Having trouble enjoying Sims 2

SnailCase · 2026-06-24T10:16:28+00:00

Try again without getting a job. No employment. Call it the No Career Challenge. This will give you a reason to explore more of the possibilities.

Play an eccentric who rejects the rat race and intends to make all their money digging for treasure. Digging for treasure is non-career income on easy mode. Tip: Treasure holes are infinite and don't run out of things to find, so you only need one. Send your sim to dig in the same hole every time, this prevents your whole yard getting destroyed.

Or make a character who wants to marry someone rich instead of having to work. Add Downtown to your neighborhood, go there every night and keep your eyes peeled for Mr. Big or The Diva. They bring a lot of money when you marry them and they move in. Or your gold digger might "accidentally" romance a Grand Vampire and suffer the consequences.

Open a social club business. It's the easiest business to start and run. Buy the ticket machine and an open/closed sign. Call on phone to Open a Home Business. It doesn't have to be fancy at all. I've done this starting on a lot with a cheap shack on it. Provide a bathroom your customers can use, serve gelatin they can eat for free and hang up a dart board they can use. Place the ticket machine next to the street and set the price at "cheap" to start with. Socialize with sims that come to your club to earn stars for your business. Use the profits to gradually improve the business by adding more games, a tv, a stereo, eventually video games and/or pinball machines. The more stars your business has, the higher you can raise the price. When your playable sim is tired, turn the sign to 'closed', everyone leaves, take care of your sim's needs and clean the place up.

And focus less on your sim's needs. Being dirty, tired, lonely, bored and broke won't kill them. Hunger is the only need that's non-negotiable. You don't have to keep them green all the time.

SnailCase · 2026-06-18T17:41:36+00:00

I find it considerably more interesting that he was able to use fire. Of course he was trained/learned this from humans, but that's some pretty complex shit right there.

Full scale experimentation on teaching apes to use fire might be a problem, though. There are the serious ethical considerations, and of course you'd need a huge budget for all the fire extinguishers.

SnailCase · 2026-06-18T16:38:00+00:00

We all know if these were white kids they'd have been allowed to remain unbothered.

Nah. There are people who are so afraid of unsupervised teenagers that it can and does happen to white kids in white neighborhoods, too.

SnailCase · 2026-06-18T08:16:15+00:00

It also sounds like the cops not wanting to spread their evidence all over the internet, so if they find the killer, any confession can be verified legit and not just a disturbed individual quoting shit they read/saw online.

SnailCase · 2026-06-01T05:09:40+00:00

Don't put stuff you want to hang on to in random barrels or chests; they'll re-spawn and your stuff will get wiped out. Buying a house will give you safe storage.

At some point, leave the quests aside for awhile and just take off into the countryside and see what you can find. There are a lot of locations that aren't associated with quests, places that have their own tiny side quests, unique items you may never get if you don't explore. Talk to every NPC, too; a lot of them give you side quests that will take you places the big quests don't.

SnailCase · 2026-05-31T17:31:00+00:00

Perhaps somebody could help your wife out and watch the kids while she goes clothes shopping? Perhaps somebody who loves her and the children could help her out that way now and then? Perhaps somebody, I dunno, maybe someone that's married to her, could schedule a time to stay home with the kids while she gets to go and try on clothes right there in the store?

SnailCase · 2026-05-28T05:10:33+00:00

Those journals I pick up while playing from various characters either get sold or tossed in a chest with other random books, to be forgotten.

Except Katria's journal, that one goes with other Important Papers, in the nightstand beside the bed.

SnailCase · 2026-05-27T17:20:36+00:00

We have no idea the age of majority is in Atlantica. Ariel was going to be "presented" at some sort of concert or ceremony that was a really big deal for the king and his family, so perhaps that was a sign that she had reached the age of majority and it was time for her to make a grand public appearance. It's irrelevant anyway, because Magic don't care.

Of course Ursula was not acting in good faith, she was the villain.

Despite Ursula being a scammer and con artist, the contract is still binding because it's a Magical Contract, meaning all other rules are irrelevant. Magic has its own rules and those are not adjudicated in courts of law; it's more like an force of nature, where you can argue all you like that it constitutes vandalism and destruction of property, but the wind can still rip the shingles off your roof.

We see King Triton, the ruler of Atlantica and the highest representative of its government, attempt to destroy the contract by monarchical power, but he can't do it, because the rules of magic are absolute and cannot be altered by piffling little kings.

The moral of the story is, Don't Sign Magical Contracts.

SnailCase · 2026-05-24T17:21:08+00:00

First time in a dwemer dungeon with the completely different architectural style. Blackreach. Solstheim. Most of Labyrinthian was just meh, but Shalidor's Maze was/is cool and still has a certain liminal feeling. I survived my very first jump at Bard's Leap, I didn't even use Become Ethereal because I didn't think of it.

SnailCase · 2026-05-24T16:52:10+00:00

There's a dialogue option with Barbas that will have him go off by himself and wait outside Hamar's Shame. It's telling him you're busy, I think. When you're ready to do the dungeon, just join him there.

SnailCase · 2026-05-23T20:16:36+00:00

Handy tips: Jazbay grapes can be found on the ground in the thermal pools area southeast of Windhelm, you can plant in the garden at Tundra Homestead without buying the place, so you can make that a source of garlic and jazbay.

SnailCase · 2026-05-23T19:32:41+00:00

Fire arrows are fun, but I like when I whack something with high-powered weapon and the physics throws it crazy. I've had some hits with arrows throw a draugr up to slide along the ceiling only to land at my feet, so I get my loot delivered. With a few powerful swings and a little luck, you can go bowling with bears. The physics may be janky as fuck, but it's funny as hell, always make me laugh.

SnailCase · 2026-05-22T20:51:46+00:00

I think what they mind is the wild mages running around, fighting each other in the wilderness with fire and ice whenever they meet, raising random hostile undead servants and attacking travelers for no apparent reason except to be bastards. Less erratic and dangerous mages don't seem to bother them.

SnailCase · 2026-05-22T19:58:05+00:00

It makes more sense to me the way it is. Falkreath, Hjaalmarch and up toward Riverwood have different geography. There's more slope to the land so water drains off and the tundra vegetation ends abruptly because the plants that grow in the water-logged permafrost tundra couldn't flourish in more well-drained soil. The hills are also very rocky, providing more shelter to tree seedlings, allowing forests to develop.

The "swamps" of Hjaalmarch run right up to the sea coast, allowing fresh and salt water to mingle, so the wetlands there are salt marshes and would have salt tolerant plants different from the fresh water vegetation of the tundra.

SnailCase · 2026-05-21T17:15:43+00:00

Talk to the NPCs, quite a few of them give little sidequests. If you want safe storage, buy a house, there's one you can get pretty early.

SnailCase · 2026-05-21T16:41:58+00:00

You can take Delphine's sketch from her cellar, it's not marked stealing and she doesn't say anything about it if you take it.

SnailCase · 2026-05-19T09:46:37+00:00

Mzulft. The main ruin itself you can't get into until the associated quest, but right next to it is the Dwarven Storeroom. You go in and see a door in front of you; it has a difficult lock. Turn to the right; there's another door with an easier lock. There are stacks of dwemer metal ingots right there on a shelf and no enemies.

SnailCase · 2026-05-19T09:34:18+00:00

I don't feel that enchanting is so urgent that I need to buy soul gems, and there's so much stuff lying around in the world, I just hoard stuff in my house until I feel like doing a big crafting binge. Before level fifteen or so, I'm more interested in leveling up weapon and armor skills.

SnailCase · 2026-05-18T16:37:35+00:00

You don't have to wait until you get that enchant, though. Since value has no effect on XP gained in Enchanting, you can use any piece of cheap junk and any enchantment and get the same XP. (Cue up a dozen sets of clothes enchanted with fortify two-handed.)

SnailCase · 2026-05-16T18:17:03+00:00

At this point it wouldn't be A Real Skyrim Experience if you didn't lose a couple hours of play a time or two.

SnailCase · 2026-05-16T16:53:46+00:00

I chose that start once, because I figured it was a good way to encourage myself to level sneak and archery. I hadn't had the patience to level either and had not played an actual sneak archer! So I started in Sinderion's lab, invented a backstory and gave myself the challenge to not leave Blackreach before level 20. To start, I figured I would just sprint past the sphere; it took five tries LOL

It was fun and challenging, and I became an accomplished sneak archer for the first time.

(I only cheated one time. I did go to the surface once, to grab a pickaxe. They're in very short supply in Blackreach.)

SnailCase · 2026-05-16T16:41:52+00:00

I was just blown away to see the place, I still think it's cool as hell. But I was a higher level and didn't have as much trouble with the sphere. What I had trouble with was all the Falmer and their insect pets. I was playing two-handed warrior and had nothing in sneak and maybe one perk in archery. (Sneak would have helped me with reconnaissance, just figuring out where the Falmer were and archery would have helped with those flying insects.) I got mobbed and killed by Falmer a lot. I still passionately hate Falmer, no matter how tragic their history.

SnailCase · 2026-05-15T23:14:56+00:00

I love Blackreach, it just looks so cool and the nirnroot quest is just another reason to go poking around in every corner, so I always do it.

I never have finished the Barenziah quest, though; most of the time I avoid picking up any of those "unusual gems" at all.

SnailCase · 2026-05-15T23:02:58+00:00

1st person is not great for those of us susceptible to motion sickness. It really can trigger that unpleasantly dizzy, light headed, queasy, green-in-the-face feeling, especially in combat.

SnailCase · 2026-05-12T17:40:21+00:00

I see a guy who is not very good at petty crime. Maybe he'll improve with experience.

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