Keeping the happy meter up can be hard. I've sometimes put toys all over a lot (kites, bricks, swings,etc) only to have the kids play with each other or the pet. Just like real life; you buy them a big expensive toy and they play with the box.

Oh ... a very important tip. This may be more directed toward new players, since I don't know if this is an important point in Sims 3 (or will be in Sims 4), but unless you want to barbecue a Sim, always put a fire alarm or sprinkler near a stove. Sims flock to the fire and flap their arms in panic, they're hard to control, and they can catch fire as well.

And yes. There is a mod to prevent that. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...hp?topic=7250.0

Also, don't forget that pool ladder. RIP, Skip Broke.

Sims can also die by flies, electrocution, satellites (rare, but it happens ... I had it happen right after a Sim gave birth and right before I was setting her up for a picture!), starvation, old age, fright. disease and flies,

If your Sim kicks the bucket, and you didn't want that, apart from not saving and apart from the Sim dying of old age, you have a few alternatives. Link for that: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Death. Insiminator and the Blender let you cheat to get the Resurrect-O-Nomitron (Insim is slightly easier), but be careful .... if you're cheap with Grimmie, your Sim may not come back the way you hoped.

Agreed.

Or if you must use the launcher, go to your Internet Connections and Settings menu and Disconnect from the internet first. If you can't figure out how to do that, just unplug the ethernet cable from the back of your modem. Don't worry; you can plug it back in once TS2's running. Call it an internet "hiccup".


If you have a Robot Crafting Station and a Sim who has a Bronze badge (or higher) in Robotics, a HydroBot in or near the kitchen can help keep those pesky grease fires under control too. Just don't forget to turn the robot on first.

Sims with low Neat points can look in the trash can for stuff.
Sims with low Nice points can Cheat at games such as Chess.

Secret Society members can Hack Grades at night.

This is directed to new TS2 simmers.

Gestures / kickybag is a quick way to make friends. Also taking to them on the phone.
Only playing one sim and don't want to bother making friends / you don't play a social sim? Get a bird / caged pets and play with them. Easy way to raise your social.
Get a fire alarm in your kitchen and an alarm system in your house ASAP. Unless you're amused by your sim having their stuff stolen / being set on fire.
Watch your sims like hawks if you don't want them cheating / flirting with others than your designated spouse. They're notorious cheaters.

In an emergency where you have a huge fire, perhaps a tree outside caught fire and there is no sprinkler or alarm, open the cheat box and type 'moveobjects on' This will allow you to grab the fire as if it were a normal item and then delete it. This is better than moving the sims, as sims can pop right back to the tree when you click play. As soon as you delete the fire the sims will act like there never was a fire.

For pregnant sims make sure they have the most comfortable bed that they can afford. An expensive bed is better than a TV any day. Also make sure they have a bathtub as nothing beats a bubble bath to raise the comfort level. Put some prepared meals into the fridge so they can quickly grab a bite.

FIRE: but if there is a fire anywhere, the build/buy is DISabled, meaning you Can't acces the "hand" control. And for pregnant sims I would add: to keep them from falling asleep at the table, just drink an instant meal, then go to bed; then wake them up to eat (it's helpful to have someone else serve a meal, or have them make some meals when their needs are good). You have to watch the waddling dummies; they will want to pee and take a bath when they need to EAT & SLEEP.

Speaking of pregnancies, if you have a cat in your home while your sim is pregnant, have another sim clean the litter box. Or get an automated one if there is one (I get TS2 and TS3 confused at times). Pregnant sims will not be able to clean the litter box.

The All-Vampire Helpie Post, Yay!

• To become a vampire, go to any Downtown lot and find a grand vampire (identified by their distinctive clothing, their gray or pale skin, their red eyes and the title of "Count" or "Contessa" prefixing their names). Introduce yourself and try to befriend or seduce the grand vampire; when your relationship is high enough (around 70-ish), stand idle and wait for the grand vampire to autonomously bite your neck. This may not work if you have installed certain mods which disable grand vampires' Bite Neck interactions, in which case there's always Plan B: Influence the grand vampire to bite you instead. It costs 1,000 Influence points to do this, so be prepared.

There's also the use of the "boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true" cheat; enter the cheat, hold Shift, left-click your vampire-to-be and pick "Make Vampire". But only cheaty lamers shrink from the challenge of enticing a grand vampire to do the deed. And you don't want to be a Cheaty McLamer, do you? :P

• The pros of being a vampire: Vampires never age; if your Sim was 13 days from elderhood when he/she was bitten, your Sim will be 13 days from elderhood forever (though drinking Elixir of Life or Cowplant milk will still reduce the vampire's age, as usual, as will using a genie to wish for a long life). Vampires never die if their Hunger reaches zero (though they'll still complain about being hungry). Vampires don't continuously deplete Needs like normal Sims do (see the next bullet point). Instead of the usual walking, running or skipping, vampires may also travel from Point A to Point B by either stalking or flying (details are covered a few bullets below). And for what it's worth, teens who become vampires are eligible for a scholarship.

• Be sure to buy at least one coffin (the Deep Sleeper by Igor and Sons...something like that, under Buy Mode > Comfort > Beds) for each vampire in your household! Vampires don't take any Needs loss at night (aside from those Needs depleted by activities such as working out, digging for treasure or getting struck by lightning); Needs such as Hunger, Bladder and Energy will never decrease if the vampire is just idling around. Vampires don't take any Needs loss while in their coffins (and will regain Comfort and Energy, as usual), regardless of the time of day. If out of their coffins during the daytime, vampires take continuous Needs loss; this continuous loss is slower if the vampire is indoors but becomes very fast if the vampire is outdoors. A vampire will die if exposure to sunlight drops his/her Energy to zero. The sun rises at 7:00 AM. Don't be late.

• Vampires also do not suffer Needs loss while in a vehicle. If your vampire can get inside his car before the sun comes up, he's home free. If your vampire has a day job, try to minimize the distance between his coffin and his car (or between his coffin and the street, if he doesn't have his own vehicle). Using the vampire's bat form, fly to a spot right next to the car's driver-side door, then immediately click on the car (the moment your vampire morphs back out of bat form) and Drive to Work. If your car is inside a garage, that's even better; just try to place doors wherever needed to shorten the distance from coffin to car. If the garage is attached to the vampire's house, that's better yet, as the vampire will never need to venture outdoors on his way to his vehicle; if your house is on a foundation, use this tutorial to attach a garage to it. For obvious reasons, helicopters and their helipads must be placed outdoors, so be prepared to suffer some wicked Needs loss if your vampire insists on taking his own helicopter to work.

Of course, if your vampire has sufficient Skills, he can forego having a regular job and instead make a decent living by painting pictures, building robots or making other trade items. Sell these items through Buy Mode for a quick profit or, if your vampire has his own business, use them to stock the shelves; just be sure to close the business and (if it's not a home business) leave the lot by around 6:30 AM; this should give you enough time to shoo away any lingering customers.

• Vampires can Stalk or Fly to go elsewhere on the lot. Stalking is the slow and sneaky way to go if the vampire's moving within the same room or to a nearby room; beyond that distance, stalking becomes about as fast as running, making it useful for Lazy vampires to get around. Flying transforms the vampire into a bat and, under certain conditions, this mode of travel can be even faster than stalking, as the bat will fly over obstacles such as island counters, tables, fences, rails and the hoods of cars, rather than going around them. The transformations to and from bat form may startle any Sims nearby (except for other vampires, of course), but this will not damage any moods or relationships.

If Stalking or Flying aren't fast enough for you, consider becoming a Vampire/Witch or taking a Far East vacation and chasing ninjas. Both the ninja teleport and the Magivestigium teleport are faster than Stalking or Flying, and they can make the distance between your coffin and your car a non-issue.

• Remember: If you leave your home and go to a community lot, when you come home, the time will be the same time that it was when you left your house. Combine this with the vampire's non-depleting Needs and it's possible for a vampire to visit community lots several times in one night. (IIRC, my record is eight outings in one night. Top that!) Just remember to return home before sunrise each time that sunrise comes around. For example, if you're working on your vampire's Cuisine enthusiasm, send your vampire to Sue's Secret Kitchen at, say, 9:00 PM. Mosey around Sue's Secret Kitchen (and get into a food contest or two) until around 6:45 AM. Drive home. Suddenly, it's back to 9:00 PM (plus a few minutes while you drive your car into the driveway, get out, click your car, back out of the driveway and drive off again)! Back to Sue's Secret Kitchen you go! Mosey around, cook stuff, eat stuff, make candy with the Schokolade machine...about eight hours later, it's time to go home again. Rinse and repeat until all that time driving in and out of your driveway brings you a little too close to sunrise at your home lot. Then it's time to call it a night.

Masters of the night, indeed.

As always, the exception is if your vampire is living on a college campus and goes to a college community lot; the clock will continue to tick away normally, and he will not recover any time by returning to his campus house, Greek house or dorm. Going to an off-campus community lot (in Downtown, Bluewater Village, the base neighborhood or wherever) will reset the clock as usual.

• With Bon Voyage, vampires can go on vacation, just like any other Sim; just be sure to edit at least one of the vacation neighborhoods and build a hotel with coffins in the rooms to accommodate such guests (a la my own Old Drifty's Morgue and Lodging hotel on Hoar Mountain). Alternately, if you have the Simoleons, buy a vacation home and add as many coffins as your family needs.

(Man...I almost kind of regret making a more-or-less Everest-like vacation spot named Hoar Mountain when I could have gone Full Dracula Mode and put together the Carpathian Mountains instead. Good thing we can build as many Mountain neighborhoods as we want, right?)


That's it. And after I spend a day playing with my werewolves, I might cough up a bunch of tips for werewolf Sims too! Stay tuned.

Grim Reaper makes your game grim if you get him selectable

(Try saying that five times fast.)

Oh yes sorry I forgot I type in 'dorm on', which is a shortcut for some cheat to open buy mode.
Cheat
Looked it up and the cheat is 'boolProp DormSpecificToolsDisabled false'
The way to get shortcuts like this or turning furniture on an angle easily with a key click, is to get yourself a cheat file. Here is mine for anyone that wants to copy. You paste it into notebook and you drop it into your config folder.

Since it is rather huge I put it behind a spoiler.


Instant meals are not very filling though, so if you can, a plate of left overs is better and better again is sparkling food.

With community lots and the time being the same, you can get rid of that with the Community Lot Time mod, that is one of my favourite mods.

And if you visit a community lot with a pond, fishes are free! And as I recall, it only takes 2 points of Cooking to cook bass with squash. Grilling fish is fine, but cook it in a kitchen (with a counter, a fridge and an oven at minimum) and the bass with squash becomes sparkly food. Bon apetit.


Random tip: How does a Sim living alone get enough money to afford a big house (like this one) without cheats?

1) Choose your Lifetime Aspiration Benefits. Be sure to take Business Instinct (the second Benefit on the Work ladder) as soon as you can.
2) Go to college. Check your Lifetime Want; if it involves reaching Level 10 in a certain career track, choose a major that's compatible with that career track. Take the opportunity to rack up as many Skill points as you can before you graduate. (Serious Sims have an easier time of doing this, of course.)
3) Graduate. Settle for a house on a smaller lot. Wait for Rod Humble to drop off his free computer, then use it to get a job. Your higher Skills and college degree should help you start considerably higher on the career track. As mentioned before, a career track which matches your Lifetime Want is a huge bonus; if that ideal career track just so happens to be compatible with your predestined hobby (ie. wanting to become a Celebrity Chef when your predestined hobby is Cuisine), even bigger bonus. This may not always be possible, depending on your Sim's personality and other make-up.
4) Keep going to work on time and in a good mood. Get to Level 10 in that career track in record time. Don't forget to collect your Career Reward!
5) After reaching Level 10 in your career track, it may be tempting to immediately get a new job so that you can go back to racking up promotion bonuses and/or pursue your next Lifetime Want. Don't do this. Stick with your Level 10 job for a while, and keep going to work. Sooner or later, you'll get a Chance Card, and the rewards from Level 10 Chance Cards are usually--if not always--huge. Carmilla von Carstein (whose house you just looked at) took $50,000 from beating the Level 10 Science Chance Card, then took another $25,000 from beating the Level 10 Culinary Chance Card. That's why you need Business Instinct; these rewards are too massive to gamble away on a mere 50% chance (if even that great).
6) After you draw the Level 10 Chance Card for your career track, it's safe to change careers. Alternately, you can keep the job long enough to burn off any vacation days you've saved up; you'll lose those vacation days if you change jobs, so you might as well use them to sit around the house, work on your relationships and maybe build up some Skill points to help you at your next job.
7) If you have Bon Voyage, don't forget to take a vacation now and then. When you come home, you get to pick three temporary benefits; Refreshed and Industrious are good choices for the upwardly mobile, career-minded Sim.
8) Keep saving your money! After you get about 200 grand, it's time to start thinking about that house on the hill....

And it's all perfectly legal and cheat-free, too. Enjoy!

Is your Sim stuck with a Lifetime Want that you really think is annoying?

Are you willing to cheat?

The Batbox has a nifty feature for that.

Also, one more thing about vampires. If one bites Mrs. C, your game is toast. Not your hood. Your game. That is a very, very bad thing.

There are ways to prevent that. I use one of the hacks here: http://forum.jfade.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16 In my opinion, I don't want a vampire biting any of the "dangerous" NPCs.

Any way to edit sims in the mirror that you don't control?
One of the dorm roomates has an ugly hat hair I need to change.

Mumty, you can use testingcheats and make them selectable to change their look (turn it off though afterwards if you need to)

If you want to change their clothes you need Inge's teleporter ____ (I use the bush personally, others the cat) as making selectable doesn't make them a proper part of the household, as I've found, and nothing will be in the wardrobe for them.
Making selectable works for the mirror because everything's there anyway.

There are two options, Mumty, which don't involve cheats. One is to use the OFB makeover chair. This has some risk of failing depending on your sim's makeover badge. The other is to use a vanity table (not sure that's the right name). These don't have any risk of failure. They look like a mirror set on a desk with a stool in front. There's one in the Seasons shabby-chic set.

Alternately, your Sim can use a ReNuYu Senso Orb or a ReNuYu Porta-Chug to get out of a sucky Lifetime Want. Save your game first (unless you don't mind gambling and letting the chips fall where they may), then use the Orb to switch to a different Aspiration and back (ie. from Knowledge to Popularity and back again) or, if your heart's not set on any particular Aspiration, the one change will do fine. Drinking a ReNuYu Porta-Chug has the same effect as a single use of a ReNuYu Senso Orb.

The ReNuYu Senso Orb is an Aspiration Reward which costs 6,250 Aspiration Points. The ReNuYu Porta-Chug is a potion; each game-generated townie gets one, but the best way to obtain several ReNuYu Porta-Chugs is to have a playable witch (with a Magic Skill of 7 or higher) brew up some Porta-Chugs in a cauldron. The Orb and the potions also make great gifts, if your Sims feel like building up relationship points before one of them decides to quaff a questionable potion or stick his head in a dangerous-looking machine.


Hmm...that's the mod which I installed first, to stop my grand vampires from biting random townies. It didn't work. So I downloaded Pescado's Creature Fixes, and that fixed things straight away. So if jfade's mod doesn't work on your computer (for whatever reason), try Pescado's.


Like Sunbee said, the easiest way to change a non-playable Sim's hair is to use a makeover chair or a vanity. Using the barber's chair repeatedly is also a good way to work on your Cosmetology badge, which is exactly what at least two of my collegiate Sims have done. You're in a dorm, and several dormmates are trapped in that dorm with you, so you might as well use them all as guinea pigs for your impromptu beautician training. I'll queue the "Offer Free Makeover to..." action on the same dormie about eight times in a row, just to save me the time of repeatedly having to hunt down a new dormie. And there's one professor who annoys me by constantly visiting my dorms. Is she annoying you too? Punish her by plopping her down in the barber's chair for half a day!

Just don't let your grades slip.

As you might expect, my dorms have a whole cast of students with some very interesting hairstyles and make-up moseying around. Unfortunately, you can't offer free makeovers to the cow mascots, or the makeover chair would be a handy way to stop them from causing trouble. Alas.

Hmm ... I'd probably try the Pescado hack first, THEN jfade if that doesn't work. In fact, since I'd like to get rid of that ugly green discoloration on my evil head witch (I use a mod that gets rid of the ugly green skin, and it works ... except for one annoying green strip near the scalp), I might try it myself after removing the jfade hack. (I wouldn't use both ... you'd probably have a conflict.) Thanks!

But I do believe the point is to install a hack early on to avoid a vampire getting the munchies with a dangerous NPC ... before the NPC gets bitten.

EDIT ... In a embarrassing moment of stupid, I've found that I have BOTH hacks in my game. Sigh. Test time in my junk hood to see if there's a conflict with vampires. I haven't played them in some time, and don't have a Downtown in any of my hoods. The HCDU doesn't show anything, so maybe I'm fine with both. If not, I will have to consider what I want to do to fix this.

After testing, I found there appears to be no conflict. But I don't believe one needs both. I simply got rid of the jfade hack for now, but will continue to test.

By the way, if you've changed the evil witch skin, the Pescado mod does not get rid of the discoloration at the scalp. But it isn't a horribly big deal. Perhaps it's a bad highlight job on the hair!

I never thought I'd play Sims 2 again, but when I got the email about UC I decided to download and try it again. I've been reading the forums for the last hour and trying to figure out what Mods to get. But now I have a crazy idea and I want to know if it could work. I have a new computer, but I still have an old backup of Sims 2. Could I just take my Sims 2/Downloads folder from 2008 (which has almost 6,000 files in it) and just place it in my new Sims 2 game? Since it contains all the Mods I thought I wanted 6 years ago, it would save me a lot of time looking for new Mods all over again. But I've also read a lot about Sims 2 being easily corruptible. What's the worst that could happen if I tried this idea? My game won't play correctly or might I have to completely reinstall Sims 2?

What was your latest EP back when you used that download folder? If it was AL then it would still be compatible. If you had NPC creating mods like Bek's animals and don't want them now, you would want to remove all those files before placing it into your new game. Also since 2008, cc and mods have come a long way. Skins, hair and clothes look about 100 times better, so you might want to think if you really want to keep old things.

You can probably keep most, but please be aware that as joandsarah77 wrote, many hacks and mods have been updated since 2008, and many will not work at all or need a workaround. When I installed my three EPs last year, I had to go through each hack and mod, research it, and replace it if necessary. Yes, it does depend on what EP you had before all this. If you had AL, you should be in pretty good shape. But even if you had Free Time, a lot of mods stopped working because of AL. Just that one EP wreaked some havoc.

What will most likely happen if a hack or mod is not behaving itself.:

1. Your game will crash.
2. You'll find that your Sims will have the "jump bug". Now sometimes, this bug is explainable. But most of the time, it indicates a mod or hack problem; particularly if the Sim won't perform certain actions. This bug is definitely different from the small "twiches" you might see if the Sims do certain things. For instance, I notice an almost imperceptible one after "make out", even in a vanilla game, but that isn't a problem. This is for Sims 3, and is quite extreme, but it gives you an idea of the difference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy0FFa-Gpws
3. Your Sims may not perform actions, even without the jump bug. You'll click on an action, and ... nothing.

Be aware that modded items can be affected as well. And sometimes, the item alone will work OK, but paired with a newer modded item ... crash or jump! And many of these hacks and mods have been updated even after AL. Researching is a pain, I know, but it's necessary. Look at the comments as well. If people are complaining that hack or mod doesn't work after AL, take note of that.

(By the way, when I finally installed AL, I had to check about 200 hacks and modded items, so yes, I do know how tedious it can be! Even afterward, I had problems with two hacks that necessitated removing and replacing them.)

You'll find a few hacks and mods that you're just not sure of after all this. I isolate those in their own folder, and if the game does something weird, they're often the first suspects. I've had to pull out one or two of them.

Joandsarah77 is absolutely right on another count. Remove any custom NPCs you don't want, make sure you don't have duplicate defaults, remove any custom PT tech mod you don't want before you even fire up the game. Custom NPCs include animals, objects, and even a mod or two. Some of Echo's carnival set, for instance, has at least one NPC, as well as the flying potion on this site. If you like these NPCs, they can still stay in. Enjoy! But if you don't, remove them immediately. Do not start the game with them, even if you don't save.

And please make sure you have Boiling Oil's No Sim Loaded before you put your lots in, if you decide to use old lots. I learned the hard way, and my game now has "Sims Mono." This refers to Super Hug Bug. Putting the hack in does stop it in your game, but if you decide to upload a lot in the future, it's a "carrier" of the bug, unless you take steps to create the lot outside of your game, such as using Any Game Starter. The bug does not go away if you put the hack in later.

Which was a silly "realism" from EA. Get a mod.

Joand:" Cheat
Looked it up and the cheat is 'boolProp DormSpecificToolsDisabled false'"
You're saying this keeps the grab things hand enabled? I've tried similar cheat for apartments (to be able to change things) and IT NEVER WORKS

Yes, this usually works for dorms. I've used it several times since AL.

Apartment Life disable mods can be tricky. I've used one once and it worked. Another time, it didn't. I do find those mods very temperamental, and they probably should be approached carefully. For reference:

http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sims...ent_Life/cheats

(Sorry for necroing but I needed to)

boolprop showcatalogepflags true/false shows which objects come from which EP if you're curious, but it's quicker flipping through the collection that comes with the game.

1. When it comes to CC - folder and sub- folder.

2. DJ's Compressorizer is your best friend

3. Just like with Sims 1, and Sims 3, update your mods

4. Just like your real house it it is something your Sims never use- delete it

5. Keep different download folders for different game play styles e.g. historical, post-apocalyptic, round robin hoods etc

6. backup your legacy families. I don't know how many times I have gotten to Gen 3 or 4 only to have my hood get corrupted and lose my family.

7. Sims 2 Clean Pack Installer should also be your best friend. Especially when it comes to lots and Sims since mods, hacks, and the creators 90 billion recolors of a single object (not just the one recolor they used- all of them) attach themselves to lots and Sims.

8. Have fun Simming should not be work- this is why TS2 is great, no achievements, no forced quests, just playing god and forcing your little pixel people to live their lives how YOU (not EA, not the Sims themselves) want them to live their lives.