Long Loading Time

If you have any CC I'd merge your package files, and convert any sims3pack files you can into package and merge them too (this made the most significant difference in my wait times, especially limiting my sims 3 pack installs to only lots I can't live without or store content). One note on the packs though, sets containing counters in sims3pack form don't convert well, so anything containing a CC counter set needs to be left in sims3pack form.

The thousands of excess items are probably not that great either, since it's often recommended that your inventories be kept light as possible. My advice on the alchemy ingredients for now would be to look up what the highest level ones you can make between your current rank and max level and only keep the ingredients you'll need to finish up.

For the hanging it might be a good idea to make sure your graphics card can handle the game: I plan to upgrade mine later in the year because I realized for the amount of stuff I'm cramming in my game my card is actually too weak for it.
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:TS3_System_Requirements

I also found that a lot of my problems were eliminated once I started using a batch file to clean up my sims 3 folder every time before I played. If you want I can upload it for you, though someone here posted a guide on how to make your own.

The first thing I would want to know is how long it takes to start up a game in the same world that is new or has not progressed so that there is a basis for comparison. If it takes 11 minutes to load up a newer game, then we know the issue is not with this save. If it takes 2 minutes, then we know that it is and it's not your package files or other forms of content, etc. as those would be common to any game save on this game folder (although the time for comparison is more likely to be someplace in between those extremes).

Edit: I misread the OP and got the loading time backwards, reading it as 21 minutes. A loading time of 12 minutes for a progressed world with that much stuff on the lot is not unreasonable unless you are running the game on an SSD which should be cutting that down to a fraction of the time.

I can't prove this exactly, but it's always been my sense that hundreds of items in storage containers like chests do not have the same impact as hundreds of items hanging out loose in inventories or on the lot so that may be worth pursuing if they aren't already stowed away like that. The 200 photos on the walls of the actively played residential lot are possibly having a huge impact though.

I've had long loading times occasionally and in the past when I've tried emptying out inventories it never seemed to make a difference. I wouldn't worry too much about items in inventories with respect to loading times. I've found that reducing the number of household members and reducing the numbers of objects on the lot (not in inventory) can help. In long played games though, sometimes the only thing that really helps is relocating the household to a new world, which I tend to do via Traveler.

I don't clear caches every game session. I notice it takes longer to fully load lots if I do, particularly with textures. I find it better to leave them be (particularly simCompositorCache and compositorCache) unless I'm trying to solve some other issue or adding/removing CC.

I've had one game which would quickly grow to 20+ min load times. The only thing that worked to reduce that was to use MC to reset the whole town (including the active lot) once a sim-week. I have no idea why an MC reset was so helpful and have only had that help in one particular game. The loading time after resetting went back to a more reasonable 7-10 min, IIRC.

Good luck.

@Linamints My graphics card is major overkill for Sims 3, as I got it for a new adventure game that required much higher specs. So happily, it will never limit my Sims 3 games. With regards to alchemy, the only thing she has left to do is to throw something like 40 or so elixirs at other sims. So I will soon be having her get rid of all her collectibles and sell all of the elixirs she's made, except for any that her own household might use in the future. She's been throwing invigorating elixirs at her husband after he's called in to work in the night in his high level special agent branch law enforcement job, and job boosters to help him make level 10 more quickly. So she's had a good head start on that final skill challenge.

Do you know where I can find the file and/or instructions you're referring to, for cleaning up the save file? Since I'm already keeping my nhd file small, I'm not sure it would help, but I'd like to check it out just the same.

@igazor and @TreyNutz, the populated starter save I made for this custom town takes 3 1/2 minutes to load. I tried making a test copy of the latest save of my game, then using MC to move all the photos into the household inventory. That save only took 8 minutes to load, so it shaved 4 minutes from the loading time.

This household has a lot of stuff in their house and on their lot. My main sim has a lot of goals, so she has a lot of skill equipment she's currently using and objects waiting to be upgraded, most of which will be sold once she's finished with them. She also has all of the furniture and décor objects she collected from rubble piles in the dystopian future sitting in the basement room under the garage, waiting for when they return to the future and buy a bigger house. I don't like to keep too much in the household inventory, because whenever my sims consign anything, everything there shows up in the consignment panel, making it difficult to find the items they're supposed to consign. But I think she's pretty much done with consigning things, so I could put several items in the household inventory now.

I have considered moving my household and the residents of the town to a new copy of the same town, through the library, using NRaas Porter. It would clear the town's history and remove even the hidden memory of any sims they'll never see again, as I don't plan on having them travel any more, except to the future, and to China for martial arts tournament competition, so I thought it might help speed up loading time. But I'm actually planning on moving them and the town's residents to another unpopulated custom world once she's finished with all of the large skill equipment she's currently using, and can get rid of all the stored collectibles and other items they won't be needing anymore, including all but a few of her photos, which I want to keep for décor in their new home. It will take a while yet to get to that point.

So do you guys think that moving them now, to a new copy of the same world, would make very much of a difference, even though they will still have almost everything they do now? Or, since there aren't any other problems with this save, should I just do whatever else I can to speed up loading times and wait for the move to the other world?

Are there other things I could do to help speed up loading time.

PS @TreyNutz I do a once a week reset everything too, excluding my active lot, mainly to help prevent corruption, which used to make it impossible to play longer than about 12 to 14 weeks in one town. Thanks to NRaas mods, that is no longer a problem. Other than the loading times and the occasional long freeze, this game has been quite trouble-free, except for the usual minor issues.

"IreneSwift;c-16931618" wrote:
This household has a lot of stuff in their house and on their lot. My main sim has a lot of goals, so she has a lot of skill equipment she's currently using and objects waiting to be upgraded, most of which will be sold once she's finished with them. She also has all of the furniture and décor objects she collected from rubble piles in the dystopian future sitting in the basement room under the garage, waiting for when they return to the future and buy a bigger house.

I might try buying an empty residential lot, put in a basement or other simple structure, and move all the unused objects there - if you have a lot of them. I do this when I play Isla Paradiso and my sims live in a houseboat where there isn't much room. I've never tried offloading objects onto an additional own home solely in order to improve loading times, but it seems like it might help. My thinking is that maybe if a ton of extra objects aren't on the lot the game initially loads, then loading time might be shorter.

The batch file referred to is an automatic way to clear cache files before starting the game (or after quitting). It does the same thing that clearing them manually does, only it's more automatic. Some of these batch files also hit the two small files in DCCache and the downloadedsims.index, the FeaturedItems folder if you don't already have that deactivated, the Thumbnails and the WorldCaches. Personally I wouldn't bother with the Thumbnails and the WorldCaches unless there is a specific problem to be solved as routinely deleting those will make the game run harder/slower while they are being rebuilt.

I see that you are excluding the actively being played lot from the MC Reset Everythings. Have you ever MC reset it? That would be worth a try also. And are you running on an SSD or an HDD? If the latter, there's only so far you will be able to go with load/save time saving tricks before they won't really be effective any further.

Yes, you would be getting some benefits of the SSD by having the program installed there but not as much as if you had your Documents folder on one. But many players have to arrange things the way you have because they don't have a large enough SSD to carry the operating system, the game, and its user game folder. Hopefully in another few years larger SSDs will come down in price and be more standard.

I'm sure you are going to say that your experiences differ, but the only "bad" thing that happens to my active sims when they get MC reset along with their residential lot is that their Dream Managers also get reset so that they start getting beginning of the game types of wishes drawn again until things settle down. But for me it never disturbs their currently promised wishes, their behavior, or their appearance unless something was already wrong with the sims and their wardrobe/CAS assignments. I hate doing this too as it's disruptive to gameplay unless I am about to switch active households in a rotation anyway and put it off as long as I can, but still do so every few sim weeks in the middle of the sim night when it seems feasible.

@igazor Their motives also get reset to whatever the game considers correct for the time of day, which never matches the schedule I have them trained to. Then they get hungry and sleepy too early. I don't like that, and I don't like their wishes changing either. But it worked fine to move them to their other house when none of them were doing anything important, then move them back once their lot was reset. Their dryer, which was in the middle of a cycle when I reset the house, got stuck on the cycle and had to be replaced. But that might have been because I moved them, rather than because of the reset, and it's no big deal. It isn't the first time I've had to replace it - more like the third time. I'm still playing, so I don't know whether it will affect loading time yet. When I finish the current sim day, I'll save and close the game.

@ScottDemon I'll ask my son about that. He's the one who built and maintains my computer for me. But I have to stick with what I have for now anyway, as I don't have the money for new hardware. By the time I do, maybe SSD's will be more affordable than they are now.

"IreneSwift;c-16931888" wrote:
...Their motives also get reset to whatever the game considers correct for the time of day, which never matches the schedule I have them trained to. Then they get hungry and sleepy too early.

I hate that too. For me, resetting right before I send the household to bed works out to be a pretty good time for most of my sims. Their motives are set to be fairly high except energy (deep yellow) and fun (at 50%). Sometimes I may tweak motives with TCE but usually I just use TCE to teleport them close to their beds and send them immediately to sleep.

@igazor I couldn't believe it the first time, so I closed my game and tried again with the same results - 5 1/2 minutes! And that was with all the photos still on the walls. It was definitely worth the slight inconvenience of moving them next door and back!