in whatever era you want. The original challenge mentions men who created cults in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but leaving that dark part of history aside, you can create your own community in any era you like.

1. Create your leader:

• Create your own character; you can base them on any real or fictional person
• Choice of traits:this sim must have one of these 3 traits, or all three, why not?
  • Insane: You will be able to share your conspiracy theories.
  • Creative: You will be able to share your ideas.
  • Genius: You will be able to share your ideas and inventions.
• You will need at least one of these traits to attract people with your ideology or philosophies.

Choose your commune's characteristic clothing, whether by color or by style, but everyone must be dressed uniformly.

2. Define your leader's personality:

• Decide whether your leader will be charming and captivating, but domineering once people are inside, or whether they will be kind and care about the members of the group.
• You can have a leader who contributes to the group or one who simply gives orders to everyone and lets them do all the work for them.
• Decide from the start whether your leader will be basically good or bad.

3. Aspiration:

• The Friend of the World aspiration is a good choice to start with, since it will make you introduce yourself to people and make friends quickly, which is essential when starting a commune or a cult.
• However, you can choose any aspiration that does not involve having a job. Try to choose one that makes sense for a cult or commune, such as Big Happy Family or Public Enemy.

4. Property:

• Buy an empty lot in Newcrest. There is one lot, the smallest one at the top, which is perfect because it has a nearby pond for fishing, plenty of people walking by and a small community park next door.
• This lot also has a small plot next to it, which you can later use to expand your commune into a second home.
• Make sure to check the lot before buying it to see whether it fits your fishing and socializing needs, since you will not be able to move until you earn enough money to buy another lot.
• You will not be able to travel at first; you will be isolated in the neighborhood you choose, so choose well.

5. Neighbors:

• You can place one or two additional houses in the neighborhood to be your neighbors.

6. Household items:

• Give your sim a tent, a campfire and an activity object.
• Examples:
  • A guitar.
  • Books.
  • A microphone.
• Note: You cannot earn money with paintings or writing yet. It is too easy.

7. Basic utilities:

• You must earn your own toilet and shower. During the first days, you must use the bathroom and shower on other lots. Basically, you are a freeloader.

8. Work:

• You cannot have a traditional job. You are trying to escape the slavery of modern society.

Do not cheat, unless it is in the rules.

9. Wants:

• You can fulfill wants that fit the challenge. Any want that does not fit the challenge's rules must be removed quickly.

10. Lifespan:

• You may want to set the lifespan to long, as this can take a while.

Rules and guidelines for recruiting in the Sims 4 Cult Challenge

After the first day, you will start talking to the sims who pass by. You will try to find young single women (or single men, if your leader is a woman) to start your commune. If you find an irresistible sim, you can ask them to move in with you.

You cannot call by phone; you must get the sim you meet to move in with you right at the start, and if you fail, you will have to wait until you see them again.

If they reject your offer, you will be offended by them or feel embarrassed (depending on your leader's personality) and you will never ask them again during that encounter.

As people move in, assign them roles according to their traits: the gardener, the fisherman or fisherwoman, the entertainer, the cook, the collector, and so on, to sustain the family.

They MUST live off the land: plants, minerals, rocks, crystals, fish and treasures they dig up.

Choose a collection that your cult or commune has to collect and pass down from generation to generation.

Starting the Sims 4 Cult Challenge

Day one:
Buy your lot and the few allowed possessions: a tent (or bed), a fire pit (or grill) and one activity item.

Set your money to 0

Spend some time contemplating and developing your skill with the skill object you chose, or reading your books. You can fish, if you want. You cannot talk excessively with anyone. You are alone and a stranger. Feel the loneliness today. This is the day your leader feels lonely and decides they want to create something bigger than themselves.

Day two:
Try to get a sim to move in with you. You have a limit of one sim per day moving in. When this sim moves in, they must have no money.

Try to develop a few more skills, such as fishing, playing the guitar or painting. Remember, you can paint, but not sell. Painting and writing are strictly hobbies.

Try to gather some things (plants, frogs or treasures) to sell.

Day three:
Now you can start buying bathroom items for your lot; hopefully, you will have saved some money.

Get a second tent, if you can.

Keep developing your skills.

Plant and start tending a garden for food and funds.

You can look for another sim once you have a second tent.

Start singing or telling stories around the campfire and form your group's nightly rituals.

Generally, the day should be for working and gathering, and the night for enjoying yourselves, doing hobbies and relaxing. It is not an easy task to live off the land and escape society and conventional jobs.

You can buy things like outdoor seating, a picnic table, objects that inspire your mood or an outdoor grill, depending on your funds, but NOT items for activities, skill building or fun for now. Only items for comfort, hunger and hygiene at this point. Remember, whatever you buy must make sense outdoors.

Day four:

Look for another sim and invite them to live with you and the others.

Your leader can have romantic relationships with the members. You can have group members visit other lots, but only within the neighborhood. If your leader is very controlling, the sims cannot go out without being watched by another member.

Keep fishing, gathering, planting and so on to make sure you have everything you need. Don't forget to start your collection.

Don't forget to flatter your members. Also, make sure to fill their heads with many of your ideas and/or conspiracies.

Day five:

The other members will be able to invite other sims to join; you no longer need to do it yourself.

Goals and beliefs of your cult or commune

You must start thinking about what kind of commune you are building, based on the traits and aspirations of the people you have gathered. Will you be a peace, joy and love commune that only does good? Or will you be an evil clan that destroys others and makes many enemies? Or something in between, with both types trying to live together?

Start setting your own parameters for your group:

• What are your beliefs?
• What are your goals?
• What are your rules?

Write them down. Do you want your sims' children to grow up with the ideology you created? Do you want to befriend the community and do good deeds? What do you want to achieve? Use the members' aspirations as a guide. Remember, those closest to the leader will have the most influence when setting goals. For example, if the one closest to them wants a mansion, then this goal carries more weight for the leader.

Important!

Male sims can never usurp the authority of their original leader unless they die; the same applies if the leader is a woman.

Day six:

When you reach 6 members, you must add a new sim every week, if you have room.

Everyone must be friends; they can have clashes, but ideally everyone should be able to live together in peace. They can have romantic relationships and children, and the leader can choose the best sim to have an heir.

Children born on the lot are considered children of everyone.

After the first week, when you have grown your commune and earned enough money, you can leave the world and visit others.

What to do during the days in the Sims 4 Cult Challenge?

Monday to Friday are days for working the land, fishing and producing.

Saturdays are for going out as a family, either to a community lot or to hold a party.

On Sundays you can buy items for the house, or visit other worlds to shop at other stores or stalls.

Watch out for the money!

One of the goals is that you must build a house big enough for all your members. It should not look like a mansion, but rather like a large cabin.

What about those sims who want to leave in the Sims 4 Cult Challenge?

Some sims are simply not made for this kind of life, such as ambitious sims who really want to have a job. If you decide that someone does not fit in the group, or if they become too unhappy and/or make others unhappy, or become disrespectful to the leader, you can decide to kick them out, or they may decide to quit and run away. Then you will have room to replace them, but you will also lose everything you have invested in them. So choose wisely. Don't forget to leave some room for children.

Generations in the Sims 4 Cult Challenge

For each generation that is born, you can expand to another “neighborhood” within the world you live in (Newcrest). When your leader sim dies, their firstborn must take command, and can keep inviting people to join or keep having children.

If you cannot fit more sims on a lot, you can expand and buy other lots for other members to live in. But you can only do this when you have the money to build an extra house.

Once you have a child, you can start raising them to be an artist, in order to spread the ideologies you have created within your group. You can choose one type of artist (painter, writer or musician) per generation, in any order. All the adults help raise the child.

If they choose to be a painter, they must:

• Complete the Creativity aspiration as a child
• They must have the Creative and Art Lover traits
• Before you start selling paintings, you must decide what their style will be, and it must match the group's style. So if the commune is hippie, the surrealist style is probably the one that suits your sim best.
• You must give each painting a name that focuses on the group's philosophy. You are trying to spread the word. You can only paint one painting per day (really painting usually takes weeks or months) and it must be small or medium.
• You must paint at least 20 paintings in the appropriate style to complete this goal.

But if they choose to be a Writer, they must:

• Complete the Knowledge aspiration as a child
• They must visit libraries as a child and as a teen
• They must have the Creative trait.
• They must self-publish their first five books.
• They can publish up to two books per week.
• They must name each book they write based on their clan's ideology.
• You must publish at least 10 books to complete this goal.

If they choose to be a musician, they must:

• Complete the Motor aspiration as a child
• They must have a radio to listen to, as soon as they are older.
• They must spend time around the campfire, singing with their parents. If they do not have a campfire, make their father their mentor on the instrument.
• They must have the Music Lover trait.
• They must name each song according to their group's beliefs.
• They can publish up to one song per week.
• They must publish at least 5 songs to complete this goal.

When is the Sims 4 Cult Challenge completed?

The challenge can be successfully completed after raising the three artists (one per generation) and completing the other goals that have been set for the group, based on their aspirations (such as building a house, raising children together, throwing big parties, becoming friends of the world or public enemies) or after completing everyone's aspirations (or the possible ones) without having a job. You set your own goals.