Deleting localthumbcache deletes my game

@MarianneChadwick  Deleting localthumbcache.package shouldn't remove any other progress.  It's just a file that caches images and perhaps some other data for faster loading; the data itself is supposed to be stored elsewhere.  Just to be sure, you're only deleting this file when your game is closed, right?  I can see how removing it while playing could cause problems.

Please also let me know exactly what is disappearing, for example are your saves intact but the sims' outfits have changed?  When you say households disappear, do you mean an entire save, or a household within the save, or a household saved to the in-game library?

Hello and thank you for responding.

Yes I am only deleting this file when the game is closed and I have tried this multiple times, both with and without Mods.

Every time, what I have noticed is that my saves are still there to click 'continue' on, but when my game opens multiple sim households have disappeared from the world, as in they simply don't exist on the lot I placed them in, or anywhere else in the game. The actual lots themselves appear to be fine.

The sim households that do remain where I put them have other issues, namely that their outfits are gone (they are all in underwear, no accessories, no hair etc.) and they don't have any friendship/romance with any other sims. I haven't checked if these households are saved to the library, as the library kind of confuses me if I am honest.

Hello again, I tried what you said. Neither time did I have an issue when deleting the file. I also tried again with removing my original overloaded local thumb cache and the only problem to persist is my sims missing their outfits and hair. I am thinking it might have something to do with broken mods or the problem I had about a few days ago where my game was unable to update and so I had to do app recovery which might be what messed things about.

Whatever the case, I am just going to be happy that things are mostly working for the moment, even if I am a bit confused how lol. Thanks for your patience and advice. Out of curiosity, do you know what file actually contains the game data/progress?

@MarianneChadwick  All the data related to a given save should be stored in the save file itself, as in, the one inside the saves folder.  Each save has one file plus up to five backup copies, denoted by the .verx tag on the end.  The Tray folder holds saved households and builds, several files for each in-game item, but you could delete these and not lose any data from your saves.

I think you're probably right that this is a mod-related issue; the app recovery shouldn't have anything to do with Sims 4 at all.  If you want to experiment more, you can test your saves in the new Sims 4 folder, with and without your various mods, and see what happens.  As long as you copy over the files rather than moving them, you won't have to worry about messing up the saves—the originals will be intact in the old folder.

Additionally, you can rename a backup and delete the .verx extension, for example changing Slot_00000002.save.ver4 to Slot_00000012.save , and that former backup will be available to load as well.  The save name needs to have an eight-hexidecimal-digit (0 to 9, a to f) number, and other than that, just make sure it doesn't share a number with any other save.  I'm mentioning this because one of your backups might be unaffected by the original issue, i.e. your sims might still be wearing their clothes.