Best expansions?

Seasons, Supernatural, and Ambitions are the packs I use the most often.

I like what came with WAs the best. Plus all the updates. :lol:

"GasolineCrea;d-937953" wrote:
I'm eyeing off Seasons and Pets.

If you have a lower end computer or laptop, keep in mind that those 2 EPs are considered the most demanding on computer resources.

I love Supernatural as well. All the EPs have at least one occult or non-human life state:

WA - mummies
Late Night - vampires (as well as Supernatural)
Ambitions - simbots
Generations - imaginary friends
Pets - unicorns
Seasons - aliens
Into the Future - plumbots
Island Paradise - mermaids
University Life - plantsims
Showtime - genies

I really like University Life and Ambitions. Ambitions adds some interesting skills, self-employed options, and some active professions. University life adds a number of activities, degrees, 2 extra trait slots, longer life (since sims don't age while attending university).

I also like the other travel related EPs: World Adventures and Into the Future. Island Paradise is a lot of fun, but the world is quite laggy for most people; you'll either have to fix it up yourself or use caine's fixed save in the TS3 Expansions forum. If you play families with kids a lot you might enjoy Generations which adds a lot for the younger age groups (teens and younger).

I'm starting to think that I may need a "what do I need to know going into this" thread, because boy, there does seem to be mentioned issues. Routing sounds interesting...

"GasolineCrea;c-16412402" wrote:
I'm starting to think that I may need a "what do I need to know going into this" thread, because boy, there does seem to be mentioned issues. Routing sounds interesting...

Yes, there are a number of issues with TS3 that EA never resolved. Bugs, glitches, routing issues, the occasional fit that this temperamental game throws... but the nice thing is that people here generally know how to work around or through the problems when they arise. For example, as TreyNutz said, ciane completely fixed EA's version of Isla Paradiso, cleaning up the issues that make the unmodified world almost unplayable. The thread with ciane's download link is stickied here in the expansions section. Many people here use mods, especially those from nraas, that address all kinds of bugs that can corrupt individual sims or entire saves. Most of the mods are simple to use, and if you have an issue with one, there's always someone here who knows how to help.

If and when you do start playing TS3, you can always ask for help here. The silver lining of EA not cleaning up this beloved bugfest is that no matter what problem you run into, someone will have experienced it before and can offer advice.

I would choose Seasons over Pets.

But your choice depends on your own preferences. Supernatural is my favorite -- so I think you are making the right decision since you like occult states.

I really like World Adventures, and Ambitions is also a lot of fun for me.

Seasons, Generations- adds more for your kids (of any age) to do- and World Adventures, where you can visit China, Egypt, and France!

Personally I like University Life, I think if you come from the sims 4 - this EP will complete a lot of missing things in the sims 3. (Like smartphones, texting, also the clothing and hairstyles are from my favourites, and also as far as the activities for the sims - like billiard table, table tennis/ping pong, bowling -- if i'm not mistaken these stuff worth a hole EPs in the sims 4....

When I first started playing I got the special edition base game plus pets. I love having pets. Then I got seasons which I can't imagine not having now. It's a hard choice but I would go with pets first.

I've got all of the collection installed and my game is very heavily Modded so I can enjoy playing it without losing saves like I used to before getting Mods into the game.I've been playing it since about 2012 and still love it though I had trouble with live mod play until I got Mods to fix the issues that kept ruining my saves if not corrupting them.
It's great if you use a Mod to disable the social workers so they don't take children away as that's known to cause save corruption and is how I lost three saves.I've not lost any saves other than ones where the storyline was finished after Modding my game out.I do also play TS2 style rotationally in empty custom worlds which prolongs my saves as I won't have routing issues and it won't throw EC12's if the world isn't rapidly overloaded with too many sims too quickly.