Strangerville - with or without mystery solved

The town starts out with the strangeness at a minimum, you'll see small strange plants in the neighbourhood and a few infected sims running around. Even your welcome wagon will consist of infected who will place a strange fruit in your fridge, which will then be confiscated by sims in black. If you don't want that to happen, just ignore the welcome wagon. Other than that, you'll meet scientists at the library and military personnel at the bar (but they will always be there, even after solving the mystery), and while in StrangerVille (whether you're living there or just visiting), you get a new social interaction to "ask about StrangerVille".

From my experience, the infection can only autonomously befall NPCs in StrangerVille. I've never seen any infected running around in other towns, or my own sims getting infected while I wasn't playing them. A played sim can get infected by eating the strange fruit or breathing in spores in the basement of the laboratory; if there are other ways, I haven't discovered them yet. The infection itself is a moodlet that occasionally pops up, making your sim look and walk weird and keeping all their needs filled until it wears off.

If you solve the mystery, it will indeed be gone forever unless you restart it by... I don't know if I can say that, because it might be a spoiler for you. Let's just say, after solving the mystery once, you get full control over how strange you want StrangerVille to be. But as I said, it will definitely start out with a little strangeness, and there's nothing you can do about that (at least not without mods) other than going with it and playing the story.

The new military career is not tied to StrangerVille at all, though. Any sim in any world can join the career and get to the top of it without once setting foot in StrangerVille.

Something I've noticed is that after solving the mystery I still see conspiracy theorists and military personnel sims around my worlds. In case that matters to you.

Thanks all!

>>The game includes some premade Sims who are infected already.
So, if I do not solve the mystery, then the few already infected locals will keep getting their weird moments for the rest of their lives?

>>The infection itself is a moodlet that occasionally pops up, making your sim look and walk weird and keeping all their needs filled until it wears off.
How often do they behave weirdly? Is it just an hour per day or more?

>>Something I've noticed is that after solving the mystery I still see conspiracy theorists and military personnel sims around my worlds. In case that matters to you.
I don't mind seeing random military persoonal or conspiracy theorists in other worlds. It's not like I will pretend the mother mystery does not exist, I just want to be able to plat active households in Strangerville, without all their lives base on the mystery.

"Simmerville;c-17383619" wrote:
>>The infection itself is a moodlet that occasionally pops up, making your sim look and walk weird and keeping all their needs filled until it wears off.
How often do they behave weirdly? Is it just an hour per day or more?

I can't say for sure, I've only played one infected sim once upon a time, and my memory is a little hazy. But I think the moodlet didn't last that long, just a few hours or so, and it came up randomly, like the occasional moodlets from emotional traits.

I don't mind seeing random military persoonal or conspiracy theorists in other worlds. It's not like I will pretend the mother mystery does not exist, I just want to be able to plat active households in Strangerville, without all their lives base on the mystery.

Then I suggest you either don't touch the mystery at all, or play through the entire thing once and then set the strangeness to whatever level you feel comfortable with. It only becomes really bothersome at maximum strangeness, when the entire world is littered with enormous strange plants, almost every NPC is a zombie, the sky is perpetually covered by colourful clouds that don't allow for any normal weather, and your bathroom equipment occasionally gets infested with vines that have to be cleaned up. In the end it's all a matter of personal taste; since sims can't live in the Magic Realm, I tend to use StrangerVille at maximum strangeness as a surrogate Magic Realm for sims who embrace the paranormal.

Someone created a mod to where all your sim has to do is:

Search the Strangerville Archive in the information center to immediately get rid of the neighborhood effects in Strangerville (infected people, plants) without having to solve the mystery.

It is called unstrange strangerville, and can be located at the link.
https://deichschafblog.de/bienchen/strangerville-strangerville/

Also be aware that you can't actually make significant progress in the mystery unless you use the Aspiration that came with Strangerville. So don't give any sims that aspiration, and you should be (mostly) fine.

Played Infected sims are infected for a 3 hour period, that I think is supposed to be 1 Am to 4 Am, but it's been a while since I've played through. And they wake with all their needs filled. NPC infection periods are more random, it appears, though they're *also* infected for the time Played sims are infected.

I have had infected NPC (as opposed to generated townie) sims show up at festivals in San Myshuno, but they're not usually seen wandering outside Strangerville very often.

Also I know you said realistic gameplay, so this may not be an issue, but if you have Vampires and a vampire drinks from an infected sim, they get infected.

If you solve it you'll get daily fan mail in appreciation.

Played Sims who get infected will wake up at 1 am in zombie mode with needs filled and will have minimal command you can give them, mostly involving interacting with the weird plants. It wears off around 4 am. Also, if an infected sim is in the vicinity of a scanner (which you can only get by following the plot line) they will go into zombie mode and attack the person with the scanner and continue as they do at night for a few hours afterwards. Your active household members can only get infected through your actions, such as eating the fruit or a vampire drinking from an infected sim.

Yes, without mods the infected premade sims will be like that forever if you don't solve the mystery. The unplaywd local infected Sims show up in zombie mode at more random times of day rather than just at night or when triggered by a scanner.

"GrumpyGlowfish;c-17383639" wrote:

"Simmerville;c-17383619" wrote:
>>The infection itself is a moodlet that occasionally pops up, making your sim look and walk weird and keeping all their needs filled until it wears off.
How often do they behave weirdly? Is it just an hour per day or more?

I can't say for sure, I've only played one infected sim once upon a time, and my memory is a little hazy. But I think the moodlet didn't last that long, just a few hours or so, and it came up randomly, like the occasional moodlets from emotional traits.

I don't mind seeing random military persoonal or conspiracy theorists in other worlds. It's not like I will pretend the mother mystery does not exist, I just want to be able to plat active households in Strangerville, without all their lives base on the mystery.

Then I suggest you either don't touch the mystery at all, or play through the entire thing once and then set the strangeness to whatever level you feel comfortable with. It only becomes really bothersome at maximum strangeness, when the entire world is littered with enormous strange plants, almost every NPC is a zombie, the sky is perpetually covered by colourful clouds that don't allow for any normal weather, and your bathroom equipment occasionally gets infested with vines that have to be cleaned up. In the end it's all a matter of personal taste; since sims can't live in the Magic Realm, I tend to use StrangerVille at maximum strangeness as a surrogate Magic Realm for sims who embrace the paranormal.

I'm liking this idea! Haven't really come up with a way to use Strangerville yet. I only have one sim living there...

I wanted the strange behavior out of my game so I completed the mystery and everything has been normal since.