Ok, After taking a break from playing Skyrim, now I decided to reinstall Sims 2...
Any must have mod beside CEP from Numenor...?
My currently installed EP: OFB, SSN, BV, FT, AL (I am planning to reinstall Nightlife as well...)

Thanks

It depends on what you want and how you want to play your game.

As to what you really should have, you'll want the official patches for all your EPs and the critical fixes for them at MATY. And the Lot Debugger (often called the batbox.) Other than that, like I said, it's entirely dependent on what you want to do in the game.

You will want the fixes to stop your game blowing up such as 'no corrupt death' and 'no link on delete' Both to prevent corruption from tomb stones Creature Fixes (if you play vampires). There are quite a few things, but since I've typed it all out at least half a dozen times before, you can check here: http://thesims2.livejournal.com/7373855.html#comments

Along with these mods, I also strongly recommend Lord Darcy's Stuff Pack Fix mods, if you have any stuff packs.

In my personal opinion... ACR (Autonomous Casual Romance) Makes for great stories and interesting gameplay. Other than that, the aforementioned fixes are a must.

Everyones already said the essential mods, but when it comes to gameplay I guess it's more what you want out of the game. I focus more on the generational gameplay because I like to watch genetics mix and match and having my sims grow up and have babies and then watch them grow up, so I found it useful to install inteen, ACR and sometimes triplets/quads to keep my game interesting and challenging. I'd say a lot of simmers on this site also installed these mods, so I imagine they're "must have"s if you enjoy the kind of rotation neighborhood type game play that a lot of simmers on this site enjoy.

Edit: You might find this link useful

These two creators' hacks are probably mentioned above.

Mootilda
Sims2Pack Clean Installer
Hoodchecker (Checks your neighbourhoods and can remove corruption)

Pescado
No Unlink On Delete
The Batbox (I don't use this myself)
Creature Fixes (Mrs Crumplebottom is NOT healthy for your game, your sims or for her own self to become a vampire)
No Corrupt Death Memory

By other creators - Optional for your own use, but I recommend them
SuperDuperHug hider (Only the LBFRemovesocial file - stamps down the silly SuperDuperHug pie menu thingy)
Watch TV from all chairs (MogHughson - more Mog mods below)
Park inside the carpark! (Requires Nightlife - self explanatory)
Sit down with your drink (Self-explanatory)
Decorative parking spaces (Goes well with the park inside the carpark mod, generates random unusable cars)
Never lose homework again (Self-explanatory)
Phaenoh's Phone Book (The Yellow Pages of the Sims, basically. Locate any random person in the hood, including townies)
treeag's Book of Talent (For the lazy who cannot be bothered to go on vacation to learn a dance and then go back home again)
Smonaff's Ghost Hack (Alive sims become deadlooking - I used to use this)
Change clothes in the pie menu (Smonaff again - this is really time-cutting by SIM HOURS and I seriously recommend this)
EDIT:
GunMod's camera mod Zoom in closer and see to the corners of your neighbourhood!

And let's not forget the game corruption causing factors that you should avoid, so read about it here: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...ding_corruption and here: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Game_gui...e_to_play_as%3F

Wow thanks for the recommendation everyone

For Cleaner Gameplay
•BO - No Sim Loaded: Remove a lot of junk controllers, tokens, and other broken stuff, without the need for a Batbox

•BO - No Trash Memories: PREVENT gossip and silly repetetive memories from being generated

http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7875.0

GunMod's Radiance Light System. It makes my rooms look nicer, and also gives very pretty morning/evening light!

There's a recent mod (and a predecessor) floating about on here, it fixes all the lighting in your game - can't be bothered finding and linking right now, but it is pretty recent on MTS.

OMG, how about

ACR
Inteen
Move out teens
Insim
no welfare

These? I DL them recently:
https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=325490
https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=325577
https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=526749
https://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=526580

This is going to need to be a sticky after this week of Sims 4 news.

You'd think this game was TS3 considering all the mods you have to install to make the game playable.

Eh, there's a difference between tweaking things to your liking and making the game 'playable'.

I agree with this 100%

Besides using the ones to fix the potential corruption, I'd suggest playing it a bit to get back into it and then making note of things that irk you.

I use a lot of the ones already suggested but here are some I haven't seen yet:
-I like cyjon's stuff because he has tons of mods to tweak little things (like getting rid of all the free stuff from AL social groupies, etc.) I've probably got at least 20 of his mods in game.

-You'll find some other great ones on this site but my fave is the Find-a-mate crystal ball. I use it to know which sims my sim will have high chemistry with, though it's main purpose is to bypass the gypsy altogether. Also the engagement memory fix & bring hobby friend from work fix found here.

-The BFFs are for 12s from MATY is essential if you hate your adults throwing wants to have BFFs like I do. (I think that came from MATY.)

-I've also got mods that allow more than 8 sims per household, allows you to invite over the entire household, allows you to invite as many sims as you want to parties and allows party guests to stay after the party timer runs out. I love playing large households so these are essential to me because then I can throw massive all-nighters and the guests will stay for hours. The programming is a bit funky so they literally will sleep in any available beds rather than go home but I love it. My teens throw massive parties in the summer and invite all the other teens in town and sometimes the guests stay for 48+ hours, heh.

Others:
-Toddler potty fixes (no more having to empty the potty for toddlers before training them again)
-Pregnancy wear any outfit mods (Which I think I got from here... or some of them from here and some from other places? I'm not sure.)
-Elders sleep through night (when directed to sleep, they'll stay asleep until 6AM like adults, or longer if their sleep bar still isn't full). There is a similar one for toddlers but I don't use it. Too cheaty in my book.

I love the Always flush toilet/wash hands http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=15.0

This will sound stupid but how do you install defaults? Just put them in your downloads folder or what?

Yep.

I'd use several folders within the download folder to categorize so I can find things. (Though some mod files are happier just in the Downloads, without it.)

The thing to remember with defaults is to remember that for each thing you're default-replacing, "there can be only one."

And the game just recognises it's a default replacement?
It's been so long since I played this game, I have no idea how installing mods works.

Yes the game recognizes that its a default replacement. Install the defaults you want, delete the groups.cache and the default will be in the game. Sometimes you need to delete the CASThumbnails.package from the thumbnails folder to get the default to show up in CAS and Bodyshop, but the default will up in the game without that step. If the default doesn't show up, then you need to look for conflicts.

OK thanks

This is a great thread - I too am finally going back to Sims 2, starting from scratch, and really appreciate the tips for mods posted here!