Some helpful tips when playing Sims Mobile (updated for August 2018 patch!)
This guide is to help you make the most out of your game (these are not cheats or game exploits), but before we go into the tips let's first define the difference between Sims Mobile vs other Sims games for fans and veterans of the Sims franchise.
First of all the Sims Mobile is not a Sims game. Yes it has sims in it, they speak in Simlish, and there's house designing and the same housing items that's present in Sims 4. However Sims Mobile doesn't contain the same needs you have in Sims games. In Sims Mobile there is perpetual daylight so you sims never need to sleep. They have no motives so you don't have to do anything with them including eating or using the bathroom, so you don't need a bedroom and bathroom per sim or as many chairs per sim. Instead sims in Sims Mobile have an energy bar that depletes as you use interactions and slowly builds up over time, and you can design your house the way you want without needing to accommodate for every sim in your family. Using items such as a bath or shower, bed and toilet will recover a certain amount of energy but you're limited to how many times these can be used in a day. When left to itself sims do very little besides warping around your home chatting and using objects, but these do not add any points to relationship or hobbies/careers and you may find furnishings start to break over time from overuse. Also you cannot place items or build at angles and there are currently no stairs or terrain tools, so no basements, no swimming pools, no raising or changing the colour of the grass etc.
Here's a long list of tips on how to make the most of your game:
First of all the Sims Mobile is not a Sims game. Yes it has sims in it, they speak in Simlish, and there's house designing and the same housing items that's present in Sims 4. However Sims Mobile doesn't contain the same needs you have in Sims games. In Sims Mobile there is perpetual daylight so you sims never need to sleep. They have no motives so you don't have to do anything with them including eating or using the bathroom, so you don't need a bedroom and bathroom per sim or as many chairs per sim. Instead sims in Sims Mobile have an energy bar that depletes as you use interactions and slowly builds up over time, and you can design your house the way you want without needing to accommodate for every sim in your family. Using items such as a bath or shower, bed and toilet will recover a certain amount of energy but you're limited to how many times these can be used in a day. When left to itself sims do very little besides warping around your home chatting and using objects, but these do not add any points to relationship or hobbies/careers and you may find furnishings start to break over time from overuse. Also you cannot place items or build at angles and there are currently no stairs or terrain tools, so no basements, no swimming pools, no raising or changing the colour of the grass etc.
Here's a long list of tips on how to make the most of your game:
- Be frugal with your simcash! Simcash isn't obtained very easily in the game and after a while you'll run out of things you can buy with simoleans alone and will be needing bucketloads of simcash. Avoid spending simcash on early unlocks or event skips, wait until you've unlocked a 3rd (and 4th if you're patient enough) sim to help you out before spending simcash on objects and outfits.
- Only purchase what you need when asked for. We all want a fancy looking house and workplace, but during the early levels you need to discipline yourself to slow down and only buy when asked to buy it as one of your quests. If the quest isn't there then wait another day, else you could make things harder for yourself later on. You can buy items that'll help you advance your career and hobby but if they require simcash then wait until you've got enough to spare before buying it.
- Check your Career Order Items before doing other activities. If you're working at a place like a kitchen or fashion store you can make items that go into your Career Order Items. These cost 2 energy to make but they don't give you any pink stars creating them. You need to give the items to customers to reward you with the pink stars. If you're not sure how many you have left take a look at your Career Order Items in your Inventory tab, otherwise you could be wasting precious energy for nothing as these items do not carry over to the next event.
- Try to consume all your energy on all your sims before accepting an event completion. If you are close to leveling up all your sims will have their energy restored to max. Use this opportunity to do as much as you possibly can on all your sims to bring their energy down before accepting the pink tick.
- Check your bed/bathroom for more energy. Showers, bathtubs, beds and toilets can give you energy back and some items can enhance them even more, every little counts so splash out on them when you can. Beds can be used every 23 hours, showers every 5 hours, and toilets every 2 hours.
- Don't just be a stay-at-home or stay-at-work sim. Try to get yourself noticed by attending or hosting parties and handing out stickers. You'll get rewards for attending and hosting parties as they level up, so spend your time interacting and helping those parties build points. You may even make actual friendships if the player is around to chat and you can continue to chat with them regardless if you're still at their house or doing an event at a work place.
- Build relationships between your own sims. It's fun to make friends with other peoples' sims, but it's better to do your relationship stories with your own sims as you can then switch between them to interact with each other so that you have 60 energy to use instead of only 30.
- Interact like crazy with visitors at your parties. You can still earn party points and friendship points by constantly interacting with visitors with normal interactions, and you can even do this with your sims that are currently at work by calling them home. These interactions don't cost you energy so you can keep on talking to visitors without your sim getting tired. Don't worry about whether you're boring them to death with your constant natter, according to them their sims are taking a shower and eating cake. By constantly interacting you can raise your parties to level 10 and claim full rewards at the end of the party, as will everyone else who attended and gained at least 3 purple stars for participating.
- Breed your sims rather than creating new ones. Young sims allow you to interact with them once a day to give them a very special trait. This makes them better at all events when they age up to adulthood. You can also have relationships with other peoples' sims and townies rather than moving them in and have their child at your house where you can raise them up and add them to your household once they're adults.
- Always have your sims doing something. Every minute your sims are stood around doing nothing is money wasted, on top of that your sims will want to retire eventually before you've completed everything you want to do with them and if they spent half their lives doing nothing then that's a lot of time wasted.
- Try to stick to quick events. Quick events reward you more for your time, however if you're not able to play the game often then stick to standard or long shifts. Quick events usually last around 1 hour, standard events around 3 hours, and long events around 7 hours.
- Have at least 1 sim always doing long events. This is best done with a sim that is level 9+ with the event to make the most out of it. Check your heirloom collection to see what heirlooms you have that have the best boosts and make sure you give the sim those same traits and equipment matching them from Izzy's collection and set this as their main career or hobby (eg. if you got Ambitious II, Foodie III, and an outfit that has either of those on it then make them a cook and make sure they're given the Ambitious and Foodie traits, you can even gender change your sim if you only have outfits for the opposite sex.) When you're ready to hand in the event wait for the LlamaZoom van to show up and do all the events with your other sims until she asks for a long event, then you are ready to hand this one in. If you try to start the event when the LlamaZoom van is already there if you can't check in regularly to keep spending energy then chances are the van will disappear before you can finish the event and any other events following after it.
- Use low energy interactions at jobs and hobbies. Beware the 3 energy interactions that aren't risky. Stick to rotating between interactions that use 1 or 2 energy. Eventually you'll get told your sim is feeling a little confident. You can take the risk if you'd like but it's better to keep spamming low energy interactions until the risk bar is closer to success, even then it's not 100% chance you'll succeed. If you only spam 1 energy interactions then it'll take longer for the risky interaction to become available and the risk bar won't increase.
- Save cupcakes to Go Faster! Cupcakes restore 30 energy when used, but they can also dramatically reduce the time it takes to complete events when you first start them. Stock them up for the really long events and use them to half the time it takes to complete them.
- Don't try to do too many stories at once. Stick to 1 or 2 relationships, 1 job and/or 1 hobby. If you push for too many you won't have enough time to do them all before your sim wants to retire. If the Quest list is trying to push you to start a new career, hobby or relationship when you're not even finished with your current one then just ignore it until you either finish your current one or have a new sim, chances are your current sim won't be able to complete it before they want to retire.
- Watch video ads as often as you can. These 20-30 second videos will reward you with either tickets, item boosts, simoleans, or simcash. Watch the mailbox either at your home or workplace for the blue play button to appear, and if you get them as a bonus to your event definitely accept to watch them.
- Complete the LlamaZoom Tasks as often as you can. You'll get extra rewards for completing the LlamaZoom tasks, so prioritize these over everything else, these pop up every 4 hours after completing them. Beware of the Complete For button, this isn't to reward you with simcash but to spend it to complete the tasks! Also make sure you read up on the task properly, if it asks you to do a Standard event then that means doing the Standard event, not a Quick event, else you could just be wasting your time.
- Only retire your sim when you feel it's right to. Just because the game says your sim is ready to retire doesn't mean you have to retire them there and then. Wait until you've completed your career, hobby and relationship stories and then retire them. By retiring your sim they will age up and no longer be controllable, so any stories you haven't yet completed will no longer be available to continue and you'll have to start them again from level 1 with a new sim. You will want to retire your sim eventually as you will get a heirloom reward and restart quests with your new replacement sim that reward you with simoleans and simcash.
