I started playing The Sims when I got The Sims 2 for PS2, and played it pretty hardcore but that was years ago. Now that The Sims 2 Ultimate is free I decided to pick The Sims back up. I now see there's a LOT more I can do, and just playing the console version I really missed out on a lot of content. So, are there any Cheats/Mods/Tips you might be able to give a new player? Anything is greatly appreciated.

Check the stickied threads, lots of good info there.

And welcome!

Here's a quite buried thread whose idea is just that.

If you have any silly (or intelligent) question, but don't feel like starting a new thread for it, ask it here.

I am new to Sims 2 - diehard Sims 1 player - granddaughter talked me into getting 2. That being said - I am thoroughly confused about all the EPs and the "Ultimate Collection". I bought Double Deluxe, which is now installed, and the Pets "Collection" - which includes M&G and Family Fun Stuff, which is not installed yet. I am not sure where to go from here...do I go ahead and install the Pets Collection? Do I play the "base" game for awhile to acclimate me to 2, or do I get the Ultimate Collection, however you might get that, and just do it all???

Then there is the issue of CC and all the mods,etc. that entails.....

Please help this newbie granny figure it all out!!!

"I am new to Sims 2 - diehard Sims 1 player - granddaughter talked me into getting 2. That being said - I am thoroughly confused about all the EPs and the "Ultimate Collection". I bought Double Deluxe, which is now installed, and the Pets "Collection" - which includes M&G and Family Fun Stuff, which is not installed yet. I am not sure where to go from here...do I go ahead and install the Pets Collection? Do I play the "base" game for awhile to acclimate me to 2, or do I get the Ultimate Collection, however you might get that, and just do it all???"

Hi!
The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection is a collection of all the Sims 2 games as a free digital download off Origin. However I think the offer expired on the 31st July. With Double Deluxe installed, you can install the Pets Collection or any other games you have. From what I understand about Ultimate Collection is that you can't install it on a computer that already has TS2 on it. You could install in on a different computer.

I hope this makes sense

I strongly suggest that you experiment with what's already installed, get the hang of it, find out what transferred from Sims1 to Sims2, experiment wildly, and then add the Pets collection and do the same.

I also moved on from Sims1 late (about four years ago now) and I installed expansions one by one, to keep from getting overwhelmed. There is a lot to get used to! On the plus side, sim needs are easier to manage; but now they've got wants, and fears, and influence, and sexual chemistry beyond what you used to get from star signs.

If you use existing neighborhoods, they can easily be reset; so any mistakes you made in them need not be taken seriously. If you make a new neighborhood, and make frequent copies of the folder between sessions, you can also restore one of these backups. A shakedown period, consequences free, in the premade neighborhoods helped me figure out what I wanted, gave me time to develop the concepts of the neighborhood I wanted to create, and be able to hit the ground running when I was ready to play seriously.

Thought I'd pop in since I first started playing Sims 2 about two years ago, and learned to play Sims 1 when very young by simply picking it up. The following are my unofficial answers to everyone starting a 'I just (re)started playing Sims 2 now what' thread, which seems to be a popular topic around here these days.

First, read up on corruption ahead of time. Avoid it at all costs. There are many resources available about how corruption destroys the game, even if "it's the easy way" or "I don't notice any difference."

Second, try the in-game tutorials, Read up on the Wiki here and the Sims Wikia, and let the actual experiences come from gameplay. I also came across a gameplay guide on a general "tips and tricks" site, however I quickly stopped using it because it was ruining the fun of playing the game!

Third, avoid corruption. Whoops, that was number one.

Fourth, as far as what neighborhood to start on: starting with one of the pre-made neighborhoods really is best; simply pick the one that grabs your attention! I've never played some neighborhoods not just because I don't have UC or all the EPs but because they don't interest me. Remember that you can play the characters that come with the neighborhood as you want, don't feel locked into playing them as they're written if you don't want.

Fifth, avoid corruption. Oh, that was number one and number three.

Sixth, regarding cheats and modification programs; I've nearly totally destroyed one of my neighborhoods far more than corruption can (and did accidentally destroy one of my families/houses) by using them and not being careful! So, really, starting out playing the game as it was meant to be played (minus mod programs, minus testing cheats, minus cheats period) really is best.

Seventh, if I haven't mentioned it already, read up on game corruption ahead of time. Avoid doing anything that causes corruption. Wait, I mentioned that several times already? Well, it's worth repeating.

Thanks for all the feedback. I have now ordered the University "collection" which includes IKEA Home Stuff & Teen Style Stuff and the Best of Business Collection which includes Open For Busines, H&M Fashion and Kitchen & Bath programs. So, what order do these need to be installed in????? I also have the Fun With Pets Collection, as previously mentioned.

Thanks in advance for all the help!!

It doesn't matter what order you install them in. Just make sure that, if you have any neighborhoods you want to keep, you make back-ups of them before installation, as they may get overwritten by a new installation. Your old neighborhoods will undergo a reset when a new expansion pack is installed, which means they'll all be awake, in roughly the place where you left them, with all their motives full except bladder, which will be at about half - just like when you first move a family in. Any food left out will be spoiled; beds left unmade may be unmakeable, plumbing fixtures that were in use when you saved will never stop running, and weird things will happen if you had a sim on the phone. So I suggest looking in on each household in a neighborhood you plan to make the transition, and make sure they're all in a place to accommodate that.

However, be very sure that the games are patched before you load any neighborhoods, as there are problems that the patches can only fix when the EP with the glitch in it is installed in a neighborhood - so, on creation, or during the neighborhood reset . The collections are supposed to come pre-patched; but I've heard of people having trouble with that, so download the patches (see how that's underlined in blue? That's a link now. Click it to find out about patches) and try to install them. If they say, "this is already patched," no harm done; if they install, then the combination of collections you have loaded missed a patch, but you're safe now. Certain families (the Critturs, which come with Pets, and the Ottomas family, which come with Seasons) have a game-corrupting glitch in an unpatched game but are perfectly safe to play in a patched one, regardless of what any nervous nellies tell you, as long as the neighborhood is patched before they appear in it.

This isn't as hard and complicated as it sounds; it's just that there's an awful lot of complex code and you can't process everything at once. Keep calm and carry on.

Be careful ordering Bon Voyage (or maybe it was the University Collection, been so long since I bought them) anyway one of them states on their package they won't install with Double Deluxe. I know this because I had Double Deluxe once upon a time. I couldn't stand having an expansion pack I couldn't install so I finally bought Sims 2 Holiday Edition just so I could install it.

Best of Business would be the last one to install since it will be the one used to load your game.

Also be careful with the Best of Business. For years it was the game I had used to load my game, until about 2 years ago. For some reason my game would no longer load with Best of Business and I had to start loading it with Mansions & Gardens. (My girlfriends quit working at the same time, on a different computer.) Mansions & Gardens worked for about a month, then it started crashing every 5th time we played. We ended up having to buy Open For Business, H & M Fashions, and Kitchen and Baths separate in order to play.



This was my experience and thought you should be warned. Good luck, hopefully what our problems were are fixed now and you don't have the same experience.

If you want cash use motherload for 50k simoleons and kaching for 1k simoleons, i've found in the ultimate collection the sims needs stay up a lot easier though, i've barely had to do anything with them because they also seem to do a whole lot more on themselves and their fun meter stays up so much more because of the hobbies so i would get the ultimate version so you have all the expansions, you won't have to use so many cheats then.

And where can I get the Ultimate Collection?? I saw in some threads where it was being offered for free until July 31, but what is the cost now? Any help here would be greatly appreciated...thanks.

Can you help me with that? How/where do I back up the neighborhoods?

To back up a neighborhood:

Go to the EAGames folder in My Documents. Inside that is a Sims2 folder, inside that is a Neighborhoods folder, and inside that are folders containing all your neighborhoods! N001 is Pleasantview, N002 is Strangetown, N003 is Veronaville, and your custom hoods start counting at N004. The ones that begin with other letters are premade neighborhoods from expansions; you can easily tell which one by opening the Storytelling subfolder inside it and checking who you see pictures of.

Select the neighborhood you want to back up. Copy to... or Copy/Paste to a secure location. When something goes wrong with the neighborhood in the Sims2 folder, delete it, copy the backup back in.

If you're about to install an EP, it would make sense to back up the entire Neighborhoods folder; also, the Downloads folder.

If you make regular system backups, you'll be automatically making backups of the neighborhood data, too, but redundant backups have saved many a file. I make backups on another drive, and both the My Documents folder and the Neighborhood Backups folder get backed up to the external drive, and I'm not afraid come what may. (Though I still don't have an external drive and backup protocol for the new machine; got to fix that soon.)

I got back into playing Sims 2 a couple of years ago myself, after a several-year hiatus. All I did a couple of years ago was buy Double Deluxe, like you, and then all of the various EPs and SPs. Overall, it didn't cost that much, maybe about $100 for everything, although I did use store credit on a few things with a local business.

Now, two years later, I see the various EPs and SPs on Ebay for under $10, so my first suggestion to you is to simply collect them all, since everything related to this game has gotten very inexpensive. Try to get the DVD versions of the various items, although it doesn't matter if some are DVD and others CD.

I don't know anything about the Ultimate Collection, other than the tidbits I've read about here. It is my understanding that it was a free download of the entire Sims 2 collection. Being a digital download, it could be problematical if you ever have to delete and reinstall the game in the future. I'm one of the apparently dying breed of gamers who like to have a physical disk in my hand of the games I play, so at least I can do with it whatever I want, when I want. Since you seem to have already bought a good portion of the Sims 2 collection, I would suggest you simply buy whatever's left.

As I said, I have Double Deluxe (DD), like you, and I don't recall having to install any patches, since DD is fairly recent and already includes the patched game. There haven't been any patches issued since long before DD, so just install the base game (DD) and then all the EPs and SPs, in any order and you should be good to go.

The next thing you can do is read the Wikipedia writeups on the Sims 2 base game, and then (especially) the EPs. The base game writeup is here and you can click on the EP links from there. I just read the EP articles a few days ago myself and they give very good overviews of each EPs attributes, better and more concise than anything you'll find around here.

Not to knock this site, there is lots of good info here, but most of it is scattered all over the place. One of the exceptions is this Sims 2 Help Page. In particular, if you click on Miscellaneous Issues on that page, you will see an additional page of links, including one entitled Neighborhood Corruption, which you should read in it's entirety. But even this page, as well as many other Sims 2 Wiki pages, seems to have outdated information, which was apparently written before the final EPs and patches were released. Sometimes this is noted in the various Wikis, sometimes it isn't and you have to figure it out yourself, or ask here at the forum.

Finally, take a look at this Simmer's page: Mootilda. Take a look at her Game Mods downloads, and especially her Programs and Utilities downloads. Most of them are very useful.

It has been my experience here at this website, that although there is much information here and many very knowledgeable people, there is also much incomplete or misleading information that is repeated by too many people who like to chime in with what they think are facts, that aren't. In short, there are a lot of myths and rumors about what can happen in this game and what might be a feature and what might be a bug. The complicated nature of the game, being a "Life Simulator", contributes to this confusion. The nature of many of the players, teens and even pre-teens, also contributes to it.
You can start a thread on virtually any aspect of the game and end up with a myriad of conflicting information from dozens of respondents.

And, of course, as you will see when you read the above-linked page to Neighborhood Corruption, Maxis left the game in a very buggy state, where even the most basic game function can cause the program to fail in the long run, with the result being a deletion and re-installation of the entire game by the player. In my opinion, the only really effective way to combat this type of thing is to quit buying Maxis' games, or at least not to buy them new, but used, in order not to keep giving them money. I myself never took the plunge into Sims 3, although the main reason for me was the prohibitive cost. Still, I'm glad I didn't, because a casual perusal of the Sims 3 forums shows many of the same kind of complaints regarding that game, now that Maxis is getting ready to release Sims 4.
Folks keep feeding them money despite excessively buggy games and Maxis will be more than happy to keep selling them.
My 2 cents.

Thanks Peni. I will make sure to do that.

Thanks Rob. That is certainly a LOT to consider!! I also am a "disk" person, as I've been playing/building in Sims 1 for many, many years so am well aware of re-installing!!!

Bon Voyage can be installed with Double Deluxe - had that for a long time.