New Simmers, welcome! - Community’s tips & tricks to get started

thanks

Picking up this game for the first time ever and boy oh boy.. does this rabbit hole even have a bottom? Y'all creative geniuses seem to be able to do just about anything, so here are a couple of things I'm having issues with:

If I wanted to create a square, hipped roof with each pair of opposite panels changed to a different roofing type, how would I go about doing that?

How do I make the game recognize an open/unwalled room as a room?

In buy mode, can I buy items and send them directly to a sim's inventory? If I just wanted to get some seeds, do I actually have to place them on the ground in buy mode then pick them up with a sim?

Do I only gain/lose friendship/love when I start a conversation? Is anything changing (besides Needs) if I start a conversation and let them chat, or do I need to keep choosing different topics to actually improve relationships?

Is there a way to hide mirrors (and other wall attachments?) when the wall they're attached to is hidden?

Thanks y'all.

@Tockity Great questions, and I know there's a lot to learn, but you'll get the hang of it! I'm going to include some links to information that I've found helpful. I'm not fully understanding your question/description about the roofing, but perhaps if you added an illustration, screenshot, or something along that line it would help me understand?

Roofing:
♦ I found this to be a helpful video on various roofing styles/options: https://youtu.be/d3aNEDX5tTs
♦ A nice Carls Guide on building roofs: https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/tutorials/building/roofs.php
♦ Another article on roofing options: https://simsvip.com/2017/11/11/tutorial-using-new-roof-styles-sims-4/

Rooms:
Getting the game to see an area as a room can be done usually by re-tracing the area/room, then clicking the side of the area/room to confirm that the game is now seeing it as a room. Please see this video:
https://youtu.be/cfHo3vsOMcM

Inventory: Not all items can be added to/stored in inventory. Some type of items can be added to Personal Inventory. More types of items can be added to Household Inventory. Certain items can be added to either. It all depends on the item:
♦ Personal Inventory: Many items can be stored in the sim's personal inventory by dragging the item to the small picture of the sim at the bottom left of the screen, dragging the item to the sim on the screen, or dragging it to the small 'personal inventory' icon on the bottom right of the screen (or if you click the icon it will open a pop-up and you can drag them into the open area):
https://i.imgur.com/pNZIqX3.png
♦ Household Inventory: Many items can be stored in the household inventory by entering build mode and selecting the item with a the select/hand and hitting the 'delete' key, or by clicking the small box at the bottom left of the screen, then dragging the item to the area in the pop-up:
https://i.imgur.com/fRZFKxo.png
♦ Some items cannot be added to either inventory.

Relationships: As long as the sims are chatting autonomously or by direction their relationship should be increasing. If you want to control it you can choose things like romantic interactions which increase or decrease the romance bar depending on how intense the interaction is and how well it's received. Same thing goes with the regular relationship bar - some interactions will be poorly received and decrease the relationship (you will see a red "-" sign if this is happening, and a green "+" sign if it is positive). If it gets negative enough you can fight them or 'declare enemy'!

Tip: Multitasking for Social: Sims will increase in social and relationship while chatting, and there are some very handy ways to multi-task and cover this need. For example:
♦ TV: You can have a sim sit on a couch/loveseat next to another sim while they are eating. You can then turn on the TV and have them watch the Cooking Channel. Doing this will allow them to be comfortable (if the couch is comfortable) and relieve stress, they will increase their food/hunger bar, they will chat with the other sim and increase their social bar, they will watch the show and increase their fun plus learn cooking so increase their cooking skill.
♦ I do the same trick by putting two treadmills side-by-side, and sometimes putting a wall-mounted TV in front of them on the wall.

On the wall items showing when the wall is hidden/down... yes and no. I find that some items will be invisible when the wall is down and some will not. It depends on the item. It also sometimes depends on if I increased or decreased the item's size &/or placed the item with MOO (Move Objects On) enabled. Some debug items also will not disappear. Since you are new to the game these are probably non-issues, but you can always test by putting the wall down after placing to see if the item remains. And just for fun, I could mention that sometimes an item messes with me - it shows when the wall is down after I place it, but if I save and leave the lot and re-enter, it then disappears with the wall down. Go figure.

I hope this helps some. If you have more questions about the roofing you're welcome to contact me about it and I can address that more specifically: https://sherigr.com/contact/

Turn aging off. That way you can relax and play slowly, while learning the game.
Don’t use high chairs for Toddlers. They can help themselves if there is food on the counter or table.
Use cheats, especially Free Real Estate.
Check out Carl’s Sims 4 site. Super helpful.
Happy Simming!

For building, I suggest just keep modifying an existing house your sims already live in. Slowly figure out one thing at a time instead of trying to start from scratch and "know most everything". That's how I started with building. And although doing a heck of alot of building since, I still learn new things. ;)

wow this discussion is exactly what i should have been looking at a few days back! i literally have owned every sims game since numero uno, and now years later and being at home due to the virus i decided to use my free time wisely to go spend a few hundred on a laptop and buy all the packs (luckily my husband is a lawyer and paid for it or id be screwed) i must say this.. i literally have been on like a 8 day binge playing sims its so unhealthy lmao.. but anyways, i see while looking through the gallery that people are doing shell challenges and other storylines with characters and stuff like that, can anyone fill me in about those... aka possibly recommend some good ones to do. i like that girl @lilsimsie page. she has some really cool builds and stuff, i think i probably ended up building a whole world with some of her shared content lol. and then another person whos builds blow me away is @kreatora man that kid can build. but anyways! hello to everyone on the forum! if anyone needs a newfriend my name is leanteamqueen on my sims game! and hope to meet some people from the community soon!

A piece of advice to our new Simmers: Have patience. :P
This game will teach you patience, that I am sure of, but you will need patience to go through loading households, loading CAS, etc.

And save your game!! I personally save my game every sim day and if something special has happened. To decrease the change of corrupting your save file; use "save as" instead of "save".
I have a couple of saves of the same households that looks like this:
"Household family name, week3,day1"
"Household family name, week3,day2"
"Household family name, week3,day3"

I generally keep two or three saves of the household to use as a backup just in case the latest one does get corrupted.

> @Joeyfat said:
> Hello! I am a vetern "offline" sims player and have recently starting familarizing myself with Sim4 and thought it might be fun participate in more of the community around this game. What is a good Sims4 beginner friendly challenge to start with?

Hey there @Joeyfat - I'm a big fan of challenges & offline play, too. There is a great list here on the forum. Give it a read and see what speaks to you https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/906643/sims-4-challenge-list-updated-october-16th-2019/p1

I think one of the best for starting players is Euphorial Queen's Rosebud challenge https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/792094/rosebud-challenge-can-you-become-a-sim-millionaire-euphorialqueen-update-29jan2020/p1 I find it challenging, but not SO challenging that you feel overwhelmed.

- My advice is to accustom yourself not to use cheats (especially for money). Overcoming life's difficulties with your character, empathizing and rejoicing with him, achieving success - this is the most expensive thing in this game.

- Create a dynasty at least once ... an amazing experience!

One of my tips that I've learnt over the last few months is try not to use cheats all the time I have recently found it more fun to play with my sims having to work for their money rather than relying on motherlode all the time (Unless I'm starting a certain type of gameplay where I want them to start in a decent house such as my super sim challenge)

Move objects on is great to be able to have a lot more freedom in placing objects although I am still learning a lot about this feature and do get quite frustrated with it myself but I have found that I am able to make my builds look so much more lived in once I started using it.