Just some random things I discovered. Probably most know them, but just in case..

1. You can duplicate the Sultan's Tabernacle in build mode, with the eyedropper tool. So you can buy one and just make more for the whole family, without needing ancient coins. Or (with "Buy On This Lot") replace all the tents in the Egypt base camp with tabernacles, and still have yours at the end.

2. Debug Enabler is a pain, because it makes a cog mouse-pointer everywhere. If you want to find traps or secret doors, disable it or its menu.

3. You CAN redo adventures without starting a whole new family in a whole new town. I have the testing cheats enabled with AwesomeMod, in which case SHIFT-CTRL-CLICK the sim and erase their opportunity history, but you can do the same from Debug Enabler's menu. (Caveat: it will also erase all their past skill opportunities, job opportunities, etc.) Unlike using some tools to operate on your saved game, this is super-safe and doesn't break anything, far as I can tell. Other than, you know, the caveat already mentioned.

4. You can just delete any files that start with China_, Egypt_ or France_ and don't end in ExportDB from your saved game directory, so the worlds reset too. This also allows you for example to send the son or daughter on adventures too, even though mum cleaned all the tombs. You can skip #3 in that case, since they haven't completed any adventures yet, so they don't need them erased first. (Caveat: every change to those worlds will be gone. That includes vacation homes, so take your trophies and sell the house first.)

5. University arcades and stuff seem to work quite well in vacation worlds. I built a hangout in France and nobody was coming there. So I added some bowling lanes and stuff, and called it an Arcade, and lo and behold, the game generated about half a dozen people (not including the bartenders) who play there when it's open. Fun stuff.

6. If you have Kama Simtra installed... oh dear... when you first go to a world, everyone is a virgin, basically. They can have kids and grandkids and whatnot, and still have zero woohoos under their belt. Trying to fuck my way through China, France and Egypt was a rather... unsatisfying experience. My sim was a black belt in *ahem* marital arts, but everyone else just couldn't keep it up. I'm telling you, it was like being a woman. Oh, wait. Things got a lot more fun after disabling Kama Simtra.

7. The store MultiTab 6000 is your friend. You can refill both social and fun very fast by playing the online social game. Or raise whatever skill you wish by listening to a tabcast while exploring a tomb, including the photography and nectar making skills that are important in WA. (Caveat: your sim might decide they want to sit down to use it, and walk half the great pyramid to find a chair, possibly running into traps and whatnot.)

8. Bring a jetpack from the future, if you have ITF. You can wear it, then click anywhere and choose "Fly Here". Especially in China or Egypt, it's MUCH faster than running along those twisty paths. It's essentially a teleport, really, except it only works outside.

9. Fairies have it the easiest, since a fairy house can be plopped just about anywhere. I think it takes even less place than a sleeping bag. But if not, do bring a sleeping bag too. Yeah, tents recharge energy faster, but need a lot more place. You may need to go back half a tomb just to find a place to plop one.

10. So you got a bunch of ancient coins and bought the Sultan's Tabernacle. Congrats. Keep the old tent in your inventory too, because the tabernacle is too tall to be placed in most tombs. Really, most of the time you can only place it outside.

Well, these were my tips. Please do share yours.

Oh yeah, I forgot the most important one:

11. Use EVERYTHING that can be used. Literally anything can be a trigger. Chests, chairs, tombstones (ESPECIALLY tombstones), you name it. If you can mourn those dudes, one of them might open a way for you. If you can push a statue for no particular reason, because there's no floor switch that needs it, yeah, it might still do something. I even had a floor hole appear when I took a dump on a toilet in a tomb. I'm not kidding.

But don't you also have to place new copies of the tombs? Won't they stay open and explored?

12. If you have an Alchemist, stock up on Invigorating Elixirs and Vials of Bliss (or even better, Vials of Potent Bliss and Potent Invigorating Elixirs or whatever they're called). This will save you the hassle of having to stop for hours for your Sim to sleep.

13. Haven't tried it yet, but you could add a few LLAMAs around Al Simhara, especially around the Ruins of Karnak and Abu Simbel, it takes ages to get there on foot.

14. The sink in the Shang Simla Academy faces the wrong way i.e. the toilet, so Sims can't access it. You'll have to rotate it yourself (and possibly extend the tiny bathroom too).

15. Also in Shang Simla, the tiny lot on the mountain, the one with the cherry tree, has a bird spawner. It will regularly spawn flocks of birds in the shape of a fan during the day, and fireflies during the night (you can't catch them, though), and has a great view of the sky and Shang Simla, so it's a great place for taking pictures.



16. If you want to encourage Sims moving around town, switch the residential lots from "Ownable Lot" to "Non-Player Sims Only". Otherwise, locals won't be able to move into "Ownable Lots" because they're designated as buyable only for the active family.

17. Seasons breaks the little island/fairy garden (?) in France, because now you can simply swim from the shore to it instead of having to go through the dive wells. And since the entrance to the tomb on land is blocked by giant boulders, I think you don't even need to get Pangu's Axe.

18. Windsurfing in Champs Les Sims is highly recommended! Probably the best water routing out of the three vacation worlds.

Tombs do stay open, and keystones do stay used, hence point 4. If you delete the worlds from your load game, next time you go there they'll be brand new and generated from scratch. All tombs closed, all keystones unused, etc.

The only problem I'm currently encountering is that Pangu's Axe won't be there if your household already got it. Or at least I'm guessing that's why. I don't know EA's coding. I might have simply run into a glitch. You might have to do some creative exporting the sim to the bin and reimporting, so the game thinks it's a new family.

Or just pick a different sim in the same town to do the adventures again and just do point 4. It's still less of a hassle than starting a whole new world just to do the adventures again. At least you'll still know everyone in town and stuff.

Also at your 16, I'd add that local sims also move in apartment lots. Not sure what's the point of those, though, since NPCs don't seem to get roommates.

I haven't played like this in a long time, but at one point in the past I'm 60% sure Pangu's Axe was in the temple when I moved the family to another town (they already had it in their inventory). I didn't take it from the temple 'cause I was afraid of breaking the game.
Are the apartment-type lots meant to attract roommates?

Thought of some more things:

19. To maximize the use of buildings in Shang Simla without having to build on lots, just make use of the four towers in the corners of the city! You'll have to go into Edit Town and enter "enablelotlocking true" in the cheat console to be able to edit them, as they're zoned as Hidden Tombs so they don't appear in Map View. You can either turn them into other lots or decorate them, or (like I did) put rabbithole rugs at the entrance (or the full buildings, if you use basements). Now I have a City Hall/Military/Police tower, a Spa tower, a Theater tower, and a Business Office/Restaurant tower. The best part is that you won't have to spend ages trying to build something and fit it within the aesthetic of the town - you already have buildings you can use right there!

20. The cafe in Champs Les Sims has a lot of space to expand - two empty stories, IIRC. You can create a cafe/bookstore combo, a cafe/arcade combo, or even a hotel. The Nectary is also quite spacious, with a few bedrooms - but since the lot is quite possibly the biggest tomb in France, it can take a while to render if you keep switching away from it.

21. The palace in Shang Simla appears as "The Forbidden City" in Sims' wishes, but as "Halls of the Lost Army" in Map View, and "Forbidden Palace" if going by street name. It confused the hell out of me when I first got the wish, because I had no clue where to go. I only found out after I sent my Sim basically everywhere, and the wish was fulfilled while he was on that lot, lol.

22. Editing any vacation destination from home will prompt a "Traveling to..." loading screen, and will take the same time as actually sending a Sim there.

23. Playing the guitar around mummies has a high chance of disrupting their normal behavior i.e. they're supposed to attack the Sim but instead sit and listen to the guitar or wander around aimlessly, and will never attack. You have to either reset the mummy (may not work), delete it, or reload the game, since this breaks any opportunity that has to do with your Sim fighting a mummy.

24. The farthest pond in Champs Les Sims (the large one near the cemetery) has a fish spawner that is too close to the shore, and buried in the ground. Sims can't use it.

When you move a family in a new town, at least via the bin anyway, their HOUSEHOLD completed opportunity history is erased. (Checked with the Neighbourhood Workshop in read-only mode.) The individual sims may still be unable to take some adventures because they personally completed them. At least unless you use Shimrod's unlimited adventures mod, anyway. I don't, hence discovering that I can use the method at point 3 to reset the sim's adventures too.

At your point 22, I'd add, perhaps more importantly "AND BACK". You also get a loading screen when returning to the game afterwards, just as long as, well, loading the main town. So, yeah, good point. I always edit vacation worlds while I'm there.

Anyway, more random stuff:

25. NonaMena's adventure boards work on residential lots too (thanks lindali365 for pointing that out.) So you can take adventures right from your vacation home. Or get UL type social-group dares in your home town, and right on your own lot at that. ("Dare to woohoo someone at the party." Sure. Hubby, come over here.)

26. You can't live on any other communal lots than Base Camp on vacation, so no point in placing apartments, dorms, sororities, etc. I tried.

27. If you're a celebrity, NRaas Register is your friend, citizen. Disabling paparazzi can be a life saver. (Though people will still interrupt half of what you can do to ask for an autograph.) Alternately, just make all 3 of them 5 star celebrities and let them chase each other around, like the 3 stooges

28. If you gift a Kenspa (or even motorcycle or car or whatever) to locals, they'll actually use those. Since all your martial arts spar competition competitors will be the same couple of sims, over and over again, this saved me a lot of waiting for them to pedal their rear over for a ranked spar. Granted, it costs money, but my sim was rich as it is, and literally won 3 million at the lottery after getting the numbers from the future. So now she gifts motorbikes and hoverboards all around the world. Plus, hey, relationship boost.

29. The locals may decide to abort and go to the toilet every time you have to hand in a quest or report for one. Worse yet, at times (typically at night), they decide to come out and immediately abort and go back in. Just keep clicking that button all the time, and they won't abort.

30. Even though Shang Simla Sims with their hidden Asian (Chinese) trait eat using chopsticks for every meal, actually there is one meal that forces them to eat with spoon: Mac n Cheese.

31. Do not ever change the traits of foreign Sims via Master Controller's CAS, even it is just to make change for one trait, the change resulting the foreign Sims losing their hidden trait.

32. Don't know if anyone know this trick, I figured out how to create a zombie, although EA didn't provide playable Zombie from beginning in Supernatural EP's CAS feature. Be a mummy. How to be a mummy, make your Sim sleeps in sarcophagus (you can find on buydebug, it's the scary dark one), after gets out from sarcophagus, the Sim becomes mummy, change the Sim appearance using Master Controller's CAS, replace the mummy with custom zombie (human Sim) you made in library bin. After applying the change, the appearance of mummy becomes custom zombie (human Sim) but he or she still retains the mummy animation that walks like a zombie and has his or her bladder and energy bar mummified. To revert back being a normal human, make the Sim sleeps in sarcophagus (find on buydebug, it's the normal Egyptian looking one).

33. If you buy a chest from the General Goods store, you can place it at home, and then shift-click it to have it contain a treasure.
Make it a good treasure, though, because after that the only way to put things in or take them out is to have a sim actually open it, which removes half the usefulness of buying the chest.

34. In France, that little campground has two ladies restrooms and no men's. You have to swap out one of the doors yourself.

Well, if you're going to add treasure at home, you can also do the IMHO even more useful:

35. Add wine... err... Nectar racks at home, make them tasteable, set the treasure component to something like ancient nectar or the most expensive one. (Be sure to scroll down in the list. DON'T set one of the §§§§§ options.) You can then drink wine for free for all eternity.

Better yet, if you play a vampire, and if you added enough wine racks, there's a decent chance to get some blood wine (err... "plasma fruit nectar") in one or another of them. Free meal and a moodlet before going to work FTW.

For bonus points, if you have a butler, that guy is an alcoholic. Can't leave a full glass lying around if his stomach contents depended on it. Watch him do the "100 yard dash to the bathroom" by Willy Makeit some 3 times if you left 3 glasses of blood wine lying around.

Even better, if you have Bonehilda, she'll drink the blood wine, and it'll pass right through her into a puddle on the floor. Then she'll run to the bathroom to puke too :p

Ok, so I'm easily entertained :p

36. Vampires get a full thirst bar and never get the "Stuffed" moodlet or gain weight from living on blood wine. So yeah, whether you make your own or use free wine racks, it's worth it.

37. If you're a vampire and make your own bloodwine, try 6 Life Fruit, 3 Flame Fruit, 1 Plasma Fruit. Max moodlets you can get from a glass, and probably the highest priced combination in the game.

38. If you're a vampire, consider hauling a few bottles of the above with you on adventures. (Or for that matter, University, future world, whatever.) Does wonders for the mood when you're hungry, tired and soaked in some tomb.

CAVEAT: Just be warned that your sim will want to place the glasses on a table, and sit on a chair to drink. Possibly triggering some trap on the way. Try planning accordingly, and if in doubt, meh, go with a plasma fruit instead.


... and, I guess, now you know how I came to play an alcoholic vampire :p

@Moraelin That sounds like a great eccentric vampire, pouring the wine in glasses. Because only peasants chug straight from the bottle, lol.

39. Getting the Collection Helper LTW is almost a must if you plan on doing adventures. The early ones involve lots of collecting, and while you do get map tags where the items are, it's highly recommended you build a reasonable supply of them before you get the actual adventures requesting them. For example, I've found that opal is super rare in France and may take literally days to spawn once depleted. If you have an opal on hand already, you won't need to wait while the adventure slot is taken up and you can't accept another one.

40. Don't fret if you're in France and get an opportunity to fetch pomegranates (which are in Egypt) or plums (which are in China)! IIRC there are two houses that have pomegranate and plum trees growing - if we consider the river as the southern point (horizontally), one of the houses is in the northwest corner of the town (large orchard IIRC), and the other is the castle on the far northwest (near the big pond). The castle isn't fenced in completely, so you can go ransack the garden anytime without having to be invited inside (especially since the lot may or may not be inhabited).

41. The only destination that has a Death Fish spawner is China. Egypt and France don't have any ponds in the graveyards.

42. The only non-stall toilet in the Shang Simla base camp (edit: on the ground floor) breaks a lot

Oh yes. My vampires are all posh and stuff. Plus, some of that stuff she's chugging on trips is like §500 a bottle. Might as well do it properly at that point. Even had one found in a tomb that was worth like 1500, and, well, down the hatch it went at the next table I found in that tomb :p

At home she even built the old family crypt under the house into a private wine cellar... err... chapel, so she can spend some time in communion with the *ahem* holy spirits every evening and morning

That said, aren't there two non-stall toilets in Shang Simla? One up there near the double bed, and one near the kitchen?

Personally I magically upgrade them to unbreakable the first thing I do when I get there. Same with the one at the academy and stuff.

Damn, this makes me want to start a new game and play a vampire again, haha.


Right, I forgot about that one - which is funny, considering how I normally direct my Sims to sleep in the bedroom near it. I guess I only remembered the one near the kitchen because every time I returned to the base camp I'd find it overflowing, dirty, and possibly quite stinky too.

On that note: the base camp in Shang Simla has three rooms at the top, one of which is a bedroom, another is a bathroom, and the third is also a bedroom...without the bed. IIRC there are two night stands already placed in the room, so I'm guessing EA either forgot to put in a bed, or wanted to leave it unfinished for some reason.

Yeah, I was also puzzled by the two nightstands and no bed between them. Especially since it's an exact mirror copy of the room on the other side of the toilet, except for the missing bed. So it's hard not to notice.

Not sure why they'd want to leave it unfinished, though. I mean, if it were an uni dorm, you can buy stuff there. But you're not supposed to buy your own stuff on base camps, so no idea what went through their heads.

Eh, I'm guessing it was either time constraints (had to rush the lot) or plain forgetfulness. The empty space is slightly annoying, I almost always clone the bed from the opposite room, along with putting some better showers in and giving each its own room.

43. More of a tip, but the graveyard in Al Simhara has a little mausoleum-type building that is perfect for placing a vampire altar. The walls are lined with arches, which provide a nice view of the Sphinx for taking pics, but the arch spaces won't count as the vampire being outdoors or hit by sunlight. I think you can also place an altar in one of the small mausoleums in France if playing a vampire, I'm pretty sure there's at least one you can enter without a keystone.

44. The common area (non-bed/bathroom) on the ground floor of the Shang Simla base camp is divided by cut-off walls, not arches. Maybe they decided to do it like this so dining Sims can enjoy the music from the stereo in the long hallway?

45. Not sure if this applies to the entire fence, but Sims can pass through the fence separating the road from the river/moat in Shang Simla.

46. I've found that setting certain community lots (like cafes) to "Small Market" or "Market" increases the number of Sims visiting. You can place special objects (registers, bars etc.) on the lots without having to worry about closing times, and they will work properly.

Well, more random stuff:

47. "Enablelotlocking true" lets you edit base camps in edit town. (Click that little lock symbol. And it needs testing cheats on.) Now you may say, "big deal, I can always just use Buy On This lot." Yeah, but this one also allows you to do stuff like reassign the old base camp as a big park or something, or just bulldoze it if you're sure you'll never want it again, and place your own custom base camp, before traveling there.

Caveat: go into edit mode AGAIN and make sure it's not set as a "Base Camp (EP11)". You can't live on an ITF base camp on world adventures, and it gets no adventure board. And trust me, it may have gotten screwed up the first time around.

48. Base camps are community lots, not homes. You don't get Stir Crazy. Good for writing those novels and stuff, is all I'm saying.

49. Registers or pro bars placed on community lots spawn employees. Base camps are community lots. So you can make a pretty deluxe hotel with bar and restaurant as a base camp.

50. Food synthesisers placed on community lots are fully upgraded from the start and spawn a local waiter. This one seems actually better than a food register employee, in that it's kinda like a maid too. I currently have Maya Wang doing the laundry on my Chinese base camp. ('Course, you need laundry gear for that.) And since it's a public lot, you don't pay a maid out of your own pocket.

I think the food is better too, and you don't need advanced tech skill yourself.

51. It should be pretty well known by now, but just in case: if you have a motorcycle, broom or car in your inventory when you go abroad, you get to use it there instead of a slow bike.

52. While the campgrounds in Egypt and China have different names, the campground in France are all named "Rose Campground" (I think all of them, there are at least two with the same name).

53. In the Copper Quarry in Egypt, one of the last rooms features an area that can only be accessed by zeneporting over a firy pit.

54. The Pyramid of the Wind (the one closest to the Ruins of Karnak) is the smallest and most disappointing tomb in the game So big, and so empty...

55. I posted about this before a while ago, but the lot with the boat wreck in Al Simhara has a skeleton submerged in the pond, under the boat:

Ah yes, walls in China seems to be more like a suggestion. My sim routinely clips through the wall surrounding the zen garden, or just takes a shortcut through the whole damn building at the hot springs. I guess when David Copperfield did that trick of passing right through the great wall, it wasn't a trick, it was just how chinese masonry works

Oh, right, 'nother thing:

56. Plantsims can't get soaked. They just absorb the water and get hydrated. On one hand, no negative moodlet in tombs, but also no fire protection.

57. Songs learned on holidays by locals, are sung while showering and other random moments of waiting, like in front of the stove,

And, of course, they choose to sing the first line over and over again, instead of finishing the whole damn song.
God help you if they know all six (?) songs.

58. At one point, you could Meditate the "Cursed!" moodlet away. Not sure if it's still there or they took it out in a patch, but it was really useful if you didn't want to bother with the Sphinx or the godawful screech of the snake basket. Theoretically, it should also be removed by a (Potent?) Cure Elixir or a Sunlight Charm.

59. It still baffles me how EA could introduce martial arts in an expansion with confrontations (with the mummies)...and leave said confrontations as basegame slapfights. OK, I get that the mummies in Egypt and France may not be as well versed in martial arts, but what about China??

60. When the time for going back home draws near, make sure you're not traveling within the vacation location. Your vehicles may stay behind when you leave!

61. You only need one Sim with a certain visa level to have longer holidays. With a level 0 and a level 1 Sim, I could go on longer holidays anyway.

62. If you want to have a kid with a foreigner but can't be arsed to take care of it or move the foreigner in, just woohoo with the foreigner, make sure he/she is pregnant, and travel home (alone / with everyone you initially came with). Then, when the travel moodlet wears off, visit the location again. Your kid will be a Child, and you can move them in if you have a high enough relationship with anyone in the household the kid is living in (you might as well be a total stranger to the kid).

This is because Sims below Child stage don't exist in vacation worlds (of course, only France, Egypt, and China; if you use other worlds as vacation spots, they'll most likely have younger kids living there)

63. Behind the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, in Al Simhara, there's a road with at least one mine entrance or alcove. It doesn't have any spawners or other attractions, but it's nice landscaping

And while looking for images, I discovered this gorgeous shot of the Market on the Wiki. It would've been so nice if the actual Market was this colorful and not-flat!

64. In the great pyramid you will find a bathroom at some place:

Yeah, that's the one where you get a floor hole if you use the toilet.

65. Some tombs lie under residential lots. You have to visit its household and at least introduce yourself, for you can go into the hidden tombs. You won't be blocked, won't get a warning and aren't forced to left when you enter the tomb. And when you make a mess in it, the resident will follow you to clean it up: