My computer recently caught a virus (totally unrelated to my downloads for the sims) and I had to reboot it from factory settings. I lost ALL of my ruthlessly searched for CC and the mods that made me think "How would I ever play this game without this mod?" I was wondering if someone could give me a general list of mods that are pretty much necessary to make TS3 run smoothly. I only have two EPs, NL and Ambitions. Thank you SO much for any suggestions, I really need all the help I can get!

Also, if this is in the wrong place, please point me in the direction of the right forum for me to post this is. I'll gladly pack up and go.

Nitpicking, but it's Late Night, not Night Life. (:

Anyways, the mods I would absolutely die without:
NRAAS Master Controller, Error Trap, and Overwatch.

You might want to pick up a Story Progression mod too, but YMMV. Personally I didn't have much against EAs SP, but I recently started using the NRAAS one, and it's certainly more...dynamic.

Haha, I debated over which it was before I posted. I originally had it as "Late Night" but then I decided it was "Night Life." I haven't played in a long time, I used to correct people about that. :P

Thank you SO much. It's such a pain to have to track down all the mods one by one. At least now I have a list to go off of.

I like awesomemod, personally, along with rule of 6. I also like m.calero's default faces (at garden of shadows) and aikea's default skins. Just my preferance anyhow. Rule of 6 changes the stages of life lengths.

I think I have every one of Twallan's NRAAS mods in right now and I love them.

For Ambitions I recommend Twallans Careers Mod and the Extended ones. Gives the most out of self employment and the helps the teens with skilling for their future, like going to school in the rabbitholes, instead of the regular school, that would help with employment as adults.

i agree with most of the previous posters: i can hardly play with twallan's mods. i use the story progression mod (and most recently the extended version and the personalities! still learning my way around those) and the woohooer. i also hate playing without using the nomosaic mod. i just hate those stupid blurs that take up half the bathroom just because a sim is standing in front of the toilet!

Agreed. I recently downloaded Twallan's Master Controller and Woohooer (I held out as long as I could!) and now that I've played around with them a little, I really can't imagine playing without them. IMO, Awesomemod was just too complicated and had way too many options that had to be reconfigured, since there were only a couple of things I wanted to change about my gameplay. I also use Dolphin's Magic Gardening Gnome (http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=393965) because it just makes gardening so much more efficient when your Sim has a lot of plants.

As core mods, I use Twallan's Overwatch (a must if you want your game not to blow up in your damn face) and Pescado's AwesomeMod (a must if you want yourself not to blow up the damn game).

I prefer AwesomeMod over Twallan's MasterController simply because in AM, you use shift-click to activate hidden options, and MC makes eveything clickable and it annoys me, but they dothe same things, in different ways.

I also use a mod that make all kinds of fish, books and food buyable in the store/bookstore.

Some fixes and tunings: a fix for the workbench in Bridgeport, longer parties, moar interactions, more jam types, no intro (A MUST) and slower cars.

I also downloaded a mod that makes the Food Truck buyable into buy mode. And of course, some facial and body sliders so my sims won't look fugly.

My game literally will not run without Twallan's Overwatch and ErrorTrap. I also have Master Controller and Woohooer (which I could do without because it doesn't factor much into my game play style, but haven't bothered to remove).

Buzzler's: Mood Hotfix, Moar Interactions, SameEnergyForEveryBed if you want to use more than one bed, ever.
Twallan's (NRaas): Master Controller, Overwatch
AwesomeMod, unless Teen-Adult relationships are essential to you. If so, get most of Twallan's mods as they cover most of the important bug fixes in a non-core manner.
Either enable Awesome Story Progression or get Twallan's Story Progression, the default one is horrid.

Everything else is optional, really.

Wow, thank you every so much for all of the suggestions. I had awesome mod there for a while, but I could never get it to work properly (because I had downloaded so many other mods before installing it, and I think I had some conflicting ones). It actually feels nice to be able to start over from scratch and just get my essential mods, instead of bogging my entire game down with mods I downloaded but forgot what they did.

Also, I have another question: Has the installation of .package files changed since ambitions came out? I remember something a while back about it changing, but I didn't quite catch what the actual change was. You guys have been so helpful!