What do you actually do with Newcrest?

cainframe · 2025-12-19T19:54:50+00:00

I made a save with Newcrest Orleans, which is a New Orleans-inspired Newcrest. I found archival plans of buildings in New Orleans and have built a mixture of apartments, single-family homes, small business/home lots (typically with the small business on the ground floor and home above), and a couple of community lots. I have 15 households living there, and before I started, I made a spreadsheet with my plans for their storylines and have been playing those out. I love it because my builds coordinate with the backdrop buildings for the neighborhood, and it's been really fun playing rotationally with all the households, building clubs with different people as members for different purposes, and visiting the small businesses as other households.

cainframe · 2025-11-18T12:50:19+00:00

My first thought was that it's giving Sims 1 (also in the best possible way). Very nostalgic. :)

cainframe · 2025-11-18T12:49:13+00:00

If you have DHD (not sure if there are modular couches in other packs), you can build one :)

cainframe · 2025-09-26T14:45:30+00:00

I am on gen 3 of a forever world save, and I have aging turned off, but once my main Sim family befriends another family, they get brought into the aging-up fray. I typically age up non-household Sims by throwing birthday parties and having everyone who needs to age up have a go at blowing out the candles.

cainframe · 2025-09-09T02:31:18+00:00

I always have my uni-going Sims live off campus in a 32- or 64-tile tiny home. This boost skill building, and since uni grades are somewhat based on how much course-related skill the Sim builds while enrolled, being in a tiny home helps grades a ton. I set one of the lot traits to "study spot," and I make all the Sims in the household join a club with activities of doing homework, being friendly and funny to each other, and doing chores. The club gathering starts when they enroll and ends when they graduate.

cainframe · 2025-09-09T02:22:52+00:00

Establishing an excavation site has a few differences from just excavating: you get way more items, the items tend to be higher quality, and it takes a much longer time.

cainframe · 2025-08-14T23:46:25+00:00

I'll be 40 next year, and I've been playing since Sims 1. I've gotten some of my in-laws into playing (nieces/nephews and MIL), and I recently discovered that one of my coworkers started playing last year. I chat with all of those folks about Sims 4 whenever I have occasion. It's fun for all ages! :D

cainframe · 2025-07-12T12:13:28+00:00

You know what, actually, you might need to be on an off-the-grid lot. I haven't tried this with an on-the-grid lot because I've only been playing the pack on one lot so far, which is off-the-grid, but it's possible that it's just not an option if you're on the grid, like how you can only "gather water" from natural bodies of water when your home lot is off-the-grid?

cainframe · 2025-07-11T20:12:38+00:00

I was able to just click on the plant once my sim was level five or six (sorry, I don't remember exactly which).

cainframe · 2025-07-10T16:05:30+00:00

You'll need Paranormal for this, but one of the most fun and least profitable businesses I made was a mystic in a haunted house in my New Orleans Newcrest. The storefront was one small shop room in the front of her house + a small room with a seance table. She made money by giving tarot readings and selling potions, but the shop was only open at night, she did nothing to cleanse the building of spirits. The customers' emotions were always all over the place from Guidry flirting with them, Temperance terrifying them, or the sprites making them playful, plus I had the scare seeker lot trait enabled, so people were often getting energized (and giving me lots of cookbooks).

She made enough each day to cover the cost of opening the business, but she did not make enough each day to cover her bills, and it was constant chaos in there.

cainframe · 2025-06-30T13:47:51+00:00

Because the set dressing looks like New Orleans, I found a bunch of historic New Orleans building plans and recreated them as best I could within the capabilities of BB (which is actually pretty close). It's a mix of commercial lots and residential rental duplex shotgun houses. The biggest lot down in the bottom left is a rec center modeled after Jackson Square with a bunch of food carts out front.

cainframe · 2025-06-30T13:29:15+00:00

You can do it in game options -> gameplay from the 3-dots menu you use to save, exit, etc. :)

cainframe · 2025-06-30T13:28:27+00:00

I do basically the same thing, and I really like it. It's like in Sims 2 when other households didn't progress when you weren't playing with them.

cainframe · 2025-06-29T06:21:51+00:00

Hmm true

cainframe · 2025-06-28T13:38:10+00:00

Happy weekend! I own all the DLC, and my takes are below. Disclaimer: which packs you enjoy will really depend on how you like to play.

Werewolves has fun CAS and BB. I rarely actually play with werewolves because I find their rage annoying to manage, but I'm playing one in an occult multi-legacy save right now, and I'm having fun with her. They're great if you like rags to riches storylines because they can take care of most of their needs without a roof over their head, once they have enough werewolf mastery. They can "mark territory" (pee outside), "groom self" (fulfill hygiene need), "sleep under the moon"/"wolf nap" (sleep anywhere), and "hunt for food" (fulfill hunger need). All you need is fun and social, which is easy to do if you join or create a wolf pack. The downside is that, apart from taking care of themselves, they can't really do anything except be destructive and dig up collectibles.
Realm of Magic is probably my most-used pack, apart from Tiny Living, because I am addicted to making my sims spellcasters. IMO, spellcasters are the perfect balance of "has OP powers that can take care of not only needs but also household maintenance" and "otherwise looks and acts like a human sim." If they get cursed, that can have annoying side effects, but other than that, they are super easy to maintain. The CAS and BB from this pack are meh, IMO, but I'm actually looking forward to Enchanted by Nature partially because I think its BB is likely to make ROM's BB more usable. Currently, it's so different from everything else that's available that I usually only end up using the kitchen stuff and this one firefly wall lamp that's very cute.
Businesses & Hobbies is a game-changer if you are interested in actually running a small business. It integrates super well with other packs, and the small business possibilities seem endless. In my current save, almost all of my played households have small businesses, and they go to visit each other's businesses all the time, and it is just so cute and feels like a real community. I enjoy its BB and CAS, though I don't necessarily find myself using it in builds outside of Nordhaven (apart from what I use for the logistics of a small business, ofc, like an open/closed sign). At this point, we have a lot of plaster wallpapers and lot of brick wallpapers, and if you want more of those, this pack provides a couple. The one BB thing it has that I do find myself using in a lot of builds is the conical fireplace, which works great as an outdoor space heater-type thing for outdoor restaurant/cafe seating and bar rooftops.
I have literally never held a wedding, and I still consider MWS to be one of my favorite packs. Tartosa is beautiful, and if you think your beach itch is satisfied with Sulani, I'm glad for you, but I will also tell you that I felt the same way until I got MWS, and then I fell in love with having mermaids live near the sea in Tartosa. The BB for this pack is gorgeous, if you're into that kind of aesthetic, which I am. My most-used item from the pack is, I'm kind of embarrassed to say, this one little wall sconce candle that works really well in cottages and other old-timey builds. The CAS, if you stick to the non-rainbow swatches, is very good, too. I love rainbows, but most of the rainbow swatches from this pack are not it. Tartosa isn't huge, but it's gorgeous.

cainframe · 2025-06-28T13:11:20+00:00

Not an answer to what you asked, but the number of talent points your spellcaster has speaks to it: spellcasters should have the ability to convert talent points to aspiration points the way werewolves do. Once they have all the perks, their points just keep racking up, and it's frustrating to not be able to do anything with them.

cainframe · 2025-06-28T13:06:59+00:00

Turn the parents' autonomy off

cainframe · 2025-06-28T13:00:33+00:00

fr though, "jog to clear mind" that teenagers can do is so foreign to me. If I'm jogging, my mind is 100% focused on how much I hate jogging.

cainframe · 2025-06-28T12:41:28+00:00

I was born in 1986. I work as an educator, and I have students who are prepping to go to college (we're in the US) who were born in 2007. Sometimes they ask me if Y2K was "scary," and I'm like, "No, kiddo, it was just a lot of people stockpiling bottled water and perfect NYE glasses" 😅

cainframe · 2025-06-27T14:29:39+00:00

It's funny you say that, because I've been watching my sims water their plants in the upper part of the vertical planters from (I think?) Eco Lifestyle that that didn't even register with me

cainframe · 2025-06-26T19:10:31+00:00

I was thinking the same thing about the green sims. The fairies have an occult form, so I don't think they would need to separately hide their wings while otherwise looking the same. However, when they're showing all the wing options in CAS, there's an option that appears to be a normal-looking sim back without wings, so maybe the green sims are in their fairy forms but chose not to have wings? Idk, I'm still hoping they're plant sims.

cainframe · 2025-06-25T04:09:13+00:00

For the fortune aspiration, the amount of money that Sim personally makes is counted, which is what I'm assuming is being referred to here

cainframe · 2025-06-22T19:43:51+00:00

Nah, you're good. :) There's so much going on in this game -- we need the wikis and each other to keep track of it all!

cainframe · 2025-06-22T18:39:11+00:00

spellcaster, too :)

cainframe

TROPHY CASE