Agreed with you that the lot & world corruption is the biggest and scariest problem. That's because it sometimes didn't show up at first time but hid in the shadow until it was too late to turn back.
I haven't experienced this corruption until now, maybe because I never touch rentals. If I want to try the rental residential lot, I may make a copy of the game folder. But I don't want to waste time playing with a paranoid mind. There are many parts of the game to focus on because I only started playing seriously in 2019.
About Dine Out, I had used "Dine Out Reloaded" mod for a while to help the restaurant work properly. But after V.4, some new functions were too risky to use (Ex. add Bar function+add employee slots), so I removed them and avoided using Dine Out for now.
Plants bug doesn't bother me too, I don't mind using cheat and it's easy. Now I only worry about things that no mod can help right now.
I don’t use mods, even though I’m on a gaming laptop, so anything they can cheat away ( like lifestyles etc. ), is a help to me.
If the game have more toggle on-off of things I want to disable, I would have to get many mods. At least, Neighborhood Stories can be turned off completely.
Your choice for not using mod is the safer way to play. You can update the patch without too much worry like heavy mod players. I'm in the middle of them, just want to make sure I understand what affects will be added each tine.
