Prioritize your Bucket List Goals with these Hot Takes!

We all have wants, dreams, and goals we hope to achieve in life, right? Well, so do Sims! The Sims 4 Life & Death expansion pack introduced an aspect of gameplay called the Bucket List, and we are loving it. The Bucket List lets your sim live their life (and…afterlife) to the fullest. Keep on reading for our Sims 4 Life and Death guide including tips, tricks, and hot takes on this exciting feature!

What are Bucket Lists in The Sims 4 Life & Death?

Bucket Lists are available in The Sims 4 Life & Death pack for teens, young adults, adults, and elders. Kids, toddlers, and infants need time to grow a bit first! Once your sim becomes a teen, their Bucket List will appear in the aspiration tab with four slots for their Undiscovered Goals.

To write goals, select the “Unfinished Business” option from a computer or diary. These can be random goals (Write Goal), goals from certain categories (Write Goal from Category), or even specific goals (Write the Perfect Goal). If you’re not a fan of the goals your sim writes, you can select Scrap Bucket List to start over. This will erase all current Bucket List goals, including goals that are in progress, and open up space to choose new ones.

Make sure to hover over the goal in your Bucket List to read the description with hints on how to achieve it. Completing these helps your sim progress through their Soul’s Journey.

Ghost Sims

Did your sim laugh at a joke so hard that they died? Try fixin’ up the stove without any practice, and get electrocuted to death? Or even just decide they want to give the afterlife a shot as a ghost? No matter how they met Grim, don’t worry! The ghost sim you know and love can still cross items off their bucket list.

Living sims can only progress to the Dreams Fulfilled tier, but there’s much more to explore in the afterlife. If they didn’t give it a try in their living form, your ghost sim can choose to start their Soul’s Journey now and check goals off their bucket list. Ghost sims that made progress on their Soul’s Journey during their life will pick up where they left off and take care of any unfinished business.

The Soul’s Journey is made up of eight tiers

1. The Road Ahead- Unlocking this tier gives your sim the ability to gain extra Satisfaction Points going forward in life.
2. Making Headway- Reaching this tier gives your sim extra skill gain bonuses.
3. Finding Purpose- With this tier unlocked, your sim will receive bonus gains to their career performance, extra discounts on computer purchases, and access to the Share Soul’s Journey interaction.
4. No Regrets- Unlocking this tier will extend your living sims lifespan. Ghost sims will get the option to Move Onto the Grave to move on from this world and enjoy peace.
5. Quite a Journey- Sims who have reached this tear will be able to use the Pass Down social interaction and create additional Heirloom objects.
6. Dreams Fulfilled- Living and Ghost sims alike who reach this tier will unlock the Rebirth option. Living sims will be given the choice to be reborn at death, but Ghost sims will be able to make this choice at any point by going for a swim in the Baleful Bog in the Mourningvale neighborhood of Ravenwood.
7. Newfound Purpose- Unlocking this tier gives your sim the ability to gain extra Ghost Mastery experience points. *This tier is only available to ghost sims.
8. Big Picture- This tier will give your sim enhanced stamina when performing Ghost Mastery, the Burning Soul trait, and the Peer into Soul interaction on mirrors. *This tier is only available to ghost sims.

Tip: Timing, Timing, Timing

Completing your sim’s Soul’s Journey is not an easy task. It shouldn’t be! It is your sim’s soul, after all. If that is your goal, you’d better focus on timing. Start working on the journey as a teen to set your sim up for success. 

The goals for teens tend to be tailored to the teenage lifestyle, so activities like attending prom, having their first kiss, or getting a part-time job will appear as options. These are (usually) easier to complete than some of the more time-consuming goals that appear later in your sim’s life. 

Entering young adulthood with a tier or two of the Soul’s Journey completed gives you plenty of time to finish it out through a few more goals. The goals during adulthood can range from easy-as-pie to what-did-I-get-myself-into, sometimes having multiple tasks per goal. Once you have progressed to the fourth tier, your sim’s lifespan will extend, giving you even more time to cross goals off of your Bucket List.

Remember: time is of the essence!

Trick: Two Birds, One Stone Method

To quickly complete your sim’s goals and progress through their Soul’s Journey, I recommend using something I call the “Two Birds, One Stone Method”. This means you choose similar goals that your sim can complete simultaneously or soon after. When writing your sim’s goals, select four goals of the same category. Usually, the steps taken to achieve goals in the same category are the same or similar.

Choosing “I want to get busy” four times created four Woohoo-related goals. Once my sim finds a Woohoo Partner, she is set to cross off these goals and progress through her Soul’s Journey!
If you choose this method, you may need to scrap your Bucket List a few times before goals with similarities appear.

Hot Take: Creative or Genius?

Notice anything interesting about your goals? A lot of these goals are pretty mundane tasks like, “Enjoy a trip to the countryside”, which asks your sim to spend a day frolicking through Henford-on-Bagely with the rabbits and locals. Or “I want to climb a mountain!”, asking your sim to climb to the top of Mt. Komorebi. It seems like the Sims creators found a creative (dare I say…genius?) way to get our Sims out to explore parts of the world and interact with items that are sometimes overlooked during gameplay. 

These goals might not fit into your storyline at first, but letting your sim complete them may lead you to all new in-game experiences. Who knows what you’ll uncover!

What are your thoughts on Bucket Lists in The Sims 4 life & death pack?