Sticking to One Save File

Early on, I only had 1 game save I played, unfortunately, I got a couple of EA bugs and also developed game bloat, that's where the save file gets junk in it so that the size of the file increases dramatically. So I had to recreate that game from scratch by transferring my household and lots from the old save to a brand new one.

After that I researched backing up my game and other safeguards to prevent corruption. There were several things I found out.

One, was the previously mentioned strategy of using the "save as" function periodically, instead of just using " save" over and over. With the " save as" you can rename the file i.e. Save 01, then Save 02, Save 03, etc. I personally name games using the surname of my main played household.

Another thing was a mod that would "Auto Save" my game on a shedule. This came in handy because I used to get a lot of crashes.

The game has changed the way saves work since then, but one issue I had in the past was having one save overwrite another, however, making sure that every save file has at least 1 household marked as "played" every time you save is a fix for this, I have found.

A few other things I do, I have an external HD where I have back ups of my files, from the "documents" folder on PC Sims 4 folder, I back up: saves, tray, mods, screenshots. With these I can effectively replace my game play from scratch. Also, custom music, if you have any you use. I keep my " tray" folder empty, this cuts down on loading screen times and lag. As its backed up, I can always put the files back if I need something. I periodically delete the thumbnails in the "cache" and "cachestr" folders, and most importantly, delete the localthumbscache.package anytime I add or remove CC or mods or just whenever the size seems to have increased significantly, that thing can cause bugs, none of these will harm your game if removed.

One more thing, making sure the household and personal inventories are not full of items this helps with the game lag and potential corruption.

Since I have been doing these things, my game performance is better and I have not had any catastrophic issues, knock wood.

It's never a good idea to have only one save. A good practice for any game is to have more than one. That way, if something goes wrong, you don't lose everything. Also, "Save As", rather than "Save". In my personal experience, saving over the same file over and over again can eventually lead to corruption.

@sunblond Sorry, I didn't read your post until after I had already written mine. Basically, we said the same thing regarding save files.

I have one main save, that I started from the beginning of me getting Sims 4, and it's generally worked well enough after all I've added on. At the same time I have backups of that save as well as several other backup saves to save my Library households into, a few for general testing purposes, and separate saves specifically for modded games.

Unlike the previous version of the game I have multiple game files. Some I have for game creation. I have file that I build in, one I make townies and then I put what I've made into my master file. I use the master file for when I want to start a new game. I don't play in that file, I just use it to create the world in which I want to play. With each new pack or patch update, I use my master file to create a new game file to test out for any broken CC or mods. I use the master file for when I want to start a new game. For game play I have a couple save files that I just dink around in testing mods and looking for way to create more drama to my actual game play. For my actual game play I generally do stick to one save for my legacy save.

I'm playing the same save file since Sims 4 was released. I've had that file become bloated and, after a patch, de-bloated, but - knocks on wood - it still works. Of course I do incremental backups (number 201 today) just in case.

I've been playing the same rotational save since the beginning. I mainly do "save", "save as" only when I'm making a backup copy. I don't take that many copies though. The save has been working fine except of course the loading times are longer than in a brand new save.

@Firande, thank you so much for explaining this to me.

"Firande;c-16361425" wrote:
You'll have to repopulate the new save, and place new lots. The new save will be brand new, with every lot and all premades in their as they were when you started your first save.

I suppose I could pretend like they are moving somewhere completely new, to a new set of worlds. xD

The save went corrupt for my legacy on generation 5. I was bummed to lose the progress within the save (townies aging, family tree, etc) but the heir was running away from her family so it fit the storyline. I saved her to my library and placed her in a new save.

I played Pinstar's Legacy Challenge, having to restart after I'd totally messed things up beyond the ability to simply go forward. I waited about a year, as it turned out, before I started anew. I used my very same Founder, since I really loved him and his backstory was so intriguing to me. All-in-all, this Challenge took me a full year to complete (and this was before toddlers were dropped into the game). To keep my files from becoming corrupted, I simply did a 'Save As…' and renamed the file each gaming session. Seemed to work and I didn't have to disrupt my game play at all. Best of luck to you.

"Goth583;c-16350981" wrote:
I only have one save; and I'm never going to do more than one because all I ever read are issues of multiple saves messing up people's games.

How so? I've had hundreds of saves and any issues I've experienced were not from that.