The Sims 3 - Expansion Pack Suggestions

[The Rose Dragon]

Do you still remember when expansion packs were a thing, instead of just DLC? Maxis does!

So anyway, I have a Windows PC, which seems to be only good for playing Bioware games, The Sims 3 and various visual novels. As such, I thought I'd collect most of the expansion packs for the second to make the most of it. The only problem is, they are rather expensive, so I need to pick the order in which I get them carefully, since I will probably only be able to get one every other month.

Currently, I only have World Adventures and Late Night. I am thinking I should get University Life next, but if anyone has any other suggestions, or an ideal order in which to get them, that would be peachy. Also, if any are worth just skipping, that would also be helpful.

[Avilan the Grey]

I stopped playing before seasons,
but for me:

Everything except supernatural, pets and university (just not into that; never played it in Sims 2 either).

[JadedDM]

I only have Seasons, and I only got it because my roommate wanted it. After the bloat from the Sims 2, I try and keep the EP's to a minimum. Each EP tends to have its own bugs and glitches, and each one slows down gameplay a bit, so if you install all of them...

Still, the Sims 4 is scheduled to come out soon. I'd suggest you wait a bit, because likely the prices for the Sims 3 EP's will drop soon and you'll get a better deal.

[Lamech]

Supernatural, world adventures, university, and ambitions are all pretty cool. Night Life I think was the name of another decent one?

If you had to pick one go with world adventures.

[The Rose Dragon]

I already have World Adventures and Late Night, as noted earlier.

[Squark]

Pets and Supernatural are both well regarded expansions, although there are a couple of things that can make the game too easy (The Midas Touch potion, for instance, and Dogs finding Tiberium while hunting can also give a massive cash boost if you have World Adventures and Supernatural. Particularly if you also have a gem cutter, since Tiberium Gem dust will still grow into a Large spire cut, so one Tiberium find can give you 160,000 simoleons after a few weeks sitting around). Ambitions is another solid expansion that introduces more interactive careers, and a variety of small quality of life tools.

Expansions that I'd be a bit wary of: Generations, Showtime, and Seasons are all a bit... on the small side. University, on the other hand, has a fair bit of content, but a lot of that content only shows up when you're on campus. Island Paradise has some cool features, but a lot of them are limited to the town introduced in the EP as adding large ocean areas to all the old towns was beyond the scope of the EP. It's also a bit buggy at the moment, as I understand.

Just a couple tips, though;
-Always install your Expansion packs in release order; If you have late night installed and pick up Ambitions, for instance, you should do a clean install of the whole game, as installing in non-chronological order tends to lead to bugs.
-If you're not actively opposed to Origin, it's worth waiting a bit before buying, as every two months or so EA sells the entire franchise for 50% off on Origin. You get better deals on downloads sometimes, but you can still pick up physical copies at a lower price
-If you haven't spent your free simpoints that come for registering the base game and World Adventures, it's not a bad idea to save them for sales in the store, especially if they work out the bugs with Complete Your Set. One particular piece of content worth checking out is the multi-tab, since tabcasts can really cut down the time your sims spend grinding skills (And it actually builds fun when you do homework on it, so it's handy for kids, too).

[Avilan the Grey]

It boils down to: Semi-realistic or not. That's why Supernatural is a no no for me.

[Squark]

Eh, all the EPs have some supernatural elements. Supernatural's just the most overt about it. The base game has ghosts and a variety of supernatural plants, World Adventures has Mummies and some mystical stuff in the tombs, Ambitions has Ghost hunters and Cheesy (in a good way) sci-fi elements, Late Night has Vampires, Generations has Imaginary Friends who really exist, Pets has unicorns, Showtime has Genies, University Life has Plant Sims, Seasons has Little Green Men, and Island Paradise has mermaids and krakens.


I guess with only 1-2 expansion packs, the fantastic elements can be avoided, but once you have most of them, there's just too much of it for me to consider the game "realistic"

[Castaras]

Depends what you want. I'm going to copypaste a reply I made on another forum for a similar question (first EP rather than one on top of), and can elaborate later.

My favourite EP is Ambitions. Self Employed careers, lots of new skills (with my favourite, Inventing), and some new careers that are more than just rabbit hole careers.

World Adventures gives you exploration of other countries, and adds in a bit of an RPG/Puzzle game aspect. It also gives new skills (Photography is the main one I always use), and a new place to find spouses.

Ambitions is my choice if I were to get my first EP. It allows Self-Employment careers with regards skill, adds in Sculpting, Inventing, the Consignment Store, and a couple of new interesting careers that you do stuff with yourself (Architecture, Stylist, Ghost Hunter, Investigator) rather than just seeing a sim wander into a rabbit hole.

Late Night, now that we can turn off celebrities and vampires, is not too shabby. More instruments, mixology skill, ability to set up a band. However, you only really see the interesting clubs in Bridgeport, which is horrifically laggy and buggy.

Generations adds in lots of little things, that are all very nice to have. Spiral Staircases, a couple of extra kiddie things, some new interactions at Teen, new pregnancy clothing (if you like making families). Nothing essential, but all very nice to have, especially when doing multi-generational families. Probably my third choice, alongside Seasons.

Showtime for me was very boring. All three careers were the same, and not things I particularly cared for. Can't even remember anything from it other than the three careers, and the horrific Katy Perry Sweet Treats that came around the same time.

Supernatural is very very fun. Probably my second choice for expansion pack, but then again I'm a big fan of making my characters different to the real life world. Witches, Werewolves, Fairies, and improved Vampires. Adds in Alchemy as a new skill, and my favourite town Moonlight Falls. Very fun.

Seasons is my third choice, alongside Generations. It adds in aliens occasionally, and (surprisingly) seasons. Winter is beautiful, only irritating thing is all the days off the EP gives to sims, making it a little more tricky to get kids up to grade A (especially in Winter. Logic becomes essential skill for adults to have).

University Life is a lot of fun. The university is fun, a little harder to do than careers back home. Only irritation is it adds in the social groups, and you can't get rid of the bloody social groups (at least, not last time I checked). It's the Celebrities thing all over again.

Island Paradise I haven't got round to playing yet. Preordered it, have it, but my computer has not been up to Sims recently. Gonna try it when I get round to installing Sims on the larger computer we have.

[Sajiri]

I have all the expansions, it depends really on what you want in the game.
Ambitions is fun for the professions, if you want to play them over the usual rabbithole careers.

Generations is kinda eh, it adds more interactions and such, I dont recall everything it added. Kind of only good if you like to play with families.

Pets is very fun, if you want the animals. Obviously if you don't want a pet there isnt much point in getting it.

Showtime is fun if you want to play the new professions acrobat musician or magician.

Supernatural is good since it adds a number of new fun lifestates and the alchemy skill.

Seasons doesn't add much exactly, but having the changing season is pretty nice.

University life...eh...I was pretty excited for that one but it wasnt so great. Unless you plan to go to uni in it there isn't much to it, but the actual university experience is pretty lackluster (it's also pretty damn buggy). It does give you the ability to earn up to 2 extra traits on sims though, so that's always a plus.

Island Paradise is incredibly fun to me, I had low expectations of it but it's definitely one of my faves now. The new world does have a lot of routing issues though, I'm not sure if it's specific to that one world or all of them, but a lot of people complain that since installing IP it's made their game really laggy, so you need to regularly clean caches and use NRAAS mods to make it play well.

[Lamech]

University Life is a lot of fun. The university is fun, a little harder to do than careers back home. Only irritation is it adds in the social groups, and you can't get rid of the bloody social groups (at least, not last time I checked). It's the Celebrities thing all over again.

Actually, I found the same thing to disable celebrity gain disables social group gain. Which IMO was annoying since I could deal with the groups, but celebs got meant every time my sim did something "wrong" everyone hated them. I swear my house was bugged by those guys. Pun not intended.

[Avilan the Grey]

Eh, all the EPs have some supernatural elements. Supernatural's just the most overt about it. The base game has ghosts and a variety of supernatural plants, World Adventures has Mummies and some mystical stuff in the tombs, Ambitions has Ghost hunters and Cheesy (in a good way) sci-fi elements, Late Night has Vampires, Generations has Imaginary Friends who really exist, Pets has unicorns, Showtime has Genies, University Life has Plant Sims, Seasons has Little Green Men, and Island Paradise has mermaids and krakens.


I guess with only 1-2 expansion packs, the fantastic elements can be avoided, but once you have most of them, there's just too much of it for me to consider the game "realistic"

Yes, but when the game auto-converts 50% of sims in town to fairies, witches or whatever it gets a little too much for me.

Edit: Showtime for me was very fun. Be aware though that Magician is potentially fatal. if you fail certain tricks, your sim will kill herself by mistake.

[Castaras]

Only autoconverts if you have the options set. They default to on, but you can turn it off to not autopopulate any of the supernatural groups.

[Avilan the Grey]

Only autoconverts if you have the options set. They default to on, but you can turn it off to not autopopulate any of the supernatural groups.

oh I know, but how many players actually know that?

[Castaras]

I'd have thought most of them if they ever looked in the options, especially considering the patch details were all advertised to have these slider additions.

[Sajiri]

Yes, but when the game auto-converts 50% of sims in town to fairies, witches or whatever it gets a little too much for me.

Edit: Showtime for me was very fun. Be aware though that Magician is potentially fatal. if you fail certain tricks, your sim will kill herself by mistake.

That's funny, I have all the options on because I want supernaturals..but in towns that aren't moonlight falls I never get any of them. Maybe it's because I use nraas story progression hmmm.

[Avilan the Grey]

That's funny, I have all the options on because I want supernaturals..but in towns that aren't moonlight falls I never get any of them. Maybe it's because I use nraas story progression hmmm.

Yeah, you have to manually tweak it, or easiest yet, turn it off until approx. 1 ingame week (to be on the safe side, just like with neighbours in empty towns and auto-created vampires, fairies and witches SHOULD be created by night of day 3) and then turn it back on.

[Squark]

That's funny, I have all the options on because I want supernaturals..but in towns that aren't moonlight falls I never get any of them. Maybe it's because I use nraas story progression hmmm.

NRAAS generally doesn't remove sims that are in place, which means only the created on demand paparazi, coworkers, and the like are going to have a chance of being supernaturals. Give it a generation or two, as the pre-created families die out, and some of the new immigrants will be supernaturals. When I sent a pair of test sims to college, about a third of their classmates were supernaturals of some kind (I think. I wasn't exactly counting), since all those classmates were randomly created to populate the college.

Or, if you prefer to speed things up, You can empty a large number of households and let NRAAS repopulate the town, or even just go on a potion-tossing binge.

For that matter, if you don't mind cheating, TestingCheatsEnabled and NRAAS's Master Controller CHeats both let you access Create A Sim and edit existing sims, so you could do things that way.

[Sajiri]

NRAAS generally doesn't remove sims that are in place, which means only the created on demand paparazi, coworkers, and the like are going to have a chance of being supernaturals. Give it a generation or two, as the pre-created families die out, and some of the new immigrants will be supernaturals. When I sent a pair of test sims to college, about a third of their classmates were supernaturals of some kind (I think. I wasn't exactly counting), since all those classmates were randomly created to populate the college.

Or, if you prefer to speed things up, You can empty a large number of households and let NRAAS repopulate the town, or even just go on a potion-tossing binge.

For that matter, if you don't mind cheating, TestingCheatsEnabled and NRAAS's Master Controller CHeats both let you access Create A Sim and edit existing sims, so you could do things that way.

I play with max lifespans so waiting on a generation doesnt work ^^; on the other hand last night I started rebuilding Sunlit Tides, I was already going to use mastercontroller to turn some people into mermaids, might as well do it with the other SNs as well