I've been trying to find the answer for this all over the Internet with no luck, only the vague descriptions EA puts on the traits are what I could find.

How much does the perfectionist trait really boost the value of your paintings/books/food? And how much does it slow you down at making those things? Does it only increase their value by giving you a higher chance of making a higher quality item, or does it always add say 5% to the item's value every time?

For the writing skill I've tried everything, even looking at the XML code in some mods here for faster writing, but the XML code doesn't even mention the perfection trait anywhere in the any of the mods I've looked at.

Also, in a related question, how much do skill related traits, such as artist, angler, etc actually help you at skill building faster and making more money? Take artistic for example, are your paintings always worth say 10% more, or is the added value the higher chance of making a brilliant or masterpiece painting?

Basically, I'm trying to figure out if it's worth taking the perfection trait, and how important other skill building traits really are at making money once you max the skill out.

Try reading through the XML titled "Trait Tuning", quite a bit of this sort of stuff is in there.

As a rule, skill related traits have only minor effects on skill gain, rarely more than about 10%. Nothing to write home about. A few traits that also affect skills, however, produce more noteworthy abilities that the sim would not have otherwise had at all without it.

Ok, thanks for the suggestion Shimrod. I figured out how to get S3PE working and looked up the file you mentioned. Here's what I found for anyone else interested.

<PerfectionistTraitEnhanceFoodPoints value="15"> <!--Range: Cooking points. Description: Perfectionist trait Sims give a bonus to foods he/she has cooked.-->

<PerfectionistTraitWritingQualityModifier value="15"> <!--Range: Percentage to write a hit / best-seller up to 50. Description: Increased chance of writing a hit or best-seller book for Perfectionist trait Sims.-->
<PerfectionistTraitHomeworkRateMultiplier value="-0.15"> <!--Range: Additive float multiplier. Description: Decreased rate of completing homework if the Sim has the Perfectionist trait.-->

<PerfectionistTraitCuttingBoardLoops value="1"> <!--Range: Animation loops on the cutting board. Description: Perfectionist trait Sims take longer to prepare food and use an additional tunable number of chops on the cutting board.-->

<PerfectionistTraitPaintingBrilliantChanceAdd value="20"> <!--Range: Int values below 100. Description: Increase in chance to paint a brilliant painting for sims with the Perfectionist trait.-->

<PerfectionistTraitPaintingMasterpieceChanceAdd value="15"> <!--Range: Int values below 100. Description: Increase in chance to paint a masterpiece for sims with the Perfectionist trait.-->

<PerfectionistTraitPaintingStageTime value="15"> <!--Range: Sim minutes. Description: Additional Sim minutes that a Perfectionist trait needs to paint for each stage of a painting.-->

Edit: It appears there's some sort of penalty being added to writing to, since I calculated 0.2672 pages a minute for a sim with perfectionist, and 0.3506 pages a minute for a sim without perfectionist (this is with a mod to boost my writing speeds if they sound a bit high). I'm not really sure what's determining the penalty/slowness however.

Also both books were fiction & best sellers, but the perfectionist one was 93 pages and $72 a week royalty ($0.7741 a page), the nonperfectionist was 81 pages and $55 a week royalty ($0.6790 a page).

Also an interesting find on the Artistic trait, it only boosts the rate you gain the painting skill (1.25 times faster) but it DOESN'T increase the value of your paintings, or give you a higher chance of making a higher quality painting. So you can start making more money from paintings sooner by getting your painting skill up, but that's about it.

Last edited by MasterDarkNinja : 12th Apr 2012 at 1:14 AM.

Romance novels written by sims with the Hopeless Romantic trait sell more and generate higher royalty payments than those written by sims without the trait.