Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 9th Dec 2017 at 6:50 AM
Default How did you fund your vet clinic?
I'm just starting a new game with a fresh sim and her dog, with the intention of vetting it up! However I didn't realise that it's not a conventional career, but a retail business!

So, as a new sim, I have to find some form of income in order to purchase my own clinic in the future.

What did/would you do?
Advertisement
Mad Poster
#2 Old 9th Dec 2017 at 6:57 AM
motherlode
Test Subject
#3 Old 9th Dec 2017 at 12:52 PM
Quote: Originally posted by daisylee
motherlode

I clicked on this thread to say exactly this xD I just wanted to try out the vet career so I couldn't be bothered saving up for it first. And the second time I just bought it with a sim that was already rich enough. But maybe you can write books or make paintings, depending on what your sim is like?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 9th Dec 2017 at 3:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Orola
I clicked on this thread to say exactly this xD I just wanted to try out the vet career so I couldn't be bothered saving up for it first. And the second time I just bought it with a sim that was already rich enough. But maybe you can write books or make paintings, depending on what your sim is like?


Hahaha yeah I considered motherlode'ing but was just curious to see if anyone went about it legit! For now, my Sim is in a horrible business career. I figure at some point she can make enough to buy the bare minimum for her clinic!
Scholar
#5 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 7:49 AM
Yeah most of my sims are mega loaded and even the not as loaded ones can afford it
Scholar
#6 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 12:11 PM
You know, even a sim fresh outta CAS should be able to afford a basic clinic.Well, if they're either single or the whole family is going to not have a regular job, anyway.

The key there is understanding that the line between residential and private business lots is somewhat blurred. There's nothing to keep you from having a private section upstairs, with your bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. So you can have your sim living officially on an empty lot, which only brings you down, what, 1500§ up front, and have your real house be the clinic. That way you only have to build one house / clinic.

Also, don't forget you can expand later. You don't have to start with a big nice clinic up front.You can start with only the most basic place to sleep upstairs, and only a reception terminal and an examination table downstairs. It's going to be a while until you need an operation table or a lab or anything.

And you don't even need to do side jobs like painting. You can easily make anywhere between 500§ and 1000§ even on the first day, at zero skill and you don't need to learn extra skills or do promotion jobs or anything. Which beats the starting or even the mid-level wages in any actual job.
Scholar
#7 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 12:17 PM
ALTERNATELY, if you really don't want to actually live in the clinic, you can rent like the cheapest deposit apartment in San Myshuno, so you don't lose money up front, unfurnished, and just plonk the most basic minimum there for now. Then use the rest of the money to open the most basic clinic. If you want to REALLY be cheap, you don't even have to build walls. You can plop the reception terminal and examination table on the grass.

This has some disadvantages, mind you. Travel times, for a start. You also have to go somewhere else to fill your needs. You also can't share stuff like the TV, sofa, etc, with the customer area, if they're not on the same lot.
Scholar
#8 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 6:23 PM Last edited by Moraelin : 10th Dec 2017 at 6:34 PM.
Just to show what I'm talking about, this is a reconstruction of my starting clinic. It costs only 17,025 simoleons. It would cost a thousand less if you build it on a 15x20 lot instead of 30x20, but those are occupied in my game, and I'm not gonna evict someone just to make a proof of concept :p

Well, you could also save a bit more with an even cheaper starting bed, toilet, skip the cat toilet, less lights, make the rooms in the back smaller until you can actually afford stuff to put in them, etc.

Spartan AF, and you'll have to buy a lot more to make it actually NICE to live in, but it should be affordable even for a new sim, fresh outta CAS, after the deposit for the cheapest unfurnished flat.

Screenshots
Scholar
#9 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 8:34 PM
I thought you couldn't have a business on a residential lot. If your sim 'lives' there... is he really? Or just when you're playing him?
Scholar
#10 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 9:30 PM
It's not a residential lot, it's a vet clinic. BUT, and this is a big BUT (I like big BUTs and I cannot lie) you can sleep/read/cook/whatever on your own business lot just fine.

So basically my sim has an empty apartment somewhere that she pays like 500 a week for, but doesn't really go there much. (An empty 15x20 lot is even better, because it costs 1000 up front, but afterwards the weekly taxes for it are a lot less.) She just lives on the clinic lot. When I got her needs up, she opens the clinic. When her needs are down, admit no more patients, finish the existing ones, close, go in the back and make a salad or sleep or whatever. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Just be sure to lock the door to the back, or the patients WILL raid your fridge and whatnot.

Obviously the same works for restaurants or retail just as fine and dandy. The current Toreador prince of the town started by sleeping in a restaurant that was really a minimalistic kiosk with a kitchen, toilet and a bedroom in the back, and the tables and podium were out in the garden. Plus a wall speaker and dance floor, so people (and the owner) have SOME entertainment. You know, fine outdoors eating and all that :p

It eventually grew into the Crypt-o-Nite.

Basically you can start a business without motherlode or first growing a walthy family, if you're not afraid to dream small and disappoint yourself even in your fantasy life
Forum Resident
#11 Old 10th Dec 2017 at 10:54 PM
I had two sisters in my active household. When they reached YA I let them move out together and into their own tiny home. One of them was supposed to become a vet and the other one was supposed to be a painter. At first they both took a normal job while the painter one maxed her painting skill. Once the skill was maxed it was fairly easy to get huge amounts of money and buy a vet clinic.
Now they're both living on the second floor of a vet clinic and the painter one is still mostly responsible for the income :D
Scholar
#12 Old 11th Dec 2017 at 5:08 AM
BTW, here's a couple more ideas. This has only tangential to do with funding the clinic, in that it's just about the income you get from it. And it's not some arcane wisdom, but I've seen several youtubers need a month to figure it out, so here it goes. In case it helps someone.

- ALWAYS queue a "Call a good pet" after healing a pet. It can raise their review of the clinic by as much as one star. People like their pets, and like people who are nice to their pets.

- Get a cleaning robot as soon as you can, make sure it's upgraded to clean puddles. (Just buy the expensive one if you can't do the upgrades yourself. It's actually cheap once you factor in the price of the parts to do all the upgrades it comes with.) Start the cleaning often. People will deduct review points for bad ambience, even if it was their own pet that barfed all over the waiting room.

- Most of the pet "treats" you can make at the lab table and sell via he fridge. and most certainly the low level ones, actually MAKE PETS SICK. E.g., the "cool" treat makes pets sick with one of the blue fur diseases, the swampwater toffee makes them drool and puke, etc. It's an asshole way to make sure people pay you money for the toffee, and then come right back to pay to have their pet healed. So, you know, if you can live with yourself afterwards, it's not a bad way to make some extra money. Especially if you have a second family member make them while you heal the pets that came back sick after they ate those.

Again, I shouldn't have to say this, but I've seen youtubers make them for a month and apparently never realize WTF they're doing,
Test Subject
#13 Old 27th Jan 2019 at 1:23 PM Last edited by NepinRith : 27th Jan 2019 at 1:44 PM. Reason: *edit: forgot something
o.o' First of all I want to say, Yikes! D; sorry for necro-ing an old thread. But I wanted to toss my 2 cents in real quick. I only recently just started playing the Pets EP for TS4. And while I have seen a lot of people (between this thread and through google searches) stating that making a house hold and a vet clinic right off the bat is hard to do. O.o I have to say that I have not had this experience, it's been pretty kosher for me. This is what I did in a nutshell (and am still doing)
/I generally do use the motherload cheat when I want to build something extravagant, but sometimes I like the challenge of starting from the bottom and making my way up. (i guess rags to riches?) either way, i haven't used any cheats with this particular game play./

In the world menu I chose Willow Creak , ( http://prntscr.com/mcsxzv . my house doesn't look to great right now, in the middle of renovating it lol.) I chose the residential lot in the more central area for my house hold. Now normally I'll buy an empty lot and build on it, but with just jumping back into the game I figured I'd buy a lot that already had a house on it. I let it stay furnished. all I had to add were some litter boxes, and food, I went the expensive route with this, I bought the self cleaning litter box (not the laser one right off) and the automatic feeders.

Queue playing my family which consisted of 2 young adults, and 3 cats (didn't take long to multiply to 5 cats)

So I click that little register icon and I chose to buy a clinic, I chose the empty lot 2 spaces down from my house. I didn't make it big, just enough to house the basic equipment it needed as well as the low end other usable vet items as well. You can bet your simoleons I was pretty low on cash after that. But needless to say I still had simoleons left over After over buying. Not much though.

So, what I did was this to get the cash flowing in, cause lets face it xD doing the rabbit hole jobs right off the bat isn't gonna cut it. So i do what i always do when starting up a new household. I make Sim #1 write books like crazy and publish them while I also have that sim take the writing career. I then make Sim #2 take up gardening (I don't always garden, but when i do, it takes up almost a whole lot space http://prntscr.com/mct3k4 just kidding I always garden and like crazy cause it's a good cash cow) and made her take the cooking career. I make sure to always have a spare seed of each type for if a plant dies, that way I can just re-plant it again (with intermittent replacing of the spare seed with better quality ones) Then I have that sim or the other if they are home when the other isn't, sell off the harvestables.

So pretty much, between selling books (really any skill that allows you to make things and the sell them after helps) and the selling of all my harvestables has been netting me between 10-15k or more simoleons a sim day. I'm sure even more plants than in my picture would give more cash, but I'd also recommend hiring the gardener and having the trait that makes one time services free) then once your at Level 10 gardening you c an just super sell harvestables in chunks. takes no time at all at that point

But yea, after 2 real life days of playing, I was able to make my vet clinic huge, 6 stations, still only using one surgery station as it appears the co-vets don't use them (least I haven't seen so yet) and a second floor that duels as a faculty lounge/kitchen, faculty bathroom, 3 very small 1 bed rooms (cause one of my co-vets likes to sleep on the couch all the time), and of course, my sims bedroom and attached personal bathroom. all while now working on remodeling my 3 story house with 1 basement (which started out as a pre-built 1 story building)

any ways, hopes this helps someone out Seriously though, Gardening is such a cash cow when done right

*edit* Oh and one other thing that rally helped that I only recently learned about as well. if you have a write that is Level 10, then you know you can right the book of life, and give it an epic saga of a sim. Now we all know these books will bring your sim back from the dead. But what I didn't realize until recently, is that you can sit down and read that book while said sim of the epic saga is alive, and it will fully replenish all of their needs. I found this greatly helpful when when my sims were in the dumps and needed a quick pick me up. really makes running the clinic and the home so much easier.
Back to top