The following information was collected from The SimWatch list-serve. See http://www.egroups.com/group/SimWatch for full details. No credit is given as to the contributor. No attempt is made to validate the accuracy of the information. The following is a collection of advice submitted to the SimWatch list-serve. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. GET a MAID!!!! Spend no time cleaning, you will be happier and get promoted and be more successful in relationships. 2. Select several activities in a series that are meanial ie toilet, shower, eat and speed the game up until complete (use 2 not 3 or you will totally lose control). 3. Make time for relationships and development (chess, art, reading - especially cooking - cause you will cook faster) and you will be happier and get promoted and be more successful in relationships. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i think the obvious use for the interests cheat, is to let you know which sims have which common interests. This is more than likely a factor in how long each of their "talk"s last, mixed with the astrological sign, happiness, charisma, and personality variables. ie if both sam sim and helen sim have a large interest in weather, they will both talk about the weather for a long time, hence gaining more +friendship with each time, and talking for a longer period of game time (ie sometimes when you ask sims to talk they only talk for 5 seconds our time, sometimes they talk for minutes off that one command, without using any autonomy) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To knock out the walls if you have anything on the wall like a cordless phone, smoke detector, or burglar alarm first you have to move those off the wall. Then go to the build section and if you have windows or doors on the wall click on either the window or door icon, hold down control and click them, after you are done clearing the wall, go to the wall icon and then hold down control and drag on the wall -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's not the kindest thing to do in the world, but build a small room with a door. Have the troublesome roommate enter the room, and the replace the door with a wall. He'll whimper (so you'll probably want your prison far away from the house so as not to hear him) and then poof, 5? days later, you have a new tombstone. I think then you can delete the tombstone. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have found that The Sims will allow gay/lesbian couples to thrive, and if I am seeing it correctly, there is a gay kiss in the introductory video when you first start the game. They don't propose or get "married" as male/female couples do, but will flirt, fall in love, hug, kiss and can move in together if played right, and they will get the baby adoption option. If they move in together, the family name is the name of the original owner of the house (ex: if John Smith asks Bob Jones to move in, and he does, Bob becomes Bob Smith). It's nice to see that Maxis keeps open-minded about such things. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes you can kill the sims, just make a pool and place a diving board in it, BUT NO ladder out, they will swim for less then a day and die. Or put a wicker chair right in front of the fire and get appropriate sim to light it -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raising a baby: The best bet is to have two Sims either married or living together, and have one be unemployed to stay at home and take care of the baby. Even then, the working Sim will most likely have to take one day off just to give the at-home Sim a rest. What I do is-have the parents alternate taking 'days' off. Aka-birth of baby-Mom cooks, eats, sleeps, Dad takes care of baby first call- Dad sleeps-goes to work- Mom-skips work- answers followin baby calls (bathing/eating when possible depending on energy level) until dad gets home. ad Immediately goes to bed. I then work on getting mom's other bars replenished. Dad skips work to take care of baby-Mom goes to work-etc. repeat day 1 for day 3 and you have a healthy kid and a stable job-Once the kids can call for pizza-I work on revving the parents back up to full speed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be careful not to put the cuckoo clock in the room with the couch or else the sim cant sleep for the noise -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Levels Espresso is good for a quick fix, but I recommend the most expensive bed, or the leather recliner. The beauty of the recliner or a couch is that you can socialize and watch tv at the same time, then just kick neighbors out and take a snooze! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A solution that can be useful when you are having some strange bug or you just can't get your sims happy anymore: Move. You loose a lot of money, but that's why you have those hard-working, money-earning sims, no? You can work to buy all your stuff back afterward. There are several advantages to moving: Neighbors that you missed the first time sometimes decide to go walk by to welcome you again. Pretty much all you mood is maxed up, so everyone's very happy. You can get rid of various bugs (that's I got rid of my phantom twin) You also get to play with a new house, or get a new one. (if you change). For those who don't know how to move: you evict your family (with the buldozer) and you tell them to buy another house (or the same one if you want to). Make sure you sell all of your furniture before you evict your family otherwise you'll lose all of the money that you've invested! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The bladder motive is one of the most pressing that your Sim has... neglect it at your peril. If it reaches zero your poor little Sim has a nasty accident, he cries, and his hygiene plummets to zero and his mood obviously falls. Not good at all. The problem is that there's no way of stopping your Sim from needing the toilet. Cook a nice filling meal and his hunger will be satisfied but his bladder starts calling and as for the Expresso machine..... Many houses are built with just one bathroom. If you have a particularly large family you can obviously create several bathrooms but this can be expensive, it take up a lot of room and the Sims usually have to walk quite a way to get to it. There is a simpler solution - toilet rooms. A toilet room is literally just what it sounds like - a room just for a toilet. It need only be one by two tiles. Don't forget to put a light in there and maybe hang a picture over the toilet. The room score will shoot down when the Sim uses it but it doesn't matter because the moment he steps out (assuming the room you place it in is nice) the score will shoot straight back up again. Place these toilet rooms near the eating area. If your Sims eat in the kitchen then put one in the corner of the kitchen, if they eat outside on the patio then create a little outhouse - it looks very cute! Put them anywhere you like actually; create an en-suite on the bedroom, if you have one of these 'skill-building' rooms containing an expresso machine then put one in there. I also have one in my Hottub room! They are cheap and they create extra corners which will increase room score and give you additional places to stack furniture. One last point - neat Sims like to wash their hands and they prefer the bathroom sink over the kitchen sink. In this case it's worth making the room a tiny bit bigger and shoving a sink in there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to make lots of friends: 1. Create an 8 person family - make them all out going and nice (about 6 adults and 2 kids) 2. Move them into a house (it does not have to be very big) 3. Put SOME furniture in the house (TELEPHONE, fridge, microwave, toilet, sink, bench and mabye some chairs and beds) 4. When the neighbors come to greet you, try to meet a member of the family that you play. 5. When you play your family again, call the person that you just met and introduce them to your family. 6. The person may ask if they can bring some friends over, so gradualy you will make 8 very outgoing friends. Also, kids make friends with other kids VERY easily if you get them outside to play. Let 'em eat, then call them outside, and then invite them to play. They'll play until they drop, and by 8 or 9 you'll have a new family friend. :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't move into a new house until your baby has become a child. Otherwise, they get lost in the move. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to take care of a baby: - Switch days of caring for the child. Have the husband do it one day, the wife one day, etc. The day that they are not scheduled to care for the baby, make sure the Sim sleeps in the BED. The parent that is careing for the baby should sleep on a really good couch, close to the baby is best for answering the cries faster. Be sure to turn off the TV and radio and that there is no coocoo (or however you spell it!) clock in the room . - When the baby cries, click on the basinet and click on Feed. While the Sim is feeding the baby, click on Sing. That way, as soon as they put down the baby, they will pick it back up and start singing. Less crying means the Social Worker won't show up. So far I have found no use for playing. None of my babies in any of my games have liked to play. They like to be fed once, then sung to 1 or 2 times before going back to sleep. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kitchen fires will happen when your Sims don't have cooking experience. Make sure you have them read the cook book from the bookshelf. I give them at least 2 points for that at a time. Fires can also start from BBQs and Fireplaces if things are too close. Make sure nothing is nearby. Be sure you have a smoke alarm in the kitch and the room that contains the fireplace, BBQ, etc. That will automatically call the fire department and cause much less damage, if any. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no weekends... but your Sim can stay home, without pay, one day with no consequences. Then he has to go back the next day, or he gets fired. But this means he can take every other day off... work, off, work, off, work, off, etc. You just make money slower that way. But it's vital, when you have a baby... it's tempting to have both parents stay home the first day, but if you do, you'll either have to abandon the baby or have someone lose their job on day 2. So the two parents have to stagger their days off for those first 3 days of baby's life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To save your houses, you have to copy them out of the "Userdata" directory in you "The Sims" folder to another folder of your choice (probably "Saved Sim Houses"). You can choose to backup either just that house, or the entire directory (although if it's only one or two houses, its probably better just to copy those house directories only). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One thing that I found is helpful (and fun) is that I move in one family (at least a couple - never a single sim) into an empty neighborhood, and build get them a job and build up there skills, until they advance to a stage in their careers where they need friends. Then I start another family and do the same with them, this time adding to the friends scores until everyone in the neighborhood is friends, then go back to the first, and let them advance some more, and then add a third family .. etc etc etc.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, just wanted to share my thoughts on how to get through your rough beginnings without having to use the cheat codes to survive. I created a family of four adults (two couples), one staying at home to make friends, meals and still have time for a little artwork that she/he can sell. You have to build each couples relationship so that they're getting along well and will sleep in the same bed. Put the balloons on the front lawn and be sociable all day for a couple of days. Max out the friend meter as much as possible and get up to about 15 friends. This will keep you going strong for everyone's career. Occasionally check to see what friend meters are running low and tend to them as needed. This allows for all other household members to work all day, come home to a nice meal and tend to their skills. Before you know it, you'll be rolling in the dough and will be running out of things to fix up and buy. After things are going well, you can send this Sim to work or have a baby, etc. After a baby has grown, which only takes a day or two, he/she can continue making new friends, which they do easily by merely playing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The more tombstones you have, the ghosts you'll see. Each ghost has a 1 in 8 chance of haunting nightly, so if you have 10 tombs you can pretty much expect to see at least one every night :) Also, the more outgoing your sim was before he died, the more likely it is he will come back and haunt you (not sure about this one - but I read it somewhere online). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advice on how to layout your house: Advice #1: Lots of doors to the outside, 2-square-wide hallways (if you must have hallways at all -- halls are generally bad), straight-line walking paths for most multistep processes (fridge-food proc-stove-countertop-dining table), and ONE STORY. Sims seem to hate stairs. :-) Which is why shotgun shacks and mobile homes seem to be so popular with my Sims. One hint: Separate dining rooms are bad for Sims; they prefer eat-in kitchens. In fact, I don't even separate my kitchens from my living rooms in most houses. I use counters and different floor materials, rather than walls, to differentiate these functional areas. If your Sims are bumping into each other in the kitchen door when group meals are served, there's your biggest problem. Two doors at opposite ends of the bathroom help a lot too; I hate it when my Sim gets trapped in the toilet by a neighbor who insists on talking to him RIGHT THEN, and it takes an hour to get them to move 'cause every time you do they pop up with another "Be Tickled" or "Receive Compliment." To which I say, "Uh-uh! Wammana! Parr!!!" ("I'm trying to take a crap, for crying out loud!!!") If everybody in your household leaves for school/work at the same hour, try double front doors. They look especially good if you use the frosted-glass ones, and set them so the knobs are next to each other, like real double doors. Advice #2: For one thing, you need to play with the family for a while - the score seeems to increase as they get used to their house. Also, middle-sized, 1story seem to work the best, make sure there are lots of doors leading outside, and that almost every room is accessible from each other (I like a big courtyard in the middle, inside a larger square which makes up their living space). Any other tips would be appreciated! Advice #3: Actually, I have found that doors leading outside are a problem when they are in the back of the house. For some reason, my Sims will go to the backdoor when it would be far fewer steps to go straight out the front door. Instead they go out the back door, and all around the house! Advice #4: That's because Sims take the route that requires them to pass through the fewest number of rooms, the outside being one room to them. If you have rooms like living, dining and kitchen separated by walls with archways, try opening up the wall instead. It's cheaper, reduces congestion at the doors, and boosts Layout scores since everything's in the same room to them. (Even if that room is 30 squares long and W-shaped ;-) Advice #5: Most of us humans like to make houses in the Sims lifelike so we tend to clumb bedrooms together upstairs and have kitchen and living quarters downstairs. In reality the Sims would like nothing better than to have their fridge, bed, playthings all next to each other and right next to the toilet. They don't like doors and objects getting in the way either. If you direct your Sim to go from the TV to the fridge to make dinner and it's just a few steps away with no objects to navigate around the layour score will be higher. If he has to walk around the sofa, open a couple doors and turn a corner it lowers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ways to kill your Sims: Let the Sim with lowest cooking ability cook and make sure there is no fire-alarm. They will start a fire and burn. You could wall them in and let them starve to death. Have them go for a swim, then remove the ladder to climb out and they'll drown. Get the Sim a guinea pig and have them play with it a lot. They will eventually get sick and die. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have a repairman come in on a regular basis to do maintenance, not just when something is broken, and make sure that you don't just use one or two of the wall lights, use alot. that way if you do have a problem with a light there are still several to keep the room well lit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this game, gender really has very little to do with who likes whom. It's more a question of personalities, interests, and astrological signs. Also, you have to start out a relationship small and build up to romance. Try talking until the relationship reaches about 30, then compliment until it reaches about 60, then hug until you're up near 100. When you're over 80, click on "flirt" when that option pops up. Once the heart shows up, you can kiss, backrub, etc., and eventually "move in" and/or "propose" will show up. (remember-only male/female couples get the propose option) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A good way to keep windowless rooms lit is by either putting in the lava lamp and instructing your Sim to turn it on (it won't turn off automatically, and will never burn out), or you can put a fishtank in there. The jukebox is also well lit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------