InsaneJournal

Things I doubt anyone will ever tell you about Sims 2:

1. Ensure that any children trying to get into private school have high grades before using the phone to invite over the headmaster. Once they're in, their grades won't rise even with good mood.


2. Save before inviting the headmaster. If he hates all of the sims in the family on sight and won't chat nicely with any of them, you should reload unless you know you can make up for a zero schmooze score.


3. Having a talent in a particular hobby can pretty much be guaranteed by setting certain personality traits. One point of playful (or nine of serious, if you want to look at it that way) will make that sim a tinkerer. Nine of active will result in a sport-loving sim.


4. Active points, by the way, are no longer necessary to ensure that your sim will make it out of bed in time for the carpool. Do not, however, assume that you can make the carpool or bus if you just have your sim do one last thing before leaving. If it hasn't started, cancel it out if you value the job or school performance. Most actions still take dubiously credible amounts of time.


5. Fun objects draw sims like flies and the resulting actions are extremely difficult to cancel out. The worst culprit is the computer, because it requires a separate sit-down or stand-up action as well as initiating whatever game the sim wants to play (that's assuming it's been left on and doesn't need a further boot-up sequence; trust me, no matter how many times you turn the damn thing off, it will have been turned on again by any sim you lost control of for half a second).


6. Free will is incredibly aggressive. If you're on a community lot, it must be turned off or you will lose hours trying to cancel out of your sim wanting to look at the ceiling lights.


7. Sell paintings using Buy Mode until you max out creativity. You'll still get the money, but you won't hit the "sell a lousy painting" fear.