The 100 Baby Challenge involves conceiving a hundred Sim children by a hundred different Sim parents and then raising said Sim kids from birth to young adulthood. It is extraordinarily difficult and, in most cases, extremely time-consuming. Kelsey Impicciche’s playthrough, segmented into 58 parts and counting, has brought in untold millions in ad revenue for Buzzfeed. lilsimsie started the challenge in 2015 and is still uploading instalments a full five years later. steph0sims, the Jackson Pollock of Sims YouTube, did manage to complete the challenge in under 24 hours, but she was fueled by caffeine and cheat codes and thus remains an outlier.

On my last attempt at the 100 Baby Challenge, I made it to 43 kids before one of them got taken away by social services. Quelle tragique. Nonetheless, I feel qualified to dispense some expert advice on how to get through this challenge without ripping your hair out and without spending literal years on it. First and foremost:

1. Play in a Tiny Home

Not an all-the-way tiny home. The second-tier one. 64 tiles or less. The game bestows perks on Sims who live in tiny homes; good moods last twice as long, and skill gains are twice as fast. This two things will halve the amount of time you spend on this challenge.

This last point, especially, is crucial, since the challenge requires you to get every toddler’s skills up to at least Level 3 before aging them up. In a tiny home, that’s a snap. Toddlers will hit their required skill levels in a couple of days just by playing with toys and wandering around. In a normal home, on the other hand, you’ll build up an impossible bottleneck full of unskilled toddlers shitting their diapers and pouring paint on the floor, and it’ll make you want to quit before you’ve even begun.

Obviously, the benefits of playing in a tiny home are balanced out by the fact that it’s hard to squeeze a bunch of kids and their beds and their toys into 64 tiles. It can be done, though. If you search on the gallery, you’ll find some good homes of this size designed for the 100 Baby Challenge, with beds for, like, three kids and three toddlers at a time. Place one of these in a big lot in a neighbourhood where it doesn’t rain a lot and then just put all the toys and stuff in the yard.

2. Pick the Right Lot Traits

Challenge rules allow you to pick up to three, and you should pick these three:

Good Schools: This one bumps your kids’ grades up and allows them to graduate faster. Provided your kid goes to school in a good mood every day, you can go from a Grade C child to a Grade A teenager in three days minimum.

Child’s Play: Speeds up all skill gains for kids, a nice boost to the tiny home benefit, but not a substitute.

Study Spot: Boosts all skill gains by 25%.

Don’t even bother with On Ley Line, especially when you’re just starting out. If you have twins or triplets before you’ve gotten into the rhythm of playing, or before you have the money and skill level to manage your household effectively, you’ll burn out. Wait until you’ve got the aspiration points to buy the Fertile trait; does the same thing and doesn’t rob you of a more useful skill gain boost.

3. Matriarch Traits Don’t Matter, But Aspirations Do

Traits truly don’t matter in The Sims 4, quelle tragique, so just go nuts. I’d recommend Childish, Romantic, and Family-Oriented for some marginal mood boosts that help with parenting and courting suitors. I’d also recommend staying away from Neat, because all that really does is make your Sim miserable in messy environments, and you’re in the army now, son. Get real comfy with dirty diapers and puddles of pee.

Aspirations, however, do matter. I’d recommend going with Super Parent at the outset, because you’ll score points automatically just by having and caring for babies. The other option is to start with Beach Life, because it’s easy-peasy and it rewards your Sim with an inability to ever feel stress.

Keep in mind that you can choose the starting aspiration, but all subsequent aspirations have to be randomly selected. Regardless of whatever you roll, pay attention to your matriarch’s aspiration and work toward it steadily — you can and should use aspiration points for benefits like better sleep, faster skill gains, and never having to pee again. Pregnant Sims pee their pants a lot. Playing this game without peeing your pants every five seconds is a huge quality-of-life improvement.

4. Garden

This is the best way to earn money in this challenge, bar none. It’s totally passive income, and it really adds up over time. Don’t shell out for seeds. Plants are free to harvest all over the Sims world, and you can even get rare, expensive plants for free by harvesting at the Romance Festival and the Spice Festival. Gnomes will also drop seeds for free during Harvestfest. Plant a variety so you have stuff growing in all seasons!

5. Visit Locations Where You Can WooHoo Onsite

Windenburg is great for this: the discotheque, the ruins, anywhere with a bush nearby. There’s also the observatory in the park in San Myshuno, the lighthouse in Brindleton Bay, and the waterfall in Sulani. Don’t bring the guy back to your tiny home full of screaming toddlers and try to Do It without any of them seeing you. So much less stressful to just go for some open air WooHoo.

6. You Can Try for Baby As Soon as You First Kiss

I don’t know if I like the fact that the game devs were like, “Yeah, absolutely, you should be able to conceive a baby with someone after kissing them one single time,” but I do know that it makes this challenge much easier. As soon as you lay that successful First Kiss on someone, you’re free to haul them into a bush and make a baby.

7. Keep An Older Sibling Around

Honestly, if you’re playing in a tiny home with Good Schools on, it’s very rare that you’ll have more than four or five kids in the house at a time, even if you are, like, continuously getting pregnant. So why not treat yourself to a little live-in help? There’s nothing in the rules that says you have to move your kids out as soon as they become Young Adults. Keep one around! They can help with dishes, chores, even homework.

Better yet, keep an occult sibling around. Matriarchs can’t be occults, under normal challenge rules, but older sibling live-in maids sure can be. Consider turning an older sibling into a spellcaster who can conjure food out of thin air, tidy messes with a flick of the wrist, and repair broken objects instantaneously.

8. Turn Off NPC Aging

At a certain point in the challenge you will get to a place where your older moved-out children just start dying of old age in droves, and all your current kids will be Sad for two days over older siblings they never even met, and it will fuck up their moods and keep them from advancing in school. Go to the settings panel and turn off NPC aging. Let all your kids live forever. You’ll have to periodically add townies via Manage Worlds in order to keep your supply of eligible bachelors fresh, but that’s no big.

9. Cultivate A Good Reputation

With a pristine reputation and maxed-out charisma, you can go from Enchanting Introduction to First Kiss to Try For Baby in Bush with no stops in between.

10. Get Your Heiress in Fighting Shape

The time will come when you have to hand over the title of Matriarch to your youngest daughter. There are a number of things you can do in childhood to get your next Matriarch into fighting shape; Carl’s Sim Guides has a good overview of the skill gains and bonuses you can snatch up through the power of good parenting.

Bonus: Pregnant Sims Can’t Die

So don’t worry about it! As long as you’re pregnant, you’re invincible. Go for a stroll in a thunderstorm. Wear a bikini in a blizzard. Eat absolutely nothing but pufferfish. You and your fetus are immortal.

A Note About Expansion Packs

This entire approach, obviously, depends on Tiny Living Stuff, which is $9.99. I think the Parenthood game pack, which is $19.99, is also essential for enriching the parenting experience. Kids Room Stuff ($9.99) and Toddler Stuff ($9.99) are optional, but fun to have, because they give your kids more stuff to do. You really don’t need any of the full-on expansion packs to play through this, but I do think Seasons ($39.99) adds a lot to family gameplay, vis a vis going on Easter egg hunts and decorating Winterfest trees and saying hi when Father Winter comes down the chimney.