Ten Tips to Get The Most Out of The Sims 4

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

I've really come around on The Sims 4 since I started playing it last week (read my full review on Paste) but one of its biggest shortcomings is how obscured some of its best features are. These are things that give you micro (and macro) control over your simulated world, and given some of the game's other shortcomings that control can vastly improve your experience.

If you're playing The Sims 4 or planning to in the future, here are ten simple tips you'll want to keep in mind:

Manage More Than One Family

You can have multiple save files and load specific ones if you want to play more than one household without disabling aging for your neighbours. You can use these saves like a slightly less elegant version of The Sims 3's multiple neighbourhoods.

Address a Sim's Needs Faster Than Ever

Your sim's most pressing Need will be shown in yellow or red in the bottom right corner of the game window, replacing the icon for the Needs panel. You can also click on the Needs panel, then click on an individual need to send your sim to automatically satisfy it.

Hit the Motherlode

Almost all of your favorite Sims cheats will still work. After opening the console with Ctrl+Shift+C,  "Kaching" and "Motherlode" will both still shower your household in money, while "TestingCheatsEnabled True" (a staple for debugging your game) has become the slightly more succinct "TestingCheats Enable". The sim decorator's best friend, the "MoveObjects On" cheat, is currently disabled due to some problems it was apparently causing. Hopefully this is temporary, but until then you can still activate quarter-tile object placement by hitting F5 in Build/Buy Mode, or place items off the grid by holding down alt.

"Coffee is for Closers"

You can control how your sims perform at their jobs by clicking the icon in the upper-right corner of their portrait while they're at work. This will give you similar options to those available in The Sims 3, allowing your sim to work hard, slack off, suck up, socialize and so on.

Spice Up Your Wardrobe

You can still have multiple outfits, and they work even better than before. Clicking on the arrow about each outfit category in Create-a-Sim will let you add several different outfits to that category. better still, your sim will automatically cycle through them instead of sticking to the last one you told them to wear in each category like they would in The Sims 3.

Design Your Dream Kitchen

Turning off automatic placement for counters and cabinets will give you access to loads of hidden options, including more complex modules and curved countertops. Check out this video from The Sim Supply to see what I mean: 

 

Don't Get Hung Up Choosing a Lifetime Wish

You can change your sim's "Lifetime Wish" whenever you want, for free. This means that if you want one of the traits that a wish will provide for your sim but you don't actually want them to pursue that goal, it's no big deal to change it later and retain the original wish's trait. 

Resize to Fit

You can scale objects up almost infinitely using Shift+], while Shift+[ will scale an enlarged object down. This might not seem very useful until you see how small many of the potted plants are by default. And what kid doesn't want a giant stuffed animal in their room?

The Keys to the Kingdom

There are loads of other keybinds and commands that will speed up your simming if you're willing to learn them. You can check out some of the most useful over on Kotaku.

Use Emotions to Your Advantage

Every job or skill has an emotional state that you can use to advance faster. Going to work in the criminal career path for example benefits from being "Energized" while you'll wrong more progress out of a writing session if your sim is "Inspired". These emotional states are also fairly easy to manipulate as well, as long as you remember to activate the "Emotional Auras" of rewards your sim receives for completing various tasks and milestones. You can dig up and refine minerals that will emit auras as well, so if you're looking to play as efficiently as possible you'll likely want to take advantage of that.

Well those are my top tips, but there are still loads more out there (including some hidden lots you might want to scope out for yourself.) As always, feel free to share your own advice for playing The Sims 4 in the comments below!

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Janine Hawkins (@bleatingheart on Twitter, Iris Ophelia in Second Life) has been writing about virtual worlds and video games for nearly a decade, and has had her work featured on Paste, Kotaku, Jezebel and The Mary Sue.

Comments

[Leo]

I miss quite a bit of the features from the past games but it's pretty fun so far. :)

[...]

Cool =3