Every night at midnight, Gremlins strike. Appliances and plumbing across the lot break overnight, and there’s no way to catch them doing it. Your Sim just wakes up to a mess.
This is what the Gremlins Lot Challenge does.
By morning, you’ll likely find several broken objects at once, things like:
Fridges
Stoves
Sinks
Toilets
Showers and bathtubs
Computers
Instead of getting ready for work, your Sim’s morning turns into a repair session. On the upside, all that fixing levels up the Handiness skill fast and gives a steady supply of upgrade parts.
If leveling Handiness isn’t your goal, just call a repairman to clean up the damage each morning.
One thing to watch for: if the lot also has the Cursed trait, repairmen will get electrocuted while trying to fix Gremlin damage.
Start a Handiness and Repair Club
If you own Get Together, forming a Handiness and Repair club is the most efficient fix. Bring the whole club to your Sim’s house each morning to handle repairs as a group. This frees up your Sim to focus on other things, like work or making money, instead of running around fixing things solo.
Fair warning: since Gremlins strike nightly, your club members may end up practically living at your house, permanently on repair duty.
If the chaos becomes too much, you can turn it off:
Enter Build Mode.
Click the House icon in the top left corner.
Disable the Gremlins lot trait.
Return to Live Mode and save your game.
Reload the save to make sure the change sticks.
Once appliances start breaking every single night, most of a Sim’s day gets eaten up by repairs instead of anything else.
Many Simmers move onto a Gremlins lot out of curiosity, hoping to max Handiness quickly, but end up worn out after a few days of constant break-and-repair cycles. Most either move out or disable the trait entirely once the novelty wears off.
If you want a fast way to level Handiness and enjoy a chaotic challenge, Gremlins can be fun in short bursts. If you’re trying to actually build a stable household, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth long term.
Pets and Gremlins
According to community reports, pets may prevent the Gremlins lot challenge from triggering properly. Some players have noticed that once they added a dog to their household, the Gremlins stopped breaking objects at night.
Although EA hasn’t confirmed this behavior, an awake pet appears to interfere with the nightly Gremlins event.