Troubleshooting guide for modded Sims 3 game

If you’re like me and put tons of mods into your Sims 3 game, I’m sure you’ve experienced some trouble with it. Minor ones, like some things not working properly, or bigger issues, like the game crashing down every time you launch it. Here are some tips to solve these problems:

2. If your sim gets stuck somewhere, like unable to get out of an elevator, or falling off the edge of the world – reset him/her:

b) Via console command “resetsim Firstname Lastname”. To enter console press ctrl+shift+c. First write in it “teastingcheatsenabled true” without quotes and press enter. The console will disappear without any notice. Open it again and enter “resetsim Firstname Lastname”. By using a console you can reset all sims in town at once, by command “reseteveryone”

Resetting a sim teleports him/her to their house with all their needs in green.

3. Your sim became invisible (e.g. happens sometimes after returning from vacation) or lost his/her interactions. Don’t delete them and don’t despair. Simply evict them from their home and them make them move in again. It is possible you will loose all the relatioships with your family, but you may use Master Controller to reestablish them. Or use it as a pretext to have beautiful romance and wedding again 🙂

4. If some of your premium content is not working – like having no interactions or missing some of them, this usually means that your ccmerged file got corrupted or deleted. This file is located in the Sims 3 folder in Documents, in the folder called DCbackup. There are two ways to deal with this problem:

a) Delete the CCmerged file, then uninstal and reinstall all your premium content – but only premium content. You can leave the rest alone. Then the CCmerged file will be reconstructed and averything should work fine again.

b)Get the right working CCmerged file from here. The download link is at the bottom of the post called “Download ccmerged.zip“. It is perfectly safe to use it, no matter if you have one, a few or all premium content items. I’ve used it myself and it works like a charm.

5. Your game suddenly slowed down horribly or started to crash, after you installed some new CC and the methods described in my Speeding the game tutorial don’t fix it. In this case check if:

a) the CC you’ve downloaded is meant for Sims 2, instead of Sims 3. Unfortunately, the files look exactly the same, so you’ll have to check it on the website you’ve downloaded it from.

b) you have duplicate packages in your mods folder. It doesn’t mean they have the same name – it means, that they contain the resources, that override one another. Like two packages containing the same pose, but one with pose list and one without. Use S3PE to open up packages, to see if they have duplicate entries, but many CC doesn’t show their names. Then the only way is to look through your mods folder and guess which packages may contain overriding resources.

c) a mod you’re using is outdated. Always check for the patch level the mod is compatible with. If the mod is outdated it may cause many errors in your game, as it can override the up to date data from your installed game with it;s own, outdated files. In this case you have to either find the updated mod or remove it completely.

6. Your game refuses to load at all – that’s worse, but you don’t have to reinstall it completely. Normally, when you install Sims3, no matter where you choose to install them, the game creates Sims 3 folder in your Documents folder. It’s there, that all the bugs make the mess. The thing is, you can safely delete this whole folder and it’s content – the game will recreate it, creating a frash and clean framework for you to work with. Just remember to backup the following Folders first:

Once you’ve made your backup and deleted the Sims 3 folder from the Documents simply launch the game. See if it works this clean as it is. If it does, you can start putting back the backed up folders – but don’t do it all at once!.

In the first step, put back DCBackup/ccmerged file, DCCache, InstalledWorlds and Library. Launch the game. Check if all the EA store content you own is present and working – objects, worlds, premium content. If it is all right, close the game.

Next put back Saves folder and launch the game again.  You may just put the most recent one back and store others on some other drive – it will save place on your C: drive and believe me, it is iimportant.

Load the saved game.You will most probably get the message, that there are some objects missing and will be replaced – it’s because you haven’t put back the mods folder again. Ignore the message for now and check if the game loads, the sims have interactions and so on. Whatever you do, DON’T SAVE THE GAME at this point! If you do, all the replaced objects will stay replaced – if like me you’re using tons of CC then you’ll spend next month reediting everything just to bring back all your CC in your world and sims.

Lastly, put back your Mods folder. If you suspected one or more mods of being the main cause of the game crashing – don’t put them in yet. Launch the game, load the saved file. If it works, that great. If not, try finding the mod that caused the crash. If the game just suddenly stopped working and that was why you started the reinstall, your best guess is the mod you’ve put in there just recently. If you can’t remember, than you” have to do it by  loading the game with one or only few mods at a time.