[OUTDATED] Max Skills Guide

So, here's a "route" and some strats, some of which will require you to do before the run even starts. I hope this guide helps you out and get you a good time, and maybe beat my record!

Pre-Run setup:
Building:
First, you want to place an empty residential lot, not very big. then you need to make a sim BUT NOT TO START THE RUN WITH! so, you must now enter build mode to build the home, it does not need to be fancy, just one room that you can stretch your legs in. what you want to do, is try to make the room and the entry door close to where your sim will spawn. I'd recommend you pay attention to the size of the room, some good sizes would be 6x6, or 4x8-10, just expirement and see what you find comfortable. Don't forget a roof and wallpapers to keep your environment need up.
Furnishing:
What you want to do, is get expensive objects not cheap ones, as the cheap objects take ages to fulfill needs and it loses time. you want a bed, kitchen, dining area, reading chair toilet and shower. Keep the toilet and shower in the same room, nobody's looking! ;)
Also, you will need objects to get the skills! first, you will need to decide whether you want to buy a bunch of objects that are giving you the skills the easy way, or by unlocking the career rewards and placing them to your advantage. It is both recommended and faster that you do it with career rewards as it is faster than buying them. Here is a list of what you will need and why you need them. (look at the sims wiki page below for a guide on obtaining them and their functions)

1. Books First for Learning: A bookshelf of Education (education career) - A bookshelf that lets you learn every skill.
2. Golden Skull of Jumbok IV: (adventurer career) - it will boost your needs when near it.
3. The Gootentaugen Award for Excellence in Journalism (jounalism career) - it will boost your needs when near it.
4. "Starstruck" Personal Fame Stars (entertainer career) - boosts the SOCIAL NEED ONLY.

Put all of these objects together, watch my run linked below to see how to set it up optimally. To obtain these objects you may either unlock them through the right careers or using the unlock career rewards cheat.

After you are done, you must get rid of your sim, but DO NOT MOVE HIM/HER OUT, you will lose all the objects on the lot if you do this. Instead you should kill him/her, an easy way to do this is to have a pool ready to go, so you can get rid of sims easily. An important thing to know is you should probably put the grave(s) near the spawn area, I will explain below.

Creating your sim:
The first thing I should clear up is that it is mandatory to make a single sim, as having more than one sim and/or pets is banned. The appearance and gender do not matter, but two thing I would recommend is to make them an adult sim, as elders are limp and their walking animation is slower. I would also recommend making the aspiration knowledge, due to the points reward system in the FreeTime expansion pack. after this, you can move the sim in and then timing starts after the lot has loaded.

During the run:
As soon as the lot loads you want to quickly go to the FreeTime benefits and copy the ones I chose in the run below. Then after this, drag the grave(s) into your inventory. The reason you do not want to delete it in build/buy is because it's both slower and is a known cause of game corruption, which The Sims 2 is known for being prone to. The first skill I's recommend learning is cooking so you both can cook better meals to save time, and not burn your meals during the run to avoid massive time loss and possible resetting of the run. After cooking, it really doesn't matter what order you do it in. Another reccomendation would be to plan ahead by telling your sim to do things in advance while they are studying or sleeping, this saves time.

If you have any questions about the run, ask in the forum, me and other runners will be happy to help you out! Thanks for listening, and good luck! :)

Useful Resources:
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Career_rewards
https://www.speedrun.com/The_Sims_2/run/y2q0dpjy

EDIT: Refer to this run to see a demonstration of the use of aspiration rewards in the run to go faster by filling your sims' wants to get rewards like the Need Energizer and the Thinking Cap:
https://www.speedrun.com/sims2pc/run/z57p80nm

NTRG

The Sims 2

galaxia5480

deskita

cwaa03

andytampan

LKComputes

USA / NTSC

EUR / PAL

One Sim

Two Sims

Retail

Ultimate

Legacy

Household Number

Retail - Versions of the game sold on discs
Ultimate - Ultimate collection provided for free on Origin in 2014.
Legacy - Legacy Collection released in 2025 on Steam and EA App.

Game Version

Macintosh

The Sims

Game version is now added to leaderboards due to release of the Legacy Collection