Game Tips

Tips and cheats are the order of the day in this section. Also answers to those burning questions that everyone always asks about their favourite game.

Makin Magic

For all of your Makin Magic questions Go here

Careers

If you want to know more about the available career routes that came with The Sims, Livin' Large and Unleashed Click here

Cheats

While playing the game press and hold Ctrl+Shift+C
Then just type in the cheat you want and press Enter for it to work:

klapaucius -
This is the money cheat if you only have the original Sims game without the patch installed. It gives your Sim 1000 Simonleons each time you use it.
rosebud; ; -
Type in this cheat and just keep pressing Enter for your Sim to rake in the money.
This cheat should work with the original sims game if you have the patch installed.
autonomy 100 -
Type in this cheat when you have the freewill option turned on for your Sims to be totally independant and make the decisions for themselves. They don't always make the best choices though!
autonomy 50 is the normal setting, and autonomy 0 makes them just stand there waiting for your commands
move_objects_on -
Type in this cheat and you can move and delete everything that you weren't able to in the normal mode. This is especially helpful when you want to get rid of those annoying flies, or if you want to plant trees outside of the grid marking their lot.
*Warning*: Do not under any circumstances delete or move the Trashcans, Mailbox, Cars or the paths at each end. This can stop the carpool from turning up and your neighbours from being able to visit.
move_objects_off -
This turns off the move_objects_on mode and prevents accidental deleting of important objects.
water_tool -
If you don't own HD, SV, or SU then you can use this cheat to create ponds and puddles on your lots.

Potion Effects (LL)

Red potion causes the Sim to fail in love with another Sim.
Orange potion makes the Sim invisible for a short amount of time.
Yellow potion reverses the Sim's personality traits.
Light Green potion decreases all of the meters making them feel rotten.
Green potion creates an evil twin of the Sim who drinks the potion.
Blue potion increases the motive meters as well as increases the mood meter of the Sim who drinks the potion.
Purple potion turns the Sim into a monster for a short period of time.
White potion cures the Guinea Pig Disease

Freewill

If you want to leave your Sims to their own devices without any human interference then select the freewill to 'on' in the options menu while on a lot. Then bring up the cheat box; as explained in the cheat section above; and change the autonomy rating to 100. You can then sit back and watch the mayhem unfold before you as they make their own choices.
Remember that what they decide to do can depend on both their individual personality and on the way that the house is set out. So it can take a little bit of experimenting to see what works for your sims.
If you want to leave your sims game running in the background press and hold Alt and Tab to minimize the game screen.

Babies

It takes three days for a baby to change into a child.
My tip is if both parents work let them take it in turns to have a day off to care for the baby so that neither Sim loses their job.

The Maid & Gardener

If your Sims are as hopeless as mine at keeping tidy then I'd always advise hiring the Maid. She's relatively cheap and it leaves your Sims more free time to concentrate on those career points and socialising.
The same goes for the gardener, I can never remember to water those plants so get this helpful guy to come and do it for you. He visits every three days and keeps your flowers at their best.
Keeping the garden at it's best also improves the outside room rating. Which will help to see your sims off to work in a good mood and they'll be equally happy on their return.

Alarms

Another tip is always install a fire alarm and a burgular alarm.
Install a burgular alarm at each entrance point to the house. Or place on the outside of the house and it will trigger as soon as the burgular enters your sim's lot.
Place a fire alarm in each room with a possible fire hazard in it. eg: where a cooker or fireplace is.
The money will be saved in the long run as it prevents the fire from damaging too much and can also save their lives while they are standing there panicking.
Also if you use the burgular alarm it calls the police right away and you then might receive a cash reward. Otherwise it will just take you sim forever to get up and phone the police by which time the culprit will be long gone.

Cooking Disaster

Always get your sim to study cooking to earn at least one point in this area before you let them cook on the stove or sooner or later they will cause a fire. The more cooking points they have the less likely it is that accidents will happen.

Mechanical Marvel

Get your sim reading his mechanical manuals. Otherwise the next time that he attempts a repair he could eletrocute himself. Or if lighting the fireplace he could cause a nasty accident.

Extra Money

The more creativity points that you have the more money you can get for your paintings. Also your Sims sound a lot better on the Guitar and Piano.

Slot Machine

Always wondered whether there is a cheat to the slot machine? Well there is. Get your Sims mood really low and then get them to play the slots, then watch as the money comes in.

Moving House

So your Sims have got their eager eye on that nice big mansion on the hill, but how do they get it? Well there are a couple of ways to get the goodies, some honest some not so honest, so it really depends on how you prefer to play the game as to which method that you choose.

Earn it the hard way

You've created your Sim's family and now they want to upgrade, well they are going to have to work very hard to earn promotion and save those simoleons if they are going to realise their dream. Then when they've got enough money, evict them and then move them into their dream pad.

More mates, More money

For every family that you create they each get 20,000 simoleons to spend on a house, so get creating. Make families for each of the lot's that cost under 20,000 simoleons and create each family with just one member and move them into a different house. Then it's time to mingle. Get them all friendly with a Sim in one of the houses until you get the option to invite them to live with you. Then move them in. As each sim joins their money comes with them until the house is full with eight sims. You can then move into the mansion and you can then kill off any unwanted sims in the household and leave the rest in the lap of luxury.

Money, money, money

Then of course there's cheating. Choose the family that you want to move into the mansion, go onto their lot and press and hold:
Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up the grey cheat box in the top left hand side of the screen. Then type: rosebud; ; and then press and hold the Enter key. Watch as their money comes rolling in until you reach the amount needed to buy the house. Then evict the family and move them into the mansion.
Whoever said that cheaters never prosper obviously have never played the Sims. :)

Get that House rating up

Do you Sims still hate the house that they live in? Well there are a few things that you can do to change this.

Keep the rooms to a reasonable size. Add enough windows to get the best from the daylight hours and add lamps for the nighttime.
Walls are really only needed to provide privacy, like for the bathrooms, or to stop load noises such as alarms or TV's from disturbing sleeping sims. So think open plan and make it easier and quicker for your sims to get to each object.
Also you can make a few of the corners of the house into diagonals instead as this also has an effect on the room score.
Add a fireplace to the house and get your sims to light the fire.
*Warning* Give your Sims some time to earn at least one technical point or they may end up causing a potentially fatal fire.
Take out the trash regularly or hire the maid as a full bin has a negative impact on the room score.
Add lot's of trees and flowers to the garden otherwise as soon as a sim returns home the room score will go down. Trees have a similar inpact on the room rating as flowers but do not require any maintance, so if you want to save your sims time and money only use trees in the garden.
Add lot's of pink flamingos. They add 2 points to the room score and are cheap to buy.

Building Houses, Saving time

When you bought your brand spanking new game did you read the instructions end to end?
If you didn't read the part about keyboard shortcuts it might be worth a read as Maxis put in a couple of very handy time saving options:

Hold down the shift key as you wallpaper a room and the whole room will be papered with one small click. The same trick can be used while tiling the floor
Hold the shift key down while purchasing an object and it allows you to buy multiples quickly.
Hold the shift key down while using the wall building tool and it will create a boxed area.

Two tasks at once

Some of the objects can help with more than one of your sims mood bars therefore saving them time.
eg: Using the hot tub improves the social rating, helps with hygeine and also provides your sim with comfort, while using the most comfortable chairs that they can afford for things like eating and using the chess board help to keep their comfort rating up as well. So try different ways of combining objects to max out your sims mood bars.

Tricky Relationships

Sometimes two sims just don't get on, but what if you need their friendship to advance your career? Well as long as they don't have a conversation face to face they'll get along just fine. So get them to have a meal together, play games and watch TV, even dancing can help the relationship along.

Sick Sims

At present there are two ways that the sims can get sick.

Guinea Pigs Disease (GPD) - Your Sims can get this possible fatal disease from the guinea pig if you don't look after it properly and they have poor hygeine levels. If the guinea pig bites your sim they may start sneezing and coughing and could possibly die if you don't look after them.
You could try hanging the Guinea pig picture up and getting them to look at it. Or if you can make the white potion with the chemistry set as that will cure them. Failing that lots of rest is the doctors orders
Montazuma's Revenge (SV) - Without going into details I think we can all guess what affect this has on you sims.
Your Sims may contract this disease while on Holiday. The only thing you can do for them is let them rest and keep them clean.