https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/iennifer-v-derevne-obzor-novogo-dopolneniya-the-sims-4-zagorodnaya-zhizn

Character Creation – How To Spend 2.5 Hours In The Game Lobby

I confess: I am not a “professional” player in The Sims 4, I am a stranger to getting all the available achievements and pumping countless skills. My favorite pastimes are creating a character, building a house, and doing self-challenges. This is when you come up with a task for two or three game sessions, complete it, and then again you do not go into the simulator for six months.

This time I didn’t set myself any tasks, but I came up with a seed that seemed to have descended from the pages of fanfiction: a famous sorceress settled in the village of Hanford-on-Bagley, whose game designers were inspired by English classics. It seems?

In the classic editor of The Sims 4, little changes from expansion to expansion: yes, there are new styles of clothing, such as T-shirts with the LGBT flag, fiercely black skin tones, weird and even, to my delight, very sexy outfits. However, the setting itself remains, albeit accurate in its general form, but inattentive to details – for example, to recreate the high cheekbones of Yennefer from Vengerberg, but at the same time to leave a rather wide chin, which the artists from CD Projekt RED endowed the heroine with, turned out to be almost impossible.

I also don’t want to underestimate my own curvature: to sculpt existing characters, and not create “handsome” out of my head, I need constant practice, which I do not have. By the way, looking for ready-made works from other gamers, I found that almost no one makes characters based on the basic version of The Sims 4, preferring to download additional textures – for example, Yennefer has a set that completely copies her clothes and hairstyle from The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt. I wanted to play a classic game with one expansion, so I sacrificed the character’s detail.

Of the new sets, I really liked two things: a dress with cherries and a sweater with chanterelles. The rest of the sets and ordinary things are also not bad, they all look like ordinary classics: unlike many other items in the game, these are easy to find in real life, and not only in the village.

Rustic style – cozy basic houses and a trendy chicken coop for pretentious roosters and layers

Like it if your house building in The Sims 4 usually takes 90% of the total gameplay time, and you have no energy left for the real game. I used to spend several hours decorating my home, leaving the computer only on urgent matters, but my “masterpieces” still looked like ordinary boxes. In the village, simple architecture does not go out of fashion, but multi-storey mansions, which are absolutely inconvenient to play in The Sims, for my taste, will only cause condemnation (and envy) among the lovely locals.

In general, after playing for several hours with the design, having received a completely different result from what I wanted, for the first time in my life I chose a standard house. It is quite cozy and, importantly, does not stand out from the general style of the village, although the real Yennefer from Vengerberg would hardly live in it – it looks too cute.

I had to modernize the patio a bit to add one of the main novelties of the entire addon – the chicken coop. Here I again decided to choose the project that game designers offer us, installing a ready-made room with a dwelling for birds and decor. As in the case of the house, the chicken coop area gives a cozy feeling. Although, as a person whose parents have real chickens in their dacha, I dare to note: everything in life is far from so beautiful. In any case, after long walks of birds, cute green lawns cease to be such.

The structure of the chicken coop is bombic. I don’t know if they were drawn from real bird houses or invented out of my head, but I would love to have such chickens at my place. They are neat, obedient, lay eggs precisely on schedule, and, according to rumors, if one does not step away from them, groom and cherish, they transform into super chickens that lay golden eggs.

From time to time, the chicken coop needs to be cleaned. This is far from such an unpleasant process as in life: the sim simply collects all the guano of not quite seabirds in a bag and takes it to the trash, and the notification says: now you have +1 fertilizer! It can be used in the garden, without which the village is also nowhere. If you don’t want to plant potatoes, then at least dill in the beds should be grown sooner or later.

You need to take care of the chicken coop constantly, especially if you want to take part in a rural fair. Competitions are held every Saturday from 3:30 pm to 9:30 pm on the central square of Finchwick, and every four weeks you can enter the chicken competition to find out who made the coolest eggs. By the way, as in life, if there is at least one rooster in the hen house, then some eggs will be fertilized and chickens may hatch from them. This will be a bright event in the life of the sim: the game will send a notification about the imminent appearance of the chick, and you can help him get out of the shell. Keep in mind that in life such manipulations should be performed only if absolutely necessary – a healthy chicken copes with this on its own.

In addition to chickens, you can breed llamas and cows, which give wool and milk, respectively. To do this, you need to build a barn – it is quite large in area, and therefore not every site is suitable for this. I even had to completely rebuild mine by removing the base chicken coop room and sending the birds to the garden. In general, this is true: in life, animals need a lot of space, you can hardly keep a cow in a garage next to a car.

Careful grooming of cows and llamas will also allow you to show off your achievements at a rural fair during one of the theme weeks. In total, there are four of them in the Hanford-on-Bagley Saturday festivities cycle – on the last one, gardeners measure themselves with the largest bulbs and pumpkins.

Sometimes foxes run into the site. They steal eggs and scare your animals, but … who cares if they’re cute as hell? The first animal that decided to eat my chickens first became interested in the mushrooms that Yennefer began to grow in the garden. The surprised fox face clearly did not understand where the vegetables disappeared …

And foxes can also sing. Sometimes they will howl at you, but for this you have to make friends with the animal. These will be the best moments of your virtual life!

Features of “Country Life”

With the release of Country Living, The Sims 4 introduces two new personality traits: a love for animals and lactose intolerance. Perhaps by adding the latter, the developers did not plan to make a mock out of this that I saw (laughed notoriously), but … lactose intolerance in an add-on where you can buy fresh milk from farmers? Thanks, no. Especially when it is a “character trait” and not a medical condition.

By the way, about shopping for milk, eggs, cheese and other farm products. Suburban Life is going to be tough for fans of bottomless refrigerators in The Sims 4. It became possible to activate the “Simple Life” test on the sites. This setting is responsible for disabling classic self-refilling refrigerators.

You can only cook meals strictly according to the recipe, and the ingredients must first be bought or grown. For the lazy, delivery is still available, but, firstly, it is paid, and secondly, you need not miss the courier. Yennefer, for example, fell asleep periodically while she waited for pizza.

In terms of eating habits, Zagorodnaya Zhizn is perhaps one of the most appropriate supplements to encourage vegetarianism. Ironically, the “Vegetarian” trait was added to the game in the City Living expansion, and I got to it in an addon with a rural theme. Due to the fact that new products appeared on the market, and it became possible to grow almost everything in the garden, including mushrooms, the life of vegetarians clearly sparkled with new colors. In reality, the opposite is true: in cities, vegetarianism is much more comfortable thanks to modern technology and plant-based “food of the future”.

You can interact with the animals that you decide to “educate” on your site in a dozen different ways. Llamas, for example, love to wash. Chickens, if you do not look after them for a long time, can become angry – they attack both you and passers-by, but they can lay unique eggs.

The animals can also be fed a variety of homemade treats, the ingredients for which must be purchased or raised. An ordinary kitchen is suitable for cooking, the necessary button is in the refrigerator menu. For fashionistas, there is an option to paint animals and dress up: hats and ties are sold by the Creature Keeper, whose house is in the forest. In general, in “Country Life” everything is simple: make friends with animals and grow plants, but if you really want to, then you can and vice versa.

And one more important innovation: with the “Country Life” add-on, The Sims 4 has real quests … or something similar that, with proper imagination, can be mistaken for a task, at the same time pulling an owl onto a globe. You can take them from each named character separately or by examining the board with tasks.

Quests are helping local NPCs. Electronic Arts and Maxis gave them lore, characters, and the ability to flirt with the plot. Yennefer could become mayor, befriend or marry an animal caretaker, become an assistant to the owner of the city’s main pub, or even her rival. In general, as always: in the life simulator, you can be anyone, but now people without imagination can also play it.

I have heard many times that people do not like sandboxes and simulators due to the lack of a built trajectory for character development and tasks in the game. What do you say now? Who is the first in line for milk?