Re: Problem with opportunity

@MarMarcin Yes, removing the bar (even temporarily) or moving towns would cause the opportunity to cancel or glitch out.  That was more a suggestion for how to try to make sure it works the next time around.  But there's no guarantee that it will, unfortunately.  I have NRaas ErrorTrap in my game, along with a number of other mods, and I often see a scripterror when a sim of mine finishes delivering the steaks and receives the omni plant seeds.  Without the mods to correct things, I don't know how the game would handle whatever issue is popping up.

Anyway, I hope your sim has more success the next time the opportunity is offered.

@MarMarcin  It's possible that one of the game patches broke the omni plant opportunity, or made it more likely to break, although I don't know for sure.  (By the time I patched to 1.63, I had been using mods for a long time.) There are a number of in-game functions that broke because of a patch and were never fixed.

Yes, you could, in theory, add a few mods to the game, use them to fulfill the opportunities you want, and then remove the mods again.  But you'll probably see more errors later, which the same mods could correct.  A good example is the borked adventure board you're seeing in China and France.  I think it was never reliable without mods, but it probably got worse as more patches were added to the game.  NRaas Traveler fixes many aspects of vacation and travel, including the adventure board, and it also makes the travel transition itself much more reliable, so that your sims are almost guaranteed to arrive safely.

I understand that many people are reluctant to use mods, and there are many mods that introduce extra sources of error.  But this is not true of NRaas mods—they are specifically designed to fix bugs and glitches, clean up bad game data, and generally keep your saves healthy for much longer than they would be otherwise.  The main cleanup mods are ErrorTrap and Overwatch, and they and Traveler don't affect the way you play.  They do their job in the background, without your needing to issue commands.  Other than the occasional report of an error that one of those mods has cleaned up, you would never know they were there.

I should also say that unlike some mods that have special uninstall instructions, and others that can't be removed safely at all, the mods from NRaas can be added and subtracted from your game whenever you want.  As long as you delete the scriptCache.package file, you'll be fine.

Normally I wouldn't recommend mods to someone who is so reluctant to use them, but it sounds like you're having a lot of issues that could be easily addressed.  And there's no way to do so just in the vanilla game—EA never bothered to fix any of the problems you've mentioned.  Without mods, getting around the bugs is mostly a question of luck, and trying over and over again until something works.

One other thing to mention is that if you want to use mods, you'll need to patch to 1.67.  It's easy enough to do—just download and run the Super Patch.  You don't need to patch to 1.69 for any mods to work, and that won't fix any game issues, either; the only "updates" from 1.67 were the mandatory Origin tie-in and the pack selector.  But even if you don't use mods at all, it's still a good idea to patch to 1.67.  A few issues did get fixed, after all.

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/175477/official-ea-download-link-for-the-sims-3-cumulative-manual-update

Just be sure to delete the five cache files in your game folder in Documents after you patch.

@MarMarcin  Even though mods are third-party content, EA deliberately made them easy to install and use because the company understood that players would enjoy their games more if they could install mods and custom content.  That's why mods go into the game folder, rather than program files—EA patched in this simpler setup in 2010.  But if you don't want to use mods, I won't mention them again.  Just understand that without them, many of these problems you're seeing will appear again, sooner or later.

(By the way, Overwatch doesn't make the game run faster by itself, although it does clean up errors that can slow things down.  It's almost always used with ErrorTrap, and together, they help prevent the save from becoming so corrupted over time that it's eventually unplayable.  So you might not notice a difference, exactly; it's just that your game wouldn't slow down and glitch out after a couple of generations.)

Anyway, I'm not surprised that Bridgeport is giving your problems.  The EA version has routing issues, and sims also tend to get stuck in elevators and the blacked-out sections of apartment buildings, which is where non-player controlled sims go when they're not supposed to be doing anything else.  Bridgeport is not as poorly made as Isla Paradiso, but you still might need to rebuild or repair sections of it to make it run better.  I'm not sure where the other errors are coming from, but they sound like typical EA glitches to me.  For example, the game loves to give out free cheap cars whenever an inactive sim needs to go somewhere, and those cars just build up over time unless they're removed.

If you save your sim family to the bin, start a new save, and place the family there, the connected vacation worlds that those sims have visited will disappear just like the old homeworld does.  So the tombs will all be reset.  I don't actually know if the game will "remember" which opportunities the sims have completed, but you could always test and find out for yourself.  One possibility is that a sim who has completed certain adventures won't be able to do them again, but another sim will.

As for the store content patches, they're no longer offered through the launcher because they're part of the program files for any player on patch 1.69.  This thread explains what to do about it:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16341942/#Comment_16341942

@MarMarcin  If you move hometowns using the in-game function (i.e. the phone), it makes sense that much of the data from that save will be preserved.  The best way to start over is to save your sim family to the in-game bin, save the house itself separately if you want to keep it, and place both in a new save.  Make sure to quit to desktop before starting the new save; if you switch at the Main Menu, some data from the old save will transfer into the new one.  After you quit and before you start the new save, delete the cache files in your game folder as well.

Another option is to use Save Cleaner to reduce the size of your save files.  It's easier to use than S3PE, and will probably do a more thorough job.  Here's a discussion of Save Cleaner that you might find helpful, starting with this comment:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/15419659/#Comment_15419659

The links in the first comment are broken, since NRaas has moved to a new site, so here are the old links via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180228113005/%20http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Deleting+SNAP+resources+FAQ

https://web.archive.org/web/20180207093234/%20http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Kuree's+Save+Cleaner

The EA version of Isla Paradiso is so poorly made that it's almost unplayable, even for the most powerful computers with the most effective mods.  If you want to use it, you can either download ciane's fixed version, or copy the edits she made into your own game.  Otherwise, your save will lag and glitch and generally be impossible to play forward after a very short amount of time.  You can read ciane's documentation of her work and/or download her fixed version of IP here:

https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag

The mod you need to assign opportunities is NRaas MasterController.  It's quite useful for the commands it makes available, but it will never do anything on its own—the player has to directly force an action.  So there's no reason to remove it; you can just ignore it until you need it again.  To assign the omni plant opportunity, click on your sim and then select NRaas > MasterController > Basic > Opportunity: By Category > Gardening > The Omnificent Plant.  Make sure that you've cancelled any skill opportunities before you do this, or no new ones will show up.

If you later decide to add mods that specifically prevent glitches and remove corruption from your game, you'll want NRaas ErrorTrap and Overwatch.  Register and Traffic are helpful as well—they control the game's Service and Role sims, and the spawning of vehicles, respectively.

@MarMarcin  You can always delete the cache files in your Sims 3 game folder (in Documents\EA).  These files will regenerate each time you load the game, and if you don't delete them regularly, stale data will build up and possibly cause glitches.  If you add or remove a mod from your game folder, you need to delete the scriptCache.package file before the next time you play.  While deleting the others is optional, it will never hurt your game.  Here's the list of cache files again:

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

There are other files that you can delete, if you want, but those five cache files are the most important ones.  Here's a list of everything in your game folder:

https://sims3.crinrict.com/en/2011/01/faq-user-files.html

And I'm glad I could help.  If you have any other questions, you know where to find me.

Could you tell me what the collection folder is for? What are these collections?

@MarMarcin  Collections are items from build or buy mode that are grouped together, making them easier to find.  So instead of having to search through the entire build or buy catalog, you can select one collection and use the items in there.  You can also create your own collections for favorite items.  The Collections folder holds the files for these groups.  Deleting it won't remove the items from your game; it will only remove the groupings.

If you never search through Collections in Build/Buy, then it's safe to delete them.  But it's not necessary, as they don't add much to the demands of the game, and the files that come installed with the game are unlikely to become corrupted.

@MarMarcin  Do you mean houses that you've downloaded, or houses that you've built yourself?  Any file that is saved to the in-game bin—households, houses, community lots—will also appear in the bin when you start a new save.  These files are located in Library inside your game folder.  If you want to create a new game folder, just copy over the Library folder, and your content will show up in the game.

If you've built a house in your save that you want to keep, all you have to do is go to Edit Town and save it to the bin.

 I wrote it bad, I wanted a holiday home bought in France, for example.

@MarMarcin  Don't worry about it; maybe I just read it wrong.

Since your new save will generate a new version of France, your sims won't own that vacation home anymore.  But they may still have their visa points, so they could buy the same home again.  If you made changes to the original house, you could use Edit Town to edit France and save that house to the bin; then you could place it in that new version of France when you're ready.