Want to Start My Sims 3 Fresh

Step One: Pull your TS3 user game folder out of Documents (or rename it). The game will spawn a new, no-content, user game folder on its next launch.

Step Two: There is no Step Two. ;)

Okay, obviously there is more to it than that as the above will allow for a fresh start but it takes some work to move the content from your prior user game folder that you do want to save. So you will want to copy some of this stuff from the pulled out folder into the new clean one after you verify that things are working as they should (start up a test game, for example). So let's go through the important sub-folders one by one and explain why you might want to consider copying their contents over.

ContentPatch: These are the "Store Patches." If you are on 1.67 or lower, for some reason they aren't currently being offered up anymore (we're still trying to figure out why). If on 1.69, these presumably don't matter.

Custom Music: Only relevant if you have actually added any of your own.

DCBackup: You must have the small ccmerged.package file from here or none of your EA Store premium content items will work without being reinstalled by the Launcher. The rest of it is expendable unless you like to export sims and lots from your game for others to use and expect CC to stick to the exports.

DCCache: The dbc bundles are your sims3pack installed custom content. The ebc bundles are your sims3pack EA Store content. The tmp files, if you had any, are garbage. Depends on whether you want to just move your installed stuff over or use the Launcher to install it all again from scratch. It's not usually practical to figure out which items are in which bundle (depending on how many you have), once installed it's sort of all fused together.

Downloads: Nothing needs to be in here except for the small files related to badges that the game will put into it all by itself. This is where sims3pack content waiting to be read and installed by the Launcher lives, that which is already installed is in DCCache as per the above.

InstalledWorlds: This is where the underlying .world files live for already installed TS3 Store and custom worlds. The base game and EP world files are elsewhere.

Library: These are your binned households and community lots. Unfortunately they tend to be cryptically named, unless you were re-naming them yourself as you went along prior.

Mods: This is where your .package based CC and mods live. If you were using the Mods Framework prior with the two required sub-folders and the Resource.cfg file so that .package based CC and mods will actually work, you will want to set that up again. How much of your package based content you want to bring into the new folder would be up to you. If you were not using .package based content, then this part doesn't apply.

SavedSims: These are your saved sim templates, accessed in CAS/CAH.

Saves: These are your prior saved games.


The other files/folders are typically not important and will re-generate as needed. :)

http://simswiki.info/wiki.php%3Ftitle%3DGame_Help:Remove_Sims3_Custom_CC

Here's a simswiki guide :) It's not for mac users though.
All you have to do is go into your sims 3 folder. The pathway for me is "Documents"->"Electronic Arts"->"The Sims 3"->"Mods". You can delete the whole mods folder or just what's inside it. This will only delete the custom content you have installed here, not using the Sims 3 launcher.

Also, if you launch The Sims 3, and click "Installed Content", there is a place where you can check "Run without custom content". I'm not sure if this also deletes your store content, though. So, you can individually uninstall by clicking "downloads" and then checking the custom content you want to delete and then clicking "delete".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu57kYBQR_8 at 7 minutes and 7 seconds this video starts showing you how to uninstall custom content via your launcher.

"Tempurrance;c-16322446" wrote:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php%3Ftitle%3DGame_Help:Remove_Sims3_Custom_CC

Here's a simswiki guide :) It's not for mac users though.

I'm afraid that page is very outdated and some of it is no longer applicable or is now just plain incorrect. User accessible game file structures changed after the release of Patch 1.12 back sometime in 2010.

Anyway, it sounds more like the OP wants to start with a fresh game folder, not work with and clean up an older one directly. Not that either way wouldn't be beneficial, depends on the player and what they are actually working with.

Thank you both I printed this off to read after church.