The Sims 2 Poverty Challenge

Here are the rules for The Sims 2 Poverty Challenge played in my livestreams. The original rules can be found here. These rules are similar, but with my own personal spin on things. Feel free to use them for your own challenges!

Challenge Objective: Survive and thrive as best you can with next to nothing. The challenge ends when the first grandchild of your founder Sim ages up to an elder.

Getting Started

• Setup your challenge hood.
  • Create a new empty neighborhood. I recommend using Any Game Starter with no Maxis Content, but you can always just create a new neighborhood in your main game that will include the Maxis townies.
  • Add any allowed lots you want to use (see Lots section below), and one large empty 5×5 residential lot for your founder.
• Create a Sim in CAS to be the founder of your impoverished family. If you want to use Anthony, you can download him here.
• Use the FamilyFunds cheat to set your Sim’s funds to $15,300.
• Move your Sim onto the 5×5 lot. You should have $100 remaining.

Rules

Here are the gameplay rules for the poverty challenge. This challenge is meant to be hard.

Marriage and Procreation

• Your founder Sim may marry and/or procreate with any townie, NPC, or service Sim they like.
• You can move a partner in with your founder to start a family.
• No roommates. Any Sim who moves in must be a spouse or romantic partner.

The Poverty Lot

• The poverty challenge stays on the poverty lot.
• All children must be raised to teenagers before moving off the lot. Teens and adults may move off the founder’s lot if necessary, but keep at least one child on the lot to produce grandchildren.
• If a Sim moves off the lot, they are no longer considered part of the challenge and cannot be played.

Earning Money

• Sims may only work entry-level jobs only. Use the Job Stopinator or whatever cheats/mods/hacks you want to prevent promotions above career level one.
• If the Sim you move in as a romantic partner has a job above level one, they must quit immediately and restart a job at level one.
• Teens and elders may have jobs, but only at career level one. If a teen with a job ages up to an adult and receives a promotion, use cheats to demote them back to level one and get rid of any bonus money.
• Sims may not purchase real estate or run a home business. Poverty Sims may not be hired as employees by other businesses.
• Sims may dig for treasure only if a stray animal digs a hole on the poverty lot. They may not dig holes themselves. The household has only ONE attempt to dig for treasure, and then they must fill in the hole.
• Gardening and fishing is permitted as a way to earn extra money.
• No other means of earning money is allowed except those listed here.

Receiving Gifts

• Sims on the poverty lot may not receive any inheritance, money or gifts from off-lot Sims.
• If your Sim receives a gift from an off-lot Sim (such as from a date), place the item in your inventory. Do not use or sell it.
• If your Sim receives an inheritance, you must use cheats to get rid of the money immediately. Do not use any of it.

Miscellaneous Rules

• No private school, University, adoption, reward objects (of any kind), servos, or snapdragons are allowed.
• Sims may only visit approved community lots (see Lots below).
• Poverty Sims must be played using all four seasons.
• Mods and custom content are allowed as long as they aren’t against the spirit of the challenge. Don’t use mods that increase money or allow skilling on community lots.

List of Approved Community Lots

Here are a list of approved lots you can download and use in the challenge. You can use as many or as few of these as you like, but they are the only lots allowed.

• Ed’s BBQ Shelter Shack
• Trashed Lot – Thrift Llama
• All-in-One Community Shack
• Old Scout Hall
• Dreamland Woodland Park
• Linden Park
• Produce Stall
• Rest Area

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Watch my Sims 2 Poverty Challenge Livestream on Youtube to see how this challenge plays out. It’s difficult, but also a lot of fun!

Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know if you have any suggestions!