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thesimscurator · 2 years

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Career World: Save File

Tired of trying to squeeze a whole giant photo studio into your fashion photographer’s cramped city apartment? Frustrated that your astronaut needs a house with a yard big enough to hold—of all the absurd things—a private rocket ship? Bored of the career options in game? Then you need Career World.

Career World is a pack-integrated, detail-oriented save file meant to maximize the gameplay potential of the Sims 4. It does this primarily by creating realistic, vibrant community spaces for your sims to play out their career ambitions. Key features include:

An expanded number of community lots with tons of stuff to do and see—plus lots of good-looking residences created by the insanely talented creators on the gallery.

More interactive stuff in the open portions of worlds, including toddler play equipment everywhere there is child play equipment by default.

Ready-to-play: there is at least one pre-made sim in every career, at least one pre-made sim pursuing every aspiration, and at least one owned version of every type of ownable business (retail, restaurant, vet, rental residential), so you can just hop in and play any ambition you want without doing a ton of tedious setup.

Local flavor: different worlds are set up to have their own advantages, drawbacks, cultures, laws (N.A.P.s that make sense!), and featured career opportunities.

Gameplay variety: whether you prefer to play with families or singletons, elaborate mansions or run-down hovels, rags-to-riches or pre-made jillionaire celebrities, this save file has assets that cater to many different gameplay styles.

Sensible setup: Libraries actually have books in them! Lot landscaping matches the world it’s in. The EA townies in this save file already lead cohesive lives, complete with jobs, living spaces, preferences, pronouns, lifestyles, outfits, club memberships, pets, relationships with others, and cultural knowledge. And lots of other things that . . . you know . . . make sense.

If that all piques your interest, keep reading for specifics of the save file. Upcoming posts will give the full creator credits and detail the Career Challenges I have created to guide you in getting the most out of playing it.

SPECIFICS (totally optional reading; feel free to skip down to "REQUIREMENTS" if you're not interested):

World Setup & Traits:

Each world in this save file has been set up to highlight and create featured gameplay opportunities for specific careers. Some of these are obvious and in line with what Maxis already did, like actors in Del Sol Valley, conservationists in Sulani, etc. but some are additions/decisions I've made, like lawyers in Uptown San Myshuno or Engineers in Oasis Springs. And some careers are distributed across several worlds, depending on the flavor you want to play (Hip-Hop musicians, for example, have their own spaces to spin records and remix beats in Willow Creek, while a pipe organist will find their concert venues among the many historic churches of Windenburg). A full list of location/career pairings can be found in the Career Chart detailed in the next post.

The gameplay opportunities largely consist of community lots set up to mimic active workplaces, so that sims in "work from home" careers can actually do those tasks in a workplace setting, often with clubs of co-workers who will show up and do workplace tasks. But there's also opportunities for sims in regular careers: once your artist, musician, or chef reaches at least two stars' worth of fame, for example, they can be an artist-in-residence in San Myshuno's Arts Quarter, where they will find a totally sweet rental penthouse tricked out with equipment for every kind of art (including culinary) plus have special spaces to show their work or perform in the nearby 1,000 Words Art Gallery. Read through my lot descriptions for more opportunities like these!

To enhance the specificity of the worlds in this setup, some of the smaller worlds are treated as parts of others in terms of design choices:

Glimmerbrook is now the secluded back side of Mt. Komorebi, where the big, old, traditional-style houses can be found. (The spellcaster population has relocated to Willow Creek, where the culture has a healthy respect for—and deep fascination with—the occault.)

Forgotten Hollow is a hidden—some might even say, “forgotten”—part of Windenburg.

Moonwood Mill is yet another defunct industry in the mountains above Evergreen Harbor (there was a road down the other side of the mountain to San Myshuno, but it's been closed for years).

Magnolia Promenade is an island in the midst of the Willow Creek bayou. Also, Newcrest is simply a newer development extension of Willow Creek. (Because come on, of course it is. They have all the same vegetation and the fancy neighborhoods share the exact same streetcar system.)

San Sequoia is the suburb on the outskirts of San Myshuno, with it's one-and-only subway station in Anchorpoint Wharf providing easy and fast transit into the city.

Hidden workplaces are part of the world they obviously belong to by their scenery: Hospital and Police Station to Willow Creek/Magnolia Promenade/Newcrest, Science Lab to Oasis Springs, and Movie Lot to Del Sol Valley.

I have unofficially introduced “world traits/challenges” and “neighborhood traits/challenges” into this save file. There is no explicit in-game system for assigning traits or challenges to entire worlds/neighborhoods, but certain lot traits make more sense when blanketing an entire world or neighborhood, particularly the ones that relate to natural disasters or the environment. So, you will find some worlds in which every single lot has a copy of a certain trait or challenge, making that trait a “world trait/challenge.” The world traits/challenges are as follows:

Willow Creek/Magnolia Promenade/Newcrest = “Gremlins” (I have found that this challenge best mimics the effects of occasional hurricanes. All your stuff breaks and floods your house with water. Can be counteracted somewhat by adding “Gnomes” trait.)

Oasis Springs = “Sunny Aspect”

Del Sol Valley = “Quake Zone”

Sulani = “Volcanic Activity”

Mt. Komorebi/Glimmerbrook = “Geothermal”

Henford-on-Bagley = “Wild Foxes”

Selvadorada = “Grody” (that is, if you drink from the pipes; Moctezuma’s revenge may be avoided by drinking natural spring water instead)

Tartosa = “Romantic Aura” (not a natural trait, but Tartosa has been so thoroughly marketed as a wedding destination that this affects the way sims see it).

Copperdale = "Teen Neighborhood"

San Sequoia = "Child's Play" almost everywhere, except for a couple of more adult-focused lots where that didn't make sense.

Chestnut Ridge = "Wild Prairie Grass"

Tomarang = "Mold"

Evergreen Harbor has a world challenge that I envision being changed into a world trait. Every lot starts with “Grody” because of groundwater contamination. As neighborhoods enact the “Green Initiatives” neighborhood action plan, I suggest removing this trait from all the lots in the neighborhood and replacing it with “Natural Well.” Plants are great at filtering water before it reaches the aquifer!

Specific neighborhood traits/challenges are as follows:

The Grimm’s Quarry neighborhood of Evergreen Harbor is a smaller, localized “Quake Zone” due to the ground instability introduced by years of mining.

The Crumbling Isle in Windenburg has localized “geothermal”—and lots of hotsprings!

Belomisia Jungle in Selvadorada has “Creepy Crawlies” on every lot.

The University of Britechester campus is rumored to be haunted, so every building (including the old library in Gibbs Hill) has the “Spooky” lot challenge. Hey, even if it’s not true, the rumors would freak you out a bit, right?

Every building on the Foxbury campus in Britechester was built using green architectural practices (“Eco Lot”) and has “Fast Internet.”

There is no grid in the Bramblewood in Henford-on-Bagley, so all houses in this neighborhood are “Off the Grid.”

Hopewell Hills in San Sequoia has updated it's internet service to "Fast Internet" for the many telecommuters who live in that suburb.

Riders' Glen in Chestnut Ridge is known for having particularly "Great Soil" for growing nectar.

There are "Wild Foxes" up in the mountainous mesas of Galloping Gulch in Chestnut Ridge.

There are lots of street cats in the Morensong neighborhood of Tomarang, so all its lots are "Cat Hangout"s.

People go to the Koh Sahpa neighborhood in Tomarang for some "Peace and Quiet."

All obviously maritime neighborhoods outside of Sulani and Tomarang (which have very calm oceans and are therefore probably behind windbreaks) have “Bracing Breezes” as a neighborhood trait due to wind off the sea. These neighborhoods include Port Promise in Evergreen Harbor, Porto Luminoso in Tartosa, The Crumbling Isle and Lykke Centre in Windenburg, Anchorpoint Wharf in San Sequoia, and nearly every neighborhood in Brindleton Bay except for Sable Square.

Certain entire neighborhoods have the “Good Schools” trait, because this does not make sense as a thing affecting only one household. Neighborhoods with good schools include The Pinnacles in Del Sol Valley, Ridgeline Drive in Newcrest, the Spice Market in San Myshuno, Gibbs Hill in Britechester, Senbamachi in Mt. Komorebi, Prescott Square in Copperdale, and Hopewell Hills in San Sequoia.

This isn't exactly a trait, but I've had a sim go around and give maximum upgrades to every single appliance in the Wakaba neighborhood of Mt. Komorebi, so the tech works really well there.

I've also done quite a bit with the Neighborhood Action Plan system from Eco Lifestyle. When you first start the game, you will find that max neighborhood action plans are already in effect in all occupied neighborhoods. I have carefully selected many of the current N.A.P.s by local area; all desert neighborhoods, for example, have water conservation policies (except for the wasteful, privileged celebrities who occupy The Pinnacles). If you would like to change the current N.A.P.s you're welcome to, but be aware that changes may have unintentional consequences on your neighbors (removing “Free Love” from Strangerville neighborhoods, for example, will destabilize the Eclectic Arts Household, who are presently a throuple).

You’ll notice that in some cases, neighborhoods have more specific identities than they had in the vanilla game: the three neighborhoods / three islands of Sulani, for example, are now the tourist island (Lani St. Taz), the island where the locals live (Ohan’ali Town), and the national park/nature preserve (Mua Pel’am). In most cases, this was just a matter of leaning in to the identities that were roughly—but not fully—established by the game designers. In others, I have reassigned neighborhood identities specifically in service of the careers theme: Mirage Canyon in Oasis Springs, for example, is now the “FutureSim campus,” modeled after the work/living/recreation “campuses” of real-life tech conglomerates like Google or Microsoft. Plus, FutureSim is now not just the company that employs scientists, but the parent company of Rainy Day Entertainment (the tech guru employer) and Obscure Logistics (the engineering employer). I have created a number of such employment clusters, where sims in related professions are now in some kind of conglomerate (all the writing professions in subsidies of Walrus Books, all regulatory and civic jobs under the municipal government of San Myshuno, etc.). Look for them in the club descriptions/lot descriptions!

Lots:

Every single lot—including hidden lots—in this save file has been changed, except the rare ones that are genuinely impossible to change like the movie studio, the redacted lab in Strangerville, and the temple in Selvadorada. So have fun exploring!

Since expanding the number of community lots was a big part of the theme of this save file, In some worlds you may not find many empty houses for you to move your own sims into. In any case where I have completely filled the residential lots in a world, I have made sure to leave at least one of them as a rental residential with some open units for you to move into. In the case of larger worlds where too many community lots wasn't an issue, I have tried to consolidate townies and leave many houses empty, so you have lots of options. The empty houses/units have traits and locations that make them particularly suited to certain careers, so read the descriptions and do a bit of shopping around to find the perfect one for your sim’s ambitions.

Some special notes concerning the four-in-one lots, a.k.a. the variable lots of the type(s) that came with Eco Lifestyle: several of the variable lots either don't actually have varieties or have been set up for specific gameplay variations:

Changing San Myshuno City Hall to a marketplace will decorate all the offices for Winterfest and cause a kind of craft/gift fair to be held on the top floor. For obvious reasons, I encourage doing this during Winter and changing it to something else during the other seasons. Changing it to a community garden will add greenspace to the top floor. Changing it to a makerspace will add a daycare center on the top floor—handy if you’re playing a family sim and want to bring your kids to work. Each of the four variations also changes the décor in the top-floor event space, so if you’re hosting a charity benefit party or wedding reception or something you may want to flip through in build mode and change the lot type to whichever one jives best with your event.

Changing the Science & Tech Centre on the Foxbury campus to a marketplace will cause the “freshman fair” to appear on the ground floor and spawn signage outside. This is just a regular marketplace, but I like to pretend it’s one of those start-of-year events where all the on-campus clubs advertise to the incoming students. I recommend doing this for one week in Fall, then changing it to something else. All of the other venue types for this lot are identical; all that will be affected is what the NPC sims do on this lot (makerspace will have them using the fabrication lab, community garden will have them gardening in the biology greenhouse, and community space will make the place basically empty of NPCs).

The Old New Henford Fair is a seasonal festival lot: marketplace=Winter, makerspace=Spring, community space=Summer, and community garden=Fall. Just vote during the weekend the season changes to keep this up-to-date. Unfortunately, the programming on the community space lot type means NPCs will not visit the festival in the summer, so I have set up some clubs for Henford-on-Bagley residents that meet at the festival grounds in the hopes that you’ll find the locals there when you visit the fair.

Zosul Taman in Tomarang actually works as intended for these four-in-ones: you can change it to an actual community garden, marketplace, makerspace, or community space, and each one features a completely unique lot by a different creator. (Hint: if you're looking for a wedding venue or playable temple, you want "community space.")

All of the other four-in-one lots (San Rio Park & Mercado, Steampunk Gardening, the Maker’s Market, The Munchkin Menagerie, etc.) are not really meant to change; they are only four-in-ones by coincidence, since the lot type I wanted it to be happened to be bundled into the community space thing. I do not recommend changing them, or they will not function as intended.

And finally, a special note on the high school auditorium in Copperdale: since having the same prom week after week gets boring, I have created several seasonal and holiday-specific variations on the formal dance and uploaded them to the gallery under the hashtag #careerworld. All you have to do to get them is enter build mode in the auditorium sometime before 7pm on Saturday, select the "Formal Dance" tab, and download your desired prom for the upcoming week from the selections on the gallery. Your next prom will now have a new decor theme!

Sims:

I have kept all of EA’s original townies (and supplemented with a few new sims on a very limited basis), but moved them around to worlds that particularly feature their careers, and in some cases given them new careers that make sense (Marcus Flex, for example, is no longer unemployed but rather a Personal Trainer living in Del Sol Valley). This has meant doing some reshuffling of households, so you may see EA townies living in combinations you don’t expect; in each case, I have rewritten the household blurbs to explain the new situation. Townies now also belong to a multitude of clubs I have set up specifically for this save file, often career-related so your sim's co-workers will show up where and when they should to make all the community lot workspaces feel vibrant.

The way that EA set things up, there were several townies with the same career and some careers with no townies (all the Discover University professions, for example), so in some cases I have added new sims and/or switched townies' careers—again, in ways that make sense—so you will have at least one sim in each profession that you can just hop into game and play with. Households have been renamed so you can see which jobs you would be playing with if you chose to play them (except in cases where there were too many adults to specify in the household name; then you’ll need to read the description to find out).

I have made some non-career-related alterations to the townies, as well, because this save file is all about detail, depth, and realism. Sims’ cultural backgrounds are now reflected in their knowledge, skills, traits, and some outfits (Examples: Moroccan sims will know City Living recipes from the Moroccan food stall, all Latinx sims now have some measure of Selvadoradian Culture skill, inhabitants of Mt. Komorebi and Tomarang have utensil preferences for various kinds of chopsticks, formal outfits for Indian sims draw on the clothes introduced in the Fashion Street kit, etc. Plus, all townies speak the proper languages if you use Frankk's Language Barriers mod.). Reasonable preferences have been set for all townies who were made before the Dream Home Decorator update (and enhanced every time new preferences are released, as with Growing Together), and appropriate hot- and cold- weather outfits for all the ones made before Seasons came out. Households outside of Brindleton Bay have pets. People who have backstories of being exes are now actually exes, and the same with current romantic interests, best friends, etc. (plus I added a few of my own: how will the Izzy Fabulous love triangle resolve?). I have also moved previously unhoused townies into appropriate living situations (swanky apartment, Brytani Cho!), and included at least one playable sim for every type of occult.

Currently, all households with teens are marked as “played.” This is basically to prevent the game from messing up teen careers by resetting existing teens as high school-specific NPCs. Most other pre-made households are categorized as "other," but with neighborhood stories disabled so that they will stay in the jobs--and career co-worker clubs--I have set for them. Neighborhood stories is still enabled for random spawns.

REQUIREMENTS:

Packs:

As you might have guessed from “pack-integrated,” this save file requires nearly every pack in order to show up properly—but not quite all. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I buy Journey to Batuu.

Specs:

Unlike the sims team, who create sparse builds so the game will run effectively on every machine, I have stuffed the save file with elaborate builds by multiple creators that take full advantage of The Sims 4’s potential as a creative tool. Thus, you will need a decent gaming system to run it effectively. I don’t know what specific specs it requires (or have any inkling of how to figure that out), so if you have a mid- to high-end machine just try it out and see if it works. If you’re trying to play on a cheap laptop, you’re probably better off with the default game.

Custom Content:

This save file is almost CC free. The ONLY mod you need in order for the save file to show up properly is Zerbu’s More Selectable Icons mod, and even then the only consequence of not downloading it is that all the clubs and some holidays will have the placeholder llamacorn for an icon. So it would be very easy to play this completely CC free if you wish. There are a few more mods that I recommend (see below), but they are not even remotely required for the save file to run.

Because so much of what makes this save file special is centered around community lots, it may not be ideal for all simmers. If you are one of those people who is allergic to loading screens, this is probably not the save file for you.

If none of that scares you off and you’re ready to play, read on for the installation instructions!

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

Step 1: Download whichever mods you plan to employ in the save file (if you don’t want to use any mods, skip straight to Step 3):

Required Mod:

Zerbu: More Selectable Icons

Recommended Mods (if you want all the stuff I’ve put on community lots to stay):

Astrelan: Fizz No Spoil

Simularity: No More Wilting Flower Arrangements

Supported Mods (totally optional stuff the save file is set up to do right):

Aramiteus: High School More Classmates

Frankk: Language Barriers (AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT USING THIS MOD: If you want to use Language Barriers with my carefully-managed selections, you MUST install the mod BEFORE OPENING THE SAVE FILE. Opening the save file without Frankk’s mod installed (or without script mods enabled—check your box!) wipes all language data from the game. If you decide to install the mod later, it will reassign all languages according to Frankk’s rules, which do not correspond accurately to the way this save file is set up or to many sim’s backstories.)

Step 2: Once you have downloaded your desired mods, you’ll need to unzip them. For this, you’ll need a program like WinZip or PeaZip. To get this program, download it from the website, then run the resulting .exe file by double-clicking it in your downloads folder (or, at least, this is what you do if you have a PC. I have no idea how any of this works on a Mac, sorry! I'm sure tutorials are available elsewhere online).

Now that you have an unzipping program, right-click on your downloaded mods and select “extract.” You can either extract them directly to your mods folder (MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods) or chose “extract here” to unzip the files, then copy-and-paste them into your mods folder. Either way, the unzipped files need to wind up in your mods folder.

Step 3: Backup your existing saves. To do this, go into MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 and right-click on the folder titled “saves.” Select “copy,” then paste the folder to any other location on your computer. I usually just copy it to the desktop so I don’t lose it, but you may have an alternative hard drive or other location where you like to back up your saves.

Step 4: Download and unzip the Career World save file, but DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR MODS FOLDER! Put it in the saves folder instead (MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/saves). If the number of the save file matches the number for a save you already have in game, change it to any number you do not already have a copy of, but keep the same number of digits. To get more specific: by default the Career World file name is “Slot_08252028.save” and if you happen to have another save file with that exact same file name (unlikely), the game will overwrite one with the other. If that’s true for you, you can change the file name on Career World to “Slot_09252028.save” or “Slot_08252027.save” or anything else that replaces a digit with a different digit, but you cannot change it to “Slot_1.save” because the game needs a total of eight digits in the file name to run the save properly.

Step 5: Open your game, click the save file titled “Career World,” and start playing!

Good luck, have fun!

01/15/24 Quick Note: The Sims 4 currently has some game instability that seems to be related to the For Rent pack, so I have two available downloads for you, a pre-For Rent version and a post-For Rent version (updated on 04/15/24 to add Crystal Creations and institute some data-saving measures to stabilize the game—see my post on the "Performance Update" for details). Take your pick on the basis of whether or not you have that pack and/or feel comfortable playing with its features.

DOWNLOAD NOW:

Career World save file WITHOUT For Rent

Career World save file WITH For Rent

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thesimscurator · 7 months

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Career World Horse Ranch update is now live!

It’s finally here! Sorry this update is so late; a minor but time-consuming home repair emergency stopped my work on it for about a month. But now my real-life house is fixed and the update is finally out! The Career World save file, Career Challenge Chart, and the list of study abroad opportunities have all been updated to incorporate horses and all their associated gameplay. And the delay meant I got to add in the new Home Chef Hustle features, as well, so it’s not all bad.

Just because I already teased it, I’ll start with...

Expansion of the Actor Career:

In addition to all the sound-stage filming that comes automatically with the actor career, and the live stage acting I had already added in the form of the Starlight Theatre venue, there are now three on-location filming spots: one for Westerns, one for costume dramas, and one for fantasy/medieval/pirate projects. Each on-location filming site is a residential lot which permanently houses several horses and three behind-the-camera crew members: a horse wrangler/stunt rider, a stylist, and a cinematographer. When cast in certain gigs, your actor should now immediately (but temporarily) move in with one of these households, in the following configuration:

If you are cast in...

Making Moosic

Last Town in the West

The Sheriff from Alpha Centauri

...move your actor sim in with the PBP Western Crew in Chestnut Ridge.

If you are cast in…

Dignity & Decorum

Of Tea & Treachery

...move in with the PBP Costume Drama Crew in Henford-on-Bagley.

And if you are cast in…

Salty Suds

Dead Sea Adventures

Tournament of Honor

Treasures of Aarbyville

...move in with the PBP Fantasy Crew in Windenburg. All other gigs you should just do as normal; they have no corresponding on-location filming site.

Once on location, you will find an area set up to house you, marked with a star door (on the Western set, this is a trailer; on the other two, a room within the massive building), as well as living areas for the other crew members, a dressing room / wardrobe area, a video editing space with the video station and lots of drones (plus still cameras for doing promo shots), and locations for filming acting scenes. In the case of Chestnut Ridge, the acting area is on a separate lot located right next door to the living area with the trailers.

Your job while you are here is to get footage, in costume, of your sim (and potentially their co-stars or the horse wrangler acting as a stunt double) acting out scenes on location and riding on horseback through the appropriate landscapes. (Mostly. The pirate stuff may not need to be too heavy on the horseback scenes, but there are plenty of places to shoot acting scenes on the battlements of the castle overlooking the sea, which is why I rolled those gigs in with the fantasy stuff. Plus even pirates get embroiled in problems on land sometimes, and have to make a quick escape on horseback. Everything you do on an actual ship is shot during sound-stage day.) I strongly suggest also taking some still photos as promotional material and keepsakes for both the crew household and your sim.

If your actor sim has no horseback riding skill to start with and looks ridiculous on the horse, you may have to spend some time riding around and skilling up in your regular street clothes before you get all dolled up and dive into filming—unless, of course, you want to get footage of your sim getting bucked off the horse for the movie, in which case get into costume immediately and fire up the drone right away; the cinematographer will edit out all the extra footage of you looking stupid while you wait to get bucked off.

At some point during your on-location filming adventure, you will be called back to Del Sol Valley for the set sound-stage filming day. Don’t worry about this; Plumbob Pictures is a wealthy studio, and can totally afford to send a chopper to whisk you back to Del Sol Valley for a day of filming on set before dropping you right back on location. Take your time and don’t rush it; you are welcome to remain on location as long as it takes to get all the footage you want to get. A word to the wise, however: you will only be able to call your director and co-stars to the on-location filming site BEFORE sound-stage filming day, so if you want to record any two-person scenes, sword fights, or all-cast promo shots with your co-stars, you’ll need to prioritize doing that first and getting your horseback riding shots later. Lucky for you if you’re filming Tournament of Honor, jousting scenes are done in full armor that completely conceals the sim, so horse wrangler Cheyenne Blackwolf is able to act as the stunt double for your co-stars for footage where you need two sims on horseback. Jim Chooli, the horse wrangler in Chestnut Ridge, is a semi-retired actor himself who frequently plays minor characters in the Westerns when a second sim is needed there. And the entire costume drama crew is happy to pop into powdered wigs and ballgowns when extra sims are needed to flesh out a ball or dinner scene.

Because you live with them in the same household during this time, you will be able to control not only the horse wrangler as a second horse-rider when need be, but also the stylist to costume both your own actor sims and your non-controllable co-stars during on-location filming. Likewise, you can direct the cinematographer to control the drones, take photographs, and even operate the non-functional camera equipment for maximum realism. The end goal of on-location filming is to have the cinematographer take all the drone footage you’ve captured, edit it together into a single reel, maximize the quality, and “send it off to the studio”—a.k.a. upload it via the video station. If you get the notification that the footage has been nominated for an award, you may want to remain with the crew household through the following Sunday and all go to the Starlight Accolades together—you could even get some red-carpet shots! If not, that’s a wrap! You’re welcome to move back to your regular residence in Del Sol Valley while you prepare for the next audition.

Chestnut Ridge Townies:

You’ll notice that with this pack, I’ve been a lot more liberal with adding townies who didn’t originally exist than I usually am. There are two reasons for this: 1) there are so many ways to make money in this pack that I didn’t think I could reasonably cover all the new career options it enabled me to add with only the original townies, and 2) Chestnut Ridge does not spawn its own locals like Sulani and Mt. Komorebi do, so if you don’t add more townies, there aren’t really enough western-dressed, horse-riding folks to flesh out the community lots—and I’m sorry, but Bella Goth just looks really stupid doing the cowpoke dance in that tight dress. So for the new townies, I used some gallery sims (credited in the Chestnut Ridge credits post, coming next), but I also used a lot of the “play with genetics” feature to expand the families of sims who shipped with the pack. Everybody gets a brother! Ok, well, not everybody, but a lot of people got brothers. So here’s what I did with townies:

In early testing, I learned to my disappointment that Sienna Grove works like the special townies from Cottage Living, not like the ones from High School Years—which is to say that the instant you start to play her, she is immediately and permanently replaced as horse trainer with a randomly generated townie. I wanted to retain her as horse trainer in this save file, so (like with Sarah Scott before her), I immediately kicked her out to the homeless bin so people wouldn’t try to play her and lose her the job. That said, for some reason this makes her un-inviteable to places just like Roberto Crinkletop, the mysterious rancher. To counteract this somewhat, I’ve had every household in town make her a keyholder, so she’ll occasionally drop by of her own accord. And of course, you can always come to her for a visit: she is outside the equestrian center from 7am to 7pm every single day, so she’s not hard to find. And pro tip: you can always invite her for a stayover, but for some reason only from the relationships panel, not the phone. The programming on this is weird, man.

Don and Duke Gooseman are now actual champions, as per their backstory. This means that Duke has the special “Champion Horse” trait that gives his foals better qualities, so if you’re going to get into horse breeding as a moneymaking enterprise, I suggest just getting a mare and having her breed with Duke. House rule, though: your sim has to gift Don a thousand simoleons for the privilege. There is now an actual stud service in town! And Don’s been doing a little studing of his own—I’ve made him aromantic since he’s such a loner, but as a sim who loves the outdoors, he constantly gets wants to woohoo in the bushes: so he is now woohoo partners with Roberto Crinkletop, with whom he has the occasional Brokeback-Mountain-style al fresco tryst. Plus I gave him a cat. Don just seems like a cat guy to me.

The Nectar Making Duo have opened a duo of businesses: a country nectary where they live, grow ingredients, and craft and age their nectars, and a small shop in town where they sell them. They’re in a fair amount of debt (used the university student loan system for this), so you can have fun digging them out and making the businesses profitable! They have three main ways to make money: holding ranch gatherings at the nectary (which are basically tasting events to bring in new clientele), using the sales table at the nectary to sell bottles direct-from-the-source, and manning the retail store in town. Some quirks to know about these things:

1) You can’t do a sale on the sales table at the same time you’re throwing a ranch gathering. I was hoping you could, but starting a sale immediately ends the gathering. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.

2) The front door of the nectary is the open-barn-doors arch to allow street sale customers into the nectary so they can buy from the sales table. If you swap these out for real, closed doors, the customers will just hang out nervously at the edge of the lot and then disappear, never buying anything. So if you want to use the sales table, you have to leave the arch. That said, an arch can’t be set as the front door for the purposes of other households coming to visit, so I have put a small, unusable wooden door off to the side of the barn doors and set that as the front door. If you’re visiting the nectary as another household, just knock on this door to make the building appear solid.

3) The nectars available for purchase at the retail store include a mix of qualities and levels of aging. There’s nothing there that is poor quality, and nothing that isn’t aged at all, but the bottles range from lightly aged to finely aged and some are normal rather than excellent. This is so that you can come to the store as a buyer while playing another household and have the option to either splurge on a high-quality bottle or not break the bank and go for something more modestly priced, according to your funds and storyline. Plus bonus: The Nectar Making Duo sub-contract with a few outside suppliers for specialty nectars they can’t brew themselves, so you can find occult nectars here, as well.

And on that note . . . to get Marissa Tracey in with the occult sims who brew the specialty nectars, and also because I think she looks a great deal like him, I have made Marissa—and her new twin brother, Chip—the products of a youthful indiscretion between Wolfgang Wilder and a human sim from Chestnut Ridge. They were both born as “dormant wolves” rather than full-blown werewolves and raised by their mother under her last name, but they know Wolfgang and are friends of the Moonwood Collective. Stocking the Collective’s moonpetal nectar got Marissa’s name circulating in the supernatural community, and now she contracts with the Straud Estate and the famed Madam Zoe herself, as well.

Aside from getting a dog, The Grove family have only gotten minor edits to careers and clothing; I put Umber in the musician career as per his backstory, stuck Juniper in the athlete career (under the new sub-category of show rider!) and let her hair down. It bothers me when the sims team gives two pre-made townies in the same world the exact same hairstyle in the exact same color, as it makes them too easy to confuse. So just like with Cottage Living, where I changed Rashida Watson’s hair to the blue-dyejob teen hair from Parenthood so she wouldn’t be confused with Cecelia Kang from behind, Juniper has now left the side braid to Sienna and adopted a more flowing-hair look that will accent those horse jumps. Oh, and Umber also started a band; he’s the leader of club of local musicians who play down at the saloon most nights—though if you feel like doing an afternoon gig on occasion, I also suggest meeting at the Hay Now! Festival Grounds sometimes.

Look, with the things in this pack, I just couldn’t resist making “Chip and Dale, Rescue Ranchers,” so I did. Chip Tracey (new brother of Marissa Tracey) and his husband, Dale Chooli (new brother of Juniper Grove) run a rescue ranch / petting zoo where children from all worlds can come to learn about animals of all types. The money they get from throwing “ranch animal day” events for kids is pretty modest to support two rescue horses, a cow, a llama, a bunch of mini goats and mini sheep, several chickens, a ton of stray dogs and cats, and some semi-wild rabbits, foxes, and birds, but it sure is cute! And they can always teach kids to ride and bring mini sheep to kids’ birthday parties on the side.

Juniper and Dale’s father, Jim Chooli, has also joined the save file as the horse wrangler for Plumbob Pictures’ on-site Western filming location. He lives in one of the many trailers on location in Galloping Gulch, alongside Barb Henderson (stylist, saloon singer, and local icon) and Giovanni Carrettino, a young cinematographer from Tartosa looking to make his own “penne Westerns.” Jim cares for and trains the studio’s three horses, Molasses, Gun, and Beauty, who play the roles of native American war horse, cowboy horse, and wild stallion, respectively.

Sienna Grove’s former lot is now home to an elderly horse trader named Tallulah Heiheiwuti, who has a bunch of family in Evergreen Harbor. One of them, her eldest granddaughter, has come to stay with her and learn the family business. The problem? She’s afraid of horses! I figured someone had to be, and that storyline just made sense. It also means there is a new family in Evergreen Harbor, which was pretty underpopulated before—Talullah’s son and his wife and kids are now fleshing out the community there and justifying the existence of the Coast Salish art swatch on the Horse Ranch wall hanging, while also giving you the new opportunity to play the botanist branch of the gardener career or the life of a pop-up cupcake baker.

Other things that have changed:

This save file has never featured Faiz Jaleel, the flower-seller from the My Wedding Stories pack, because neighborhood stories killed him off before I had quite figured out that feature and how to manage it. But now, thanks to Roberto Crinkletop’s secret family recipe, he has been resurrected and is in the save file as a living sim! I could not, unfortunately, figure out a way to reinstate him as the flower cart NPC, but he still has all the grapevine gossip interactions about owning it, so just pretend he’s hired extra help to man it sometimes when he’s busy. He has moved into his old childhood home in the big square in Tartosa with the other Piazza Dwellers, where he is trying to get a second business venture, a food stand, off the ground. He’s torn between the classic Tartosan cuisine of pizza and leaning further into the romantic atmosphere with heart-shaped waffles. Can you help him decide and make his new business a success?

Speaking of returning from the netherworld, the save file also never featured Felix Psyded, ghostly founder of the University of Britechester, because the game culled him before I discovered coolspear’s “Delay Ghost Culling Indefinitely” mod. Now that I have it, I have re-downloaded the original Felix from the gallery and made him the resident ghost of Lord Drake Men’s Dorm on the UBrite campus. How did I do this, you say? I’ve enrolled him in the History degree at UBrite in order to make him a proper resident of the dorm. You can keep him there practically indefinitely by having him enroll in only one class at a time while you play with other focus sims in this dorm—and if he runs out of classes and completes the degree, just start in on another degree. By my count, this should enable him to keep haunting this dorm for 156 in-game weeks—and that’s only if he never fails a single class! If you alternate having him fail and succeed so he does it slower but never gets kicked out, that’s 312 weeks, or basically eternity in sim years. He’s here forever! Also, in setting this up, I realized I had not included any woohoo locations in the UBrite dorms, which is completely unacceptable. Who’s ever heard of a dorm without a hookup spot?! I have now added closets to both the men’s and women’s dorms in order to fix this grave oversight. My deepest apologies.

I had previously not moved Wolfgang Wilder in with the other Moonwood Collective sims because I wanted him to remain the NPC librarian in Moonwood Mill, but in the process of making him related to his new children (Marissa and Chip Tracey), I discovered that somewhere along the way the game had already booted him out of that role for some reason. Just like with Faiz, I couldn’t figure out how to reinstate him, so now he has retired from librarianship, moved in with the rest of the Collective, and embraced his writing full-time—which means he still spends a lot of time at the library, since the Collective Cabin is off-the-grid and doesn’t have a computer.

On the subject of townies with NPC jobs, there’s news on the Scotts, the not-quite-playable family I booted to the homeless bin to prevent Sara Scott being supplanted as pub owner in Finchwick. You still can’t play her without losing her job, but her husband Simon is totally fair game, because he isn’t any kind of special villager NPC. So, with the introduction of a large estate needing filming crew for the long-running TV series “Dignity & Decorum,” I decided to rescue him from the homeless bin and make him the cinematographer on the Plumbob Pictures costume drama crew. This has actually allowed me to make the Scotts semi-playable, because even though Sara is still in the homeless bin, I was able to get Simon to ask her to be his NPC roommate, and that completely works! As long as she’s only a roommate and not technically part of the household, she can both be the pub owner and live in the swanky suite of rooms I’ve marked off for her and Simon within the manor house. Admittedly, she’s rarely there because pub hours are serious business, but still! That said, in my experience the game tends to get rid of roommates when you switch households, so you may need to reinstate her as roommate if you want to play with this arrangement down the line. Luckily, that’s very easy; just head down to the pub where she’ll be working and re-invite her under the “roommate…” menu.

Derek McMillan and Ian Moody, the stitchery shop owners in Henford-on-Bagley, are getting on in years and have been finding the crops and the chickens and the llamas and the store a lot to manage, so they’ve made a few strategic decisions to help themselves out. First and foremost, they have refocused on their mission to provide beautiful, high-quality colored wool to their customers by swapping out their chicken coop for a small sheepfold, which they have stocked with a multicolored array of mini sheep dyed every color of the rainbow (except for the colors already covered by their two llamas). They’ve also hired a ranch hand to assist with animal care and the garden, so they can focus their own energy on the shop and their sewing circle club, which is going better than ever now that it’s associated bug has been fixed!

The Watson family has moved off the hilltop to a smaller, flatter, and more organized farm with fewer camera problems down in the valley of Old New Henford. They have added a small flock of sheep to their livestock, and adopted an elderly Irish Draught horse named Dobber. Rashidah has already knitted him a set of leg warmers and a saddleblanket, and animal-lover Imran is learning to ride!

Lucha Harjo has started a side hustle selling popcorn down on the pier in Copperdale. It’s more a hobby than a career move right now, but oh, that satisfying crunch when those teens enjoy their popcorn to the tinny sounds of the ferris wheel music! Truly heartwarming.

Bob Pancakes randomly came home the other day with a tattoo of kitchen utensils on his forearm. Eliza thinks she smells a midlife crisis coming on . . .

Celebrity chef Clara Bjergsen decided that she wanted a whole new expanded kitchen, so she bought one. It’s not like she doesn’t have the money. Her current flavor obsession: reconnecting with her childhood and making heritage memories for her daughters through haute cuisine experimentation with traditional Nordic waffles.

On the opposite end of that career trajectory, aspiring chef Hugo Villareal has been hard at work spending his father’s ill-gotten gains on lots of new equipment to revive the old nectary the family moved into. With his new nectar press, oak barrels, bottle storage racks, pizza oven, stand mixer, and a block of parmigiana and a grater always at the ready, Hugo is all prepped to begin his journey into vineyard-to-table nectars perfectly paired with lovingly crafted Italian dishes. And he’s really leaning into it, too—he also bought himself a whole set of food-themed shirts, so he’s always repping his future career goals. If he could only graduate high school early and get started...

Refugio dei Pirati Resort in Tartosa discovered a long-forgotten Roman bath structure beneath its foundations and, deciding this was too good a find to ignore, tore down their entire building to excavate, restore, and construct an entrance to the thing. They subsequently rebuilt completely from the ground up, and now boast a whole new building with brand-new amenities like a private reception hall alongside refurbished old favorites like the couples’ spa. To celebrate their grand re-opening, they rebranded as the Amorosa Resort. If you’ve never vacationed in Tartosa, now might be the time to start—especially with all the new pizza ovens and functional nectar cellars popping up all over the place!

The shops on the Sulani Promenade have gotten in a whole new shipment of swimsuits thanks to the Poolside Splash Kit. They are now on display and for purchase from a series of colorful new mannequins. Whether you’re looking for tourist-y beach wear or wetsuits and snorkel gear, they’ve got you covered!

That's not the only new stock in this update: The Gnome’s Arms in Finchwick has stocked its behind-the-bar shelves with nectar. It’s not top-of-the-line stuff like you’ll find in Chestnut Ridge, but it does the trick!

SimCity Pizza, the oldest restaurant on The Waterfront in San Myshuno’s Spice Market, has finally, grudgingly, updated their equipment to include a modern pizza oven alongside their so-old-the-food-inspector-banned-them-from-using-it wood fired one. They’re having a “create your own flavor” special right now, where customers can make their own pizzas using off-menu flavors and ingredients. It’s really revitalized the place!

Llamante Llama Ranch in Selvadorada wants all animals to feel welcome, including those who are traveling with their humans. They have converted some previously unused space in the front into a small horse paddock, and added some items for cats and dogs, as well. If you’re looking to go horseback riding around Selvadorada (gorgeous, by the way!), this is the place to rent for your vacation. There are also a ton of juice barrels lined up behind the bar in town—you’re welcome to use a couple of them for horse training, if you want.

San Sequoia has a few more items in the open portions of worlds, including a newly functional lemonade stand alongside the makeshift one down on the docks! It’s a great place to sell ice cream, lemonade, or scout cookies (though you’ll need to make those yourself at home beforehand).

There are no new residents in Brindleton Bay. Nope, not a one. Not a single living soul. But the price has gone down on the old lightkeeper’s house on Deadgrass Isle. For some reason, you can now move in there completely for free…

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Thanks for your patience, and for your votes on the expansion of the actor career! Head to the original Career World save file post to download the update and enjoy!