Hi again,
First of all, thank you so much for offering to take a look at my save — I really appreciate your help!
That said, I think I’ve finally managed to figure out what was going wrong. I read elsewhere that if a save file is corrupted, creating a new save while in live mode, then returning to the main menu and reloading the new save might help. I tried that a couple of times with no luck, even after removing all my mods, which is when I posted here out of pure frustration.
But I kept testing, and strangely enough, on the 4th or 5th attempt, it suddenly worked — even without mods. The only downside was that I’d lost all my CC. So I started slowly reintroducing my content and found that the game still worked… until I put everything back in, and the issue returned.
At that point, I was convinced it had to be one mod causing the problem, so I started the 50/50 method to narrow it down. It took me pretty much the whole day, but I finally found the culprit: the “Unhidden Traits” mod by Vicky Sims. As soon as I removed that and created a new save in live mode, everything started working again — Everdew lots are now fully accessible!
So, long story short: it’s been a journey, but I’m incredibly relieved my game is working again. I hope this helps someone else who might run into the same issue. And again, thank you for your willingness to help!