trial version of Eco Living

Decided to give it a try now with a new save. I haven't properly tried Cottage Living yet though, as I wanted to find a way for it to fit in my current save, so I'll need to make sure I focus solely on Eco Living content this weekend.

"Babykittyjade;c-17979618" wrote:

"CK213;c-17979547" wrote:

"maggiemae8135;c-17979463" wrote:
I bought Eco Living and feel that it adds a lot of options to my game. Especially the items that help lower the costs of my sims' bills! LOL I use the windmills and solar panels, water collectors often, especially on my farms with Cottage Living. The game has the toggles to shut off the NAPs which seems to be the biggest complaint with the game. I don't use the NAPS unless playing a game in Evergreen Harbour and decide to challenge myself with all the gameplay that comes with the game. I have never regretted buying this pack.

So you haven't experienced any NAPSs at all?
I removed it mainly for the NAPS. But I did like community spaces and some of the Eco features.
And there are also some clothing and hairstyles that I like.

And now that we have Home Decorator, I really would like the furniture making machine.
My decorator sim will also own a home furnishing business. It would be cool if she could manufacture her own furniture pieces.
I could also see some of my wellness sims setting up in a community space for Yoga and Meditation classes.

But I don't want to see sims with bags on their heads, home invasions and home theft from friends, free love, or inventories filled with clay and future cubes. If I have to go around to every neighborhood fixing unwanted NAPs, I would rather not have the pack at all. But if I can avoid all that and not have to worry about it, I would put the pack back.

You can turn off NAPs from the options menu. Which means you can fulfill your dreams without NAP disturbances ?

This is true. However, if you have multiple existing saves, be sure to turn NPC voting off for each save before actually playing in that save. I've had a few NAPs sneak in a couple of my older saves because I forgot to check if I had them turned off. D'oh! It's pretty easy to deal with after that, though, at least for people who play on PCs. If you do forget, you can do the instant repeals available via mailbox debug cheats, but you do have to be controlling a sim that lives in that neighborhood. After you clear up that first sneaky round of repeals (you can also leave some of the less annoying ones enacted if you want), NPCs will be unable to autonomously vote any others in.

@CK213 , I do not repeat what everyone has said above, all true, just turn it off.

I only add that even when naps turned OFF, you may still get the popup "vote now" and the "Voting has ended and this and this NAP won" .. that is a bug, there is NO NAP going on if you disable those before playing :)

ETA, I have disabled those when I bought the pack, and never ever had a NAP until I decided to have one :) As some of those are useful, depends on playstyle :)

I'm having fun so far. I haven't seen anything "bad" so far and there are things that would be good for my game, but I'm not sold on the pack as yet. We'll see how it goes.

I have eco lifestyle from when it was 50% off but I haven't actually gotten around playing it much yet (though I've built tons)

one thing i do like is how it comes with lots of little surprise things like neighbors visiting with gifts or tina tinker offering to fix your broken items or getting calls if some family should have baby or nah

makes things feel bit more lively

+ I do love the trashcan thingy and have it everywhere by now because well it reminds me of urbz no excuses

the new lot type also intrigues me though i haven't tried it yet but in theory its cool to be able to make multiple versions of same lot and switch it up... i just gotta find out how :sweat_smile: but sure i will eventually find out

the bits and pieces thing kind of irks me though... not sure if I'm missing something but i can't seem to find ingredients so i could make candles even though my sims have inventories full of all kinds of wax... probably just me missing something tho

and also the nap thingys be buggity bug

and the bug with molding clay and using the eco tablet thing is getting pretty irritating by now

as for the main part of making place polluted or eco friendly... its bit strange yeah because sometimes I will have eco friendly by doing basically nothing and other times it keeps switching between neutral and ecofriendly and ???? I am confusion

but i do like having the pollution effect sometimes to make things bit more awful for my sims :sweat_smile: and its pretty easy if just put out lot of trash on the lot too so thats neat... or should i say... messy

Oh yes! I forgot the Eco Lifestyle calls! They are fun and one of the reasons why I bought the pack :blush:

"Simmingal;c-17979703" wrote:
I have eco lifestyle from when it was 50% off but I haven't actually gotten around playing it much yet (though I've built tons)

one thing i do like is how it comes with lots of little surprise things like neighbors visiting with gifts or tina tinker offering to fix your broken items or getting calls if some family should have baby or nah

makes things feel bit more lively

+ I do love the trashcan thingy and have it everywhere by now because well it reminds me of urbz no excuses

the new lot type also intrigues me though i haven't tried it yet but in theory its cool to be able to make multiple versions of same lot and switch it up... i just gotta find out how :sweat_smile: but sure i will eventually find out

the bits and pieces thing kind of irks me though... not sure if I'm missing something but i can't seem to find ingredients so i could make candles even though my sims have inventories full of all kinds of wax... probably just me missing something tho

and also the nap thingys be buggity bug

and the bug with molding clay and using the eco tablet thing is getting pretty irritating by now

as for the main part of making place polluted or eco friendly... its bit strange yeah because sometimes I will have eco friendly by doing basically nothing and other times it keeps switching between neutral and ecofriendly and ???? I am confusion

but i do like having the pollution effect sometimes to make things bit more awful for my sims :sweat_smile: and its pretty easy if just put out lot of trash on the lot too so thats neat... or should i say... messy

I have had Eco lifestyle awhile too, but have mostly been setting up my towns with solar power, or wind turbines, and trash cans. I have also put in a few new community space lots, set up for all 3 options. I haven’t really done much using the candle maker, fizzy juice maker, or the furniture maker machine yet. I did read about buying dye and wax, by either clicking the candle maker to buy dyes or wax, or buying from the computer, but I haven’t tried it yet. I have tried dumpster diving for things, and realized that there are a couple of lot traits that can help fill the dumpsters, and cause trash to pile up if you want, I can’t remember the names right now. I didn’t turn off NPC voting on naps early enough, and did have some family members steal a couple of counters I think. So, I do recommend turning off NPC voting first thing in a save. I just found out there were soybean and wax plants and I plan to download a meat wall for one of my farm families.

I’m wanting to keep at least one of of my neighborhoods trashy, in Evergreen harbor, so I worked at making it not go green, because neighborhoods tend to head more toward green.

Some people love Eco lifestyle and some people don’t like it. But, with being able to turn off NPC voting on naps, and turn off Eco footprint if you want, it shouldn’t be a problem. I personally think it is worth the money.

Watching videos on EL has helped me.

"Ellupelluellu;c-17979654" wrote:
@CK213 , I do not repeat what everyone has said above, all true, just turn it off.

I only add that even when naps turned OFF, you may still get the popup "vote now" and the "Voting has ended and this and this NAP won" .. that is a bug, there is NO NAP going on if you disable those before playing :)

ETA, I have disabled those when I bought the pack, and never ever had a NAP until I decided to have one :) As some of those are useful, depends on playstyle :)

I think I will give it a try again once all my sims in rotation have graduated from Uni.
I will be making a Master Save game and will be editing and placing a lot of households.
I will most likely know what is going on in all the worlds in the process. :)

I have a problem - I can't find my sim's fabricated items. Can they "fail" during the process? I've had the eco parts come up fine, and the rugs, but I've tried to fabricate other items at least twice and failed to find them in either my sim's inventory or the household inventory.

I have had Eco Lifestyle since the release and there really is a lot to explore :)

• I'd definitely recommend turning the NAPs off in all your saves right away. After that you can still vote for NAPs with your own sims (or cheat) and get to have complete control of which NAPs are active and for how long.
  
• I haven't played much with the eco stuff that comes in the game. I have plopped some solar panels or power generators in my households, but not fully invested in them.
  
• I have tried the community spaces which are actually really nice. You need to go on the lot to start the "voting" process (you get to decide if NAPs are off) and then play in that neighbourhood until the lot changes on Monday evening. I think there's room to get really creative with these, for example you could build seasonal festival lots. I've only used them the intended way.
  
• I have also used some of the different crafting items. My fabricator sim has a furniture and robot (DU) store with her friend. Juice fizzing I've only tested a little bit and same with candle making, but I think both are great hobby options!
  
• I forgot to mentioned the bug hotels as I haven't played with those yet. I really want to but haven't had a suitable sim!
  

You likely wont get to experience the whole pack during the trial. Have fun!