The Simple Living Lot Challenge Guide

Sims 4 has created a multitude of different gameplay aspects to create new challenges for our sims to overcome. This includes the introduction of lot challenges, and many are quite unique to their respective expansion pack. Sims 4 Cottage Living that centers around farm life introduced the Simple Living lot challenge.

The Simple Living lot challenge requires your sims to have all the necessary ingredients in order to cook any meals and your sim will no longer have access to quick meals for an extra bit of a challenge. This article will go over how lot challenges work in general and how to be successful when playing with the Simple Living lot challenge including some tips and tricks I have learned along the way.

What are lot challenges?

Lot challenges were officially introduced when Sims 4 Cottage Living was released. A lot challenge creates certain characteristics to your sim's current lot that introduces a new gameplay challenge for your sim to overcome. There are a wide variety of lot challenges and below is the complete list of current lot challenges in the Sims 4.

If you enjoy lot challenges, the Off-the-Grid lot challenge is a great complement to the Simple Living lot challenge. If you enjoy making you sim completely self sufficient you can learn more about the off-the-grid lot challenge here.

What are the differences between Lot Traits and Lot Challenges?

Lot challenges used to be included with lot traits, and you were limited to three total traits/challenges to add to your lot. With the introduction of Sims 4 Cottage Living, lot challenges were separated into their own unique category.

Since they have been separated you can have more than just three traits/challenges overall. You are limited to three lot traits, but you can choose any amount of lot challenges you'd like. You can try adding every lot challenge if you'd think it would be a fun game play challenge.

How to add Lot Traits and Lot Challenges?

To add Lot Traits and Lot Challenges you will need to be in build/buy mode. Click on the little information button on the top left of the screen next to the name of your lot. Then click on the traits panel (the small question mark in the hexagon), you will see three more hexagons with question marks and then a trophy with a triangle behind it. The three hexagons are the lot traits, and the trophy is the lot challenges.

The Traits Panel will be on the lot traits options by default. To add a lot challenge you need to click on the trophy first and then you will see your options for lot challenges.

What effects does the Simple Living lot challenge have?

The Simple Living lot challenge requires you to have all the ingredients required for you to cook any recipe you'd like. This will require you to get grocery deliveries, start a garden, fish, and raise animals.

You can learn everything you need to know about gardening in my article that goes over everything from planting seeds and how to get super rare plants and increase your plants quality. This article will help you successfully navigate the simple living lot challenge.

While it is a challenge, your sim does gain a nice benefit from eating fresh ingredients in their meals. Each time you eat a cooked meal with fresh ingredients your sim will receive the "Self Sustaining" moodlet. It is a positive moodlet that will boost any current positive emotion.

Which lot traits help with the Simple Living lot challenge?

If you add the simple living lot challenge there are some good lot traits to consider adding to help your sim along the journey. Particularly the "Great Soil" lot trait, this trait makes your sim grow their gardening skill much faster. This will allow you to do higher level abilities such as grafting and fertilizing plants sooner to help you expand the variety of plants in your garden and increase your overall plant quality.

Another lot trait that doesn't directly affect getting ingredients but can be helpful is the Chef's Kitchen trait. This trait helps your sim grow their cooking skill faster and can helpful in the kitchen so your sim has more recipe options at their disposal. This can allow you to have more options for those ingredients you work so hard to get. It would be a shame to let them go to waste.

Some tricks and tips to help with the Simple Living lot challenge.

After playing through the Simple Living lot challenge myself I found some techniques that really helped my sim be successful.

Get a Gardener:

Your Sim will do a lot of gardening in order to grow most of the ingredients you will need for cooking. At first you will enjoy the experience of setting up an amazing garden with a vast variety of plants. However, your sim will have to tend to their garden and harvest plants every single day. After awhile that part of the gameplay can get boring.

I suggest hiring a gardener to help alleviate some of the chores that come with a massive garden. You can hire a gardener with your phone or computer using the "Hire a service" option. You can select to hire a one time gardening service or a scheduled gardening service where they will come multiple times a week. I suggest the latter.

What is actually better than a gardener is a FREE gardener. To get a free gardener you must purchase the free services reward in the reward store for 1,500 satisfaction points. The description says "All single-use service request are free." However, I've never been charged for my scheduled gardening services when I had the Free Services reward.

Greenhouse:

If you have Sims 4 Seasons having plants sheltered is a must! You will need access to your fruits and vegetables all year round. You can use planter boxes in your house to keep a few plants out from the elements, but the best solution is to create a separate greenhouse.

You don't have to necessarily use planter boxes in the greenhouse itself, you can create a room and delete the floor to have the terrain exposed and then simply place your plants as you would if they were outside. If you want to learn more about when to use a planter box and the benefits to them you can learn more in my guide to planter boxes that goes through when to use them and the pros and cons.

The only downside with a greenhouse is that you cannot place trees inside. This would include many different fruit trees. You will need to make sure you stock up on your apples, coconuts, cherries, avocados, and more before they are out of season.

Grocery delivery is necessary:

While the introduction to flour and sugar production as well as butchering your own meat would have nice with the introduction of Sims 4 simple living lot challenge, unfortunately some ingredients you cannot make on your own. You will have to place a grocery delivery if you want flour, sugar, red meat, or white meat.

There are not currently any mods (at least that I am aware of) that make functional flour and sugar. I did find some mods that have a functional mill that makes a bag of flour, however, the game doesn't recognize it as a qualifying ingredient. If you used the custom content mill to make a bag of flour when you go to cook you will see that the game will say you still need flour for that particular recipe.

To make a grocery delivery you can use either your phone, computer, or refrigerator to select "Order a delivery." Then you choose grocery delivery, it cost $20 for the delivery fee and then you can select from a pretty wide variety of grocery items. Once you place your order a grocery deliverer sim will appear and you will need to go to them and accept the delivery. You can also choose to tip your grocery deliverer $10 for bringing you your groceries. They will set the bag of groceries in your house and then you can click on the bag to put your groceries away.

If you do some errands for the grocery store owner or the grocery deliverer you can get a coupon for a free grocery delivery.

Animals:

To get milk and eggs for cooking you will need some cows and chickens. You will need an animal shed and a chicken coop on your lot. The animal shed can hold one cow or one llama each and the chicken coop can hold to eight chickens at one time.

When you milk your cows you get six bottles of milk in a variety of different qualities. It is also possible to get different kinds of milk. For instance if you tip your cow $25 simoleons you will receive enriched milk, or you can give your cow a chocolatey treat you will receive chocolate milk.

Each hen lays one egg a day. If you have a rooster in the coop you will receive some hatchable eggs that you can incubate and hatch some chicks to increase your egg output. Like the cow you can give your chickens special animal treats to get different types of eggs. With chickens if you have a very strong friendly relationship with them you might find yourself with some golden eggs.

Cooking:

With the simple living challenge your sim will spend a lot of time in the kitchen. You won't have the option to have a quick meal anymore. You will want to work hard in the garden to get the highest quality plants you can. You are more likely to cook higher quality meals with higher quality ingredients.

You can use fertilizers to get perfect quality plants over time. You can learn which fertilizers are best and how to find them in an article I wrote explaining how to know which fertilizers have the best affect on plants.

You also want to make the most out of your ingredients by cooking larger portion meals. There are three different sizes of meals in the Sims 4. Single serving, Family size, and Party size. Family size includes four servings and party size includes eight servings.

If you don't want your sim to run out of ingredients so quickly try cooking party sizes and eating the leftovers later. Rather than requiring double of all the ingredients to make eight rather than four servings, some party size recipes only require double the amount of one ingredient to make double the amount of servings.

For example: a Family size of Yorkshire Pudding requires, 1 Egg, 1 Bottle of Milk, and 1 Flour and a party size requires 2 Eggs, 1 Bottle of Milk, and 1 Flour. The eggs are the only ingredient that doubled for that particular recipe.

Canning:

Sims 4 Cottage Living introduced a new element to the cooking skill, canning. Canning is not a new skill all on its own, as your sim gets better in the kitchen you will have access to more canning recipes. Your sim can now make a variety of jams, sauces, meat substitutes, mayonnaise, custard, and more. You don't want to overlook this particular aspect of the game. Many recipes require these new ingredients to make a few different recipes.