Top Tips For TS2 Not your run-of-the-mill cheats and how-to's .... Let's have your brill ideas for smoothing off the rough edges that everyone (anyone) can do. Here's mine to kick off. Avoid ruining your enjoyment of your favorite songs by using them as tracks in build/buy mode and thereby getting utterly sick of the sound of them. Download free MP3's from free download sites such as: http://music.download.com/ where everyone can find a genre to suit their taste and drag them wholesale into the appropriate folder ... (a) you'll get plenty of nice surprises and (b) why not?
Make sure that you have a good list of baby names...I just named a baby Sim a named I picked out for a boy...it suits the daddy Sim though
Don't know if this is what you're looking for, but here are some non-EP tips, off the top of my head: Make sure your sim houses have smoke and burglar alarms. Buy them the comfy beds (comfort level 3 and up), even though they're more expensive ... less time sleeping means a less boring game. Put flamingoes or gnomes in the front yard for a quick "fun" boost ... kicking them raises it faster than anything else. Don't double-click on service people when "accepting delivery" or "dismissing." It confuses the game. It may seem like they're never going to get their act together, but they eventually do. Make sure your sims always wash their hands after using the toilet or taking out the trash. I also have them wash them after they clean the toilet. This will help prevent flu. If your sim is broke, they don't need a stove. A microwave works OK, or nothing. Just a fridge is fine. Make sure you have a sink and a bathtub if the sims have babies or toddlers. It's the only way to bathe them.
I started a thread like this a long time ago, called "post tips for the non-savvy player" or something like that. Wasn't a big success. I hope this one is! *horrified* I'd never deliberately kick a gnome! Never, ever, EVER, in my whole life! *covers Archibald's ears* In case you don't know (I don't remember if I posted about it here or not), Archibald is my little gnome friend. He recently came indoors for the winter and is now accompanying me while I wile away the hours at the computer. The idea of kicking flamingoes are a little less horrifying, but still inhumane. I love flamingoes! Besides, it's less of a hassle to have flamingoes instead of gnomes because the townies will be stealing them all the time and your sim won't get any sleep while he/she goes out on the "Gnome Retrieval" quest. I didn't know you could get the flu in TS2 from now washing your hands. It's times like these that I really wish Maxis hadn't taken away the automatic-hand-washing thing. Don't waste your money on a TV. Buy a flamingo like SBW said, and when you save up enough, buy a computer. They're a godsend for the multi-tasker! Don't waste your money on a dining table and chairs, either. I'm not sure if sims can eat while standing up, but any other chair/sofa is fine. Appearances aren't important while entertaining guests in this game. When playing with a female family sim (just gonna copy and paste, pretty much, from the other thread) make sure she's got at least 5 cooking skills before you get her pregnant, as pregnancy can be a torture without the ability to cook meals that will fill up her hunger bar right away. Also wait until she's got at least enough money for a good bed that will satisfy her Energy need the quickest, and then you can fill up her fun bar, which takes the longest I think. There, all the tips I still find valid that I posted.
OK, this isn't exactly gameplay, more of a suggestion for sharing gameplay I've only recently discovered that it's easer to compose a post in WordPad on the desktop, edit and all that, before going online to Worldsims when I'm adding to a story/soap opera thread. Generally, this is because I spend a lot of time stroking my chin, scratching my ear, thinking out loud, before I'm happy with what I have to add to the story, reading and rereading for grammer, etc., and by then the forum has timed me out so that I have to log in again. Big nuisance. (I'm guessing that Person123 and SBW, at least, have already figured this one out.) Also, as I'm always uploading pictures from storytelling folders that have hundreds , I now review them before going online, find the ones I want, then copy them to a desktop folder where they will be easy to find when I want to upload them to the forum. Planning ahead!
Another one that I leaped right into as soon as I loaded the Nightlife Expansion Pack --- trees The following suggestion only matters if you have Nightlife and can see your surroundings beyond the lot you happen to be visiting. When in the neighborhood screen you can jazz up the neighborhood with trees and bridges and birds and stuff. I have found that trees add a lot to the atmosphere of gameplay. The best trees in the neighborhood screen are the forest clumps of trees or the hedges (I don't much care for the look of the one-at-a-time trees.) I put these tree clumps or hedgerows as close as the game will allow me to put them all around my sim family lots. Then, when I enter the lot there's always a view of trees and woods through the windows and across the road. It's a friendlier street scene when you're visiting the lot. The fire hydrants, telephone poles, street lamps and road signs also contribute, if placed carefully. Note, however, that too much of this decoration all over the neighborhood slows down the loading of the game. I've done away with the birds, balloons, clouds and other moving stuff, although pretty, because it seemed to give my computer a little trouble at startup.
Even adding too many trees can really slow down a neighborhood screen. However, you can "cheat" to get around the neighborhood screen if it doesn't want to move when you're looking for the house you want to play. Do this by going into the neighborhood decoration option. You can move the angle or direction so that you can see the house you want, then go back into the lot or family option (where the decorations can do the most slowing.)
When a sim is pregnant, leave gelatin out for quick hunger fixes. It doesn't fill her up but will make her full enough that she can cook for herself without gesturing wildly every few seconds. In general, make sure you keep a pregnant sim as happy as possible, and don't have her work out. She'll get tired, and you'll pay for it! If you're new to the game and are having a hard time getting your sim promoted, check to make sure they have enough friends. The game is kind of inconsistent: sometimes it matches actual friends, sometimes it doesn't. A good way to "cheat" the friends thing is to have more than one sim living in a house. Their friends will count as a pool of friends ... so if you have a sim with 20 friends and another with 3, there will be 23 household friends (provided that they aren't some of the same people ...) The only toy you need to buy your toddlers is the charisma toy. This is because they can get logic and creativity pretty easy as children but generally have to wait until they're teens to get more charisma. And charisma-getting gets boring when they can no longer use the cute little rabbit. They have to stand in front of a mirror for hours, unless someone in the house has the podium or the golf thing ... Which leads me to something I just discovered, and is really cool: children on up can learn to use career rewards from the sim who earned it (or from someone that sim taught), and it works really slick. I had a kid get 5 mechanical points in one afternoon from the surgery machine. She just wanted to keep learning, and her brother, who had learned to use it from their father, was very nice about it ... it goes much faster than other methods and is fun. When a kid is learning, the other sim does it and the kid watches. Teens on up use it themselves with the other person helping. Oh, another thing I just figured out, cuz I'm slow: You can decorate an entire room or house exterior's walls by holding down shift before you click your mouse. Works for floors too. (I posted this somewhere else, but since this is a tips and tricks thread ... )
