When people ask about favorite mods, of course Twallan and Pescado dominate with their giant mod (or suite of mods) that radically alter the game. But I'd like to know what your favorite minor mods are. Those little ones that only do one thing in your game, but you refuse to play without it. These are mods you may not even notice until an update comes out and you take out all your mods and then go nuts because things you take for granted in your game are suddenly missing.

For me:

1. Buzzler's "Housecleaning for All" mod. I HATE trying to keep a house clean without it. It's just a waste of time for me to go through and click on every single item and see if it needs cleaning. I am very grateful for this mod and when a patch comes out, I sometimes wait until I know this one is updated before I'll start playing.

2. Twoftmama's "Bottomless Potty" -- How annoying is it to change the potty every single time the toddler uses it -- especially when you have twins or triplets. This is another one that I may wait on (depending on if my game has toddlers or babies in it during the update)

3. Twoftmama's "Shut the Flock Up - Bicycle sounds" - This is something so seemingly minor and trivial. I mean, you can't even hear the bike sound. But I recently found out that the sound effect glitches out now and then, causing all of the sound in the game to go silent until it fixes itself. This very minor mod fixes that.

4. New one: Fit Environment Multiplier - This isn't one that I'd actually not play until it was updated. It doesn't have to be updated at all because it's a very simple tuning mod. But it solves a problem that annoys me to no end. The moodlet you get from the gym actually SLOWS DOWN your athletic skilling, making the gyms in the game worse than useless. This makes it act like the library's moodlet and you can skill athletic faster, which makes sense. I usually skill at home, but if I have a very social sim, going to the gym is now a good idea so he can make friends while he works out.
So anyone else have favorite little mods that have a subtle but strong effect on how much you enjoy the game?

Desecrate's Weapon Library and ani's Dexter Bear. Both are killing mods

For me it's NoMosaicLN. While I run Awesomemod, and it's my fave mod, it does not correctly address the censor blur. I saw a comment by Pescado somewhere(probably MATY) that technically the sim is not nude on the toilet so he leaves the blur on. In my mind's eye, this misses the point. For me it's not a matter of wanting to see the nudity, it's a matter of not wanting to see the hideous censor blur...lol. I know he scans these forums for certain keywords, so I hope he'll see this and reconsider.

There are a couple of annoyance mods that I run if I play much(which is rarely). A No Autonomous Watch Instruments mod & a No React to Mummies, Simbots and whatnot seem essential to me.

It's the damn BICYCLES?

Excuse me, I'm going bike-hunting. With a rocket launcher.

I hesitate to call it a minor mod, because I don't want to play without it: Dolphins Magic Gardening Gnome.
Others that I barely notice, but definitely improve the quality of my game: EsmeraldaF's No coughing/choking while eating, and any mod that addresses the foot tapping/route tantrum (I'm currently looking for one that does both.

i don't know if this is considered minor...but twallans relativity is a god send

@vhanster - I don't know whether to laugh or back away slowly in fear from you. So I'll do both.

@Periandre - thanks for posting that. I like to see what other people consider must haves because there are so many nice little mods out there that I likely overlooked. That one does look pretty awesome. One of the reasons I made this post is to find the mods I never knew I needed until I heard about them.

@PoisonFrog - I don't think Pescado will change that and I agree with that decision. It's not so much we want to see the nudity, but the fact that sims look really stupid sitting on the toilet with their pants on. The blur gives the illusion that they are using the toilet like regular humans instead of peeing through their pants like morons. It kind of surprises me, because I never thought of Pescado as someone who cared that much about aesthetics of the game. Since there is a mosaic mod you like better, just use that one. There is no other modder who has bothered to add that nice touch of hiding the toilet animations so I'd like him to keep it.

@Zokugai - YES it's the bicycles. I found out because I asked about it on MATY, and was told to SEARCH MOAR. I was having trouble with it, so I just laid in wait to see what would happen. And it came from someone who gave a very unhelpful and very wrong answer. Someone else yelled at the guy who gave the wrong answer and then gave the right one. So HA! I got help from someone who didn't mean to give it! I was like.. SCORE! I felt like I cheated and tricked someone into holding my hand so I didn't have to search.

@jeneusa - I love Twallan's relativity mod too. And compared to his other stuff, it's a minor one. I just wanted to shine some light on some of the less fancy mods out there that don't do much but are so useful. I hope that the modders out there who don't get shout outs too often may read this and think "Yes it was worth it!"

Periandre: AwesomeMod does both, if the options are turned on with aweconf.

My favorite minor mods are anything with an autosave. Particularly Twallan's, because it'll even save in build mode (why, EA, why?), and because it asks you instead of just automatically saving like AM does.

And the default replacement replacement horse tails from Equus Sims that fix the godawful obnoxious shininess of horses.

Oh, and Shimrod's Portrait, Still Life, and Memorize Scene Quality Fixer, plus the height adjustment one. If I'm painting a portrait for my legacy family I want to be able to actually see the sim past all the stupid specklings.

I am using:

Shimrods - No memories - can't play without

HP's Celebrity Mod

Black Cats - Cooking and Ingredients Overhaul - makes cooking much harder and interesting

a few mods from claudia sharon and Anach who make the game harder - more bills, housemaid cost more ...

My coffee mod, because I have been wanting to sit down with my house-guests, and have a cup since TS2. I know there was a coffee/tee tray in TS1 but I don't remember how it worked and could you actually share a drink with your guests.

The mod that lets you choose which memories your Sims have. It did wonders to my saving times, when I first deleted all pictureless memories via MC, and then put in that mod. It also did wonders to game-performance now that every Sim does not get a new memory every time they go to a park, or flush a toilet.

Twoftmama's Always put books away

Twoftmama's Children Can Adventure

Twoftmama's Easy Pregnancy Shorter Maternity Leave

Twoftmama's Faster Homework

Twoftmama's Faster Toddler Training and Bottomles Potty Combo Mod

Twoftmama's Instant Novel Writing

Twoftmama's Slow Motive Decay

Twoftmama's No Martial Arts Idle

and there are many more by TwoftMama that I use, but we would be here all day if I listed all her mods I use.

Bluegenjutsu's No Meteors falling- I don't want a meteor to hit and kill my Sims, so I installed this mod to prevent it in the first place.

Bluegenjutsu's No Route Fail Animation and No Foot Tapping- They still get the route block thought bubble above their head, but they don't tap their foot or throw a hissy fit.

Bluegenjutsu's No Autonomous Call to Chat-I love this mod because I have a lot of Ghost Hunter Sims and I want them to banish spirits/ghosts not call friends in the middle of a job.

Bluegenjutsu's No Autonomous Check out my Awesome Belt- I have a lot of Sims that want to learn Martial Arts when they are in China, and the check out my belt thing gets annoying.

again we would be here all day if I listed all of Bluegenjutsu's mods I use.

Oh, I can't for the life of me remember which versions I have, but the various "Put away all fruit/fish/books from inventory" ones are GODSENDS. Especially the books. I tend to save up a bunch of money and then buy, like, every book in the bookstore at once. And then spend 30 minutes real time dragging the books into the shelf one by one.

Jasumi's No Autonomous Computer Games - I have this obnoxious bug that makes the video game computer sounds like 540358502385 x louder even if sound is off, etc. This is the only thing I've found to fix that.
EsmeraldaF's No coughing/choking - Not sure why EA thought this was a great idea for not slob sims. :/
FreakishManda's Revised Writing Skill mod - Originally used it for faster writing, but the higher royalties and unlocking books at a logical point of progression is very nice.

I also use Twoftmama's Put away all books and Bluegenjutsu's No Route Fail Animation, can't live without it.

I've also used a couple of Fireproof Fireplace mods, so I can have a nice auto fireplace AND a rug at the same time. And not worry about a fire everytime it comes on.

@Lemonez - Does the computer game mod actually fix the sound? Or does it just stop you from getting startled from the obnoxiously loud computer games. I have that too. I HATE how loud the computer games are. I started noticing it after patch 1.26 or so I think.

My small mods, which are very helpfull but not really necessary for me :
- Delphy's Magic Garden Gnome : to use after my sim is max skill in gardening.
- Buzz's Box of Seeds : to prevent a sim from using perfect ingredients for cooking and because I like to keep a sims inventory as empty as possible.
- I also sometimes use a faster skill learning mod (50%) and one that gives clubs longer opening hours, but i dont have these installed atm.

My major mods are mainly Twallan's. These determine my patch lvl, because I don't like The Sims without those mods.

I have been wanting to install ani's coffee mod and something for the coughing while eating, but I keep forgetting.
The essentials...

No intro

Buzzler's Carpool Disabler

Shimrods Memories Disabled

whiterider's NoCurfew

HP's tiny texture mods. I can't play without them anymore or else I will become blind from all the sparkling.

No intro

Winterhart's I hate hats

Buzzler's Same energy for every bed

This thread rocks! So many juicy mods to try next. Almost as awesome as Where can I find...? section that I like to browse through

Anything Buzzler, on this site. Most helpful, the one that doesn't make the roof tool automatically come up on a finished room. I hated having to go and remove the roof because I forgot to click the button that does that before building. Ugh.

Cmomoney's circulating fan. It's an object and a mod for future modders to have animations for a circulating fan. Love it!

Anything Twallan. I don't want to play without those mods.

Twoftmama's mods. I have quite a few from her and Bluegenjutsu on TFM's Naughty Sims Asylum. They make the game more sensible.

@kewpie - Had I known you were planning to moderate this thread, I wouldn't have replied, as it could pull me into a discussion I don't want to have. But fine...your logic is that the censor blur is good because it hides a silly animation. By extension, you should also want to do likewise with other lame Sims animations like z's coming out of ones head while sleeping or musical notes appearing magically in the air when a guitar is played, or the awful trampoline animation. I doubt that you are making serious attempts to mod the many other lame Sims animations beyond the sparkly stuff ones in Awesomemod.

Actually, this is one of the rare cases where I agree with EA on their choice. They knew there would be censor defeating mods, so they left the clothes on. Great! I want to see those clothes. I don't want a high degree of realism for go potty animations...ewwww!!!
:p

Wow, I never realized the discussion about potty animations could be so heated! Sorry, but that makes me laugh

Anyway, my favorite little mods (that have not yet been mentioned) are:

Inge Jones' Lot Sizes. Being able to plop down lots of the size *I* want is so freeing! I have almost all of Buzzler's fixes (Yay for the scribbling pad for technophobes ) and Aikea Guinea's No Drift Freecam mod.

As I said, it's a discussion I didn't want to have. I just feel my opinion is a valid one.

I didn't realize I was moderating anything. I just agree with Pescado's decision. I was just saying that there are lots of censor removal mods out there that do what you want to do and only ONE mod that does what Pescado's does. So I wouldn't want it to change, since it's the only one out there.

kiatyn -- Oh yeah. I forgot about that mod. I thought that came standard with the game and then it went away. I just realized that I had Inge's mod, deleted it and then forgot to put it back in.

Ani's No shopping from the refrigerator mod. I love this mod, it makes the supermarket and coupons from the newspaper actually playable. Ani's drinking mod...Because I now have a blast sitting back and watching my sims get drunk at the club...fun times!! Enriei vampire attack mod, because what's the point of playing with the undead if they can't kill anyone. Twofeet mama faster homework mod, faster paint skills, and no immigration mod. Shimrods, no celebrities, vampires, move, and emigration mod. And that's about it, with the exception of Twallan's overwatch and mastercontroller +integration

It just makes them not autonomously play video games. So if they still do, you have to command them to play, it will still be ridiculously loud.

Like I said, I haven't found anything that actually fixes the sound issue. But this at least circumvents the issue.