The much anticipated update to The Sims 2 Nightlife FAQ has finally been
completed! In between drawing my usual pictures of cute anime female bipeds
with questionably large hydro active optics and a quarter of a year absence
from playing The Sims 2, I finally got the munchies for some more ground zero
sim testing action thanks to all you great people out there who sent me tips
and leads! And fifty dead sims later and a blank memory bug, this sucker is
ready to be upgraded! Actually, this update was done simultaneously with my
The Sims 2: University FAQ, and seeing as how the next expansion pack The
Sims 2: Open for Business is right around the corner, I wanted to get it out
of the way before I bury my head in the game's sand and fail to acknowledge
my friend's and co-worker's right to existence - or the need for sleep and
food for that matter. In unrelated news, I'm considering displacing some of
the more non-expansion specific info from both FAQs into a more generalized
base FAQ in the future.
So what's new? To top the list off, the ever popular action guide has had
several new entries added to it and has been heavily refined, and there are a
couple of new tricks and glitches in their respective section and the usual
all around grammar correcting good cheer! Overall though, the Action Guide is
80% of what this update is about, so please enjoy. ^_^
Now with 50% less beached whales due to popular demand, the spirit of The
Sims 2 University Practical FAQ that was anything but practical has now been
carried on into this The Sims 2: Nightlife FAQ! Yeah, I suppose sometime down
the road when Maxis gets to their seventh or two hundredth expansions for
this game, I'm going to have to compile it into one huge abominable ocean of
nonsensical advice in a War and Peace sized textbook, but for now, I'm going
to target this expansion specifically! Actually, to be more accurate, this is
an "Expansion FAQ". There are many basic techniques and cute little entrails
of information in my The Sims 2 University FAQ that covers the core game and
university, so please consult it if you have a more general question about
the core game or The Sims 2: University, and of course, there are many other
great FAQs and forums out on the internet to help you in all your simming
needs!
The Sims 2: Nightlife is the second expansion pack to grace The Sims 2
lineup, and focuses on the dark and exotic scene when the moon is full, the
night is young and the sims run wild all over downtown! There's a little
something for every The Sims 2 player with this expansion pack! From the OCD
perfectionist Level 99 powering RPG inspired zealot to the laissez faire
casual gamer who loves to watch soap operas unfold to the psychopathic
homicidal gamer with a tendency to oh, violently kill their own virtual
children off for a lack of a better euphemism, there's a whole new toy box to
open and dismantle for players all around the gaming table! Of course,
there's something for the master builders out there as well, and the great
artists cranking out that most excellent custom content, you will now have a
whole new bag of goodies to play with!
In addition to the core game, there are lots of fun and practical additions
that Nightlife makes in conjunction with the University expansion pack! So
much that it makes me want to bang my head into particularly spiky picket
fence when I realized just how much of my original university FAQ advice was
made obsolete by such game altering features as the inventory, cars, vampires
and those blasted blind dates that should go right, but never really do
(Actually, do blind dates ever go well in real life?)... oh, and those stupid
restaurants with the incompetent waiters and their projectile food.
Now then, before we start, I'm going to quickly review what I learned over
the past few months since my The Sims 2 University FAQ was released. First of
all, you The Sim 2 fans are awesome! Thank you for all your kind e-mails and
questions, I really appreciate it! You guys are the best! Second, EA isn't an
evil faceless corporate juggernaut - in Canada at least. Third, imitation
isn't the highest form of flattery, blatant plagiarism is, and to that I say
thank you! You never know if something is really good until someone tries to
pass it as their own and sell it on e-bay! Too bad it's against my personal
beliefs to make profit off of another person's or organization's work unless
officially commissioned too, hahahaha. Yup, that's going to come around to
haunt me alright when it's time for my next meal.
Since I covered so much in the University FAQ and not a big fan of copy and
paste methodology, virtually everything in this guide was original written
just for Nightlife, save for the very popular special move and command
section of my FAQ that everyone loves! It's now been updated! Please refer to
my University FAQ for more thorough coverage at:
This FAQ is based a little bit on my experience with the game, but a lot of
it comes from advice and help from many of the The Sims 2 related forums. I
have relied a great deal on others for corrections when making this FAQ, and
I will definitely still be relying on you for them when it's done. Thank you
for reading, and please enjoy!
=============================================================================
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: How Nightlife Will Traumatize Your Sims
[0] General Update
[1] Relationships Changes
[1.01] Chemistry 101
[1.02] Chemistry Factors
[1.03] Turn Ons and Turn Offs
[1.04] Perfecting Chemistry
[1.05] The Perfect Couple
[1.05] Changing Your Sim's Mind
[1.06] Fury
[1.07] Contacts
[1.08] Interest Update
[1.09] Influence Update
[2] Aspirations Update
[2.01] Wealth Aspiration
[2.02] Knowledge Aspiration
[2.03] Family Aspiration
[2.04] Romance Aspiration
[2.05] Popularity Aspiration
[2.06] Grow Up Aspiration
[2.07] Pleasure Seeker Aspiration
[2.08] Grilled Cheese Aspiration
[3] Sim Inventory
[3.01] Inventory Mechanics
[3.02] Usable Devices
[3.03] Consumable Potions
[3.04] The Inventory Advantage
[4] In Cars
[4.01] About Cars
[4.02] Building a Garage
[4.03] Car Alarms
Chapter 2: Going Downtown
[5] Why Go Downtown
[5.01] Why Community Lots Don't Suck Anymore
[5.02] Downtown Design Essentials
[5.03] Nightlife Benefits to University Young Adults
[6] Restaurants
[6.01] Eating Out
[6.02] Favorite Foods
[6.03] Disgruntled Waiters
[6.04] Getting A Discount from the Host
[6.05] Skipping Out On the Bill
[6.06] Restaurant Tricks
[6.07] Why Restaurants Suck
[7] Recreation and Fun
[7.01] Being the DJ
[7.02] Bowling
[7.03] Photo Booth
[7.04] Poker Table
[7.05] Electro Dance Sphere
[7.06] Karaoke Machine
{8] Miscellaneous Downtown
[8.01] How to Make A Cemetery
[8.02] Building a Base
Chapter 3: Getting Together
[9] Dates
[9.01] How To Get A Date
[9.02] How Dates Work
[9.03] How to Have the Date from Hell
[9.04] How to Have a Dream Date
[9.05] Rewards and Punishment
[10] Outings
[10.01] How To Go On An Outing
[10.02] How Outings Work
[10.03] The Worst Case Scenario
[10.04] The Omni Outing
[10.05] Goodies And Grief
Chapter 4: Vampires
[11] Going Vampire
[11.01] Becoming A Vampire
[11.02] The Vampire Lifestyle
[11.03] Special Abilities
[11.04] Curing Vampirism
[11.05] The Ultimate Vampire
Chapter 5: Meet The People
[12] New NPCs
[12.01] The Matchmaker
[12.02] The Count and Countess
[12.03] Mr. Big and the Diva
[12.05] The Slobs
[12.06] The DJs
[12.07] The Host
[12.08] Waiter/Waitress
[12.09] The Chef
[12.10] Mrs. Crumplebottom
Chapter 6: Action Guide
[13] Special Skills, Commands and Actions
[13.01] Hidden Skills
[13.02] Special Manual Commands
[13.03] Age Based Interactions
[13.04] Special Effects
[13.05] Automatic Commands
[13.06] Object Based Interactions
[13.07] Dining Interactions
[13.08] Motive Desperation
[13.09] Aspiration Desperation
[13.10] When Disaster Strikes
[13.11] Reactions to Death
[13.12] Paranormal Actions
[13.13] Career Reward Actions
Chapter 7: Wrapping Up
[14] Cheats
[15] Closure
[16] Copyright
[17] Special Thanks:
[0] General Update: For When the Instruction Manual Self Destructs
The Sims 2: Nightlife adds so many excellent things you'll be wondering if
they were there since the beginning game or not! One thing you can change now
in the gameplay options is to have the surrounding neighboring buildings
around the lot visible while in actual play, as well as the decorations you
used on the neighborhood screen! Also, if you click on a neighboring lot, you
can now conveniently swap over to play them! These features are awesome, and
definitely make screen snapping album makers like myself happy when you have
a lush backdrop instead of a patch of infinite blue! Granted the quality of
the surrounding area is reduced to an abbreviated 3D model similar to what
you see on your neighborhood screen, but it's either that or your computer
implodes, and I much rather take the former. Another new and very much
welcomed addition to The Sims 2 is now the ability to adjust the fade
distance to increase or enhance game performance. You will find these two
options and a bit more under the newly improved gameplay options tab.
On an audio note, upon first playing the game, you'll immediately notice the
most excellent music they put into the game as well! Many of them are remixes
of your tried and true The Sims 2 songs that you heard way too many times to
not remember, you know, when spending like seven hours in build mode. EA got
some rather prominent artists like Timo Maas, Adam Freeland and my personal
favorite, Lemon Jelly, to work their music! Its nice weather for ducks, isn't
it!?
Another part of the game's interface that was highly improved is now the menu
screen for when you take to your car or taxi cab and go to a community lot.
The menu will now allow you to go straight to any place you want in any of
your neighborhood's communities, including the local area and downtown, as
well as university campuses for young adults. This also means that young
adults can go outside of their campus shells and go back to their home
neighborhood, to another university's campus or any of the created downtowns,
and do it directly as well, instead of having to go to the respected area's
neighborhood screen. They wouldn't get to visit other secret societies, but
oh well; you take what you can get.
While we are talking about the neighborhood screen, it should be to much
delight that you can now toggle between day and night! Downtown areas are by
default shown at night time, but you can switch any neighborhood back and
forth if you so desire! Just remember for those special effect lovers,
spotlights only work at night, rainbows only work during day. Along with the
standard lush and desert types of landscapes for neighborhoods, the game has
added two more new styles, dirt for those somewhat evil and cold
neighborhoods, and concrete for those cold and evil neighborhoods.
Added to the expansion at neighborhood screens are also new decorations like
spotlights and skyscrapers, which add to the downtown feel. It's a bit
depressing when a preset skyscraper is bigger than even your largest
construct on your largest lot by twenty fold, but eh, what are ya' going to
do? Well, you could use the cheat and build a 255 floor ziggurat or something
and blow up your computer, but that's not recommended, hahahaha, seriously,
don't do it unless you got your computer from NASA or something. Speaking of
lot sizes, the game adds much more variety! You can now get a petite 1X3
sized lot, and other lot sizes to help diversify your neighborhood when space
absolutely, positively has to be filled. Oh! There are also new preset
buildings in the houses bin, some complete with garages for that brand new
car! Speaking of garages, there are a few building tools added to the game,
specifically half-walls, drive ways and diagonal pools!
Heavy duty builders like me will be glad to know that you can now build half-
walls. Half-walls act very much like fences but can be painted and wall
papered. Unfortunately, you can't put tiles on them to make a half floor like
many of us were hoping, but eh, it's still a nice addition. Half-walls are
more for cosmetic and design purposes more so than practical gameplay. You
can't put doors, windows or wall hung objects on them like paintings, and you
can't put a gate on them like a fence. They do look good on a well designed
lots though or as a room divider or rail. About the only thing that actually
gets past half-walls is light, even noise and an Environmental score straight
from the depths of Hell, complete with roaches, pools of urine and piles of
trash get filtered out by an enclosed half-wall.
A new feature introduced to Nightlife that many might not notice at first are
the addition of rugs! Now, you can have that perfect little sheet of wooly
cloth to cover the floors and add some depth to the room that you always
wanted! Rugs can be stacked on top of each other for some neat patterns, and
they are great for hiding that unseemly repeating effect that ordinary tiles
give to large room. Be careful with Rugs though, as they can be somewhat of a
fire hazard, and little children can rub their feet against them to deliver a
static shock to unassuming sim!
Next on the list are driveways! They come in two varieties, brick and cement,
and also have extended parts that can be used to build a garage. Cars can
only be placed on driveways, and the garage is also mostly for cosmetic
purposes, save for in the case that your sim is a blood sucking vampire, but
it's good to know that they are there.
Finally, Maxis has made pool building much easier! Long gone are the days
when you had to fool the game to build that looped, squiggly, or just plain
distorted to Hell and back pool of your dreams! The game now allows you to
build diagonal pools, and the pool tool is far more adjustable and editable
than its old "Lay down a rectangle of water and that's it" version.
Unfortunately, you can't place ladders, lights or diving boards on the
diagonal portions of the pool, but it's no biggy.
No expansion pack for The Sims 2 would be complete without new interactions,
and Nightlife offers a bucket full of fish heads of them! In particular, you
can now mass call sims to dinner, including guests and your household or
everyone in one step! Saves that clickity, clickity pain! Also new to the
game is the "Ask" social interaction menu. It's so obvious you'll wonder why
they didn't put it in sooner. Now you can ask sims to find out information
about them, like what their wants are, what their job is, their zodiac sign,
how skilled they are, and of course, how much money they will give you if you
marry them. You can also ask them out on a date as well as offer to give them
a ride back home or to your sim's place while on the date. Other ask
functions like "Ask to Join" get their own command on the main menu still, so
don't worry too much about command clutter! The "Ask" command can also be
used to start casual groups or ask sims what they think of your sim, but way
more on that later!
Along with the new object interactions, there's also a new dance in town, the
Smustle -- which is just plain disturbing - and kids can do it too! Of
course, there are now a few new romantic interactions, including the Slow
Dance! Now you don't need to be around music for your sims to dance, and they
can now do it with feeling! The slow dance also has three subcommands that
can be used during it, and often is chainable with related wants in sequence.
Finally, there are plenty of special interactions that can be done at the
dinner table between lovers and friends. Really, there's so much to talk
about, but this section is starting to get embarrassingly long, so I'm going
to have to snippity snip.
Of course, there are also new cloths, new hair styles, and other new goodies
to customize your sim's appearance with, and a few extra yummies, but I'll
save them for later in the FAQ!
=============================================================================
[1] Relationship Changes: Sims Have Feelings Too! Trample Them!
There are many new additions to the relationship system in The Sims 2:
Nightlife! Now your sims have chemistry between each other that can make
their dates a living Hell or Heaven on Earth! Also new are the turn ons and
turn offs, special preferences that sims are looking for in their potential
mates! One of my personal favorite additions is Fury. Now, your sims can be
thoroughly pissed off at each other, and they will indeed show their inner
most contempt for the rest of sim kind, or at least at your sim! On the
opposite end are contacts, people who want to lick your sim's boots and will
have a temporary positive relationship with your sim! These factors are at
the core of the new expansion pack, so enjoy!
[1.01] Chemistry 101: Because Alchemy Just Doesn't Work Like It Used To
The Sims 2 Nightlife is all about good chemistry, well, either that or
chemistry gone terribly, horrifically wrong, one of the two. Now sims can be
irrationally biased pricks too, and doesn't that just make the game so much
more realistic?
The chemistry factor affects your sim's ability to interact with another sim,
particularly in regards to romantic actions. Positive chemistry increases the
success rate of social interactions, as well as allows certain actions, as
represented by a lightning bolt next to the interactions name to be boosted
to be executed earlier than normal, although it should be noted that it's not
necessarily a good idea to actually do so unless their compatibility is
extremely high, as it still usually stands a good chance of being rejected.
These bolts will be very prominent when you are just opening up a fresh
relationship, often helping to guide your path in woohooing the perfect guy
or girl of your sim's dreams, but they will go away from the command menu
when your sim starts to max their lifetime and daily relationship with the
person in question, since they will have freely unlocked all social
interactions and have no need for the chemistry boost.
Personally, I recommend when interacting to pick the next most powerful
interaction down from the lightning bolt, as it's almost guaranteed to work
instead of the actual lightning bolt command, which might deep fry the
relationship. This is especially true on dates when you don't want to add
insult to injury and get a flaming bag of poo the next morning. This is of
course, unless you are experienced with what and what will not work based on
the relationship and chemistry score, which takes quite a bit of play
experience to master now with the chemistry system in place which gives
different levels of success and accessibility. It's also interesting to know
that chemistry also "helps" with negative interactions under the irritate
command if the relationship is in the negatives, although exactly what else
could not go wrong from using a negative interaction with chemistry is beyond
me.
In order to get a read on your sim's chemistry in a relationship with another
sim, the most direct course of action is to use the "Check Out Sim" command
under Flirt, don't worry, it wouldn't piss the other sim off, they wouldn't
even know that you are stalking them. You can also ask them if they like what
they see under the "Ask" menu or just execute a romantic action to get a read
on their compatibility.
You'll know that two sims have good chemistry by looking at the thought
bubble of the person over a sim's head. If you see a bubble with a sim's face
in it with hearts fluttering about happily, it means that there is at least
some positive attraction there. Likewise, if you see a bubble with Xs flying
and the sim acts like they are going to vomit, it's a bit of an
understatement to say that they might not naturally get along so well.
Sometimes, your sim will automatically add another sim to their chemistry
relationship list, but this only seems to apply if they have positive
chemistry.
A more wide spread course of action is to click on your sim and have them use
the "Scope Room" action. Doing so will run a quick check, and any sims with
positive chemistry will have a white aura around them. It should be noted
that Scope Room is based on your sim's sexual preference. If you sim only has
had relationships with guys, then only guys will glow white, the opposite is
true for the lovely ladies. Of course, if your sim is bisexual or nonsexual,
then the scope will be scanning both sides of the field. If your sim hasn't
had a romantic interaction with or checked out another sim though, the "Scope
Room" ability will not be available
Oh yeah, if you were wondering, all sims have the potential to be bisexual,
so unlike in our world where same sex relationships aren't something
universally accepted, in The Sims 2 world, any sim can romantically involve
themselves with any other sim with no objection, regardless of gender. As a
matter of fact, if I were to be thinking in my usual extremely practical game
exploiting manner instead of my society dictating "common sense", I'd have to
say that a bisexual sim has an advantage over one that only plays one side of
the fence, since they have a wider selection to go through. As soon as a sim
stakes their sexual preference, their chemistry boosted commands will
automatically be displayed when dealing with compatible mates.
Sims cannot develop chemistry towards family members or other sims that they
are romantically incapable of falling in love with.
Virtually all moves that can be boosted by good chemistry share in common the
ability to alter lifetime relationship along with daily relationship, keep
this in mind when using them.
A Sim's chemistry with another sim is represented by a little lightning bolt
icon. The numbers of the boost here are an approximation and vary between
their levels of power. There are 5 levels of chemistry attraction, here in
order from worst to best:
1. Lightning Bolt Crossed Out: Horrible Chemistry
Boost: No Boost, Higher Risk of Failure
2. No Lightning Bolt: No Chemistry (Or Unknown Chemistry Status)
Boost: No Boost
3. One Lightning Bolt: Good Chemistry
Boost: 15-10 Daily and 5 Lifetime Relationship
4. Two Lightning Bolts: Great Chemistry
Boost: 25-20 Daily and 15 to 10 Lifetime Relationship
5. Three Lightning Bolts: Incredible Chemistry
Boost: 40-45 Daily and 20-25 Lifetime Relationship
As an important note, the boost of chemistry might not be equal on both
sides, although it's generally around the same neighborhood within the bolt
indication. There might be times when one partner gets a boost in one action
that the other does not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1.02] Chemistry Factors: For When Love Isn't Blind, or Stupid
There are five factors to chemistry attraction, Zodiac, Personality,
Aspiration, Relationship and Turn Ons and Offs.
Chemistry is tough to properly evaluate, it's not as simple as one bolt plus
two bolts equals three bolts. There's actually an underlying numeral score
and the bolts are just there to vaguely represent it. This makes testing it
accurately very tricky. Without further delay though, the five factors of
chemistry are as follows:
------------------------
Zodiac Compatibility:
Of all of the factors to take into account, the Zodiac Sign is the most
important to take into consideration, if only because it's the only one you
can't change after sim creation. All sims are attracted and repelled by two
signs each, but it really makes no good sense why, and it's definitely not
symmetrical or systematic, kind of like astrology really (Depends on who you
ask). Speaking of astrology, if you know your real world astrology inside
out, you'll realize that the sim one isn't the same as the one we humans have
become accustom too, although it has the same signs, but I guess that's just
the just the way it is.
Due to the way the game works out, some signs have general overall advantages
over others, for example, Sagittarius is a well liked sign and apparently
doesn't repel any other signs, making it idea for Romance Sims who want as
many partners as possible. In the case of star crossed lovers, Aries and
Taurus work well together, since they both mutually attract and can be
adjusted to have similar personalities, which leads us to the next factor.
------------------------
Personality Compatibility:
Unlike Zodiac Signs that are positively or negatively affected by signs other
than their own, Personality Compatibility is based on how similar the two
sim's personalities are to each other, the closer the better. You'd think
this whole bit would be a big sweaty shell of redunda' fodder, since Zodiac
Sign is closely tied to personality initially in "Create A Sim" mode, but you
can alter the points within a certain degree and still be labeled under a
certain sign in create a sim mode. There are also a few ways to alter
personality, the safest being elderly and parental encouragement. On the flip
side is the not so safe way, which involves killing your sims off and
bringing them back with the Resurrect o' Nomitron wrong, either as a zombie
or on the side of cheap that reverses their old personality.
Personality is the second most important compatibility trait, simply because
it's very difficult to change controllably, especially for anyone older than
a Teen as encouragement starts to lose effect and you'll basically need an
elder in the family. To throw salt on wounds, you'd need to have two parents
with extreme opposite personalities to have good control over their child's
personality, which takes planning and lots of forethought, and there will
still be one stray personality value left unless there is an elder to
straighten it out. This is because parents can only encourage another sim to
be at a level of personality equal to their own. It'll at least be this way
until a new expansion pack introduces another way to alter personality, like
the good old crystal ball from the first game.
------------------------
Aspiration Compatibility
Aspiration type is a big part of the game, and now different aspiration types
have different compatibility relationships with others. All aspiration types
love other sims of the same aspiration, so that's the safest bet, but let's
face it, having a town of all the same aspiration is boring, and probably
impossible thanks to the expendable NPCs that keep on coming back despite
making your city into a death trap. Outside of having the same aspiration
type, which will always be good chemistry, attraction between aspiration
types is a mixed bag that is not shared equally on both sides. Aspiration
used to be harder to change than even personality, only getting one shot at
it in university, but now with the aspiration item the ReNuYu Senso Orb, it
becomes almost as easy to change as turn ons and turn offs, allowing for
interesting gameplay.
------------------------
Relationship
The saving grace of chemistry, when your sims have a strong daily and
lifetime relationship, their chemistry score will also get a boost. It's
practically impossible for two sims that are the best of friends to have bad
chemistry with each other. Unfortunately, this is quite useless in actual
practical effect since chemistry specifically helps build relationship faster
and safer. When two sims already have maxed out their lifetime and daily
relationship scores, the purpose of chemistry becomes pretty much obsolete.
Still, if you like the look of a triple lightning bolt, then it definitely
helps. On the flip side, if two sims hate each other's guts, they'll also
have a massive decrease in chemistry. You'll know that two sims are truly,
compatible if they can become mortal enemies and still have triple bolts,
albeit there's not exactly a good reason for them to be at odds in the first
place, unless one of them cheats.
------------------------
Turn Ons and Turn Offs
New to Nightlife, Sims now have turn ons and turn offs! In case you are under
six years old and live under a rock where cute little dragons hoard their
treasure night and day, turn ons and turn offs are what people desire in
their potential mates. If the lovely guy or gal in question matches the turn
ons of your sim and not the turn offs, then it'll give their chemistry score
a boost. In this game, turn ons and turn offs exist solely for effecting
chemistry between sims and can mean the difference between an easy romp and a
kick in between the legs, figuratively of course, it'd be awesome if there
was a social interaction to do that.
Newly created characters or children that grow up to teens can pick their
turn ons and turn offs, as well as the usual aspiration selection system, but
old sims from before the expansion get a random batch of them upon you first
playing them after Nightlife installs, however, Maxis knew this would piss
off gamers, and included a handy ReNuYu Potion with every sim from previous
saves that you can chug to instantly change them. Of course, Maxis also knew
that they would have pissed the Hell out of the world if they decided to have
turn ons and turn offs based on the color of a sim's skin, hence why they
aren't there, and to that I salute you and your politically correct minions
of orthodoxy Maxis! Anyhoo, there is much more about turn offs and turn ons
to come, but that'll be in just a little bitty from down here, so please be
patient.
[1.03] Turn Ons and Turn Offs: Hey Folks! Artificial Discrimination!
Well, that was a long wait! Since I'm already riding on a wave of words here,
I'll just get right down and crawl through the mud - that's right, crawl
through the mud! Of important note is that the "Best" turn ons and turn offs
are directly related to your playing style and who the majority of people in
your neighborhood are, or the potential mate you want to set your sim up
with, so there is no "Best" choice for all situations, ah screw that, Custom
Hair is the best turn on or turn off in the game, next.
Of all of the factors in the game, turn ons and turn offs are the easiest to
change, you can also change your own and other sims to match preferences, so
it's no biggy if your old sim from before the expansion gets some really
weird fetishes when you check their turn on and turn off tabs. Turn ons and
turn offs are also one of the more influential factors in chemistry
Here's a list of the Turn Ons and Turn Offs with small notes:
------------------------
Fat: Sadly, a turn off in our world and age (Remember when plump and pale was
in some hundreds of years ago?) but the sims seem to randomly love fat people
as much as fit people. Still, most townies are average build, so unless you
have a custom neighborhood full of fat people, it makes a safe turn off. It
makes the perfect turn on though however if your desired partner has the
Grill Cheesed Sandwich Aspiration. It's a difficult factor to change
unfortunately, albeit infinitely easier than in real life, just get your sim
to use an exercise machine till they have reached the desired weight.
------------------------
Fit: A good turn on in custom neighborhoods with sims that have been raised
with particularly strict athletic attention, whether they wanted it or not.
It's pretty hard to get a sim with high body skill that isn't fit
accidentally. The downside to being fit is that it's hard to change on a dime
if your date happens to hate athletes or supermodels, so you have to really
plump your sim out through over eating. Keepin' it real!
------------------------
Stink: There is really nothing good that comes out of having this as a turn
on, it's probably the worst turn on you can have, since sims who start to
stink generally have extremely low hygiene and have other things on their
mind than chumming about with romantic interests. It makes a natural turn off
though.
------------------------
Cologne: All sims can buy a bottle of cologne for 125 simoleans, it can last
up to four and a half hours if you don't ultra speed through it, so it's a
safe turn on to have and also a safe turn off, since you can use it at will,
so long as you got the scratch to pay. It's downside of course is the fact
that it costs bling whales and it's temporary.
------------------------
Vampirism: Makes a safe turn off if you don't plan to have any vampires in
your neighborhood, but what fun would that be? On the flip side, if your
vampire loving sim's mate isn't to their liking, you can always remedy that
problem should they be vampires themselves with a big ol' bite. You can
always reverse vampirism with Vamprocillin-D.
Formal Wear: A good turn on, since it's controllable, but not particularly
constant, since non-controllable sims tend to rarely wear, if ever wear it
outside of special events. It's okay if you have two controllable sims and a
wardrobe though. Can't recommend it as a turn off, just incase you want to
dress the part for oh, a wedding or something trivial like that. Formal wear
and other clothing types can be changed with a wardrobe instantly, as well as
performing certain actions like going to bed, taking a swim or working out.
It is also be possible to make a custom "Omni Suit" like my main sim's custom
made "Xynthica's Universal Yukata" dress that counts for all clothing types,
however, it will only count for the style of cloths that you put it on as
with the wardrobe, so you wouldn't be able to hit all three clothing turn ons
at the same time. Still, having like six outfits for the price of one isn't
horrible, and it's especially useful to give your sim when they start out in
create a sim mode.
------------------------
Swim Suits: A logical turn on for the voyeur sim in you, or pretty much any
biped with a pulse. There is actually only one reason why a sim should be
given this as a turn on, and that's specifically for hot tub interactions or
around the pool. I can't recommend it as a turn off though, since it's always
handy to have in those cases. I'm personally not sure if outgoing sims who
take it all off in hot tubs are classified as being in swimsuits, it has yet
to be tested.
------------------------
Underwear: Yeah! Panties! Fan service! Ahem... other than making an infinite
amount of sense as being a turn on, you almost never see non-controllable
sims in their underwear, save for extremely outgoing sims at Toga Parties, in
which case, I still have to test if the outfit counts as underwear instead of
a toga. Seriously, unless you don't approve of minor things like oh, how the
Hell sims can reproduce, don't give your sims this as a turn off, as they are
still technically going to be wearing it during Woohoo, and you don't want
that going south.
------------------------
Make Up: A safe turn on for girl lovers, since quite a few female sims in the
game wear makeup by default, although it doesn't quite always work that way
for the opposite sex so it makes a safe turn off for men lovers. Make up and
other facial features, including hair style and color, glasses, hats and
basically everything down on the this list from here can be changed using a
mirror. It seems that sims don't actually take off their Make Up when they
are about to take a shower or go to sleep, so it seems to have a pretty
constant presence.
Not to imply anything politically incorrect here, but you can take advantage
of the Make Up turn on to "brand" your sim's love interests using the "Make
Over" option with the Cornerstone Variable Vanity table. This will accelerate
the attraction if your sim has a turn on for Make Up, and Makeup isn't as
obvious as some of the other turn on or turn off choices in appearance, so it
can help.
------------------------
Full Face Make Up: Very few sims wear full face makeup in blank default
custom neighborhoods, save for those that are ruled by clowns and evil pro
wrestlers, but it's an easily alterable trait, so if you happen to
aesthetically like it, it's not a problem. Full Face Makeup also makes a good
Turn Off otherwise.
------------------------
Glasses: I hate people with glasses, it makes me want to punch their squiggly
little faces in, or so I would like to say - if I didn't wear glasses.
Glasses are a good controllable turn on and turn off. The glasses do come off
on some occasions though, so it might not be as universally viable as some of
the other turn ons or turn offs.
------------------------
Hat: Who doesn't like hats? Oh wait, me, I absolutely hate hats, I can't
stand them, I think they are an insult to cacti everywhere. That being said,
hats are very changeable, just go to a mirror and pop one or off, makes for a
controllable Turn On or Turn Off, and at least a small amount of townies wear
them. Sims have a tendency to take their hats off when they aren't dressed to
go outdoors or are planning on doing something like sleeping or showering, so
it's not the most stable turn on or turn off.
------------------------
Facial Hair: Anyone who has their eye on the lovely ladies has a better
chance to fetch an ice cream bowl out of Hell with their teeth than to have
this as a turn on, seeing as how girls in this game are normally incapable of
having facial hair. It's a pretty safe turn on though for man chasers though,
at least a fair deal of townies has facial hair.
------------------------
Black Hair: It's black, its hair, what more is there to say? Makes a great
turn on, but a pretty counterproductive turnoff, seeing as how a lot of
townies, dare I say the majority, have black hair, well, that's the way it is
in our world anyway. If you are starting a fresh neighborhood with no
grandiose plans of community assimilation in mind, I highly recommend giving
your sim it as a turn on.
------------------------
Brown Hair: It's brown, it's hair, and it's everywhere! There aren't many
ways to go wrong with having brown hair as a turn on, and like all the other
hairs, quite a bit if it's a turn off.
------------------------
Blond Hair: Blonds are more fun! Hurray! And to think that they are going to
do the dodo in two hundred years (Actually, that article was more or less
debunked). Save the blonds! Have blond hair as your sims turn on! Well, if
you have it as a turn off, fair enough, I like black hair more anyway.
------------------------
Red Hair: Apparently, according to a study, red heads feel naturally feel
more pain. That being said, don't make their sim counterparts go through the
emotional half of it! Yup, it's a similar case with the other hair types.
------------------------
Gray Hair: Old people! Yeah! I love old people! Nothing says "I'm old and
rich! Give me some love!" like gray hair, not to be confused with white or
silver hair that says, "I'll kill you and use your entrails as a skipping
rope". Naturally, if your sim and his/her love interests are elders, giving
them gray hair can only be beneficial. It's not bad for young and regular
adults either, but don't give it to teens because they wouldn't be able to
romantically interact with elders.
------------------------
Custom Hair: Custom hair, in a few words is the absolute best turn on AND
turns off you can have in the game, depending on your gaming preference. For
example, if your entire city consists of giddy anime hair brushing school
girls (School referring to university of course) with hair color from all
parts of the Mississippi northern lights, then have a single guy with a turn
on for custom hair, he's going to definitely be in chemistry heaven. Well, on
the somewhat more practical side, you can just make all of the "anime girl"
sims extra yuri, and that'll do more than just solve the problem. Anyhoo,
bottom-line is that if you get a community of custom haired sims together,
it'll be all one love, love, happy, happy community!
Custom Hair can be of any color or texture as well, since you create it, so
you can have a blond who is still technically considered as having custom
hair despite it looking exactly like the preset blond hair. It doesn't work
at all well with the townies, but you can invite them home and change em' up
a bit to your liking. Basically, the work will take place outside of the game
in the Body Shop, but since hair color has an indefinite duration, it'll have
a permanent effect until you decide to change it. If you're really serious
about milking your sim community's potential, the Custom Hair factor is
definitely an aspect to look into. Of course, if you happen to hate the body
shop and don't like downloading custom content, well, then Custom Hair might
not be the Turn On to float your boat. On the flip side, if you don't plan to
have custom hair, it suddenly becomes the safest Turn Off in the game,
because nobody in the game uses it outside of your own sims, nobody that you
can form a romantic relationship with at least that I know of.
[1.04] Perfecting Chemistry: When It Doesn't Blow Up In Your Face
Chemistry and Compatibility in The Sims 2: Nightlife is a surprisingly hard
thing to predict. Unless you happen to know about the finer details, you'll
probably rely on trial and error to find your sim's perfect match, which can
be a bit of a pain can't it?
The following tables regarding Aspiration Compatibility and Zodiac Sign were
taken directly from the official www.thesims2.com site and I hope you to find
them as useful as I did:
-----------------------
B: Bad
N: Neutral
G: Good
(R) (W) (P) (F) (K) (PS) (C)
Romance G N G B B N N
Wealth N G B G N G G
Popularity N B G N B B N
Family B N B G G B N
Knowledge B B N N G N N
Pleasure G G N B N G G
Cheese N N N N N N G
-----------------------
I'll level with you folks, I agree with the Zodiac Sign chart, since I've
crossed referenced it with other sources, and it seems to work in execution,
but I have my doubts about some parts of the Aspiration Compatibility table,
namely because I've experienced a couple scenarios where making a neutral
aspiration compatibility on both sides go bad had a positive effect on the
relationship chemistry and vice versa.
So you're probably thinking that an obsessive compulsive, perfectionist, RPG
level hoarding bastard like yours truly couldn't possibly come up with a
completely different version of the chart through repeated painful accounts
of trial and error? Well, you don't have to spell it out so clearly, but
yeah, I did.
Unlike the official chart above, this one focuses on the actual outcome of
the final chemistry score, instead of what one aspiration type thinks of the
other. I have never seen through hundreds and hundreds of different chemistry
combinations a case where two people didn't have the same chemistry rating
for each other, they consistently and reliably mirror each other. There does
apparently seem to be an asymmetrical attraction between aspiration types
though like the above chart states, as evident when you use the "Check Out"
command and one partner is impressed and the other is indifferent, so it does
seem true that one aspiration type can like another, but not the other way
around., this is taken into account automatically in the final score, which
is what I am using as a measurement. Okay then, here are the ratings, unlike
the chart above, the one I researched has six different levels, although
please keep in mind that there are probably actually more increments of
measurement:
1. Sucky
2. Bad
3. Neutral
4. Good
5. Great
6. C. Lust
So you're probably wondering what C. Lust stands for right? Cheese Lust of
course! It is by far the most powerful Aspiration attraction. It practically
equals triple bolts even if virtually everything else between the couple is
wrong, so if you are thinking about making a couple with as insanely high
chemistry score as possible, make them Grill Cheese Aspiration sims!
Oh yes, please feel free to follow the aspiration compatibility chart that
works for you better. As I have not found enough volunteers to cross check my
version of the chart, I do not have complete confidence in its universal
accuracy, although it seems that the official chart has a few skeptics as
well. If you find my version of the chart to be accurate or inaccurate,
please let me know, I appreciate it.
Okay then! At the very least, any relationship between two sims in the game
can be turned into a double lightning bolt from changing aspirations and turn
ons and turn offs to fit on both sides to fit each other alone. The roadblock
in chemistry is generally the Zodiac Sign, since it cannot be changed.
Personality is a close second of course, since you can only change it
controllably if you have someone in your family in an older age group than
your sim. On the positive side, the other loose variables of chemistry that
are aspiration type, relationship and turn ons and turn offs are pretty
influential and adjustable, there's even a pretty good chance that you can
ring up a triple from just altering those three factors alone. It's not very
hard to convert crappy chemistry into good chemistry once you know how things
work out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1.05] The Perfect Couple: Are Not Born, They Are Made
It is very rare that two sims will just naturally have triple bolts without
you trying. Even if you pay the Matchmaker top dollar, chances are, she'll
just summon an okay double bolter from the heavens. A double bolter who's a
stranger can become a triple bolter upon becoming a lover, but where's the
fun in that? You want a couple with such insanely high chemistry that they
can tear each other's eyes out and become lovers again in the same day!
Do you want a couple with chemistry so ridiculously high that they can still
"Friendly Hug" each other when they are in the negatives? How about a couple
that doesn't just get to the third base in few short hours but a full blown
homerun? If you are, here's how you do it. Please take note that under most
normal circumstances, as mentioned above, a good deal of couples can be
changed up to meet the triple bolt level by adjusting aspiration type and
turn ons and turn offs alone. Personally, my main sim is a Cancer, so the
fact that Cancer is kinda' "Uguuuu..." when it comes to general or
specialized compatibility ticks me off, but she still managed to get a triple
bolt with her Sagittarius partner.
if you want to make a couple with perfect compatibility, which by the way is
pretty pointless at 100 daily and lifetime relationship since the success
rate of almost all positive interactions with the exception of badly told
jokes and automated chatting is virtually 100%, then this section is for you!
-----------------------
Perfect Zodiac Compatibility:
There are four Zodiac combinations that mutually attract each other:
Aries to Taurus
Capricorn to Aquarius
Gemini to Pisces
Scorpio to Pisces
Of these four, Aries to Taurus is the one that starts off naturally as having
the closest personality in Create a Sim mode, which bring us to our next
section.
-----------------------
Perfect Personality Compatibility:
If you start your sims as teens or younger and encourage them to match their
destined lover's personality perfectly then you have hopes of scoring the
maximum score for personality compatibility. This part of the process
requires a lot of planning and effort, and your sim should at least have
parents that have personality levels that match or exceed the child's
destined lover's personality, both on the positives and negatives. At this
point, it all boils down to lots and lots of encouragement commands. In the
case of a good match like Aries to Taurus though, you wouldn't have to
shuffle that many points to get them to match
-----------------------
Perfect Aspiration Type Compatibility:
The easy way to do this is to just have your two sims have the same
aspiration. However, in the case that the level of compatibility is all that
matters and nothing else, than have your two sims stick their heads into the
ReNuYu Senso Orb with crappy a aspiration level and fry the grill cheesed
sandwich aspiration into their heads. There will be more details regarding
this in a later section. Two cheese aspiring sims have the greatest
compatibility by far of all the aspiration matching, a practically guaranteed
triple bolt.
-----------------------
Perfect Turn On and Turn Off Compatibility:
This one is easy, you either make your sim's turn ons and turn offs match
their partner, or you make their partner match their turn ons and turn offs.
This process is a double sided road, meaning that it's ideal if both
partner's match each others preferences from both sides. You can't change the
turn ons and turn offs for your partner if they are an NPC not living with
you, so you have to work with what you can change.
For the first case, just have your sim drink a ReNuYu Port o' Chug or stick
their head into a ReNuYu Senso Orb with success, as opposed to grilled cheese
surprise. Next, just pick two traits that your partner has, like black hair
and wearing makeup that are indefinite in time duration for most all
circumstances, as opposed to temporary effects like wearing cologne or what
type of cloths they are wearing. This will help boost the chemistry on your
sims side.
In the second case that is changing your partner to fit your sim's turn ons
and turn offs, buy the Cornerstone Variable Vanity and use the "Make Over"
option. Assuming that your sim's relationship with the other sim is
tolerable, they'll allow you to prep them up however you wish, just like when
your own sim uses a mirror. You wouldn't be able to change everything about
them, but you can at least alter things like makeup and hair, and make them
look like your sim's dead lover in a creepy sort of Hitchcock inspired way.
Of course, if you know your partner's own turn ons and turn offs, try to have
your sim match them as well if you can't control them to change. You can
either use the wardrobe to change clothing if they have a preference for
underwear, swimsuits or formal clothing or use a mirror to put on make up,
change hair styles, or any other number of things. All of this of course will
take a moment, so it's recommended that you prepare for it before the date if
possible.
-----------------------
Perfect Relationship Compatibility:
This one is pretty much automatic, when your relationship with the other sim
reaches very high levels, their compatibility will naturally increase as
well. Just have the two sims hit off on each other normally and romantically,
and they'll have maxed out relationship compatibility in no time.
-----------------------
Love Potion #8.5 Touch Up:
If you want to absolutely, positively make sure that the relationship is as
high as the game can possibly allow, then have each partner drink a Love
Potion #8.5. Basically, this is like injecting steroids into a pink elephant,
there's really no need to since anything past this point in chemistry is
pretty much all in your head rather than in practical gameplay, but if you're
the kinda' person who likes the cake, the icing, the card, the cherry on top
and the box that the dang thing came in, then this is a good final step.
-----------------------
Well then, there you go, after taking care of all five variables, you now
have a couple that is so ridiculously compatible that they can beat each
other down with baseball bats and still be lovey dovey in no time, as a
matter of fact, most any interaction between the two will work as soon as
they appear, and your sims will even be able to successfully deliver friendly
hugs even when their daily and lifetime relationship scores are -25 each and
furious with each other! At a neutral level of 0 daily and lifetime
relationship, they also already start off at a healthy launching point for
middle level flirts and low level hugs and kisses. You can practically take
them from 0 to 100 in a couple of hours. How's that for compatibility!?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1.06] Changing Your Sims Mind: When Being Yourself Just Isn't Good Enough
Do you think that it's weird that even a beautiful young maiden of a sim that
you have watched and cared for like a doting father each and every sim day is
turned on by smelly vampires after installing Nightlife? No problem! Maxis
included two ways to easily change your sim's turn ons and turn offs. First
off, with every old time sim's inventory from before the expansion back was
installed is a ReNuYu Porta-Chug! Good for a one time use to change their
preferences, and of which I will discuss more in the inventory section.
Now, onto the second method to change your sim's turn ons and turn offs! The
dream machine behind this is the new and only additional aspiration reward
called the ReNuYu Senso Orb! All your sim has to do is stick their head into
it and get reprogrammed to witness the broader horizons of life! It costs
6250 points, comes with five charges and can change your sim's aspiration
type and turn ons and turn offs - but wait! There's MORE! IT CAN COMPLETELY
SCREW YOUR SIM'S MIND OVER AND GIVE THEM THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH
ASPIRATION!
Ahem, pretend you didn't read that whole part in caps and let's go on. No
longer will your sims have to go through the hell that is university to give
themselves a fresh perspective on life! Now even grown adults can experience
any aspiration they want, and Family Sims will now finally have a way out of
those nightmarish lifetime wants like "Marry Off 6 Children", like Hell they
will!
[1.07] Fury: When Cold Silent Homicidal Hatred Just Doesn't Cut It
Long gone are the days when Sims were innocent, inherently good love children
of the player! Now, you can look down on all of creation with pity and
embarrassment!
Fury is a special period where one sim is clearly pissed off at another sim
for a variety of possible reasons. In this time, the portrait of the
character in the relationship menu is eclipsed in a red haze that slowly
clears up like a clock and provides a massive temporary decrease in both
lifetime and daily relationship scores. It doesn't make positive interaction
with the sim impossible, but it definitely limits your options, since the big
scoring interactions wouldn't be around unless you work them back up to the
positives. You can restore a relationship back to its former state even when
still in fury if you work at it and do everything you could before, but it
might be a battle better waited out than fought.
Sims in fury that you do not control will make it their mission in life to
ruin yours. From stealing your newspaper, to kicking over your trash can to
just plain ominously creeping about your lot at night, furious sims not under
your control are obvious not very nice. You can pay them off to stop for 50
simoleans, but it's best to let things blow over and repair things after the
red clears up.
Fury makes the game much more "interesting", in an evil, more realistic
sorta' way, and balances out the game's original friendly environment. In the
old days before Nightlife, the worst two freewill controlled sims could
usually do on their own without pre-intervention was have the usual awkward
conversation, piss off each other with annoying pranks, and the occasional
poke and shove, but it never really escalated on freewill alone into a full
on brawl. Now computer controlled sims will escalate their negative social
interactions, even on community lots into full blown fights! I had two of my
best sims become mortal enemies with -80 on both lifetime and daily just from
one nasty set of exchanged social interactions on a community lot. Also, if
you influence a sim to attack another sim, there is far more leverage and a
much higher possibly that the two will start attacking each other out of
their own freewill.
There are several ways to incite Fury. First off and most guaranteed, is
catching someone cheating on your sim, resulting in a slap happy sim seeing
red. Another way is just attacking them and beating them into a bloody pulp.
Losing in a fight seems to automatically ensure fury, but so does simply
repeatedly insulting and attacking the other sim. Yet another way is when a
burglar robs your house, it results in your sims being furious at him or her,
yeah really. Another very reliable way is to use the "Throw Drink" command
under irritate to easily and understandably toss the victim of the splashy
surprise into a furious frenzy. There seem to be a lot of ways to feel the
fury indeed.
In regards to fury and all around general hatred, there is one personality
trait in the game that has become much more prominent in its role, the
Grouchy and Nice parameter. Even before nightlife, there was a difference in
behavior; like grouchy sims would cheat when playing chess, more and Nice
ones would take pleasure in joyful actions like hugging, but now there is
even more of an effect. In Nightlife, the freewill takes the grouchy
personally and has gotten around to making them pure evil. Seriously, I have
one old man of a grouchy sim, and he insults and attacks almost any sim he
doesn't have a friendly relationship with, I have to quickly exit the lot as
soon as I see him poking another sim, because I just know he's going to try
and attack them - again. Very nice sims on the other hand start their
relationships quite well, you can leave them on their own on community lots
controlled by freewill, and be pleasantly surprised at their new
acquaintances when you get back to playing them. It seems that being nice now
has definitely been stepped up in Nightlife to become a very important
personality trait if you happen to like your neighbors, and I don't mean in a
tiny drinkable cup of cow plant milk.
That's not all there is to being a Nice or a Grouchy sim now either, Fury's
power and duration is actually directly affected by how nice your sim is, at
least on their side of the conflict. A perfectly nice sim has the ability to
reduce the total time it takes for them to get a grip and subside from fury
by almost four times as fast as a perfectly Grouchy sim. Being perfectly Nice
also reduces more than half of the relational damage that being perfectly
Grouchy takes when triggering a furious state, along with having a generally
higher relationship score when the dust clears.
Nice sims also get a little behavior bonus that you'll notice if you watch
them carefully -- they don't fight back! If a grouchy sim comes up and slaps
one up the side of the head for no good reason, they'd sooner run away with
tears streaming out of their eyes than slap back. It's lacking a bit of
dignity to it, but nice sims are experts at keeping bad emotional fallout to
a minimum, which can be extremely helpful if you don't like to watch your
sims wring each other's necks. Of course, if your nice sim still has high
body score, they can still finish what another sim starts if they are full on
attacked. Generally, if you have a good relationship that has taken a furious
hit, then being Nice can only be an asset, on the other side of the coin
being Grouchy actually has some benefits in the fury department as well, if
only because it exploits the game mechanics.
There is a unique case where a smart player can use fury to their advantage
to actually increase relationship! It is best used if their sim is especially
Grouchy, but it'll work with any sim to varying degrees. If a sim already has
hit the bottom of the hate well and is in the deep -100 in daily and lifetime
relationship, or pretty darn close to there, a sim can actually heal their
relationship by initiating Fury. The Fury period actually recovers the
relationship from its lowest point as it subsides by a very good amount, this
is of course, partially due to the natural recovery of negative relations
over time, but it's also because there's just nowhere else to go after -100
but up. Since Grouchy sims have a much longer recovery time, they'll actually
heal more, since they don't take any additional relational damage over -100.
This does take quite a long time though, so don't expect any immediate
gratification. It's also not exactly a common thing to "accidentally" get two
sims to hate each other to the point of maximum bloody red loathing.
So how long does Fury last exactly? It depends on the severity of the action
really and how nice the offended sim is. Doing something somewhat small like
throwing your drink at another sim can make them pissed off at you for about
5 to 18 hours, but beating the tar out of them can leave them burning in
their own rage for a day to half a week! So what's the longest time I've ever
seen? When a burglar robbed the house of a perfectly Grouchy sim, that must
have went on for what must have seemed to be weeks, probably enough time to
go through almost all four years of University come to think of it. Needless
to say, sims do not take kindly to having their houses plundered.
[1.08] Contacts: When Other People Want to Lick Your Sim's Boots
Put simply, Contact status is the positive opposite of Fury, they happen most
often when your sim has gone out for a good date or outing with a person with
connections, and you might get a phone call from one of their buddies later.
In my experience, contacts have always been, except for one case, people who
your sim hasn't met yet. They'll just call you up when you're all good and
not ready and ask for an outing, just like real life!
With Contacts, instead of covering their portrait in a red haze, you get a
blue haze and a nice boost to their relationship of something like 30 Daily
Relationship and 10 Lifetime Relationship, enough to easily cut to the chase
and make them your friend permanently. When a sim has contact status, you
should try your best to befriend them before the time is up, since it's a
very easy way to make a new friend. Well, that's it for contacts, so much
fury, so little friendly, hahahah. Oh yeah, since there is really only one
way to get contacts, they are pretty stable in length I'm theorizing, about
24 hours or so regardless of personality, of course, they are also generally
much rarer to come by because you can't trigger them at will, unlike Fury.
[1.08] Interest Update: When Grill Cheese Is a Cold Issue
Along with the original 18 interests that were around since the core game was
released, there is a bit of a hidden one that doesn't work quite as
conventionally, the grill cheesed sandwich interest. Seriously, I can't make
this stuff up, well, actually I can, but that's beside the point.
It might be that there is a grilled chees sandwich interest parameter in
everybody, but unless they happen to have the Grill Cheese Sandwich
aspiration, other sims with it the same aspiration stand a snowball's chance
in hell of successfully communicating their cheesy good desire, and since the
cheese sim has frequent wants and fears relating to it, it's rather important
to them.
Oh yes, this is not exclusive to the expansion pack, but I did more testing
on interests in my epic crusade to try and max out my main sim Xyni and
discovered the following. Apparently, there is indeed a limit to the total
amount of points a single sim can have in interests, if it exceeds the limit,
then other interests decrease to compensate. The magic number hovers around
101-110 total interest points. If an attempt either by reading magazines or
sharing interests is made to exceed the 101 number, then it is extremely
likely that the total number will rebound back to 101 by decreasing other
areas. You can crawl past it just slightly, but 110 is about as far as you
can stretch it to. On the other hand, a sim who has less interest points than
101 can safely increase their interest in any area they wish without fear of
a rebound until they meet the set number. It should also be noted that sims
start having serious trouble reading magazines for long periods of time when
they are around the 90 point or so period and wouldn't be able to sit down
and soak the information in as well.
[1.09] Influence Update: Being Even More Under the Influence
There are a few new influence actions for those with the luxury to own both
expansion packs!
Bite Neck: 1000
The most useful of the new influence options, a sim can now influence a
vampire sim to directly bite another sim, turning them into a vampire in the
process! It should also be noted that if you influence a Count or Countessa
to do so, their chances of success will be significantly higher, even on
complete strangers, as opposed to if you influenced a regular vampire.
Drink Vamprocillin-D: 1000
Basically the opposite to the Bite Neck influence command, Vamprocillin-D is
a potion you can buy from the Matchmaker for 60 simoleans, and if you take it
out and put it directly onto an open space on a square, you can influence
vampires to drink it to be restored to normal. Take note though that there
seems to be a bug in the game that prevents computer controlled sims from
being influenced to drink Vamprocillin-D. Kind of stupid, since that's pretty
much the entire point of the command. The option will be available, they will
acknowledge the action, but the game will make them not actually jump into
action. That doesn't mean that they can't be restored though if you gain
control of them and have them drink it manually.
Serve Grill Cheese Sandwiches: 2500
A notorious influence ability exclusive to cheese sims. Cheese sims can
influence other sims to cook grill cheesed sandwiches regardless of their
cooking skill level or time of day. Cheese sims also have a high paying want
that corresponds with this.
Sing Karaoke: 1000
You can influence a sim to make an idiot out of themselves on lots where
there is a karaoke machine available. There seems to be a corresponding want
to this, and in all fairness, it's rather fun watching people sing very badly
like an American Idol reject.
Sing With: 1000
I hate duets, I really hate duets. They annoy me. To have a sim sing with
another sim at the same time, just use this influence option. Their
relationship with the other sim should at least be tolerable for it to work.
=============================================================================
[2] Aspirations Update
All of your favorite aspiration types are back and more fleshed out than
ever, but making their new appearance in this expansion pack are two new
aspirations! Now, the highly anticipated Free Loader, errrr, I mean, Pleasure
Seeker aspiration is available! So what's the second new aspiration? Well, if
you didn't see it being mentioned several times already, read on down!
=============================================================================
[2.01] Wealth Aspiration
It's back with a fistful of cash and more worldly desires than before! Well,
that's what I would like to say, but aside from a desire to try out some of
the new toys and social interactions in the game, wealth aspiring sims
haven't changed much, they are still reliable and solid choices for climbing
the corporate later though, and I'm willing to bet in the next business
oriented expansion pack, they are going to take a big ol' spotlight.
On the plus side for wealth sims in this game, they gain an extremely big
benefit from the inventory, so much that it feels like you are cheating. When
you stash an object, say an expensive painting away in their inventory, their
want to buy it again will be renewed for you to quench again. Additionally,
object's values don't depreciate in the inventory, so you can easily exploit
the wealth sim's want to buy things by stashing them immediately after buying
them and then selling them a day and a bit later for no loss of aspiration or
money!
The most evil and twisted aspiration in the game has just gotten even more
evil and extra twisty with the addition of vampires! Now, most sims don't
want to be vampires, and if they are, they want to be bloody cured of the
dang ailment, but not knowledge aspiring sims, they want to share the love in
big watery mouthfuls with as many people as they might remotely like! Bleh!
If you are thinking of making a vamp who wants to spread their lifestyle,
pick the knowledge aspiration, you wouldn't regret it. There is so much fun
to be had with vampires though that I definitely had to make a section in
this FAQ dedicated to them, and will cover more of the importance of the
knowledge aspiration in it as well. Oh yeah, if you read my last FAQ on The
Sims 2: University, you'll know that the sims of knowledge aspiration have
the unique ability remember very bad things, like seeing ghosts, being turned
into a zombie or being abducted by aliens in a very good light.
The knowledge aspiration actually starts to gain relevant wants and fears to
particular phenomenon after first witnessing them, more so than any other
aspiration type. Upon seeing or being through their first alien abduction,
zombie resurrection, the grim reaper, or vampire turning, they will start to
have wants related to them. Other sims go through a similar process, but they
will most likely have fears about them instead of wants. For scoring
purposes, it's good to focus your knowledge sim in one instead of all
phenomenons, so they can combo their want satisfaction better, but having a
sim who's seen and done everything is also satisfying.
Not much has changed with the family aspiring sims with this expansion, still
good, still sweet, and still firm believers of monogamy. Like it's popularity
striving sister, family sims thrive on social interaction, and can take
advantage of the new dating features, however, they can get away again and
again with dating the person who matters the most - their spouse! How
exciting is that! Yeah, you can tell I haven't been married yet can you tell?
Actually, the Family Aspiration loses a bit out to the other aspiration types
in this game, because now any aspiration can go into "Date Override" mode and
gain intimate interactions with their partner, which was one of the things
the family aspiring sim excelled at originally that made them so reliable.
Oh yeah, I noted it in my previous FAQ, but although the family aspiration is
one of the most reliable in the game, right next to the popularly aspiration,
it has some of the most painful lifetime wants, like getting 6 children
married, getting 6 grandchildren, getting 3 children through college. This
especially screws up your game if you happen to be an OCD story teller like
me and have no idea how to fit something like 6 grandchildren into your plot
arc. Thanks to the ReNuYu Senso Orb, you can now switch your sim out into
another aspiration to fulfill a much easier lifetime want, the lifetime wants
of the wealth aspiration are particularly easy to achieve, then switch them
back with their lifetime platinum aspiration still intact.
If it weren't for the Pleasure Seeker aspiration, I'd swear that Nightlife
was made for romance aspiring sims in mind! Of all of the old aspirations,
the romance aspiration has the most to gain from the expansion. Now thanks to
the dating feature, they can get aspiration points and also get some good one
on one time with their potential love interests to shoot their meters to
platinum and through the roof! This isn't even taking into account that they
can now also conveniently woohoo in cars and in photo booths for extra booya!
The Photo Booth in particular actually allows them to do "Public Woohoo" in
the comfort of their own home oddly enough.
The chemistry system also gives players a lot more to think about to what
their romance sim's personality, zodiac sign and turn ons and offs should be,
so that they will have the sweetest honey to attract the flies. For best
results, get a romance sim who is a Sagittarius or to a slightly weaker case,
a Taurus which have the best attraction versus repelling ratios of any of the
signs. After deciding their chemistry features, make them start hitting on
anything that moves, except for the RC car thingie, that would be just weird,
and buggy (Seriously, the RC car is bugged, don't use it!). Now the only
thing you have to watch out for is getting caught cheating!
Oh yeah, if you didn't read my other FAQ, then you should take note that
romance sims are notorious for being self gratifying, disloyal, cheating
bastards that would sooner jump on anything with two legs that move than
conform to something as trivial as commitment, no offense to anyone who's
like that in real life. Trying to have a lovingly committed romance sim is
like trying to make a Chia Pet designed to be lit on fire. The problem that
comes with Romance Sims is that dating becomes very difficult when any other
lovers see your sim dating a new boyfriend or girlfriend. When former flames
are stalking your every move, it practically becomes a game of Metal Gear
Solid, and I'm not even talking about the radio waves that doing a woohoo
apparently sends to any potential hearts on the lot to come into your general
vicinity with extra slap happy virgin oil on their minds. Now then, when half
of the neighborhood is deeply in love with your romance sim and you go
downtown for a date, you can imagine the Hell that will ensue, it'll
steamroll your dating score, back up, then run over it again - in slow
motion. Remember folks, just because it happens in harem anime definitely
doesn't mean that it'll work here (Might work in real life though), so there
are two things you can do in order to keep your free loving sim from
disasterizing every date they go on in a town where everybody loves them.
First of all, you can kill all of your sim's old lovers *sips a cup of
coffee*. You know, I just realized just how morally bankrupt that sounds, but
really, it's not a bad idea. Just ask them to move in, take their money and
inventory, and then just chuck them into a pool without a ladder or an
incinerator room for that extra crispy flavor *takes a bigger sip of coffee*.
Actually, that's not an incredibly bad idea either, your romance sim might
not even have to work if he or she lives off of marrying the rich and mowing
them down underground after emptying their pockets, I mean, they're all just
expendable, worthless excuses for digital people after all *finishes the cup
of coffee*. Anyhow, remember, sims don't kill sims, people kill sims.
Actually, the above paragraph wasn't the best idea really; it's just the most
amusing. The best idea is to invite your sim's lover to move in, and then
move them to the family bin using the "Find Own Place" command on computers
and newspapers, that way, your sim will still technically be in love with
them, but they wouldn't be able to come and interfere with your sim's life.
This is especially useful for you to be able to achieve the multiple loves at
a time related wants. Keep in mind though that relationships deteriorate with
the passing of time, so you might have to move them in temporarily to refresh
the love then out again to the bin, this is not actually a bad idea either,
because when you move them out, they'll gain the default 20,000 simoleans,
and when you move them back in, you'll add that amount to your account as
well. Of course, this is kinda' exploiting the game, but if you don't like
exploiting the game, then you shouldn't be reading a FAQ in the first place,
especially this FAQ, hahahaha. Oh yeah, watch out when you ask a young adult
to move in, they'll automatically drop out of university in the process.
Young adults and adults look almost identical, so the best to tell is by
their voice sets.
The second, and infinitely more morally correct solution than the ones
proposed above is to simply have your romance sim date at home where the
roving public eye wouldn't follow them, but that just makes too much sense,
and where's the adventure?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2.05] Popularity Aspiration:
Ah, after practically writing an essay on the popularity sim in my last FAQ,
I'm sad to say that there isn't much new to say about it. Popularity sims can
take great advantage of both outings and dates, helping to satisfy their
rapid wants to meet new people and make friends, helping with their longer
termed goals. It's actually pretty fair to say that the concept of outings
had popularity aspiring sims in mind, since they are basically like parties
on the go, although pleasure seeking sims develop the relevant want to do so
far more frequently where popularity aspiring sims tend to want parties
instead.
Popularity aspiring sims definitely have a lot to gain by dating. Unlike
romance sims and more like family sims, they can stick to one loving sim and
not get tired of them, unlike real life I might want to add as I dodge
various implements of death being thrown at me. At peak performance, they
still have the highest aspiration point output, especially if they go on
frequent dates and outings now.
Oh yeah, in case you are wondering, my "main gal" sim that I mentioned
several times in my last FAQ as being a popularity aspiring sim is doing
fine, she's almost graduated from university with highest honors at the time
of writing this part of the FAQ. Her name is Xyni, named after my own
original anime style character which you can find on my site mentioned at the
bottom of this FAQ. She has blue hair, pink eyes, two legs, and loves her cow
plant, and is very much in love with a snail (My stories are messed up,
hahaa). Then again, the real Xyni has a man eating tail and collects
caltrops, but until the The Sims 2 gets the "The Sims 2: Completely !@#$ed
Up!" expansion pack, I'll have to improvise. Almost all of the positive
experience I have in the game comes from playing her and her family. On the
flip side, I also have Xyni's "Onee-chan" Rally Vippy. Rally has pink hair,
blue eyes, and is basically the exact opposite personality of Xyni, which is
to say that she's Satan. As you might have guessed, a lot of the "evil"
things mentioned on this FAQ are experienced by playing as her. I will
mention the two sims in a way similar to "Good Idea", "Bad Idea" later in
this FAQ, because I think it's !@#$ing hilarious.
Since Nightlife has so little to do with the children and the younger aspects
of The Sims 2, there is very little to mention here. I just thought I'd list
it here for the sake of completeness. The grow up aspiration is extremely
dependant on what stage of childhood your sim is in. As a toddler, they'll
want to learn the basics of life, like walking, potty training, and that kind
of fun stuff. As a child, they'll be more independent and want to do things
like play with other sims and make friends and learn how to study. Except for
family night outings, kids don't have very much to do with the Nightlife
Expansion, but it doesn't stop them from going to nightclubs if mommy or
daddy comes along.
Sim parents can't leave their children at home without a nanny, so bringing
them along to a nightclub, a bar, or a poker joint isn't actually a
completely horrible idea, unlike in real life where they could be exposed to
the lowest levels of human corruption. Oh yeah, on the bright side, similar
to how having children at home makes other children automatically appear as
passing by neighbors, bringing a child to a community lot makes other
children to interact with appear, and that means that your child will finally
have a victim to bully and attack.
Freeloaders rejoice! The new pleasure seeker aspiration has been introduced
into Nightlife, and what a pleasure it is! Honestly, I'd like to compare it
to some of the other aspirations, but there's just nothing particularly close
enough. Sure, it has the worldly desire to buy lots of stuff like the Wealth
aspiring sim, it has the drive to go on dates like the romance sim, and
perhaps it has a dab of the original grow up aspiration's playful nature, but
for the pleasure seeker, it's really all about having good times using fun
objects, going on great dates, not lifting a finger to work and juggling
balls! Yup, you can't forget to juggle balls if you have a sim with 8 points
and up or there is a juggling opportunity for an object on the lot, because
your sim will remind you that they want to juggle every chance you get!
In terms of lifetime wants, I have seen pleasure seekers have the following:
1. Become a Professional Party Guest
2. Have 50 First Dates
3. Have 50 Dream Dates
The Professional Party Guest job is the top of the slacker career, so it's a
pretty normal lifetime want shared by the romance sim, but the other lifetime
wants are rather unique. Believe it or not, the 50 First Dates want is
actually a bit more difficult than the 50 Dream Dates one, because you have
to date a different person each time. Well, it's actually very easy if you
don't mind them ending regularly in disaster, just go to the Matchmaker, pay
minimum wage for a date, then end the date immediate, it's almost as fun as
using a broken slot machine, but you might have to change up the prices later
on when you get the same idiot falling from the sky a few times. You should
be able to at least squeeze by with at least a "Good" and above rating with a
total stranger if you are actually trying and something doesn't go horribly,
horribly wrong, but it all depends on how you want to play the game.
With the "Have 50 Dream Dates" lifetime want, all you have to do is go on a
date with the same person over and over and over again. Your sim can even be
married to them, and the dates will go by very fast in getting to Dream Date,
since they can cut straight to the heavy duty romantic actions. I like to
call this technique "Machinegun Dating" and will cover it thoroughly later in
the FAQ in the dating section.
The pleasure seeker sim is probably the most difficult sim out of the
aspiration types to start off alone due to their tendency to quickly saturate
their wants list with wanting to buy objects that you might not have the
money to part with, and no other way to clear off their list. Of course, you
can use the inventory trick mentioned in this FAQ's inventory section to help
lighten the burden, but seriously, it can become rather annoying, since
unlike the wealth sim that has the desire to actually make the bread to buy
the butter, the pleasure seeker is basically a good for nothing freeloader, I
mean that in the nicest way possible. When making a Pleasure Seeker sim, you
might want to highly consider giving them 8 points of playfulness, because
unlike all the other sims who find the art of juggling completely useless,
the Pleasure Seeker sim can get a small regular boost just from whipping out
their balls, errrr, I mean juggling. Still, you don't absolutely need the
actual innate ability to juggle to satisfy the want, since sims can juggle
tumblers and bottles as well to satisfy the want, but it's a much more
portable way to satisfy a want than going to an object.
The higher their playfulness level is also generally means the weirder and
more out there the pleasure seeker's wants will be. This should at least keep
them a float till they fill their houses with materialistic goodness. Of
course, needless to say, the downtown feature of the game was practically
designed with the pleasure seeker in mind, as they'll frequently get wants to
just go there, and once they are there, they will find plenty of things for
them to do to help rejuvenate their aspiration meter.
A good strategy for pleasure seeking sims is to pair them up with adult
wealth aspiring sims. Pleasure seeking and wealth aspiring sims can help
fulfill each others needs. They both also frequently get buying object wants,
so you can get lucky and nail two birds with one stone by buying objects that
both sims want. Of course, needless to say, the pleasure seeker sim can
freeload off of the wealth sim's bling whales. An alternative, but very
effective strategy, similar to the romance sim, for pleasure seeking sims is
to have them specialize in dating wealthy sims, like Mr. Big and the Diva.
A pleasure seeking sim that specializes in dating for profit would invite
lovers to move in or marry, then kill or ship them off after looting their
money and inventory. It wouldn't take a well played pleasure seeking sim very
long to land a lover ready to move in after a good date or two, which they'll
most likely have wants to do anyway, and if you manage to land Mr. Big or the
Diva, you'll be set for quite a while to come, so it'll be done, done, onto
the next one.
Aside from all of the above, pleasure seeking sims sure have some fun small
time wants only exceeded in weirdness by the cheese aspiring sim. Pleasure
seeker sims love to play pranks on people, fair enough, they also are
particularly fond of using influence commands, however, that doesn't even
begin to cover their hilarious want to roast marshmallows over a fire jet
that could potentially fry their eyebrows off or to stay home from work.
That's right, pleasure seeking sims can actually get a puny counterproductive
want to stay home from work, something we all can relate to. They also will
want to do things like jump on the coach and take bubbles baths, and the want
to go on outings or dates is pretty standard with them as well. One other
cute want that certain personality pleasure seekers have is the desire to
change into their PJs when they are at home, I can kinda' relate, hahahah.
Finally, pleasure seekers also develop the want to buy children's toys, guess
there is a kid in every sim after all, except for romance sims, they're evil.
Oh yeah, Pleasure Seekers have one of the most hilarious desperation
aspiration animations of the bunch! They put a lamp shade over their head and
start dancing like the delusional disco inferno stud that they are, oh yeah,
they also make weird noises while they are at it, can't forget the weird
noises.
What's grilled, has cheese in it, and is sandwiched? A beached whale of
course! Errrr, I mean a grilled cheese sandwich, and now your sims that have
enough emotional problems in their lives to deal with as it is can be further
traumatized with dreams and ambitions of a better grilled cheese sandwich for
tomorrow! So how do you get this magnificently cheesy aspiration? Stick your
sim's head into the ReNuYu Senso Orb with green, and most definitely red
aspiration level and watch as they get the dreams of the ideal grilled cheese
sandwich implanted into their minds! In case you aren't familiar with
aspiration rewards slightly defective quirks, they tend to backfire when your
sims are lower than gold mode, the ReNuYu Senso Orb in this case is just
acting out it's defective paces.
So what is the grilled cheese sandwich aspiration good for? Absolutely
nothing! Hahaha, if only that were really true, cheese sims ironically gain
the most new abilities from their new found aspiration, more so than any
other aspiration type. Some of these special abilities include the talent to
make grilled cheese sandwiches at anytime of the day and to talk about grill
cheese sandwiches to other sims for a surprisingly big pay off if they can
actually relate, in which case is dismally not often unless they are also
cheese sims, since it seems other sims find the grill cheese fetish
apparently rather bizarre. Sure, they're pretty useless abilities, but then
again, what the hell good is the sexy walk for anyway?
Another ability of cheese sims is that they can influence others to serve
specifically grilled cheese sandwiches, this actually isn't all that bad of
an extra skill, since grill cheese sandwiches are at least a lot better than
the instant meals the lazy talent lacking townies tend to serve, although if
they burn down your kitchen in the process, your grilled cheese sandwich and
local friendly townie might be a little overdone, although it's good to know
that the sandwich is still somewhat eatable -- not so much with your
neighbor. Normally, you need two points of cooking skill to make a grill
cheese sandwich and it can only be done during lunch time, but cheese sims
can completely bypass that, as well as bypass the limit of others when
influencing them.
Cheese sims are actually pretty reliable in their wants, you wouldn't get
want palette lock too easily with them, since their grill cheese related
wants are simple to satisfy and small in variety. They're weakness however
seems to be that they don't have any gigantic payoff wants unique to them, so
you'll have to chip away at their wants in small doses. The simple wants that
they do have however, pay surprisingly well for such simple tasks. All you
have to do is keep them at home cranking out sandwiches all day long, but
hopefully you'll have another bread bringer in the family to keep the fridge
nice and full.
So what about wants? Well, compared to other aspiration types, the grilled
cheese sandwich is quite limited. They will have wants of eating a grill
cheese sandwich, serving grill cheesed sandwiches, influencing other sims to
serve grill cheesed sandwiches, and the occasional object or relation
oriented want that the other aspirations get as well. On the flip side, they
fear eating bad grill cheese sandwiches, burning grill cheesed sandwiches,
losing cooking skill points, and of course, our good old friend since the
dawn of time, fire.
So with all of this fun, what would the cheese aspiring sim's ultimate
lifetime want be, well there's only one, and it involves wolfing down 200
grill cheese sandwiches! They are definitely going to put on a little weight
for that one! So how are you going to count how many sandwiches your sim has
eaten? Well, each time a cheese aspiring sim eats a grill cheesed sandwich,
they get a vivid memory of it, beats me why anyone would make such a big deal
about such a small thing, then I remember the succulently smooth, warm and
gooey texture of a grill cheese sandwich, and I can kinda' relate.
For the normal "Eat Grill Cheese Sandwich" want, you can take one bite out of
it to fulfill the want, but in the case of getting a marker for their life
time want; they have to eat the entire sandwich for it to count. Since
naturally doing this will require your sim to eat it all in one sitting or
else it might rot, they will most likely overflow past their hunger bar and
put on weight. Basically, trying to have a fit grilled cheese sandwich sim is
like sticking your hand into a flaming toaster and expecting it to come out
okay.
In actuality, the best strategy with cheese sims is to have them work in
twos. Giving your cheese loving sim a partner to share their passion with,
serve and be served meals to is a great strategy, and kinda' cute in a sick,
nonsensical kind of way. In particular, they'll be able to satisfy their want
to talk about grill cheese sandwiches more, since sims of other aspirations
tend to have an inherent indifference or sheer hatred of them, regardless if
they have a high food interest score or not. Two grilled cheese sims together
also have the highest aspiration type compatibility possible, so that's
definitely something to look forward to.
Cheese sims have a rather hilarious aspiration desperation for when their
meter is in the deep red. They'll take out a cardboard plank with a grill
cheesed sandwich picture on it and fantasize over it. Grilled cheese
sandwich, I solute your greatness *Bites out of a hamburger*!
Finally! Long time fans of the original The Sims with its fully decked out
roster of expansion packs will be more than happy to discover that Maxis has
revived the inventory feature in Nightlife! Except this time, they loaded it
up with steroids, spun it around three times, and sent it out to the players
wielding an aluminum baseball bat! Ever wonder how the burglar manages to
steal things bigger than any single human could ever hope to carry, like say,
your new car? Well, we'll probably never know exactly how, but now your sim
can do it too, and isn't that all the better!?
[3.01] Inventory Mechanics: Your Sim's Own Personal Black Hole
The new inventory system doesn't just hold usable items like the cellphone
and consumable objects like cologne, it holds practically everything that you
can buy in the game, any aspiration or career reward, paintings and pictures,
and even a bag of flaming poo that pissed off daters leave on your front
door! For the love of all things holy, you can pocket other people's
tombstones! The basic rule is that if you can select and delete it, and it
isn't a window or a door, then you can stuff it down your sim's pants
(Seriously, where exactly do they put their belongings?). All you got to do
is enter the inventory screen and drag and drop the item into your inventory
bin, and your sim's semi-infinite black hole of a pocket will grip onto it
where ever they go! The classic "Bag of Holding" has got nothing on this bad
boy of a black hole inventory system! There is a time though when you can't
use the inventory though, and that's basically the same time as whenever buy
and build mode are not available, such as a disaster, a burglary, or on a
community lot.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[3.02] Usable Devices: Because the World Needs More Distractions
All three of the usable objects in the game that can be carried with your sim
and used infinitely originated with the University Expansion pack. For the
long, winding, and admittedly far wordier than it should be version, please
check out my The Sims 2 University FAQ, specifically the master copy on
www.gamefaqs.com.
-----------------------
The cornerstone of all on the go sim communication, your sim can take their
cellphone out of their inventory now! It seems from my experience, that you
can add cellphones sometimes by drag and drop, but other times you can't, so
your sim has to pick it up and use it manually to add it back again. I can't
believe I'm saying this, but I think Maxis finally fixed the cellphone waking
up people in the middle of their slumber problem. It seems now that when your
sim sleeps, their cellphone automatically stops ringing, yeah, I can't
believe it either. With the new downtown in place, a sim with many, many
friends can expect to be invited to go downtown quite often, feel free to say
no, as it can actually be rather disruptive to your sims' lives if they say
yes to every invitation. The cellphone is probably the number one most
important item to have in your sims inventory, and now that it doesn't seem
to wake them up, it's all the better. After using a cellphone for a while,
you'll start to feel naked without one.
-----------------------
Allowing your sim to whip out the music everywhere they go, so long as they
don't mind standing around in the middle of the street dancing like an idiot.
It's a handy device to use boost up your sims fun motive.
-----------------------
Ah! The ever addictive marvel of portable entertainment is still available to
enjoy for sims of most ages! As of the recent patch, sims now wouldn't have
to worry about getting a crush with themselves or another sim from the
wonders of gaming technology and metaphysical string theory application! Oh
yeah, if you didn't know, the word "LeTournament" is a play off of Maxis'
senior producer "Tim LeTourneau". In somewhat related news, if you were
wondering why the names of the objects in the game are so ridiculously long
and hard to remember, it's because Maxis hires tiny little elves slaving over
a typewriter to cram as many in-jokes as literally possible into each and
every little write up, very similar to how the Caramilk bar is made, except
those are made with evil machines. I like Caramilk bars.
[3.03] Consumable Potions: Liquid Solutions to Your Every Problem!
ReNuYu Port o'Chug
Price: N/A
Buy From: N/A
All sims that were created before the Nightlife expansion pack will get a
complimentary ReNuYu Port o' Chug magically deposited into their inventory,
free of charge! The blue potion is good for a one time change of turn ons and
turn offs. In the case that you want to get more ReNuYu Port o' Chugs though,
don't fret, pretty much all default townies come with one in their inventory
upon moving into your household and becoming controllable, so you can just
take theirs and deposit it into your inventory before introducing them to
your torture room full of fire jets.
Cologne is a handy little fragrance your sim can sprit onto themselves to
help increase their chemistry with sims who are turned on by it. You can use
it at anytime by clicking on your sim and selecting the appropriate command.
Cologne can last up to about four hours and a half consistently, however it
actually seems that going into Ultra Speed mode ends its full duration
prematurely, and not just special effects. You'll know it's working when the
flower petals flutter about your sim. With the exception of the ReNuYu Port
o' Chug, potions can also be bought in bulk in intervals of 1, 3, 5 and 10.
-----------------------
Love Potion #8.5
Price: 350 Simoleans
Buy From: Matchmaker
When your sim absolutely, positive has to make a relationship work,
regardless of trivial crap like the other person's feelings, then try some
Love Potion 8.5, because apparently the sim FDA deemed version 9 unsafe for
human consumption, works fine on cats though.
You can buy a bottle of Love Potion #8.5 from the Matchmaker for 350
simoleans each, and it's definitely worth using in a pinch, especially in
combination with the Cool Shades aspiration item for an enhanced effect
during a date. What Love Potion #8.5 does exactly is temporary boost
chemistry between your sim and any other potential romantic for a period of
game time. Strangely enough, if you set the game on Ultra Speed, the game
makes the potion's effects wear off prematurely, whereas if you play at
normal or fast speed, it seems to last reliably for four hours of game time,
so make sure you work fast within that time to dig your way into the
relationship. You'll know that the potion is taking effect when you see the
flowers sprout from wherever your sim stands and hearts are radiating from
them, as opposed to seeing birds suddenly appear whenever they are near.
Drinking a vile of Love Potion #8.5 usually adds about one or two bolts to
your chemistry score by multiplying the effect of your sim's existing
chemistry variables, however, if you happen to be controlling two sims that
you want to hook up, having both of them drink Love Potion #8.5 together has
a multiplying effect that basically results in an instant triple lightning
bolt chemistry. This is unless in the extremely rare case that every single
one of the five chemistry factors violently clashes, including relationship,
after all, a billion multiplied by zero is still zero. Even if you have just
one of the five factors that do work though and the rest clash completely,
you should expect at least a positive chemistry to work with, especially if
the relationship is descent, meaning that the lovebirds aren't ripping each
other's hair out. Having a couple with perfectly broken chemistry is as hard
to create or come across a couple with perfectly compatible chemistry, so it
shouldn't be an every day event that downing two Love Potion #8.5s each
wouldn't do the trick.
-----------------------
There's only one cure for the power of darkness that is vampirism, and it
doesn't involve chopping off a vampire's head, filling it with garlic and
whopping it with a silver golf club, and that cure is Vamprocillin-D! Along
with being able to cure your sim by clicking on them and selecting it, a sim
can influence another vampire to drink it for 1000 influence points and
return them to normal, however, this does not seem to actually work on
computer controlled NPCs at the time of writing this, as although they will
appear to comply, they simply wouldn't spring into the actual action.
Vamprocillin-D is also surprisingly cheap, costing only a measly 60 simoleans
from your local friendly Matchmaker!
[3.04] The Inventory Advantage: Exploiting The Game One Step At A Time
Now thanks to the inventory system, otherwise heartbreaking scenarios can
easily be remedied! Here are a few cases in which you might find the
inventory extremely useful!
-----------------------
Scenario 1: Moving
Are your sims moving, but you want to take all their goodies, including
sentimental pictures and paintings, and hard earned career and aspiration
rewards instead of selling them with the house for dismal returns? Well now
you can! Just pile on anything that isn't nailed down with the house in a
sim's inventory, then get a moving on up!
-----------------------
Scenario 2: Going to University
Is your teen sim going to university to live a life of poverty but her family
is obscenely rich and it makes absolutely no sense why they can't give her
some serious bling whales on her adventure to higher education? No problem,
just load her up with expensive goodies like a little pony in the spring
time, send her to university, have her sell some expensive objects,
preferably expensive art for money to buy and move to a bigger lot, then
build a ginourmas mansion bigger than any other building on campus and fill
it with material zeal! You can even lend them some career and aspiration
rewards to share with their friends or bring to the secret society for future
generations! That's right folks; the mind numbing trauma that I underlined so
many times in my previous FAQ of sims going to university is now officially
remedied!
-----------------------
Scenario 3: Lending a Helping Hand
Now if you have an established and powerful sim in your neighborhood with
more money than they know what to do with (Without crashing your computer)
they can lend the new sims in town that you create a helping hand by -- you
guessed it, moving them in and loading them up like a pony, then sending them
out to their own lot to lay down their new toys! Thanks to the inventory,
sims helping sims is now even easier, and the boost is extremely helpful for
a fast startup!
-----------------------
Scenario 4: Ransacking!
Thanks to the inventory system, now your sims too can be thieving, lying
bastards, well, maybe except for the lying part, sims seem inherently
incapable of lying, with that whole speaking in a nonsensical language and
everything. Anyway, similar to the ransacking trick with the normal
University expansion pack, your sims now can go from dorm to dorm in
university and steal everything that isn't nailed down and if that wasn't
enough, they can also plunder the entire Secret Society along with their
career rewards. So if you have a sim who wants a Cow Plant or a Resurrect o'
Nomitron, but doesn't want to do something like actually work for it, then
you can have them "borrow" it from the Secret Society, minus the return.
-----------------------
Scenario 5: Space Saving
Is your game running like a jumbo, mutant, drunk snail like in my student
film because there is too much on the screen at once? Is your house so full
of useless clutter than you have nowhere to put anything else and your sims
are constantly complaining that there is something in the way? Thanks again
to your friend and mine, the inventory system, you can now spare some of the
pains of kleptomania without having to sell your horribly depreciated
belonging! So much can the inventory system hold exactly? It can hold enough
to store away every single item in the buy catalog, and probably much, much
more. You can practically have a sim who's acts as a walking and talking
shopping mall this way.
-----------------------
Scenario 6: Portable Trash Disposal
Do you have a flaming bag of poo burning a hole in your front lawn, annoying
books lying around everywhere, and newspapers rotting from all parts of the
lot? Now you can just fork them over into a sim's inventory and improve the
environment score, oddly enough. It truly does seem that the inventory system
is a bottomless black hole, and although the item is literally on your sim,
their interpretation of the environment will be improved - and that's a good
thing! Yeah, it makes no sense to me either, but oh well, since when have I
let a little something like basic reasoning skills get in the way of
exploiting computer games? Of course, you might want to eventually ditch the
trash someday, unless your idea of a legacy is giving your children your
collection of poo bags. You can't put everything in, like dirty dishes or
garbage, but you can improve the environment score by sacking anything that's
biting away, including dirty items like toilets, showers, stoves and
counters. Of course, if you happen to be related to Satan, you can always
just load an expendable sim with crap, then send him on a death march into a
swimming pool without a ladder, there you go, garbage problem solved.
-----------------------
Scenario 7: Grave Keeper
Yeah, it sounds pretty weird in concept, and it is, I mean, do you know
anyone who carries around a grave stone with them everywhere they go and
plops them around anywhere, aside from my uncle? Well, now your sims can, so
if you really want to make a sick sim who collects trophies from his kills,
you sure can do that now, not that I've giving any impressionable youths any
ideas - on purpose anyway. A more practical description of this game device
will be discussed in the Cemetery section. As a rather funny note, you can
pocket a sim's tombstone, then revive them and still have the tombstone in
your inventory. Unfortunately, the tombstone will disappear immediately if
you place it on the lot while the sim is still alive, but it makes a nice
souvenir for the psychopath in you.
-----------------------
Scenario 8: Time Capsule
Want to know something else amazing about the inventory other than the
fact that it's a virtual black hole? Apparently, time doesn't escape it
either! Objects you just bought will not depreciate or age, making it
the perfect place to stash items you bought solely for filling your
sim's buying aspiration then selling them later! Okay, maybe I didn't
emphasize that last sentence enough for you to notice. You know those
annoying "Want to Buy" wants that your sims, specifically Wealth and
Pleasure Seeker sims have all the time? Now you can easily satisfy them
without ultimately losing a dime! Just buy the item, stash it in your
sim's inventory for a day and a bit, take it out when they've already
forgotten about it and then sell it, and they wouldn't get the negative
aspiration score that they normally would if you sold it within the
twenty-four hours, nor will the object have depreciated! It's so
convenient; you'll practically feel like you are cheating!
There's more fun to be had as well! Newspapers don't age either, and
you can collect and achieve them daily to have a bigger library of jobs
to select from when you finally do decide to get one, as they will
still be fresh and readable with different opportunities each. Flowers
and shrubs will also not age, so you don't have to water or trim them
if your sim is rushed for time, but then again, they are so
inexpensive, you wouldn't really have to worry about replacing them
anyway. The timeless aspect of the inventory will also give you more
control over many other items that depend on time, such as the
Hydroponics Garden, Cow Plant, and Money Tree.
-----------------------
Scenario 9: Dodging the Repo Man
Are you too poor to pay the big old bad bills but don't want that funny
reefer, errr, I mean repo man to repossess your hard earned belongings?
If you have time to kill on your hands and just want to piss off the
sim government, all you have to do is stash all of the objects in your
house that you bought in Buy Mode into your sim's inventory, and then
when the Repo Man comes to reclaim your goods, they'll be nothing left
and he'll leave without even entering your house, parting with just
some rather painful words about how poor your sim is and how they
should get a job, but little does he know that your sim is really a
millionaire gifted with extreme bill evading skills!
-----------------------
Scenario 10: Bringing Home the Bacon
With the ability to now store and drop stuff in your inventory, you can
send a single sim out to a community lot to buy electronic accessories
like multiple cell phones and mp3 players, and then take them home to
share with the entire household, saving everyone the painful trip of
coming along. This of course, can also be done with potions like
Cologne and Vamprocillin-D, making it handy for saving time and effort.
-----------------------
Scenario 11: Barter and Trade
Have you ever wanted to barter and trade with other sims in your neighborhood
but always though it to be impossible due to limited game mechanics? Now you
can, thanks to the inventory system! This technique is a bit of a work around
and not quite as clean cut a system as I would like to advertise, but it does
work! All you need to do is create a sim who specializes in moving from lot
to lot where your other sims dwell, and picking up and delivering objects by
storing them in his or her inventory and unloading them upon reaching the
location of your desired recipients! Did that one sim of yours want to borrow
the killer cow plant for the weekend to much on some neighborly cuisine? Not
a problem when you have the delivery sims! Think of them as pack mules -- but
more expendable! With them in action, your sim community will run more
efficiently, and be able to support itself better! Remember, the key to this
trick is to have the delivery sim use a computer or newspaper and chose to
"Find Own Place", this way, the original family living on the lot will still
be there, and only the delivery sim will be sent out.
The only real side effect to this bartering and trade system that I
originally suspected is that there would be tons of memory fallout from
joining and moving out all the time, but as my tests suggest so far, with the
exception of the delivery sim receiving a memory of having moved out each
time, the other sims he deals with on each different lot practically don't
even initially notice him or her in their memories, aside from the default
relationship boost, which comes in handy too for counting friends! If that
wasn't good enough, for each bounce from lot to lot that a delivery sim does,
the recipient lot gets the delivery sim's default and apparently self
renewing 20,000 simoleans! It's almost borderline cheating! This method might
work a bit different on university campuses though, since the college town
game mechanics are different and Greek Houses can't be joined unless the sim
has a strict membership with it.
I personally recommend having two delivery people for each neighborhood, a
male and a female. For the most part, they are completely expendable unless
you want otherwise, but the reason why they both are of different genders is
that they can also transfer any unique clothing into the wardrobes of the
sims' lots that they move into. This way, you can spread rare clothing like
the Diva's dress from household to household without having to ask the Diva
herself to move in to obtain it!
Scenario 12: Screwing the Bookshelf Store
If your poor sim family and their cardboard box of a home are having serious
penny pinching financial problems, you can opt to save a nice wad of cash by
stuffing the books straight off the shelf into your sim's inventory and
promptly returning the shelf while the books are kept nice and tight down
your sim's pants. Really, you don't actually need the bookshelf, just the
books, you can even share them with the rest of the family!
=============================================================================
[4] In Cars
Well, its official, Hell has finally frozen over, the one thing that sim fans
have been nagging up mother Maxis' skirt has finally come true! Next thing
you know, the sims will be able to run their own businesses, yeah like
that'll ever happen, ahahaha. Anyway, if you somehow missed hearing about all
the fans screaming for the The Sims 2 to have drivable cars, then you're
probably reading this with a giant WTF thought bubble over your head, but
yup, your sims can now officially OWN their own car, and build a garage
around it too! No more of those stupid carpools, albeit some of them like the
helicopter, limo and flying to work superhero style were pretty awesome.
So, what can you do now that Maxis has compromised the eco-friendly carpool
system with gas guzzling materialistic bliss? Plenty! First of all, let's
talk about how to get a car. In order to place a car on your lot, you first
need a driveway, then you can select from 5 different cars with many
different paint jobs from the new car section of the shopping catalog, I
especially like the retina burning pink cars!
The game does an excellent job of describing each car, so I'll skip on the
details for now (Damn, I wish I could get a job writing dialogue for Maxis
games!) but if you want a good idea, the cheapest car is the same wreck that
comes to pick you up for carpool at bottom level jobs that still has problems
with the door closing. On the flip side, the most expensive one is the most
excellent sports car that comes to pick your sim up at top career jobs as
athletics and culinary, and did I already mention that you can now buy it in
iris engraving pink?! Oh yeah, although all the cars are the same in
function, the better cars offer more fun and comfort, and the best cars can
apparently actually recover energy when you are in them and driving off,
helping to compensate for the drain that it takes of going between lots!
Oh, if you were one of the lucky and smart consumers who bought the game on
pre-order you would have gotten a "Rave Card" with a special number to
download one more extra special car. Don't have a Rave Card? No problem, some
of the lots up on the sims official site at www.thesims2.com have one
included, just download the lot, and you should get the car into your catalog
as well, assuming that Maxis doesn't crack down on people after finding out
that people are doing this, and they probably already know about it as it is.
Cars are a convenient and fast way to go to community lots! No longer do you
have to phone a cab and wonder what is taking them so long, just run to your
car and drive away into the sunset - oh, wait, The Sims 2 doesn't have
sunsets yet, screw that!
With cars, there is now an option to make a sim its owner; this will allow
them specifically to take their cars to work instead of have the carpool
come. Sims can also now actually be late for work, funny how that wasn't
possible before. Your job performance will suffer from it and it definitely
isn't a good way to avoid getting fired, however, I heard that you can get
away with sending your kids very late to school and not lose out, and it
seems to be true from my experience. Oh yeah, sim parents can take their
kiddies to school and return very quickly. Their kids will return on a school
bus, and for all good purposes, this is a good way to give your sim family's
children more time before turning to the "Establishment" for education.
So who can own a car? As soon as a sim becomes a teenager, they can own a
car, no need to take a driving test and fork over more hard earned cash to
the corrupt sim government! I wish I was that lucky back then, then again, I
would have decimated my car, I'm a ridiculously bad driver. Hurray for public
transit! It seems that young adults in university do not need a car to go to
classes or the final exam, but it does sure help with taking them to
community lots both on and off campus. As a side note, community lots cannot
have driveways or ready made cars on them. It also seems that Secret
Societies cannot have driveways or cars placed on them either, although they
are available on the menu, the game simply doesn't allow them to be placed,
even if you do something dramatic like lop off half of the building, since
there is very little room to put a driveway even if you could.
Sims can also just sit in their cars now, crank up the stereo, turn the
headlights on and off and even invite other sims to come into their cars for
serious passion making, including Make Out and woohoo options. As a matter of
fact, the "Woohoo in Car" want is rather a frequent want that accompanies the
regular woohoo want, and that means big aspiration points! Well, they call it
woohoo, but if you actually look inside the car, the two sims actually
disappear to another dimension far, far, far away. I wonder what happens if
the kids are in the car though as well as mommy and daddy, that could be a
bit awkward. Well, I actually know the answer; it just cancels all of the
intimate actions, same with pretty much having anyone else in car besides the
two love birds.
Sims can also just go for a joy ride with the "Take a Spin" command to drive
the car out of the lot without loading up a community screen or anything.
This will help restore their fun score in particular, and is a good way to
get them off the lot if another sim on your lot has blatant adultery on their
minds.
Just like alcohol, cars are extremely useful for dates and outings. On
outings particularly, everybody in your group climbs into your car. How eight
people can fit in a two seater is beyond me, but they apparently can, and
when you get in your car ready and have already commanded your sim to drive
off to another lot, their motives will fixate while waiting for their friends
or date. Additionally, if you are on a date or an outing, the rating bar will
temporarily be omitted so that you don't waste anymore time. I seriously have
to thank Maxis for doing this, because there's nothing like being at the
mercy of an idiotic sim eating a full course meal before getting into your
car before driving off, and it does happen, trust me. On dates in particular,
the car is the perfect Make Out and Woohoo nest, so it's definitely worth
considering buying at least a crappy car, now if only they brought in
motorcycles, Maxis sure has it hard with the fans.
[4.02] Building a Garage: Having A Real Place to Stash the Murder Weapon
Unlike real life where garages actually have a purpose, like keeping your car
from becoming the pissing grounds for a bunch of disease infested squirrels,
preventing shifty looking neighbors from borrowing your car, minus the
return, or hiding a murder weapon (Pssst, you should know that's the first
place they'll look), the garages in The Sims 2: Nightlife are pretty much
entirely for cosmetic purposes.
To build a garage, add an extended driveway to your already existing one and
then add a garage door between the two parts. Next, surround it with walls to
form a room and there you go, you now officially have a garage! Of course,
you can style your garages anyway you want, like in the case you want to make
your garage an underground racing hangout for the slow and sedated! Oh yeah,
the garage door can be entered by sims on foot as well as by car, so you
don't have to worry about building another exterior door to the garage if you
don't want to. If you want your sim to drive their car into the garage, you
must manually place the car within the driveway inside the garage, the next
time your sim drives out, they'll drive back into the garage. Basically, the
car remembers where it is parked, and it'll always be parked there while at
home.
Garages however are extremely useful in one case, sending your family vampire
out to work during the daytime. Vampires literally burn in daylight, and if
they aren't in platinum mode, this can bring ruination onto their overall
mood, decreasing their chance for a promotion and lowering job performance.
Although Vampire's needs decrease fast regardless during the daytime, if they
are indoors, it helps a great deal in stopping their motives from draining,
so placing their coffin right next to the garage indoors in a great way to
help them go to work when absolutely positively have to. Vampires are usually
actually pretty comfy while at work or school, since they apparently have
vampire working accommodations for the livingly impaired, so their motives
don't drain as fast as you might expect, it's usually the twelve feet getting
out of their drive way that actually roasts them.
Oh, in case you were wondering, you can indeed build like a thirty car garage
with eight garage doors and fill it with automated mobile bliss! You can even
literally bulldoze paradise and put up a parking lot! Too bad you can't do it
on community lots where parking lots really belong, but oh well, close
enough. You can even drive your cars out in the back of the extended
pavement, even if they have a line up of cars in front of them, and they'll
just kinda' pop onto the street in front of your house and drive off and pop
back when they return. So feel free to give your sim a car collection the
size of Bruce Wayne's if they have enough scratch and space.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[4.03] Car Alarms: Instant Dance Party!
Yes, finally the alternative minimalist techno that plays every night out of
cars to wake everybody up in busy cities finally finds its way to The Sims 2
neighborhood! Life now officially sucks! For the price of 250 simoleans, your
sim can take their car out to be fitted with an alarm. Your sim will be gone
for sixty minutes doing this. The alarm is activated by a remote key each
time you enter and exit the car, and can be disarmed if necessary.
So what exactly does the car alarm do you might ask? Much like a regular
alarm, if a burglar comes onto your lot, there's a good chance that the car
will the first thing they go for. However, unlike our puny overly insensitive
car alarms in real life, the car alarm in The Sims 2 can sense a burglar
coming to steal it quite a distance away, and will stop the burglar from
stealing it, even if he walks right up to it. You might actually be wondering
about how a burglar can steal a bloody entire car, well, apparently, he has
the same inventory system that your sims are now equipped with, so rather
than just drive it away, he'll actually just suck it into a bag like he
normally does with everything else.
Right smack dab at the heart of The Sims 2: Nightlife is the new downtown
area, armed with more restaurants, nightclubs, bowling alleys and washrooms
than you can securely shake a stick at! Along with the game comes a custom
made Downtown with many nice hotspots, although if you aren't a very big fan
of the word "Default" then you'll be glad to know that you can virtually
build as many downtown areas as you want! Unlike the university campus,
Downtown is actually very similar to the regular neighborhood now that
Nightlife has armed the player with all sorts of fun building tools, the only
real difference is the roster of NPCs and Townies that visit the downtown
neighborhood, the fact that you can create multiple downtowns, and sims will
specifically invite your sims to go downtown over the phone. Downtown
community lots also seem to be perpetually full, even at nighttime, and it
seems even NPCs and service sims from all walks of life stroll on by the
sidewalk, which might give you a good chance to meet people you normally
wouldn't.
[5.01] Why Community Lots Don't Suck Anymore: Because They Sure Did Before
Let's face it, not too many people were fans of the community lots when The
Sims 2 first came out. First of all were the painful loading times if you
went to a large lot with tons of sims. The second problem was that calling
the carpool was annoying, very annoying. The third was that you couldn't
bloody save if things went very, very, very wrong, and if you quit without
going back home, you'll have returned back to your home lot with about half
an hours time wasted. Of course, having your sim deprived of their usual
sources of motive satisfaction was also a bit scary, but now with Nightlife,
Maxis has made some really good reasons to go downtown and experience the joy
that are community lots!
Downtown areas are by default, viewed in nighttime but you can toggle day and
night off for all neighborhoods now. Residential lots can also be made
Downtown, so it is now possible to basically build entire new communities and
still have them be linked to each other outside of university, very handy
indeed if your normal neighborhood is running out of space. Although
residents from downtown and your normal neighborhood will stop by and be
controlled by the AI, the young adults still at university will not visit
automatically. This does not stop university students from going downtown
though under your control, as a matter of fact, university students have the
most to gain from going downtown!
[5.02] Downtown Design Essentials: When Incompetence Really Shows
The default Downtown the game came with a very large and very well designed
downtown area with something for everybody, but if you happen to be an
obsessive compulsive builder who simply can't stand the word "default", then
there are few things you should know about making a good downtown design! It
is actually possible to practically have a sim live indefinitely downtown,
since they don't age if you know how, and the key to that is having the right
objects!
-----------------------
Must Have Setups:
-----------------------
1. Barista's Coffee Counter:
I swear, every lot should have a coffee dispenser in it, you have no idea how
ridiculously important it is! Since sims can't sleep on community lots or
take naps, the only way to restore energy is through the warm, rich, dark
brew of life! It'll take you maybe three or four cups to max out your sim's
Energy, but remember, actual time is non-existent on downtown lots and your
sim doesn't have to go to work or school, this is especially true for
university students, which I will elaborate greatly in the next section. Also
place a sofa or armchair next to the coffee stand, your sims will make good
use of it after buying their brew. Also, as always for practical purposes,
use expensive wallpaper and floor tiles, coupled with lots of light to
maximize Environment score for your sims.
There is a handy want to buy coffee for another sim to be fulfilled if the
lot your sim visits has a coffee stand, but beware, this can make the two
sims form a crush with each other if they have a daily relationship above 50,
so be careful and only do it with family or steady lovers if you don't want
any fallout. Needless to say, other than leaving your sim as a jittering
mess, you're sim is going to really go to the washroom since coffee makes
their bladder fill up like the Titanic after hitting an iceberg.
-----------------------
2. Toilet and Shower:
Put the best toilet and shower on every community lot, preferably right in a
room next to a coffee counter! Nothing says "Run like Hell back home!" like
nature's calling, and there's nothing as effective for restoring hygiene on
community lots as a good shower! Without these two, you'll be in a serious
pinch if one of your sims starts to get desperate, and if you want your sims
to milk their time downtown, you can't have that!
-----------------------
3. An All Purpose Shop: Sure, you might have the urge to make multiple stores
that specialize in selling different things like a classic RPG town, but not
only will this slow down your computer with unnecessary NPCs (A new cashier
is created for each cash register), but it's also highly inconvenient for
your sim. To save a little pain, make a store where your sim can buy
everything, and by everything I mean clothing, games, magazines, portable
devices, cologne, groceries, and get their photo taken with a cherry on top,
taking up as little space as possible.
Also, as a general tip, try to keep your lots small, trust me, grandiose
giant buildings the size of Balamb Garden from Final Fantasy 8 might sound
good in concept, but when it comes to loading, you're going to be in a world
of pain. I have quite a few gi-nourmas structures that I spent hours on, and
I'll be blunt in saying that my sims never go there, because the loading
times tend to crash my computer. Keep them small, and keep them many and
you're downtown experience will be fun and fruitful.
-----------------------
Building Tips:
I'm in no way a master builder, I've cranked maybe 40 or something buildings,
but it's not something I'd advertise as a skill (My buildings look like Andy
Warhol's worst nightmare after all), since there are some master builders in
the sim community that know things that I couldn't even begin to figure out.
Instead, I'm going to mention somewhat obscure building tricks that the game
doesn't clearly spell out, specifically object related ones.
-----------------------
Sectional Seats:
With Nightlife, there are four different types of chairs that can connect
together to form different shapes. You'll know them, because they all have
the word "Section" or "Sectional" in their name. They are good for placing
around corners to give the room a unifying look.
One set of the sectional chairs deserves special attention, the Jacuster's
"Last Stand" Sectional Booth. These seats are particularly useful in diners,
as a sim can slide on them to any of the seats around the table, allowing the
designer to save space and establish a closer feel of unity. Other sectional
seats just apparently don't work in diners, and when you use them at home
with a dining table, your sims will eat with the plates in their hands,
disabling some of the seated dining interactions. Now then, the special
aspect, there are two special interactions that can only be done on the
Jacuster's "Last Stand" Sectional Booth on community lots. So what are they?
Dining Love Talk and Dining Hot Smooch. I'll talk more about them in the
special ability section and their ridiculous requirements. Oh yes, be careful
with using Jacuster's "Last Stand" Sectional Booth for home use, as although
they work fine in diners most of the time, for home use they seem to cause a
lot of path finding problems for sims that makes it so that they cannot carry
their food to the table and sit down, which can get old real fast.
-----------------------
ClubCube by Luminescent Projections:
It's been asked on a few forums, and I'd figure I'd finally nail it down and
answer how you can have obscenely high stacks of color changing cubes taller
than the dang building, and the best part is that you don't even have to
cheat to do it!
Now, normally, the game only allows you to stack two together, however the
default Downtown completely defies this, as displayed by Sugar Cube Bowling,
leading many designers wondering how the heck they did this. It's very
simple, instead of stacking each additional cube onto the stack one by one,
you have to place the entire stack onto each single cube! Just keep on
placing the stack onto individual cubes, like a stamp, and soon you'll have
your very own towering temple of seizure inducing disco blocks! I don't know
why they designed it this way, but it works, so it's all good.
Light cubes can also be adjusted for different display patterns and you can
turn them onto color fade mode as well for a nice warm glowing effect. The
floor version can also be adjusted this way.
-----------------------
Colorful Lights:
Worth a mention because they are just so lovu-ree! The Sims 2: Nightlife now
contains colorful lights from all over the spectrum that you can place all
over your lot! Now your red light district really can have red lights, how
awesome is that!
The three different types of hanging dance floor lights come in four colors,
white, yellowish orange, red and blue. Although the hanging lights cover a
large area, they can be placed very close to each other. Not the largest
selection we could have hoped for, however, if you want to make a new color
try combining lights together. Do you want an electric violet color? Combine
blue and red together and voila! This technically doesn't work perfectly with
all combinations, in particular, blue and yellow don't seem to make a
believable green, but it'll have to do, The actual color of the light beams
wouldn't change, but the actual light they give off will, which helps if
you're a huge fan of bondi blue and tickly pink like I am, after all, they're
Xyni's color scheme!
There are also wall lights, but these come in more colors generally, so it's
not such a problem. It should also be noted that the animation pattern of the
Shadow Streamer and the Gobo-o-go-go Spotlighter from LumiO
-----------------------
Dining Table Lights:
It's important when designing a restaurant to know that not all table lights
will allow your sims to place their plates down on the table and comfortably
eat, generally being on account of being too big. Before Nightlife, this
wasn't a particularly big deal, but now that there are several actions that
sims can perform when seated and eating (with their plates on the table) it
has become something very worthy of consideration. For example, the Romantic
Romance by Elle and Eey is a nice small light that will allow your sims to
eat comfortably at the table, where as a big honking light like the Dynasty
"Enlightenment" Light isn't. In the worst case scenario, the game might not
even consider a single square dining table with a large light on it as a
table when bringing guests to it, so be careful.
-----------------------
Coffee Tables:
Coffee tables are virtually useless, pretty much only good for two things
unless you count holding things on top and aesthetic appeal, yoga can be
performed on them by extremely active sims, and sims can deposit their empty
coffee cups on them. Still if you want to make use of a coffee table, they
are designed to be put right next to a sofa and allow Sims to slide over to
their respected places while having the coffee table directly in front of
them,
[5.03] Nightlife Benefits to University Young Adults: Give Maxis Money!
Who would have guessed? To no other age group do the downtown neighborhoods
benefit more than the young adults at university, which give plenty of reason
to get both expansion packs! Give the fine folks at Maxis more money! Yeah!
Ahem.
Along with the inventory system which gives teens growing up to be young
adults a huge boost from home, the ability to travel to community lots
outside of the university campus to downtown and the base neighborhood gives
a great advantage as well. The properties and game mechanics are different in
other neighborhood community lots than they are for university ones, allowing
for some interesting extended play.
First the bad new, young adult sims can only gain skills on university
community lots, that means if they do something like workout on an exercise
machine downtown, they wouldn't be building any skill, although they will
lose weight and become more fit.
Fortunately, there is plenty of good news to go around. As long as a young
adult is downtown, their actual time in university will cease to pass! What
this means is that they wouldn't have to worry about going to class, going to
final exams, and best of all yet, their clock to the next semester wouldn't
tick down! You can massively extend the time a sim spends their time as a
young adult this way, and make a little extra money on the side to help fill
their campus den with goodies, and even a car! Within this time, as with
other sims on community lots, the relationship adjustment period doesn't
happen, in other words, relationship scores will not go down with the passing
of time, making it the perfect time to brush up on old friends.
Unfortunately, lifetime scores wouldn't be altered positively regularly
either, but that's the dark side of the same coin as they say.
Now that young adult sims can venture off campus, they will get to mingle
again with their old friends and family back in the regular neighborhood and
downtown without having to manually invite them over, although their pals
from university wouldn't be around there unless they call em' up or string
em' along manually. Like adult sims outside of university, they will be able
to go on dates and outings and get rewards and goodies for their tiny home,
as well as the possibility of increasing their skills without losing time
back at home. Of course, other sims can take advantage of this as well, but
since sims can't get a real job in university that actually pays money, they
are worth much more. All in all, Nightlife softens the linear nature of
university for the young adults, and allows them to break out of their
studies without fear of wasting valuable time that could be otherwise spent
to boost their class performance bar.
Now your sims can dine out in style without having to turn to the pyro-prone
barbeque grills or the cranky cafeteria worker! So suit your sims up for the
occasion, get in the car and drive downtime for some good eating! Restaurants
are open 24 hours a day seven days a week oddly enough, and where else are
you going to get service like that in real life?
[6.01] Eating Out: For When Your Sim Makes Fire Better Than Food
The way restaurants in this game work are very different from the typical
pick up a plate and eat routine that you and your sims may be used to. First
when your sims enters a restaurant, they have to talk to the host to be
seated either at a table or at a counter. Each customer that comes in alone
or with a group gets their own table to be seated at. In order to have
multiple sims eating at the same time, you must have invited them to meet you
on the lot either through a date, a regular phone call, or as a part of your
group for outings or fun. As long as those conditions are met, your sim
friends will follow you to the dinner table, which hopefully will hold all of
you or else they'll be seated elsewhere. At this point in time, the closest
waiter will walk up to you and take your order, so select what you would like
off the menu, the more expensive the food, the more filling it is. This is
not true in all cases, but it's a safe rule of thumb. Here's a list of the
foods with the prices, foods with the * next to them are foods that your sims
can't normally cook at home and worth mentioning.
*Glass of Water: 0
Cake: 8
Mac and Cheese: 9
Spaghetti: 9
Baked Alaska: 10
Omelettes: 11
*Nectarine Tartlette: 12
Crepes Suzette: 13
Chili Con Carne: 14
Chef Salad: 16
Hamburgers: 17
*Ribs: 18
*Fried Chicken: 18
*Lime Seared Prawns: 19
Salmon: 21
*Pork Chops: 23
*Fillet Mignon: 25
Lobster Thermidor: 35
Unlike chef's in real life, the chef's in the restaurants apparently have
telepathy and work with the hands of a surgeon at the speed of a martial
artist, in other words, they practically make the food instantly as soon as
you order, all ready for the waiter or waitress to bring for your eating
pleasure! It is surprisingly quick compared to the restaurant system in the
original The Sims: Hot Date which Nightlife is frequently compared to. While
your sim is seated sipping away at a bottomless glass of water, they can
order as many dishes as they like and it'll be added to their total bill.
When they are done, they can pay the bill manually or pay it automatically
upon leaving the lot. There is of course, a fun little alternative to
actually paying which involves stealth and stinginess.
Oh yes, the Crepes Suzette is a new dessert that you can order at restaurants
as well as make at home at about four points of cooking skill! Just watch out
though, it involves fire!
[6.02] Favorite Foods: Sukiyaki! Sukiyaki! (There's no Sukiyaki)
Upon visiting a restaurant and being seated for their first time, a sim will
develop a favorite food as displayed by the thought bubble with the food of
preference floating in it and which they should retain for the rest of their
lives. So what exactly is so special about a sim's favorite food? It seems
that on dates and outings, having your sim and company eat their favorite
food gives the date rating a little boost, although it might be a bit
difficult to tell, since your sims are usually talking when they are seated
and naturally increasing their relationship, thus, the date rating rises
automatically.
Some sims with particular aspirations and personality types might also have
wants to eat their favorite food, specifically knowledge and wealth sims, but
it's not a particularly common thing, so it seems hard to tell if it was
because of the introduction of Nightlife, since wants to eat a certain food
have existed since the core game was released.
When you order the "Chef's Choice" option, they will automatically bring your
sim's their favorite food. You can also order Chef's Choice for your entire
group to add a little variety to the table. Oh yeah, be warned that some of
the foods look a bit weird when they are floating in the bubble, particularly
the hamburger which looks more like a meat muffin than a standard hamburger.
You'll come to recognize each food soon enough and there's always Chef's
Choice if you are still unsure.
Now then, that being said, since favorite food is apparently permanent and
unique for each sim, it helps if you happen to be an obsessive compulsive,
perfectionist who wouldn't take no for an answer, like me, to reset the game
while on the community lot over and over and over and over, *inhales* and
over until they finally get Lobster Thermidor as their favorite food. The
proceeding procedure I will guaranteed will drive you bloody up the wall,
it'll make you friggin' suicidal for crying out loud, since every time you
reset the game while in a trip to a community lot, it roughly wastes almost
an hour of time in residential lot for driving out and driving back, even
with a car and it's even worst with a carpool. Then there are the loading
times, oh the loading times *shivers*. If your favorite sim naturally got
something good like lobster of frustration or Fillet Mignon, consider
yourself lucky. It doesn't really make any sense since it plays a pretty
obscure part in the grand picture of the game, but then again, washing my
hands thirty times a day doesn't make sense either.
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[6.03] Disgruntled Waiters: They Hate Their Job and They Hate You
Remember kids, waiters and waitresses are people too! So be kind to them, or
they'll unintentionally get revenge on you by dumping a hot steamy plate of
human sustenance on you! Yeah, in my experience, it tends to happen more
often when you order expensive foods like Lobster Thermidor, but your sim
will get a bad memory nonetheless from it and the waiter and host will just
stand there looking stupid instead of compensating you like any real dining
establishment would in real life. Although on further experiences after
writing this, it seems that the waiters will also redeliver your order
instead of just ignoring you at least some of time. Fortunately, you also
don't have to pay the bill for food that lands on your sims lap, but it's
still a speed bump on dates, even it doesn't actually seem to decrease the
date rating.
To help reduce the chance of flying food, it helps to befriend the waiters
and waitresses, as the game itself recommends if your sim has a fear of food
being dropped on them, but the problem is usually that there are so many of
them compared to the host and hostesses that you have to put a little more
effort into it, and you never know who's going to be the one to finally bring
your food to it's final destination, since the computer decides for you by
picking the waiter who is closest to the food with free actions. Fortunately,
spilled food isn't a very common event; it's kind of the restaurant
equivalent to burning food. Still, if you want to befriend waiters and
waitresses, just take a seat and don't order anything, and eventually they'll
come around to talk to you. You can also tip them and talk to them when they
have a free moment, and then you can work the relationship up from there. It
also seems from my experience that making a complete mortal enemy out of
waiters or waitresses' doesn't seem to increase the rate of dropped food, so
I guess you can say that they are actually pretty professional with their
work.
[6.04] Getting a Discount from the Host: Friendship Pays!
It pays to be friends with the Hosts! At least become friends with one Host,
because each restaurant randomly cycles through several hosts. When you do
see the one you are friendly with, you can directly pick them standing at the
restaurant podium and hopefully get a discount on your total bill! Normally,
eating alone isn't all that expensive, but when you have a group of four, the
bill can kinda' add up, so it helps. The discount seems to be based directly
on your lifetime relationship score as opposed to your daily score. The
biggest discount I've seen so far is 30% and although the relationship score
might be constantly high, it seems somewhat random to how much you get off of
each meal.
Unlike the fine waiters and waitresses of the establishment, hosts and
hostesses cannot be directly interacted with while they are on the job,
however, your sim will add them to their relationship list upon the first
time they go to the restaurant and are seated by them. After that, it's up to
your sim to call them up and help start forging a solid relationship.
Ah! It's time to do the Solid Snake and sneak away after eating some dead
animal. Oh wait, that's closer to Naked Snake, my bad. After your sim is
finished eating, but before they cancel the dining action or pay the bill and
are just sitting down sipping innocently away at their bottomless cup of
water, click on the Host and select the "Skip Out On Bill" command, and get
ready to run.
As soon as you select that command, the timer will start and you will have to
survive for 45 game minutes without the Host or Hostess coming close enough
to be considered as catching you. I personally highly recommend turning off
freewill when doing this, as you will know much better than your sim will how
to escape.
Shortly after gaining control of your sim and the timer starting, the Host
will start to actively seek out your sim. The Host will run at you if he
happens to see you in sight, so just run away as far away as you can,
preferably outside where there is as much maneuverability as possible. As
soon as the time is up, the Host will forget completely about what happened
and you'll get away without paying. In the case that you get caught though,
you'll be forced to pay the bill, and the hostess will yell at you, resulting
in a double minus reaction. On the plus side, it seems that when you dine out
as a group or on a date, the host will ignore the other members of your group
and you only have to worry about the active one who opted to skip out on the
bill. Don't think that you can escape in your car though early though, even
if you get away, the bill will be paid automatically.
Of course, if you are building your own lots, it helps to specifically design
the area for running away and high maneuverability with particular emphasis
on the ability to go from one room to another with no dead-ends, but there is
only so much that you can do. I will say this right here and now, having a
sim who can run or at least skip or fly as a vampire (Hopefully it's not day
time or you WILL burn) is of utter importance to not get caught. Now, you
might think you're a rocket scientist if you have a female sim and hide in
the women's washroom with the anti-man door and everything, but the male host
is even smarter, HE HAS NO SHAME IN RUNNING INTO THE WOMEN'S WASHROOM AND
SCREAMING AT YOU! It seems that service sims on community lots are blind when
it comes to gender restrictions.
If you want some more tips on making a place where you can dodge the bill
more effectively, I'll tell you this much, the Host is a fricken' Terminator,
you can try using Myne Doors that don't actually work on community lots or
even a giant swimming pool half the size of the lot to slow them down, but
nothing stops the Host when she or he smells blood and an unpaid restaurant
bill, almost nothing. If you feel like outsmarting the Host still, and don't
mind desecrating your sim's ancestral graves, there is a way to completely
avoid being caught by the Host, although it's slightly inconveniencing. Close
to the location of dining table, but far away from the restaurant podium as
possible, create a narrow one square wide corridor sealed with two doors on
each side with one door leading to remote chamber. This trick requires that
your sim has a spare grave in their inventory, yeah, just in the case that
they carry those around wherever they go. Simply seal the corridor with an
urn or a tombstone on the side the host will be coming from, and then have
your sim walk into the remote room. With the grave marker acting as a road
block in a one square thick corridor, the Host should be blocked from
catching your sim till the time runs out. It still might ultimately be easier
to run for your life in most circumstances.
[6.06] Restaurant Tricks: Probably Would Work In Real Life Too
Free food! Who doesn't like free food? I sure know that I do -- despite what
you might have heard! There are other ways to get free grub aside from
skipping out on the bill! Sometimes, you can get lucky and get your sim to
eat free food by having another dining sim get distracted. Sometimes this
happens naturally, but since dining sims are pretty unresponsive to your
interference, there is an even better way to distract sims from their eating
- make a scene! If your sim has a mortal enemy in the vicinity, call him over
and attack him or her! All the dining sims will immediately get up from their
comfy little seats and watch as you beat your victim into submission (Or the
other way around) that or run away, and they will still be wandering around
like idiots for a bit when the fight is done. Assuming that they took at
least one bite out of the food, you should now be able to sit down to some
free grub before the waiter takes it away or the true consumer lays their
filthy legitimate paws on it!
Another more semi-rational strategy is food sharing. If your sim has gotten
full on that big giant king of all cooked crayfish that is Lobster Thermidor,
they can quickly get up and let another sim that you are controlling sit down
and finish it, but you have to be quick or the waiter will take the plate to
the washers, oh what a waste of good food!
[6.07] Why Restaurants Suck: Because "Fast Food" Isn't an Option
Despite the fact that I wrote this whole ginourmas section regarding the
wonder that are restaurants, in conclusion, I actually really hate them for
the following reasons in no particular order:
1. It fills the lots up with tons of service sim NPCs, slowing down your
computer. You'll get one cook, one host and a number of waiters proportional
to how many dining tables to serve.
2. The food is surprisingly not that effective at fulfilling the Hunger
motive! A Lobster Thermidor cooked by a sim with 10 cooking points is more
filling than that cooked at a restaurant by a master chef! As a matter of
fact though, there's practically nothing that tops home cooked turkey for
feeding an entire group. If your sim's Hunger bar is in the yellow to reds,
chances are that you're going to need at least a two or three coarse meal to
fill them up. At least you can order multiple times during a single
restaurant seating.
3. You have to pay money! Nobody likes to pay money! Do you like to pay
money?! I know I don't!
4. Each time you order from a disgruntled waiter, you risk the chance of
witnessing the phenomenon that is artificial incompetence in the form of
flying food! Some sims actually have a fear of this, and it's something that
can only go wrong in a restaurant.
5. Freewill controlled sims are annoying unresponsive when dining! When you
have a restaurant, usually the first thing sims controlled by freewill do is
go to the dining podium and be seated to dine, and you can't override their
actions with your own and you'll have to wait for them to finish dining
before interacting with them, unless you want to reach out and attack
someone.
6. When you are seated, you never really know where! Sometime the Hosts take
you to the other side of the lot to sit down on some obscure counter,
multiplying the time it takes for the waiter to get to you for compound time
wasting! This is especially annoying, since some dining interactions can only
be done under certain conditions and formations.
7. The tables and counters have the possibility of filling up! It doesn't
happen too often, but if the restaurant is rather small, then you wouldn't be
able to dine until someone else finishes! Yeah, it's like real life, and it
sucks!
8. Even though the sim restaurants are inhumanly faster than restaurants in
real life, they are still much slower than other forms of filling hunger on
community lots.
9. Since restaurants can only exist on community lots, they also come with
all of the weaknesses of community lots, such as the inability to save,
switch to build or buy mode in case something gets in the way or there is a
path finding error.
As a conclusion you should only go to restaurants in three cases. First of
all is the want to dine out with other sims at restaurants, fair enough even
though it pays a miniscule amount of aspiration points and influence for such
a time consuming action, even if you can cancel it prematurely and still
satisfy the want. Second reason is if you value building relationships
between the people eating more than the food (Although there are a lot more
things to do standing up for building relationship). Finally, there are a lot
of fun things for your sims to do while sitting down and dining, like toast,
throw food and feed your sim's lover a bite. If you want to put some pretty
pictures in your photo album, you should at least have a few shots of them in
a well lit restaurant. Basically, if you are playing this game for the
"Experience", then diners are fun places to be, but if you happen to be a
ridiculously practical person with heavy emphasis on efficiency as much as
the Borg, then don't have your sims go to restaurants.
So what's the alternative? If you have The Sims 2: Univesity Expansion pack,
believe it or not, the cafeteria setup is a better choice! Despite the
potential for food poisoning that comes from eating rotten or burnt food,
it's a much more practical way to dine. The food is free, surprisingly
filling despite being rather cheap food, you can take as much of it as you
want if there are lots of kitchen islands for the cooks to put the food on,
it's easy and fast to pick up and eat, and there is no risk of your sim
getting a burnt memory since the cafeteria cook incinerates it for you.
The cafeteria has two disadvantages over the restaurant, unfortunately.
Cafeteria workers arrive at work at 12:00am and return to work at 4:00am,
leaving a four hour period where you wouldn't have any fresh food, although
the last batch they cook can usually last for a few hours before rotting.
Second of course is the possibility of food poisoning which is more than just
a serious pain. Actually, it's pretty easy to avoid getting food poisoning
for sims that you control, just eat food when it's fresh and not burnt. The
real problem is when freewill controlled sims who you actually might care
about do the opposite. Just make sure that there are sinks in the kitchen and
having two cafeteria workers instead of one isn't a bad idea either so one
can wash dishes while the other cooks them.
Yet another alternative to restaurants is the outdoor grill which can be used
safely both outdoors and indoors on community lots, otherwise it becomes an
instant pyrotechnic kit if you happen to have a bright sim light it up on a
residential lot indoors. In order for the grill to be effective however, your
sim will have to have a high cooking score, otherwise they'll crispify their
food in the process and the cooking time will be longer as well.
I wonder if The Sims 2 will ever have an eat all you can buffet style
restaurant, I would really love that. Lousy a la carte service and their
traditionally inefficient methods!
As to be expected, there are several fun new stylish toys at your sim's
disposal that can be either used on community lots or at home! First up we
have a most excellent DJ Booth that your sims can be paid to spin and scratch
on when on community lots! Also on the list are bowling alleys and photo
booths, and who can forget the much anticipated Poker Table and the Electro
Dance Sphere? There are about 125 new objects introduced into The Sims 2:
Nightlife from what I've heard, but these are my very favorite!
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[7.01] Being the DJ: When Will They Ever Learn To Cross Fade Properly?
Who doesn't want to scratch hot burning vinyl and feel the wave of ecstasy
from the crowd?! If you have a very creative sim or two with financial
problems, especially if they are enrolled at university, you'll be happy to
know that being the DJ is now the most profitable and reliable way to make
money on community lots! Wanting to DJ for money is also a frequent want
among sims of all aspirations as well, so it helps give your sim a small shot
of aspiration. DJ Booths can play four styles of music, House Mix, Fast,
Medium and Slow and other sims can dance and do the Smustle to it.
What exactly is the Smustle you might ask? It's like a dance that's a cross
between riding on a pony in the spring time and acting like a drunken zombie
on vodka I'd say. Your interpretation might vary. You can get a bunch of sims
to do it in synchronization and it's very fun to watch. Oh yes! It might be
my imagination playing tricks on me, but it seems that the animation to
depict dancing skill is now much more noticeable. On low dancing skill, sims
will sometimes forget moves, fall down, be laughed at, and generally look
stupid. At high dancing skill, well, they wouldn't be faking the funk - as
much. Dancing skill now applies both to the Smustle dance and regular
dancing, so take your time to enjoy your sims getting their groove on.
Now potentially, performing music for tips or freestyling is the best way to
get money on lots, however, it's not very reliable, sometimes, sims around
just wouldn't dig all that deep, and that's not a good thing. While your sim
is a DJ with high creativity they will make a tidy 30 simoleans for intervals
of about 10 minutes of game time. That's much better than other steady
working jobs like being a Barista, Cafeteria Worker or Bartender. Your sim
will also take a great deal of fun in playing those records, and if you are
doing it on a university community lot, they can also gain Creativity skill
from it. If your sim is about as creative as a stick of butter though, you
might want to consider having them develop a few points before putting them
in front of a critically laughing crowd, as they wouldn't make remotely as
much money due to sheer suckage. So do you want to know just the extent of a
completely uncreative sim is in a DJ Booth? First of all, they make a
pathetic 5 simoleans every 10 minutes; next, they accidentally tend to butter
finger the headphones, catching them just in time. Finally, one of the
funniest things incompetent DJs do is mix in annoying and completely out of
place elevator music into the groove, and you will also actively see people
who are trying to dance to the beat have a thought bubble with the DJ Booth
crossed out over their heads.
Your lucky sims can now bowl, and what's better is they don't have to stick
on the crappy tight fitting bowling shoe filled with toe crud to do so! Of
course, your sims can buy their own personal bowling alley for home use, and
bowl from the comfort of their home. Still, the most fun to be had bowling is
downtown, if only because you can find or build lots that completely
specialize in the ball rolling art and have other wandering sims join in on
the fun, including Mrs. Crumplebottom herself. On residential and university
community lots however, sims can gain body skill points at a good rate,
although they don't seem to lose weight as fast as other physical activities.
Wanting to go bowling is a common want among most aspiration types,
particularly the Pleasure Seeker, they'll even have wants specifically of
going bowling with their date.
There might be a little fuzz going around the forums claiming that bowling is
a hidden skill, it is most definitely not, it is directly relational to high
their body skill is. At a prefect ten points of body, you can expect them to
throw strikes on every try, how awesomely unrealistic is that? Sims can also
play other sims since it is a group activity. It doesn't do wonders for
raising relationships like Poker and Chess do, but it's fun to watch.
Oh, in case you are wondering, the bowling allies are nine pin standard with
American style extra meaty bowling balls with holes in them, opposed to the
Canadian's embarrassingly small coconut balls. Yeah, I used to bowl when I
was a kid, and I was ticked off that the dang balls weren't bigger too. I was
like "Well, yeah, but I'm an American, so give me a bigger ball!", but they
were like "Nooooooo, you're in Canada now, so let's go build an igloo and
drink maple syrup while chopping down trees, eh!" and it kinda' went like
that for a while. Hahha, in all honestly, I'm both a Canadian and an
American, so more slander power for me!
Too bad sims with low body scores don't do the "sissy" way of bowling from
between the legs, that would have brought back some good memories, hahahah!
Oh! Wait, I just found out that even children can bowl, and guess how they do
it? Yup! They throw the ball the sissy way, ahahahaha, I'm so happy to relive
those good old memories! As an extra note, adult sims who are incredibly bad
at bowling and have a low Body score can sometimes slip and smack their face
on the hard polished wood when throwing the ball, always good for a laugh.
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[7.03] Photo Booth: To Whoever Invented These Things, I Salute You!
Ah! I have such fond memories of photo booths! You know, you don't see them
very often in North America where I live, but when I was in Asia, wow! They
even printed them out in little strips with frilly pink borders and stuff,
awesome @#$%! Anyhow, now for the price of 10 or so simoleans, your sims can
get their portraits immortalized solo or with another person in three
different styles! Normally, a single sim can only do Normal and Goofy styles,
however, get a person in there with a romantic relationship with your sim,
and you can also take a Romantic photo.
After the pictures are taken, the photo will slide out of the booth and
develop for your sim to pick up and add to their inventory. Each picture
print actually contains four pictures in one, and it's rather funny that one
of the pictures in the Romantic print has your sim looking angrily at the
camera and covering the lens. I mean, you chose to have the picture taken,
deal with it, hahahaha. Anyhow, there's one other fun little thing you can do
with the Photo Booth, and that's of course public woohoo, just in case they
get tired of doing it everywhere else. On an odd note, you can satisfy the
woohoo in public want by having your sims buy at photo booth and woohoo in
there, although it's not technically in public, it still apparently counts.
The Photo Booth holds a maximum of two people and is also a frequent want
among sims of all aspirations, as a matter of fact, it's pretty common to
have a want to take a picture and a want to take a picture with their date at
the same time when on dates. It's a nice quick way to shoot up some
aspiration points.
[7.04] Poker Table: Gambling Your Kid's College Money Away
My favorite card game is finally in The Sims 2! Now if they would only bring
in blackjack! In order to get the Poker Table functional, you have to add
four dining chairs to it first. When you add them, they'll somewhat latch
onto the table, so you can move all five pieces around without inconvenience.
On community lots, when one person starts a poker game, others will be likely
to automatically come and join, but you might want to manually invite them
over. Up to four players can join at a time, and the dealer is rotated
between each player.
If your sim is looking to have a fun time, then poker is definitely a good
option. It's also a good place to start a relationship with the other
players, although it's more diluted than a one on one chess or pool game.
Unfortunately, if you are looking to make some serious bling whales off of
poker, you're playing the wrong game, go play online poker where every other
player besides you has a software program running to calculate odds in favor
of screwing you over and you can't read the faces of any of your opponents
who just can't wait to introduce their loan shark associates to you.
Seriously, consider yourself lucky if you double your hundred in a single
game of poker, you have just as good a chance of losing as you would of
winning it seems. The only strategy I can think about when it comes to poker
is to have three of your own players against one computer one, but that takes
quite a bit of time and resources.
There isn't much that your sims can do in poker in this game other than lay
down their 100 simoleans into chip form, and play the hand dealt to them.
Unfortunately, in this case, poker is a game of luck. There is apparently no
hidden skill that can be improved, coordinating regular skill, or winning
personality to help with that poker face. It seems that sims are naturally
extremely emotional and even a super serious sim can be read like a book and
no amount of skill can fix that. I've tried to test if there was a winning
variable in poker for a while now, as well as having the one family play the
hell out of it, and there just doesn't seem to be sadly enough, because in
real life I truly respect skilled poker players, since poker is a metaphor
for life.
[7.05] Electro Dance Sphere: This Thing Will Never Be Invented
This object definitely fits into the definition of awesome! Makes you wonder
if somebody will ever invent such a torture device, errr, I mean
entertainment machine in our world and time. The Electro Dance Sphere starts
off as a glowing ring like structure over a base foundation, but when your
sim gets into it, it spreads out to form a spread of metal curves and begins
to rotate around in midair due to electro-magnetic manipulation and
stabilization from the base.
The Electro Dance Sphere has three settings, Easy, Medium and Hard. Sims
often have a want to ride the Electro Dance Sphere when there is one around,
however, they will also commonly have a fear of being thrown off one, which
is rather hilarious to see. The higher a sim's body skill is, the longer and
better they will be able to ride the sphere at higher settings. Buying one
for your home use to practice on isn't a bad idea, it's a great way to gain
Body skill and lose weight, but you should give them a couple of points from
more conventional methods since they can get tossed from even easy mode with
no skill points, and it's just sad to watch. While spinning, other sims can
come to watch and cheer you on, which restore some of the onlooker's motives
and it looks good too.
At very high body skill, a sim can actually float in midair tucked into a
ball without holding onto the handles that I like to compare to Samus'
Crystal Flash move in Super Metroid, but with more spinning and less healing.
There is another little phenomenon that can occur from using the Electro
Dance Sphere, although I'm not sure if it can be done on community lots, but
I'm very sure it can be done on residential lots. Sims who have been abducted
by aliens before can apparently "warp out" of existence when using the
Electro Dance Sphere, assumingly having been abducted yet again. It's not
remotely as grandiose as the telescope abduction, they don't get a memory of
it or a cut scene, and you might not even notice it at all or write it off as
a glitch, but it does happen. When warped out of existence, the sim's motives
are fixated and they wouldn't return for a few hours, and when they do come
back, they'll do it very quickly and almost blink back into existence.
Supposedly, male sims can get pregnant yet again by this happening, but I've
not been able to try this out for myself.
[7.06] Karaoke Machine: Also Known As The Humiliator
Ah, Karaoke, Who doesn't love karaoke? Most likely anyone who sucks at it,
that's who. Every one else like me just loves it! Bring on the weird J-Pop
that I have no fricken' idea what is being said but sing to it anyway! Suki!
Suki! Sankyu!
Karaoke can either be sung solo by a sim or as a duet with another sim with a
fair relationship, and a Karaoke machine can conveniently also be purchased
for home use and is an effective way to increase Creativity skill, have fun
and increase relationship scores with those your sim sings with and those who
watch. Depending on your sim's Creativity skill level and the style of music
randomly being played, their animation will vary.
So you must be wondering, exactly what does a sim who has the creative genius
of a pothole do when performing Karaoke? Well, outside of the expected
suckage, they have to look at the scrolling lyric screen more, their
movements are less coordinated, they screw up occasionally, and they kinda'
just generally blow, no other way to put it. Of course, to show their utter
malcontent for your sim's lack of vocal skills, other sims watching will
laugh and boo at them. On the flip side, Karaoke singers with high Creativity
skill will know the words by heart and be very bold and dynamic with their
actions. On one upbeat soft rock like sounding track, they'll actually jump
on and off of the main part of the Karaoke Machine. Typically though, Duets
are in a slow, more romantic way than going solo, so it makes for an ideal
dating activity. Fortunately, Karaoke seems to be fun and traumatizing for
the whole family, as even children can do it! All in all, although you might
hate Karaoke, your sims actually seem to like it. Then again, these are
usually the same sims who's idea of fun is to play pirate in a bath tub and
jump on coaches.
Oh yeah, anyone else here try to sing to "One Winged Angel"? You know, "blah-
blah-bla-bla-blaaah, SEPHIROTH! Da-da-daaa-da!" Awesome song.
Other things you can make and your sims can enjoy downtown - or suffer from!
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[8.01] How to Make a Cemetery: A Zoo For Knowledge Sims
Maxis realized that it gets pretty annoying when the dead come back to make
grown sims piss their pants and you can't get rid of them save for the delete
key, I mean, it happened enough in the first The Sims, but the ghosts weren't
quite as life ruining. Don't worry, Maxis feels your pain and has made a
convenient way so that you can shuffle the dead straight off the mortal coil
to some remote dung hole that nobody will ever visit again, that or a
peaceful cemetery surrounded by the wonders of nature.
Now then, along with the original option to mourn a grave or urn, and in the
case of sims who happen to have hated the decease with each passing breath,
smash and kick, sims now have the option to move graves to different
community lots for proper burial. Additionally, if you happen to kill your
sims in bulk, like me, then you can move all of the graves at once. Once they
get there, they'll be planted around somewhat randomly for your sim to add to
their inventory and move around as they see fit. Normally, you can also enter
build mode on the community lot when not playing your sims to adjust the
tombstones, however, there has been a known glitch where when you do try and
edit the cemetery, the tombstones that you sent and saved wouldn't appear,
nor will it save the location of the stones if your sim manually moved them
upon visiting the community lot, so be careful.
As mentioned before, sims can add gravestones to their inventory and plant
them anywhere they can walk. This makes for an excellent road block on
community lots, or a form of semi-convenient portable fun, since evil sims
can get some fun from repeatedly kicking graves, but if you happen not to
think like a sick and twisted sim murderer like me, you can plop it on a
community lot to make a nice quite wellspring of death and damnation, oops.
Actually, ghosts are supposedly a bit better behaved on community lots, and
at the very least, they wouldn't be able to kill your sim from fright while
they are there. Too bad you can't bring some fun ghost interactive toys like
the Xylophone and Teddy Bear though.
All of the above being said, now knowledge sims have a safe and reliable way
to come see the pretty ghosts! In the past, knowledge sims always had the
nagging want to see ghosts, but of course, you didn't want to kill any
members of your family that you might actually care about, and if you
"accidentally" killed some townie on your lot, their ghost will be there to
haunt and annoy you, waking your sim up in the middle of the night on
occasions and scaring them randomly. In many ways, the graveyard is like a
tourist attraction for the inherently evil knowledge aspiring sim. Whenever
they get the want to see dead people, send them on over to the graveyard and
let them pet the ferocious ghosts to satisfy their wants. Other sim types
also get the want to see ghosts, but it's generally that of a sim they
really, really, really hate who's ironically still usually alive, but now
thanks to the new furious system, you'll be seeing that surprisingly more
often.
As an important note, if you are seriously considering making a cemetery with
the intention of giving those happy little knowledge sims a new pet ghost to
cuddle and love, as opposed to oh, a burial ground of respect and dignity, it
is important to remember that ghosts tend to scare sims they hate far more
than sims they actually might like, especially enemies. If you plan to off a
sim to run the graveyard shift for "entertainment" purposes, you might want
to make them "mortal" enemies of any of your knowledge sims in the
neighborhood before having them jump off their mortal coil. On community
lots, ghosts also can't kill people with fright, so it's an excellent safety
feature, especially if you happened to make a cesspool of utter damnation.
Another useful purpose of cemeteries that will never catch on in the real
world due to common sense is that they can act as convenient "Rent a Ghost"
centers that sims who want to adopt a ghost to haunt their lot can come to
and pick. In order to send a tombstone back to a residential lot, click on
the tombstone and select the appropriate options to transfer the tombstone
back to home or pocket it in their inventory and unload it when you get back.
Yeah, if something like this ever happens in real life, it'll be six billion
years too soon.
*Ahem* Now then, in order to get the graves to make a good zoo, errr, I mean
graveyard, one must be experienced at the art of killing your sims! Errr, why
is everyone looking at me for advice? You know, I only spend a quarter of my
time killing sims compared to playing them well, but oh what the Hell. First
of all, sims can only die on residential lots, so you must do your dirty work
there. There are four effective ways as of Nightlife to kill sims without
cheating, I feel like I'm killing off victims in Deception III again, love
that game. Here the methods are as follows:
-----------------------
The Pool Without A Ladder:
The pool without a ladder system is perhaps the most infamous way for a sim
to die since the first The Sims game due to the total lack of common survival
skills on the sim's part. All you have to do is build a pool with one or two
diving boards and greet visiting sims. Upon doing so, they will often
automatically get into the pool. As soon as a sim runs out of Energy in a
pool, they drown; it's pretty much as simple as that. It should however be
noted that visiting sims take longer to drown than those that you control due
to the wonderful magic of computer game mechanics. Pools are best for killing
sims indiscriminately in bulk over a long period of time. It's practically
automatic and you don't have to life a finger after building the pool.
-----------------------
Cow Plant:
My main sim Xyni loves her cow plant, she borrowed it from the Secret Society
and has yet to give it back, but since then it has helped to keep her smile
bright and skin milky smooth! Her children will probably end up returning it
someday, but anyhoo.
The cow plant is the best way to ultimately kill a single sim, it's fast,
reliable, no chance of pleading with the grim reaper, easily controllable,
clean, and other sims visiting are naturally attracted to it's cake like
tongue and mouth full of teeth. Best of all, it gives off life restoring milk
that turns back the aging clock by five days and some sims even have wants to
drink their mortal enemies. The only weakness of the cow plant is its
recharge time of twelve hours. Your own controlled sims wouldn't be stupid
enough to go for it, but be careful if you have some neighbors that you might
actually care about and tuck it away into a safe room or it's owner's
inventory.
-----------------------
Incinerator Room:
Because the outside grill used indoors and TV dinner time bomb oven weren't
enough of a fire hazard, Maxis has given us sim pyromaniacs a new toy. Now
then, does having a device in your house powered by a baby dragon that
propels scorching flames several feet into the air sound like a fire hazard
to you? Seriously, this thing might be great on community lots, but unless
you are doing what this part of the FAQ is telling you to do, keep that dang
death machine out of your house! Fortunately, your sim can turn it off, but
then again, they can turn it on, from far, far, far away I might add, just
like a light can be turned on and off even when paused.
To build your own incinerator room, just build or empty out a room for the
purpose, place an archway as your only entrance into it and fill it full of
fire jets turned off. Next, call over as many victims as you can fit into the
room. Have your sim exit the archway unless you want them to take one for the
team, and remove the archway. The reason it is an archway instead of a door
is that doors cannot be moved when they are actively opened, whereas arches
don't have to open. Anyway, lob in a cheap couch or something, make a cup of
tea and sit and watch the fireworks as you turn your blasters on. Cook till
tender, repeat as necessary. If you'd rather make them suffer, put in a water
sprinkler that puts out the fire, only to have them instantly reignite again.
The fire jet is such a ludicrously effective fire starter that if the firemen
come, they might never leave. On the down side, where a fire is active, you
will not be able to use build, buy or inventory modes, so be careful.
-----------------------
A Vampire's Day in The Sun:
This isn't a very effective way to kill sims honestly unless you gain control
of them. NPCs that are turned into vampires by being bitten on the neck
automatically run away when sunrise comes, and if you lock them in a room
they disappear in a puff of smoke. If you do however control them and leave
them to easy bake in the sun, they'll light up like a blowtorch and fade away
into nothingness, specifically when their hunger bar runs dry. Still, if your
sim is dating and asking their lovers to move in faster than you know how to
kill them, now you do, granted that your own sim is a vampire. You might even
make an easy bake room that's not completely closed off by walls but fences
or half-walls instead, although the great outdoors normally does the trick
fine. Oh, if you are wondering what type of ghosts sun dried vampires make,
they are basically the same as ghosts who have died from starvation. Their
naturally pale skin makes them look a bit bluer and they don't appear in
mirrors like they did when they were slightly less undead, but they are still
basically the same old ordinary starvation ghost.
The base isn't a particularly well advertised feature in the game as much it
is a technique for downtown that I highly recommend. The purpose of the base
is very simple, to refill your sim's motives as quickly and efficiently as
possible taking as little space as possible on a small lot for quick loading
and processing times.
There will be frequent times when after shopping, a date or an outing
downtown that your sim will be running low on one motive or another. It is in
this case that the base is an essential stop to make before continuing the
downtown adventure. So why not just return home to restore everything? Well
that's because it eats away at time.
A good night's sleep, a shower, a trip to the toilet, and a full meal takes a
great deal out of your sims actual daily routine, and they might not be
prepared to go to work or school after all that partying the last night. Even
if you have a cellar full of Enigmatic Energizers, you'll still take at least
an hour to freshen up, but with a base, you can actually go downtown to
restore your motives to a state much better than they were when your sim
left, and do it much faster and more efficiently than a huge honking
community lot. As a matter of fact, if you play your sim well, they can spend
time indefinitely on community lots without returning home to the horrors of
work and family. The game automatically saves in between lot loadings, so you
don't have to worry about losing too much data if something goes horribly
wrong and you can go on dates and outings galore!
Similar to the Downtown Design Essential section, the base has to have the
best shower, the best toilet, a source of food, preferably a cafeteria and
coffee, can't forget coffee! Don't use gender specific doors for the
washrooms; you'll be surprised how counterproductive this is! Additionally,
all the key features should all be within relatively close distance to each
other, especially the coffee stand to the washroom. Sims who can run will
always have the advantage over time, but not all sims can run, skip or fly,
so you have to take that into consideration. You might want to put a small
shop with everything compressed into it as well, but it's optional.
The base also has another purpose, for your sim to make some hard earned cash
without going to their actual excuse for a job, extremely useful for young
adults in university. Definitely put a DJ Booth in and some instruments, as
you can actually get money from the tips that other sims get while playing,
and if your neighborhood has some especially creative sims, you'll be
thankful for every simolean they add to your bank account. The musical
devices will also help greatly in restoring fun, you'll practically not even
have to worry about it, and social is already in the bag too with so many
people walking around and a cellphone at your disposal.
A pool table for hustling or poker table isn't a bad idea to place in your
base. At the very least, a poker table seems to distract Mrs. Crumplebottom
from getting on your case too often. Speaking of Mrs. Crumplebottom, build a
"chill room" that is located in a remote section of the building with no
bars, bowling alleys or poker tables, as they tend to attract her. The chill
room is designed for one purpose; public displays of affection outside of the
public eye, and definitely out of Mrs. Crumplebottom's peripheral vision.
While you are at it, make sure you stuff a photo booth in there too for
woohoo. Of course, if you are controlling the love bird sims, and they can
teleport with meditation, you can just build a very remote room high in the
sky with no doors or stairs leading to it where the old hag can't reach them
and warp them there for some happy, happy, luv-u-ree!
Satisfying, new, and refreshing to The Sims 2 Nightlife is the new dating
system! Yeah, we can see how this can go horrifically wrong. Actually, dates
are extremely easy and fun once you get the hang of the system, and that is
what this entire long and winding segment is about!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[9.01] How to Get a Date: Ridiculously Easier Than Real Life
Before getting into the details of how the dates actually work, it's best if
I discuss how your sim actually can go on a date, there are several ways.
The first method is the most direct, if the person you want your sim to ask
out for a date is on the same lot as your sim is, just have them go up and
use the "On Date" command under "Ask". If your relationship is high enough,
or occasionally in the case that the two sims have great chemistry but are
total strangers, they will immediate start the dating game.
The second method is similar to the first but over the phone, you can call up
a sim for a date and have them meet you on a community lot or at home. You
can also invite them to date you while your own sim is already on a community
lot. As with the previous case, the relationship and chemistry determines the
success rate of initiating the date. Also take note that you can only invite
sims out for a date during the hours that they are normally awake and aren't
away.
Finally, the third and a rather hilarious method is to go through the
Matchmaker who can randomly wander onto the lot, as well as be summoned on
the phone under service sims. The Matchmaker sells potions, along with
setting your sim up with a blind date from the heavens; literally, they fall
out of the sky. In any case, depending on how much you pay the Matchmaker
from anywhere from 1 - 5000 simoleans, the compatibility of your date will
vary, the more, the better your results, but there's no guaranteed you'll
find an incredible triple lightning compatible mate right off the bat.
Remember, in this game perfect couples are rarely born - they are made.
Oh yeah, you can also piss off your date extra royally by standing them up by
inviting them to a community lot but not going yourself in the first place,
shades of real life.
[9.02] How Dates Work: Reducing Sim Romance into a Cold Hard Science
Okay then, onto the actual dating game. Similar to how the party system
works, your date is rated on different levels, but unlike parties, there is a
visual UI thermometer on the right side of the screen that will tell you
exactly how you are doing! Also unlike parties, you start off with only three
hours, but each time you climb to a new rating level the time of the date is
extended, like Sol's extended Gun Flame in Guilty Gear X2 while in Dragon
Install mode which requires half a bar of tension to perform. Well, there are
better comparisons, but you get my point. By the way, did I mention how much
I like Dizzy's character design from that game? Well, now I did. Okay, then
the levels of the dates and their extended times are as follows:
Date Ratings:
All dates start on the edge of the Okay rating, if your meter falls down due
to mid date trauma, then you do not gain additional extended time for
recovering to the time periods below Okay or those that you have previously
already reached during the date but.
All together, a fully extended date lasts nine hours. You can end a date
however anytime you want which makes things extra convenient, it also let's
you steamroll the system, back up, and run over it again, again and again, as
the Xyni-licious Dream Date example will explain in a later section.
Date ratings are affected by two main factors, how well the cumulative
reactions to social interactions are between the two sims and the total
aspiration point addition or reduction from wants and fears satisfied. In
simpler terms, hitting it off well with your date and fulfilling their wants
is the key to having good dates, that and you have to work fast. At the very
least, you should reach the Good rating before doing any activity that is
particularly time consuming. It should also be noted that after you reach the
top of the meter at Dream Date, any additional date rating points you get
will act as a buffer zone to prevent the meter from decreasing, thus, it's
possible to have a total disaster happen at the top of a dream date and still
be perfectly fine, so long as that disaster doesn't involve something trivial
like your date getting eaten by flies or being lit up like a roman candle,
not to be confused with roman cancel, you'd be surprised how often that
happens.
Unique to dating is the ability to view and lock your date's wants by
clicking on the tab under the thermometer that has their aspiration type
symbol on it. This is extremely useful, so make sure that you do it whenever
you see something tantalizing like a "Make Out" or a "Woohoo" want. Your
ability to control your date's wants and fears will be the equivalent of what
it would be if you were controlling them, this means that if they are full
fledged university graduates, you can see their six wants and lock two of
them as well.
Although all aspiration types are different normally, when they go on a date,
they enter a mode I like to describe as "Date Override". Similar to Party
Override, which puts your sims in a state of mind to socialize when hosting a
party, Dating Override sets your sim up for the date. Basically, most of the
sims's wants and fears instantly become related to the person being dated as
soon as the event is initiated. This makes it so that the less social
aspiration types like knowledge and wealth can easily pick up the pace and
swing into things almost as well as any romance, family or popularity sim.
There are also a few other things out of the regular that can effect a date,
however, most of them are for the worst. Mrs. Crumplebottom is a perfect
example. Getting your sim's head clubbed in by a purse full of knitting gear
is a pretty good way to step down your date, but it's not enough to
completely obliterate it, no, for something like that you need a jealous
lover or two to run and slap the living daylights out of your sim.
I've probably mentioned it a few times in this FAQ, but when your sims are
dating, any rival hearts that see them will suddenly go into a ballistic
slapping rage, and the two don't necessarily even have to be together for
that to happen either, as long as they are in date mode and the jealous lover
sees the person they are in love with, they'll get the urge to smack. Having
jealous lovers assault your sims is pretty much the number one way to kill a
date, aside from attacking and irritating your date, which is just kinda'
common sense not to do. Fortunately, you only have to worry about two people,
instead of multiple ones like for an outing, but try to minimize negative
interactions as much as possible and encourage positive ones for a good date.
Another score modifier for dates, as well as outings are changes in
relationship status, for example, becoming friends, best friends and lovers.
Doing this results in some pretty big points, and at the very least will
usually push the bar up one level. Of course, on the flip side, becoming an
enemy with year date is pretty much romantic suicide, but since when has that
stopped players from doing it at least once?
There are several ways to accidentally end a date prematurely. If the date
rating reaches rock bottom on the meter, you leave the lot without your date
in tow, as in the case of going to work or taking a spin in your car, or in
the rare case that your date has a untimely demise in such a fashion as oh,
being on the receiving end of Sim NASA's latest satellite, then the date will
end. Other more normal ways for the date to end early is if you offer to take
your date home in your car under the "Ask" command or your date suffers from
too much motive deprivation. It is for the later reason that you want your
dates to be short and successful, and that means reaching Dream Date level at
record speeds.
You can take a guess what motive your date wants to satisfy and try to
fulfill it, it'll usually be hunger or bladder, but it takes time to satisfy
those things, and you generally don't want to drag a date out longer than it
takes to reach the highest level, as you never know when something could go
wrong. As your own sim and their date's motive's decrease, their overall mood
will also decrease, making risky social interactions less likely to hit, so
if you expect the date to be in for the long haul, you might as well go
through the paces. Also of special note is if your sim is dating a vampire,
they will almost immediate run off into the sunrise at 7:00am, canceling the
date, so be careful when you time your vampire loving sim's dates.
So why go on dates? After all of the things that could possibly go wrong,
there has to be something to come out of it right? There are quite a few good
reasons to go on dates! First of all, they are extremely effective ways to
bring a sim's aspiration to platinum level if you play your cards right.
Second on the list is that they are also an excellent opportunity to focus
your time on another sim to raise their relationship level to as high as
possible. Finally, there are also lots of goodies to be had from dating as
well, which will be covered thoroughly in another section.
An important thing to keep in mind is that dates don't necessarily have to be
done by potential love interests. It's quite possible to have a successful
dream date between best friends, although not quite as easy without the high
scoring romantic interactions. Just the same though, watch out for rival
hearts, as they'll whap your sim upside the head with little discrimination
if you are in date mode, even if it's just a friendly thing.
[9.03] How to Have the Date from Hell: When Bad Just Isn't Good Enough
Before I discuss how to do it right, it's important to know what you can do
wrong if you want a date that's an absolute catastrophe, there are also some
"interesting" little nuggets of love you can get from dates gone wrong. For
this case of defective dating, it'll be the lovely Rally of the Axiom
neighborhood to act as our esteemed example!
-----------------------
How Rally Gets A Date:
-----------------------
Rally's Example #1: Ask People Your Sim Doesn't Even Know for a Date!
Assuming you don't get rejected, and there's a pretty dang good chance that
you will, the date is going to be one mountain of a steep climb. No problem!
That just means there's less room to fall down!
On the flip side of Rally's thought process, dates can still end up being
very successful dream dates with an almost total stranger, but at the very
least, the sim you want to date should have 30 daily relationships with fair
or better chemistry. That will allow to start using double plus interactions
like gossip, bust a' move and red hands and vastly improve your success rate
when you need it the most. At around 60 daily and lifetime relationship and
chemistry doesn't become as important and you should be able to work your way
up with the big stuff under hugs and kisses easily at that point. Needless to
say, if your relationship is a perfect 100 on both fronts, you're in for a
very easy time with "Make Out" and "Woohoo" rocketing your score through the
roof. If you use some of Xyni's examples in the next section though, it's
possible to take a complete 0 to a perfect 100 daily and lifetime
relationship score within the time of a date.
-----------------------
Rally's Example #2: Pay the Matchmaker Minimum Wage!
It's a great idea to skimp on the dating when it comes to the Matchmaker!
She's pretty dang pricy for just hooking you up with a single date, with the
maximum price for a date being 5000 simoleans, what a rip off! Even the good
dates she brings are ugly, so why not just get an expendable loser with no
chemistry at all to abuse and attack?! Really though, unless your sim has way
more money than she has love, don't rely on the Matchmaker to set you up.
It's easier to create your own sim to match your sim's chemistry anyway. Of
course, if you happen to be dating for disposable income and an even more
disposable spouse, the Matchmaker is the way to go! Speaking of being ripped
off, if you paid money for this FAQ, you got scammed! Report the person who
sold it to you immediately and get your money back!
-----------------------
Rally's Example #3: Date a Guy with Lots of Girlfriends!
Nothing quite says disaster quite like sending radio waves to all of your
date's lovers that might come onto the lot that you're claiming a stake on
their man, and that's exactly what happens when your sim dates a guy with
many lovers! It's amazing what a few slappy happies does for making a date a
living nightmare! If you are dating a fresh townie though, in general you
wouldn't have to worry. For the most part, you are in total control of who
falls in love in the neighborhood, albeit accidental love does happen, like
when you throw your food at a sim with a high enough relationship score who's
a young adult or older, sheesh, who could have saw that coming? In which sick
culture is throwing your food at people a sign of intimate love?
-----------------------
What Rally Does On A Date:
-----------------------
Rally's Example #1: Attack Your Date!
It's so crazy that it might just work! Of course, unless your sim inherently
already hates their date and somehow got them in a Matchmaker's draw, you're
going to have to irritate and poke them quite a bit before you can get to the
fun that is assault and battery.
On the more practical application of how not to piss off your date, stick to
safe risk intimate actions. If there is strong chemistry, like a triple
bolter, you might get away with a few chemistry accelerated actions, but only
use them if it's an all or nothing race against time or you are perfectly
comfortable with the chance of failure, it wouldn't take long for chemistry
accelerated actions to become regular safe actions anyway.
As with building any normal relationships, find a combination of three strong
interactions that work, then cycle them over and over again till a another
strong and safe one is available and substitute it into the cycle. At the
highest level of romance, the cycle of Make Out, Goose and Squeeze does the
trick, but it wouldn't be long before the couple starts wanting to woohoo, so
prepare for that as well. At that point though, any inherently good
interaction will be almost guaranteed to work, and relationship building to
the maximum level will be easy, along with taking your date to the top!
-----------------------
Rally's Example #2: Waste Your Time
Rally likes food more than men. More specifically, she likes men as food, but
she can't do that in this game, at least not without a cow plant, so the
first thing she'll do on a date is be seated at a restaurant and spend all of
her time trying to order something and wolf it down while somewhat paying
attention to her date. By the time they are done eating, the date is dead and
cold.
The proceeding example was an incredible waste of time and puts your sim in a
disadvantage to score relationship points and satisfy wants! If your sim
already has a high enough relationship to be romantically involved with the
other sim during a date, there is plenty to do at the table, but if not,
you're practically walking through a social interaction minefield, since the
only safe one is toasting at low relationship levels. Be careful when doing
actions outside of direct standing interaction like dining, bowling, poker,
and dancing, as they will limit your arsenal of possible interactions. Cancel
out of any want related action as soon as the want is satisfied to help save
time, such as the want to dance, the want to dine, the want to play cards and
so on. It might not be very sweat and subtle, but your date wouldn't mind the
fast pace, and the date's pacing will be significantly accelerated. When
you've already reached Dream Date at the top of the Date Rating meter, then
your sims can relax and enjoy their time at the diner table or play fun
activities together, but don't do it at the beginning of a date or the
stretch of inactive time might kill it before it really starts to warm up.
-----------------------
Rally's Example #3: Take Your Date Home and Kill Them
Rally has a great deal of experience with bags of flaming poo being left on
her front door. She also doesn't like them very much; she thinks they are
very disrespectful. Of course, Rally has discovered a way to persuade her old
dates gone bad from doing such a thing - lock them in an incinerator room and
light them on fire! If your date hasn't gone completely south, you can ask
your date to come home with you and off them. Alternatively and more
reliably, you can invite them to your lot in the first place - then off them.
You might have figured it out by now, but Rally is not a nice person. Oddly
enough, the date meter only falls about two levels if your date happens to
oh, die, but the date will pretty much also instant fail and of course,
nobody will be coming to bring you flowers. Well, that's it, no positive
lesson to be learned from this example, other than "Do much worst onto
others, before others intend to do it to you", seeing as how dates gone bad
can come back to haunt you. As a special note to any impressionable youths,
DO NOT DO THIS IN REAL LIFE!
Well, now that we're through that sadistic slugfest part of the FAQ, it's
time to talk about how to consistently have a Dream Date each and every time
and completely abuse the system in a way that would make Maxis cry. Now, to
explain this segment by example is our other Axiom resident, the luv-u-ree
female biped Xyni and her portable cow plant! Not to be confused with the
actual Xyni from my website, Xyni Platini from Second Life, that other Xyni I
used for Wizardry 8, that one that I used for Morrowind, the Xyni I used from
the original The Sims, and of course, definitely not the one used for the
original Final Fantasy, which only supported four character names anyway. The
name goes a long, long, long way back. Okay, nuff' of that, onto the
examples!
-----------------------
How Xyni Gets a Date
-----------------------
Xyni's Example #1: Machinegun Dating!
Well, here's something you can't do in real life, without some strange looks
from people anyway. Since Xyni is a popularity aspiring sim, she can stick to
one sim she likes very much and satisfy all of her and her partner's wants on
demand without clashing with her aspiration nature, unlike Romance sims who
might get wants to Make Out, Woohoo and fall in love with multiple sims while
on a date, which can definitely clash with their dating goal at hand. Xyni
also just graduated from Axiom University, so her palette of six wants and
two locks gives her a much larger selection of actions and directions to go
in on dates.
Xyni's dates are ridiculously short, lasting less than two hours before they
reach Dream Date level, mainly because of repeated Make Out and Woohoo
actions, then she ends the date and starts it again immediately, locking any
high scoring wants from the last date to be used as accelerants for the new
date. More on the locking bit later.
In the time it takes another sim to go through a fully extended Dream Date,
Xyni can have four or five Dream Dates with her partner and amass obscene
amounts aspiration points. Its borderline unrealistic that any physical
living being in real life could actually do that, and Maxis apparently didn't
think it unrealistic that a person can date the same person like fifteen
times on the same day, so exploit it and bite away at the wound like a
ferocious cougar on the weakest gazelle! Of course, Xyni's "best friend" will
stop by to give her a few flowers and other goodies from the compound dating,
sometimes even during the current date, and hopefully, he wouldn't get eaten
by the cow plant.
Oh yes! Another goodie that comes from delivering a Dream Date is that the
dating sims' motives get about a fifth of their meters in all areas restored,
save for Environment of course. What this means is that our healthy female
biped here and her best friend can machinegun date practically indefinitely
all day and night long without interruptions. Oh yeah, it should be noted
that married couples can still date each other! Oh what an unrealistically
ideal world The Sims 2 is! So don't let a little something like monogamy get
in the way of your sim's dating pursuits!
-----------------------
Xyni's Example #2: Home Is Where Your Date Is
The place where most good dates end should really be the place where they all
begin, at home. Unlike real life where first time daters like to meet on
neutral grounds just in case one of them is a serial killer, like Rally up
there, in this game, sims can invite their date to meet them at home in the
first place.
Home has many advantages to it aside from being a place you are familiar
with, you can fix some problems that might come up with build, buy and
inventory mode and help make things work better, such as bringing the jukebox
into the room when you need to dance together. Other advantages are that you
can use aspiration rewards like the Love Tub and Cool Shades, you can have
double beds on residential lots, which is always useful for obvious reasons,
and finally, you can SAVE YOUR GAME!
Having your sim's date at home is also ideal for established romance sims
with multiple lovers who have a better chance of going to Heaven than going
on for a date on the town without receiving a fistful of slap. Of course, the
reverse is kinda' true should a more family oriented sim be domestically
anchored to the old ball and chain and want to escape the confines of their
spouse's domain of terror. Of course, pretty much every sim with the
exception of the romance sim can become very satisfied with monogamy, so it's
really more for story purposes.
Another help to having your sim's date at home is that if your sim lives with
other people, they can also help support the date to work better so you
wouldn't have to solo it on your own, such as with cooking meals and
cleaning. Better yet, you can double date or even all out multi date all at
the same time! You can do this on community lots as well, but multiple dates
mean multiple risks, so it's good to be home. Yeah, it might be a massive
undertaking, but with the home team advantage, it'll be a snap! Downtown does
have some advantages over home though, most important is the fact that actual
worldly time doesn't pass so you can be there for as long as you like if your
motives are healthy. The second is that you will only find restaurants
downtown, although the want to dine out with another sim is actually very low
paying. A good alternative to home though is to invite your sim to the "Base"
mentioned in its own section. Of course, dates can travel around from one
location to another, but home is the perfect place to anchor the dating
relationship to a secure point before taking off to a community lot, plus you
wouldn't have to fear being caught cheating as remotely as much as if you
were downtown.
-----------------------
Xyni's Example #3: Ummm, Control Your Date
You wouldn't have the luxury of controlling both of your dates all the time
unless the sim has somehow moved in with your family or was built into the
household. This works pretty well for micromanagement style players who like
to build their neighborhoods and sim communities from the ground up, but more
plug and play gamers might opt to wine and dine the townies instead.
After the household merging system that came with The Sims 2 University, it's
not all that hard to control any two of your own sims under one roof by
merging the respected two families together. Even if they don't have good
relationships, you can force them to live with each other from the
neighborhood screen. Additionally, if it's a townie or service sim we are
talking about here, you can purpose for them to "Move In" after reaching a
good best friend relationship or even marriage if commitment is no problem
for you. Not only does controlling both of your sims give you an enormous
advantage by burning the candle at both ends and increasing efficiency in
unity (Your date wouldn't wander off to go bowling with Mrs. Crumplebottom),
you'll also be able to satisfy each other's wants better.
-----------------------
What Xyni Does On A Date:
-----------------------
Xyni's Example #1: Fools Rush In -- And It Works! Taking 0 to 100! Love!
Love!
If you dated a person under Xyni's first three examples above, then you're
practically guaranteed to have a Dream Date if you just remotely try,
however, you wouldn't always have that much control over your date, and for
the sake of immoral "common wisdom", a little romantic variety doesn't hurt,
so this and the following rules are in the case that your date doesn't like
you very much. So you might be asking, if Xyni was such a dedicated love
interest to her man, why would she need to start dating total strangers?
Well, her cow plant ate her "Best Friend", the end. Okay, that didn't really
happen (In any game that I saved at least), but if it did, this is what she
would do on dates with complete strangers. Now then, it brings me great
pleasure to reduce the wonders of dating into a cold hard soul lacking
science - again -- but this time in steps!
At Okay Level:
The first three hours of the date are the most important and difficult. This
is when your new date is at their most alienated state and when you don't
have any time extensions or hard hitting interactions. If you can manage to
get them into the Good level and get the extended 2:30 hours quickly, then
you'll have a much higher chance of getting to Dream Date. If you are working
a zero relationship, then you're definitely in for a ride, although it's not
all that difficult if you've become experienced in how the dating system
works and a complete utter disaster doesn't disintegrate your date on
arrival. On the flip side, if the two sims have triple lightning bolt
chemistry, you can get away with a very easy dream date and maxing to 100
daily and lifetime relationship even if you make some big mistakes and start
off as total strangers.
The key to boosting the dating rating as fast as possible is to nail the
intimate interaction related wants of both sims as quickly as possible,
preferably nailing multiple at a time and getting a plus reaction from it in
the process. Let the sim and their date's want list guide your actions.
Metaphorically, you are trying to kill as many birds with as few stones as
possible.
Fulfilling wants by sheer number isn't enough; you want your sim's
relationship to flourish and grow so that you can advance up the social
interaction level, bring bigger paying wants and bring out the big guns like
Woohoo and Makeout. Take note that a good indicating of actions that will
work are the wants your partner has, sometimes they'll want a risky action
like Slow Dance or Make Out before they are typically ready for them. It is a
good bet that using those interactions that they want will work, although
it's not perfectly guaranteed, particularly if your sim's chemistry isn't
going for them, but it's a good hint and a bonus for if it does work.
The hardest part when first dating is the first 30 points of daily
relationship on both sides, take or give depending on chemistry (The 30 mark
is from neutral chemistry). Hopefully your sims have good chemistry, but
that's wishful thinking too.
Thankfully, Nightlife has the new "Ask" command that is far more effective
than automated talking and informative too. You might want to have 10 points
of daily relationship before you ask certain questions if your chemistry
doesn't bounce. Oh yes, please keep in mind that the full palette of "Ask"
commands will not be available if your sim's date is being controlled at the
same time, the game kinda' renders it redundant I would suppose. This isn't a
particularly big deal though, as they get a default bonus relationship upon
moving in together well past the zero point anyway where asking is most
useful. Anyhow, back to using the "Ask" command, it is safe to generally
first ask what your date's sign is, then what their job is, followed by what
turns them on or off, then their wants and fears. There are several other ask
options, but you typically don't want to ask them how much money they have
until the relationship improves (This seems to piss off the Diva and Mr. Big
in particular), although if you are a romance, pleasure seeker or a gold
digging wealth sim, that'll be the first question you want to ask, but really
shouldn't.
The reason why the 30 point mark is so important is that it is when reliable
double plus interactions become readily available, such as Gossip, Red Hands
and Bust a' Move. Fortunately, some of the "Ask" commands can result in
double pluses as well, making them surprisingly effective given their quick
speed, but be warned if you are trying not to actually get your sim
romantically involved. Asking can trigger a Crush relationship when daily
relationship reaches past 50, save for "About Interests" and "Ask If They
Like What They See". . Ask commands also don't have coordinating wants, so as
soon as such actions as Admire, Tickle, Gossip, Dance Together become
available, switch to them to double bank on the wants, especially on dates.
At Good Level:
Assuming that you made it here, you can now feel just a little bit relieved,
even more so if you broke the 30 point barrier. At this stage, start using
double plus reactions with minimal risk, it's still not completely safe to
start a romance, but try to get in some lifetime relationship effecting
actions in like "Friendly Hug" and "Bust a' Move".
At Great Level:
Hopefully at this point, your sim and their date will be at least friends at
50 relationship points. At this point, you can start using subtle romantic
actions with a good chance of success like Peck, Sweet Talk and Romantic Hug.
The key to this point is to start increasing lifetime relationship score with
the low level intimate actions and work your way up to higher level ones.
It'll only get easier from this point.
Remember, in order to perform stronger romantic interactions, it is the
lifetime relationship level that is more vital. Certain casual moves don't do
a thing at all of increasing the lifetime level, but others nudge it and the
strongest romantic interactions shove it. Nonromantic actions like Bust a'
Move and Backrub can increase lifetime relationship a little, but you'd best
turn to intimate actions under hug, flirt and kiss if you want the romance to
bloom.
At Dream Date:
You have finally tasted the sweet taste of success! You can always end your
date here and expect roses in the morning, but there's a pretty good chance
that your sim's relationships haven't been maxed out to 100 daily and
lifetime relationship yet, and this is the best time to do it while the iron
is hot! Ideally at this point, you will have increased your sim's
relationship to 100 daily and above 50 Lifetime relationship. That's not
particularly easy to do normally, but the later examples in this section will
help with that. At this point, it's fairly safe to use high level flirts like
Caress, Hold Hands and Goose as well as the high level hugs and kisses. What
you want to see in your sim and their want palette is the want to flirt or be
flirted with. If you are lucky, hitting this want will lead to the make Make
Out want in addition with the Kiss want, and satisfying that will lead to the
Woohoo want and very possibly any of its alternate sisters like Woohoo in
bed, Woohoo in Hot Tub, Woohoo in public, but most specifically Woohoo in car
seems frequent if there is a car on your lot, including community lots.
-----------------------
Xyni's Rule #2: Use the Tools of The Trade!
In real life, we don't have any real devices to make dates go better other
than our own charismatic personality, oh wait, we have booze - and that made
all the difference. Anyhow, the best place to start a date hands down is at
home as mentioned before, but what I didn't elaborate on where how aspiration
rewards and other items can severely enhance your dating rating potential, as
well as Love Potion #8.5, Cologne and having a wardrobe and a mirror.
First of all, I'll talk about Love Potion #8.5. If you have a bottle of it,
definitely use it within the first three hours of the date. At the very
least, it'll help to neutralize horrible chemistry and if you already have
good, but not perfect chemistry with your date, it can help you temporarily
achieve that illusive triple lightning bolt rating, making things
significantly easier. Next on the list are two aspiration items that will
help you accelerate your date, the Cool Shades and Love Tub.
The Cool Shades aspiration item multiplies the effect of interactions, both
successful and negative by a good deal, so if you are confident that the
social interaction will work, wear them and do it. For dates in development,
I recommend using it with Bust a' Move, but for dates already in the secure
circle of love, I highly recommend using it with Make Out. You can also use
the Cool Shades with Woohoo for incredible payoff, but it's a bit tricky, as
sims automatically talk when they are in the hot tub or in bed, wasting the
glasses. In order to get the glasses to work with Woohoo, you have to make
out in a public cloths booth or a photo booth, but wait you say, you can't
bring the Cool Shades to a community lot? No problem, buy a photo booth for
home use and that will suffice! Oh yeah, if you are controlling both sims,
try making both of them wear Cool Shades when performing a strong
interaction, since they will multiply the effect. The Cool Shades are
particularly useful for jump starting lifetime relationship, which is usually
something that time does better than anything outside of high level intimate
actions, so use them many and use them plenty if you got the aspiration
output for it. Chances are that you'll be far more than just compensated for
their price at the end of a Dream Date.
Now then, about the Love Tub, sim's gain a much higher level of success with
romantic actions performed in the love tub, so you can Make Out and Woohoo
with significantly less risk, and since those two are the biggest paying
social interactions in the game, they'll blast your date rating straight
through the roof. There is also a specific want to Woohoo in the Love Tub
want that can be satisfied for some good points at the same time as the
regular want to woohoo in a hot tub.
The mirror and the wardrobe are very useful in helping to increase chemistry
by altering a sim's characteristics. First, you have to find out what turns
your date on and off, so ask them under the "Ask" command. With a wardrobe
and mirror, you should be able to change the majority of variables. There is
one table mirror under Surfaces in the Miscellaneous section in the shopping
catalog that you might also find handy called the Cornerstone Variable Vanity
that will allow you to extreme makeup your date to better fit your sim's
preferences. You might not have the time to do all of this on a date of
course, but it doesn't take all that long and the results do payoff if the
couple has the chemistry of water and oil.
Using these tools, I've been able to regularly turn horrific 36 simolean
discount Matchmaker nightmares into Dream Dates, and now you can too!
-----------------------
Xyni's Rule #3: Lock and Load Your Wants!
This trick works best in the case that you are "machinegun dating" like
mentioned in Xyni's Example #1 for How Xyni Gets a Date, which is best
summarized as having extremely fast Dream Dates one immediately right after
the other with the same person. At the end of a Dream Date, there is usually
some fallout from the "Dating Override" that all the passion making brought
about. You can take advantage of it and ride it into your next date with the
person by locking it so that you don't have to worry about want shuffling
start up time between ending your current date and starting your new one,
which tends to start the date off with low level interactions. For example,
if you had a spare Make Out want at the end of your last date and you locked
it, you can satisfy it immediate upon starting a new date and get the wants
shuffling at the highest intimate level of making out, flirting and woohoo.
This kick starts the date right where the last one left off, and is a highly
effective strategy in reaching Dream Date as fast as possible.
There is another similarly related strategy for dating, and that is to save
and lock a powerful want that your sim can satisfy controllably, specifically
something like the "Sell a Masterpiece" want for extremely creative sims
under the popularity and wealth aspirations who have a spare painting on a
canvas waiting to be sold. This will give your sim an a good boost even on
completely crappy dates with strangers, although high paying wants outside of
the "Sell a Masterpiece" are pretty hard to control, giving popularity and
wealth aspiring sims a bit of a dating advantage.
Well, that was a really long segment, finally, onto what wonderful goodies
you get from going on dates!
There are several rewards your sim can get for a well done date, as well as
some that are not so nice from dates gone wild, or just plain disastrous.
With most of the gifts, you'll see your date come onto your lot to deliver
the item personally to your front door at any given time of the day, or in
the case of the letters, a mail man will bring it straight to your mail box
in the morning. In the case that your sim date lives together, he will have
his actions overwritten once his queue is free and deliver the gift. Gifts
have a nice little bit of amusing poetry attached to them, and they can be
viewed to see them or you can read the description after putting them into
your inventory. Oh! The good Gifts also have a funny secondary effect if
other lovers of the sim view them; they start crying and get a moderately
large negative reaction towards their lover who went on a date, as well as
the possibility of becoming Furious. Gifts from dates are actually a pretty
useful device for when you want to end a loving relationship without getting
caught cheating or domestic abuse. Anyhow, without further delay, onto the
goodies!
Gifts:
1. "You're My Dream Date" Bouquet:
I have so many of these on my main sim's front lawn that it's a bit
ridiculous! Still, this is the immediate gift that you get from a date
very well done, a lovely bouquet of non-perishable roses, and by non-
perishable, I mean bloody immortal like the Highlander Duncan McCloud.
2. "I Had A Great Time Flower:
The diminutively less impressive version of the rose bouquet for having a
Great Date, it's still a treasure for a job well done and is apparently
also an immortal plant that doesn't require water or substance of any form
or sort to flourish.
3. "Thanks for the Fun" Note
For having a Good Date, this pink tidy little letter will land in your
mail box and be directly deposited to your sims inventory.
4. "Don't Call Me" Note:
This one's a treasure to me! If you get a lame or bad date, you might just
find this in your mail box the next day! I've gotten so many dream date
bouquets that I was so happy to find this little golden nugget of hate
mail in my sim's mail box one day! The letter is a black note with a red
seal on the front, and it apparently smells very badly, as your sim
discovers as they receive them. It can't get worst than this though can
it? Oh yes it can!
5. "Worst Date Ever" Flaming Bag of Poo:
The ultimate in date hate, if you have a horrible date, your date will
sneak onto your lot and light this perpetually burning bag of poo. I mean,
I just waited and waited for days for the thing to go out, but it just
doesn't seem to stop burning! The bag of hot steamy feces does massive
damage to the environment score, and in order to throw it away, one of
your sims has to stamp it out and clean it up.
Other Rewards:
1. +1 Cleaning Point: Your sim can randomly receive one cleaning skill
point for a successful date. There doesn't seem to be any determining
variable, it just happens at random. It might also be possible to get
other skill points from dates, but I haven't seen it happen personally,
unlike with outings.
2. Motive Restoration: Depending on how well your date went, you will get
an instant boost to motives as soon as the date ends. A Dream Date can
restore about a fifth to all motives, but a horrible date wouldn't
really help anything.
3. A Random Item from the Buy Catalog:
It might be proportional to how well your date went or not, but you can
get some great stuff from your date. What will happen is that your date
will sneak onto your lot with one of those bottomless inventory bags
and deposit the item at your door steps where there is space available.
The item seems to be random as well as the actual chance of the event
occurring, and they seem to be too various to list. I've seen and heard
everything from flower pots to stoves to remote controlled cars to
pianos, the only basic rule seems that it has to be able to fit on the
ground on your front lawn. You can get some great grub for free this
way!
Ah, there isn't quite anything like the classic outing where your sim and
company can venture from lot to lot, beating down and shooting any rival
gangs that get in their way, oops, wrong game. Seriously though, you can
assemble gangs together to go and terrorize people using outings, but of
course, that's far from what Maxis intended the player to do, although I'm
pretty sure some rogue game testers somewhere thought otherwise!
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[10.01] How to Go On an Outing: When Parties Become Obsolete
Outings are a cross between the group numbers of parties with the mobility
and play mechanics of dates. They also allow you and your sim friends to
travel from lot to lot using taxi or car, which equals a very adventurous
romp. You can also just stay grounded at home, similar to a regular party.
Alright then, similar to what I did with dates, I'm going to talk about how
to go on outings first!
There are three ways to go on an outing; I will discuss the more conventional
way first. New to Nightlife is the group system to make repeated outings with
your sim's friends much easier. When your sim uses either a cellular phone or
a land phone, they will have the command "Groups" in the menu. When you first
choose it, the only option available will be "Manage Groups". This will allow
you to assemble groups of multiple people together for outings from people
your sim knows.
Similar to parties, the power of your computer, as determined by what the
game detects (If you happen to have an AMD processor like me, it tends to
read wrong), is what limits how many people you can have in a single group.
The highest I've personally seen is 8 but your results will vary. Groups also
include the sim that assembled the group. If you created a group involving
other sims you can have control over, as indicated by the diamond on the
group creation screen next to the name, that person too will have the group
listed when you go to play them.
All right then! We're ready for an outing! All you have to do now is pick the
either of the two options under "Groups" that are "Invite Over" and "Meet On
A Community Lot". These two options will be available if you are calling from
home, but you will only be able to summon your group to where you are if you
are on a community lot. Be warned in the case of the later, because all your
groupies tend not to show up when the community lot is full of townies. There
are also two options under the previously mentioned commands, "For an Outing"
and "For Fun". The only real different is that "For an Outing" starts the
Outing Rating meter where as the "For Fun" one doesn't and can go on
basically indefinitely so long as all of the members of the group don't leave
or you manually disband it. Your group still follows you around wherever you
go, and it's good if you are going out with a group of strangers who would
sooner beat the tar out of each other than have fun.
Finally, onto the second method which I like to call the Katamari Damacy
system or perhaps it is better described as the "RPG Party Plot Device
System". Basically, it involves you adventuring around, quite possibly from
lot to lot and adding new people to your group as you go. In any case, when
you click on another sim there will be a command under the "Ask" option, look
for the option of "Ask To Join Casual Group". You will start off the outing
with a single person, and be able to gather people as you go along. You can
also ask people to join your group in any of the other outing situations, as
well as ask them to leave.
Finally, if your sim has some friends or potential contacts in the mix, they
may be asked to go downtown over the phone for a group outing. This is
probably the worst case scenario if you are looking to have a successful
outing, since you don't pick and choose who will be in the group, and there's
a good chance that your sim wouldn't be friends with the other members of the
group in question. For crying out loud, the people in the group are probably
not even friends of the other people in the group, the grouchy ones in
particular seem more likely to eat each others faces than to actually bother
with something low priority like communication.
Outings actually somewhat make ordinary parties obsolete, since you actually
get rewards and goodies from them and you can call groups much easier than
independently invite guests. Of course, this is not to mention that you can
bring outings anywhere, from home to downtown community lots. The only
downside to outings is that it seems that you don't get a memory for having
them, but it's not such a big deal. Parties do however have the benefit of
having more frequent variations of wants to satisfy though, and more
aspiration types get them more often, so they are still good for when your
sim just has to party. Still, parties still use the old text box rating
system. I'd like to see them updated in a future expansion pack.
[10.02] How Outings Work: Trying Not To Make Your Friends Hate You
Outings have the thermometer rating system almost exactly like dates do,
except the names of the levels are different and you will not be able to view
any of the other sim's wants or fears. Similar to dates, you start at the
middle ranged "So-So" level with three hours, and each time you reach a new
level, you get your time extended.
The Outing Rating also behaves almost exactly like the dating system,
increasing and decreasing with interaction results and wants and fears being
fulfilled and the other stray variables mentioned for dating. Many of the
strategies that work for dates can be adapted with a little multitasking
common sense for outings. The Outing Rating is actually quite a bit tougher
to fill up than the Date Rating, as it involves multiple people who may or
may not actually like each other. Fortunately, if the other people in the
group do like each other, then they will automatically help fill the bar up
with each positive interaction. On the flip side, if they are beating each
other down into a bloody pulp and continue to assault each other with slaps,
shoves and pokes, the outing could easily become an unrecoverable disaster.
Just like how starting a date makes your sim go into "Date Override" mode,
outings have their own "Outing Override" equivalent that focuses on
interacting with other members in the group. As you probably can guess,
fulfilling these wants in conjunction with having good interactions, and
doing it quickly are the keys to rockin' outings.
In particular when it comes to increasing or decreasing the outing score is
achieving new relationship statuses, like best friends, lovers and enemy. It
seems to be a lot more volatile with so many people than on a date where you
generally try not to rearrange your partner's face as a rule of thumb. Be
very careful with what your guests are doing. It seems to be okay if someone
else is pissing them off or attacking them, but if two people in your group
irritate or fight with each other, it could be quite painful for the meter.
If this becomes the case, click on one of the offenders and select the "Leave
Casual Group" command under "Ask" and eject the idiot before he or she causes
some major rating damage.
An important strategy in outings is to focus your attention on people in your
group as marked by the smaller diamond over their heads, and if any good
friends come strolling by while you're roaming with your group, invite them
on board unless they are a mortal enemy of other people in your group.
Fortunately, unlike dates, other rival hearts in the area wouldn't come and
slap the hell out of your sim when they are on an outing automatically, thank
goodness. However, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't string a single
romantic interest along with you, in fact, doing so results in a much easier
outing. Of course, if you are thinking of stringing along two love interests,
you better be extremely careful not to let one see you making out with the
other, as I've seen a outing at the Fun rating go straight down to the bottom
of the meter at disaster by a sim that was caught cheating, which basically
insta-killed the Outing.
Similar to dates, outings can be ended at anytime by clicking on your sim and
selecting the "End Casual Outing" command. You can also gather your group
together into one spot using the "Gather Casual Group".
Ironically, you can kill off people in your group if you are on a residential
lot, and the score doesn't seem to decrease, although killing everyone in
your group is pretty much automatic failure. In other related news, if the
idea of a vicious gang that goes around getting into fights sounds like an
interesting story bit to you, you can very well do that with outings. It
seems that your own sim can get away with fighting people not in the group
during an outing and get away without hurting the rating. The same case
applies when you influence your groupies to fight other expendable townies;
at least this seems to be the case most of the time.
When you are on an outing, you can venture from one lot to another, and it's
particularly useful if you have a car, as everyone will squeeze in, taking
your party along as you go. Oh yeah, the following sections are in story
form. I figured you might be tired of my cold analytical game oriented
scrutiny, so I thought I'd have a story time break to help teach the little
kiddies about outings!
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[10.03] The Worst Case Scenario: When It Can Always Get Worst
The following is based on an actual The Sims 2 story:
It seemed like a simple enough outing for Rally. The local Mr. Big decided to
invite her over to an outing with her friends on some cold night that nobody
will ever remember. Normally, Rally didn't like invitations, seeing as sims
who usually accepted hers have a tendency to oh, die, but since Rally had
plans of world domination and to steal Mr. Big's money before tossing him
into the incineration room. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
When Rally arrived at "Yushi's Floating Market" she realized that all of Mr.
Big's friends were all a bunch of worthless losers that had faces that looked
like they'd be pressed firmly against a George Foreman Grill. There was no
way she was going to associate with these decrepit vagrants. Still, Rally
wanted to get some goodies from a good outing score, so she did her best to
meet the wants and act friendlier than normal, which means she's not trying
to kill anyone with boolprop cheats.
After playing poker on one of the platforms, Rally noticed that two of Mr.
Big's friends were starting to royally piss each other off. After a while,
they got into a slapping contest, now that can't be good for the rating.
Before Rally got over there to eject one of the idiots with the "Leave Casual
Group" command, they finally broke into a fistfight and became enemies on the
spot, because apparently they weren't enemies before. This unfortunately
completely leveled the Outing Rating, and things were looking pretty hopeless
since Rally didn't have any particularly strong friends outside of Mr. Big
who was just a casual friend.
That's when it happened. Rally's best friend and "little sister" Xyni came
onto the lot. Had she still been in university, she wouldn't have come to a
downtown lot automatically on her own, but since she recently graduated and
moved into a cardboard box of a house, she was all good to go. Rally quickly
ran over to Xyni and asked her to join her group. After that moment the two
completely ignored everyone else and were in a world of there own. Rally was
highly considering swinging the other way, you know, to help accelerate the
Outing Rating with intimate actions, that's all, but doing so would
completely wreck the story continuity, so she stuck to friendly actions.
Through satisfying several combo chained wants and high powered interactions
and a lot of effort in a little time, the outing finally turned into a
Rockin' success!
Wheel of Morality Says:
Generally, you should be careful accepting invitations downtown over the
phone, they do not work in your advantage and can be rather difficult if you
don't have many close friends in the group, and even worst if the people in
the group hate each other. You should have at least one close friend during
an outing to rely on if things go hideously wrong. Concentrate on getting
your Outing Rating as high as possible through interacting positively with
this person before moving onto strangers. If there is no one available, find
a person with good chemistry, or better yet, if a sim who is friends with
yours walks onto the lot, invite them to join the group and work with them
for a better outing tomorrow!
[10.04] The Omni Outing: When You Have The Attention Span of a Hummingbird
The following is based on an actual The Sims 2 story experience, like there's
even a point to writing this statement:
There is one thing you should know about Xyni - she's insane. No, it's not
because she commands an army of semi-evil zombie slaves that crank out
counterfeit money day and night, or the fact that she named her pet cow plant
"Moo Moo the Man Eating Plant", and it's not that thing she has for meteor
paperweights and pocket caltrops either -- probably. No, it's because Xyni,
in her complete utter lack of time management skills has decided to have an
outing, a party, and to top it off, a date tonight - all within five hours
overlapping!
Xyni called up her best friend and love interest to come to a house party
instead of a sports party, since sweaty people whooping the crap out of each
other in questionably valid athletic activities while onlookers eat potato
chips is out of the question for her, being really poor and living in a
cardboard box like house with no TV - or a ceiling for that matter and all
that other optional jazz.
The reason Xyni only invited one person through the party call is simple, she
follows the party call with a call to assemble her favorite group of friends
to meet her at the house for an outing! This way, they all take part in the
party upon arriving on the lot, and Xyni will only need to ask her best
friend to join the outing instead of multiple people! Now, Xyni read the
programmer's code, and knows that if she left the lot to go venturing during
the outing on a community lot with her entourage of scum and villainy, the
party would resume right where it left off when she returned, but she doesn't
want to exploit the game's play mechanics - again, so she's going to do it
the realistic way. If Xyni ever wanted to take her group away from home
though and eat at a fancy diner though, she could very well do it at no
additional consequence, since party time ceases when off the residential lot.
When all of the guests for the party that double as outing members arrive at
the house, Xyni asks her best friend to join the outing and since parties and
outings are very similar, all positive actions count for both of the events!
Wham! Xyni effectively hits two hippopotamuses with one telephone phone!
Synergy!
After hugging and greeting all of her long time friends to help brush things
up to that beautiful little 100 relationship number, Xyni returns to her love
interest and they do some "Payapaya" sending the Outing Score through the
Roof Raiser score that the party is enjoying simultaneously, but it's not
over yet! While there are still two and a half hours on the clock, Xyni
quickly asks her partner for a date, suddenly, the Outing automatically ends
as a Rockin' Outing (Although the message wouldn't come up till after the
date) and the Date Begins!
After some more "Payapaya" on the bed, a little "Payapaya" in the car, a dab
of Payapaya in the Photobooth and just a wee bit of "Payapaya" in the love
tub, she ends the date as a Dream Date and the party ends shortly there after
as well. Xyni has now effectively had a Roof Raiser Party, a Rockin' Outing
and a Dream Date all in the time it would take to throw just a normal party
or almost half of a regular outing.
And they lived happily ever after.
Wheel of Morality Says:
You can actually go on a date or an outing at the same time as throwing a
party! Since all three events rely heavily on positive social interactions,
you are basically getting a three for the price of one plus tax deal.
Although you'll have to work the outing and date independently, the dating
score can help reinforce the party score. Outings and dates unfortunately
cannot be had at the same time for a single sim, so you have to divide them
over the duration of the party. Of course, if you wanted extra time since two
and a half hours is only about a fourth of a full date or outing, you can
always exceed the party time limit. Normally parties make sims force leave
automatically when they end, but if they are members of your group or date,
they'll stay with you after the party ends. Alternatively, you can always
take off for a community lot for more time.
It is absolutely vital that the sims you invite have a good relationship with
your sim. Having a single successful date, outing or party alone might be
easy, but having all three rolled into one is a bit more complex, so you want
to make sure you're prepared for an epic undertaking like this. I've actually
done more complicated, multiple dates and outings between multiple sims
running simultaneously while a party is running, but I can feel my computer
crying when I start to try things like that, so I don't do it unless it's for
the sake of doing it. Actually, it's weird, but you can have two sims start
rival outings and steal each other's members into their own group, although
two groups cannot be merged by asking the leader to join.
There aren't clear cut rewards for successful outings every time you have
them, although you might randomly receive the following if you are lucky.
1. +1 Skill Point:
Like dates, you can gain skill points by having a successful outing,
although it seems completely random. I've personally seen cleaning,
creativity, charisma, body, cooking and mechanical points added this way,
the last remaining skill, Logic, can most likely also be gained this way
as well. It should also be noted that you can still get points this way
even if you have a high level 9 in a respected skill, which makes for a
very easy point when you're that far along in skill development. Oh yeah,
the game generally tells you something along the lines that the reason
that you got the skill point was that your sim was around other sims with
the quality in the outing. In my experience, this doesn't seem to be true;
it appears to be completely random in fact. Any controllable sim in the
group has the opportunity to gain a skill point after it ends well, making
including other members of your household in the group very useful!
2. A Random Object From The Buy Catalog:
Just like with dates as well, a sim from your outing can sneak onto your
lot and deliver some well deserved loot. I've gotten some nice expensive
items this way for free, and there's nothing cheaper than for free. I've
seen everything from the Soma Audiogeek TK421 Tower System to a 12th
Century Song Dynasty Sculpted Vase to a Bust of Tylopoda. It might also
just be me, but I think that you can only get objects from good outings if
they involved at least one sim that you do not control who will visit your
lot to deposit the item. The same seems to be true of dates as well. I'm
trying to composite a reliable list of objects, but it seems pretty hard
to nail down.
3. Motive Restoration:
For a good outing, you can receive a nice boost to all motives that will
help you recover the energy you exerted while trying to keep your
"friends" from killing each other.
4. Coupon for a Free Meal:
To tell the truth, I don't know if this is a reward for a successful
outing or just a randomly deposited goodie in your mail box. In my
experience, it always comes right after a great outing, but the game
itself doesn't say anything about it being because of a good outing unlike
other rewards. In any case, this coupon is good for one free meal for your
sim and his or her guests at a community lot restaurant! The coupon is
definitely a nice little treat, so order some really expensive stuff,
okay?
I have also heard that you can get promotions for your sim's job from
outings as well, although I have yet to see this happen myself. It woud
also seem that there aren't any particular negative penalties for doing
extremely bad on an outing other than a few harsh automated words.
Also, similar to how you can take advantage of dates to increase motives,
aspiration and increase skills in the style of "Machinegun Dating", you
can also do "Machinegun Outings" to restore motives to an entire group of
people who live in your sim's household and who have great relationships
with each other, as well as the chance to also pick up some spare skill
points. Machinegun Outings aren't as executable as Machinegun Dating due
to the rating thermometer being harder to fill, but they do cover more
sims at the same time, and can be multitasked with other activities,
making them a very worth consideration.
One of the most notorious features about The Sims 2: Nightlife that fans have
been waiting from the sidelines for and debated ever since that little
preview that came with The Sims 2: University was seen is now here! Vampires
are the newest "alternative lifeform" to be added to The Sims 2 universe and
are far different in play compared to normal sims than both aliens and
zombies combined! Of course, big time fans of vampires will notice a few
differences from the legend, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying a life
shrouded in arguably comical darkness.
[11.01] Becoming a Vampire: When You Don't Intend To Work on Your Tan
There are three ways to get your first vampire sim, although they basically
both involve the Grand Vampires that roam the community lots at nighttime
downtown. There are two Grand Vampires at any given downtown, although it's
also possible that there are two sets of them by default, either way, you
have the Count and Countessa, which I'm starting to wonder if is even a real
word.
The Count wears a unique black "Dracula" like suit with a gold medallion
while the Countessa wears a distinctive red long dress, and tends to wear the
hair style that came with Nightlife with the jewel piece. You will also
recognize them by their pale skin color, fangs, red eyes and the way they
walk with their arm covering their face stalking the night. Yup, they're
pretty evil and aren't very good at hiding it. It might seem that they are
very rare at first, but they seem to appear more frequently after you meet
them for the first time, although it might just be a psychological thing. Oh
yeah, vampires tend to say "bleh!" a lot, it's one of Maxis' running jokes
with a little bit of Hollywood folklore interpretation tossed in. I miss the
days when people actually feared vampires, not that I would know anything
about that.
Speaking of fear, if you have no intention of having your sim become a
vampire, you would do well to not have them befriend the Count or Countessa,
as once they reach about the best friend mark with 50 daily and 50 lifetime
relationship, the Count or Countessa will most likely start to have the
munchies for your sim's neck, and you can guess how that'll turn out. This is
especially true if they have naturally good chemistry with the vampires, and
can be bitten even earlier than that. As a matter of fact, I've had an almost
complete stranger in one of my households get bitten this way. Just keep a
watchful eye and get ready to cancel the action to be bitten if it pops up.
It should also be noted that the Count and Countessa are unique in their
automatic response to bite a sim. That is to say that other NPC sims turned
vampire don't seem to do it nearly as often. To tell the truth, although I
hear of it frequently, I have yet to see a non-controllable vampire outside
of the Grand Vampires bite a sim personally, and I've turned entire
neighborhoods into vampire stomping grounds, invited like eight of them to a
single normal sim's house for eight hours and not get a single bite, whereas
I've had several occasions where I invited only a Count or a Countessa over
and got a relatively immediate bite. It also seems that your own controlled
vampires will bite necks automatically if you turn freewill on as well and
let them act on your own, which is generally not a good thing, since if you
wanted them to bite, you would have made them do so manually.
On the flip side of not getting bitten, if you want your sim to become a
vampire, befriend the Count and Countessa at all costs! They might be a
little hard to find, since they only come out at night on community lots and
run away at 6:00am due to the sunlight, unless they get occupied by something
addictive like poker. I'm not joking about the poker bit, although it happens
with activities as well, vampires can become distracted before realizing they
are starting to sizzle, then run away. This happens a lot when you've turned
a fair share of the neighborhood to the dark side and there are vampires left
and right. Oh yeah, speaking of vampires running away during the daylight, be
very careful if you are dating a vampire or have one as a member of your
outing group, as if the sun rises, they'll run away and instantly end the
date, likewise, if you bring them home and the sun is shining when you last
left it, your date will burn and run. Basically, the sun makes vampires
cancel whatever action they are doing and take off for their crypt, so be
careful about dealing with them when daylight is about to break, especially
in dating and cases where you use influence on them to do something like
writing your term paper. On a positive note, you can also use the difference
in time between community lots and residential lots to extend a vampire date
if you left your home at night time when meeting your date on the community
lot, and proceed to return home when daylight breaks, since you'll be
returning to a night atmosphere instead of to a vampire sizzling sun.
You might be able to take a shortcut to the Grand Vampire of your dreams if
you use the Matchmaker to find your undead date. If you have a pleasure
seeker sim with a turn on for vampirism, you have a good chance of meeting a
Count or Countessa if you pay the Matchmaker top dollar. Likewise if your sim
is a perfect opposite, you can pay her minimum wage and take your chances. Of
course, this works best before half of the neighborhood conveniently goes
vamp, but by then, you wouldn't really need the Grand Vampires for turning
anymore. Regarding the Count and Countessa, they seem to always be pleasure
seeking sims with Professional Party Guess jobs, their other traits tend to
be somewhat random. Either way, make sure you do it at night, or your date
might run off with a really nasty sun tan. In related news, there are times
when vampires just don't know any better, such as when a vampire friend comes
home from work or school with your sim, and immediately runs off, or when a
sim asks if they can bring a friend a long, and it turns out to be a vampire.
Once you get the Count or Countess to a reasonable level of friendship,
invite them to your sim's residence at night, turn freewill off for your sim
so they aren't doing anything, and hopefully the vamp will give your sim the
chomp. This is the first method to getting a vampire, and generally the one
most players experience first in Nightlife. The only thing is that it can be
a bit annoying to be at the mercy of the computer's "Freewill" to get your
sim bitten. In my case, I had the "designated vampire" of my neighborhood be
bitten on my first try while on her first date with a Countessa, but there
are a lot of stories of people getting royally pissed that their sim is not
getting bitten. In my experience, your chances of getting bitten on
residential lots seem to be much higher, and at the very least, it's a
controllable environment where you can save if things don't go right.
The second method is similar to the first in involving the Count and
Countessa, but seems to work better in general and more reliably. Unlike the
first method that involved developing a close friendship and waiting to be
bitten, this method involves using influence on a Count or Countessa to bite
another sim. Now, you might be thinking that since the sim in question and
the Count and Countessa don't exactly know each other, the chance of their
bite working is slim, but it seems surprisingly reliable in its success rate.
This seems to be an exclusive ability to the Grand Vampires, that is to say
they have a significantly higher success rate of biting necks when influenced
compared to ordinary turned vampires. As a matter of fact, I hate to say
anything is guaranteed, but I've had sims that absolutely hated a Countessa's
guts with around -100 daily and lifetime relationship, and the bite still
worked! In other related news, I had the same Countessa bite like four
different complete strangers on a community lot, and a Matchmaker to boot,
and she landed every one of them! Of course, Counts and Countessa's lose this
ability when they move in and become controllable, so you might want to keep
them as NPCs, even though they'll be replaced. In the end, you have to get a
sim that acts as an in between man that knows a Count or Countess and the sim
who you want to become a vampire, get them both on the same lot, and
influence the Count or the Countessa to bite them. With a little luck, this
should do the trick and you'll have your first new vampire.
Now then, onto the third method for getting a vampire, you must build up your
relationship with a Grand Vampire and ask them to move in or marry them.
They'll bring a hefty 50,380 or so simoleans into your coffers and give you
the player control over a vampire lord to start your own cute little batty
clan, which may or may not tolerate drinking blood from sewer rats.
Alternatively, you can kill them and resurrect them with the Resurrect o'
Nomitron under your control, but the first way is much easier and rewarding.
Oh yeah, in the case that you want to pull a "Buffy" and slay a few vampires,
they seem to have the ability to teleport out of your lot with a puff of
smoke if they are trapped in a room when the sunlight comes out, so you might
have to resort to a more conventional form of divine delivery to finish them
off, like drowning or a cow plant.
After you get your first vampire, spreading the love is much easier to do,
since you can now have your new vampire turn other sims on your command once
they reach a healthy enough relationship. Vampires can screw up their bite
attempt though, with hilarious results. The "Bite Neck" command is also
affected by chemistry, so you can take advantage of sims that share a good
compatibility with your vampire to make a quick light snack, the Matchmaker
once again is a good source of disposable victims. Strangely enough, and
probably a good thing, becoming and being cured of vampirism both leave good
memories for your sim behind, as opposed to getting abducted by aliens or
getting resurrected as a zombie. This doesn't seem to apply exclusively to
knowledge sims like other phenomenon, but to all aspiration types it would
seem, despite most sims fearing becoming vampires. Oh yeah, in case you
haven't guessed, sims are infinitely more tolerant of different lifeforms
than people on our little ball of whirling mud, nobody will really care if
your sim is a vampire, zombie, alien, or even a vampire zombie alien with the
cheese aspiration who just happens to have had their electrically charred
faced rearranged to look like a Picasso by Dr. Vu's Automated Cosmetic
Surgery machine gone wild and has taken on the appearance of death warmed
over with the personality of oatmeal. Well, in the case of vampires, the only
real discrimination is another sim specifically has a turn on or turn off
that coordinates with vampirism.
So what is the glamorous vampire lifestyle like? Aside from gaining pale
complexion, red eyes, fangs, and a new sim portrait with them looking mighty
evil, they also have several new abilities and play differently from other
sim!
Unlike the classic myths, sim vampires don't have some of the weaknesses that
vampires are generally known for. They don't necessarily have to be invited
into your house to walk in, they don't need to drink blood to survive and
might actually prefer garlic sprinkled spaghetti, and of course, there are no
wooden stakes in this game - yet. They also don't burn in water when taking a
swim or bath, which is another less common vampire belief, but Vampires still
have one weakness, oh, and what a weakness it is! As most everyone knows,
vampires hate the sun, they really hate the sun, as a matter of fact, the sun
probably hates them too. Whenever a vampire sim is outdoors in the open sun,
their motives will decrease as if they were being set on fire. Within a
single hour, all of their motives will be in the bloody red, and if they
continue to stay in the sun for a few more hours, they'll burn to ashes. In
other words, "Run! Run! Before you are well done!" Indoors, vampire's motives
still drain faster than a regular living sim's and it becomes very difficult
to maintain them. If you are wondering if taking down the windows and lights
helps prevent vampire motive drain indoors, it really doesn't seem to; their
motive drain is pretty much constant wherever they go indoors. Vampires also
seem to have the inability to faint when their energy zeroes out, but they
sure will complain about being tired a lot.
Fortunately, to solve our Vampire's day life problems, Nightlife introduces a
nice spiffy little coffin bed called the "Deep Sleeper by Igor and Sons".
Aside from potentially being used to kill other sims, the coffin will freeze
your vampire sim's motives and restore their energy. Other sims are actually
able to sleep in coffins, as a matter of fact, even little kids, but they
wouldn't have the same static motive benefit as vampires. Vampires also have
a much more spectacular entrance into their coffin, complete with mist, sound
effects and all that jazz. The coffin also cannot be used for woohoo, its way
too small. You can however, have your sim peek or dare someone else to peek
at the coffin and scare the living daylights out of them.
There are two reactions to peeking at a vampire sleeping inside a coffin; it
depends on how much energy your vampire has. If your vampire has low energy,
the sim viewing the vampire will get shivers down their spine. On the other
hand, if the vampire sim has almost full energy, they will leap out and scare
the holy Hell out of the sim. This is a very similar effect to when ghosts
scare sims, as a matter of fact, if the sim that peak's motives are low
enough, they can die from fright!
Now that we're done talking about the horrors of the vampire day life, onto
the good stuff! Vampires don't have to worry about motive deterioration at
night! Of course, the Environment score is still directly related to your
sim's immediate area and not be effected, but all other motives will not
decrease normally, keep in mind though that objects and activities that
normally sap motives will still be in effect though, such as using an
exercise machine drains hygiene or being scared by a ghost drains all around
motives, but without the natural decrease, it'll barely count as a problem,
unless they come across something a little troublesome, like being lit on
fire or sticking their finger into an electric socket.
Your vampire sim can pretty much party the entire night away without having
to worry about trivial things like going to the toilet or eating, but if they
want to restore their motives; they still can do so with no natural decrease
to counteract the increase! Of course, the night doesn't last forever.
Nighttime lasts exactly from 7:00pm to 7:00am, so you better get your vampire
running home before the sun rises! Although it should be noted that sims,
including vampires can't die on community lots, but they sure can if they go
home and their motives are too low for them to take six steps to their front
door in the sunlight and another seven to their coffin. For this reason, it's
important to build a garage for your vampire's car so that they will be
exposed to as little sunlight as possible when coming home during the day,
and make sure you put the room with their coffin close to it!
Oh yeah, you are probably wondering, if your sim is constantly getting French
fried in sunlight, and I don't mean the detergent, how are you going to get
them to work or class? Outside of the pains of stepping out into the daylight
to get to their car and off the lot, vampire's motives don't seem to decrease
particularly that rapidly when off the lot, they'll still be in a bit of a
pinch if they return during the daytime. Still, it can be difficult to have
your vampire in a good mood when a few minutes of sun sucks the death out of
them, so have an Enigmatic Energizer around. Also, if you are able to get
them to platinum mood before work, it could easily be their saving grace for
getting that promotion. Young Adult vampires have it a bit hard though, since
the times of their classes are all over the place for each semester and they
actually walk to class instead of take a car. The best you can do in this
case is have them run or fly out to the edge of the lot where they normally
walk off to and have them go to class manually, at the very least, it'll
minimize the damage.
Vampirism is not genetic, if two vampires have a kid, he'll be perfectly
normal. Strange that vampires can even have kids, being all moldy and dead
and all, but that's how it works. Having kids is one distinct advantage
vampires have over the distinctively inferior walking shambles that are
zombies. As a matter of fact, except for their weakness to sunlight, vampires
are superior to zombies in every way; they even have the gift of not aging
just like zombies! Also like zombies though, the youngest a vampire can be is
a teenager, since the "Bite Neck" command will not be available when
interacting with children. Vampires can also pick up the Undead Scholarship
for university, exactly the same one that Zombies can pick up. This is a lot
better, because unlike being a zombie, being a vampire isn't permanent.
An NPC vampire's daily schedule is virtually the opposite from a living
sim's, although they ultimately clock less hours since normal sims can be
called up and invited from 7:00 in the morning to 12:00 at midnight, giving
them a total of 17 hours, along with more tolerance for the late hours.
Vampires only get 12 hours from night to day. If you try and call a vampire
up during the day time, they'll refuse to comply and tell you that the sun is
just slightly too bright for them, minus the slightly part. However, vampires
are perfectly available during the nighttime. Due to the fact that vampire's
schedules are so utterly different from regular sims, it is wise to group
them or invite them separately from other sims, otherwise their times might
clash and they'll ride away into sunrise.
Unlike their pathetic undead cousins the zombies, vampires actually get some
pretty good abilities and less of the annoying defects. Of course, you
probably all know about their "Bite Neck" command that allows them to
mesmerize a living sim before sinking their teeth into them, but they have a
few other exclusive moves as well.
First of all, vampires gain two new move commands! First, they can transform
into a bat and fly! Flying isn't quite as fast as running is; it's actually
exactly the same speed as skipping. Unfortunately, it actually doesn't allow
your sim to pass over fences, half-walls, lakes or anything else on the
ground that common sense would dictate that you can fly over, trust me, I've
tried, but it sure does look cool. Flying unfortunately, is still inferior to
running, and if your sim has low motives, they might cancel out of it
immediately. Fortunately, bat transformed vampire sims can still open doors
automatically, that'd be pretty painful otherwise -- "Ka-Splat!"
The other new move command that vampires get is "Stalk", which is kinda' like
a walk, but with more stalk and less talk. Stalking is basically the action I
described earlier when the vampire has their arm in front of them to cover
their face while sneaking by. It's a basically useless action, being about
the same speed as walking, but it sure does look shifty and ominous. It's
actually possible to have your sim do a "Stalk Run" where their legs are
running but their arm is still in front of their face. This is done similar
to how "Go to" walking automatically accelerates into running when the
selected sim has to cross large distances and has high energy.
Vampires have one special effect that many players might not notice at first,
their reflections don't appear in mirrors! This is hilarious when your
vampire is interacting with a living sim, particularly for activities like
"Kicky Bag" or "Leap Into Arms", as there will only be the living partner in
the interaction visible.
Finally, one of my personal favorites is the "Bleh!" command under
"Irritate". Depending on who you use it on, the reaction will be different.
If a vampire uses it on another vampire, the other vampire will be slightly
annoyed and bleh back! On the flip side, if a vampire blehs a non-vampire
sim, it will cause them to freak out. If you happen to use "Bleh" when a non-
vampire sim's bladder is very low, they'll also piss their pants. Strangely
enough, after doing this once, their bladder doesn't seem to reset, so you
can terrorize a single sim over and over again with "Bleh" and have them do a
"Noah's Ark". Fortunately or unfortunately, you can't kill another sim with
"Bleh", trust me, I've tried. Even stranger though is that "Bleh" has
absolutely no social relationship reaction to it, no pluses or minuses.
Well, that's it for special abilities; let's talk about the cure next!
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[11.04] Curing Vampirism: Wadda'ya know, it's a life style after all!
So you've had your fun with your own personal walking and talking embodiment
of evil, huh? Do you want to reverse that horrible ailment that's leaving
your skin peeling in the light of things? No problem! Unlike virtually every
other story involving vampires, killing them with a wooden stake, chopping
their head off, filling it with garlic, and smacking it squarely with a five-
iron into a lake of holy water isn't the answer to curing vampirism here!
Nope, the answer is Vamprocillin-D! A potion you can buy from the Matchmaker
for 60 simoleans that you vampire sim can drink, and influence others to
drink! Sure, striking them a few times with the Belmont family whip would be
a better alternative, but you have to make the best of what you got!
Since the Vamprocillin-D is so cheap and easy to get a hold of, you can
actually very well just have one vampire in the household during the day time
while all the other vampires in the family drink Vamprocillin-D and walk
through the day before voluntarily being bitten again to enjoy the night,
repeating the cycle! Aside from the wants and fears related to becoming and
being cured of vampirism, this is actually a very handy gameplay tactic! As a
matter of fact, it's a good idea to always have your vampire with a bottle of
Vamprocillin-D, just in case of emergencies, like when you are out on a date
with a living sim that must absolutely go well, and you don't want your
vampire to go the way of the Hindenburg.
[11.05] The Ultimate Vampire: Without Sharp Pointy Impaling Things
Who doesn't love an omnipotent vampire? Generally in story telling, Vampires
come in two categories; those that you can actually respect that possess
style, dignity, and enough power to compete with the Energizer Bunny in a
marching band, and then those you don't want to be seen in public with due to
their irritating cartoon like personality, although Count Chocula is okay in
my book. How could anyone with so much chocolaty goodness not be awesome?
This part of the guide is dedicated to making the ultimate evil vampire that
you can be proud of.
Although all of the NPC Counts and Countessas in the game are of pleasure
seeker aspiration, the ultimate vampire is a knowledge aspiring sim. Why is
that? Well, it's simple - knowledge aspiring sims are evil. Sure, Maxis will
tell you otherwise, but we know better than that with their constant want to
see dead people and bring back zombies n' stuff.
If a knowledge sim has become a vampire they'll have specific wants to see
other sims, most likely with high relationships as vampires, along with the
usual "Bite Neck" want. Along with that, they'll actually have fears of being
cured of vampirism, if that doesn't say that they are dead and loving it,
nothing will! They will also gain the want to become a vampire again should
they have been cured, "accidentally". Of course, you can still be very
successful with vampires of other aspirations, a grilled cheese sandwich
vampire in particular would be hilarious, but since you want your sim to be a
vampire in the first place, you might as well take advantage of their dark
nature, otherwise you're better off forging a perfect "ordinary" sim like
what my other FAQ recommends. The type of vampire this part of the FAQ is
aiming for is one who can easily soak in the occult and turn the majority of
the neighborhood to the undead underside of things.
Unfortunately, it seems that knowledge aspiring sims have wants from all over
the board, especially if they have already witnessed aliens and zombies, as
they probably have the biggest palette of possible wants of all the
aspirations, so it can be a bit difficult to bring up the ones you want
related to vampirism up on demand. Since this is the case, it's good to rely
on other ones based on the occult, such as seeing ghosts or bringing back
zombies, along with more normal ones like going on dates. An additional great
help to the limited want palette is to have the university graduation boost
that adds two want slots and an extra lock.
One of the greatest forms of aspiration income that knowledge sims can thrive
on is seeing ghosts. You might have seen your sim get scared here or then,
and thought that getting scared by a ghost is a relatively rare thing, well
it's not if you know how to manufacture a cesspool of death and damnation!
Normally, you might be used to your casual family ghost, or the neutral paper
boy that you accidentally lit on fire ghost, but nothing compares in sheer
scaring ratio to that of an extremely pissed off ghost with utter contempt
for the sim who's lot their grave dwells in. Ghosts that have a particular
hatred towards a living sim on the lot they are on will be far more likely to
scare them, resulting in big points for satisfying the "See a ghost" want
multiple times with surprising frequency. It's a very lucrative way for your
knowledge sim vampire to get aspiration points, granted they don't die in the
process from fright that results if a sim is scared with low motives.
If you have a dozen or do dead sims who were mortal enemies of your vampire
sim buried on your lot, it's not uncommon that they'll at least try to scare
you several times a night, sometimes your sim might get scared three times in
a roll by different ghosts who all hate him or her, satisfying the same "To
see ghost" want all three times before the want slots can even fully turn
over! Of course, being ridiculously mean to these people before they meet
their untimely demise them is also a part of the vampire lifestyle, and the
way the gameplays around with knowledge sims, it's actually one of the rare
cases where being mean can ultimately benefit a player! The ability with
Nightlife to incite fury also makes this process easier than it was in the
past, since apparently, even death doesn't cure fury. Vampires also have a
particular advantage in this area that ordinary sims do not, and that's their
ability to seal off their ordinary motive decrease during the night time.
Ghosts still can cause them general motive drain, but it'll be much more
difficult for them to kick the bucket, taking around eight or so scares in a
roll before risking death by fright.
Anyhow, back to talking about how to forge your ultimate vampire from the
beginning! Ideal vampires should have a specific chemistry and personality,
within a threshold of variation. Like romance sims, they'll want to focus on
working on chemistry and compatibility so that they will be able to perform a
successful bite option as soon as possible. It is recommended that your
vampire be under the Sagittarius sign if possible, due to its generally good
all round compatibility and lack of any who are really repelled by it. The
Taurus zodiac sign is also an okay alternative choice. For vampires, it makes
sense to have them be turned on by vampirism, which gives them an automatic
boost in chemistry to sims that they turn, which does definitely act as a bit
of a side motivation as well as help them get turned into a vampire in the
first place. On the flip side, the sims your vampire will be eating for lunch
wouldn't be vampires to begin with, so you might opt to have them be turned
on to a specific hair color as well, as it is very useful for biting the
general population.
Personality wise, you should try to make your vampire as outgoing as possible
so they'll be more socially adept, funny how that works out. You might also
what to adjust their nice and grouchy score. In relation to the occult,
Knowledge sims have different wants depending on how nice or grouchy they
are. Grouchy sims are more akin to making zombies and doing resurrection on
the cheap, ideal for your vampire's zombie army. Nice sims on the other hand,
are usually content with seeing ghosts and doing full resurrections, more
suitable if you simply want that loner vampire who gets the Hell scared out
of them every so often a night. Of course, relationship to the dearly
departed sim also matters in determining what the evil knowledge sim will
want to do to them after they have bounced off the mortal coil, as if they
hated them, they will be more than happy to bring them back as a zombie,
whereas they will be more merciful with full resurrections if they had
actually liked them when they were not so dead.
Of all of the personality parameters, the most useful personality detail to
take into account is to make sure that your vampire has seven or under points
of playfulness. Since vampires can naturally fly, being Active and able to
run isn't completely necessary, but it still helps a great deal. Now then,
why was it so important that vampire sims have seven and under points of
playfulness? Once they gain 3 points of logic, they will be able to meditate.
If a sim has over seven points of playfulness they'll lose their ability to
meditate, at about nine or so points, gain the ability to juggle, which is
really only useful to pleasure seeker sims.
Meditation, like with any other sims, makes motives static as long as they
are in the transcendental state. Vampires can use this to their advantage, as
by meditating, they will not have to return to their coffins during the day.
Instead, they can bask in the glow of the warm Tuscan sun without fear of
getting dusted. Additionally, after a certain amount of time meditating, a
sim will gain the ability to teleport, this is also true with vampires! They
might not be able to do much, but they'll at least be able to move around and
prepare for when the night comes by warping right next to their carpool or
car. Vampires can use meditation on community lots to wait out the day time
and party away the night. It seems though that when daylight comes, any
action a vampire is doing, meditation included is canceled, so you have to
quickly snap your vamp sim back into it before they burn.
For when vampires absolutely, positively have to be around during the day
time, make sure you have an Enigmatic Energizer up and ready to restore them
if things get a little red. Also, it's best to turn off freewill, as there
are times when your vampire will walk outside on their own for trivial
purposes and get dark roasted. Starting a struggling sims life off as a
vampire can be a bit taxing, but it's nothing a little getting used to
wouldn't solve. Still, vampires in The Sims 2 can't live on sucking blood
alone, they need money.
So now that you have your vampire, what is the best way to make a living you
are probably asking? Well, there are really two choices, get a job or have
rich people move in with you that'll double as your personal torture victim.
The later I prefer, but first I'll discuss the best final jobs for vampire.
Naturally, since vampires thrive on the night, their job should also take
place during the night right? It depends on how you look at it actually.
Motive decrease isn't completely horrible when your vampire is at work during
the day and at least they're off doing something rather than staying dormant
in a coffin, as a matter of fact, at some of the top job positions, they'll
actually gain motive points instead of lose them and their motive drain will
stop as usual when at work as well, but still increase, in which case they
can handle pretty much any job as long as they don't fry when getting to
their car. Still, it works against their favor to shake and bake in the sun,
so ideally you want to give them a night time job. No job is all exclusively
night hours throughout its entire career track, but the best case scenario is
to have the final position in it be, in which case the best job is naturally
the top of the Paranormal career track at Cult Leader.
Although you have to get to work when the sun is still out at 6:00pm, the
majority of the hours from being a Cult Leader are at night and your sim will
come back from work at 3:00am with motives better than when they left the lot
and you can snag a Resurrect o' Nomitron on the way up the corporate ladder
for all your zombie cranking fun needs as well. Unfortunately, none of top
positions of the university exclusive jobs that pay the most in the game take
place entirely during the night, so you'll have to make due. Outside of
university though, the Mad Scientist, Criminal Mastermind and Professional
Party Guest are perfect since they take place entirely at night, and although
they pay quite a bit less than the university jobs, they sure are a lot safer
for a night stalking blood sucker such as your vampire sim. The Mad Scientist
is the Science career, the Criminal Mastermind is in the Criminal career
track, and finally, the Professional Party Guest is a job for the Slacker
career track, and also what the Grand Vampires have.
The second way to get some bling whales into your bank account is quite the
evil way indeed. Befriend or fall in love with an important and wealthy sim
like Mr. Big, the Diva or even another "rival" Grand Vampire and ask them to
move in with you. After they give you their hard earned disposable income,
it's time for you to dispose of them however you see fit. Don't worry;
they'll always be another NPC to replace them that you can exploit, the NPCs
in particular always seem to spawn a replacement. It also seems that if you
bite any service sim in the game, they'll automatically get a replacement as
well, since vampire sims can't stand the sunlight. Of course, you can bite
them, kill them off and bring them back as a discount zombie or kill them off
entirely and have them hang around as a tormented spirit to satisfy your
knowledge sim's various evil wants in the process. Needless to say, this
course of action is not for any players who might feel it necessary to
exercise their conscience in gaming, but you can't say that it doesn't work.
After a while of this, your sim will truly be the most evil being to walk on
the streets of Sim City with hoards of zombies and vampire millions to help
serve their evil bidding.
There are several new NPCs added to the roster of The Sims 2: Nightlife that
add flavor, and in the case of Mrs. Crumplebottom, torment!
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[12.01] The Gypsy Matchmaker:
Matchmakers haven't come along way since the old day, having become virtually
extinct in North America and all that jazz. That hasn't stopped these crystal
ball shining, respectably aged ladies from coming onto your lot to say hello
to your household and offer their potions and services for a price. You know
it's a Matchmaker when they wear lots of orange, and lots of makeup, oh yeah,
and the crystal ball is a big giveaway.
You can buy two potions from the Matchmaker, Vamprocillin-D and Love Potion
#8.5. Both very useful under the right circumstances, but unfortunately, she
wouldn't give you a discount even if you are good friends with her, but you
can at least buy them in bulk.
In addition to selling liquid solutions in a bottle, the Matchmaker can set
your sim up for an instant date. Depending on how much you pay her between 1
- 5000 simoleans, she'll set you up with a date that matches your
compatibility, or completely clashes with it, in the case that you pay her
the bare minimum. Upon confirming the transaction, the Matchmaker will summon
your date from the heavens to crash land right beside your sim in an untimely
matter that would have killed any normal human, and then the date is on with
a bang!
Hey kiddies, do you want your sim to do something stupid and fun with the
Matchmaker? No, I don't mean that, well, not all the way to the third base
anyway. You know how dates automatically cause romantic interests in the area
to come over and reach out and touch your sim with a hand full of slap? Well,
if you have your sim get into a loving relationship with the Matchmaker and
you ask her to set you up for a date, her hand will hit your sims face only
seconds after your current date hits the ground. Needless to say, unless you
want to tell a funny story about the crazy Matchmaker's lack of social common
sense, don't make your sim fall in love with a Matchmaker, makes for a good
laugh or two though.
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[12.02] The Count and Countessa
The Count and Countessa are the two Grand Vampires that roam the downtown
community lots at night; they are your sim's ticket to the mystical journey
of vampire splendor. After your sim gets to know them, they will get the
possible chance to be bitten by a Grand Vampire and join the undead. You can
recognize the Count from his black typical vampire suit. The count's
particular suit is actually unique, and you cannot normally buy it on
community lots, although there is a similar version to it without the gloves,
red inner cape and gold medallion for sale. The Countessa wears a long
elegant looking red dress and has a specific hair style with jeweled
accessories. You can buy two similar dresses to the one the Countessa wears,
but her particular red one seems to be exclusive to her. Both vampires have
red eyes, fangs and pale skin, with a very distinctive stalk walk. You'll
also recognize them because they have the titles "Count" and "Countessa"
before their name and like to say "Bleh" a lot.
The Count and Countess are quite rich, when they move in or marry into your
sim's household, they will share their 50,380 or so simoleans with them. The
Grand Vampires are reliably pleasure seeking sims that work as Professional
Party Guests, although their other factors seem to be random.
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[12.03] Mr. Big and the Diva
Two especially rich sims with the Wealth Aspiration who typically work as
Professional Party Guests. They generally come very skilled and if your sim
can latch these big spenders into their own household, will contribute a
hefty 70,950 simoleans and an inventory full of great items, about nine
random objects from the buy catalog and one ReNuYu Port o' Chug. A good deal
of townies can also contribute items and money to your household upon moving
in, but none quite as bountiful as these two, they are the epitome of gold
digger's pay dirt.
You'll recognize Mr. Big by his smokin' red jacket and typically clean cut
appearance and the Diva wears a distinctive black dress with a red scarf
around her neck. Although they are best known as "Mr. Big" and the "Diva",
these names are actually just labels and you wouldn't actually see them
normally in game. The Diva and Mr. Big will appear under a much more normal
name, which differs from downtown to downtown as it's basically randomly
generated. Like all NPCs, if they should get into a fatal "accident", they'll
be conveniently replaced. It seems that both Mr. Big and the Diva have
exclusive clothing that you cannot buy, although Mr. Big's smokin' red jacket
has a couple of alternately colored versions for purchase, it kinda' looks
like a bathrobe come to think of it. The Diva's dress on the other hand seems
to be completely unique and stands out in a crowd with the distinctive black
cut and red scarf.
Supposedly, Mr. Big and the Diva are the ultimate dating challenge, but if
you play your cards right, they really aren't that much harder to bring over
to your sim's side than any other sim. This is especially true if your sim
has good chemistry with them. The fact that the two contribute so much money
to your sim's household upon moving in gives you very good reason to try and
target them if the thought of vile financial exploitation through fake
friendliness makes you smile.
The polar opposite of Mr. Big and the Diva are the slobs. You'll know who
they are because they are vile, rude, and have a rather unique way of
communicating with their body through fart and belch, more so than even the
sloppiest of normal sims. Other than that, you will be able to recognize the
two slobs by the clothing they wear. They actually wear PJs, and dirty and
tacky ones at that, with heavy emphasis on the dirty part. If you want to
know exactly what their clothing looks like, they are the only PJs by default
to come with the Nightlife expansion.
Mr. Slob's PJs have white and red stripes, he also tends to be blonde, as for
Ms. Slob, she wears a filthy T-Shirt with what appears to be a bull on it,
she also tends to have red hair. Both seem to actually be somewhat skilled,
but work as Gas Station Attendants, most likely due to complete utter lack of
ambition.
So just how much money do they contribute to your sim's coffers? 14 whole
simoleans, there's not a missing zero there or anything, that's all you
really get. They also will come with a ReNuYu Port o' Chug, but that's about
it for what they can give you. Naturally, they are free loading pleasure
seeker sims, so you might just want to humor them and ask them to move in. It
certainly wouldn't be because of the money in this case. Something still has
to be said about their incredible ability to fart and belch though.
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[12.06] The DJs
Every DJ booth on a community lot comes with its own DJ. They wouldn't say
much of anything, or even be available to interact with directly for that
matter when DJing, but when your sim wants to start spinning records on their
own, the active NPC DJ will temporarily leave the booth to allow your sim to
work their magic, and go and play some poker or something. There is nothing
particularly special about DJs outside of that, although they do wear some
pretty spiffy two piece tracksuit like clothing that you can buy from
clothing stores.
While DJ NPCs, as well as your own sims are scratching away, other
controllable sims can request tunes from four different styles, slow, medium,
fast and house mix. Other sims can also do the Smustle and dance normally.
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[12.07] The Host
One of the NPCs actually worth befriending since she or he will give your sim
and their buddies a potential discount on their meal, based on the lifetime
relationship score, although there is a bit of randomness involved. Although
it's a good idea to befriend the host, don't have him or her fall in love
with your sim, or any other service sims for that matter unless your sim is
intending to actually marry them, as you will often find your dates going
through some very awkward moments.
The host stands patiently at the dining podium at restaurants accepting phone
calls and welcoming in customers. They are generally elders, although
sometimes you'll find adult hosts as well. Upon greeting you, they will take
your sim and their guests to their table where they will begin dining.
When the meal is done, you can pay the host the bill or skip out on it, in
which case the host will try and hunt your sim down like a dog and they will
have to survive 45 game minutes or be caught. Getting caught results in a
double minus interaction with the host, and your sim has to pay the bill
anyway. Hosts cannot be interacted with while at work, so if you want to
befriend them, you'll have to call them up and contact them on your own time.
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[12.08] Waiter/Waitress
Ah the waiter and the waitress, either your best friend or worst enemy,
depending on their chance of incompetence in action. Waiters and Waitresses
take your sim's order, chat things up and finally bring the food cooked by
the Chef to its final destination, which hopefully is your sim's mouth
instead of their lap.
According to the game itself, increasing your relationship with the waiter or
waitress decreases the chances of spilt food, which results in a bad memory
but it's hard to tell exactly since the chance of spilt food is relatively
rare on its own. When waiters or waitresses are not currently serving food,
you can interact with them somewhat normally, minus the more intimate
actions, and tip them up to 100 simoleans as well.
Ah, the wonderful Chef of the dining establishment that literally makes meals
at record speed. The chef is simply there to make meals for your sim, no more
and no less. There are no interactions you can do with the Chef while he is
on the job, so the chance of you normally having a Chef NPC in your
relationship list is slim, however, like other NPCs and service sims, he can
sometimes be found wandering downtown community lots or at least passing
through on the sidewalk.
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[12.10] Mrs. Crumplebottom
The legendary Crumplebottom bloodline continues to traumatize sims of all
sizes, shapes and colors on community lots with her purse full of socks and
knitting gear. If you've followed The Sims games for a long time, there's a
good chance you've already familiar with the name and know what the
"Crumplebottom" name stands for, which is everything anti "Public Displays of
Affection". Basically, that means if two sims get lovey dovey when she's
around, she'll come over and beat one of them over the head with her purse.
So what exactly is it that sim fans have come to love or hate so much about
the Crumplebottom name? In the original The Sims: Hot Date, it was Miss
Crumplebottom who came to community lots to assault any sims getting their
groove on with each other, but due to popular demand, or perhaps the reverse,
Maxis has placed her distant relative in The Sims 2: Nightlife who goes by
Mrs. Crumplebottom. Apparently, the joys of domestic wifehood haven't made
this new one any friendlier.
Okay then, a brief history of the Crumplebottom familyline! The
Crumplebottoms are actually ancestors of the ever popular Goth family that
was around since the first game and who still reside by default in
Pleasantview. You can actually see the deceased Crumplebottoms' tombstones on
the Goth lot and resurrect them with the Resurrect o' Nomitron, but don't
expect anything ground breaking to surface, they are basically just empty
shells.
The oldest known member of the Crumplebottom family was Simon, who married a
fine lady by the name of Prudence and grew old together. They had two
children before passing away, Agnes and Cornelia. Cornelia went to marry
Gunther Goth from a long line of Goths and had Mortimer, Agnes on the other
hand, apparently never got married and died in obscurity. As to why she never
got married, it is a mystery, but being old and single can't be good for your
view on public displays of affection, unlike Cornelia who clearly did get it
on with her husband at least once.
Here's where the theories collide. In Hot Date, it was actually "Miss
Crumplebottom" who would come to harass you on the community lots, however,
there is an object description that mentions a Mrs. Crumplebottom as the
widow of a famous puppeteer. The most likely scenario is that it was either
Prudence or Cornelia who was the Mrs. Crumplebottom, and Agnes was the
infamous Miss Crumplebottom of morality policing fame.
Since Agnes never had children or got married, she's already pretty much
ruled out for having descendants, but the strange thing is this, since
Cornelia was married to Gunther Goth, all of her descendant's surnames would
have been Goth, not Crumplebottom, so where the heck did the new Mrs.
Crumplebottom come from? This leaves us with three possibilities. The first
possible scenario is that Mrs. Crumplebottom in The Sims 2 is a very, very
distance cousin of the original Miss Crumplebottom with a histoty dating way
past Simon's, the second one is that she's a clone, the third is that the
developers of the game had no idea that she would become such a hilarious
running joke and left loopholes the size of the Grand Canyon in the
continuity of the Crumplebottom bloodline. Actually, Maxis pretty much said
it themselves that Mrs. Crumplebottom is a distant relative, but where's the
fun in "official" evidence, other than being true and all that jazz of
course. There can be all sorts of other theories, depending on what evidence
you choose to believe and which you conveniently ignore, that's why fans are
so great right?
All right, enough of the history lesson. So what exactly is it that Mrs.
Crumplebottom does? She beats down any sim in her vicinity with her purse
full of socks whenever they perform a "Public Display of Affection" which is
basically anything under the kiss, hug or flirt menus. The rule is if it
looks like romantic fun, she'll come undone; the old prune just loves to hate
lovers. Hahhaa, I remember her terrorizing the Xyni that I had in The Sims,
and her remote successor has effectively continued that legacy when I first
started playing Nightlife. I wanted Xyni to befriend her, since I'm such a
big fan of hers, but nope, she wouldn't have of it. Mrs. Crumplebottom also
seems to have an inherent hatred of Swimwear and Underwear as well, and will
cause lecture and cause your sim to automatically return to their default
everyday outfit if she gets to them. Children also wouldn't have anything to
do with her, which is actually pretty smart if you really think about it.
Nothing good comes out of Mrs. Crumplebottom, if your sim tries to be nice
and hug her, or perform any interaction for that matter, she will cancel it
out and lecture them for no apparent reason. Getting smacked by Mrs.
Crumplebottom's purse also decreases rating scores on dates slightly, and can
be a bit annoying when you are strapped for time.
Mrs. Crumplebottom also does a few surprisingly interesting things despite
her decrepit appearance. She drinks juice at the bars like a fish, she bowls
like Fred Flintstone and she plays poker like a dog, which is usually
actually a pretty good distraction from her lover hunting hobby. Mrs.
Crumplebottom also always brings her knitting gear wherever she goes, and
occasionally takes the time to work on her latest sock project. Mrs.
Crumplebottom also does not act like a typical sim, heck she's not even
classified as a regular NPC, as she has no motive meter, and she can spend
what seems like an eternity on a community lot and has a black hole of a
bladder, meaning she never has to use the washroom despite her age. She
specifically seems to be attracted to places with poker, bowling and bars
though, so if you want a Crumplebottom free crumple buffer zone, avoid
putting those objects on your community lots, although she seems to come
anyway if you wait long enough.
Actually, Mrs. Crumplebottom isn't all bad, she's actually got a bit of a
hidden love animal side to her if you know how to play your sim's cards
right, and by that, I mean glitch the game to Saskatchewan and back. Read the
"Mrs. Crumplebottom Gives Lots of Love" trick for more information.
As you might have read, I am not a fan of copy and paste, comes with the OCD,
as a matter of fact, up to this point in the FAQ, everything has been
original and especially catered for The Sims 2: Nightlife expansion pack.
However, due to the multiple e-mails I have received in regards to this
section, there is little doubt in my mind that this section on special and
unique abilities has become the most popular part of my University FAQ! So to
all of you great people asked for more, so I'm giving you more, more, more!
It is my pleasure to introduce an updated and expanded version for your
viewing pleasure!
Hidden skills are abilities that a sim can improve in that are not a part of
the regular skill set necessary for getting jobs and optimizing for majors.
Hidden skill levels also cannot normally be revealed to the player other than
by close observation of their related actions.
-----------------------
*Dancing:
Requirements: A stereo, jukebox or DJ booth and practice
Dancing is a hidden skill, but it is best practiced by dancing together with
another sim as opposed to dancing solo. A character with high dance skill
moves their bodies in more flexible ways with smoother motion and grace, and
in particular has the ability to do a quick flipback maneuver. It doesn't
really contribute to the game so much in practical essence as visual, but
it's good to know that your sim can shake down the dance floor. As a note,
despite common belief, dancing does not operate on the ten step level similar
to ordinary skill. There are three levels of dancing, low, medium and high.
Also of important note is that high dancing skill allows a sim to be able to
perform "Bust a' Move".
As of Nightlife there is a new dance gracing the nightclubs known only as the
"Smustle", is it a cross between a shuffle and a hustle or something far more
sinister? Well, it sure is awfully funny looking no matter how you think
about it. The animation of dancing regularly also seems to have been updated
to more clearly display your sim's level of skill, or perhaps the lack
thereof would be more accurate statement. Sims will now fall down and forget
steps if they are especially untalented in dancing. Dance skill counts for
both regular dancing and the Smustle as well, so you don't have to worry
about mastering both.
Dance skill also effects the Slow Dance action, and if a sim has no skill in
that area, there is a chance that they will step on the foot of the person
they are dancing in, resulting in a small negative drop, and a rather awkward
moment.
Regarding normal solo dancing, the personality of your sim also has an effect
on the standby animation that occurs between each move. Depending on how
Outgoing or Shy your sim is, their standby animation will reflect their
nature in dance, although they will be able to perform the actual moves
equally well. Shy dancers will be very conservative, keeping their hands
close to their body and taking small steps. On the flip side, Outgoing sims
will flail their arms in the air like they just don't care, and will be much
more into the spirit of things.
-----------------------
Pool:
Requirements: A pool table and practice
Pool skill is new in The Sims 2 University and a very useful skill, since
sims will occasionally have the desire to hustle another on their want list,
and losing sucks. There is also a great scholarship to go with it and it's a
great way to make friends, even after you beat their pants off. Speaking of a
related subject, the hustle want description says that the option might not
appear if the relationship isn't good, but to my experience, I've had sims
that were on straight -100 scores for both daily and lifetime relationships
that were able to hustle each other without a problem.
If you watch sims play pool enough, you'll get to recognize the critical shot
where if they screw up, the other sim wins. To avoid humiliation before your
sim masters their pool skills, get to know what this shot is and be prepared
to cancel if they do screw up to avoid unintentionally hitting a Lose Game
fear or losing money. The maximum amount of money you can hustle is 150
simoleans, but if you have less than that in your funds, you will not be able
to wager that much. Additionally, make sure the pool table is a nice wide
open space, as frequently, long pool games can be ended abruptly by playing
sims bumping into each other. 150 simoleans is not very much in common
society, but it is actually quite the chunk of change when you live in
university.
The best way to judge a sim's Pool ability is by having them perform trick
shots. There are two types of trick shots, cup and xylophone. The former
basically has the sim trying to get the ball into a cup, and later has them
trying to play a little tune on a toy xylophone and is mighty impressive if
they succeed. The game calculates a winner ahead of time by running up the
ability of both sims playing. Even master pool players can lose on occasion
to novices, but it is fairly rare.
Pool, like dancing doesn't operate on the ordinary skill level either,
instead, it operates normally on a 0 to 100 score, with trick shots giving
two points and full games giving around one to eleven, depending on how long
they play and how many other sims they are playing with. In general though,
the more time they are actually at the table shooting, the better. The game
allows having a pretty much bottom negative score as well, but under normal
play, it seems that skill will only go up, win or lose. For this reason, if
you are trying to hustle people, make sure to keep your opponents fresh, as I
remember the family maid who came over every day to shoot some pool got to
become quite the formidable enemy on the table, which I found odd, since
normal skills don't seem to improve for computer controlled sims under
ordinary circumstances.
-----------------------
Painting:
Requirements: An Independent Expression Easel
Although painting originally relies on creativity, the painting ability has
it's own independent parameter that increases with each successful painting
completed and it has yet to be determined if there is a limit to how high it
can go. Originally, paintings will sell anywhere from 400 to 600 simoleans
when a sim first maxes out their creativity skill, however, it will gradually
increase the more a sim paints but always randomly varies between a range of
200 simoleans. Training this skill is ideal for Fortune and Popularity
aspiring sims, as they specifically have a very generous want to sell a
masterpiece that gives a 2500 influence point bonus and 6000 aspiration
points, so painting frequently becomes a great way to hyper charge their
aspiration meters. To meet this want specifically, a sim must sell a painting
worth over 500 simoleans fresh off the easel, although it doesn't necessarily
mean that it has to be their painting, as you can sell someone else's artwork
and get away with it. Paintings also tend to gradually increase in price with
time.
Painting seems to be a bottomless skill to build, so if you have a sim who
has done it all, this is a great place for them to focus their time until
another fun expansion pack comes out. Oh, for the record, it takes about six
and a half hours to paint a complete picture from start to finish, and final
price is determined upon completion, so you can essentially reload your way
to a higher price if you interrupt the painting process, continue it and see
if you get a higher price. If your painting didn't turn out as valuable as
you would have hoped for, you can always just hang it on a wall.
-----------------------
**Writing
Requirements: A Computer
Similar to the independent skill involved with painting, the value of selling
novels does indeed increase with each new completion! Every time your sim
finishes writing a novel on a computer, the original base value of the novel
increases by a slight amount. Since novels are worth more, the value also
increases more per each attempt; however, since novels naturally take about
four times as long to write as a masterpiece takes to paint, have a greater
range of value fluctuation, and have less valuable aspiration payoffs,
pursuing writing over painting is quite the undertaking, as it takes a great
deal of time out of your sim's life.
Similar to the want to paint a masterpiece, popularity and wealth aspiring
sims at full creativity can also have a want to write a great novel. In terms
of aspiration payoff to time invested ratio, painting a masterpiece is far
superior, seeing as how it takes a big meaty 27 hours to write a novel, but
once again for that sim who has done everything and has way too much time on
their hands, giving them a shot at the good old keyboard and monitor can only
help them broaden their horizons.
-----------------------
**Study
In regards to doing homework in elementary school, high school and college,
sims have their own independent value for competence in doing homework. It's
the same skill for all three however, so the younger you teach them the
better, especially since usually all it takes is a single focused session of
an older person in the family tutoring the younger to shave time off of all
of the homework they'll be doing for the rest of their lives.
A sim who doesn't know how to study can take up to roughly two hours to do
homework, however, a sim who does know how to study can cut that time in
half, and the initial period of being taught also speeds up the rate at which
homework is done. Additionally, even a sim who knows how to study can cut
about 15 minutes off the clock if someone is there to help them. For children
and teenagers, the process is basically the same, they bring the homework
back to their residence and an elder member of the family can opt to assist
them. For university students, it's a bit different; they have to ask another
student with a higher GPA to tutor them until they learn the skill of
studying, as indicated by the spinning textbook icon when it is activated.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.02]Special Manual Commands:
Not all sims are able to perform the same repertoire of commands. There are
actions that are personality driven, and then there are skill driven
commands, then there are unique abilities that require both or have another
requirement thrown in for good measures. This section covers some of the
lesser known commands that require tricky prerequisites.
-----------------------
*Meditate, Levitate and Teleportation:
Requirements: 3 points of logic skill and roughly 31 hours of meditation
Meditation is a useful technique as it is. After obtaining the requirements,
putting a sim in a meditative state allows them to lock their motives so that
they cease to plummet. There however, is an additional bonus that comes with
the ability to meditate.
In the original The Sims's expansion Makin' Magic there was a purple magic
growth crystal that gave your sims the ability to teleport at will. This
ability was incredible and was probably the single biggest improvement a sim
could go through and it was incredibly fun to boot, even though you could get
busted for using it in public. In The Sims 2, any sim with a playfulness 7*
and under can teleport.
In order to levitate, a sim must first have at least three points of logic to
be able to use the meditate command. After meditating for about 19 hours,
they will start to levitate in a burst of blue aura. Keep up the good work
for 22 more hours and they gain the ability to teleport while in levitation.
After going through this initial trial and being able to teleport for the
first time, it will then take roughly one hour of mediation to reach
levitating state again on sequential executions and at which point, the sub
command teleportation will be available for your sim to warp right past any
walls, multiple stories up high and basically anywhere on the map you want to
go, even if there is no normal way for other sims to get there. Your sim will
be able to continue to teleport as many times as they want until meditation
is canceled out of.
Meditation as it is locks all motives and prevents them from decreasing, but
important factors, such as age, aspiration level and relationships will still
gradually fall, so its usefulness is very limited in university where time is
limited. In normal neighborhoods however, teleportation can become very handy
outside of university, particularly in community lots, where time is
essentially unlimited and where there is an area actually large enough worth
teleporting. Teleportation has also become more useful in The Sims 2
University, as when you reach a lifetime want, you aspiration stays fixed at
platinum, so that takes one of the big disadvantages of meditation out.
Levitating zombies also don't have to worry about wasting their precious days
away and could actually really use it because their zombie shamble is so
ridiculously slow, so if you can get your zombie to teleport, feel free to
call him a lich king or something fun and mighty sounding.
Thanks to The Sims 2: Nightlife, we now actually have someone who can make
some actually practical use of meditation and teleportation despite the long
startup time. When a vampire meditates during the day, their motives lock
just like they do for any other sim, however, this is very useful in their
case, especially on community lots, because vampires have incredibly rapid
motive deterioration during the daylight, especially when outdoors and
exposed to direct sunlight. Since meditation effectively stops the drain of
motives for vampires during the day, they will not necessarily have to return
home to their coffin to when the sun rises. By using meditation, it is very
possible for a vampire to stay at a community lot indefinitely without
worrying about fulfilling motives if they move during the night and meditate
during the day.
-----------------------
Yoga:
Requirements: 3 points of body skill
Yoga takes three points of body skill, but despite what some say, it is not a
hidden skill. The ability to perform Yoga is directly proportional to body
skill, and at maximum body skill, a sim can stand on their finger on their
first time performing yoga. I personally enjoy watching some of the lesser
skilled sims screw up though, it is rather entertaining. I personally find
Yoga to be one of the very best ways to lose weight, as it doesn't kill
hygiene like other forms of exercise, can be performed anywhere, and is
surprisingly effective, as active sims derive fun out of it and can invite
other sims for a social boost.
-----------------------
*Yoga on Coffee Table:
Requirements: 9 points of body and 9 to 10 points of Active personality
To add that extra cool factor in your yoga oriented sim, you can have them
perform yoga while standing on a coffee table, simply by selecting a coffee
table and choosing Yoga. Who would have thought that coffee tables in this
game weren't completely useless? This actual talent seems to actually some
rather strict requirements that I didn't originally notice when I first wrote
it up, but it seems that your sim has to be both very active and very skilled
with their body to do this.
-----------------------
*Juggle:
Requirements: 9 to 10 points of playful personality
Available at a whopping 9 to 10 points of playfulness, I am sad to say that
juggling seems to be an almost useless skill, especially with the handheld
game system which is far more effective at increasing fun. Juggle however
does allow a playful sim to invite other sims, playful or not to join. I
think it would have been a lot better if it was a hidden skill and when
improved, sims could start juggling chainsaws or something, but oh well. It
is impossible for a single sim to be able to both juggle and meditate at the
same personality state. It should also be noted that while this particular
juggle command requires a high playfulness, any sim can juggle bottles out of
the fridge or cups out of the espresso machine.
With the addition of Nightlife, the ability to juggle actually now has a
purpose! Pleasure Seeker sims will often have wants to do just that for a
small aspiration boost! It still doesn't have the wow factor of meditation
and teleport though, although pleasure seekers might find it more practical
in actual game play. Oh yes, another thing that Juggle has as an advantage
that that Meditate doesn't is that children can do it. Oh, but keep in mind
that even non-playful pleasure seeking sims can have the juggling want
satisfied by picking the slightly alternative command at a fridge, bar or
when serving up coffee.
-----------------------
*Run:
Requirements: 6 to 10 points of active personality
The single most useful special ability in The Sims 2 and an extremely
welcomed feature they put in, since the original The Sims was practically
crying out for it with both arms. Any sim can run normally if it's over a
long distance when they have enough energy or are late, but it takes an
active sim to get the ability to run on command. Simply select an empty space
and command them to run to it. Running is about three or four times faster
than walking, and can save a great deal of time. You especially feel the
difference when your sim lives in a huge house or goes to a community lot,
and what's better is that they can go up stairs as well. Active sims also
seem to have a glitch where they might get into a hyper mode. In this state,
they run everywhere automatically they would normally walk and do so
hilariously fast, even when doing chores or talking on the phone. I've been
trying to find a way to glitch this on command, since it's quite useful, but
I yet to figure out exactly how. Under normal circumstances though, running
is slightly inconvenient, because you must manually make your sim do it. It
is still very handy for shaving time off the clock though, and you get used
to it.
Since The Sims 2: Nightlife is highly focused on community lots, which will
generally be significantly larger in size than residential lots are, the
ability to run has become even more important. Running is also extremely
useful for skipping out on the bill in restaurants and avoiding the Host, as
it is the fastest form of self sufficient traveling, still beating out the
vampire's ability to fly. It is also possible for vampires to do a stalk run,
by commanding their vampire sim to stalk a long distance with high energy, as
opposed to the regular walking speed stalk.
-----------------------
Skip:
Requirements: 5 to 10 of playful personality
Run's slow and stupid looking little brother. Skipping is faster than walking
by about twice, but unfortunately, the command disappears if your sim is
doing certain activities so you can't always have him or her do it in queue.
Skipping is also disabled on stairs so they have to walk up normally. If you
are trying to create a lazy sim, skip is the best thing you can give them to
compensate for the lack of the ability to run, save for vampire abilities,
but for really long foot journeys, teleportation and its one hour warm up
might actually be faster.
-----------------------
Bust A' Move:
Requirements: High Dancing Skill
Aside from the fact that it shares the name with one of my favorite video
games, Bust A' Move, introduced in The Sims 2 University is the ultimate
social interaction outside of romantic actions. It's very fast, has a low
chance for rejection if the target's relationship is above 25, increases 2
points of lifetime relationship and around 8 of daily relationship. All sims
can perform bust a move, fortunately, it ties into one of the hidden skills!
In order to be able to use bust a move, you must be first skilled at dancing!
It doesn't take long at all either. Just a few hours of dancing together
should slap this awesome little jig in your sim's arsenal. If I remember
correctly though, it would seem that bust a' move can only be preformed by
sims to other sims of equal or greater age, although in university, generally
only young adults exist unless invited.
-----------------------
Play (With Lawn Gnome):
Requires: A Lawn Gnome and 9 to 10 Playfulness
Your playful sim takes the lawn gnome for a magical spin through the air and
back down to earth and gets a very small boost of fun in return. Seeing as
how a sim in the original The Sims could live off building and selling
gnomes, along with that fact that they could come to life, water your lawn
and kick your sim in the shins, there will always be a special place in my
heart for gnomes in the sims universe. Don't kick them.
-----------------------
Play (With Bathtub)
Requires: Bathtub and 8 to 10 Playfulness
Sail the high seas as your sim takes a cue from Spongebob and plays pirate
solely by sailing on the wings of their own deluded imagination. Come to
think about it, I can't really remember Spongebob playing pirate per say, but
he's already done pretty much everything else, so why not? In any case, this
can be done with any bath tub, and your sim will get minimal fun in return,
it makes for some great pictures, especially if you have two bathtubs facing
each other and sims playing in each one.
-----------------------
*Crank Call:
Requirements: 0 to 1 points of Nice.
Crank calling is a surprisingly useful skill and pretty much the only thing
good that comes from being grouchy. You might think crank calls useless at
first, but they have a very useful purpose. They can provoke a sim,
regardless of their relationship to come visit your household regardless of
time of day. You can have anyone your sim knows basically pay you a visit at
ohhh... four o' clock in the morning, although they might quickly leave saying
that it is too late, but they don't particularly seem to be angry about being
dragged out of bed in the middle of the morning, so it all balances out. For
this reason, having at least one grouchy sim in your household might not be
such a bad idea after all when making friends. Oh yeah, Crank Call doesn't
work very well when trying to call out vampires to come and fry at your
place. If they do manage to show up somehow or another, they'll quickly run
off before you can even get a word to them. Surprisingly though, you can
invite vampires in bulk to come during the day time by throwing a party, and
watch their delayed reaction to figuring out that they are basking in the
warm rays of the sun.
-----------------------
*Salvage:
Requirements: 0 to 1 Neatness and a trashcan with contents
It is time to dig in the thrash like your favorite childhood friend Oscar the
Grouch. Salvaging is the most useful skill a sloppy sim can have, but is
quite limited. In order for them to do so, have them put some junk in the a
trashcan and the salvage option will be available if they are very sloppy
sims. When a sim salvages, they find various interesting pieces of trash like
cups, dolls and alarm clocks and get small amounts of money for them.
Unfortunately, hygiene goes down, way down. Even children can salvage though,
which is rather amusing. Unlike what I originally though, a sloppy sim can
salvage any garbage can, save logically for the trash compactor, cause that
would just be plain suicidal. So if you have an small trash cans in your
household, you can engage in a filthy fill filled family activity and dig in.
-----------------------
Lick Clean (Plate):
Requirements: 0 to 3 Neatness.
Licking plates clean is a surprisingly useful skill in a bind if it doesn't
happen to churn your stomach into butter watching. It is rather a quick way
to make dirty dishes with no more food on them disappear without having to
visit the sink or use the dishwasher. There seems to be a bit of trick
regarding selection though, you must click on the outer rim of the plate, as
for some reason, clicking on the center just brings up the usual clean up
command
-----------------------
Use (Shrub):
Requirements: Male and have a low bladder.
Introducing the only thing male sims have over female sims in this game...
well, that and being able to get impregnated by aliens. If you have a bush or
a shrub and your sim has got to take a leak, then feel free to give Mother
Nature's toilet a whiz. Predictably, your sims aim wouldn't always be tried
and true, and puddles will form, resulting in weeds. Apparently, even very
neat sims can do this, but sloppy ones do it automatically.
-----------------------
*Kick (Tombstone):
Requires: A tombstone of a dead sim who is an enemy
For when death to the infidels isn't enough, you can always add disrespect to
death by kicking old enemies grave a couple of times to infuriate the spirit.
Oh yeah, kicking tombstones many times is a surprisingly quick and effective
way to increase fun. If you choose to mourn over an enemy's grave however,
your sim would more likely prefer to laugh and cheer rather than sigh or cry.
Certain sims can develop a rather hilarious want to kick a former foes
tombstone, as well as a fear in the case that they actually might have liked
the dearly departed.
-----------------------
*Smash (Urn):
Requires: An urn of a dead sim who was an enemy
As bad as kicking the tombstone was, what you can do to an urn is
exponentially worst. A sim can effectively finish off a dead sim and their
spirit for good by smashing an urn and sweeping up the remains. Tombstones
and urns are interchangeable, depending on whether the object is inside or
outside, on a table or not.
Oddly enough, the spilt ashes of a smashed urn can still technically be moved
to a graveyard. It also seems that smashing an urn and cleaning up the ashes
might actually not be a permanent way to delete a ghost, sometimes it seems
to glitch and give them a permanent residence instead. In any case, be
careful about playing with the dead.
On a related note, sims who have extremely spiteful relationships with a
deceased sim who is on their lot in urn form can gain a want to specifically
smash their urn for a small 500 aspiration point bonus. I've seen knowledge
sims in particular have this want, but it's possible that other aspiration
types can gain it as well. Sims can also develop a fear towards getting a
loved one's urn smashed, I mean, who wouldn't?
-----------------------
Sleep On Floor:
Requirements: Member of a Greek House in University.
Essentially having the exact effect as fainting, members of Greek House that
require sleep can do so on the floor where things like fluffy pillows and
warm blankets wouldn't get in the way. This option will only be available if
your sim requires sleep, similar to how sleep options don't appear when you
click on beds if your sim is already well rested. Not many good things can
come out of sleeping on the floor, as it drains comfort and is the slowest
way for a sim to recover energy by sleep possible, well, aside from being
cheap or watching your sims suffer.
------------------------
Nag
Requirements: Be part of a family and in a really bad mood
The bane of all marriages that causes almost as much strife and chaos as
leaving the toilet seat up, nagging is now an equal opportunity action in The
Sims 2 universe and can be done by either women or men in an intimate
relationship under a crappy mood. Even teenagers can nag their parents for a
nice touch. Nagging, which is located under the Irritate category, has a
strong negative impact for a social interaction, but it goes a long way to
make the game more realistic.
------------------------
**Bad Mouth
Requirements: A sim who is furious with someone and a person to talk with
If your sim has become furious with another sim, they can share their
distinct hate of them to another sim who at least has a neutral relationship.
Just look under the "Talk" category for this realistic shade of social
reality. This action has a rather strange effect on relationships. It boost's
your sim's relationship by a small positive amount, but the person you talk
to gets a double negative relationship decrease. Animation wise, Bad Mouth is
very similar to gossip, except you'll see the person being disrespected
clearly in a thought bubble.
------------------------
**Buy Off For 50 Simoleans: A sim who is furious with your sim
If you accidentally pissed off another sim for them to be in a furious state
who does not live in the same household, then you probably notice their
tendency to pull off a "Homestar Runner" and repeatedly walk back and fourth
across your lot, adding to the routine the addition of kicking your garbage
can down and stealing your newspaper. Using this unique command, you can pay
them off with 50 simoleans with the agreement that they will leave you alone.
------------------------
Groom
Requirements: Available between family members who are Young Adults or Adults
Although a relatively common command that any sim who is part of a family can
do, the ability to groom a fellow family sim deserves special note because it
actually restores hygiene, making it special among other social interactions.
Grooming can be performed by young adults and adults on younger sims in their
family as well, and is a effective way to restore hygiene in a pinch. In
order for this command, which is located under "Appreciate" to become
available, the target sim's hygiene must not be completely filled.
------------------------
**Primp
Requirements: None
A new action that neat sims do on their own rather frequently when freewill
is turned on, primping restores a very small amount of hygiene and is similar
to Groom, except a sim does it to themselves by fixing themselves up with
mirror in hand. It seems that for the most part, all mature sims can primp
regardless of how neat they are.
------------------------
Cheer Up
Requirements: A friend of a sim in a horrible mood
If a sim is in a really bad mood, another sim who is in a good relationship
with that sim can select the "Cheer Up" command under "Appreciate". Cheering
a sim up doesn't seem to have any special effects added to it, but it's
guaranteed to work, whereas trying many other social interactions might face
rejection.
------------------------
*Apologize
Requirements: A negative relationship
If two sims have gotten off to the wrong start, one of them can apologize to
help pave the way back from bitter hatred to tolerable indifference.
Now with the new furious system in order, you will be seeing a lot more
potentially negative relationships than the utopia that was pre-Nightlife. As
such, you might find yourself using Apologize quite a bit more often than
before. When it is available though, it does a good amount of restoration to
the relationship for a single nonromantic action.
------------------------
Make/Serve Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (Any time of day)
Requirements: Grilled Cheese Sandwich Aspiration
Sims with the aspiration for freshly made grilled cheese sandwiches around
the clock gain the ability to make them clock regardless of their actual
cooking skill level or the time of day.
Similar to the cheese sim's usual ability to make grill cheese sandwiches,
they are also capable of influencing others to do so regardless of time of
day or actual cooking skill for 2500 points.
------------------------
Talk About Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Requirements: Grilled Cheese Sandwich Aspiration
A rather amusing concept if you think about it, cheese sims can talk about
grilled cheese sandwiches to their sim friends, whether they will actually
care or not is a completely different matter. Typically, only sims who share
the same passion for warm gooey cheese on toasted wheat will respond
favorably about talking about grilled cheese sandwiches. Other sims simply
hate talking about them, perhaps due to post grill cheese trauma.
-----------------------
Talk About Major:
Requirements: Two young adults in college majoring in the same subject.
One of the benefits of having two sims specialize in the same major is that
they can discuss the subject and both increase their class performance meter
slightly under the context of a conversation. Of course, you can also do this
with NPC sims, but in general, virtually every townie generated at university
has an undeclared major, so it becomes difficult for your young adult sim to
relate to the townies after they start following a specific major.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.03] Age Based Interactions
While the other sections of this ability and command list apply generally to
adults and young adults where the majority of a sim's life will be spent,
there are some special abilities that sims of other ages can perform that you
might miss since they grow so fast.
------------------------
*Noogie
Requirements: Teenagers under the same household
Although not a particularly secret command, it's one that you could play the
game for a long time without ever seeing, since they seem to lose it when
they grow up. Teenage members of the same household can give each other
noogies, but unlike other social interactions, noogies have a very strange
effect. The person giving the noogie gets a large boost to their
relationship, but the person receiving gets a large hit to their
relationship.
-------------------------
Tell Secret
Requirements: Child to child
Telling a secret is the children's equivalent of Gossip, so watch as the
little kiddies out there share evil and spiteful rumors about their next door
neighbors.
-------------------------
Mary Mack
Requirements: Child to a child
Until playing this game, I had no idea what the heck this game was. Located
under the play command, you can have two young children play this fun little
patty cake like game.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cops and Robbers:
Requirements: Child to a child
Not to be confused with its politically incorrect cousin "Cowboys and
Indians", children can practice enforcing the law with imaginary guns in
preparation for the real thing, more less.
------------------------
Tag
Requirements: Child to a child
The fundamental game that has resulted in millions of children being
ridiculed and which summarizes everything that is wrong with our society can
be played at any time when two children get together.
------------------------
Nyah Nyah
Requirements: Child to a child
If the children aren't on the best of terms, they can tease each other in
good old fashion traumatic manner.
------------------------
Splash
Requirements: Children/toddlers and a puddle
Children and toddlers can splash in puddles of water, or urine for that
matter if you really start to think about it. Toddlers in particular have a
tendency to like to play with the toilet and flood the washroom for a quick
shallow pool.
-----------------------
**Snuggle
Requirements: A child an older family member on a couch or loveseat
As opposed to the more mature "Cuddle" command, the snuggle command is a cute
and tender way to get your young ones closer to their family roots. Simply
have a child sit next to an older sim, be it a sibling, parent or grandparent
and if their relationship is high enough, the snuggle command should be
available for some family time.
-----------------------
**Static Shock
Requirements: A child standing on a rug
Who would have thought that the seemingly useless rugs introduced in
Nightlife for mostly cosmetic purposes would actually serve a very amusing
and hard to find purpose! Children who are standing on carpets have the
ability to perform the time tested and true prank of charging their little
socks up with static by rubbing their feet on the carpet, and then
discharging it on a rather shocked sim with hilarious results. Children can
also perform this prank with sims who are older, for immature little sims who
just want to get even with mommy and daddy for not buying that lovely little
teddy bear!
Most any rug can be used to charge up static, even one tile bathroom mats, so
remember parental units, if you want your children to be vengeful pranksters
in the terror of your own home, line your floors with fluffy static prone
goodness and get ready to fry.
-----------------------
**"Welcome Back Home!" Friendly Hug
Requirements: A child with a good relationship with a parent
The friendly hug is a normal enough move; however, little children in a fair
mood and good relationships with their parental unit occasionally come
running to their parents when they come home from work and give them a big
friendly hug to welcome them home automatically! It's so sweat, and it's
definitely a great way to end your sim mother or father's day at the office.
It should be noted that as of the latest patch, the override effect of this
automatic action is suppose to happen less. Apparently, loving children were
starting to get on some player's nerves.
Certain sims who have met particular requirements do the same action
differently from other sims, as such, they essentially add a special effect
to a rather ordinary routine.
-----------------------
Super Sparkling Cleaning Bubbles:
Requirements: 9 to 10 Neat
If you want your sim to cleanse the tyranny of filth from their stoves,
toilets and showers with a little more oomph, make sure that they are
extremely neat and they will be able to clean with bubbles and sparkles
everywhere they go as well as have fun while doing it. Cleaning that almost
sentient moss off the toilet isn't so bad now anymore, isn't it? As an
additional note for sims who have an incredibly neat personality, they can
actually reach a higher state of cleanliness than other sloppier sims can.
That is to say that they can opt to clean some objects even if it's just
slightly dirty, whereas dirtier sims wouldn't have the option appear.
-----------------------
**Pee in Shower
Requirements: 1 to 0 Neat
For when a quick whiz at the toilet just isn't convenient enough! Extremely
sloppy sims get a little bonus when they take a shower in the form of brief
relief in their Bladder score. Of course, you never actually get to see them
whizzing about their business, but you'll see their Bladder motive be
restored. This of course, explains why sloppy sims also tend to leave
overflowing floods after taking a shower. The restoration to Bladder does not
occur when the sloppy sim is taking a bath, and also only seems to work with
single purpose shower stalls, as opposed to dual purpose shower/baths like
the Colonial Combocleen by Imperial Plumbing Works.
-----------------------
Sexy Walk
Requirement: Romance Sim with platinum mood
Ah, the legendary sexy walk full of mystery. It'll save the mystery and tell
you exactly how to do it. In order to do the Sexy Walk, a sim must have
Romance aspiration and be in platinum mood. At that point, command them to
perform a romantic or intimate action with another sim, such as flirting or
kissing and they will walk quite provocatively to their target. The men will
strut there stuff predictably, but it's quite amusing to watch how the women
walk with an almost serpent like wobble of the hips, even more so than the
regular walk.
-----------------------
*Super Ultra Happy Back From Work Cheer:
Requirement: A family aspiring sim who returns back from work to household
Thanks to several e-mails from fellow sim fans to cross reference my original
theory, this move has now been nailed down! The key ingredient to the this
action is to have a family aspiring sim with who is at least in a descent
mood return home from her job to his or her household! Normally, sims will
just return home, and that's it, but family aspiring sims will perform a
happy little cheer as they wait for their family to greet them! A sim will
open their arms widely in happiness and start celebrating their return in big
bold motions to say that they are glad to be back. Kinda' sad how everyone
just kinda' sits there and ignores them.
-----------------------
Jitters:
Requirements: Coffee or Espresso
To give your sim that nervous wreck look that all of us are so familiar with,
have them drink a solid amount of coffee or Espresso and watch as they start
to shake and jitter in everything they do This is particularly more fun to
watch when they have low aspiration and look even more burned out with just a
hint of crazy. In case you were tempted to try, your sims can't overdose on
coffee and die, although it would be rather amusing.
-----------------------
Enter Hot Tub Nude:
Requirements: About 10 Points of Outgoing
If your sim is a perfectly outgoing young adult or above, don't be surprised
to see them take it all off while going into the hot tub. This of course, can
be rather fun to watch and other sims will freak out accordingly, but it
would seem that it is actually somewhat counter productive, as when there is
a nude sim in a hot tub, teen sims can't join, although it makes pretty good
sense in retrospect.
-----------------------
Go To Toga Party in Underwear
Requirements: 9-10 Points of Outgoing
Some sims just seem to rather go closer to commando than go Greek, and if an
extremely outgoing sim throws or is invited to a toga party, they might wear
just their underwear instead of a full on toga.
-----------------------
Popularity Factor:
Requirements: A popularity sim
It seems that popularity aspiring sims naturally just seem to simply get
other sims thinking about them much more frequently than other aspiration
types, as indicated with thought balloons with their face in them. It's
difficult to evaluate whether this is a factor of platinum mood or not, since
the effect is quite subtle, but it's at least worth taking a note of.
------------------------
*Friendly Gesture:
Requirements: An outgoing sim
Instead of a humble wave, an outgoing sim will point and smile as they pass
by other sims that they are friendly with or give a thumbs up. I have also
reason to believe that this might be a natural action of popularity sims as
well, instead of for outgoing sims in general, but it requires a bit more
testing.
------------------------
Bash Alarm Clock
Requirements: An alarm clock and a sim in a really bad mood
In recognition of potentially the most evil invention created by man, sims
show their respect by bashing it a couple of times with their fists to try
and get them to shut up, should they be in quite a horrible mood, as opposed
to simply switching them off. As a bit of a note, I highly recommend against
relying on alarm clocks in this game, as if you ever really wanted your sims
to wake up, doing it yourself is always a more direct approach. Oh yeah,
ringing alarm clocks actually also lower environment, so if you want to go
ahead and reenact my student film, fill a room full of alarm clocks and laugh
as your sims are awoken from their only natural state of happiness and forced
to turn off more alarm clocks than they can count before going crazy.
-----------------------
Shadow Boxing:
Requirements: A playful sim
If you leave a playful sim alone with no commands or freewill long enough,
they will shadow box for a waiting animation.
-----------------------
Cross Arms
Requirements: A serious sim
If you leave a serious sim long enough without commands or freewill, they
will cross their arms and wave side to side in anticipation of your next
command.
-----------------------
Lazy Posture:
Requirements: A lazy sim
Lazy sims tend to revert to a slouched over posture should you leave them on
standby, whereas an active sim will stand upright and ready for action.
------------------------
*Clean Self:
Requirements: A neat or sloppy sim
Neat sims on standby animation have a tendency to brush themselves off. This
doesn't actually increase hygiene or anything, but it's interesting to watch.
Sloppy sims on the other hand clean themselves in a more barbaric manner,
blowing their nose or checking under their armpits. Also note that now neat
sims now also Primp when on standby on freewill, which although takes up a
bit of time, restores a small bit of hygiene.
------------------------
**Counter Attack Slap or Shove:
Requirements: 6 and below Nice
If your sim's personality dictates that they don't like getting a fistful of
slap in their face, they can quickly return the favor by slapping or shoving
the other sim back for that extra zing their sting. This might not actually
be exactly what you'd call a good thing if you are trying to get your sim to
embrace something as trivial as the power of friendship, but it does give
your sim a little less passive aggressive spine.
------------------------
**Counter Attack Poke:
Requirements: 4 and below Nice
It takes a relatively grouchier sim to counter attack a tiny little poke, but
eh, since you're already returning violent favors with interest, you might as
well cover the small returns as well.
------------------------
**Cry After Attack:
Requirements:
5 and above for Poke
6 and above for Shove
5 and below for Slap
Some sims just don't like the idea of getting whacked upside the head, who
wouldn't? Shove and Poke can be bypassed if your sim has grouchy enough
personality. In other words, nice sims tend to walk away and cry after an
attack whereas grouchy ones tough it out. Surprisingly enough though when it
comes to slapping, very nice sims can actually tolerate being slapped, not
counter attacking or even crying, talk about turning the other cheek. Crying
after an attack can still occur even if the targeted sim counter attacks.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.05]Automatic Commands: Freewill is for the Stupid
Automatic commands occur naturally when a sim's freewill is on and are
normally inaccessible to the player to use on demand. These actions are often
preformed by guests and NPCs. Due to the semi-random nature of these events;
many of the requirements listed are not exact. And this list is far from
complete.
-----------------------
Sponge Bath:
Requirements: A kitchen sink and a very sloppy sim with low hygienic
One of the most hilarious and shocking actions a sim can perform. When a
sloppy sim's hygiene dips well below toleration and they happen to be near by
a sink and no shower or bath tub in sight, they will sometimes take it all
off and clean themselves in a more manually intensive way. As to be guessed,
this automatic action is far from effective compared to ordinary ways to
raise hygiene.
-----------------------
Belch At:
Requirements: A sloppy sim with a bad relationship
Normally, sloppy sims belch and fart on their own, but under circumstances,
they will use it as a manifestation of their hatred for another sim's
existence. The Evil Mascot is particularly fond of doing this.
-----------------------
Watch Prank
Requirements: A sim to prank and people to watch
A fairly standard action, when a sim pulls a prank on another sim, some on
lookers will get a nice big laugh out of watching the ensuing humiliation.
The reaction actually does vary on the relationship the onlookers have with
the prank victim and executioner, and sometimes it can result in a worried
look instead of laughing.
-----------------------
Tease:
Requirements: A bad relationship
Although it should belong under the irritate category, this little display of
belittling public affection is quite routine among grouchy sims with a bone
to pick and helps to further throw fuel into a bad relationship's fire. I've
seem nice sims do it as well however, so it doesn't seem to be particularly
personality driven.
-----------------------
**Laugh out Loud:
Requirements: Another sim to watch an embarrassing moment
After doing something stupid and embarrassingly, like dancing like an idiot
in front of other sims, they will relate your sim's attempt to express their
feelings with song and dance with their attempt to express their own feelings
with insult and laughter. There are different degrees of laughing at other
sims, you'll be able to tell them apart naturally with your sense of human
expressive interpretation.
-----------------------
Congratulate:
Requirements: A sim with a recent positive memory and another sim with
nothing better to do and a good relationship.
Congratulate isn't a particularly noticeable interaction, it's just a simple
pat on the shoulder followed by a thumbs up, however, the fact that it can
only be done randomly by free will makes it interesting. Originally, I
thought that it was a rather rare action, but later I discovered that the
reason I didn't see it often was because I'm a control freak who doesn't
trust such trivial things as freewill.
The Congratulate action occurs when your sim has recently had a good memory
and there is another sim around with a good relationship to give them a pat
on the back, it also seems to help if they've witnessed it. In a particular
scenario, having two sims fall in love with each other in front of a friend
or family member warrants congratulations, but I have also heard of reports
of congratulations from everything from graduating from university to just
meeting a new person, to engagements to making best friends. It seems that
just about any positive memory can be congratulated for. In any case, the key
factor in the equation is to let freewill take over, as this action seems
never to activate for a sim who is constantly being commanded around.
-----------------------
Attraction:
Requirements: A romance sim and other sims to be around.
Induced by romance aspiring sims on other sims, an attraction is quick
gesture of potentially or romantic interest, albeit it might as very well be
the caked tongue of the cow plant if you are familiar with the sole purpose
in life of a romance sim. Unfortunately, it gets a little annoying after a
while, since it happens quite often if your sim has healthy aspiration and is
in a good mood and can occasionally stall actions.
-----------------------
Play With Fridge:
Requirements: A very playful sim
Having your sim spontaneously decide to dance with the fridge is a
surprisingly entertaining action to watch. On rare occasions, a fun loving
sim will open the doors of a fridge and start swinging on them all while
opening and closing them with vigorous passion. Doesn't do much in the way of
meeting motives, but it is very fun to watch.
-----------------------
Visit Campus:
Requires: Be in a Greek House at university
Your sim will leave the lot and come back with a box of pizza or a random low
quality object from bonsai trees to television sets.
-----------------------
Get Gnome Back:
Requires: Lawn Gnome
I have only heard about this frequently, but have never been lucky enough to
see it for myself, unfortunately. Apparently, guests can sometimes steal your
lawn gnome, and at a random point in the day, your sim will leave the lot to
depart on a magical journey to get it back.
-----------------------
*Kick Trash Can Over:
Requirements: A wandering sim who passes your lot with an attitude problem.
The sim kicks over the big trash can, leaving a huge mess. This would be a
good time to get a little revenge with the Sim Vac or using influence.
Now since the addition of The Sims 2: Nightlife, this happens much more
frequently with furious sims, as a matter of fact, the same sim can come to
your lot repeatedly in a single day and kick the can each and every time you
try to pick and clean it up.
As a strange note, there was one mysterious occasion I experienced where I
could actually command a sim to kick over the garbage can manually, and each
time she kicked it over, new trash would spill out. I have since yet not been
able to reproduce this action however, and when I reloaded my game, the sim
was no longer able to perform the action.
-----------------------
**Steal Newspaper
Requirements: A grouchy or exponentially furious sim neighbor
When I first started playing Nightlife, this was the first neighborly
greeting I got from the local Mr. Big. Grouchy, or enemy sims seem to do this
occasionally, but the furious sims do this all the time every chance they
get. As soon as the newspaper is delivered, the thieving sim will sneak onto
your lot, grab your newspaper and run as onlookers yell at them.
In the case you want sweat revenge for that thief in your life who keeps on
taking your newspaper, build an incineration room with fire jets, place the
newspaper inside as bait, remove the door from behind the paper them, turn on
the jets and chuck in a cheat sofa, voila, missing newspaper problem solved.
It actually seems that other sims will not steal the newspaper if it is
indoors, so if you actually care about getting your morning dose of black,
white and read all over media, place it inside the house or a sim's
inventory. In the case of the incinerator room bait mentioned above, you
actually have to keep at least one segment of wall open for them to be lured
in and charred, yes, I am very serious about those who steal my newspaper.
-----------------------
*Lecture:
Requirements: Several
This happens occasionally when one sim breaks an object while in another
sim's presence. Typically, this will happen when a child sim smashes their
doll house, but I've seen it happen among adult couples as well in regards to
a broken bathtub. Lectures also occur if your child is doing horribly in
school, as can be expected. There are apparently also different levels of
lecturing, depending on just how severely defective the action of the sim
being lectured was. Mrs. Crumplebottom also loves lecturing other sims who
try to interact with her, so this will most commonly be your only interaction
with her outside of getting clubbed over the head with a purse full of
"magic".
-----------------------
Chastise:
Requirements: When a teen gets caught sneaking out
If a parent catches a teen trying to sneak out, they will properly catch them
and lecture them about the rules of the house. You can cancel this however,
and it seems that in families with good relationships, a teen can
surprisingly sneak out without anybody throwing a hissy fit.
-----------------------
Be Embarrassed:
Requirements: Performing a very intimate action in front of others
If two sims in love perform a particularly sexy interaction in front of
others, such as a Goose, which is basically a brisk grab of the behind for
the uninformed, other sims in the room stand a chance of becoming embarrassed
in the "go get a room!" sort of way.
-----------------------
*Disapprove/Approve:
Requirements: A close family member witnessing a romantic interaction with
another family member towards another sim
The approval/disapprove action is a semi-random reaction that can occur.
Sometimes, it happens randomly out of the blue, but more often than not, it
happens when a sim witnesses a member of their family romantically
interacting with another sim who they may or may not like as their reaction
suggests. It's basically a quick nod or shake of the head, but in such
obvious cases as a wife catching her hubby cheating on her, you will probably
expect a fistful of slap before the nod of disapproval.
-----------------------
Cold Shower:
Requirements: A cheap shower and a toilet
When a sim is taking a shower, have another sim flush the toilet. Now, we all
know from general experience what this does. In reaction to the sudden shift
in convenience, the sim in the shower will come out exceptionally angry and
start poking and yelling at the sim who flushed the toilet
-----------------------
Wash (Window):
Requirements: Unknown
Normally there are no manual actions regarding windows, but occasionally, a
sim will go ahead and wash one, even though they are apparently incapable of
getting dirty. This might be a factor of a neat personality, but it rarely
happens unless your sims live in a house with nothing but windows, so it is
hard to tell.
-----------------------
Look Out (Window)
Requirements: Unknown
On rare occasions, a sim will automatically look out the window. Really makes
me wonder for what other reasons were windows invented, and I don't mean the
Bill Gate's variety either.
-----------------------
Miss Object:
Requirements: A debt hungry repo man or a penny pinching you
If run into debt and the repo man comes over with his magical ray gun to zap
some merchandise, your sim may go through a missing animation. Similarly, if
a sim had a want to buy a certain object and you fulfilled it, only to take
it away again and sell it within the same day, they will come over to the
place where the object used to be and sigh.
-----------------------
**Smells Good
This action has been around since the core game. Whenever a sim comes within
the vicinity of skillfully non-carbonized eatable food, they will have a
whiff and acknowledge its greatness in terms of consumption capability.
Smells Good has its reverse counterpart "Smells Bad".
-----------------------
Be Shocked:
Requires: Nudity
This is a hilarious reaction, specifically because of the delay time of which
sims usually have it. Your young adult could be playing pool with a naked
streaker for hours, then when the match is finally over, finally notice that
the guy is naked and freak. Likewise, sims react this way to very outgoing
sims who go into the hot tub without anything they weren't born with. You'll
also see this happen quite often in your washrooms between sims who aren't
romantically in love.
-----------------------
What's This?
Requires: Any object on your lot
When a sim has nothing better to do, they often wander to a random object and
start to wonder about the great meaning of the universe behind it. Usually,
this occurs when you first buy an object and there are sims around to see it.
On several cases, a sim will react either positively or negatively depending
on the value of the item. Just like people in real life, sims don't like
crap.
-----------------------
Witness Abduction:
Requirements: A sim that is abducted through the telescope and another to
watch.
When a sim is abducted and there is another sim around to witness it, they
will have this reaction. After witnessing an abduction, a sim will start to
have wants and fears related to aliens without having to be abducted
themselves.
-----------------------
Return Home
Requirements: A sim who is abducted
When a sim is abducted, this is the name of the action that they are doing
while off the lot. Who knows, they might be actually torching the mothership
down or playing Go Fish as opposed to taking a nap on a cold hard metal slab.
-----------------------
Welcome Home!
Requirements: An abducted sim returning and others to watch
When a sim returns from their magical adventure to outer space and being
probed by semi-hostile aliens, other sims watching will cheer and welcome
them home. If you also happen to have cut scenes off, this command will also
appear if you click on the alien ship, albeit it doesn't seem to do anything.
-----------------------
Be Shoved (By a random sim who comes running onto your lot):
Requirements: A telescope to look through in the daytime.
If you use a telescope during the daytime, there is a possibility that an
angry sim from the neighborhood will come running in and attack your sim,
most likely in the form of a shove. Feel free to do this every day to satisfy
the stalker in you and follow up with a few crank calls to bring them over to
beat up.
-----------------------
Crack Knuckles:
Requirements: A sim ready to fight
If a sim is about to execute an action under the "Fight" category, on
occasions they will crack their knuckles in preparation for the assault while
the other sim is stalling time doing something like crying.
------------------------
Hide Diary
Requirements: A sim writing a diary and another sim in close proximity
It's rare to have a sim write in a diary, because it seems to be a slow
useless action with barely any increase in motive, however, it is fun to
watch sims try and hide their diaries should another sim walk by, this
includes babies, service NPCs and even the Grim Reaper.
Although the majority of unique objects in the game are designed to be
interacted with by your sims, there are a few interactions that deserve
attention for being uncommonly known, or just plain hilarious to watch.
Although some of the actions in the previous section involved objects, the
ones in this section don't have any more requirements other than possessing
the object, but are definitely worth trying out at least once.
------------------------
Join LAN Party:
Requirements Two or more computers on the same lot and an equal number of
people to play them
You can have two or more sims play computer games together if you have one
sim start playing a game and have another sim click on another available
computer and choose this command. LAN parties increase fun and social at a
good rate. This should also be possible to do on community lots.
-----------------------
**Lay on Back:
Requirements: A sim who is swimming
If you click on your sim while they are swimming in a pool, this option will
appear. Many players never see this simply because they seldom ever actually
click on their own sims when swimming.
------------------------
**Play on Couch:
Requirements: A couch
Who here hasn't had the wonderful experience of jumping on soft bouncy things
when they were a child? To have your sim of all ages play trampoline on the
couch like your mom told you over and over again not too or you will DIE,
simply click on it and select "Play" when clicking on a couch. It seems that
it doesn't matter how playful or serious your sim is, they will be able to do
this. The ability to play on couches has always been around since the core
game was released, but now it actually has a purpose! Pleasure seeking sims
of the playful variety can have a want to do it! As a fun side note, if a sim
is playing on the couch next to another sim who is just sitting down, that
sim will start to bounce a little bit as well, whether they want to or not.
------------------------
**Roast Marshmallow:
Requirement: A Bonfire or a Fire Jet
It used to be before Nightlife that you could only do this on the Stack-o-
Flames Bonfire, but now you can also do it with the Hottcorp Burning 8-R Fire
Jet, you can now toast marshmallows from the comfort inside your own home, as
opposed to outside it on the front lawn, where it might actually be safe.
Pleasure seeking sims also have a coordinated want to roast marshmallows, but
be careful or when using the fire jet, because a sim can be thoroughly cooked
themselves in the process of toasting their mallow of marsh. Eating
marshmallows restores a small bit of hunger, along with regenerating a fair
bit of fun. Oh yeah, it seems that sims with incompetent cooking skills have
the opportunity to burn their marshmallows in a fiery blaze, always fun to
watch!
------------------------
**Add Soap (To Fountain)
Requirements: A fountain
This has been around The Sims 2: University, but I figured since I'm already
listing a broader range of interesting abilities and actions, I might as well
putt it into the hole of information. A rather hilarious action that sims can
develop related wants to and have the ability to influence other sims to do,
adding soap to an otherwise classic fountain will make it sprinkle and
sputter bubbles for several hours as onlookers either come to gasp in horror
or laugh their pants off.
There were originally two fountains in The Sims 2 University that this could
be done with, a small one and a ginourmas one, but The Sims 2: Nightlife
introduces a more practical upstanding one that can be used as well that only
takes two squares of ground space.
------------------------
**Pull Prank (With Sprinkler)
Requirements: A sprinkler
Ah, water, water everywhere, and who's going to clean it up? Seriously, who
here doesn't like to abuse and take advantage of otherwise well designed
security and safety measures? If your sim has the mischievous nature to click
on a sprinkler and pull a prank, they'll ignite a lighter under it and set it
off, gushing water all over the floor. This action can also be influenced,
and apparently occasionally also has a want that corresponds with it.
------------------------
**Maintain Clock
Requires: Ol' Grandfather Clock
Normally with the grandfather clock, all you can do is wind it to keep on
running, however, after a certain amount of time, the clock will eventually
wear out it's up to your sim and their bag of repair skills to maintain it
it. What is particularly interesting about this case though is that if your
sim is incompetent and screws up, the entire clock falls apart like cheap
shoes in water. I remember this scaring me half to death the first time I saw
it.
------------------------
Open Rear Door:
Requirements: A criminal who has just been arrested.
You can actually free burglars who have just been caught by the police right
after robbing your house blind. Talk about being benevolent, huh? Doing this
however is a bit tricky and the timeframe of opportunity is extremely small.
Shortly after the cop arrests the burglar and puts him or her in the police
car, he or she will walk back into your house to inform your family of the
news. It would seem that the time in which the option on the police car "Open
Rear Door" appears only for a brief while if the cop takes long enough to go
into the house and talk to one of your sims. From my tests, it usually
happens exactly at the time when the cop hands over the compensation or
reward money that this elusive command appears.
After first seeing the "Open Rear Door" command, you can select it to send a
sim running to open the door on the cop car and free the prisoner, getting a
large double plus relationship bonus. However, you'll also get a large
negative towards the cop who arrested the criminal and who will be completely
pissed off in the process when they get back to the car and find no one to be
in it. From that point on, the sim who freed the burglar should be able to
call up either the cop or the burglar and treat them as you would any other
sim. Just for the sake of hilarity, try to invite both of them over for a
party and see how they react.
-------------------------
**Smash (Doll House)
Requirements: Will Lloyd Wright Dollhouse
Crushing a doll house with your bare feet is a gem of an action from the core
game that is definitely worth watching. After all, what Godzilla loving sim
wouldn't jump at the pleasure of squishing a miniature embodiment of their
own domestic imprisonment? Children and above can all enjoy smashing this
lifelike replica of man's favorite domestic abode, although it should be
noted that children tend to get a lecture if they do this whereas adults can
just brush it off to a middle aged crisis. Oh yeah, only children can
actually play with the Doll House, as opposed to the more logical "Must
Smash" approach which also boosts up the fun a motive a fair bit.
-------------------------
**Teddy Bear Fun
Requirements: Durably Plush Teddy Bear
Grown ups can talk through the teddy bear for some awkwardly fun trauma with
their kids or even total strangers for that the most part, but the fun part
comes from children interacting with them. Children, along with the ability
to carry them around normally without an inventory, have different ways of
playing with the teddy bear depending on their aspiration and mood. If they
are in a good mood, they will play happily and gently, whereas if they in a
horrible mood, they'll beat it into a pulp, similar to what you see in create
a sim mode, but it seems that being nice is not a determining factor.
-------------------------
**Newspaper Fun
Requirements: The daily newspaper
What more fun than can be had with a piece of paper? Along side the logic
enhancing crossword puzzle, and obvious little uses, like oh, reading the
dang thing or finding a job sims can also opt to fold it into a neat little
aerodynamic aero plane and send it for a soar through the sky before
recycling it. Just because the people Maxis think too much, there is actually
a limit to how many times a sim can throw a paper airplane before it breaks.
Sims can also do the crossword puzzle once per each newspaper for a small
logic boost.
I laughed quite whole heartedly the first time I saw a sim use the recycle
option, since where I live, recycling is taught thoroughly in school and is
somewhat of a great sin to do otherwise. You know, you sort your burnable,
paper, plastic, dead sheep and stuff products apart from each other and toss
them in a special blue or green box for the fine folks at the recycling
center to process. Guess how sims "recycle" their garbage? Yup, they just
toss them in the garbage can like most people do. Remember kids, we only have
one planet, so let's try not to destroy it before we take over Untitled-
2394.930 Alpha.
--------------------------
**Make Over
Requirements: Cornerstone Variable Vanity
This object deserves special attention just because of how hard it actually
is to find in the buy catalog, and how useful it actually can be. Normally
with a normal mirror, all your sim can do is change themselves up, however,
with the Cornerstone Variable Vanity, sims can now make over their friends
and lovers to fit their needs as well! What this means is that you can make
over even service sims who you could not normally have access to unless you
asked them to move in directly with you. Do you want that Count in the
neighborhood to have a big afro, no problem! With the Cornerstone Variable
Vanity, cosmetic humiliation is only a click away!
In actual practical use, the Cornerstone Variable Vanity is useful for making
over sims to fit your sim's turn ons and turn offs to improve chemistry. This
item is a bit tough to find it residential catalogs, but can be located under
the Miscellaneous section of Surfaces.
-----------------------
Watch Television in Bed
Requirements: A bed with a television in front of it
Although it makes perfectly good sense to lazy people the world over, a lot
of players don't know that sims can enjoy the wonders of telegraphed vision
from the comforts of their own bed! Sims don't automatically lay down on bed
when they watch television unlike how they automatically sit down on coaches,
instead, you have to manually command them to relax on a bed, then have them
use the appropriate watch command. Now, if they could only eat in bed they'd
be just as lazy as their human counterparts!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.07] Dining Interactions: Cause Dining Love Smooch Is Evil Incarnate
Now introduced with The Sims 2: Nightlife are some new interactions that sims
can only perform when they are sitting down for a bite! In order to perform
most of these actions, having your sims seated on dining chairs in front of a
dining table is necessary. Of particular note is to specifically have the
dining chair called Jacuster's "Last Stand" Sectional Booth (two of them to
be exact next to each other) and sitting side to side to unlock all of the
interactions. There a several common interactions, like Blow Kiss, Toast and
Caress Hands, but a few deserve special attention for being especially
unique. Actions that are exclusive to seated sims are indicated by a chair
icon next to the command name. Some of the moves can also only be done when
eating, and others, when not eating.
-------------------------
**Throw Food
Requirements: Sims eating food, sitting close to each other at dining table
with a good relationship.
In what culture is throwing your food at other people a sign of deep
intimacy? Well, I'd imagine the Greeks or Italians or something, but I'm
pretty sure the Chinese and Japanese consider it extremely disrespectful.
Ignoring that, sims can now officially fling food at each other if their
relation is high enough, and what's more is that it is classified as an
intimate action! Sims can actually fall fully head over heels with each other
by just slinging left over lobster into each other's general direction!
Another interesting thing about this move however, is similar to "Peck", it
does not make other rival hearts in the area jealous and still can trigger a
love relationship. As a bit of irony, Throw Food also seems to be the only
dining interaction that adults can do with kids, so I guess you can say that
it's an all purpose interaction, it's pretty funny watching a little kid
repeatedly assault their mommy with food though and get away with it.
-------------------------
**Throw Drink (Seated)
Requirements: Sims sitting close together at dining table with a neutral or
worst relationship level
Okay, someone explain this to me, by reasonable analogy, you'd figure that
since throwing food is a loving action, throwing a beverage at someone would
also be a very intimate action right? Well, the answer is no, definitely no.
If two sims have about a neutral or worst relationship with each other, one
can splash the other in the face with cold, icy, reality inspired water while
still sitting down and instantly incite fury, very similar to the more
conventional "Throw Drink" standing up version. I never get tired of watching
"Throw Drink", it's always so funny!
-------------------------
**Steal Bite:
Requirements: Sims eating food, sitting close to each other at the dining
table with a good relationship
Located under the Play category, this curious display of self gluttony at the
expense of another sim's dinner is a move to be careful of, since it can
trigger a crush between the two sims involved.
-------------------------
**Feed a Bite
Requirements: Sims eating food, sitting close to each other at the dining
table with a very good relationship
As opposed to "Steal Bite", "Feed a Bite" is a serious romantic action,
although it still doesn't cause other jealous lovers in the area to come and
beat down on your sims. Actually, pretty much all seated interactions when
actually eating have the ability to dodge the eyes of jealous lovers,
including Blow Kiss and Caress which is actually pretty useful for avoiding
getting caught outside of dates. With feed a bite, your sim delicately
delivers a fork full of food into their potential lover's mouth for a nice
score.
-------------------------
**Cuddle (Dining Version)
Requirements: Sit side to side with lover on Jacuster's "Last Stand"
Sectional Booth
This version of cuddle that apparently can only be done on Jacuster's "Last
Stand" Sectional Booth is very different from the normal variation that can
be done on loveseats, sofas and other sectional seats. Instead of introducing
the regular option of Make Out, Peck and Romantic kisses, this one allows the
usual actions that can be done on a diner table, plus two exclusive new ones
if the two sims are sitting side by side. You don't absolutely need a dining
table to perform this action, but having a dining table in front of the
sectional booth will allow for more interaction options. Unlike the normal
eating romantic interactions, Cuddle definitely brings on the fury from other
loving sims, and so do the other actions that it links into.
-------------------------
**Love Talk
Requirements: Sit side to side with a lover on Jacuster's "Last Stand"
Sectional Booth in Cuddle mode
What can be more loving than Love Talk? Well, probably a lot of things, but
that's beside the point. Love Talk is a pretty ordinary action outside of its
rather strict requirements, but it's another handy tool for a lover's
arsenal.
-------------------------
**Hot Smooth
Requirements: Sit side to side with a lover on Jacuster's "Last Stand"
Sectional Booth in Cuddle mode
Along with "Love Talk" Hot Smooch is the other interaction that can be done
on a Jacuster's "Last Stand" Sectional Booth when in Cuddle mode. It's pretty
much what it sounds like, a hot smooch. Good for when your sims are too lazy
to get up to kiss or after a meal.
-------------------------
**Dining Love Talk
Requirements: Sit side to side with a lover on Jacuster's "Last Stand"
Sectional Booth in Cuddle mode in a community lot while dining at a
restaurant but not eating and coincidentally sitting next to each other under
the extremely likely chance that you will not due to your stupid Host
Introducing the single most difficult interaction to execute in The Sims 2
with the least amount of payoff possible, it is my pleasure to present to you
the horror that is Dining Love Talk. Dining Love Talk is virtually exactly
the same as Love Talk, except the name is different and it must be done on a
community lot when dining at a restaurant, but not eating while in Cuddle
Mode. The hardest part about this interaction is sitting next to your sim's
partner, since there is really no guarantee that they will be seated that way
by the Host, unless you designed the restaurant with that in mind by having
each table matched only with two Jacuster's "Last Stand" Sectional Booths.
-------------------------
**Dining Hot Smooch
Requirements: Why don't you just go sell your soul to Satan already? It's
easier!
Writing the requirements for this move, which are exactly like the Dining
Love Talk makes me wonder to Heaven and back how the heck I found out about
it in the first place. As you probably can guess, the Dining Hot Smooch is
not any easier than the Dining Love Talk and unless you are lucky or smart in
your restaurant designs, you are pretty dang likely never to see it.
-------------------------
**Surprise Engagement:
Requirements: Sims sitting close together at a dining table with a loving
relationship
The Sims 2: Nightlife introduces a new type of way to attach the old ball and
chain to your future spouse's leg ahead of time! Now your sims can propose
while sitting down at a dining table! Surprise Engagement isn't actually all
that much more surprising than the original engagement interaction, though.
Actually, I'd have to say that it's a bit less dramatic; not doing that whole
kneeling bit that girl's dream of so much. Throwing an engagement ring
through your lover's apartment window with a giant rock attached, or slipping
it into their red wine and having them go to the hospital for swallowing it,
now that's surprising, but eh, this way isn't bad either and with far less
sexual harassment potential. It makes a good way to end a date and an
alternative to the conventional engagement proposal.
[13.08]Motive Desperation: What's Your Motivation?
When a sim has extremely low motives in one area, they will start yelling at
the player and this is called a desperation action. All motives have one, but
they are basically the same in effect. It is usually what follows immediately
after that is interesting to watch.
-----------------------
Die of Starvation:
Requirements: Absolute redline on hunger
Your sim reaches out for one final breathe before crumbling into a fetal
position and kicking the can. Wearing the accursed Noodle Soother gone
terribly wrong with a side effect is a great way to see this effect early.
-----------------------
Have An "Accident":
Requirements: A sim that has completely redlined the bladder meter
You sim will form a surprisingly clean puddle of water when they had their
chance to go but didn't. As an additional note, surrounding sims might laugh
at the overloaded bladder victim or try to comfort them, depending on their
personality and relationship
-----------------------
*The Green Stench:
Requirements: No hygiene left
When your sim runs low on hygiene, they start to vent a green fume that
repels most other sims away. This is actually fairly common should your sims
exercise a lot.
As of The Sims 2: Nightlife, simulated stink has now become a potential turn
on or turn off, although why any "normal" person would like the smell of rot
and sweat is just a little bit beyond my expertise in human sociology.
------------------------
**Cover Ears from Loud Noise
Requirements: A helicopter carpool
If one of your sims travels to and back from work with a helicopter, other
sims in the immediate area of the copter will cover their ears and be unable
to do anything until the noise has past. A bit annoying, but it's apparently
the price sim's pay for stylish aerial mobility.
------------------------
Smells Bad:
Requirement: A sim with low hygiene or burnt food
This reaction is a self explanatory reaction to an invasion of nasal nausea.
When your sim has low hygiene or has learned how to cook a hot steamy plate
of charcoal, any other sims in the area will react with this.
-----------------------
Be Disgusted:
Requirements: A bad dirty joke
If a sim bombs on a dirty joke, the person who they are telling it to will
through a motion similar to vomiting. This automatic action also appears
under other cases, such as when a sim is sick.
-----------------------
Vomit:
Requirements: Morning sickness or food poisoning
Should your sim come down with food poisoning or morning sickness, you can
expect them to run to the local toilet several times to vomit before they
recover. After vomiting blue fluid, the toilet will become severely dirty,
although if there isn't a toilet around, the floor will have to suffice.
There are also other fun ways to vomit, just because it's so refreshing! Sims
with low body skill will frequently puke after riding the Electro Dance
Sphere and I've heard stories of sims who have drank the night away saying
goodbye to breakfast in garbage cans, although I have yet to see it myself.
-----------------------
Cough and Sneeze:
Requirements: Flu, Cold or Pneumonia
If you sim comes down with the above mentioned sicknesses, they will be prone
to interrupt their actions with long coughing or sneezing spells.
------------------------
Summon the Social Bunny:
Requirements: Extremely low social motive
When a sim's social is very low, the social bunny will fall from the heavens
ready for a nice big hug... that or you can beat him up. The social bunny is an
imaginary being, so when you select other sims, they will not be able to see
it.
-----------------------
Faint:
Requires: A sim that has run out of energy
A sim, depending on how much space is around them will collapse on the floor
or fall asleep standing up looking like they've been hanged, in which case
other sims around them will come over to laugh, even if they are just one
step away from dying.
-----------------------
**Fall Asleep In Food
Requires: A sim who is very low on energy when eating
A hilarious action that many actually competent players might miss, if you
have a sim who is on the verge of fainting start eat away on a plate or bowl
set on a table, they might do a face plant into their favorite foods and
snooze, slowly recovering energy similar to after fainting, and staying that
way until you wake them up. You can also hear smearing sounds as they mash
their face around in the mush.
If another sim is eating at the same table, they may also react to the sim
falling asleep by looking somewhat awkwardly from side to side. Strangely
enough, they will continue talking to the sleeping sim despite their apparent
lack of consciousness.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.09] Aspiration Desperation: Aspire to This!
Similar to when your sim's motives hit red rock bottom, your sims will also
go a little loopy should you deprive them of their hard earned ambition in
life. Certain aspirations have particular weaknesses, such as knowledge sims
frequently fearing fire, fortune sims fearing the repoman or family sims
understandably dreading the return of a zombie sim from the dead. Exploit
these fears well, and you will be rewarded with entertainment at the expense
the little digital people who put all their faith in you. Oh yeah, just for
the record, although Maxis strongly insists that The Sims 2 is a life
simulator and encourages players to play the game properly, you will notice
by watching the intro sequence that they show almost all of the aspiration
desperation animations in sequence. I'm quite sure the animators had a good
laugh making them as many of us do watching them. The following occur
randomly when your sim almost has full negative aspiration.
-----------------------
Fortune Aspiration Desperation:
The financially challenged sim will take out a sign and a mug and start
panhandling, most often on the side of the road.
-----------------------
Knowledge Aspiration Desperation:
Taking a cue from the movie Cast Away, a desperate knowledge Sim will take
out a volley ball with a graduation cap named Prof. von Ball and start
talking to him.
-----------------------
Family Aspiration Desperation:
Will start to play and love a little baby flour sack, cradling it back and
fourth. This one is just depressing folks.
-----------------------
Romance Aspiration Desperation:
Romance sims will take out a sponge mop with a paper face and proceed to
dance with it. That doesn't seem all that unusual to me to tell the truth.
-----------------------
Popularity Aspiration Desperation:
Takes out a cup with a face on it and hands named Cup-Stick Buddy to be their
new best friend, seeing as how if you got them to this point, they probably
don't have any.
-----------------------
**Pleasure Seeker Aspiration Desperation:
I couldn't stop laughing when I first saw this. So what exactly do pleasure
seekers do when there is no pleasure in their life? Well, you might be
thinking of a lot of things, but in this case, they plop a lamp shade on top
of their head with a smiley face on it and start disco dancing to the sound
of a different beat in their head, complete with self made sound effects.
------------------------
**Grilled Cheese Sandwich Aspiration Desperation:
Cardboard cheese! Seriously, this is one of the saddest things you'll ever
see, I mean, what could be more depressing than going insane because you
can't get a single grill cheese sandwich? You'd have to seriously torment
your own sims pretty badly to get them this far, but fortunately, every
cheese sim carries with them a conveniently drawn grill cheese sandwich on a
plank of cardboard that they can whip out and fantasize about when feel down!
-----------------------
Ultimate Desperation:
Occurs when the aspiration meter is at its absolute lowest bottom rung on the
ladder, and occurs to all aspiration types. Your sim will simply go insane
and summon an imaginary psychiatrist that will put them into a hypnotic
trance to perform a humiliating impression of an animal before snapping them
back to semi-functional normal. Other sims that happen to be around will
gesture quite politely that this sim has gone nuts.
[13.10]When Disaster Strikes: And You Have Popcorn
By now, you probably know all the ways a sim can die from other FAQs or by
accidental exposure. You got your starvation, fire, drowning, electrocution,
disease, death by flies, satellite, death by fright, old age and the mighty
cow plant, but what you might like to know is how other sims may react to
them and other crisis. This section covers various reactions to disaster as
well as interesting notes about some of them.
-----------------------
Watch Fight:
Requirements: Two sims to fight and others to watch
Depending on a sim's personality between shy to outgoing, a sim will have two
reactions to this. The first is that they will watch intently and the second
is that they will run out of the room. Needless to say, everybody loves to
watch a fight at other people's expense, and when you have multiple sims who
all hate the same person, things can get pretty wild. Sims will also cheer
and boo for the sims involved in the fight if they like or hate them and
react accordingly to the victor.
-----------------------
Run Away:
Requirements: A teenager in a very unhappy family
Teenage sims can run away should they have exceptionally horrible
relationships with their parents and other household occupants. You can sic'
the cops on them to bring them back though, although it might not always
work, particularly after 24 hours.
-----------------------
Electrocution
Requirements: Low mechanical skill when repairing a complex object
For when you want to light up that special sim in your life, there are very
few literal substitutes to just plain and simple electrocution which can
happen randomly, but most frequently when your sim has very little mechanical
skill, in which case repairing something like a garbage compactor or
dishwasher is just plain suicidal. Electrocution is also interesting in that
if your sim survives, they'll have a unique appearance of having spiky
electrified hair and be blacked out all over their body. This can be easily
remedied by a clothing change at a wardrobe or a trip to the showers, but
it's so ridiculously funny looking, that you might just want to keep it
anyway. It looks especially hilarious on zombie sims, making them look even
more dead, if that's even technically possible. Electrocution also has the
negative effect of making your sim lose skill points as well as a pretty
hefty motive drain in all areas except environment and a naturally negative
memory. Oh yeah, in case you haven't figured it out already, electrocution
has the slight side of effect of oh, death, if your sim's motives,
specifically their Energy bar is very low.
-----------------------
Fire:
Requirements: Errr, fire
Quite possibly the most annoying automatic action, or the most hilarious to
watch, depending on how much you hate your sims. Fire makes idiots out of
sims, and they basically start panicking like chopped head roosters only
making the situation worst. Fire is a very persistent action and will cancel
out any other action in queue, making it difficult to escape. Of course,
needless to say, a sim reacts quite a bit more desperate when they actually
catch on fire as opposed to just watching it.
-----------------------
Burglar:
Requirements: Self explanatory
Should a burglar ever choose to pay your house a visit and there is a waking
sim to witness them, they will proceed to run around like an idiot while the
burglar plunders their precious property. This still applies if your sim is
oh, let's say a cop or even Captain Hero, heck it even applies if your sim is
a vampire, seriously, there should be an alternative to detouring the burglar
side from calling the cops, but I guess doing this vigilante style wouldn't
be really the kinda' thing Maxis would want to promote.
-----------------------
Vermin:
Requires: Roaches!
Should your house happen to be a filthy mess of a domestic battlefield, there
is a high chance that you will develop roaches. Sims who try to spray away
roaches or stomp on them have a good chance of panicking in the process and
might get a vermin memory as well. When there are vermin around for too long,
sickness can't be too far behind, so if you actually care about your sims,
have them vacate the room and call an exterminator.
-----------------------
Watch In Distress:
Requirements: A stupid sim, a broken appliance, and a lot of electricity.
When a sim gets electrocuted, other sims in the nearby area come to watch in
distress. Watch in distress can also occur in other instances where a sim is
going through massive turmoil, like passing out. If a sim is in a bad
relationship with a victim, they will laugh instead of be distressed. For the
record, energy is the key factor of a sim who will die after being
electrocuted, although it makes it hard to kill a sim this way, since they
will usually interrupt themselves when their energy is low.
-----------------------
Worry
Requirements: A sim who actually cares about a sim who has fainted
Very similar to "Watch in Distress" and only really different in name, a sim
who sees a friend or family member faint will have a worried look on their
face. In the case that the person watching doesn't have all that good of a
relationship with the sim who has fainted though, they'll get a good laugh
out of it. Personality type might also play a role in the reaction that takes
place.
-----------------------
Spread Sickness:
Requires: A sim with a cold, flue or pneumonia
If your sim has come down with a cold or another contagious virus, there is a
high chance that they can accidentally share the love if they get close to
another sim for prolonged periods of time. It seems that you can also infect
townies this way as well, so if you happen to be Satan, you can quarantine
about a dozen sims into a small tiny glass room, have them all infect each
other, then promptly incinerate them to benefit the many at the cost of the
few. For anyone else trying to play the game competently though, just don't
put sims with contagious sicknesses around other sims, as even if they have
recovered, there is a chance that a person who they passed the affliction
onto can return the sickness back to them. It does not seem like the Mystery
Disease is contagious.
-----------------------
Crying:
Requirements: Recent bad memories:
If a sim lost a fight, had a loved one die, lost their job, made a brand new
enemy or have been put through some other tragedy, they might spontaneously
cry throughout the day. Sims with even high aspiration can start crying from
a bad memory, but sims with low aspiration or horrible mood in addition might
get even more disturbing behaviors added to their roster, like stomping on
flowers.
-----------------------
Nightmare:
Requirements: Recent bad memories and low aspiration
If your sim has had an incredibly bad few days with people biting the dust
and fighting left and right all while catching the flu and having dozens of
other bad things happen to them, along with a red lined aspiration, they will
start to have nightmares and wake up abruptly in the middle of the night in
cold sweat.
-----------------------
**Throw Tantrum:
Requirements: A sim with low aspiration in a bad mood
I've seen this action happen specifically with children and teens when they
are in an especially crappy mood and low aspiration, but it might be possible
for adults to do it as well. There also seem to be different levels of
tantrums, but you'll know that it's at its worst when your sim is stamping
their feet into the ground and flailing their arms about.
-----------------------
**Drop Flaming Dessert:
Requires: Bare Minimum Cooking Skills and Incompetence
This is one of the most hilarious things you'll see in this game, and also a
rare event! You'll rejoice at watching your sim dance in a fiesta of flame
after accidentally dropping their fire friendly food after such a grand
presentation! There are two desserts that can be dropped that both
conveniently involve fire. The first dessert is Baked Alaska which has been
around since the core game and can be made with 8 cooking points. The second
and new with Nightlife dessert introduced into the mix are Crepes Suzette,
because only the French and the Alaskans (Baked Alaska didn't really come
from Alaska actually) could possibly invent a dessert so difficult to make
that screwing up royally can result in death. Well, in this game at least. On
a completely unrelated note, I've always wanted to try Baked Alaska since I
was knee high, it's on my to do list for life somewhere.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.11]Reactions To Sim Death: And How To Make The Most of It.
Depending on the relationship a sim has with a sim who has just died their
reaction will be different.
-----------------------
Cry Softly:
Requirements: A good relationship with a sim who has just died.
Fairly self explanatory when a good friend or close family member has died.
-----------------------
Sigh
Requirements: The death of a sim who has an indifferent relationship.
Sighing is on a progressively lesser notch in the "I don't care" department
when another sim has died.
-----------------------
Laugh At:
Requires: The death of a sim who is an enemy
Sims are just like real people, except they tend to do things that all of us
are thinking, but never in a lifetime will do. As such, having them laugh as
their arch enemies take off on their journey to the great beyond is quite
amusing.
[13.12]Paranormal Actions: For When Your Sim's Life Doesn't Suck Enough
These are some of the actions available related to the more occult ambulance
chasers of The Sims 2 world. From ghosts to zombies to vampires and aliens,
oh my!
-----------------------
*See Ghost:
Requirements: A well aged tombstone or urn on the lot to bring out a ghost
When night settles in on a lot where the dead wander, occasionally a ghost
will pop out of nowhere and scare the daylights out of a sim with a rather
amusing reaction. It usually takes three days after death for a tombstone to
manifest a ghost, but once they are around, they'll be bouncing about your
lot for ages to come. Most sims remember this badly, some even die if their
motives are low, but ironically, knowledge sims love seeing ghosts. It would
seem that if a sim is an arch enemy of another, he will start having wants to
see that sim as a ghost. This is the kid friendly way of explaining that they
want the other sim to die, but lack the programmed means to do so in order to
keep the game on a level acceptable to violence condoning families
everywhere. Since I'm already on this subject, it should be noted that sims
that really hate each other can develop a want to drink their enemies via cow
plant.
Ghosts scare sims that they particularly hate far more frequently than
normal, this can lead to some ludicrous profit for knowledge aspiring sims
who live in full fledge vengeful ghost houses. That is if they happen not to
get a heart attack in the night and die from fright.
-----------------------
Be Abducted (Telescope):
Requirements: Stargaze through the farstar e3 Telescope and lots of luck
What could be more fun than being abducted by aliens, probed with highly
unfamiliar metallic tools not unlike those of Salvador Dali's worst
nightmare, and spit back out? A lot of things actually, but that's beside the
point.
In order to get your sim abducted, you have to purchase the expensive
telescope available in the buy catalog, yeah, the one with the ominous
description related to aliens. After purchasing it, have your sim stargaze
with it at night time and with a lot of random luck, they might be abducted
by aliens in a grandiose fashion and taken aboard their ship for some probe
on sim action. A lot of fans have speculated many, many different ways to
help the chances of being abducted, but nothing has really been proven solid,
so for the most part, just assume that it's pure random luck.
During the time soaring through the cold vacuum of outer space and
experiencing the business end of an alien probe, the abducted sim's motives
will wildly fluctuate and they will be gone for several hours. Upon return,
they will be tossed out of the flying saucer onto the pavement in a rather
less than gentle matter, and upon realizing their latest ordeal, will start
to gain wants or fears related to aliens. Male sims will also be left with a
little souvenir that comes in the form of being impregnated with an alien
baby, although female sims will be just fine, albeit a bit freaked out.
A lot of sim fans wonder why is it that only male sims get impregnated. Well,
it's because of the way the sim alien society works. There is one female
queen and countless male drones roaming about, and apparently their
biomechanics work in reverse, so the queen impregnates the male drones and
all sorts of other fun stuff that most people just don't to think about due
to paradigm shifts and human globalism. It should also be noted that other
than having different eyes and skin color, aliens are pretty much exactly
like normal sims.
-----------------------
**Be Abducted (Electro Dance Sphere)
Requirements: Electro Dance Sphere and a previous abduction experience
A sim who has been abducted before, or perhaps has at least acknowledged the
existence of aliens as indicated by their wants or fears, has the chance to
mysteriously vanish when using the Electro Dance Sphere, most likely back to
the mothership for another intimate exchange with Sir Probalot. The player
doesn't get to see anything happen, and the exit out of existence is very
discreet compared to the telescope abduction, but it's a fun little activity
nonetheless, in a weird abnormal pink flying elephant kinda' way.. Upon being
abducted, the sim's motives will be made static and they will have
disappeared once again for several hours, it sure is tough being an alien
guinea pig.
I have heard that it is possible for male sims to get imprenated with an
alien baby yet again through this exchange, but I have not experienced it
personally.
-----------------------
**Resurrect Zombie
Requirements: Resurrect o' Nomitron
So you want your own defective, incurable shambling mound of walking and
surprisingly talking flesh? No problem, to get a zombie, just use the
Resurrect o' Nomitron from the Secret Society or that can be won up the
career ladder upon getting the Medium position in the Paranormal career
track.
If you pay slightly above 1000 simoleans to resurrect a deceased sim, they
will come back as a zombie, complete with slow and annoying funky zombie
shamble and agelessness, as well as a grab at the Undead Scholarship if they
are teens.
-----------------------
**Bite Neck
Requirements: Be a vampire
The cornerstone of sim to vampire conversion, all it takes is a little bit of
hocus pocus mesmerizing magic on the other sim and a nice dramatic chomp to
add them to your army of the walking undead. The "Bite Neck" command can also
be influenced, and is particularly effective when doing so with the Count or
Countessa Grand Vampires. For other sims who want their friends to fly the
night away with them on first bite, they should have about 50 daily and 50
lifetime relationship on both sides for a munch, depending on chemistry.
"Bite Neck" is not immune to failure, in which case the other sim gets pissed
off at whatever the vampire is trying to do to them and ignores them,
resulting in a double negative reaction. The "Bite Neck" command, if
successful is actually a fairly strong interaction in itself that increases
daily and lifetime relationship, despite its possibility of traumatizing the
other sim who might have a chronic fear of becoming a vampire. Note that if
you bite a computer controlled sim during the day time, they'll most likely
run off due to daylight savings, or was that saving themselves from the
daylight?
Vampires are very different from ordinary sims. Their motives don't drop
normally during the night time, but they easy bake in the sun outdoors during
the day time and have heavy motive drain indoors as well.
-----------------------
**Bleh!
Requirements: Be a vampire
Vampire sims have the ability to irritate other sims by attempting to show
them their slightly more scary side. "Bleh!" doesn't seem to directly affect
relationship levels between two sims, it does however have the ability to
make other sims piss their pants if their bladder is too low. Oddly enough,
instead of the usual toilet bowl icon desperation over their heads appearing,
they'll get a rather infantile baby bottle to appear over their heads. Even
stranger is that it seems that taking a leak on the spot doesn't apparently
empty their bladder, so you can do it multiple times to make them flood the
room in a truly humiliating manner.
-----------------------
**Fly
Requirements: Be a vampire
Zombies have the ability to transform into a bat and flutter around from area
to area at the same speed as skipping. A handy form of transportation,
although it doesn't seem that they can actually fly over anything you'd think
they would normally be capable of, like lakes, fences, walls and stuff.
------------------------
**Stalk
Requirements: Be a vampire
What's better than stalk talk? Stalk walk! Vampire sims can walk around
shiftily with an arm in front of their face and look all spooky and
everything and watch in amazement as sim political correctness makes everyone
ridiculously indifferent to their evil nature. Stalk is basically exactly the
same as walking in use, and can be extended into a running version of the sim
who uses it crosses a long enough distance with enough energy.
-------------------------
**No Reflection
Requirements: Be a vampire
True to the legend, vampires don't have a reflection when in front of a
mirror. Sure, it defies the laws of energy related physics, but then again,
since when has a computer game not defied physics and spit in its general
direction to boot?
--------------------------
Peek and Dare to Peek in Coffin
Requirements: A vampire snoozing in their coffin
When a vampire sim is sleeping, other sims can take a sneak peek at the freak
by clicking on the coffin at picking the appropriate interaction. Depending
on how much energy the vampire has recovered, there will be two outcomes. If
the vampire is still low on energy, he'll still be snoozing when the lid is
opened, but your sim will be just slightly disturbed by the sight of the
sleeping undead. On the flip side, if your vampire has almost recovered all
of his energy, he will scare the living daylights out of your sim with the
possibility of even inflicting death by fright if the sim he or she scared
had low enough motives.
If you rather have your sim do on to others very much what you wouldn't want
them to do onto you, and your sim has a fair relationship with the victim,
errrr, I mean person in question, then they can successfully dare that person
to peek into the vampire's coffin instead for a shocking surprise!
**Getting Dusted
Requirements: Be a dead vampire, sun dried style
If you let your vampire have their day in the sun, chances are that they'll
be extra crispy in a few hours. The death animation of vampires who die in
sunlight is that they gasp in horror as they fade away into the daylight and
leave behind a pile of ashes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[13.13] Career Reward Actions: When Using Them Right Isn't Good Enough
Other than the purpose that they were designed in mind with, certain Career
Rewards can have a few interesting features and side effects that might not
be all thoroughly known. Since the Resurrect o' Nomitron and Cow Plant have
been well documented in other sections, their specific information with be
omitted here.
--------------------------
Make Medicine:
Requirements: Simsanto Inc. Biotech Station
Although making medicine to sell or take is the Biotech Stations basic
function, it deserves special mention since the medicine can be taken to
shorten the duration of a sickness. Depending on how high your sim's logic
is, they will be able to sell it for a higher price and it will become more
effective in cutting down the duration of sickness.
--------------------------
Make Virus
Requirements: Simsanto Inc. Biotech Station and 9-10 Logic
A some what dummied out function of the game, although sims with high logic
can make viruses using the Biotech Station, there is really nothing that can
be done with them, as the original "Sell Virus Illegally" command was
apparently removed out from the game before official release, probably
because of moral and ethical issues. As it stands, there is really no purpose
to making a virus.
--------------------------
Contract Mystery Virus
Requirements: Simsanto Inc. Biotech Station
After brewing up a patch of biological goodness, it is possible for your sim
to contract the Mystery Virus when opening the hatch of the Biotech Station.
The mystery virus is a rather odd phenomenon and not much is known about it,
but it seems to be the only virus that can out right kill your sims
regardless of motive level if they are not treated well and cured within a
certain amount of time, so be careful and hasty in curing it if a sim you
might actually care about has come down with it.
--------------------------
Nothing says being broken down to the end of yourself like hot sweaty intense
military issued training, and it's all the more humiliating when you're
forcing a little girl to do it. Depending on how low their body score is, a
sim will screw up more frequently on different parts of the course.
Specifically, sims will trip over the hurdle logs, get caught in the mesh
netting, and fall down when try climbing up the wall, all very good stuff to
watch and their expense!
Brown puddles! Who doesn't like brown puddles? Sims with low cooking score
can often screw up the initialization process when using the Chocolate Maker
and cause the chocolate reservoir to overflow, resulting in an ominous, yet
tasty chocolate puddle on the floor that is lots of fun to clean up for the
whole family! Speaking of family it should be interesting to note that
although children cannot use the chocolate maker, an older more skilled
family member can teach them by example to increase their cooking skill,
however, no money seems to be made this way, and the person teaching's skill
doesn't increase.
--------------------------
Spare the Children from Shock Therapy
Requirements: SensoTwitch Lie Detector and a child
You might know the SensoTwitch Lie Detector well from its rather shocking
dose of punishment it can inflict when a sim screws up, however, in this
case, it is what it doesn't do that is of particular interest. Simply put,
the SensoTwitch Lie Detector is kid friendly, and although it still beeps
when an error is made, doesn't shock them into submission when they screw up.
Apparently, Maxis deemed that having your kids well behaved doesn't
necessarily equate to having them well done.
--------------------------
After growing flowers in the Hydroponic Garden, you can have your sim harvest
it for nature grown goodness. The resulting potted plants can either be sold
at 350 simoleans a pop or used to decorate the room for a slight
environmental boost. It takes roughly five to six days to get your flowers to
the stage in which they bloom and can be harvested, quite a while really, but
fortunately, you only have to tend it a little bit between each available
stage to keep it going. On the other hand, if you don't tend the garden,
that's another story.
--------------------------
Let Hydroponics Garden Wilt
Requirements: Hydroponics Garden
Like most everything in real life, if you ignore the blooming buds in the
garden long enough, they will start to rot. If you do not have your sim tend
regularly to their Hydroponics Garden when it is growing, it can wilt and
leave a dirty monument to neglect behind.
--------------------------
Get Face Rearranged
Requirements: Dr. Vu's Automated Cosmetic Surgery
In the Sim world, Dr. Vu has a pretty bad reputation, trying to take over the
world in Sim City 4 with UFOs, toxic trucks and a mechanical whale that
shoots missiles kinda' does that to you, so why not trust the same mad
scientist when it comes to rearranging your sim's face? Well, just in case
you couldn't imagine what could go horribly wrong, on random occasions of
using Dr. Vu's Automated Cosmetic Surgery station, the machine will go nuts
and give your sim a face only a mother could love. I'm currently unsure if
there is a controlling factor for increasing or decreasing the likeliness of
this happening, but I would suspect mechanical skill would be the reasonable
variable.
--------------------------
When Nightlife first came out, there were bugs from side to side, as much as
I hate to say it. I remembered grieving over my sim's missing newly received
diploma and cellphone, and then there was the fact that I couldn't hear any
of my sims sing karaoke which I was looking very much forward to!
Fortunately, the patch is supposed to fix that, so I can't wait to try it out
after I'm done writing this FAQ! Now, the diploma is supposed to transfer
from its rightful place from the Career Rewards section to the Inventory
section.
There are still two bugs that definitely need to be watched out for though
since I believe the patch doesn't fix it. First of all, don't have your sim
use the remote control car electronic entertainment on a lot and save. Doing
so results in a "Blank Memory" bug.
Another bug that you probably have heard about already is the "Do not make
Mrs. Crumblebottom a vampire" bug, which corrupts the game and triggers a
series of rather nasty related bugs that makes the game run like a pregnant
yak. Of course, the natural work around this is to avoid the temptation to
turn Mrs. Crumplebottom to the dark side. Oh, like she wasn't there before?
-----------------------
Mrs. Crumplebottom Gives Lots of Love:
If any other person told me that you could get Mrs. Crumplebottom to give
your sim hugs and kisses in normal gameplay, I would have thought they were
dishonest rumor spreading bastards, yet here I am typing down this trick that
I discovered and have been able to reproduce some twenty times. I mean, it
makes no sense, technically, Mrs. Crumplebottom is an "object", not a sim,
and she isn't like any other sim in the game, so how the heck is this
possible? It goes against all common sense, but I'm definitely not dreaming.
It's probably a glitch, since Mrs. Crumplebottom doesn't actually have proper
animation to correspond with the actions, but having the opportunity to
witness a "Public Display of Affection" from the very person who would rather
bite off her own leg than do them herself is surely something noteworthy, so
that's why this is here!
I have seen Mrs. Crumplebottom perform three intimate interactions using the
following trick with an adult sim, her animation is screwed and her face
looks like it's ejected with a few gallons of botox, unable to change
expression, but you'll definitely see the name of the action in the queue and
your sim reacting to it, and best of all, your sim will have a chance to
reject Mrs. Crumplebottom's advances! How ironic is that!? The three actions
Crumplebottom can perform are:
Romantic Hug
Romantic Kiss
Leap Into Arms
Of all three, Leap into Arms is the only one with a remote chance to work.
Since this is a glitch, there is no way I can guarantee if it'll work on your
game. For the record, I don't use mods and I don't use cheats, and at the
time of writing this, I still haven't installed the newest patch. If this
trick works for you, please let me know! This is how you get Mrs.
Crumplebottom to give your sim lots of love:
Step 1: Go to a community lot and find Mrs. Crumplebottom.
Step 2: Use the Charm action with her under "Flirt" as many times as the
queue will hold and you cannot add it anymore. In theory, any action will
work, but I used Flirt specifically.
Step 3: The queue will quickly clear and Mrs. Crumplebottom will start to
lecture your sim.
Step 4: Quickly add "Chat" under "Talk" with another adult sim other than
Mrs. Crumplebottom to the queue. Any action might actually work, but this is
what I used. Mrs. Crumplebottom will continue to lecture your sim multiple
times in a roll by this point.
Step 5: Mrs. Crumplebottom will continue her reign of lectures for a while,
but at the very end of it, she'll add one more action out of her normal
routine, you'll know that's it because it will appear after the "Chat"
command you ordered with another person on the queue instead of before like
the lecture ones.
Step 6: Quickly cancel the chat command with the other person, and feel Mrs.
Crumplebottom's warm embrace.
Just for laughs, the first person I had do this by accident was a women,
hahahaha. Never knew Mrs. Crumplebottom swung that way, but oh well. There is
another thing, I've also had Mrs. Crumplebottom cheat four times in a role
with the lover of that same women I just mentioned. Each time Mrs.
Crumplebottom tried to hit on my sim, her lover came and slapped Mrs.
Crumplebottom, not because she though her partner was cheating on her, but
because she saw Mrs. Crumplebottom cheating on her with her partner! When I
went to see this jealous lover's memories, there were four "Caught Mrs.
Crumplebottom Cheating" memories right next to each other (I got it to work
four times in a roll by then) and a memory of having met her for the first
time in between! Unfortunately, Mrs. Crumplebottom seems to be impossible to
add to the list of relationships no matter how hard you try without full on
cheating.
As an additional note, you can actually play as Mrs. Crumplebottom if you use
the good old debug mode boolprop code, shift click on a mail box on a
residential lot to summon Mrs. Crumplebottom over, then promptly kill her (I
found an incineration room most effective, as she cannot be boolprop killed
like ordinary sims, but strangely enough, she isn't immortal). Next up, just
use the Resurrect o' Nomitron to revive her perfectly, and she should now be
back and you should have Mrs. Crumplebottom as a playable sim, but she's
glitchy as hell and many of the animations will look weird, as her hands are
usually in a locked position. From this, you can find out that Mrs.
Crumplebottom is a family aspiring sim, is a Scorpio with a very extreme
personality, has no turn ons or turn offs, and is surprisingly skilled in
several areas, and is indeed a virgin, heck it seems she's never even kissed.
^>From this point on, you can torture her as you wish, like get her
electrocuted, rejected for woohoo and all around revenge for the pain she's
put your sims through on community lots now that she's on your home turf and
under control. She'll still take time out to knit socks though, oddly enough.
Be very careful when experimenting with the above trick mentioned, as it is
practically begging to corrupt your game, try not to do any permanent
changing scenarios, like oh, turning her into a vampire or zombie, and for
all things holy, make a back up save before you do it if you are actually
playing seriously. If you don't mind going royally off the deep end, you can
use the Sim Modder spawned item to restore her back to her younger years
(Still with bag in hand), and wouldn't you know it, she doesn't look all that
bad, except for the fact that her texture is different from other sims with a
huge lip line. Honestly, be very careful with this trick, I just gave my game
the blank memory bug three minutes ago with it - again. I personally don't
like using actual cheat codes, I have absolutely no gripes if it can be all
done in game though, so if you are wondering why I don't explore this trick
more, that's the reason.
-----------------------
Multi-Term Paper!
This is an awesome trick contributed by Jason Newman after I wrote my The
Sims 2 University FAQ but never had time to update back then, so I'm putting
it here now! Hope you don't mind! Unlike the Mrs. Crumplebottom love trick
above, this trick is actually very useful!
With this trick, it is possible to get double or even triple term paper
credits in a single semester! If you have your sim influence other sims to
write term papers before the first term paper for the semester finishes, they
will all start typing away on them, and when they finish, their compiled term
papers will all be counted onto the score and send the Class Performance
Meter soaring! As a bit of a note, three term papers in one semester is
pretty much enough to send any class performance meter straight from the
bottom to the top and costs 7500 influence points total. Of course, you have
to have enough computers on the lot for the sims to write on, so this trick
works especially well on dorms and university community lots where the
resources are available, as well as the Secret Society. Of course, your sim
can also jump into the frenzy to write his or her term paper themselves when
other sims are being influenced to type away at it at the same time, for in
the case that they are running low on influence or want to fulfill a term
paper want.
-----------------------
Getting Special Clothing:
Along with getting to add work cloths to your sims wardrobe upon reaching the
desired position, you can get the clothing of service sims and townies by
asking them to move into your household. Upon being able to control them, the
cloths will be available to sims of the same age and gender, although some
outfits are unisex or can cross multiple age groups. Using this trick, you
can now get that lovely Diva dress or the Countessa's unique red long dress
of sheer evilness. Of course, if they happen to "disappear" from this mortal
plane, you will still retain the precious drags in loving memory. Collecting
cloths in the game can become quite the side hobby.
On a slightly saner note, if you move an NPC out to find their own place and
they have a unique set of clothing, the lot they were previous on will still
retain a copy of their cloths, so long as other sims stll live there, as well
as the new lot they decide to live in. Using this, you can trade and spread
unique clothing from residential lot to residential lot, along with any spare
inventory items you might load them up with.
As a bit of caution to the wind, the armoire's arsenal is strictly tied to
the lot that it's on. Even if you take the wardrobe in your sim's inventory,
they will only have the clothing that the lot they are moving to has. In the
case that it is a new lot, they will only have their basic set of current
cloths. In the case that they are going to a community lot though, they will
be able to change into any outfit they have at home. There is also an
alternative and quite a bit more evil way to do this trick, and that's to
kill an NPC sim off and revive them on your lot as a discount zombie,
although it might be just a little bit too evil for to pull off just to get
someone's clothing.
This trick is especially for those vampires out sims there who would rather
the night lasted almost forever. There actually is a way that you can extend
the time of night by a few dozen folds if you really want to shower your
vampire with nightlife time and love. Have your vampire sim leave for a
community lot immediate when the sunsets at 7:00pm, then have them return
back to it before the time on the community lot reaches 7:00am. When your sim
returns back to their home, it will still be night time, and you can send
them back to the community lot which will reset to being nighttime
immediately again, just repeat the cycle over and over again until you either
get tired or day time eventually comes to the residential lot from the
elapsed time of driving in and out.
Counting total time on community lots from each visit using this trick, you
could clock ultimately more than 150+ game hours of vampire loving nighttime
in a roll. This trick is especially handy at University for vampire young
adults, as their motives will not normally drop, and they still will be able
to attend their final exams and build required skills on university community
lots, allowing them to effectively progress through University without having
to rest in their coffins or be interrupted to refill motives. This is
actually probably the best strategy for vampire sims in university, with it's
only downside being that they wouldn't be able to attend day classes.
Here's a trick that I first learned from Martin Ostera who e-mailed me all
the juicy details of one of the biggest in game exploits I've seen! As a
matter of fact, this trick is so ridiculously useful; it's a mystery to me
why I haven't found out about it until now!
Have you ever wanted all the career rewards that you could ever possibly hope
for, but too lazy to actually play the game and too honorable to actually
consider using type in cheats? Well, this is just perfect for you!
Originally, in the core game, when your sim applied for a job through the
computer, they could overshoot the position that would normally give them the
career reward if they were overqualified and go on for the rest of their
career until they reach the top without ever getting it. This led to most
career reward hunting players starting their climb up the job ladder from the
bottom rung by finding a job in the newspaper instead of through a computer.
Now, it seems that somewhere between all the current expansions and patches,
Maxis has remedied this problem, and now, you can obtain career rewards
retroactively, simply by reaching or overshooting the job position that would
normally give the career reward. For better or worst though, Maxis didn't see
how this feature could be massively exploited, and here's where Martin
Ostera's trick comes into play.
This trick works best with sims who have graduated from university with a
Summa Cum Laude earning 4.0 GPA to grace their diplomas with high skill and a
dozen or more friends, as it virtually guarantees them the highest position
possible, usually a level 8-9 position optimally, however, even sims without
post secondary education can do it to a lesser degree so long as they have
enough friends and very high skills to offset. Okay then, let the career
reward ripping begin!
All you have to do is have your sim pick a job, any job using the computer,
and so long as the position they start off with meets or surpasses the career
reward position, they will obtain that career reward simply for being hired!
Now, all you gotta' do is hop from one from one career path to the next and
mop up the goodies, all in a few in game minutes for your sim from the
comfort of their own computer! Even better, with Nightlife, you can share the
love by distributing multiple career rewards to other members of the
household to spread around the neighborhood, and presto, you have a full
blown career reward manufacturing facility to share the wealth! With this
trick, you can obtain the career rewards from every career path in the game,
including the four university exclusive ones if you have a graduate doing the
job hunting, and although you only get five career options available to your
sims on their computer every day, that is barely a pothole in the light of
the power this trick can give to your sims. Now everybody on the block can
own their very own cow plant, and wouldn't that make the world a much better
place?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Play as a Ghost
It is actually possible to play as a ghost in The Sims 2! Now, if you know
your debug boolprop, you might have tried to make wandering ghosts selectable
only to find out that they don't listen to your commands as all. It is
however possible to semi-glitch the game and play as a ghost! Just don't
expect them to last very long unless you watch over them angelically.
In order to get a playable ghost, first have the sim you want to kill off and
become a ghost relax on a bed to help fill their command queue. This is
important because as long as the ghost sim's command queue has something in
it, they wouldn't vanish later on when you resume playing them. Next up, have
another sim invite them to their own lot, and promptly kill them as you see
fit. I typically use fire for this, but other leading causes of death should
work as well. After the deed is done, save your lot then return back to the
original lot where the sim who died was lying down in bed. If all things fall
into place, you should now be able to control the phantom, but be warned, in
essence, you have to constantly keep the ghost's command queue full, or else
the game will recognize that the sim is actually dead and make them vanish!
Ka-poof!
Unfortunately, this trick is mostly for novelty and cosmetic purposes, as
controllable ghost sims wouldn't be able to float or scare people or do those
neat little ghostly interactions with children's toys. They do have a few
neat abilities though. For starters, they actually can walk through objects
and walls, although since the game never intended this glitch to be a
feature, the path finding AI still occurs so you usually only see it by
accident. Second of all, ghost sims are incapable of interacting with other
sims, with the exception of through objects. Unfortunately, ghosts still have
motive decrease and can't gain skills to make it even worst.
Despite all of the limits of ghosts, you can take a little of their borrowed
time to make things right before they puff into thin air for good and it
makes for some good pictures. Ghosts have a few other things they can do, or
to be more accurate, can't do to be worth trying out at least once in an
isolated neighborhood where sims you might actually care about don't live, as
it's an unstable glitch that may have side effects. You can also screw things
up a little more with if you try and get another sim to revive them with the
Resurrect o' Nomitron while they are dead and walking around on the same lot.
This has a weird effect, giving the ghost sim back their normal abilities,
but locking up the sim using the Resurrect o' Nomitron and canceling the
ability to exit the game, as well as access build and buy mode, so it's not
recommended.
Well, that's a wrap! I can't believe for the life of me that this FAQ
actually ended up longer than The Sims 2: University FAQ, if you've read this
entire thing, congratulate yourself, because you have just read a document
pretty much the size of a moderately thick paperback novel - but with bigger
pages. Makes me wonder if I should start writing short stories and become a
starving writer instead of a starving artist!
This FAQ was written for two reasons, the fact that I happen to really like
this game, and as a tribute to all of the great people who have e-mailed me
since my University FAQ with tons of positive feedback! You people rock! I
probably would have never made this follow up FAQ if it weren't for all of
you! If you have any questions, comments or information, please contact me at
the e-mail address on the top of this FAQ! Hurray! I love exclamation marks!
Oh yes, if you liked my writing style and sense of humor, please visit:
www.xynthica.com
It's my website filled with overly cute anime styled goodness and satirical
humor openly mocking the limited potential of the human race! It's almost as
fun as a bowl full of mice! Or maybe it's actually MORE fun than a bowl full
of mice?! Please let me know what you think, because we here at
www.xynthica.com love to suffer for you!
This is Zephos (TheSocialBunny) saying happy simming and have a great
nightlife! And remember:
EXPLOIT THE GAME!
=============================================================================
[16] Legal Stuff
Copyright 2005 Zephos Amaranis
This guide may be freely distributed, digitally displayed, and or reproduced
for personal and private use for non-profitable purposes, so long as its
contents are unaltered and the original author is acknowledged.
The following sites have obtained my official acknowledgement and approval
for hosting this FAQ:
Lots and lots of people to thank! This FAQ could have never been what it
turned out to be without the help of enthusiastic gamers like yourself, so
let the long detailed credits roll!
- First and foremost my utter most thanks to Maxis for making this excellent
electronic entertainment product and all of its expansion packs and trying
not to piss the fans off by being as politically correct as corporately
possible while still retaining a most excellent sense of humor! Loved you
guys since the original Sim City, love you guys even more now! Llamas
forever!
-Special thanks to EA for giving me my copy of The Sims 2 for being a
volunteer tester, you guys are awesome! I take back everything I said about
you being an evil faceless corporate juggernaut that runs gymnasiums full of
overtime working sweatshop conditioned game testers! Well, your British
Columbian branches anyway, you guys got so many branches that you should
really look into world domination when you've got the time.
-My personal thanks goes to warfreak on www.gamefaqs.com for writing the
first The Sims 2: Nightlife FAQ available! Warfreak actually wrote the first
version of the Nightlife FAQ before I even bought the expansion pack! It was
an excellent rundown of things I had to research and look into, and I found
myself reading it to cross reference my own FAQ many times.
-Incredible thanks to Jason Newman for telling me personally through e-mail
the information regarding the Multi-Term Paper trick! I use it all the time
now and it's such a useful time saving way to exploit the game, and you all
know how much I LOVE to exploit the game! Well, without cheat codes or mods
anyway.
-Hefty thanks to Carrie Kube for telling me about the "Welcome Home" Friendly
Hug that children can automatically give to their parents when they arrive
home from work. How sweet it is!
-Indispensable thanks goes to Richard Doyle, Laura Samuel, and J.T.
Bloodstorm for helping me to lock down the true nature of the "Super Ultra
Happy Back from Work Cheer". When my information was bleeding, you guys
stepped up to help me nail it down, and that made all the difference!
-Undeniable thanks goes to Slurpicus for explaining why the heck my AMD
processor gets read wrong by the game to allow only two guests at parties and
relaying to me the solution! I swear it saved me a kitten sized brain tumor!
-Extra virgin oil thanks to Asleon who wrote guides to perfect couples and
romance sims available on www.thesims2.com forums that gave me a great deal
of incite into how the chemistry system works.
-Incredible thanks goes to all of the people who stood up for me and reported
the numerous plagiarism related cases of my FAQ. Not so much thanks to those
who actually did rip it off, although I forgive you. Heh, I'm an artist,
plagiarism isn't anything new to me. As my brother taught me when I was
young, there is only one way to beat plagiarism, and that's to keep on
consistently doing what only you can do, but do it better. Well, that or hire
an army of lawyers, one of the two.
-Grandiose thanks goes to the authors of the official The Sims 2: Nightlife
guide by Prima! I've personally never read it or any of the other The Sims 2
guides save for the demo pages of the University guide online, but I've heard
that it's the size of my eleventh grade math textbook and packed full of
information, buy it at a store near you! There's a good chance that someone
down the road who gave me advice learned it from that book, so to it I give
it credit and thanks! I also have every intention of buying and assimilating
the information now that my FAQ is done and needs cross checking.
- A mound of thanks to Carlos Alberto Colon for informing me of how sloppy
sims can take a whiz in the shower and about how the salvage command works on
normal trash cans as well as the big mother trash can!
-Congratulatory thanks to Marius who helped me isolate the cause and effect
to the rare auto-action Congratulate!
-Extensively spectacular thanks to Avalikia Kapu for dropping me an enormous
tip on the exact cause of the approve and disapprove actions, I couldn't have
boiled it down if it wasn't for your help! Awesome name by the way!
-Super happy thanks to Martin Ostera for his trick about getting easy career
rewards through simply getting hired at high positions! Surely one of the
greatest in game exploits I have ever come across to date!
-My heart felt thanks to all of the wonderful representatives of various
video game sites who have asked to host my FAQ and done an excellent job
doing so! I'm not a very promotion or public person, so thank you for making
my work easier and taking care of the worries of displaying my FAQ so that I
can focus on writing them, you guys are the best!
-Finally, thanks to all of those people who sent in those e-mails and
responded to my inquiries on the forums! You guys are the best! I'll be
looking forward to the next expansion pack as well, so see you all then!
