Sims deluxe strategy guide

Sometimes building bonds will be much quicker, this is due to differing sim personalities. As relationships are built you can invite sims to move in with you as well as establishing a best friend, boy or girlfriend, or fiance status. You can also get married.

These options are not restricted by the gender of your sims. The tutorial ends once you've completed the tutorial aspiration, which also includes guiding you through promotions, community lots, and other features of the game. You'll then be able to choose your own new aspiration and Alex will move out. At this point, you can stay in the house and continue playing, add a new roommate or start a new household.

Since the house is larger than a regular starter home and you'll also have around 20k in simoleons, continuing playing will give you a boost over a regular household, that has to buy their home from their 20k starting funds. As you start you new adventure, remember that the most important thing is to keep your sim's needs met and everything else can be worked out as you go along.

We also have some other guides to help you including building tips and even a cheat guide for if it all gets too difficult! It's time for this JRPG series to offer players a new perspective. Let's go, girls. Helen began playing games at an early age with her first computer being a hand-me-down Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

She juggles the daily demands of life with a family and somehow still finds the time to indulge her two passions in life, writing and gaming; sometimes both at the same time. Creating Your Sim A recent addition to the base game is the tutorial.

Share Share Tweet Email. Related Topics Guides the sims 4. Do you want your Sim to succeed in their chosen career? Raise a family? Plant a garden?

Loaf about and do nothing at all? It is all up to you! Your Sim is a work of art, and Create a Sim mode is your clay and kiln rolled into one. Craft your perfect Sim any way you wish, from their gender including transgender options , bone structure, skin tone, and voice to their clothing, Aspirations , and Traits.

Do you put yourself in the game, or do create a purely fictional character? Either way, we'll tell you how! Life in SimCity can be a little intimidating. The Sims 4 is a sandbox, and the entire world is open to you from the start.

The taxes you generate from here are smaller than other places, but the sims will be pretty undemanding, so you can stick them in high-crime areas without losing too much business. Medium residential zones are where most of you probably live, in middle-class homes. These typically have nice gardens and other accommodations, although you pay for it by having to provide schools and other essential services. The high-density residential zones hold buildings that kiss the sky, whether that means they're skyscraping hotels, or mansions that people like Bill Gates live in.

Light commercial zones are for local businesses. These include things like local donut shops, auto stores, ice cream parlors, fast food joints, and the like.

They also house small office buildings. Dense commercial zones hold malls and offices that touch the clouds. Industrial zones are a little different. The first zone type is agricultural zones. Unlike the other industrial zones, this can be as big as you want it to be. Agricultural zones are nothing but farms that employ few people.

Do not build farms if you're looking for money. Medium-density industrial zones are mostly dirty industries. There are horribly polluting industries like resource gatherers, toxic waste dumps, and other nasty places.

They pay a bit in taxes, but you'll be spending a lot of that money on ways to combat the crime and pollution that come with it. Manufacturing industries, like car shops, exist in some medium-density zones as well. These pollute, but not nearly as bad, and they pay more. The most dense zones accommodate high-tech industries. These don't pollute but do produce vast amounts of money for your coffers. Maxis, EA, Microsoft, and such would be in high-tech zones.

We're in the year and beyond for SimCity 4, so gone are the days of dirt roads and horses. Instead, we've got cars and subways! The top button of the transportation tier is asphalt options. You can build roads, bus stops, and--new to the SimCity series--streets.

Roads are your basic to-and-from route. These are two-lane roads and can handle a fair amount of traffic. Streets are a much weaker version of roads, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The pavement just outside your house is probably a street, one that cars don't travel on too much. There may not even be a line painted down the center of it. Streets are good to get isolated neighborhoods to the main streets. However, the speed limit is less here, along with its capacity, so don't use streets to link major places.

Don't be afraid to make streets, however; you can always upgrade them to roads later by painting over them with the road tool. You do NOT need to put a bus stop at a destination.

Buses cut down traffic, so unless you put them along busy roads and intersections, they won't do too much. The second button of the transportation tier allows the construction of highways. These beefy boys are six-lane elevated roads designed to get sims from point A to point B with optimal speed and minimal stops. You need to connect highways to roads, and to do that requires one of the two available on-ramps. Highways can also be linked to each other via a cloverleaf.

Highways need their own section, and it's much later in the document. The third button lets you ride the rails. You can place down double-wide tracks, but trains won't run without train stations. Stations, it goes without saying, must be directly next to tracks to work. Unlike bus stops, you have to build train stations everywhere you want the train to stop, so you'll have to do some planning to get it to work.

You can also build freight train stations, which carry goods to and from the city, but that's an advanced strategy that we don't need to deal with at the moment. The fourth button allows you to build subways. These as you may know are passenger-only trains. They're underground, so they won't take up valuable land. They are quite expensive however, especially considering that you need a stop at every place you want the sims to go. Small cities don't even need to consider them.

The fifth button allows you to build an airport. Again, it's not necessary to worry about it for a small city. Airports are a fixed size, unlike they were in SimCity The sixth and last button lets you build a seaport.

Again, seaports help commercial and industrial demands. They need water to work, so if you took my advice and started a new region without water, you won't be using them for now. Like airports, they're a fixed size, and they're pretty darn expensive. People want TVs and computers, and they need some place to power those computers.

The first button lets you build a large variety of power plants, along with power lines to link the plant to your zones. Most of the power plants are grayed out for now because they have prerequisites that go with them, and obviously as a young city you don't have much going for you.

Explanations of the plants come later. The second button lets you build water structures. There's not much there, and we'll go into more details when water becomes important. Until then, your sims can suck water out of the ground after it rains. The third button is for garbage disposal.

The quick and dirty literally way to deal with trash is to zone for landfills the same way you zone for other things. You can also build incinerators to burn trash, though that gets expensive and stinky.

You could also get a waste-to-energy converter to make trash into electricity. Finally, you can plop down a couple recycling centers around the city and hope your sims save a tree.

They have specific sizes and uses, and require some planning to be used effectively. The first button lets you slap down a few police stations and jails sorry, no donut shops. You can go with small stations at first, but soon the crime will be a little too large and will need a bigger place to deal with things.

All stations have small internal jails, but those will quickly fill up, so you need to build jails eventually to keep criminals behind bars and off the streets. The second button is your fire department. Again, you can make a little station that serves a neighborhood or two, but large cities need large stations. The third button is your educational department.

Schools come in three major varieties: elementary schools for the kids, high schools for the adolescents, and city colleges for the young adults. Education is pretty expensive, so make sure your other needs are suited to first. You can also build libraries and museums here, which assist adults and senior citizens from getting stupider than rocks. The fourth button of the civic buildings tier is for the city's health.

You can build tiny clinics, or decent hospitals. You'll also eventually be able to build a disease research center, which assists your other health buildings in extending your sims' lives. The fifth button is real-world landmarks that help attract tourists and businesses to the town. Unlike in SimCity , these cost, and some are astronomical in price. You can only have one of each per town. The sixth button gives you access to rewards You can also build business-deal buildings such as casinos and malls, although those aren't listed initially.

The seventh and final button is where you can build recreational buildings and sites. Green cities make the environmentalists happy, especially because they cut down the pollution poisoning the city.

This is your destruction tool, used for taking out trees, buildings, pipes, power lines, and everything else in your way.

This does NOT remove zones. Whenever there's an emergency, used the options in that to send your boys in blue and yellow to their targets. In SimCity , there was an emergency siren here as well, used to warn the city when a tornado or alien attack threatened their lives. It's been removed, so you don't have to stress about hitting a warning button the instant disaster looms. The button on the left re-enters God Mode.

However, it's a VERY limited version. You can start disasters, reconcile the city edges talked about in the God Mode section , or nuke the city. If you have a dark monitor, you may want to force the world to stay in the day the whole time so you can see what you're doing.

Doing so will not change the internal clock that your sims live by. The middle button takes you to Mayor Mode, with the tools. The third button takes you to My Sim Mode, which I'll get into later. Below that is a question mark. That's your query tool. In the very bottom-left corner is a mini-map. There are arrows where you can rotate it, or zoom in and out.

There are also speed settings near there, in case you want time to fly. Finally, you have your options button. You can save the city, exit to the region, exit to Windows, or alter your options.

As a new city, you have access to only the most basic plants: wind, coal, natural gas, and oil. This is your first big decision: what are you most interested in? If you want a clean city, stick with wind or natural gas. If you just want to get a high population quickly, go for coal. Whatever you choose, find a nice corner of the map and plop it down. City edges are absolute, and pollution that spills off your map does NOT enter adjacent cities.

This way you can remove almost half of the building's pollution from the start. If you chose windmill plants, you'll need several, but if you chose anything else, one will do. Now that you've got some power, you'll need to zone land so your sims know what to build where.

Do you want to live next to a stinky coal plant? Neither do sims. Go a fair distance away from the plant and build your first industrial zone. I always start with dirty industrial zones to get a solid foundation of the city, then expand outward.

Your industrial zone or zones should be large enough to support a decent influx of people, but they shouldn't be so large that your town is flooded with smoke. I normally go with two 8x8 zones that are fully enclosed with roads not streets. Those will go up, but they have no place to give their finished goods. You need to build some commercial zones, but right now you'll have nothing but tiny local businesses. Go some more away from the industrial zone in the direction opposite the power plant, and build a few commercial zones of light density.

Let the computer build streets as it needs to; you can take finer control of that aspect later, once you get more accustomed to the way things work. Once that's ready, both the industrial zones and commercial zones need workers. Build a large number of medium residential zones as close to the commercial zones as possible on the side opposite the industries. That way, your people won't be smelling like smoke TOO badly, if at all. Again, let the computer build streets as it needs to.

However, make sure you build roads that connect all the zones to each other. You'll also need one road that links the power plant with the rest of the city. Within a month or three, you should be getting your first people and businesses! Woo hoo! Let your city run awhile, because you'll have to wait for things to happen before you can take additional steps.

If you're impatient, speed the game until you have a few hundred or few thousand people. You need to be provided with detailed maps and such of situations, and luckily, it's all there for you! With Mayor Mode active, check out the stuff to the right of the buttons on the bottom edge of the screen.

You're presented with several things: your mayor rating, the city's cash, the city's population, the RCI meter, six status bars, and five tabs that provide information. The six status bars to the right are heavily weighed for your mayor rating, but it's not that simple of a calculation. The money and population counts are self explanatory, but the RCI meter is not. The taller the bar, the more that zone is in demand. The lower the bar, the less it's demanded.

Bear in mind that no other situation is taken into account: even if you fill up every square inch of your city's boundaries with something, the RCI meter will still be active. You can click the RCI meter to get even more detail about what's hot and what's not, but don't get too dependent on the details. For example, if nothing but farms are being asked for in the industry zones, but you don't want farms, just ignore the demands.

The sims will have to deal. If you did click the RCI meter, then you'll notice that the fifth tab became active. I'll talk more about it in a sec. For now, click the second tab, the one with a person. This is your advisor screen. They give frequent reports about everything in their departments. If their picture is on a green background, they're happy about things. If the background is red, they're none too pleased.

If it's blue, they don't care one iota either way. Click on any one of their pictures to get a list of their reports. As a new mayor, their first reports are just introductory resumes, where they tell you what they do and what they watch for.

As time goes on, they'll make real reports about different things as they need to. The third tab of that section takes you to your budget. You're given a simple chart of your current money, your monthly expenses, your monthly income, and your projected total after the month ends. Obviously, you want your income to be higher than your expenses, but young cities will struggle in doing so. You can get a more detailed look at your budget by clicking the small report.

The screen will expand and show your expenses and incomes, and you can further go into detail. I'll worry about that later as well. For now, just click the fourth tab in that group. This is your data view, or map. You can see various aspects of your city through this to hunt down problems or see successes. As an example, click the traffic option. You'll see which roads and streets are more traveled than others.

Red routes mean the path should be upgraded, whether that means changing a street to a road, or adding bus stops, or something else. The last tab takes you to a bunch of charts and grafts. This is where you can get a general breakdown of people or services.

Wanna know how your crime rate compared to five years ago? You can do that here. Use this information as much as you need to. There's plenty of trouble that can happen, and the sooner and more you know about it, the better. Don't use it just to figure out what's wrong, though. See what's right, and make sure you don't ticker with what's working.

Services such as police protection are still not needed, but the time is coming short. For now, just look to see what can be expanded. Plan out new neighborhoods, new industrial zones, and new business sectors. Zone them once you can see them in your head. Don't bother zoning for new places if the ones you already haven't aren't full. My experience tells me that residential zones will fill up fastest, so you'll have to be zoning for more houses first.

The only thing aside from zones you'll want to build at this second is a landfill. Garbage becomes a problem fairly early, so you'll need to take of that one as quickly as possible.

Make sure to give it road access as well. Not one to be heartless especially after the neat gift they gave to you , you need to take your sims' lives out of your hands and put them in someone else's. Education isn't much of an issue at the moment, but your sims' safety is. After all, if they get murdered, who's going to be around to pay taxes? The first thing you need to build is a police station. Click the appropriate buttons, then select a small police station.

Take a look at it as you drag it around the landscape. See the big circle around it? That's the range the police station has access to. It's scalable, so a crime committed two doors away will have a better chance of being stopped than a crime on the fringe of the radius. Place the police station in such a way where you can cover the whole town aside from the power plant if you can.

The worst crime is probably in the industrial zone. I'm sure you have a large amount of money left, so build a fire department now. Get a small one and place it so it too covers the whole city if possible. Favor the residential zones if you have to; losing a business won't cut much into your economy, but losing people will. You may also want to put a second small fire department next to your power plant. That prevents your plant from catching flames and exploding, which would result in the loss of power, which is absolutely devastating this early.

That second fire department does not need to cover its full radius if it's right next to the plant, so I'll teach you how to make it a little more efficient. Click the query tool the question mark near the mini-map , then click the station. That's way too expensive for a station that has only one objective, so let's fix that.

Click and drag the little box to the left to lower the building's funding. Notice that the radius shrinks as you do so. Don't lower it too much, or else the people will go on strike. By now, your people should be going along smoothly, and your people are ready for new challenges.

You don't have much for kids to do, so build a few parks or plazas around the town. Unlike previous SimCity games, each rec area costs monthly, so don't go nuts. About five small parks will do for now.

Kids can't just play, of course. It's time to address the education issue, and this is where most new cities go down.

Build an elementary school, and make sure you place it so it only covers residential areas. Commercial and industrial zones don't breed little sim kids, so it would be a waste to put a school too close to those places. Once the school is placed, grab your query tool and examine the building. The radius is determined by the bus fund, and lowering it any will catch up with you in the end unless you monitor it VERY carefully.

The main funding affects how many students it can hold. That's still probably high, but you can lower it later. Speaking of which, there's nothing more to do for now. Let your city run itself for awhile. Hope for a profit, but know that your large treasury will hold out for awhile as long as you didn't go crazy with building things earlier. After about two months, query the school again. You'll get a count of its current students.

Adjust the funding so you can accommodate all the students and about 50 more. If you put in more funding than that, you're just wasting it, and at this stage, every simoleon counts Trust me, though, that education will pay off But as a zombie. Hey, it's better than nothing!

Anyone who has seen "Aladdin" or any other cartoon dealing with Genies will immediately recognize this as a Magic Lamp. To get to the genie, select the lamp and [Clean]. It also has a very minor effect on Fun when [Viewed]. The genie will make you choose between two things, and then he will "act. Here are the choices that I would choose to minimize your risk: Fire or Water: Water if the Fire burns something large, such as a bed, you won't get the fire extinguished before it destroys the item!

Hopefully it will be something small and easy to put out. Friends or Family: Family this one has almost no risk at all! Called the Concoctonator Its primary purpose is to improve your Sim's Logic it isn't fun. One time this potion will fill up Energy, Hunger and Fun, while another time it will fill in Social, Bladder and Hygiene. By "Evil Clone" it means that this Sim is your exact duplicate. This means that this Clone may not actually be evil. If your Sim is a jerk low Nice , then this Clone may be a really nice guy.

You can't get rid of a Clone, but eventually they just fade away. Evil clones will ruin your Sim's relationships with other Sims. Yellow - Permanent Reverse Personality. Yep, your Sim will have their entire personality flip-flopped. If you had 3 Nice, you will now have 7. If you had 10 Neat, you will now have none.

There is a really cool trick involving this potion, see "Tip" below. Purple - Turn your Sim into a monster. Monsters just don't listen to you! Monsters also tend to wake up sleeping Sims if in the same room. Monsters don't lose Need points. If they were halfway hungry when they became a monster, that's where they'll be later.

Worse of all, monsters also have a tendency to break most things they use! Plus they seem to want to use break everything in the house! This effect eventually wears off. Light Green - Ruins all of your Sim's Needs except Room, such that they'll all have a mere sliver of green. It took me about 16 hours to resuscitate a Sim this way.

Orange - Turns your Sim invisible. Therefore other Sims can't interact with that Sim. This potion has the shortest effect of all of them. Red - Causes your Sim to fall in love with someone in the neighborhood. White - Cures your Sim of sickness. And, of course, the Chemistry Set can always explode in your face! Tip: Once the potion is created, there are two ways to get rid of it.

First you can just drink it. This isn't always desirable, if say, the potion is a bad one. Second, you can sell the Chemistry Set and buy a new one.

This will lose you some money as your chemistry set will have depreciated. Well there is a neat little cheating way to get around this. Then drink the potion. The bad effect hits you. Since the Sim is brought back from the last save, she'll be exactly as she was before drinking the potion. This tip also works well for the Genie effects, such as when he blasts away your skills. Tip: The Chemistry Set is one of the most fun objects in Livin' Large, and there is one fun thing to try with it.

Takes a while but it works! Rob Sevening has another idea to remove unwanted Potions: Another easy way without cheating to get rid of an unwanted potion is to invite one of your Sim's friends over to your house. Make sure there is no food for the friend to eat because the first thing friends look for when they come over is something to eat. Anyway, once the friend arrives have your Sim greet them and do nothing else. The friend will walk directly to the potion set and drink the potion regardless of what type it is.

This has worked for me every time I wanted to purge a potion. If it is the nasty green potion, the friend will leave immediately! This bed allows your Sims to finally do "it". Have one Sim get in the bed under the [Vibrate] command. They'll strip and get in the bed. Then have another Sim one who is in Love with the other Sim, naturally go to the bed and do the [Play in Bed] command.

They will then proceed with gettin' it on. It is both Fun and a Social activity. On the downside, it pulls down every other Need you have quite dramatically. There is also the [Relax] feature which improves a Sim's Comfort like no other. Plus as a group activity, two people can share in the fun. Sometimes, however, the second person the "watcher" will Jeer the person playing. This is usually caused by the first person being a horrible guitar player.

The better the Creativity level, the better the chance that anyone [Watching] will "rock out". Even with people listening to your Sim-guitar work, this isn't a Social object.

You still have to buy it, but it will soon be rakin' in the dough for you! Used to increase Mechanical Skill while creating yard Gnomes. In any event, once a Gnome is completed it can be sold, only through the Furnish F2 function and the more Gnomes you make, the more money you get per Gnome. The rate at which Gnomes are produced is a little slow at first, but as you progress and your Mechanical Skill gets higher they take less and less time.

Also the later Gnomes sell for more money. Lawn Gnomes do NOT appreciate in value like artwork not the stuff you paint, but the stuff you buy.

The value of your gnome is equal to your initial mechanical skill times your updated mechanical skill if it went up, otherwise they're the same. Once that happens you are making a Gnome every 20 minutes from the time the Block of Wood is put on the table, to the time that the Gnome is put on the ground.

Of course, the table is very stressful for your Sim, and their Needs will drop while working at it. Gnomes are decorations and improve the Room rating slightly. Note: Gnomes are more interactive in Hot Date. Your Sim can pick them up, and give them as a gift. I had a Sim turned into a Monster. First thing he did was kick a Gnome, which exploded knocking him on his butt.

You can't force them to kick a Gnome. What it does is it gives you a riddle. You must have your Sim do what the riddle says, and you will have a permanent Stat increase. To gain your stat increase, simply do what you are told, and it will happen naturally.

No more work required. Possibly because you didn't fail to meet its objectives, but didn't succeed either It takes 24 hours from the time you first look into the Crystal, to when it adjusts your Personality. He can do just about anything, cook, clean, repair. In order to function, his Pod must have one empty square in front of AND behind it. Then simply [Turn On] and he'll patrol your house looking for things to do. Once he runs out of tasks, he returns to his Pod. Servo puts on different "hats" depending on the job he is about to perform.

He wears a brown cap if he wants to repair something, a little maid's cap to clean and a Chef's Hat when he prepares a meal. If you see him wandering around in the Brown Hat for repairing then you can assume that he WANTS to repair something, he just can reach it. Find what it is it's probably a burnt out Wall Light , and clear the obstacle out of Servo's way so that he can fix it.

These meals are the equivalent of a Pizza slice. One of the promotionals Maxis made prior to the release of Livin' Large intimated that Servo might "rebel" against his human oppressors.

I have not confirmed whether this exists or not. So in the end, is Servo worth it? No, not really. Even if you have the money, a Maid and a Gardener are better bargains. Plus he has the annoying drawback that you must activate him EVERY time you want him to do something. In that time, you could probably do the very thing you were turning him on to do!

If Servo automatically sensed a mess, or something to repair, went out and cleaned it all on his own, then he would be worth it. Rob Sevening has this to say about Servo: I've noticed that when my family has friends over and my robot is finished with his chores he will sometimes approach one of the visitors and interact with them.

Sometimes he will entertain them juggling act or sometimes he will dance with them. He has never done it to any member of my family only to visiting friends. Another thing was he only interacted with the exact same friend every time she was over. It was though he grew some 'attraction' to that particular Sim.

Servo may attempt to interact with a Sim if his social score is low. Getting abducted by Aliens will mess up your Sim's personality. This hasn't happened to me yet, so I can't say anything more specific about it. Rob Sevening had his Sim's adbucted: I don't use the telescope anymore because it seems every single time I've had my Sims use the dang thing they get abducted. No aliens are ever seen, but they get 'beamed' up in purple beams of light. My family members then 'grieve' at the spot they were abducted.

They cry for a few minutes then continue on with their business. The longest I've ever been gone was about 12 hours. The Sim then reappears in a random spot usually near the abduction point with a picture of an alien in their conversation box. Each time their personality was apparently randomized no pattern found never to return to normal. Then the occupants must be sad, look at his portrait and he will appear and attempt to cheer you up. Too bad that he is so depressed himself, else he might actually be ABLE to cheer you up.

As it stands, he manages to make matters worse! He does much the same stuff there, but arrives without your having purchased the clown portrait. He does a variety of tricks all of which fail miserably , but mostly just wanders around your house crying, coughing, sneezing, and just generally getting everyone down. There are bunches of interaction options with the Clown, but the only one that seems to make my Sims happy were [Insults].

There's nothing YOU can do to get rid of him, he simply has to leave on his own. Tip: Having trouble getting the clown to appear? Try this. Make potions with the chemistry set and try to get the light green The one that makes you tragically unhappy yourself , then look at the clown's portrait. This guarantees nothing, but the clown loves a good tragedy! JediPika88 has this to say about Clowns: The tragic clown appears when the family's average motive drops below Do not try to trap him, if he cannot get somewhere he makes a hole, goes in and pops up somewhere else.

To get rid of him, get the family's motives up to He will then leave. Or you can put his painting above a fireplace, remove smoke alarms, then light it. When the painting catches on fire, so will the clown. Can't see that it has much point, other than pure annoyance. It can only be used on someone currently in the house, and cannot be used on children. I can't see much of a purpose to this item, except for sadistic pleasure.

If the voodoo doll victim is in the same room as the one using it, they will attempt to slap the user. I just felt that it didn't add enough to the Sims to justify the cost. Ah, well. First you need to buy just about every party object in the game which requires a large house to start with , then you need to hire a caterer to feed the group.

The quality of the party can be measured by who shows up, if you get the Mime, your party stinks, if you get Drew Carey, you probably have a good party. This can create a LOT of havoc in their lives! I saw one female "entertainer" kiss about 4 different men before leaving, each one had their girlfriend in the room at the same time. Result was a lot of jealousy and one completely ruined romance. Buy "Jungle Jumble Import Display," and hang it somewhere. A picture of the Maxis staff, stangely dressed up will appear.

Next to it will be a narrorative, with a written out french accent, which is supposed to be parody of a generic nature documentary. Just pick up the phone and call a cab. When you get downtown, visit one of the lots that Maxis has made for you.

If you want to get creative with all of the new objects, hit the downtown button from the neighborhood screen and build your own downtown lot. When building your lot, it is best to place 3 tiles worth of sidewalk next to the street.

We recommend that you limit the number of animated objects you place on your lot. The more you have, the slower the performance will be.

There are the "worker-bees", like the chef, waitress and store clerks and there are the "dateable" NPC's. These "dateables" are Sims you can meet downtown and strike up a relationship with.

New Catalog Sorts Each catalog sort now has a subsort in order to better organize the objects that are available. If you double click on the buy mode icon, you will notice that at home you have both a room and a functional sort. In downtown buy mode you have a Place and a functional sort. If you choose to place skill objects downtown, your Sim will not gain skill.

Skills are only gained in your Sim's house. If you have previously downloaded objects from www. New Web Features There is now a new exchange available to you on www. The Downtown Exchange is where you can post your new downtown lots that you have worked so hard on. You also have the opportunity to download lots that other Sim fans have created. The Sims Hot Date allows you to have a different downtown area with each one of these neighborhoods. You can select new neighborhoods by using the arrow buttons in the upper left portion of the neighborhood screen.

There are five neighborhoods to start with, the first of which is reserved for the existing neighborhood players have created. Neighborhoods 2,3,4 and 5 are not created by House Party. This is to allow for Livin' Large to install its neighborhoods in these spaces.

Neighborhoods 6, 7, and 8 have been created for your House Party houses. It is possible for users to have even more neighborhoods in The Sims House Party. Here's how: - Make a copy the TemplateUserData folder. Place it in the same directory as the other UserData folders.

We do not recommend you use neighborhoods until after you have installed Livin' Large. See the "House Party and Livin' Large" section for more details. Either way, the game should pick up the fact that you added a new neighborhood. Here's an example: - You're running the game, and you decide you want to add a new neighborhood to hold some imported houses you just found on www.

Rename this folder to UserData As you scroll through the different neighborhoods, "23" will show up. This refers to your new UserData23 directory. First, you might not be able to control the reactions of each Sim in a conversation.

Just switching from one household to the next to get 2 Sims to like each other, propose and move in. Now some Sims are NPCs. That is, you don't get to control them. You can meet NPCs at the new downtown area. The "Friendship Meter" used in previous versions is now replaced by a "short term Friendship Meter. Positive reactions to your Sim increase the meter, when it hits a certain number about 60 you make a new Family Friend.

It won't tell you how the other person feels about you, and THAT is critical in determing whether they become a Family Friend. The new "long term Friendship Meter" doesn't decrease nearly as often as the short term which decreases in value daily. It, as its name implies, offers you a view on the long term relationship between your Sims.

I imagine this is what The Sims Online will be like. This is like a date, I suppose. While on your date, any time you do a "group" activity, your date will follow you. That is, if you go to the restaurant and order food, your date will automatically follow. Play pool, dance, etc. For example, if you want to Hug another Sim, but don't want that Sim to get the "wrong idea" you could do a quick "Friendly Hug.

It's all up to you, now. Tip: Remember to do actions that the other Sim enjoys the most. This is as before based on that Sim's personality. For example, "Active" Sims enjoy doing active things, such as Lively Dancing.

If a Sim consistently rebuffs your attempts at TYPES of actions, then you know something about their personality, and what types of actions to use on them. Interests are literally what interests your Sim. If you are Downtown, you can actually ask the Sims there what their interests are.

The major reason to ask a Sim what she is into, is if you can't just check it yourself, for she is a Townie. And just as you might suspect, the Sim that loves sports does not get along so well with the Sim that hates sports. If you want to customize your Sims interests, go buy a Magazine from downtown and read it. Each magazine contains 3 interests. Studying an interest in the magazine will improve one Interest and drop another. Typically this space is used to show you what gifts you are carrying.

Gifts are bought downtown, or in the case of Lawn Gnomes, built by your Sim These gifts are then given to other Sims to improve their friendship. Each lot typically has a bunch of objects and things to do in it. Typically every Need is accounted for in these Lots except Energy, i. So, as long as your Sim has lots of Energy, you can head off to Downtown. The best lot of the bunch is probably the old converted Farm, which is now a pricey restaurant and nightclub. It offers the best entertainment value, dancing, which is free.

Note: To go downtown, use your phone and call a cab. Wouldn't want to lose track of your Date Dogs and Cats are adoptable, and become family members! New Neighborhood The Sims can now see their much larger Old Town, thanks to the expanded view and zoning opportunities of the new neighborhood in The Sims Unleashed! The original neighborhoods from the Sims are still there, and all your families are accessible - you can find them in the upper right section of the new neighborhood screen.

You now have 41 lots to play with in each neighborhood! In this new neighborhood, you can choose whether you'd like any lot to be a community lot for all your Sim families to share, or a residential lot for your Sims to live on.

You can do this by clicking on the "Evict or Rezone" button at the top of the neighborhood screen. Community lots offer a different set of objects and opportunities from the residential lots you're used to in The Sims. You can use our community lots to have all your Sims socialize, adopt pets, pick up gardening supplies or the fruits of other Sims' labor at a farmer's market, shop, play, eat, or even enter your dog or cat in a pet judging contest!

You can also build your own community lots to delight or destroy the moods of your Sims. The possibilities are endless! Should your Sims want to visit any of the community lots in your neighborhood, have them call a cab, so the Old Town Shuttle can pick them up and take them wherever you'd like them to go. New Lot Filters There are now new lot filters for your neighborhoods. This makes it easy to choose which lot you want to go to at any given time. New Phone Book Gotten too popular for your own good?

The Sims Unleashed has come to your rescue with a brand new phone book system. New Gardening Finally, your Sims can now grow their own food!

A new garden plot object lets Sims grow a variety of vegetables at home, using seeds purchased at a local market in Old Town. For the first time ever, hard-working Sim families can now live off their own land, or make a living by selling their homegrown vegetables at the market!

New Non-Player Characters The Sims Unleashed has a wealth of characters to liven up the lives of all your Sims — including your pets! Food and Entertainment: Be it saxophone or hand organ, coffee or pastries — community lots are the perfect place for a stroll in the park with family and pets in tow. You can also call upon these friendly folks to get rid of skunks or raccoons who may visit your Sims from time to time. Head Gardener: This helpful gent is a great source of advice for a Sim who has an avid or passing interest in their garden.

Pet Judges: See the Head Pet Judge to enter your pet in the contest, have your pet judged at a pet pedestal, and win fabulous prizes to take home with you! Sims can ask him questions about pets and training, and also hire him to train their pets for them. Four-Legged Visitors: Rabbits, raccoons, mice, gophers, and even skunks may pay a visit to Sims unexpectedly. New Careers 5 new career tracks are coming to the classifieds in your Sims' neighborhood! Your Sims can now choose to earn their living in Fashion, Culinary, Circus, Education, or Animal Care, with new carpools and 10 levels in each career track.

Editor's Note: These are covered more fully in the Jobs section. Creating a Family Ah, your first family besides the Newbies.