How To Start a Sims 4 Legacy Family

I’ve been playing the Sims for nearly 20 years and never finished a single Legacy Challenge. Maybe it’s my ADHD, or maybe I’m just not that into playing Sim families. But every Legacy Family I’ve created has been abandoned at the bottom of my save file list. 

But I also tend to tread the same life path with all of my Sims, which also means I get bored with them quickly. The randomness of the Legacy Challenge seems like a great way to break out of that rut. If you want to try the Legacy Challenge, follow this step-by-step guide to setting up a new Legacy Family featuring my Founder Sim, Zion!

Starting a Sims 4 Legacy Family

Step 1: Create Your Founder

Start with a brand new save. Your Legacy Family is the only household you can play for the duration of the challenge, which lasts until your 10th-generation heir becomes a young adult or you fail the challenge. You don’t want to leave any of your existing households stranded in story progression mode for that long!

Once you get to CAS, you can use the story generator to create your Founder Sim, but you’re not required to. I recommend skipping it and choosing your Founder’s Aspirations and Traits. Your Founder Sim is the only one you have any control over. You’ll select Traits and Aspirations for future generations using a random legacy generator, so it’s a good idea to give your Founder as many advantages as possible now.

My Legacy

TS4’s new-ish gender and sexuality options mean Simmers can play legacies in more diverse ways than ever before. Since you get to choose every last detail of your Founder Sim, ours is a male Sim with masculine clothing preference and a female frame – hello, nonbinary bae! They love the ladies, but they’ll have to make the babies, so I selected the “get other Sims pregnant” option.

Now, I don’t typically like to play family Sims, but since that’s kind of the whole point of the Legacy Challenge, I wanted to pick something from the Family Aspiration category. I went with Big Happy Family, where the goal is simply to have kids and grandkids, instead of Successful Lineage, which requires the kids to do well. That’s a lot of pressure, okay? 

As for Traits, I chose the Family Oriented since they’ll get powerful moodlets when they’re around family members. I also chose Loves the Outdoors since that’s where they’ll be spending a lot of their time starting out, and Creative since they’re going to make most of their money at the easel.

I’m terrible at choosing names, but since I will be stuck with this family (and their last name) for a long time, I chose one I know I love – Finch. Then I randomized the first name until I got a nice nonbinary one I liked – Zion.

Step 2: Moving In

The original Legacy Challenge required Simmers to move their Founder into an empty 50 x 50 lot. But for some reason, bills have gotten a lot higher in the Sims than they used to be. (Apparently, inflation has hit the Sims world, too.) So you can choose any size lot you want. Just remember that you’ll be playing on that lot with ten generations of Sims, so you’ll probably want a lot of room to spread out.

You can choose an already empty lot or bulldoze a large lot if there’s not one available in the neighborhood you want. To do this, park your Founder Sim on a small empty lot, then save and go to Manage Worlds. Select the lot you plan to clear for your Legacy Family, click the three dots in the lower right corner, evict the family living there (if necessary), then bulldoze the lot. 

Now you have a clean plot of land for your eventual Legacy Mansion. Click on the lot you parked your Founder Sim on, evict them, and then move them to the lot you just bulldozed. 

My Legacy

I moved Zion into 2 Olde Mill Lane, a 50 x 40 lot in Henford on Bagley because it’s my favorite neighborhood. Gardening is also a great way to make easy money, and plenty of wild harvestables can be found around Henford on Bagley.

Lot Traits and Challenges are also completely up to the Simmer, so I removed Wild Foxes and Off the Grid. Starting the Legacy Challenge is hard enough without trying to do it without power or water. 

As for the lot Traits, I added Romantic Aura to help Zion fall in love quickly, Natural Light to help them paint better paintings, and Penny Pixies because, well, money’s going to be tight for a minute, and they’ll need all the help they can get.

Step 3: Building Up

The unspoken backstory of every Legacy Family goes like this: the Founder, a single young adult Sim, sets out to build their own life. Like most of us, they start with nothing – no job, no money, no stuff – and slowly work their way up in the world. 

So now we need to create those conditions for our Founder Sim by reducing their household funds to 1,800 Simoleons. Yes, that’s right – no matter how much money you have, whether you got more by creating your Sim through the story generator or saved money by buying a small lot, every Legacy Family starts with exactly §1,800.

Back in the day, Simmers had to buy a big, stupid, ugly table to reduce their household funds, which also increased household bills. But again, since bills have gotten more expensive and are a little bit out of control as it is, that’s not the case anymore. Instead, we’re going to take our household funds down using cheats.

Open your cheats menu, then enter:

testingcheats on

and

money 1800

Your Founder Sim needs a few essentials to survive in this cold, cruel world. You’ll need the following:

• Fridge
• Bed
• Toilet
• Shower
• Easel

Back in the day, Simmers would just leave all this out in the open on their lot to save money on frivolous luxuries like shelter. But with the Seasons EP came the addition of weather to the Sims world, and rain will ruin your expensive fridge in about two seconds, so we need to put a roof of some sort over it.

If you’re following along at home, you’ve probably realized that there aren’t enough Simoleons left over to put a drywall box around all your new stuff. But this clever building hack will give your Founder Sim a stylish roof over their head for free.

Simply place a Gabled Roof on your lot and drag it to fit over all your stuff. Voila! Now you have a trendy-looking A-Frame abode and a few dollars left in your pocket! 

My Legacy

With Zion moved in and all set up in their fancy new digs, it’s time to get to work. As part of the first milestone of their Big Happy Family Aspiration, they want to spend §1,000 on kids’ stuff, but they’ll have to earn that money first. They’ll also have to fall in love if they want someone to pass their legacy on to. 

The money part is easy. I’ve made Zion a Creative Sim, which means they gain Painting skill quickly, produce better quality paintings, make more money on them, and gain fun while doing it. That’s a lot of perks! To capitalize on them all, Zion also joins the Painter Career. As I said, we need all the advantages we can get at the start of the game!

After a few low-quality paintings that Zion lost money on, they quickly started turning a lovely little profit and gained enough Painting skill for their first, second, and even third promotions. At this point, I began to realize that I was missing out on one more major bonus – the Tiny Home Residential Perks.

With the Tiny Home Stuff Pack came the Tiny Home Residential lot type, which offers big bonuses to Sims, who live small. A home that occupies 32 tiles or fewer counts as a Micro Home granting Sims who live there the following perks:

• Household bills reduced by half
• Relationship gains doubled while on the lot
• Plants that grow twice as fast
• Positive moodlets last twice as long
• Skill-building speed doubled
• All objects are twice as comfortable

Unfortunately, my cute little A-Frame doesn’t even meet the four-tile minimum requirement to get the Micro Home Perks because there are no real walls enclosing it. So priority #1 for Zion is to make enough money to build some walls in this place so they can start taking advantage of all those amazing perks. 

Before long, they’ve walled in their bathroom, and things really start to take off. The doubled rate of skill building allows Zion to max out their Painting skill in a matter of days, selling paintings for §1,000 or more each. Before long, they’ve upgraded from their itty bitty A-Frame to a real-life tiny home with wall paint, flooring, and everything!

Coming up in the Finch Legacy, Zion uses that relationship-building bonus to fall in love, and boy, do things move FAST.

Have you started, played, or even finished a Legacy Challenge? Want to see more of the Finch Family Legacy? Let me know in the comments!