Better Mystery BoxI've improved the Mystery Box in two ways:
1. The Magic Starter Kit that the Mystery Man delivers lowers your room score dramatically.
This isn't a problem if you open the box right away, but if you intend to hold onto the box for awhile, it is a problem. I've hacked the box so that it has no effect on your room score.
Now if you want to play with magic later, but you're working on more mundane issues -- like getting a job -- in the beginning, you can hold onto the box without that huge room score decrease.
MysteryBoxNoRoomScoreHit.zip
2. Every time you cast a spell, you increase the magical aura of your lot, and once the magical aura gets high enough, your lot starts to grow magic crystals, which can be used for things and which are also just cool. This magical growth happens much faster if you live in Magic Town, but you need a lot of magic coins to buy a lot in magic town -- either 1000 or 1500, depending on the lot. The Magic Starter Kit usually gives you 35 magic coins, but this is just enough to buy a magic ingredient or two, nowhere near enough to buy a lot in magic town. By the time you've earned enough magic coins to buy a lot in Magic Town, you'll have wasted all that casting you did on your lot in the normal neighborhood.
Well, I've hacked the box so the Magic Starter Kit now gives you 1535 magic coins. This is the 35 coins for ingredients you normally get, plus 1500 to enable you to buy even the most expensive lot in Magic Town. It also has the "no room score decrease" hack included, just in case, though if you're moving to Magic Town, you probably want to open the box right away.
MysteryBoxMoreMagicCoins.zip
If you want the Mystery Man to simply NOT deliver the box at all, Hedda at SomeSimThings has a mod for that here.
Since both of these override an in-game object, you can only use one at a time. Use one or the other, not both!
Do NOT put this in your Downloads folder!
Installation -- Because this replaces a file the game normally uses, it doesn't go where new objects go; it goes into the folder that houses the object it's replacing, which is the Maxis\ExpansionPack7 folder.
If you decide you don't want this hack anymore, simply delete the file, and the game will go back to using the version that's contained inside your ExpansionPack7.far file.
Since this mods a file that came into the game with the Makin' Magic expansion pack, you obviously have to have that expansion pack -- or The Complete Collection -- for this file to be of any use.
I made these mods for my own use, but I went to the trouble of uploading them in an attempt to make my fellow simmers happy. So if you enjoy any of these mods, I'd love to hear about it! I don't get mail at corylea.com, but you can leave a comment in the thread announcing these mods at ModTheSims or Reddit or send me a PM at either of those places; I'm Corylea at both.
Have fun!
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