Playing TS2 for the first time

I suggest you take a stroll around Strangetown :sunglasses: its lovely this time of year.... or any other time of year for that matter

Welcome to the best sims game made so far! ? (and I’ve played all of them).

I mean… the best thing is really to just try yourself and discover things for yourself. Some helpful things to know though:
* Do not ever delete tombstones, delete sims from the bin or move an inhabited house from one world to another. All of these actions will corrupt your game.
* There are mods for literally everything in this game.
* It is quite different than sims 3 and 4 if you’ve played those. Sims 2 is extremely customizable (so is sims 3 to an extent also in all fairness, but in different ways), sims 2 is very supportive of rotational play if you’re into that. I’ve always played rotationally and that’s one of the reasons I never felt like sims 3 or 4 suited me.
* If you are used to sims 3 or 4 and miss story progression there is a really great mod for that for sims 2. I’ve never used it because I don’t want story progression, but I’ve read that many people missed it in sims 2 and that the mod has gotten great reviews.
* If you get into the game a bit and feel like downloading some cc I _strongly_ recommend downloading the world Elsewhere by Plasticbox. It’s wonderful and doesn’t contain a lot of cc and is so much fun to play with.
* Some useful cheats:
- Motherlode: adds 50 000 simoleons to your household
- Kaching: adds 1000
- Aging on/off: stops the sims on the lot from aging and turns it on again
- Moveobjects on/off: ability to place object where you otherwise can’t
- Boolprop allow45degreeangleofrotation true/false: allows diagonal placement of objects

Those are some basics, but you should really just try for yourself! Have fun :-)

My favourite town is Pleasantview. The best things about the Sims 2 is the fact the Sims sit and chat together. You can have family meals. If you sit a Sim down, they stay there until you you tell them or one of their needs bottom out. So useful for sorting the house out.
Sims 3 and 4 often feel like herding cats!

Although going anywhere means a loading screen I never minded this.

There’s some great mods and cc out. I got a laptop although it functions as a desktop computer in game. Some clothes and a manuscript mod, they can get creativity points from it as well as the easel and piano.

Have fun! ?.

"EveryDaySim;c-18167349" wrote:
This is a much earlier version of the game, and some things were not yet as we know them today. Be careful about moving in or marrying certain "special NPCs", it can corrupt your game. Some are ok (like maids), but others are not. Always check if it's safe before you do it, because you may corrupt your save.

Rule of thumb here: If they don't show up in your relationship panel after interacting with them, it's probably not a safe idea to move in or marry them.

Those special NPC's are shared between neighborhoods and their file is located in the installation directory. Meaning you'll have to reinstall the game and delete any neighborhood that you had played after they had been corrupted.

While this game does have a number of known ways to corrupt your game, don't be too overly cautious in your play. Corruption doesn't go from corrupted to horribly broken glitchy mess in a single Sim day. It takes time. It could be the next day or it could be 10 years. You could have a bad glitch due to corruption, go back to a back up and go several generations past that point before having anymore issues. Chances are you'll be bored of a neighborhood before corruption takes too much of a hold on your neighborhood. Let's just say on the official Sims 2 forum, you could get into arguments over whether corruption was an actual thing because of how random the speed of corruption would occur is.

Sims 2 is an awesome game and the Sims actually have a personality, depending on their horoscope. One of my favorite parts about Sims 2 is it is great for a rotational player. Time stops when you leave your lot and non-active sims don't advance if not playing them. That actually helps me, as I like playing all of the sims in my town, having them get to know and socialize with each other. With seasons I always change the season at the end of my rotation, just before returning to my first household. You are able to go into seasons and change them so you have all of the four the same, which keeps the season for the entire time you are playing. If you enjoy playing college with several sims, you just need to put them all in a house together and then have them all apply to college, placing them together into a dorm. It is a challenge but so much fun! Welcome to Sims 2 and enjoy!

"Seera1024;c-18167407" wrote:

"EveryDaySim;c-18167349" wrote:
This is a much earlier version of the game, and some things were not yet as we know them today. Be careful about moving in or marrying certain "special NPCs", it can corrupt your game. Some are ok (like maids), but others are not. Always check if it's safe before you do it, because you may corrupt your save.

Rule of thumb here: If they don't show up in your relationship panel after interacting with them, it's probably not a safe idea to move in or marry them.

Those special NPC's are shared between neighborhoods and their file is located in the installation directory. Meaning you'll have to reinstall the game and delete any neighborhood that you had played after they had been corrupted.

While this game does have a number of known ways to corrupt your game, don't be too overly cautious in your play. Corruption doesn't go from corrupted to horribly broken glitchy mess in a single Sim day. It takes time. It could be the next day or it could be 10 years. You could have a bad glitch due to corruption, go back to a back up and go several generations past that point before having anymore issues. Chances are you'll be bored of a neighborhood before corruption takes too much of a hold on your neighborhood. Let's just say on the official Sims 2 forum, you could get into arguments over whether corruption was an actual thing because of how random the speed of corruption would occur is.

I agree with you and I would also like to add that those sims that you could corrupt your game by marrying you can’t actually marry without cheats. So you won’t accidentally suddenly find yourself doing that, you would have to very deliberately make an effort to marry a sim that the game won’t let you marry or add to your household through normal gameplay.

While it is absolutely fair criticism to the sims 2 that there even is the ability to do things in normal gameplay that will corrupt the game (like the things I mentioned in my previous comment: deleting tombstones and sims and such things), I don’t think the ability to corrupt it through cheats and mods and stuff is something one can criticize the game for. Any of the sims games can be corrupted through cheats and mods, those things are always at your own risk because you are doing things the game wasn’t meant to do.

All of this is just added to your comment: I agree with your original premise that the game isn’t even that easy to corrupt severely. The corruption thing with sims 2 is very exaggerated. Sims 4 is by far more buggy, and sims 3 basically required a super computer to run.

One thing to remember that The Sims 2 has a different save system (same one The Sims 1 has). Each lot is a different save (while in The Sims 3 & 4, each world was a different save). This also means that when you switch households for a few days and come back, nothing has been changed when you left it: the time is same, the aging and pregnancy progress in same, skills stay same... Only things that can change is life state, relationships, and death if they're on the same lot your sim is (no worries, deaths really shouldn't occur randomly).
This also means that you can't save on community lots unless you own them. And when your sim goes out, the home lot will be saved in its current state. And if you save while on owned community lot or in a hotel, other sims cannot visit it when you are playing with another household.
And lastly, I'd recommend to never save and quit. You may save with a button click or save and exit to the neighborhood and then quit, but I'd won't save and exit. I lost a lot that way (the game crashed while loading it)...



Of course like someone said, there is that story progression mod that changes that all.

One thing you'll need to know if you ever have a pregnant sim. There is a lot of work in keeping their needs good. When I first started playing Sims 2 I can't even tell you the number that died on me, but it was a lot. Just keep multiple servings of food in the fridge, really helps.

Don't eat a snack, eat an instant meal. Serve an instant meal.
Better yet, if they have the money, buy the buffet table in the Misc/Party tab.

You can even use the buffet table and put down plates of the food for the head master to eat. Just grab a serving, let them place it on the table, then cancel the action. Repeat until the table is full of meals so the head master can choose a serving.

Don't forget the Aspiration rewards. If they're in gold or platinum, use the energizer. You really should try all the rewards. The SimVac can be funny. :wink:

This is a much earlier version of the game, and some things were not yet as we know them today. Be careful about moving in or marrying certain "special NPCs", it can corrupt your game. Some are ok (like maids), but others are not. Always check if it's safe before you do it, because you may corrupt your save.