The Sims 3: Into The Future – Exploring Dystopia and Entering the Crash Site

Now that we’ve unlocked and triggered dystopia, although staying here for any length of time is not necessary if you’re looking to do the “Made the Most of My Time” Lifetime Wish (LTW) or Time Keeper Legacy statue, let’s have a look around at some of the features of this cruel and unusual future.

My video walkthrough accompanying this guide. For the full playlist of all four videos, click here.

Exploring Dystopia

• Skyfall – There are constant meteor strikes that can potentially kill your sim. So don’t stay outside for too long, especially if your sim doesn’t have the “Lucky” trait. There’s also some speculation that meteor strikes leave hot springs, enabling you to complete the “Bathe in Hot Springs” wish. But I’ve yet to see this, and much of The Sims 3 community is also quite mythed as to where said hot springs appear.
• Trash Piles – These are everywhere, and work just like those at scrapyards introduced in The Sims 3: Ambitions when it comes to rummaging. However, you won’t get scrap metal, just various items of furniture and items. These will go into your family inventory. If you don’t own property in the future, you’ll only be able to use and sell these upon returning to the present. Other things you can do in these piles is play in them increasing your “Fun” need but at the expense of your hygiene, and “Dive In” which doesn’t really do anything that I can figure out from apart from deplete your hygiene.
• Bugging Out! There are also a lot of common insects scattered around the place. Whilst this isn’t exactly great for collectors, they do make for a quick snack if your sim is feeling peckish. Watch out though, for as much as bugs can leave a positive moodlet from being eaten, there’s also a chance of getting a negative because, you know, you’ve just eaten some bugs!
• Rifts – These are also all over the place. These are rabbit holes which you can go down which can result in various things happening. Again, having the lucky trait helps a lot in trying to avoid death and negative results. By entering a rift, you can either:

1. Get a rock, unsmelted metal, or uncut jewel
2. Become signed
3. Get a moodlet that interrupts actions to make you giggle a lot
4. Get a moodlet that makes you glow green, interrupts actions to make you fall over
5. Get a moodlet that makes you become a lightning magnet
6. Possible location of elusive “Hot Springs”

• If you get the lightning magnet moodlet, get inside somewhere as soon as possible, as you’ll be constantly struck by lightning for the duration of this moodlet. It you don’t have the “Lucky” trait, you’ll quite likely kick the bucket!
• There’s a bug that means any rocks, unsmelted metals, or uncut gems you find in a rift won’t register in your collection journal, which is quite irritating.

Unlocking the Crash Site and Mysterious Door

• OPTIONAL – Get the opportunities arc from Emit that involved unlocking the mysterious door, which starts off with seeking records at the Observatory. Whilst you don’t need to have these active to find mysterious key fragments and unlock the door, it will help build relationship with Emit a little (upon accepting the quests) for those looking to complete the “Make the Most of My Time” LTW/Time Keeper Legacy statue, and will contribute a lot to your Advanced Technology skill if you’re after the “High Tech Collector” LTW.
• Go to the wasteland and find excavation piles. Excavate these to find one of the four pieces of the mysterious key. Excavation piles are located as shown.
• There appears to be a 1:5 chance of getting either one of the four pieces, or nothing at all. 
• If you have Emit’s opportunities active, at one point you’ll get a “Wasteland Pox” moodlet which you’ll have to go to the hospital to get rid of (and to also complete an opporutnity). This only happens during this particular part of this opportunity line, and you will never get from the excavation piles otherwise.
• When you have collected all four pieces of the mysterious key, click on any key and select “Assemble Key”.
• You will now have the completed key in your inventory. Go to the Crash Site door and click on it, and you’ll see the action “Insert Mysterious Key” is no longer grayed out.
• Inside the Crash Site you can find 4 of the following:

1. A holo disc/sprite
2. A pyramid (“projection chip”) can that will enable you to change the picture on the projection wall to The Sims 4 concept art
3. A money bag
4. A book entitled “Hard Copy of the Internet [random#]”
5. A rare Plumbot Trait chip
6. A robot llama, for which there are 5 in total needed to construct a magic gnome

• It’s worth changing futures and each time re-unlocking the crash site to get different goodies, especially if you’re building Plumbots or just after the magic gnome and all sprite forms. Therefore, it’s also wise to keep hold of any surplus mysterious key parts you might find, although you can sell them for 90-100 Simoleons a piece if you just want the money.

To read how to trigger dystopia, read the guide here.