HI everyone!! I fixed all of my ridiculous problems and now officially ready to get back into the sims. This time around I really want to take things a bit more serious and make progress, but I'm a bit afraid of running into "corruption" later on.

I want to start out with Pleasantview and all of those hoods before I get into a custom hood, but apparently these hoods have problems? I want to have the cleanest, safest experience and I rather get started before it's too late. Here's where I need help...

I found these: http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html and http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751

I'm confused about how I should go about this. So far I replace/download the main hoods, universities, downtowns, and then the shopping districts, correct? But I'm really confused about "stealth" hoods.. who do I download from and what's the real difference? So far I see the second link has less and possibly "cleaner" versions, but is it okay to mix those stealth hoods with the main hoods, etc. templates from the first link? What does everyone else do?

All of this is a bit overwhelming.. sorry!!

I am not an expert, but as far as I understand, stealth hoods are not real hoods. They just contain pets and playable sims that came with each EP.

If you really want to reduce the chances of corruption in your game, (and you're not afraid to experiment with it) you can still get empty templates that remove all previously resident pixels from the neighborhood..but it takes some work, especially if you have every EP.

Once you get the empty hoods it will create, you can make your own pixel drama from scratch. It's worth the effort.

Yes these are the best out there http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=520751 clean and empty stealth hoods.

Yes these are the best clean up main hoods. http://meetme2theriver.livejournal.com/63030.html if you want to play the shipped hoods for Sims 2.

The only thing left to do is to remove N001 folder from (your install location)\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods and this will remove the Pleasantview townies for all new hoods you make in game.

Now after all this you need to read these 3 guides.

A very good set of guides to read:
"Game Help:Avoiding Hood Corruption" http://simswiki.info/wiki.php%3Ftit...Hood_Corruption
"Game guide:Avoiding corruption" http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...ding_corruption
"Game guide:Which NPCs are safe to play as" http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...safe_to_play_as

To help with corruption or stop corruption go here for the list of mods you should have in your downloads folder.
Essential Mods http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=532696

Best way to avoid corruption? Don't play.

Mixing and matching the different main hoods and stealth hoods is fine, it just depends on what you want in your game. With the stealth hoods, I usually use a mix of Jawusa's and Tarlia's depending on whether or not I want the bin sims, vacation sims, and stray pets. If I am playing a 'hood where I want the bin families, I go with Tarlia's, and if I am playing a 'hood where I want as few game generated sims as possible, I use Jawusa's. I play with mods like notownieregen and nostrayrespawn to keep the number of sims generated by the game to a minimum, so having the empty templates has a noticeable effect - my game doesn't generate characters unless it needs to. Without those mods, but with either the minimalist (Tarlia's) or empty (Jawusa's) stealth hoods, the game would generate random sims to fill the townie or stray population pools.

In my current hood, which is modern, I wanted to play with the bin families and have strays, so I used Tarlia's templates for everything. In my medieval hood, I used Jawusa's for all the subhoods except for possibly pets (I don't recall). In a hood where I'm playing something akin to a build-a-city challenge, I tend to do the same but also keep the original vacation stealth hood so that I have tourists if I end up adding a vacation destination.

Thank you!! I guess it will have to come down to what I want in my game but I have a few more questions... do these bin sims and such cause any problems? even if I don't use them? and can I add these stealth hoods to my game whenever or do I have to reinstall my game?

If your game is patched, the bin sims are fine; Samantha Ottomas and Sarah Crittur are pregnant and in an unpatched game their pregnancies will probably have the wrong father. Other than that, the sims are fine so long as you don't delete them. They have character files and deleting them from the bin is one of the dangerous things that can cause corruption. If they are in your game and you don't want to play them, either just leave them in the bin or stick them on any lot and just don't play that lot

You don't have to reinstall the game to change the stealth hoods, but the changes will only apply to hoods you are opening for the first time, as that is when the templates are used to add the stealth hoods to your neighbourhood. You could have Pleasantview with the Maxis stealth hoods, then swap everything out and have Strangetown with empty templates if you haven't opened Strangetown before. If you wanted Pleasantview to have the empty templates after having opened it, you can start a new Pleasantview by deleting your played hood and then putting Tarlia's N001 in the folder Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods. The next time you opened your game, an unplayed Pleasantview would be there. When you opened it, the empty templates you have in the game installation files would be used to create the new Pleasantview's stealth hoods.

The clean and empty stealth hoods can go in any time but any hood that was open in game before you install them has the bin sims already in them and there is no way to change that.

As long as your game is patched for every CD/DVD/download EP, base game and the one SP for your setup then the bin sims can be left in the bin but some of them will come home with your sims.

As one who is a corruption-obsessed rep here, I would have to agree.

I use the cleaned templates (I kinda like the Pleasantview townies), make my files read-only, follow the usual suggestions for not corrupting your game or hood. It's almost getting to the point where I can recite the list of Sims You Should Never Mess With by heart. I can assure you this can stand me in good stead as I go about my real life. I forget items on my grocery list, but do not forget not to mess with the Unsavory Charlatan.

Even with all of that, in either Sims 1, 2, or 3 (and I have played all of them now), the game can still burp at some point and you wind up with a problem. You can reduce the chances of corruption severely, but I believe you can never completely eliminate them. What I think I can do is to take prudent steps, enjoy the game and do any damage control I can if something weird happens.

Thank you to everyone who has replied so far!! I'm deciding today after updating and going through what I want. but I'm just a bit confused about the first link's stealth hoods. I found this comment "I hadn't known the MATY templates removed the hobby/magic lots until today." how true is this?

I use no clean templates at all. The amount of corruption that the Maxis hoods start with is manageable in comparison to what will build up if you play a long time. And most of the corrupt stuff is killed by my "No Sim Loaded" anyway. And whatever is not killed, can still be taken care of with the Batbox and some other tools. What remains in the way of corruption, is hardly worth mentioning.

One thing to remember, whether one uses cleaned templates or a mod like No Sim Loaded: in both cases, there is a good chance that the quests/challenges that Maxis originally built into their hoods, become unplayable. With the non-Basic versions of NSL that is a virtual certainty, because the Scenario Controllers are habitually destroyed whenever you enter a lot. I think that those controllers are essential if you were to try and complete the quests.

I am playing without townies and bin Sims for the first time, and, well, I kind of miss them I am actually contemplating putting them back, and, yes, I know, I know, I may live to regret that. No final decision made yet, but this is the second time I am trying to play without them - and the second time I end missing them. So I am very happy to hear that NSL will take care of everything needed if I should go back to playing them! Somehow, the game without any townies seems a little boring to me; and the townies I made myself, (well, I am probably not too good at that either, but they don't seem as interesting and varied as the Maxis ones). I always make my own hoods, and thought it would be lovely to have one without Komei or Benjamin or Joe - but somehow, it is not!

The ones at MATY were done way before we knew of or about the sims references and were never deleted out of them so again the best one's to use if you want to use any is the one's done by Jawusa which I linked to in my post up above.