The following is a set of rules and restrictions you must follow when playing your Sims 4 Legacy Challenge. They are mainly here to keep the challenge balanced and maintain a degree of difficulty as you play through your 10 generations.
No cheats/hacks/mods that give you an advantage over someone who did not use them. I leave this rule deliberately open-ended because of the sheer variety of cheats/mods and hacks out there that have been, and will be made. The rule of thumb is that using a specific cheat/hack/mod will not put your family in any better of a position compared to someone who did not use one. For example, money cheats like motherlode and kaching would be against this rule because someone who did not use them would have less money than someone who did. Where as a mod that, for example, created a brand new yellow shirt in CAS that your Sims could use, would be fine because having a pretty yellow shirt would not cause your family to gain any more points than someone who stuck with the stock clothing options.
No restarting after bad events. Did your Sim get fired from a bad chance card? Did you burn down your kitchen because you forgot a smoke alarm? Did that baby get born a boy when you really wanted a girl? Keep the results and move ahead. Taking the bad events with the good makes the challenge more interesting and struggling back from failure states is half the fun. Restarting to recover from a crash, glitch, bug, or other technical problem is allowed.
A Sim may utilize an anti-aging item ONCE in their lifetime. This includes drinking a youth potion or milking the cow plant. Any cheats that freeze aging or lengthen (or shorten) lifespan times may not be used.Sims lifespans must be set to “Normal” in the gameplay menu.
You may not change a Sim’s current aspiration. The exception is when they fully complete an aspiration. When that happens, you may choose their new aspiration, as long as it is not one they’ve already completed.
You may not move/marry out the sim who currently holds the title of ‘heir’. All of the other children in that generation (known as ‘spares’) may move or marry out. Once a sim moves out, they are ineligible to be heir, even if conditions change that might make them the rightful heir.
When playing a Legacy Challenge, your legacy family is the ONLY family you may play in that saved game. You MAY move in new families into the neighborhood during your challenge but you may not play them
You are allowed to follow Sims to their jobs if taking the new Doctor, Detective, or Scientist careers. Since these careers do not branch, having a sim reach the top level will satisfy the ‘both branches’ requirement in the Nature category.
You may start with an alien, vampire, or mermaid and have them as heirs. If you start with a Vampire founder, keep in mind that Vampires are immortal. It is up to you to decide what to do with the older generations (you can be as sinister with that as you wish).
The Wishing Well from the Sims 4 Romantic Garden Pack can be used only ONCE per Sim in their lifetime. Once a Sim in the Legacy family uses their one wish, they may no longer use the Wishing Well again during their life. So use that one wish wisely!
If you have The Sims 4 City Living and marry in a spouse with the “City Native” aspiration, you may use the Random Trait Generator to get them a new aspiration (ignore whatever traits it gives you, you are only changing the aspiration).
Any Sim in the household can be set as a Toddler’s caretaker. All objects added with the Toddler update are Legacy legal.
You do not need to roll for lot traits. You may pick and choose those as you wish and can change them at any time.
If you have the Sims 4 Parenthood Pack you do NOT need to roll for any of the upbringing traits. They are reward traits you earn by influencing and raising your children. You may do so however you want. Standard child/teen/young adult traits are still rolled for in the traditional manner. All of the new objects, interactions and gameplay elements are all fully legal within the Legacy Challenge.
If you have The Sims 4 Cats & Dogs you may adopt pets, but we do not have any rules regarding pets and do not want to REQUIRE that you adopt or breed pets because they take up a Sim slot that would otherwise be used for Legacy family members (and thus make the challenge more difficult).
The new weather machine may be used to its fullest extent, risks and all.
You may befriend and use Patchy the Scarecrow to his fullest extent.
You may purchase and use the trait re-arranger potion. However, you must roll for new traits.
You are welcome to create as many holidays as you want while playing the legacy challenge. However, there are two that are built more deeply into the challenge that have some guidelines and points associated with them.
The Money Tree aspiration reward is too powerful due to the ability to get a large amount of simoleons from it and is therefore not allowed to be used in this challenge.
Spouses may not bring in any money with them when they move in/marry into the family. To prevent this, you may merge townies into families with one another prior to moving them in. A Sim who is not the last member of their household will not bring any money into the household. Alternatively, if a Sim does bring in money, use the money cheat to reduce the family’s new balance to whatever it was prior to the new sim moving in.
The restriction on the number of Sims moving into the Legacy family house has been lifted. You may now move in as many sims as you wish, as long as none of them brings in any money. You may have spares get married if you so desire and create ‘cadet branches’ within the household.
The first spouse who is brought into the household specifically to partner with the heir is known as the primary spouse. You may only have one “Primary Spouse” per generation, but may move in any number of secondary spouses.
With the update that allowed you to customize your Sims genders, you are able to have same-gender couples. There is no rule preventing this.
There have been many reports that the automatic generation of random townies peters out over time, leaving the dating pool barren. To combat this I am easing up on the restriction of using gallery sims for Legacy Challenge spouse material. On the gallery, look up #LegacyLoves (name suggested by BossJinja) any and all families you find there can be brought into your world and become eligible spouses. You can even add your own entries! Simply make one or more sims in CAS, then upload them to the gallery wiht the #LegacyLoves tag. Please do not upload pre-played sims to that hashtag as it remembers their skills. Please don’t write what the Sims’s traits are in the description. I don’t want people to be able to pick and choose what traits their spouses have.
*NOTE* If a spouse moves in with one of the tutorial aspirations, you may re-roll their aspiration using the Random Trait Generator (ignore the traits that it tells you, just look at the aspiration).
Regardless of your succession law, you may always introduce children into your family via pregnancy or adoption. With the addition of The Sims 4 Get to Work alien babies can also be brought into the family via abduction. Children may only be adopted as infants. You may not adopt if there are any infants (natural born or adopted) living in the house at the time and must wait for them to grow to toddlers before adopting a new one. You may rename the baby, and it is recommended (but not required) that you change their last name to the Legacy Family’s name.
Regardless of their status, when an infant ages up into a toddler, you must roll for their toddler trait (and later their aspiration and their first trait using the calculator found here when they become a child). Be sure to put the traits of the two parents (even for adopted children) in the calculator because the algorithm it uses factors those in when generating random traits for the children. When the child grows into a teenager, you consult the calculator again for their adult aspiration and their second trait. Finally the calculator will be used to generate the third trait upon reaching young adulthood.
There is an option here to generate both aspirations and all three traits for a sim at once, though the proper method is to wait until the Sim ages up. And remember- No re-rolling! One of the hallmarks of this challenge is getting randomly generated children so you should keep the good with the bad. Since the traits of the parents have an influence on the traits of their children, you can try to engineer children by selecting spouses with desirable traits, but this is no guarantee.
You are allowed to use fruit and/or music to influence the gender of an unborn child, should you choose to do so.
The addition of Toddlers should not change the flow of your Legacy families, you just have a new age to deal with.
You may use the death flower to guarantee success when pleading with the reaper to save a dying sim.
You may NOT use ambrosia to resurrect a dead sim. (You may cook it and have living sims eat it if you wish)
You may invite ghost sims back into your family. However, they no longer earn your Legacy family any Legacy Challenge points. They may not purchase potions of youth, any completed skills, aspirations or other Legacy Challenge scoring methods do not count. They may not take a job. They cannot memorialize other sims. If they were a member of the Legacy Challenge family
Ghost Sims can still be memorialized but only by Sims that knew them in life.
An invited ghost who is no longer welcome may be moved out just like unwanted family members.