The Tricou Challenge

The door closed behind me, and I stood outside the lawyer´s office, puzzled, bewildered, and shuddering in the chilly autumn air, a piece of paper in my hand.

Bits and pieces of the conversation swirled through my mind, and I was trying to make sense of them. My father (I had a father? I never knew my father!) had left me an old mansion in the outskirts of town. He even left me a little sum of money. How considerate of him. And I had siblings, five siblings? I took a step down the stairs, feeling dizzy from all the information the lawyer had given me.

I looked at the paper in my hands. There, in accurately written letters, stood the address to my new home. I shuddered, not sure if it was just the wind. And started to walk, curious to see what my father had left me …

***

This is a rather simple, yet fun and demanding challenge, and the first I wrote up, so I am always happy about feeback, corrections, constructive criticism and ideas!



A little tip: Don´t read too many of the links, because they might spoil the fun!

The aim of the challenge is to befriend all six descendents of Jon Smith Tricou and resurrect all eight deceased Tricous that can be found on the Gothier Green Lawns and the House of Fallen Trees, plus Rainelle Neengia, who can also be found on the latter.

Requirements:

University, to be able to resurrect Sims. If you don´t have the Uni EP, marka93 on MTS suggested to use the Sim Manipulator or the InSiminator which also has the option to revive Sims. 

Nightlife, where this family was introduced

Challenge:

Make a Sim in CAS or use an existing Sim. That Sim isn´t so important, so you can put as much or little effort into making her or him as you want.

Send your Sim downtown and try to find one of the Tricou teens, explained below under Recommended Mods/Cheats at the very bottom of this text.

Befriend that teen, until you are best friends with him or her, then use the SimBlender (also to be found at the bottom) to move that teen in.

Use the SimBlender again to make that teen independent. This can be found under „Aging“, then „Set as Independent Teen“.

Let the teen move out and into the House of Fallen Trees in Downtown.

Decorate the house like you want to (use cheats if you like to make it more atmospheric), but once you are finished decorating, reduce the family funds to 500 - 1000 simoleons. I found the miles deep basement rather annoying, so I flattened that first.

The teen must get a job. You need a lot of money to resurrect all family members, so you better start soon.

Visit the cemetary in Downtown called Gothier Green Lawns. Pick up all gravestones that belong to the Tricou family and put them into the Sims inventory. Place them on the lot of the House of Fallen Trees. You might want to make a nice family graveyard for them (money cheating allowed).

The teen needs to find and befriend all other five Tricou teens that run around downtown. Once you are best friends with them, move them in, too. (This doesn´t have to be all at once, you can add them one after another).The other teens, once moved in, can also befriend their half-siblings. The goal is to have all six Tricou teens in the house. Let them all get jobs.


With the low wages the teens earn, it might take a while until they have acquired the money necessary to resurrect the first Sim. The first teen might age up during this time.

Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler! (select invisble text below to see it)

8513 simoleons is the exact amount you need for a perfect resurrection.

End Spoiler

Use the Resurrect-O-Nomitron to resurrect the deceased Tricous. The process is explained under Recommended Mods/Cheats below at the very end of this text.


Start with Jon Smith Tricou, who is the father of the six Tricou teens. He knows the rest of the deceased family, so they can be resurrected later. I aged him down to adult via the SimBlender, so he can get a decent job and help raise funds to resurrect the others.

The challenge is done once all dead Tricous and Rainelle Neengia are resurrected.

Comments:

There are various ways to play this challenge and achieve various goals. Use mods and cheats as you like. I recommend a few below.

I found that having limited funds makes for more interesting game play, so I did not use cheats to get more money, except for decorating.

Since the house can get a little crowded, I allowed the first teen to move out after Jon Smith Tricou was alive again, and after a while the other teens were allowed to have their own households, too. Make sure you have enough Sims in the house to get the funds for the resurrections!

Especially in the beginning, when you just have one teen in the house, it can get insanely difficult. The Tricou teens are all pleasure sims, so their fun motives go down quickly. The ghosts that roam the house cause a lot of disruption.

At one point I was so desperate that I moved another teen into the house to help with money and company. Also my Sim who befriended the first teen invited him often and cooked meals for him.

The aim of the challenge is to have fun, so let that be your guidance.

I sometimes find it overwhelming to control large households, so I prefer playing the Sims in ISBI-style. ISBI is short for "I am surrounded by idiots", which is an unflattering but rather true description of what happens when you let Sims take care of themselves.

In an ISBI, you are only controlling one Sim. The rest is left to themselves. I play the ISBI in rotation, so on day 1, Sim 1 is getting controlled, and only Sim 1. All the other Sims in the household can do what they want. On day 2, Sim 2 gets controlled, the other Sims are left to their own devices, and so on. Only at the end of the day I check everyone´s motives, let them fulfill their basic needs, and not much else. This of course causes more chaos, but is extremely fun to play.

I haven´t finished the challenge myself, because I have a rather large neighborhood that I play in rotation, and it is only one hood among many, since I play a few themed games, so I have only resurrected three Tricous so far.

Find the description of my gameplay here: The Tricou Challenge - My Gameplay I



Additional info and help:

The Tricou Teens:

From the Wiki:

„The Sims 2 expansion pack Nightlife brought a sub-neighborhood, Downtown, in which "Downtownies" were introduced into the pool of Townies. Six of these downtownies created once Downtown is added to a neighborhood are teenage siblings, with the common link of Jon Smith Tricou (head of the extensive Tricou Family) as their father. While townies in The Sims 2 normally do not have family relationships, these six teens are exceptions to that rule.
The six teen downtownies have the Pleasure Aspiration and are decorated with items that ship with Nightlife. Their names are randomly generated when Downtown is associated with a neighborhood; the names listed in this article are only referenced in the game files.“

On the same page, you can also find images of the six teens, which is helpful in identifying them in game.


Caveats/Warnings:

Orion and Tiave Tricou´s face templates are broken when they age up. I used the SimBlender´s plastic surgery to fix their faces after their birthday.

The late Mootilda warned to move the house into the lot bin, so leave it where it is. There are spoilers in that discussion, so you might want to read it only after you have finished the challenge.

 If you haven´t played the House of Fallen Trees, skip the next short paragraph!

Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler! Spoiler! (select invisble text below to see it)

In the above thread there is also a discussion about the dim lighting on the lot. The House of Fallen Trees has a special lighting mod included that came with the game, so no matter how many lights you place, when it gets dark, the light become very dimmed. 

I did not test the suggested cheat, because I felt the eerie lighting added to the atmosphere.


End spoiler!

Recommended Mods/Cheats:

Reduce family funds: Bring up the cheat window by clicking crtl+alt C and type in familyfunds [family name] [amount of money] and hit enter.

Example: familyfunds Miller 500

Unlock career rewards to get the Resurrect-O-Nomitron: If it has not been earned the regular way (by being in the Paranormal Career), bring up the cheat window by clicking crtl+alt C, shift+click on the newspaper, then select Career Rewards under Paranormal.

SimBlender - An extremely useful tool not only for this challenge, the Simblender allows you to change lots of Sims´s characteristics, like appearance, age, jobs, relationships. I could not play without it!

Inge´s Teleporter Cat - Another invaluable tool, it makes unselectable Sims selectable and vice versa, lets you move in townies, summon Sims and many more great features.

School Bus/Bring Friend & Homework Hacks Children and Teens get homework only sometimes, very useful for that challenge.

Hope you enjoyed this little write-up. I would be happy to hear your comments and experiences with the Tricou family!

You can find my experiences with the challenge here: The Tricou Challenge - My Gameplay