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THE SIMS 2 STRATEGY GUIDE/FAQ - WRITTEN BY JPaterson |
The
Sims 2 for PC FAQ/Walkthrough Written by Josh Rulez - aka warfreak |
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Unknown -
While playing a game, press Right, Down, Right, Down, Right, Down. If
you entered the code correctly, you will hear a Sim voice.
Mode switch -
Press Select to toggle between Direct Control mode and Cursor Select
mode. This very useful in Freeplay mode.
Extra clothes -
Get your Sim's relationships to 100 with everyone. Each time you raise
another relationship to 100, you will unlock a new article of clothing.
Food locations
Dangleberries can be harvested in the Sproutch Couch.
Other fruits are harvested on a Frood Tree.
Golden eggs can be received from Chicken Checkers game.
Fish can be harvested from the Manilla 1000 Aquarium
Some vegetables can be harvested from the GenoLife Garden Hutch.
Hunger satisfaction -
The more expensive refrigerators carry more foods. They also add a bonus
amount of hunger satisfaction. The more cooking skill you have, the
higher the hunger satisfaction. Additionally, hunger is the one need
that if left unmet can kill your Sim. Sandwiches that boost energy (also
is a love dish) are ostrich, pork, strawberry, wheat bread.
Easy money -
Go to Build mode, then go to wallpaper and press Square to sell. Select
a wall that has no wallpaper. Keep selling the wallpaper that does not
exist for easy money.
Saving money -
Objectives that require buying furniture can be easily purchased on low
ends. Just buy it to complete the goal, then delete and get your full
money back.
Controlling a dead Sim -
Kill your Sim. There are a lot of ways to do this, but starting a fire
is the fastest. Once your Sim is dead, switch to direct control (if not
already in it). As a dead Sim you can walk through walls and talk to
Sims. Terrorize, Wail, and Possess are social options dead Sims can do.
However, you cannot actually possess Sims out of Social mode. These
social options have no effect on other Sims, but are amusing. You can
also challenge the Grim Reaper in fiddle challenge. You have an
unlimited number of chances to try this. If you win, your Sim will come
back to life. You can also pay the Grim Reaper 100 Simoleons for a Back
To Life Ticket.
Development team picture - At
the title screen, press Right, Down, Right, Down, Right. If you entered
the code correctly, you will hear a Sim voice. Alternately, press Left,
Right, Down, Right, Left, Right, Down at the title screen. If you
entered the code correctly, you will hear a Sim voice.
Extra locations
Alien Crash Site: Fulfill all of XY-XY's aspirations
and make him friends with Jonas. This will unlock The Bio-Dome.
Cliffside Retreat: Fulfill all of Isabella's Wants and make her happy.
Note: It may be difficult and take some time to get her to make a
sandwich.
HMS Amore: Fulfill all of Betty's Wants until she is Platinum. She will
then tell you where the next location is. One of her wants will be to
marry Captain Nelson.
Jugen House: Fulfill all of Toothless Joe's aspirations until your Sim
gets "Visit New Location" as one of their aspirations. Then, go back to
Tranquillity Falls and your aspiration will change to "Help Chantal". To
do this, just keep fulfilling her wants until she is Platinum (a job in
Art). This will unlock the Alien Crash Site.
Orbit Room: Become friends with Red S, then serve him some food. Then,
move back to Sunset Canyon and make Red S and Helga fall in love and get
married. Red S will now live there, and you can control him. Do whatever
is needed to get Red S in a Platinum mood. He will tell you how to get
to Tranquillity Falls.
Rockwall Acres: Follow the instructions given to unlock this area.
Shoreline Trails: Buy a Foosball Table. When a Want that is described as
"Beat Torin at Foosball" appears, wait for Torin to play, then click the
"Challenge" option and defeat him.
Sunset Canyon: Bring Helga, Billy, and Sheila back to life, build a
kitchen, clean up the mess, build a bathroom, and give them beds to
sleep in. They will then tell you the next location.
Tranquillity Falls: Fulfill all of Larry and Chantal's wants to put them
in a Platinum mood. After both are in a Platinum mood they will tell you
where Jugen House's is located, and it will be unlocked.
Hidden food - There is more than just the food you can make. For
example, there is food that give your skills a boost, food that helps
you in love (romance Sims only for their goals), and food not in the
list. For example, you can make a pizza.
Free harvested food - Use the following trick if you are in need of food
and have very little money. Buy an item that can have food harvested
from it. Harvest the food from it, sell it back, then buy another. This
will keep you from having to spend money on food. Unless there is more
than one sim in your house, you do not have to worry about the other Sim
wasting money buying non-harvested foods.
Aphrodisiac effect meal - Ostrich and Passion Fruit; or Carrot, Lime,
Pork, and Passion Fruit. Most things made with Ostrich or Passion Fruit
will have the aphrodisiac effect, although some have a very negative
effect (black hearts) that will lower your Sim's mood.
Energy boost effect meal - Dangleberry, Yogurt, Strawberries, and
Cherries; or Ostrich, Eel, Strawberries, and Mangosteen (expensive but
works the best). Sandwiches that boost energy (also is a love dish) are
Ostrich, Pork, Strawberry, Wheat Bread.
Skills boost effect meal - To boost all your Sim's stats by 3
temporarily, create a meal using Egg, Milk, Whole White Flour, and Corn
Oil. Put it in a food processor, then in an oven. The meal will have
sparkles coming out of it. When you eat it, all your stats will be
boosted by 3 temporarily. Alternately, create a meal using Chicken,
Onion, Egg, and Milk or Carrot, Egg, Milk, and Whole White Flour.
Sick meal - Any meal made with Llama, no matter what the effect, any Sim
that eats it will vomit.
Raising motives - To raise your Power, Fun, and Comfort at the same
time, power nap on a couch with a television or radio on nearby.
Finding buried treasure - A Sim can only use the Metal Detector in
Direct Control mode. It is possible to find money, Dangleberries, monkey
idols, and bottle caps.
Cheat: - Sent in by: lee.gould2
Fill All Motives
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter UP, CIRCLE, UP, RIGHT, L2.
Cheat: All Objects
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter L2, CIRCLE, DOWN, LEFT, UP.
Cheat: All Recipes
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter R2, SQUARE, UP, DOWN, RIGHT,
X.
Cheat: Audio Track
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter R1, L1, R1, L1, TRIANGLE.
Cheat: Team Picture
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter RIGHT, DOWN, RIGHT, DOWN,
RIGHT.
Cheat: All Fashion
Unlock Gnome. Then pause the game and enter SQUARE, R2, DOWN, RIGHT,
SQUARE.
Unlockable: Gnome
To reveal Plumb Bob Trophy on the lots, pause game and enter L1, R1, UP,
X, R2. Sim Voice At the title screen, press Right, Up, Right, Down,
Right, Up, Down, Right. If you entered the code correctly, you will hear
a Sim voice.
Mode switch
Press Select to toggle between Direct Control mode and Cursor Select
mode. This very useful in Freeplay mode.
Extra clothes
Get your Sim's relationships to 100 with everyone. Each time you raise
another relationship to 100, you will unlock a new article of clothing.
Extra locations
Alien Crash Site: Fulfill all of XY-XY's aspirations and make him
friends with Jonas. This will unlock The Bio-Dome. Cliffside Retreat:
Fulfill all of Isabella's Wants and make her happy. Note: It may be
difficult and take some time to get her to make a sandwich. HMS Amore:
Fulfill all of Betty's Wants until she is Platinum. She will then tell
you where the next location is. One of her wants will be to marry
Captain Nelson. Jugen House: Fulfill all of Toothless Joe's aspirations
until your Sim gets "Visit New Location" as one of their aspirations.
Then, go back to Tranquillity Falls and your aspiration will change to
"Help Chantal". To do this, just keep fulfilling her wants until she is
Platinum (a job in Art). This will unlock the Alien Crash Site. Orbit
Room: Become friends with Red S, then serve him some food. Then, move
back to Sunset Canyon and make Red S and Helga fall in love and get
married. Red S will now live there, and you can control him. Do whatever
is needed to get Red S in a Platinum mood. He will tell you how to get
to Tranquillity Falls. Rockwall Acres: Follow the instructions given to
unlock this area. Shoreline Trails: Buy a Foosball Table. When a Want
that is described as "Beat Torin at Foosball" appears, wait for Torin to
play, then click the "Challenge" option and defeat him. Sunset Canyon:
Bring Helga, Billy, and Sheila back to life, build a kitchen, clean up
the mess, build a bathroom, and give them beds to sleep in. They will
then tell you the next location. Tranquillity Falls: Fulfill all of
Larry and Chantal's wants to put them in a Platinum mood. After both are
in a Platinum mood they will tell you where Jugen House's is located,
and it will be unlocked. Food locations
Dangleberries can be harvested in the Sproutch Couch.
Other fruits are harvested on a Frood Tree.
Golden eggs can be received from Chicken Checkers game.
Fish can be harvested from the Manilla 1000 Aquarium
Some vegetables can be harvested from the GenoLife Garden Hutch.
Free harvested food
Use the following trick if you are in need of food and have very little
money. Buy an item that can have food harvested from it. Harvest the
food from it, sell it back, then buy another. This will keep you from
having to spend money on food. Unless there is more than one sim in your
house, you do not have to worry about the other Sim wasting money buying
non-harvested foods.
Hunger satisfaction
The more expensive refrigerators carry more foods. They also add a bonus
amount of hunger satisfaction. The more cooking skill you have, the
higher the hunger satisfaction. Additionally, hunger is the one need
that if left unmet can kill your Sim. To quickly fulfill your Sim's
hunger even with low cooking skills, make a meal using Beef, Pork, Lamb,
and Potatoes.
Aphrodisiac effect meal
Ostrich and Passion Fruit; or Carrots, Lime, Pork, and Passion Fruit.
Most things made with Ostrich or Passion Fruit will have the aphrodisiac
effect, although some have a very negative effect (black hearts) that
will lower your Sim's mood.
Energy boost effect meal
Dangleberry, Yogurt, Strawberries, and Cherries; or Ostrich, Eel,
Strawberries, and Mangosteen (expensive but works the best). Sandwiches
that boost energy (also is a love dish) are Ostrich, Pork, Strawberry,
Wheat Bread.
Skills boost effect meal
Chicken, Onions, Eggs, and Milk.
Sick meal
Any meal made with Llama, no matter what the effect, any Sim that eats
it will vomit.
Raising motives
To raise your Power, Fun, and Comfort at the same time, power nap on a
couch with a television or radio on nearby.
Easy money
Go to Build mode, then go to wallpaper and press Square to sell. Select
a wall that has no wallpaper. Keep selling the wallpaper that does not
exist for easy money.
If you need some money and own a "Defective Arcade Genie Lamp" you can
keep making wishes and you will get money eventually. However, the genie
can also cause fire and make all the characters in the area of the lamp
to pee themselves if you make him mad. When the genie is mad he will
come out of his lamp with red colored smoke beneath him. However, if he
is giving you something good the smoke will be purple or pinkish. It is
best to perform this when you first get a house so that you can get your
money and not risk losing any items you have purchased. Note: If you
talk with the genie, he will also give you small advice and hints
occasionally. Saving money
Objectives that require buying furniture can be easily purchased on low
ends. Just buy it to complete the goal, then delete and get your full
money back.
Finding buried treasure
A Sim can only use the Metal Detector in Direct Control mode. It is
possible to find money, Dangleberries, monkey idols, and bottle caps.
Controlling a dead Sim
Kill your Sim. There are a lot of ways to do this, but starting a fire
is the fastest. Once your Sim is dead, switch to direct control (if not
already in it). As a dead Sim you can walk through walls and talk to
Sims. Terrorize, Wail, and Possess are social options dead Sims can do.
However, you cannot actually possess Sims out of Social mode. These
social options have no effect on other Sims, but are amusing. You can
also challenge the Grim Reaper in fiddle challenge. You have an
unlimited number of chances to try this. If you win, your Sim will come
back to life. You can also pay the Grim Reaper 100 Simoleons for a Back
To Life Ticket.
'
--
5. Request a Guide:
'Walkthrough: It's All About the Benjasims
As you can see from the screenshot, Kelly's got get the National
Compound running, and she's already met a few people from the
neighborhood. However, those 234 Simoleons in her bank account are not
going to last long. She needs to do what the Silhouettes preached about
years ago: time to Get A Job.
Jobs
Jobs are the main way Sims will get money. Taking a job is easy, but
maintaining it day in and day out will be tough. Kelly's up for it
though, and starting the process isn't hard at all. Kelly starts the
process by going to her newspaper, which is delivered every day at 9 AM.
That right there is her first mistake in life. A better way to find jobs
is via a computer. If you use one, you'll find jobs based on your skill
points (explained in a moment). That means you won't have to start at
the bottom of the corporate food chain if you've already got the skills
to be past it. Every paper will have three jobs available, and can be
looked at a couple times before one is decided on. Computers usually
have four or five jobs available. Again, while the newspaper only lists
level 1 jobs, computers list them by the asking Sim's skill levels. Jobs
have many things in common at their core. Most jobs have five days on
the job per week, and two days off. Promotions are based on gaining job
skills, good moods, and many friends. No single job is on a swing shift
(that is, Sims have regular hours). All Sims have to take carpools to
work. But we might be getting ahead of ourselves here. There are 10
career tracks in The Sims 2, and each has 10 levels of actual jobs. The
goal, in theory, is to start from level 1 and earn your way up the
corporate food chain until you get to level 10. Each level is more
demanding than the last, but provides more money. There isn't really one
track that's better than the others, but starting pay may be a huge
factor. Now, let's review Kelly's aspiration, both the in-game one and
the one that we, as the player, decided for her. She is aiming to be
popular, and wants to turn the National Compound into THE party house.
She does not want be locked into a job forever; she just needs one to
get started. With that in mind, her goal is to simply get a good
starting pay. So she looks through the paper, and looks at all three
jobs before accepting any. See the screenshots below. The first job, an
EMT in the Medical track, has a starting pay of 280 Simoleons per day.
The second is a Dishwasher in the Culinary track, and that'll bring in
126 per day. Finally, the third one available is the Llama's Team Mascot
in the Athletic track, and that brings in 154 per day. Kelly just wants
the cash now, so she wants to be an EMT. By selecting Find a Job from
the pie menu of the newspaper again, the same three choices will be
offered, and this time she'll select Take Job when EMT comes up. She is
informed via pop-up window that the carpool will arrive at 7 AM daily.
With Kelly now holding a job, she can take a look at her job panel
again. This time, we'll actually have something relevant to talk about.
Remember how to access it? It's the third icon of the vertical five.
Check out the screenshot above on the right while we go through what all
the bars and everything mean. First, at the top left of the pane, you
can see the career track symbol and the specific job your Sim currently
has. Below that are the per-day salary, and then the work hours.
Remember that the carpool arrives for the Sim one hour prior to the
shift. Kelly works from 8 AM to 2 PM, so the carpool will arrive at 7
AM. When it does so, it will stay up to one hour, then drive away if she
doesn't get in it. Below that are the days of the week; the light blue
ones are work days, and the dark blue ones are off days. The arrow
underneath a day says what day it is. Finally, the bottom-left of the
pane shows how many vacation days the Sim has. Sims start with none, but
will earn them through frequent promotions. These vacations are PAID, so
if you have one and just need to give your Sim a day off, have him or
her stay at home. The money is automatically given when the shift
starts, even though the Sim isn't there. On the right side of the pane
past the divider line is a list of seven job skills. New to the Sims
series is the last one, Cleaning. We'll touch on all of them in a
moment. Job skills are used not just for jobs, but they are the primary
requirement of getting promoted. Unlike personality, Sims are not locked
into job skills and have no limit. Provided they live long enough, they
can earn all 70 points and be Uber-Sims. Here's a rundown of all the
skills, how to earn them, and what they mean inside and outside of the
job.
Cooking: A Sim with high Cooking will be able to cook better, more
fulfilling meals. This helps all Sims who eat their cooking to have
their Hunger need filled faster. This one is a must in the Culinary
track, and useful for all other tracks as well. In addition, a Sim may
start a fire when attempting to cook a meal too advanced (like if a Sim
tried cooking salmon when it only knew how to nuke a TV dinner). Study
this one at a bookshelf, or by watching the Yummy Channel on TV.
Mechanical: Sims can fix broken appliances quickly if they've got high
Mechanical numbers. That will save money when something breaks and a
repairman would usually be called in. This skill is used in practically
every job to some extent. This one can also be trained via a bookshelf.
Charisma: A Sim with high Charisma can actually offset the penalties
associated with being fully shy. Charismatic Sims tend to attract other
Sims as friends, and their jokes and other interactions will pass more
often. For Kelly's purposes (having the Popularity aspiration), this one
is extremely important. Charisma can be trained at any mirror by
selecting either Practice Speech or Practice Romance.
Body: High body skill points will allow a Sim to have just a hair more
energy when doing active things throughout the day. Plus, a Sim with a
good body will do better in physically demanding jobs, such as anything
in the Athletic career track. Working out to music from the radio, the
TV, or any exercise equipment will get this one up.
Logic: Logic does not seem to have much of an impact outside of jobs. It
is, however, a boost to inactive Sims. The theory is that while athletic
or active Sims use their bodies to accomplish things, the logical Sim
uses its mind to solve the same problems. Logic can be improved by
playing chess or looking through a telescope.
Creativity: Creative Sims can paint pictures and write novels, the two
non-job things that actually earn money. (The specifics will be
discussed shortly.) It can be gained by playing the piano, or doing
either of the two non-job activities.
Cleaning: This skill helps improve the speed and quality when a Sim
cleans a dish, floor, toilet, or whatever. This is a good offset for a
Sim who has a low Neat score: while you'll have to command him to clean,
he'll do so quickly and accurately. Cleaning, like Cooking and
Mechanical, can be studied via a bookshelf. In addition, all job skills
gain while the Sim is performing a related action. For example, while
the Sim cooks dinner, it will gain a little experience in Cooking. If a
Sim cleans the bathtub, its experience will grow in Cleaning. Skill gain
rates are dependent on the object used for it. For example, working out
with the TV or the radio is fine. But you can get higher Body points
MUCH faster with exercise machine. Always try to gain your skills using
the fastest method to save time. Here's a screenshot from earlier as a
reminder. All the bubbles next to the skill names are empty, but the
first point of Cleaning is circled in blue. That means she'll need to
achieve one point in Cleaning to even be considered for promotion.
Dividing the job summary and job skills is a vertical bar with two
numbers at the bottom. The bar is your Sim's job performance; obviously,
the higher, the better. The bar raises with every day that your Sim goes
to work on time and in a good mood. Some needs can usually be met at the
job site, so don't fret if you've stuck between getting to work in only
got two minutes or peeing yourself. Just head for work, and Bladder
should be taken care of there. Not getting to work, or showing up in a
bad mood, will hurt the job performance. If the bar dips low enough,
your Sim could be demoted, or even possibly fired. The two numbers below
the job performance bar states how many FAMILY FRIENDS your Sim has, and
how many more it needs to be promoted. Family is stressed because Sims
in the household can befriend other Sims and still have it contribute to
the overall total, which plays into the Alpha Strategy section of the
guide. Kelly's as you can see is 0, and (+0). That means she has no
Family Friends, but she doesn't need any to be promoted. So, Kelly's got
the day off today. Even if she didn't, she didn't have the job when the
carpool was supposed to be there, so it's not counted against her. She
needs a single point of Cleaning to be up for a promotion, but she
should learn how to prepare food for herself first. (Living on one's own
is a drag, huh?) So she goes to her bookshelf, pulls out a cook book to
study via choosing Study… > Cooking. She sits in her discount chair and
starts studying away. See that tube above her head? That's a progress
bar that shows how far along she is to learning the skill. The smaller
the number skill, the quicker it is. Now she's ready to cook a meal
before going to bed. And cooking gets its own separate sub-section!
Do You Smell What the Sims Are Cooking?
Cooking is an art, and in The Sims 2, you have to know what you're doing
to make sure no one gets sick. If a meal is cooked wrong - whether that
means overcooked or undercooked - the Sim that eats it will have a
chance of suffering from food poisoning. It's not a pretty sight,
especially since it can be contagious. Cooking can be done in two ways.
The old Sims 1 way, which is still an option, is to click the
refrigerator and select "Have …" if the Sim is only cooking for itself,
or "Serve …" if your Sim is cooking for others too. The new way is to
click a cooking appliance and select the option from there. The latter
is preferred, because by choosing your appliance, you can affect the
speed of the meal. Food from ovens is more filling than from a
microwave, but a microwave is extremely fast and definitely preferred if
you've got a time crunch (such as eating breakfast before work). You can
select the specific dish you want to prepare after selecting either the
"Have…" or "Serve…" options, but be choosy. Your refrigerator has a
limited amount of food in it, and you'll have to get more groceries if
you run out. Complicated meals, and meals for multiple people, will use
up more ingredients than basic meals. Plus, eating a stack of pancakes
when the Hunger meter is only 1/4 empty is a fast way to a fat tummy.
Eat only what you need to, only when you need to. The quality of the
meal is not just based on your appliances, but your Sim as well. Sims
with high Cooking skills not only make better meals, but they can make
more types of meals. Sims without Cooking skills can barely handle TV
dinners and instant meals (like protein shakes and so forth), whereas a
Sim with high Cooking skills can churn out turkeys left and right
without effort. Again though, banging out a turkey when you only need a
bowl of spaghetti will quickly get your Sim out of shape. Here we see
Kelly making a meal. She is led to the microwave and chooses Have
Dinner, because she is the only one she is cooking for. She then chooses
TV Dinner, as it's the only option. She'll go to the fridge
automatically, cook it, then head to the nearest table and chair combo
to eat. Hired Help It's getting pretty late now, as you can see. She
needs to get ready for her first day of work tomorrow, so it's time to
start wrapping it up to head for bed. She cleans up her plate, goes to
the bathroom, takes a shower, sets her alarm, then dives into bed. In
the morning, the alarm gets her up. She cooks a quick meal, then heads
out to the carpool when it arrives. It whisks her away to her work (and
out of our hair) for a few hours. Did you see what time it was before
she managed to get into the ambulance? Remember, the carpool only sticks
around for one hour after it arrives, and at 7:53 AM, Kelly cut that one
close. She lagged a bit because she was cleaning up her breakfast
dishes, so she decides to get some help with those household duties. The
moment she arrives home, the amount of money she earned is added to her
household account. She'll need it, because hiring people to help out
with the house can get expensive. To start the process, all she needs to
do is go to her phone. After selecting Services from the pie menu, a box
will pop up with the list of services she can call. Adoption Agency: If
your household has a decent income, you can call the Adoption Agency to
get a kid without all the messy body fluids. You will be denied to adopt
one if you can't financially support it.
Bartender: The host of the party should be all about the socializing. He
or she shouldn't be wasting time making and serving drinks. The
bartender will alleviate that problem for you, freeing up time to
schmooze and flirt with party guests.
Exterminator: Too many dirty dishes and unclean bathrooms lead to
cockroaches and other nasties that shoot Environment needs through the
floor. While your Sims can take care of a few groups by themselves, a
full-blown outbreak of pests can only be controlled by an Exterminator.
If you ever find yourself having to call one, try harder to keep a
cleaner house to prevent it from happening again.
Gardener: Gardens are beautiful, but require a lot of time and effort.
Gardeners will water plants and prune hedges for you, for a price.
You'll practically need one if you want anything more than a couple
bushes.
Maid: The epitome of a cleaner. The maid will work like a robot to make
sure every dirty dish is washed and every toilet is cleaned. The maid
will arrive daily around 10 AM, and will leave once everything is
cleaned up. That's a double-edged sword though, as there won't be anyone
to clean up family messes aside from the family at night. Luckily, the
maid is pretty cheap, and can be afforded by practically everyone. The
service is excellent especially in the early days when your Sims need as
much time as possible to gain skills for promotions.
Repairman: Broken appliances make messes at best, and outright fail to
work at worst. If your Sims have a high Mechanical skill, they can fix
it themselves. If not, or if you don't want them to, you can call a
repairman to do it. They're expensive, but probably worth it if you need
to save some time.
Nanny: Sim kids take a lot of work. It's almost a full-time job to raise
a child, especially an infant. Sims who need to work can help themselves
and their newborn by hiring a nanny to do most of the work, like
feedings and diaper changes. Sims can hire nannies on a long-term basis,
and she'll come by based on the adults' schedules (that is, she'll come
around while the adults are at work). Sims can also hire a nanny on a
short-term, one night basis. That's perfect if a couple wants to have
some time to rekindle anything they had lost after Junior came along.
Job Advancement So Kelly hires a maid to help out now and then. This
particular maid is male, and as you can see by the little window in the
corner, he'll be over in the morning. Don't worry all you male gamers
out there: the hot French maid is still there. The specific gender of
your maid is random, so if there's one you're shooting for, just decline
to hire one, and immediately call back to hopefully be offered the
other. As you can also see by the screenshots, Kelly's Social meter is
awfully low. She also has the Want of successfully inviting someone
over, and another Want of being friends with Albert Staple. We can kill
all those birds with one stone. She can buy a chessboard via Buy Mode
with her remaining funds, and she can also use Buy Mode to move her
dining chairs around it. After doing so, she can call up Albert and
invite him over. Once together, they can play chess for awhile. Doing so
will get her Logic up a point, and her relationship with Albert will
grow. To invite a Sim over to your Sim's house, the process is just as
easy as getting a service. Simply go to the phone and select Call… > Sim
from the pie menu. A list of all the Sims that your Sim knows will
appear. You can sort and view the list a couple different ways, but
Kelly doesn't know enough people at the moment to make it tough to find
the one she wants. If the target declines the invitation, the
relationship meters are probably not high enough. Call again
immediately, then just have the two Sims talk. Once the daily meter
breaks +20, hang up and call again, then fire over an invite. It should
be enough to get them over to your house. If the target asks permission
to bring a friend along with him or her, it's up to you whether you want
to allow it. There's no penalty for declining, and it would be another
mouth to feed and brain to entertain, but accepting may make your friend
network grow faster that way. Details about house guests will come in
another section. With only one Sim in a household, this is the primary
of getting anything accomplished. By itself, one Sim cannot easily get
the job skills AND friends needed to get promoted while maintaining
other relationships. Actions like this, that add to relationships and
job skills simultaneously, are hard to find, so they need to be done
when they can be. With a successful chess session, Kelly bids goodbye to
Albert. Now, without a need to play chess anymore for the night, she
decides to sell the chessboard back to the store. Whatever store Buy
Mode links to has the best return policy ever. If you sell back an item
within the same day of buying it, your Sim gets a full refund no matter
how many times the item was used. Notice that's "within the same day,"
not "within 24 hours." If you buy an item at 11 o'clock at night, you'll
only have an hour to use it before it loses some of its value. An old
use of this policy is to buy a computer at the beginning to expand the
number of job options so you're not limited to just the paper, then
immediately selling it back to get all that cash back. However,
computers are now exceptions to that rule, and will lose some value if
used to get a job. The next day at work, she didn't get promoted, but
she did get a Chance Card. These are little situations that your Sim can
get into at work, randomly determined. In this case, Kelly has been
asked to help clean a very messy exam room. She has three options
available to her: clean it herself, ask the custodial staff to do it, or
ignore the situation. Whenever you get a Chance Card, you'll always be
presented with two situational options and an ignore option. One of the
situational options is right, and the other is wrong. You won't know
which is right ahead of time, because they can and will switch on you.
That is, if one time the first option is right, then perhaps the second
time you get the same Chance Card with a different Sim, the second
option may be the right one. It's random each time, so unless you have a
better system, a simple coin flip can help you out here. Chance Cards
can carry huge benefits, but also huge losses. The moral choice may not
always be the right one to pick, either. A different Sim, on the Law
Enforcement track, once got a Chance Card where she found out her
fellows were taking illegal cuts from busts. The Sim could either keep
quiet and get a cut herself, or turn them in. The Sim chose to keep
quiet, and managed to get 40,000 Simoleons without being caught. Yes,
that's 40 THOUSAND. In that instance, going against the moral choice
actually proved beneficial. Since it's always one or the other, if she
had chosen to turn them in, something bad would have happened. If you
choose not to gamble, choosing the Ignore option basically cancels the
Chance Card. As you can see from the screenshots, Kelly chose to gamble
by trying to clean up the mess herself, but unfortunately, that was the
wrong one. She lost one day's pay, which is substantially better than it
could have been. So now she's got a friend, a couple points in Logic,
and decent need meters. Kelly decides that it's time for her to try to
get promoted to level 2 in the Medical career track. If you remember
from before, she just needs one point in Cleaning to make it. Because it
will only take one hour to achieve that first point, she decides to skip
breakfast the next morning and simply study the moment she wakes up.
After going to work and coming home, we find that… …Absolutely nothing
special happened. Oh well. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are
careers. At least the job performance bar has gone up a bit, so she's
closer to a promotion than she was yesterday. She is still paid for her
work, though, so now would be a good time to discuss the uglier side of
living: the bills. As the old saying goes, the only guaranteed things in
life are death and taxes (and expansion packs). Sims have to pay to
live, and that comes in the form of bills. Bills are delivered every
Tuesday and Thursday, and if they're not paid, the unfriendly
neighborhood Repo Man comes by and legally jacks one of your Sim's
possessions to cover the cost. Your Sims have roughly four days to do
something about bills, so that should be adequate time to gather the
money, unless you really went nuts with possessions. Bill cost is
determined by the items in your Sim's house, as well as the house
itself. With the National Compound as small as it is, not to mention the
fact that there isn't a whole lot in it, Kelly's bills are not too bad.
Despite ignoring the bill on Tuesday until now, Kelly won't have to
shell out even one day's paycheck to cover it all. To gather your bills,
click the mailbox outside your house. Your Sim will bring in the mail
and place it on any available surface, starting with coffee tables.
Then, you simply need to click the bill and pay it via the pie menu.
Provided you have the funds, your Sim will take the bill outside and put
it in your mailbox, and the funds will be deducted from your account.
The mailman will come by the next day and take the mail away
automatically, so you don't have to worry about that. Now all the bills
are paid. Kelly still has all the requirements to be promoted, so she
just needs to keep showing up to work in a good mood. With nothing
specific to attend to, a number of options are available to her. The
first thing she should do is spend the money she's got. Remember, the
Compound still doesn't have windows or internal wallpaper. Getting that
set will improve the Environment meter in the rooms, helping her mood
before she heads to the hospital. After that, she should spend her time
studying cooking to help get her stomach full the next morning to boost
her Hunger meter a bit, also adding to her mood and chance of promotion.
Ka-ching! Kelly arrives home and gets what was coming to her! All her
hard work has paid off, and she gets promoted to the next level,
Paramedic! Not only does she get a raise from 280 per day to 385, she
gets a one-time bonus too! The bonus is always twice as much as the new
salary. So, she gets 385 per her new job, plus (2 x 385) = 770 bonus,
for a total of 1,155 for the day! Obviously she won't see that kind of
money on a daily basis for a LONG time, but it's a great boost! As you
can see from the screenshot, she needs one more point of Cleaning to be
considered for another promotion. There's no reason to stop now, so as
soon as she can, she starts studying, and nails level 2 in Cleaning in
only a couple hours. She bides her time awhile before she goes to bed.
When she enters her bedroom that night, though, she remembers to reset
her alarm clock to the new time. The alarm clock will not reset itself
for her new job. Under normal circumstances, the money received from the
bonus should go to skill-gaining objects. For example, if your Sim would
need a point in Logic to get promoted again, it would be in your best
interest to permanently buy a chess table. However, because Kelly's job
requires a skill she can get with her current objects, she puts the
money to improve the house some more. She even adds an oven to her
kitchen so she can make better meals. She makes sure to leave some money
left over to pay her maid the next time he comes over, so she can't
completely outfit her house with windows. Still, what windows she has is
definitely an improvement over the what the house used to look like.
Walkthrough: Hangin' With Your Peeps
The next day, she finds herself bored at home. Although she's got to
work, her shift is late. When the maid Remington comes over, she decides
to chat him up a bit. Their friendship takes off a little quickly, so
she decides to call him to come over again after his shift, but for a
social call. Unlike in The Sims 1, all NPC Sims can not only be talked
to, but they can be treated like other Sims, including to be added to
the Family Friend Count provided the meters are high enough. In order
for her to host her guest, she decides to make a meal for the both of
them. (This way she can also test-drive her new oven.) This is
accomplished simply by selecting the appropriate appliance, select Serve
Meal…, and then the meal itself. She will automatically set a place for
the guest, grab a plate for herself, then sit and eat with Remington.
All Sim guests have two core needs when coming over to another Sim's
house: they need food, and they need entertainment. Sim guests don't
necessarily NEED to eat, provided the visit will be short. They seem to
have a higher bar for their Hunger need than they used to. Still, if
you're planning on having the guest stay awhile, make food early so they
have the energy to do other things later. After serving Remington
hamburgers, Kelly asks him to dance. It's nothing hot or heavy, but they
dance a bit around her living room to the music that's on. The current
song is "Chapter Four" by Avenged Sevenfold… (We'll talk about
customizing music in the game later.) As you can tell, Kelly's choice of
music as random as her choices for room décor. Even though Kelly and
Remington don't become friends, their relationship becomes very good. At
7 PM, the carpool unfortunately arrives. Kelly and Remington have had a
great evening, but she sends him away as she piles herself into the
ambulance. Kelly wants to get to know Remington more, so the next day,
she calls him up again after his shift. This time, their relationship
gets a whole new kick in the pants. Not only they become friends, but
after a little flirting, they get crushes on each other. Several more
hours later, and despite the carpool impatiently waiting outside, they
share their first kiss: a tiny peck on the cheek. (Why they decided to
choose the bathroom for this romantic moment is beyond me.) See that
icon above Remington's head in the screenshot? The icon declares that
that Sim (and usually the other Sim involved in the action) has a new
memory. If we check Kelly's memories in the Personality Panel… sure
enough, she's got that one down as a significant event. Kelly continues
to go to work. Luck is with her, and one of her new Wants is to become
best friends with Remington, something very easy to achieve. The next
day she wakes up and studies Cooking, and Remington comes over to clean.
After he does so, he asks to clock out and just hang out with her. She
accepts, and they continue adding to their relationship until indeed
they are tighter than a knotted string. Things are going well between
her and Remington, but she doesn't want to neglect Albert. She decides
to throw her first house party to try to gain relationships with both
Sims. Early the next morning, Kelly buys a third chair for her kitchen
table and a couch to replace her recliner chair in the living room, she
goes to the phone. After selecting Throw Party…, you can choose the
specific type. For Kelly's purpose, she only has one (House Party)
available. She can then invite a certain number of Sims over. As you can
see from the popup window, she can only invite two people maximum.
(Apparently, the maximum number of party guests is based on the power of
your computer. The computer used to write this guide… well, isn't the
most powerful of computers.) She only has two friends anyway, so she
invites them both. Parties are timed events that start the moment the
guests arrive. Kelly only has about five hours of game-time (that's five
minutes real-time in normal speed) to make sure everyone has a good
time. Parties have a chance of starting off on the wrong foot because if
you invite a guest who doesn't like the host, the guest may not show up,
hurting the party score. Luckily, both guests show up here. They'll
invite themselves in, so Kelly won't have to worry about greeting them.
Once it gets going, a window in the top-right corner shows the timer and
the party score in text form. Keeping party guests entertained isn't
much harder than dealing with standard guests. The added factor is your
guests' Social meters; in addition to feeding them and entertaining
them, the host also needs to be talking to them. Kelly starts by making
meals for her guests, then busts out her dancing. She manages to get
both guys dancing with her (who could blame them?), which brings up
relationship points and party scores all over the place. Once they get
tired, they all go and watch some TV until the party timer runs out. It
works well for everyone, and relationship scores (and her aspiration
meter) soar. Thanks to the timing of Kelly's job, she's able to throw
her party and still have the time to go to work that night. Not only
that, but because she's gone Platinum, she goes to work in the best of
moods, and she gets promoted again!
Walkthrough: In-Home Jobs
As you can see, life is rolling along pretty well for Kelly. She's got
the Compound complete (at least compared to the planning phase of it
that we did in the last section), she got a couple good friends, and is
doing pretty well financially considering her youth. However, she
realized after the successful party made that she does not want to stay
in the Medical track. For that matter, she doesn't want a typical job at
all. Luckily, there are two things she can do instead. Although she
doesn't have an ounce of creativity in her, Kelly feels she can start
writing some fiction based on her experiences in the hospital. She'll
need a computer for that though, and she doesn't quite have the money
yet. She sticks with her job long enough to buy a desk, chair, and
computer for her living room. Kelly works on her novel all she can,
gaining creativity the whole way. It can take a long time to bang out a
novel. Kelly tries it between her shifts, but in the end she's got too
much on her plate and must give something up. She has enough money to
sustain her, so she decides to resign from the Medical track and become
a full-time writer. A Sim can instantly quit his or her job by going to
the phone, calling Work, and resigning. But don't quite before taking
advantage of any vacation days you may have! They don't carry over or
anything, so you might as well use them if you've got 'em. Roughly 25
man-hours after she started, her novel is finally finished. It's sent to
the publisher automatically, and now its path is taken out of her hands.
She doesn't really feel like typing out another one, but she still has
all those creativity points. To bide her time until she gets the report
of how well her novel sold (and the royalty check that comes with it),
she decides to buy an easel and start painting! Like in The Sims 1,
painting can lead to some good money. However, this time around, you can
actually select the EXACT thing to paint. After buying an easel, click
it and select "Paint" to create an image from the depths of insanity, or
"Paint Still Life" to paint a subject of your own choosing. If you
select the latter, a box will appear and you can steer it around with
the keyboard and mouse to frame the thing you want to paint. If there's
another Sim in the house, you can also choose "Paint Portrait" to have a
tangible memory of the target forever. Your Sim needs to get some paint
on the canvas to lock in the effort. If you terminate the action before
any paint hits the canvas, the canvas shall be removed and you'll have
to start again. If there is paint on the canvas, you can just get rid of
it if you've changed your mind, or you can continue the painting until
it's done. The screenshots below show Kelly as she first paints a
standard picture. The second set shows her selecting and painting her
computer. Once a painting is complete, you can sell it, or you can use
it as décor for your house. Kelly will eventually get paintings of
everyone who lives inside the Compound and make a special room to show
them off… but that's WAY into the future. You can make a lot of money
from writing novels and painting. You can definitely make enough to make
that your full-time job. Doing so enables your Sims to make their own
hours and relax most of the time, living with little stress. For Kelly,
it's perfect due to her desire to throw parties and make a lot of
friends. Conventional jobs pay a little better when it comes down to it,
but nothing beats the convenience of being a freelancer. Let's take a
break for now. We've already spied on Kelly long enough, so we'll give
her a break and let her live in peace for awhile. We'll check in on her
again soon.
Walkthrough: Sim Love
Let's see how Kelly National is doing. You can see her age meter has
dropped, because she's bought the Elixir of Life and drank it five
times. If a single adult Sim aims to go through the whole process of
finding a mate and having a kid, he or she will practically NEED to
drink the elixir to get enough time to do all that. The National
Compound has grown considerably. A second floor has been added; the
bedroom, a bathroom, and a room specifically for painting go up there. A
large room on the lower floor is the new party room. Kelly's doing
great, both in the money and mood sense. …Well, almost. She longs to
have someone always available in her life. She and Remington have had
eyes for each other since the day they met, so she's decided to take
their relationship up a notch. She invites him over one day and cooks
him a delicious meal. They flirt a little bit, and then finally a kiss
is issued. Kelly wants to take it up ANOTHER notch, though, so that
night she buys a double bed to replace her current one. The next day,
when Remington comes over for a visit, they both go upstairs. Kelly is
issued the Relax command via the bed, and she invites Remington to join
her. After that, she issues an interaction through Remington called Woo
Hoo, and two minutes later, Kelly hops out of bed without much on and
Remington falls asleep. Tool. Kelly isn't exactly a traditional girl, as
you can tell. But she still has enough of a conscious to want to make an
honest man out of Remington. So she does the modern thing and actually
pops the question to HIM. This is done by her doing an interaction
called Propose… > Engagement. Luckily, he accepts, and Kelly finds
herself with a fiance! Weddings are a big deal this time around. The
first sign that it's an actual ceremony (instead of a two-second event)
is that a special type of party is opened up. Kelly heads to the phone
the next day and selects Throw Party… > Wedding Party from the pie menu.
Now, the special types of parties have special types of stipulations.
You can't throw a successful wedding party, for example, if no one
bothers getting married there. It will be considered an abysmal failure,
even if everyone is fed and entertained. For the wedding party, Kelly
buys a wedding cake and hires a bartender. She invites Remington and
Albert as guests; the latter to rekindle some form of friendship, and
the former because, well, you can't have a wedding without the groom.
This is where having a more powerful computer will definitely play into
things. A wedding with only one other guest is pretty lame, after all.
Anyway, at the party, Kelly fires the interaction Propose… > Marriage
after the party starts. Remington accepts, they swap rings and spit,
then cut the cake. Just like that, the party is a success. The final 3
hours (game-time) of the party pass quickly, and end with a limo pulling
up to the house. It whisks away the newlyweds to their honeymoon, and
they come back with perfect need bars! Remington takes Kelly's last name
due to her household being the, shall we say, "hosting" house for the
whole relationship. He moves in, bringing a thousand Simoleons with him.
When a Sim moves into someone else's house, and the mover is the last
one of his or her family to move out, then all of his or her wealth
comes too. Remington is apparently poor, but that's no big. Usually, the
mover's job retains. However, Remington's job was to clean Kelly's
house. Remington won't pay himself to clean his own house, so he goes
unemployed. However, his job SKILLS retain, and Remington starts with a
combined 50+. Remember, he was a maid, so obviously his Cleaning is 10,
with everything else not far behind. Marrying NPCs is a great route to
go for first-generation Sims for this reason. Now, Remington is the
second Sim here, and he is under our direct control. Switching the
active Sim is easy. You can either right-click the Sim itself, or
left-click its picture in the vertical bar above the UCP. You can also
use the space bar to quickly switch and center to the next Sim in the
list, too.
Walkthrough: Sim Kids (And Elders)
Remington's aspiration is Family. As much as he loves Kelly, he wants
her to be the mother of his children too. Doing that is no different on
your part than a typical Woo Hoo, but there's a separate option. As you
can see from the screenshot, both Sims lay on their bed, but the select
the Try For Baby option.
Pregnancy
Pregnancy is simulated in The Sims 2. The Maxis version of the EPT is a
simple musical line. If Kelly becomes impregnated, then as soon as
they're done Woo Hooing, you'll hear one line of "Rock-A-Bye Baby." If
don't hear that, then the attempt was simply fun, not productive.
Apparently, Remington doesn't shoot blanks, because Kelly's head is
filled with the tune on the first attempt. It can take several, but
there's a much better chance of a baby on the way if both Sims are in
great moods before the attempt. If Kelly had become pregnant while
employed, the job would give her a MANDATORY maternity leave regardless
of her career track and level within it. She would be forced to stay
home until the child was born. After that, she would get three more paid
vacation days intended to be used to take care of the child. However,
that is not mandatory, and she could go right back to work without
repercussion; and in fact, she'd have three vacation days she could use
for her own purposes. The fathers don't have the same luxury, but who
cares? Anyway, now that Kelly is expecting, she quickly downs another
batch of Elixir of Life. She needs to anyway, because when an NPC Sim
moves in, its age meter is empty. So, it's as if Remington has JUST
become an adult, so Kelly is years ahead of him. By her guzzling the old
E of L, she basically catches up (down?) to him. During the next night,
Kelly has weird dreams and frequently stirs awake. When she finally
wakes up for the day, she has to quickly run to the bathroom, and she
proceeds to make a mess on the toilet. If morning sickness doesn't
advertise pregnancy, nothing will. Meanwhile, Remington, probably afraid
at what the pregnancy will do to his new wife, quickly gets a job in the
Athletic career track and books it out of there onto the next carpool.
Jerk. Well, maybe that's not so bad actually. Raising a child will be a
full-time job, and Kelly will not have the time to work on her paintings
or novel before and directly after the birth. Even during pregnancy,
Kelly's body will be a roller coaster of confusion. Her Hunger and
Energy meters will be in hyper-drive, forcing her to eat and sleep twice
as much as usual. Her Bladder meter may or may not be affected; it seems
to be random. Either way, she will definitely not be able to do much to
contribute to the bills. But why should she? Remington should be all
over taking care of her these trying months. Well, okay, pregnancy only
last three days in The Sims 2, but still. To Kelly, it probably feels
like an eternity. It only gets worse as she shows more and more as the
time marches on, and that seems to throw her meters for an even bigger
loop. The less she does, the better. That doesn't mean she should be
lazy; far from it. She works out now and then to keep superfluous fat
off her and nutrients coursing through her veins to keep the baby
healthy too. Toward the end of the pregnancy period, Kelly uses
Remington's paychecks to slightly remodel the upstairs. The bathroom
gets moved, and everything on that half of the hallway gets extended.
The old bathroom gets converted to a new bedroom to be used when the
baby comes. However, thing are not bought for it yet; Kelly wants to see
the gender of her child first. So while Kelly's dealing with all that,
Remington meets a chick at work named Brandi and gives her a tour of the
house. While Kelly's upstairs doing last-minute checks of the new rooms,
Remington and Brandi discuss diamond rings in the party room downstairs.
Uh oh. Well, nothing bad happens here. Brandi goes on her way, and
Remington rescues what little of his paycheck Kelly hasn't gotten her
hands on yet. He realizes that his everyday outfit is his old maid's
uniform (complete with gloves), so he decides to head into Pyroville to
get new threads. He hits the phone and calls for Transportation, then
selects to take a taxi. A pop up will ask if he wants to go alone, or if
multiple Sims (i.e., the whole family) will be coming. He answers that
it will just be him, and a few minutes later, the taxi is outside
waiting for him. He jumps in and rides away to the heart of the tiny
city. Details of community lots will given later. Suffice to say that
Remington cannot visit another house; he must visit a community lot.
PyroTech Industries Clothing, Incorporated is open 24 hours, so he stops
in there for a quick shopping trip. To buy new clothes, simply go to a
clothing rack. (Remington chooses the pink rack, and everyone around him
successfully ignores his existence.) You could select Try On from the
pie menu if you wish, just to see how everything will look. To actually
purchase it, select Buy from the pie menu, and you'll get a catalog of
every piece of clothing in the game. You can choose to select an outfit
for either gender and any age, and since Remington is buying for
himself, he goes with Male Adult. To buy an article, simply click it
once to get a green highlight around it. Then click the icon at the
bottom to add it to your shopping cart. You can remove items from your
cart by clicking the cart tab at the top, selecting the clothing you
wish to put back, and hitting the appropriate button. After you're done
selecting all you want to buy, hit the checkmark at the bottom, and your
Sim will buy it. You can buy as many items (each for 200 Simoleons) as
you want, provided you have the funds. Just because you have the
clothes, though, doesn't mean you wear them. Remington takes his
purchase out of the store and calls a cab to head home via the blue pay
phone on the sidewalk. Once there, he heads upstairs and chooses Plan
Outfit… > Everyday from the pie menu of his wardrobe. He selects the
clothes he just bought, and to make sure it's all good, he changes right
there. You can mix any top and bottom for that gender and age (no
cross-dressing here), although one-piece outfits must remain by
themselves. Remington is proud of his new purchase, but later that
night, he has something else to be very proud of. Kelly wakes up in the
middle of the night and, after several painful expressions and
seizure-looking reactions, gives birth to a healthy Sim! During the
birth, a box will pop up and will freeze the game to announce the
newcomer. The reason the game does this is because the child is actually
going through a DNA process. Both parents' DNA (their body structure,
skin tone, hair color, et al.) are examined. Genotypes are invisibly
created, and a child is created from coin flips and other probability
methods. In other words, while a child's appearance is SOMEWHAT random,
it is MOSTLY based on the parents'. If both parents have black hair, for
example, the child is guaranteed to have it too. Dominant and recessive
genes play a part in this, so if you actually paid attention in biology
class, you might just know what's going on. For all of us who couldn't
stay awake through the teacher's lecturing, it simply means that the
kids will actually resemble the parents, and kids from the same pair of
parents will resemble each other. You may not (and probably won't) see
any resemblance until the kid hits at least the Child stage of life
(after Infant and Toddler), but it becomes very clear then. The
appearance isn't the only thing that a child gets from its parents. The
personality of the child is based on its parents. Similar to The Sims 1,
a child's personality is determined category by category. The child will
either take the points of the father, the points of the mother, or the
average of the mother and father. So if the mother has 4 to Neat and the
father has 8, then the child will either have 4, 6, or 8 points in Neat.
That said, parents can alter a child's personality during the early
years by using the Encourage… interaction. Once the child comes along,
you're given the chance to name it. A symbol will be beside the textbox
will inform you of its gender, so you can make a good (or really
inappropriate) choice. The idiot in charge of the Nationals hit the
Enter button too quick in the act of trying to take a screenshot, and it
was too long since he last saved, so the National baby's name is Baby
Boy. Yeah, that kid's gonna need therapy before he hits his teen years.
Despite the crappy name, Kelly is all over her new son. At Remington's
insistence, she buys a crib with a camo mattress. She also buys a diaper
changing station (which Remington insists also is designed in camo), and
puts them both in the new room. Remington goes Platinum with the arrival
of Baby Boy, but Kelly has other Wants to be attended to. Infants The
first stage of a Sim kid's life is the Infant stage. They won't stay
here for long, but it's going to be hell on the parents during this
time. In fact, it's arguably the hardest one to deal with. As an infant,
the Sim baby has absolutely no control over itself. It can only cry when
it needs help, and it can't convey the exact problem it's suffering.
Luckily, a Sim infant doesn't need much to keep it happy. Aside from
being fed, the only thing a Sim infant needs is its diaper changed now
and then. Feeding is done by choosing Give Bottle to from a fridge, and
diapers are changed via the diaper changing station. (You did buy one,
didn't you?) Because an infant does not exactly know the best time to
start crying, constant vigilance must be paid to make sure it does not
deteriorate in happiness. Infants will frequently wake up in the middle
of the night for any given reason, and the parent must immediately
respond. There are two ways to go about that. The simplest way is to
keep the baby's crib in the same room with the parents' bed. The baby's
crying will easily pierce the dreams of the adults, and they can
immediately deal with the problem without risking any delay. Kelly and
Remington choose the other path, which is more risky, but only forces
one of them to wake up at a given time. Because of an infant's simple
needs, it's usually in full green if everything's all right. If the mood
changes at all (shown by the background color of the baby's thumbnail
above the UCP), the player can forcibly wake Kelly or Remington to deal
with it. Green smoke above Baby Boy indicates a dirty diaper, and it's a
good rule of thumb to feed the baby whenever its diaper is changed. The
only other thing to remember is to put the baby in its crib when it's
time to sleep. Infants have no business sleeping on carpet or, heaven
forbid, wood or concrete. Infants really don't have much of a reason to
EVER leave their crib if not being held by a parent anyway. If all this
sounds too much for your adults to handle, simply call up the nanny
service via any phone. A nanny will be over and will, for a fee, take
care of the baby. No muss, no fuss… but the baby won't turn out QUITE as
well. Besides, there won't be any relationship points going between the
baby and its parents, whether it's being taken care of or not. Make sure
that if your Sims don't take care of the baby, that a nanny does.
SimCity Social Services are on the lookout for abandoned babies. They're
not as strict as they were in the old days, but your children can still
be taken away. What's worse, if ANY child is neglected, they're ALL
taken away at the same time. So be sure to keep those mouths fed and
those butts clean. As a personal note here, Kelly did one thing that
shows off the power of the painting engine, one that really caused
strong fanboy feelings for The Sims 2. Remington, wearing his new
clothes, held his son while Kelly painted the image. After these
screenshots were taken, the painting went on permanent display in Baby
Boy's room. "The cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy
blue and the man in the moon…" Kinda makes you cry, doesn't it? But they
don't stay young forever. In only a few game days, you'll get an alert
that your infant is about to have a birthday and advance to the next
stage of life. The infant will automatically turn into a child the next
day roughly around 6 PM, but you can force it to happen sooner. Trust
me, you WANT to force it, because it'll help out your kid's aspiration
meter a hair, plus give you an excuse to throw another special kind of
party. Kelly goes to the phone the next morning after 8 AM and selects
Throw Party… Birthday Party from the pie menu. Albert Staple gets
invited, along with the Nationals' bartender. (Don't worry, the
bartender is off-duty here; it's just a social call.) A birthday cake is
the trigger to make the event good, like the wedding cake (and the
wedding itself) was for the Wedding Party. With Remington and the other
guests present, Kelly interacts with the cake and chooses Bring Baby Boy
to Cake from the cake menu… er, pie menu. She summons everyone over, and
she helps Baby Boy blow out the candles. After that, the aging is
forced, and Baby Boy becomes a toddler! The party isn't over, and the
guests enjoy the cake. Kelly jumps into Buy Mode to grab a high chair so
Baby Boy can enjoy some of that sugary goodness too. Before long, the
party is over, and a whole new set of challenges presents itself.
Toddlers The Toddler stage is the second stage of a Sim's life. A
toddler sticks around in this age a little longer than an infant, and
unless you're intentionally making the Sim a terrible parent, you'll
need every additional second you get from it. A toddler only has six
needs, adding the Fun, Social, and Hygiene meters to the Hunger,
Bladder, and Energy meters. (Toddlers don't care about their Environment
or Comfort meters.) Toddlers also graduate from milk, and can be served
actual food. Just buy a high chair for them, have an adult put the kid
in it, and select Serve Food from the pie menu. All toddlers will have
three key Wants: Learning to Talk, Learning to Walk, and Learning to
Potty Train. A parent's intervention is required for all three. If
ignored, the child will still grow up and achieve those three skills on
its own automatically. However, its aspiration meter will take a heavy
shot in the process, subtracting the final lifespan significantly. On
the other hand, the quicker the toddler learns the skills, the higher
the aspiration meter upon growing, and the longer the final lifespan.
Whichever skill you go after first is up to you. If the toddler can
talk, it can inform you of problems easier and quicker, and be social
sooner. If the toddler can walk, it can get throughout the house faster.
If the toddler can use a toilet, your adults won't have to waste time
changing its diaper. The only thing you'll have to buy here is a
training toilet. Place it in the bathroom, because an adult can empty it
by flushing the contents down an adult toilet. No muss, little fuss.
While you're buying stuff, you should buy a variety of toys. Toddlers
can work on certain job skills early to give them a head start in life
later. This is why it's actually a disadvantage to start with adult Sims
if you're going for career success: toddlers will have job skill points
entering the job market, a luxury which first-generation adults will not
have. But still, starting your first family with kids is unnecessarily
complicated, which is why it was not recommended. Getting your Sim kid
trained in all three skills before it grows up is damn near impossible.
Luckily there's a way to really speed the process. If you buy and feed
Smart Milk from the Aspiration Rewards Panel to the kid, you can double
the speed it learns any of the skills. In addition, if your adult is
also wearing the Thinking Cap, the speed the kid learns at is four times
normal. It can be extremely frustrating to deal with this stage of your
Sim kid's life. Especially toilet training, where the Sim kid won't gain
much skill unless its Bladder meter is close to empty. The best way to
do this is to issue the Teach To Talk or Teach To Walk commands eight
times. The adult will repeatedly teach the child, and though moods will
get shot to hell all over the place, the training will be done.
Unfortunately for the Nationals, no one has a high Aspiration Meter, so
they have to rely on normal learning speeds. Try to make sure all
training happens on one floor. For that matter, try to have all your
toddler stuff on whatever floor your fridge is on. With the extreme time
limit placed on you, you'll need to waste as little time as possible,
and that includes going up and down stairs. The Nationals take a
middle-of-the-road approach, keeping the crib and diaper changing
stations upstairs, while keeping the training toilet downstairs. Your
adults will need to sleep whenever they can. Adult Sims and kid Sims
have different internal clocks, and will usually have conflicting times
when they're awake or asleep. Try to stretch out a Sim kid's energy
until it breaks before sending them to their crib, but have the adults
sleep whenever the Sim kid does. If that means that the adult will have
to truncate his sleep when the kid wakes up in the middle of the night,
so be it. After you go through all that, you'll get the same warning
about a birthday being around the corner. Kelly does the same thing
here, gathering guests for Baby Boy's entrance into the Child stage of
life. Candles get blown out, and just like that, we go to the next
section of the guide! Child Children Sims have outgrown the crib, the
toddler toys, and the diaper changing station. If you only have one kid
like the Nationals do, sell off all those items and get a standard twin
bed. If your Sims are going to have more kids, keep all those items in a
nursery or something, because you'll need them. Make sure you give your
new child an end table and alarm clock, too, because now they start
school. Just because your Sims go to school, though, doesn't mean you're
out of the woods. They are still under the watch of SimCity Social
Services, and they'll be taken away if they don't get fed. Luckily,
they've become very similar to adult Sims. Children have all eight of
the normal meters. They can still learn job skills, but that shouldn't
be their focus. They must go to school daily, or they'll be taken away
by Social Services. Their Job Panel shows their progress in school,
although of course you can't get promoted or anything. High grades lead
to a high aspiration meter, which again leads to longer life spans. The
bus arrives outside the house like the carpool every morning at 8 AM. If
an adult Sim goes to work the same time, they can't share vehicles.
School is on five days a week; children get Saturdays and Sundays off.
Now, everything sounds like it's all clicking well, right? Well, if you
remember Brandi from awhile ago, Remington starts inviting her over
more. To make a long story short, in comes to a head when, with Kelly in
the other room painting, Remington and Brandi are relaxing on the bed.
Remington decides to take a gamble and attempt a Woo Hoo. Bastard. It
passes… but just at that moment, Baby Boy comes out of the bathroom
attached to the bedroom and witnesses it. Word IMMEDIATELY and
AUTOMATICALLY gets back to Kelly, who runs in. She smacks Remington,
then breaks up with him via an interaction from the pie menu. When two
Sims break up, whoever initiated the action stays at the house, and the
other is ejected. Remington leaves, never to be seen again. (Well, he
is, but Kelly won't look at him anymore.) Meanwhile, Brandi has the guts
to hang around in her underwear. Kelly gets violent, and proceeds to
lose two fights to her. She decides to just slap Brandi a couple times
then, and Brandi finally takes the hint to leave. And just like that, in
a matter of hours, the marriage is undone, and Kelly becomes a single
parent. This hurts for many reasons, and Kelly immediately sets about
recovering herself. First, she takes a job via the computer to get
something that pays well. Remember, taking jobs from the computer gives
the Sim the chance to pick up jobs based on the Sim's skill, which means
he or she can get something above level 1. Second, because Baby Boy is
still a child, Kelly won't leave him home by himself. So, she uses the
phone and calls the nanny service, selecting to have a nanny come over
anytime Kelly is at work. This all happens on the course of the weekend.
Once Monday hits, and 8 AM rolls around, it's off to school for Baby
Boy. He brings home homework, which stresses the hell out of kids but
seriously improves their grades. The best way to deal with homework is
to ask for help, which any Sim can do. As long as a Sim is of equal or
older age, the older one can help the younger one. Kelly and Baby Boy
persevere despite having their lives completely turned around. Before
long, and many piles of homework later, Baby Boy gets another birthday.
Kelly is the only adult in the house, so she has to do the actual
inviting. She invites Albert Staple and Kennedy Cox, as usual. Kelly
pointedly does NOT invite Remington. This time Baby Boy won't need
assistance to get to the cake, so he blows out the candles, and just
like that, we've got ourselves a teenager! Teenager When a Sim becomes a
teenager, the first thing you're presented with is the option for what
you want their inspiration to be. You can choose any of the five, and
there's no downfall to picking one over the others. Baby Boy has grown
up pretty well off, and so he wants to continue the trend by Getting
Stuff. Teenagers are free of SimCity's Social Services. If children get
mistreated in the house, and SCSS comes over to haul them away,
teenagers are spared. Teens have the ability to get jobs, but only can
if their grades are high. They still must attend school, and they cannot
move out on their own. However, they don't need babysitters watching
them. They can engage in romantic interactions, but they can't Woo Hoo.
No teenage pregnancies here. Teenagers should focus on getting job
skills between school days. If you give your kid a job, that's all the
more true. Don't forget homework, though, because if grades fall too
far, the job will be terminated. Teens get two new, related, cool
commands at their disposal. Depending on their aspiration, the commands
can even play into their Wants. Teens can go out to boost their Fun and
Social meters, and can do so by Sneaking Out or Asking Permission To Go
Out. The former is done by going to the phone, although this is an
advanced command that can only occur between two teens with very high
relationships. The command can only be issued between 10 PM and
midnight. The latter can be done by having the Sim ask an adult who lives in the house through a standard social command. After permission
is granted (assuming it IS granted), the teen will choose his or her
target as if he chose to sneak out. Either way, a car arrives late in
the evening to pick up the teen for whatever Sim teens do. There isn't
much more to say about teens, but while Baby Boy is one, Kelly edges
closer and closer to advancing to the final stage of life: the Elder
stage. She and Baby Boy do what they can until that fateful day, and a
final birthday party is thrown for her. She blows out candles and
advances. And she STILL does not invite Remington. The jerk doesn't need
to see her sexy body get all flabby and old. Elder If your Sim makes it
to Elder, congratulate yourself on a fine job. Not every Sim can survive
that long, and it's far too easy to intentionally do something to the
poor thing that can terminate its life early. Elder Sims are, oddly
enough, everything you expect Elder Sims to be. Their hair automatically
turns white, females bodies sag in the chest, male bodies sag in the
stomach, it's incredibly difficult to maintain fitness, and both the
Bladder and Energy meters are constantly plummeting. Elders also seem to
have a slightly higher chance of catching diseases. Elders don't have
any business stretching their Energy to the depths of hell anyway, and
shouldn't take unnecessary risks, such as being outside in the middle of
the night. Elders still go to work, but only if they desire. Once a Sim
hits that age, if the Sim was already employed, he or she can call work
and retire from the job. This in effect quits it, but the Sim still
earns a daily paycheck equivalent to roughly one-third of what he or she
was making before retiring. Kelly National has been hard at work in the
Slacker career track, and she managed to get a really valuable Chance
Card. She's expanded the Compound, and retired from her job. In
addition, Baby Boy's birthday comes and goes. He's an adult now, and
gets a job via the computer. No more homework! Woo hoo! Because no other
outfit was available, Baby Boy wears Remington's maid uniform as his
primary everyday clothes. Needless to say, he goes shopping too.
Finally, many days later, Kelly sadly passes away. Because she died of
natural causes, the SimCity Insurance Company shells out money to her
kin. Family of course gets the first cut, but if a Sim doesn't have too
many family members, his or her best friends will get the remainder. The
total amount is scaled to that Sim's prestige (such as work ethic and
number and quality of friends), plus his or her aspiration meter. So, as
you can see again, the aspiration meter, while it can be ignored, is
extremely important. You can see from the screenshots below how much
Baby Boy netted. Note also that if the Sim who gets the cash did not
live with the newly deceased, they will STILL get the money. For
example, another family in the neighborhood, the Eaves, had their oldest
daughter move out. When both parents died, the daughter got a total of
roughly 5000 Simoleons. It's not a tremendous amount, but it's certainly
a great boost. The money does not subtract itself from the family's
account. For all intents and purposes, it's "free money" that appears
out of thin air. As you can see from the screenshot above, Kelly's death
brought Baby Boy nearly 10,000. Again, that was partly due to Kelly's
gold aspiration meter at the time of her death. The Nationals' story
does not end here. Baby Boy, perhaps taking a page from his mom's book,
starts hitting on the maid (the female maid, not another male one). You
can even see their first kiss below. That said, we've stared at the
Nationals long enough, so we'll leave them in peace from now on. But no
matter where you go in The Sims 2, try to keep the life of Kelly
National in mind. Her successes and mistakes that you've seen should
help your own Sims out.
Sent in by: lee.gould2 |
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