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irueone · 6 days

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GAME FEATURES

THIS IS A REALLY LONG POST

There are SO MANY features in The Sims 3 that I keep learning more and more each day, so I decided to start keeping track of all of them. Some of these I've known myself, but most of them come from Reddit and TS Forum.

I'll keep on updating everytime I find new things.

Features are under the cut!

Gameplay

Careers/University/Skills

You can sign autographs as a rock star by clicking on a random building (bookstore, theater, stadium, etc.) and make cash. You can only do it once a week and have them perform the action yourself (similar to the vaccination event you do as a doctor).

If you send a Sim to college, you can get a financial aid grant every 24 hours. Just click on the administration building and select “apply for financial aid”. The better your grades, the more money you’ll get.

Traveling to the past with ambition’s time machine, random events will change your household’s present. (Change careers or add family members).

Sims who reach the highest criminal career level glow red. This is bad for relationships with Sims with Good, Friendly, and Family Oriented traits. Having maxed out the Charisma skill will mostly prevent it, or even throw “Jar of Friendship” potion at them. Although it is good for relationships with Sims with Evil and Insane traits.

When some rectangles of one (or more) skill is highlighted, it’s because it’s the requirement for the Sim job.

If you protest about low wages, you have the possibility of increasing the wages of everyone.

Parent Sims can have a wish for their kids to have specific careers.

You will get gifts for working on your job for 5 years.

Singer Sims could sell their albums to other Sims.

If you click on your Sim work building when they’re at work, you can demand a raise. but if their mood is bad or their relationship with their boss is bad, this can get them fired. You can also go out with your boss and ask for a promotion.

Sims can die while you’re lifeguarding.

Your Sim can get caught if they call in fake sick.

Sims in the medical career can follow up with patients by calling them.

You can fry beetles if you are an evil private investigator (if you have a magnifying glass).

Your Sim can be an evil politician.

Ghost hunters can “appease ghosts” at the graveyard.

Lifeguard and firefighter sims can “demonstrate CPR” on another Sim as a romantic action.

Maids

Some maids actually don’t do their work, you have to fire them so a new one comes up, and is, hopefully, better.

Most Maids will have at least neat and/or perfectionists, brave and flirty, or charismatic traits. Some Maids are also Kleptomaniacs. Exceptions to this are: Delicia Hoover from Bridgeport and Simon Swift from Barnacle Bay, they are Slobs, which means they will never actually clean your House.

Maids will quit if they see Bonehilda in your house.

Toddler/Child/Teen

Kids will gain skills if someone reads them skill books to sleep.

When a witch sim does their homework they accidentally get it done all at once by magic. They grab the blue notebook, but the green bar completes itself immediately and they look confused for a second. In case they fail to do homework by magic, their whole body gets burnt.

When children and teens are asleep, you can click on them to select a dream, and then they’ll wake up with a moodlet related to it. While the moodlet is active, you can get a special moodlet if their dream comes true. While still sleeping, the game will notify if the dream turned into a nightmare and they will get a negative moodlet.

Toddlers and Kids can build hidden skills with certain toys.

You can put kids in time out and they will stand in a corner crying.

Toys can go on the crib.

Babies can get diaper rash if using the changing station from The Sims 3 Store.

If you take a child of the bouncer, they get bratty and mad.

Children can hold a bear while talking to an adult.

Kids can read the newspapers to see what baked goods sell better.

When you get robbed children can get the lifetime wish to become a cop or a thief. They can also want to become a doctor after seeing someone dying or getting a new sibling, become a musician after seeing someone jam, become a creature robot cross-breeder after seeing a ghost. become a firefighter after a house fire, become a magician after seeing a sim use their magic, become a singer while singing with their imaginary friend.

Child witch Sims have stabilizers on their brooms.

Kids can get sick from prison food.

Your Sim can chat with toddlers through their Teddy Bears.

Parents can play with their toddlers in the ocean.

Children inherit the effects of some Genie Wishes.

Your Sim can get detention if they slack off in school.

You can create custom and random baby DNA at the hospital.

Children can fight teens.

Parents will have a higher friendship level with their baby with an at home birth than a hospital birth.

Traits

Inappropriate sims can take sponge baths from a sink.

Your Sim can have a hidden trait called “advanced art training” earned by completing the “Skilled Painting” opportunity acquired through working in the art appraiser career. Sims with this trait can paint paintings of any skill level (0 to 9), instead of paintings appropriate only to their painting skill level.

Bookworm sims can join the book club by computer and get mailed books.

Unlucky Sims can’t die. But they can die of transmutation and leave a golden statue.

Party Animals Sims can dance on top of the counter.

Mermaids with the Evil trait can spawn sharks.

Sims with the Green Thumb Trait can Revive Dead Plants.

Brave Sims can ask for a raise.

Frugal Sims will cut coupons from the newspaper.

Daredevil Sims can “play with fire”, and will stick their hands in the fire and pull them back out until their fun motive is full.

If your Sim has the hydrophobic trait they cannot Woohoo or Try for Baby in the shower.

Being in Bot mode (Bot fan trait) will keep your sim from aging.

Sims with the daredevil trait can eat bugs.

Sims who have the childish trait have the option to read a toddler’s book like any other. Others will get the message “Sim can only read this book to a toddler.”

The Good trait Sims could accuse of being meanspirited.

Sims with the Good trait can donate to charity.

Sims with the “Never Nude” trait shower in their bathing clothes.

Moodlets

If you click on a negative need moodlet, the game will have the sim do the activity to fill that need.

If you gift your child Sims too many times in a row, they get a “spoiled” moodlet.

The creepy magical gnome (the one that kinda looks like a devil) will sometimes spawn next to your Sims bed at night with glowing red eyes. Your Sims can get a creeped out moodlet.

Buy a baby, toddler, or child a teddy bear because it gives them a special moodlet when they sleep while having it in their inventory.

You get a moodlet when you have a blog and something from the blog’s theme happens in your Sims real life.

The “rejuvenated” and “completely at ease” moodlet prevents the horrified noodlet from exploring the catacombs.

Sims can make snow angels face down, and when they do, they get the frosty face moodlet.

Mourning over the dead Sim’s gravestone would reduce the negative effect of “Mourning” moodlet.

If you send too many secret admirers texts to the wrong Sim, they will receive a negative “being stalked” moodlet.

You get a moodlet saying “Brrrr! This is cold!” when your Sim sits on ice furniture.

Romance/Woohoo

You can woohoo or make out behind the scenes at the theater hall if you have two romantically involved Sims visit at the same time. It works for any rabbit hole you can visit (town hall, military base, science lab…).

Using the Time Machine to Try for a Baby in the past will result in a biological teen showing up later that day.

Try Online Dating on the computer.

If your Sim is dating someone and that someone is dating someone else, you can tell them they are cheating.

Sims gets a fertility boost after getting a romantic massage.

Sims can get kicked out of theaters for woohooing.

You can give a cinnamon kiss when you flavored your food with it.

If a Sim marries a plumbot the creator of said plumbot officially becomes their parent-in-law.

If your Sim feels betrayed from an unfaithful marriage they can rebound kiss.

Money

To make money, go to the science skill tree until you have enough skill to take samples from gems, and then clone them using the science station.

Adopt a bunch of dogs or have a werewolf Sim and make them hunt.

Go through the trash of wealthy households.

Experiment on bugs until you get a plasma bug then sample and clone it. A cat with high-level Hunting skills will also catch them occasionally.

Master the Martial Arts skill and break space rocks on the board breaker and get lots of valuable gems.

Paintings appreciate in value over time and are the best sold when the Sim dies.

Miner holes are treasure chests. You can also make several holes into a cave system.

If you have a philosopher’s stone, you can turn pretty much anything into gold. You run the risk of your sim turning into gold and therefore dying. However, if you have a death flower in your inventory you don’t die and you get to keep the gold statue of your sim - making tones of money because of it.

Pets

If you’re cooking food and have a pet, you can throw scraps to them that they will eat.

You can have a rock as a pet.

You can breed fish.

If a pet bowl is outside, any other animal can eat from it.

Gnomes can encourage and discourage cats and dogs on your lot.

Your Sim can pet their dog while they are lying on the couch.

Horses will eat and destroy the newspaper.

When pet birds die, their bodies don’t disappear, they lay there until cleaned up.

Two small dogs can eat from the automatic feeder at once.

Pets can eat garden plants.

Dogs can howl and cats can meow along with instruments.

Your Sim can drop a fish from your inventory onto the ground and their cat can eat it.

If your Sim dog uses the guard-the-house interaction, it will actually bark at any strays that happen to come by your door.

Foals will get a negative moodlet if their mother isn’t around. However, if a Sim gives lots of love and feeds it when it’s hungry, in a couple of days the moodlet changes to a positive one saying that it’s not missing the mother anymore because of all the care you provided

Death

There are only two graveyards in the game with fully unique and custom graves, and no generic ones. They are the graveyards of Sunset Valley and Riverview. Appaloosa Plains is unique in that it has a pet graveyard.

Burning, electrocution, and starvation are by far the most common causes of death among the preexisting graves, with old age being surprisingly common.

If you make a ghost Sim as a playable Sim and have them paint, all their paintings will get the Simoleon bonus to value from the painter being dead.

Your pets can save your Sim from death.

You can have funerals when a Sim from your household dies.

Small tombstone: Dies before 75,000 lifetime happiness points. Medium tombstone: Dies between 75,000 and 149,000 lifetime happiness points. Large tombstone: Dies at 150,000 and above lifetime happiness points.

Sims Graves have different emblems on them depicting how they died; flames, hands reaching out of water, shark jaws, etc.

Expansions

You can discover islands on Island Paradiso.

Isla Paradiso is full of hidden chests on secret islands.

Sunlight charm spell changes a wolf to their human form.

Some Supernatural portraits & paintings (marked with purple border in Build Buy) change during a Full Moon.

Vampires can raid the hospital and the grocery store.

Misc

When out in the ocean, the Kraken can appear. It can attack and sink your Sims small houseboat. It can spawn into Sunset Valley & Lucky Palms if you go out to the furthest point of the water.

If you have a microphone from university life in your inventory, your Sim can greet other Sims by shouting in their face.

You can plant cheese and eggs.

You can upgrade umbrellas.

You can store elixirs in the fridge.

You can waterski.

Sims can mess up an alchemy spell and become a toad.

Birthday cakes can catch on fire.

There are types of objects that aren’t in the catalog that you can make in the toy machine.

If your sims mess up the weather stone, it can rain flowers.

You can open a tab at a bar and if you can’t pay it, they will add it to your bills.

Aliens can steal space rocks from the science lab.

If you steal someone’s clothes after skinny dipping, they’re too mortified to go again.

If your sims are on fire, they can put themselves out in a shower or bathtub. They also put themselves out in dive wells from World Adventures and if you have a shower in a can.

You can upload your Sim sketches and paintings to the digital frames.

Sims can send thank you notes after receiving wedding gifts.

You can place snack bowls on island countertops.

You can announce aptitude test results to other sims.

Not all adult sims get a Midlife Crisis and there are variables involved.

You can go to therapy during a midlife crisis.

Sims who have body hair can get it waxed.

If you place a professional bar at a gym, with a mixologist, they can make protein shakes for your sims and a weird wheat grass-type drinks, graveyards have the tombstone topper and others. The library has basic drinks but one is “alien brain” and is a skill drink and stacks on the library moodlet and the supernatural bonus, so reading skill books takes way less time.

Sim can free criminals from jail with the mining tool.

Celebrities can’t be abducted by aliens.

You can throw herbs at the fireplace, and it will give you a moodlet that varies depending on what herb you have.

Selling objects in the Consignment store is something you can improve over time.

Your Sim can sue people for slander at City Hall when you’re a celebrity and they spread rumors about you.

Details

The stones at the bottom of the fishbowl change depending on what you put in it.

Artistic, Can’t Stand Art, Computer Whiz, Evil, Genius, Gloomy, Insane, Neurotic, and Virtuoso Sims all have different and unique painting styles.

Fish can spontaneously breed if you put them in fish tanks.

If you are being robbed, and the police come to put the burglar in handcuffs by their car, while they search your house, you can click on the burglar to set them free. They will even thank you for doing so, promising to make it up to you, although they never do.

Cats can jump onto Sim’s lap and they can pet them.

You can drag the greeting card into a big digital frame.

You can get a “wrong number” call.

Clones will be attracted to the cloned Sim.

Cats can sleep on newspapers.

Sims can get a dirtbag reputation if caught cheating. If caught a lot of times, they get a slimeball reputation.

You can “Play in Sand” in the spots where you painted the terrain with sand.

If you have a big dog and a puppy or a cat and a kitten, they can cuddle together in a big pet bed.

Different bars will serve different food depending on the lot type. You can get onion rings, nachos, and hot wings at the normal lower-tier bars but olive platters and shrimp cocktails are reserved for fancy places like exclusive lounges, vampire lounges, and art galleries.

Sims can get sick eating bar food at the lower-end bars.

You can preview a house before you buy it by clicking on the magnifying glass.

Sims can chat on the bunkbed and interact on the playpen.

Try using “Disco tags” in the cheats menu (Ctrl+Shift+C) and go to the map view.

Sims can read lying on the beach towel.

You can style the time machine.

Bonehilda will fight robbers.

Hydrophobic sims won’t accept a fishbowl as a gift.

Simbots have 0’s and 1’s instead of zzz’s.

Male Sims can leave the toilet sit up.

Sunglasses have the reflex of the world.

There are 6 types of snowman - classic, evil, tragic clown, hockey, Grim Reaper, and alien.

With no couch, sims will play video games sitting on the ground.

There’s a city in the background of the university world.

Sims can have different sitting positions.

When your Sim spouse dies and comes back to life, they come back divorced.

Horses can ride boats.

When Plumbots pee themselves, oil is what gets on the floor.

If you place a rubber duck on the bathtub, Sims play with it while they bathe. If you place “World’s Brew Bubble Bath”, they will have a bubble bath.

You can change the colors of the street lights.

You get a popup when a pregnant Sim enters a costume party (it reveals the number of hours left for the pregnancy to end).

Store items come with new skills.

You can expand the inventory and relationship tab by dragging it.

Your Sim only earns LHP when your Sims mood is in the “bubble” on the Mood Meter,

If a Sim’s mood drops all the way to the bottom (-100), the Sim may simply refuse to do anything, even if directed to by the player. You can send them on vacation but if they become depressed on their vacation, it will be necessary to send them home.

The volcano in Sunlit Tides can erupt.

Ants crawl in and out of a public picnic basket carrying food.

Every time a Sims learning the Painting skill sells a painting directly from the easel there is a 20% chance that the painting will replace a wall decoration item in the local art gallery.

You can spy on neighbors with tab mode.

Your Sims can get bitten by mosquitos.

Sims can chat with other sims while cooking.

Friends can bring their kids over to play with yours.

Resort Staff NPCs sweep the floors of the resort.

Sims can get nauseous from foods with herbs.

Sims with the Asian Culture trait use chopsticks to eat rather than knives and forks.

Ghosts can swim in swimming pools but you can’t see their body under the surface of the water.

You can double-click on the save file you want to play on the main menu screen and it will start the game.

When you have the cheapest washing machine and your Sim tries to stop it from shaking, you will get a “Victory Over Washer” moodlet.

Magic gnomes spawn at random when you do related activities.

The trash bed in buydebug makes you stinky.

If you put your bird cage outside it might fly away.

The doors on cars matter, if a car has 2 doors, 2 Sims will get in, if a car has 4 doors, 4 (or 5) Sims get in. Also, babies and toddlers will be held by their parents inside the car.

Create-a-style

You can drag the whole palette to other objects so they get the same style.

You can swap patterns by dragging one of them onto the dividing line next to the other.

You can randomize patterns + colors by right-clicking on the swatches.

Right-clicking on the color above the color wheel, the game will give you a more appealing color (a different shade) than the one you have selected.

CAS

Right-clicking the icons at the top of CAS randomizes that part of clothing you are on.

You can have hairstyles in different outfits.

Build-Buy

Plants change in size as you place them.

You can make custom object collections.

If you typed in the cheat moveobjects on you can move sims by just clicking on them (on Build Buy mode).

You can set seasonal decor on your home lot to auto-change if you place the debug marker and then decorate accordingly.

If you press alt when building a foundation, you can change the height of it.

You can paint ceilings.

Mods

If you play with NRAAS Story Progression, no vampires or celebs will be in your town unless you specifically say you want them.

#ts3

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irueone · 6 days

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Some tips for The Sims 3 Buy/Build

Install LazyDuchess’ Smooth Patch to alleviate lag, esp in Buy/Build and CAS.

Keep your CC merged and organized, esp your patterns, this will also alleviate a lotta lag across all modes.

When building on community lots, or any lot rlly, avoid going to the edit world menu, and just put testingcheats enabled into the cheat window, then shift+click the ground of the lot to enter Buy/Build mode. This makes leaving it to save a lot easier, with less “preparing” screens to possibly get hung up in.

Lower your settings, you don’t need any adjacent lots loaded, and you certainly don’t need super water on either. You can always switch these back on when you’re done.

While you’re at it, remove your HQ mod, and turn off your Reshade/Gshade preset, or at least turn off your depth shaders. I only ever turn on my depth shaders when I’m taking screenshots for better fps while playing. The DoF shader esp requires a lotta resources your game could be using to simulate all those 78 townie sims instead.

Save as… vs Save, I Save as… at least every third save. It’s also just good habit to keep backups.

When using the CASt tool, set down everything you plan to CASt first, then switch to a category like the wall tool to avoid eventual lag and drag when using it a lot. Love yourself. You don’t have to suffer using CASt tool in an overpopulated category like misc deco.

Utilize the clone option through testing cheats to duplicate already CASted objects, it’ll keep your design just like the dropper tool, but it’s a lot less time consuming, I promise.

Don’t be afraid to use the swatch save tool for objects you use often, esp community lot objects, as it helps to keep your aesthetic consistent. I also keep all of my favorite streetlamps, benches, and public trash bins etc in a convenient custom collection folder to speed up the process of doing multiple lots in one sitting. These handy tools are there, use them.

The issue with custom counters. They mess up sometimes, if you can’t recolor it suddenly, here’s how to fix that. Now if you can’t place down a cupboard suddenly, even though nothing’s in the way, and you’ve got moveobjects on activated, try putting it on the wall a tile over, and then try adding it to your desired spot again. Lastly if you set down counters or cupboards at a corner, and it messes up the textures, but you can still recolor it, you could do what the video I linked above does, or you could simply pull out the CASt tool, and switch it back to any of its original swatches and click the check, then feel free to recolor it as you want.

Railings will also do the “can’t recolor” trick too, but this is a simple fix, just delete it, and replace it, and you’re good.

“Oh no, I switched between buy and build mode, and now my catalogue won’t load, and I can’t click on anything at all!” Don’t panic, hit F2 and/or F3 on your keyboard, these are shortcuts for switching between them, and if you’re lucky it’ll load properly again. Should you get the bug where you load a category and it’s somehow empty, don’t fret, just click on a different category and this should fix it. Then if you get the bug where all the objects you put down disappear suddenly, sorry your game is haunted. Call an exorcist, or just reload, they might reappear if you do.

Tbh, if you run into any kind of major bugs, it’s likely a sign to either save immediately or just restart your game. These only ever show up when you’ve been at it a while ( at least for me ), therefore starting fresh wouldn’t hurt. Probably also wouldn’t hurt to check whether you might’ve installed something the game didn’t agree with by running Dashboard, or put it through the ol’ Save Cleaner.

Honorable Mention: Keep an eye on the texture sizes and poly counts of objects. I know it’s tempting to build these ultra hyperrealistic lots with clutter at every inch, but unless you’re just doing it for screenshots, or for your story, or using it very sparingly, it is not by any means recommended purely for gameplay. This is just the truth when it comes to any Sims game. You don’t want lag, or max memory crashes, or save errors? The Sims 3 is a 32bit game, that’s almost old enough to drive, be easy on it.

#ts3

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