Hello and welcome to How-to Play the Sims.
Cottage Living is one of the newer expansions for the Sims 4. The expansion dares you to live off the land, tend to farm animals, and make friends with the wild life.
I have just started and it is challenging. One of the challenges is the price of the land. To get a cottage with a barn it is almost 20k, which is what you start out a new Sim with.
This means if you do buy an already made farm, you will not have much money left to live on.
Shift + Ctrl + C will open the command bar at the top of your screen. Typing and entering the word Motherlode, will add 50k to your Sims bank account. Do this a few times to increase your Sims money until you can buy or build a bigger house, or live comfortably in the starter house.
There are a few very pretty premade houses for this expansion. The main building needed is the barn since tending to either a llama or a cow is a big part of the Cottage Living challenge.
I decided to live comfortably in the starter home and did not move into the properties available throughout the towns.
There are three different towns in the new area of Henford-on-Bagley.
The woods of the Bramble Woods, where you will find the Isle of Volpe Park, the rolling hills of Old New Henford, where you will find the community garden, and the riverside of Finchwick where you will find the local pup and where they hold the village fair.
I picked the tiny farm on the peak of the Bramble Woods. The lot challenge is wild foxes, and simple living.
The simple living lot challenge means you will need to gather ingredients for your food and cook it yourself. I began this challenging by getting chickens so my Sim would have eggs to eat.
You can buy the chickens by clicking on the chicken coop. This chicken coop will hold 8 chickens or roosters. I bought 3 hens and 1 rooster to start. To collect the eggs you simply click on the chicken coop and select the option to collect eggs.
Collecting eggs is only the first part of feeding your Sim off the land. You will also need bread to eat the eggs. If you click on the fridge and select cook, you will see the cooking options and the needed ingredients for each meal.
If you buy a cow for your Sim's barn, you can get milk from the farm. I bought a Llama, so I went to my phone to order groceries. Grocery delivery is free with the Country Care Taker aspiration, which I picked for my Sim when I created her.
This aspiration also improves relationships with animals making them live longer. The birds and rabbits bring more gifts, and they can interact with the plants in a special way, giving them more yield from harvests.
The days of a country Sim consists of cleaning out the barn and the chicken coop, feeding the animals, tending to the garden and trying to bathe and feed themselves.
I did venture down to the pub before I started cooking the eggs, but I have not ventured much yet.
I will continue to level this Sim. I have read the lessons for the game so I know there is much more to come.
I will keep you informed on my progress!
Until then,
Happy Gaming
~simgirl
