Challenge: Legacy Extreme!
Welcome to the home of the Challenge Legacy Extreme, or E.L.C (“Elk”)* for short!
This challenge can be done with just the base game, or with any/all packs.
The rules & scoring both separate out any content that isn’t base game & so do the sheets for traits & collections etc.
What is the ELC?
At its core, the ELC is a “Legacy” play challenge. The idea is to start & continue a family successfully through 20 generations.
Beyond that, it’s about collecting & experiencing as much of the game as is possible within the time it takes to reach your 20th generation.
The Sims is a sandbox game, requiring players to make their own decisions on what gameplay they do. It’s easy to get lost, or miss things you didn’t realise were in the game. This challenge exists to enable players to do more & get more out of their gameplay, whether it be trying a career they wouldn’t normally play, or discovering new mechanics & locations.
The Challenge Legacy Extreme (ELC) can be done with only the base game, or any of the expansions & game packs, up to all of them. It is a living challenge, being updated whenever a new pack releases for the game that adds any gameplay, aspirations, or traits.
What do you mean, collect experiences?
Did you know there is a secret mine you can unlock through gameplay in Oasis Springs?
Have you ever seduced the Grim Reaper to save a life? What about making him a sandwich?
Some collectibles in the Sims 4 are more obvious than others.
For example, you can dig up crystals, metals, & “MySims” statues from locations around the worlds. There are frogs you can find in logs & ponds that you can then breed. You can go fishing & catch fish to mount as wall decor, cook with, or put in bowls/aquariums. These collectibles are tracked within the game itself & you can find the information by pressing the diamond button in your sim’s inventory.
The ELC takes this concept & runs with it, like an ultra marathon.
From careers & skills, to deaths & degrees, the ELC exists to help you do it all.
The more gameplay you do, the more experiences you collect, the more points you earn in this challenge.
For example, there are 10 careers in the Sims 4 base game, & each of those has two branches to choose from as you progress through the ranks, gaining promotions from good job performance up to a maximum level of 10. A single sim cannot do both branches of the same career, but they can reach the top of multiple different careers in their lifetime.
The ELC has you collect every career to max level, with bonus points for getting both tracks of each career achieved too, during the course of your 20 generations.
It pushes even seasoned players outside of their comfort zone, by collecting all of the various personality traits & lifetime aspirations. Played the game for years but never played an evil, clumsy, dog lover who more than anything wants to be a Self-Care Specialist? With the ELC, the sims born in your game get randomly generated traits & aspirations, with the generator taking into account the traits of the parents.
Why is there a spreadsheet?
Even if you only have the free to play Sims 4 base game, there is a lot of content in the game. The spreadsheet helps you track what you’ve done.On top of that, it has a score sheet so you can get extra dopamine hits during play by earning points for your achievements!
The spreadsheet has information for all the expansions & gamepacks etc, & if you’re a player who isn’t sure what pack you want to prioritise getting next time there’s a sale, you can also use it to figure out what gameplay you want to add. You can easily see which packs add what gameplay elements, from collectible items to deaths, careers, occults, animals, & personality traits.
Why would you play a challenge like this?
Do you ever get excited to unlock Steam achievements, or Playstation trophies?
The ELC is basically that! Fill out your scorecard & collect them all!
Hopefully through this challenge you’ll be able to experience a large chunk of what the Sims 4 has to offer, & maybe even explore outside your standard gameplay norms. There’s enough random chance thrown in amongst your strategizing that this challenge should mean your save games play out differently each time you do it.
Base Game alone can earn up to 167 points. With all packs, & playing the Hardmode ruleset, you could earn up to 490 points… but watch out for those penalties!
The spirit of this challenge is to play without mods that give you an advantage over someone who doesn’t have them. For example, if you’re trying to get the point for 10 kids in a single generation, you should be playing with the default 8 sim per household limit (which includes cats, dogs, & vampires who don’t age – hello hard mode!).
This also applies to not quitting without saving when an event happens you didn’t want, like a bad chance card, a forgotten birthday, or accidental death. Work with what you have! Take the random chance & embrace it! The exception to this is for bugs – if a game glitch messes you up, absolutely feel free to quit without saving (or not).
With that said however, the most important part is that you enjoy your time playing. So play the way you need to in order to enjoy yourself – the mods you cannot play without included!
The spreadsheet that goes with this challenge is designed to help you get the most out of your gameplay. Utilise the extra sheets to keep track of not only the rules & scoring, but also what you’ve discovered & things that might make your gameplay easier – like who your Serial Romantic sim has kissed, recipes you’ve learned, your occult journeys, memorable experiences, & your family’s advancement through bills & lot value.
I tend to keep track of who was in charge when things happened, by using the generation colour to fill the cell of what was achieved/found. That’s not part of the rules or scoring, it’s just a silly little thing I enjoy – being able to see at a glance how long certain tasks/collections took me to complete. I’ve played through this challenge many times & I love comparing the sheets to see how different each playthrough was.
If you have never played the Sims 4 before, I highly recommend playing through the in-game tutorial with a throwaway sim before starting a new save with a different sim for this challenge.
That way you’ll learn how to play, find out what certain interactions do, & discover where things are, before you’re trying to get things achieved for points. It’s less stressful & means the ELC rules & goals will make more sense to you when you go to play.
resources
Generator (updated to Life & Death!)
How to use the Spreadsheet & keep score
downloads
Excel Spreadsheet for scoring (updated to Life & Death!)
Don’t have Excel? OpenOffice has a free spreadsheet software
Check out #CampbellShell on the Sims 4 Gallery for some brilliant community lots made by my twitch community for my streamed legacy.
If you would like to share a community lot to help with this challenge please use #ChallengeLegacyExtreme so we can find it on the gallery.
Please also use this hashtag on socials if you share moments, stories, or screenshots from your playthrough of this challenge. I’d love to see how your playthrough goes!
With Thanks
To the Lairizens (my twitch community) for showing me that this challenge was interesting to people other than just me, & for pushing me to write it down in a way that was clear & easy to follow.
To DragynsLair for building the back end of the generator, & the scripts to run it.
To ScraneGames for writing the PHP to make the generator run on this website.
To Claymen for his help with setting up a develpment space to rebuild my website calmly, where it wouldn’t be live.
To my playtesters – LifeLoveAndWhy, MissWhiteHead, PixiePan, EngramPlays, PickupNotes, SaltQueenPlays, & CookiesAreAKatherineFood – for their feedback & help finding typos, errors, explanations that were missing, & helping me find balance between challenge & fun.
To ParaDdraigo for teaching me new formula tricks & enabling me to automate the spreadsheet even further.
Without all of you, this challenge would still only exist in my head & in my own playthroughs.
Thank you for the belief & support. <3
Shoutout to Pinstar for the creation of the original Legacy Challenge for Sims 2, then 3, & finally 4, which heavily inspired this challenge.
& thanks to the Sims team for keeping this game going so long, & continuing to throw more content at it both in free patches & DLC. I almost feel like I’m updating & rebalancing this challenge every other week!
* Australia is upside down, so it stands to reason that our acronym for this is backwards.
