Re: [BY DESIGN] [V] NPC Vampires don't autonomously come in anymore

This is really weird. The vampire break-ins were gone completely from my game and then started again after I installed Seasons and Island Liiving. It seems liks having or not having certain pack really effects a lot in the game now. I'll also mention, in case it matters, that my first break-in was a vampire townie that I created. Second break-in was Caleb. This townie existed in my games before the additional DLC were added and I had no break-ins. They are tuned down, though. It hasn't happend much, which seems more reasonable.

It's more than frustrating and also sad that the vampire pack is so broken now. The random vampire attacks while wandering around outside at night was broken a long time ago. The power to fight and protect other sims is pretty useless now. When I first got the pack (years ago), Caleb would knock on my sim's door at night and start talking to her about being attacked and chased by other vampires (speech bubbles) and would then stress-eat any excellent quality food in my sim's fridge. It also used to be that if your sim answered the door at night to a vampire, with the exception of Caleb (makes sense), you didn't know if, after a short conversation your sim would get bitten. If your sim's a vampire and spouse is not, a visiting vampire friend (Lilith in particular) would somtimes try and attack the spouse when invited over (my sim got into it with Lilith more than once.)  I really miss all that. It seemed that content disappeared when the vampire breaking into public lots bug started (and also the bugged guaranteed attacks on your sim when sleeping at other sim's' homes, that was ridiculous), I mean it seems like attempts to fix that broke a lot of content.

Hi u/sushicrow - thanks for weighing in! Your post had me wondering if the vampires pack itself was broken, or if it's a pack integration issue that's more to blame. So I removed my mods folder, disabled all packs but Vampires, and started a new save file. Lo and behold, Vlad called my Sim on day 2 and on day 3 she'd gotten her plasma drained in a vampire break-in. In my other saves this event never triggered, even when starting a new save file.

I'm going to keep testing to see if the other stuff you mentioned still happens with just the base game and the Vampires pack - I've never seen it before, but that may be because I purchased Strangerville before Vampires, and also got Vampires as part of an Origin bundling deal. So something in there might have broken it.

After that I'll experiment with adding in more packs and see which combos break things. I have a save point that's right before the Vlad break-in that I can reference. I'll update this post with the results.

Results with Vampires pack only:

• It looks like the vampire loitering (coming up to your door, knocking, and then not doing anything) is a problem with the Vampires pack and/or the base game. I had two elder vampire ladies come to my Sim's house in Forgotten Hollow, knock on the door, and then had a nice conversation with my Sim for about two in-game hours. One of them was evil and the other actually had an uncomfortable buff (likely from low thirst) and neither tried to drain my Sim's plasma.
• I've spent a few days in-game and have wandered around Forgotten Hollow after dark, both loitering near vampires and talking to them. No attacks.
• When Caleb appears after dark (8:30PM so far), I do not get any of the pop-up messages @sushicrow mentioned appearing back when the pack first launched. Was this functionality stripped out? Or is there a specific thing I need to do to trigger it?
• No further break-ins as of the close of week two.
• Halfway through week three the old ladies came back, and this time I invited them in to see if anything would happen. Both times my Sim spoke to them for a few in-game hours, and absolutely nothing. They're just like any other NPC that comes randomly to your house.
• Still no break in events as of the close of week three, outside of the initial first one. If I was playing on short lifespan, my Sim would be mostly through her life already. I'll try for another in-game week.
• As of Wednesday of week four, I have had no more break-ins at all, and this is with my Sim interacting with vampire-related things as much as possible.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Vampires pack itself is either broken at this point, or the conditions needed to trigger a vampire break-in are so specific that it's nearly impossible to trigger without either knowing what they are and doing them specifically or having them accidentally match your playstyle. This is harder than getting a Sim abducted by aliens. What I have done: go to bed at around 9PM daily, be friends with a vampire (Caleb), socialize with non-friend Vampires (Lilith and Vlad, the two older ladies), use vampire-related social interactions, gain vampire skill, and harvest and plant vampire pack plants. These don't appear to trigger break-ins.

@onemorekayaker  I'm interested in your findings, it would be nice if the other stuff I mentioned would return, too (not holding my breath.) I don't remember exactly what packs I had before things went haywire, but I know I had City Living and Get to Work installed. How do you disable packs? Rename them?

@sushicrow, you have to open the Origin app, navigate to "my library", right click on the Sims 4 game, and then go to "game properties" and "advanced launch options." From there you need to type in a command line argument that specifies which packs you want to disable. The coding isn't the most intuitive, so I went to James Turner's (a YouTuber) website where he has a tool that lets you select which packs you want to disable and will generate the coding for you.

The exact line I typed in was: -disablepacks:EP01,EP02,EP03,EP04,EP05,EP06,EP07,EP08,EP09,EP10,GP01,GP02,GP03,GP05,GP06,GP07,GP08,SP01,SP02,SP03,SP04,SP05,SP06,SP07,SP08,SP09,SP10,SP11,SP12,SP13,SP14,SP15,SP16,SP17,SP18

This disabled everything but Vampires, and Batuu (which I don't have).