A
lot of people say it's difficult to make friends in The Sims 1;
some
even say that it's impossible. But it's easy if you understand how the
game works!
Interests
When the Hot Date expansion pack came out, sims acquired a wider range of possible interests, and sims became uninterested in any conversation that wasn't about one of their interests. Given that there are 15 possible interests, and the average sim has five of those interests, it's very easy to find your sim talking about things that the other sim doesn't care about.
The problem was that Maxis forgot to go back and ADD interests to the sims that existed before Hot Date came out. So people like Bob & Betty Newbie or Bella & Mortimer Goth didn't have ANY interests, which meant they hated Every Single Topic of conversation.
But it's easy to give those sims interests! Just play their household for a couple of minutes and take them to a community lot. You can take them to Old Town (if you have Unleashed) or Downtown (if you have Hot Date) or Magic Town (if you have Makin' Magic). Taking the sims to a community lot automatically gives sims interests, so once you've taken them somewhere, bring them home, save the game, and they'll now have interests.
Of course, since there are FIFTEEN possible interests, and your sim will only have around five interests, it's completely possible to have no overlap between your interests and the interests of the sim you want to make friends with.
I play every household for a minute, so that I can look up their interests and write them down. Then, when a sim walks by my house or I meet them on a community lot, I can look up that sim's interests on my list, compare them to those of the sims in my household, and have a sim with at least two or three common interests talk to the person. Or, if no one in my household has at least two interests in common with the other sim, I don't bother talking with them.
Any topic the sim has seven or more points in is an interest. Any topic they have three or fewer points in is a topic that will make them LOSE relationship points if your sim talks about it. If they have more than three but fewer than seven points in an interest, they won't enjoy talking about it, but they won't lose points if you talk about it with them.
If you want to change a sim's interests (and don't want to use a mod), you can buy magazines downtown. Reading a magazine will give a sim a point in the topic you're having them read about, BUT it will also take away a point from a random interest.
When your sims are just standing around talking, you can't change what they talk about. But if they're doing a group activity -- eating at a table, watching TV, playing chess, and so on -- you can click on your sim, and one of the options will be Change Topic. If they're talking about something the other sims aren't interested in, you can make them change the topic of conversation to something the other sims DO like.
You can tell what the sims are currently talking about by looking at the pictures above their heads and comparing them to the pictures on the interests panel. A boat, plane, or car means they're talking about Travel, whereas a shoe, eyeglasses, or necktie means they're talking about Style, and so on. If the other sim thinks about something with a large red X through it, it means they hate that topic -- don't talk about that!
Personality
No sim enjoys having the same social interaction repeated over and over again, but WHICH social interactions a sim enjoys depend partly on their personality. Nice sims like compliments and hugs, whereas Mean sims hate them. Playful sims love to be tickled and to hear jokes, but Serious sims hate those things.
I make families of 8 sims that exist only to be friends with my main sims, and all 8 of the sims in these families have the following personality:
Neat: 0
Outgoing: 6
Active: 7
Playful: 6
Nice: 6
This personality ensures that they enjoy interacting with others (Outgoing 6), that they enjoy compliments and hugs (Nice 6) and that they like jokes and tickling (Playful 6). The Active 7 is there to make sure they can stand up long enough to have a long conversation, without problems with Comfort. (Make sure you give these families a phone, so you can invite them over!)
When I meet one of these sims for the first time, my interactions go like this:
Talk - Talk - Entertain (Joke) - Compliment - Tickle - Talk - Talk - Entertain (Joke) - Compliment - Tickle - Hug
At that point, we're usually friends. :-)
Tickle is a great interaction because it gives EIGHT points towards a relationship. But sims hate it when you repeat an interaction too quickly, so you can't just Tickle-Tickle-Tickle; you must have several other interactions between each time you tickle.
Sims usually fend off compliments unless you've gotten to know them a bit -- a relationship of around 20 is good -- which is why I don't do it until after two Talks and an Entertain.
Nice sims love hugs with friends or people who are very close to being friends, but even nice sims won't hug total strangers.
Community Lots
Community lots are your secret weapon in the quest to make friends! When you go to a community lot, there won't be many sims there at first, but sims will flock to the lot after you've been there for a few minutes, and soon there should be five or ten sims on the lot. If you have your list of which sims have which interests, you can see which of the sims currently present has several interests in common with yours. Seek out THAT person and talk with them. The advantage of community lots is that there are more sims to choose from, so there's a greater chance of finding a sim that has at least three interests in common with yours. And if you have Unleashed and go to Old Town, you can have every sim in your family busily making friends at once. It's easy to go to a community lot and come back with as many new friends as there are people in your family.
And of course, you can play a family that's not your main family and have THEM do the work of making friends. This is so easy that it feels kinda like cheating to me, so I don't usually use this tactic, but if you don't mind the cheaty feel to it, it's certainly an easy way of getting your friendship numbers up. :-)
Everything I've said so far uses the normal workings of the game. If you're willing to use a mod, though, things get even easier.
Two Mods that help a LOT
If you're willing to use a mod, you can use my mod The Interest Adjuster on every sim in town, so as to give EVERY sim the same interests. Child sims have several different possible interests than adults do, such as Toys and School. They also have four possible interests in common with adults: Weather, Sports, Outdoors, and Music. So The Interest Adjuster gives any sim who clicks on it interests in Weather, Sports, Outdoors, and Music, so that EVERY sim will have at least four common interests. If every sim has four common interests, making friends is a snap!
If you'd prefer a different interest pattern (though I did choose this pattern for a good reason), you can go to SomeSimThings and download the Supersculpture that Hedda made, which will allow you to set your sim's interest points to 10 in any topic you choose. You can do this with as many interests as you like. Do this with every sim in the neighborhood, and making friends becomes VERY easy. The Supersculpture (which also has a lot of other useful functions) is at http://www.somesimthings.com/Obj/05Obj.htm
Another useful mod
Of course, even once you've MADE friends, you have to maintain them, because your friendships lose points every single day. You can invite a sim over every night in order to maintain those relationships, but that leaves little time for raising your skills. Or you can get my mod that eliminates relationship decay.
If you hate mods
But even if you don't want to use mods, knowing that pre-made sims don't have interests but will acquire some if you take them to a community lot will help. Keeping a list of who has what interests will help. Making sims with easy-to-befriend personalities will help. Knowing that repeating a social interaction too quickly makes that interaction fail will help. Put all of these together, and you really CAN make friends in The Sims 1 quite easily!
Happy simming!
I don't get mail here at Corylea.com, but if you need to contact me, you can reach me at ModTheSims or at Reddit; I am Corylea in both places.
Back to the list of Sims 1 mods
Interests
When the Hot Date expansion pack came out, sims acquired a wider range of possible interests, and sims became uninterested in any conversation that wasn't about one of their interests. Given that there are 15 possible interests, and the average sim has five of those interests, it's very easy to find your sim talking about things that the other sim doesn't care about.
The problem was that Maxis forgot to go back and ADD interests to the sims that existed before Hot Date came out. So people like Bob & Betty Newbie or Bella & Mortimer Goth didn't have ANY interests, which meant they hated Every Single Topic of conversation.
But it's easy to give those sims interests! Just play their household for a couple of minutes and take them to a community lot. You can take them to Old Town (if you have Unleashed) or Downtown (if you have Hot Date) or Magic Town (if you have Makin' Magic). Taking the sims to a community lot automatically gives sims interests, so once you've taken them somewhere, bring them home, save the game, and they'll now have interests.
Of course, since there are FIFTEEN possible interests, and your sim will only have around five interests, it's completely possible to have no overlap between your interests and the interests of the sim you want to make friends with.
I play every household for a minute, so that I can look up their interests and write them down. Then, when a sim walks by my house or I meet them on a community lot, I can look up that sim's interests on my list, compare them to those of the sims in my household, and have a sim with at least two or three common interests talk to the person. Or, if no one in my household has at least two interests in common with the other sim, I don't bother talking with them.
Any topic the sim has seven or more points in is an interest. Any topic they have three or fewer points in is a topic that will make them LOSE relationship points if your sim talks about it. If they have more than three but fewer than seven points in an interest, they won't enjoy talking about it, but they won't lose points if you talk about it with them.
If you want to change a sim's interests (and don't want to use a mod), you can buy magazines downtown. Reading a magazine will give a sim a point in the topic you're having them read about, BUT it will also take away a point from a random interest.
When your sims are just standing around talking, you can't change what they talk about. But if they're doing a group activity -- eating at a table, watching TV, playing chess, and so on -- you can click on your sim, and one of the options will be Change Topic. If they're talking about something the other sims aren't interested in, you can make them change the topic of conversation to something the other sims DO like.
You can tell what the sims are currently talking about by looking at the pictures above their heads and comparing them to the pictures on the interests panel. A boat, plane, or car means they're talking about Travel, whereas a shoe, eyeglasses, or necktie means they're talking about Style, and so on. If the other sim thinks about something with a large red X through it, it means they hate that topic -- don't talk about that!
Personality
No sim enjoys having the same social interaction repeated over and over again, but WHICH social interactions a sim enjoys depend partly on their personality. Nice sims like compliments and hugs, whereas Mean sims hate them. Playful sims love to be tickled and to hear jokes, but Serious sims hate those things.
I make families of 8 sims that exist only to be friends with my main sims, and all 8 of the sims in these families have the following personality:
Neat: 0
Outgoing: 6
Active: 7
Playful: 6
Nice: 6
This personality ensures that they enjoy interacting with others (Outgoing 6), that they enjoy compliments and hugs (Nice 6) and that they like jokes and tickling (Playful 6). The Active 7 is there to make sure they can stand up long enough to have a long conversation, without problems with Comfort. (Make sure you give these families a phone, so you can invite them over!)
When I meet one of these sims for the first time, my interactions go like this:
Talk - Talk - Entertain (Joke) - Compliment - Tickle - Talk - Talk - Entertain (Joke) - Compliment - Tickle - Hug
At that point, we're usually friends. :-)
Tickle is a great interaction because it gives EIGHT points towards a relationship. But sims hate it when you repeat an interaction too quickly, so you can't just Tickle-Tickle-Tickle; you must have several other interactions between each time you tickle.
Sims usually fend off compliments unless you've gotten to know them a bit -- a relationship of around 20 is good -- which is why I don't do it until after two Talks and an Entertain.
Nice sims love hugs with friends or people who are very close to being friends, but even nice sims won't hug total strangers.
Community Lots
Community lots are your secret weapon in the quest to make friends! When you go to a community lot, there won't be many sims there at first, but sims will flock to the lot after you've been there for a few minutes, and soon there should be five or ten sims on the lot. If you have your list of which sims have which interests, you can see which of the sims currently present has several interests in common with yours. Seek out THAT person and talk with them. The advantage of community lots is that there are more sims to choose from, so there's a greater chance of finding a sim that has at least three interests in common with yours. And if you have Unleashed and go to Old Town, you can have every sim in your family busily making friends at once. It's easy to go to a community lot and come back with as many new friends as there are people in your family.
And of course, you can play a family that's not your main family and have THEM do the work of making friends. This is so easy that it feels kinda like cheating to me, so I don't usually use this tactic, but if you don't mind the cheaty feel to it, it's certainly an easy way of getting your friendship numbers up. :-)
Everything I've said so far uses the normal workings of the game. If you're willing to use a mod, though, things get even easier.
Two Mods that help a LOT
If you're willing to use a mod, you can use my mod The Interest Adjuster on every sim in town, so as to give EVERY sim the same interests. Child sims have several different possible interests than adults do, such as Toys and School. They also have four possible interests in common with adults: Weather, Sports, Outdoors, and Music. So The Interest Adjuster gives any sim who clicks on it interests in Weather, Sports, Outdoors, and Music, so that EVERY sim will have at least four common interests. If every sim has four common interests, making friends is a snap!
If you'd prefer a different interest pattern (though I did choose this pattern for a good reason), you can go to SomeSimThings and download the Supersculpture that Hedda made, which will allow you to set your sim's interest points to 10 in any topic you choose. You can do this with as many interests as you like. Do this with every sim in the neighborhood, and making friends becomes VERY easy. The Supersculpture (which also has a lot of other useful functions) is at http://www.somesimthings.com/Obj/05Obj.htm
Another useful mod
Of course, even once you've MADE friends, you have to maintain them, because your friendships lose points every single day. You can invite a sim over every night in order to maintain those relationships, but that leaves little time for raising your skills. Or you can get my mod that eliminates relationship decay.
If you hate mods
But even if you don't want to use mods, knowing that pre-made sims don't have interests but will acquire some if you take them to a community lot will help. Keeping a list of who has what interests will help. Making sims with easy-to-befriend personalities will help. Knowing that repeating a social interaction too quickly makes that interaction fail will help. Put all of these together, and you really CAN make friends in The Sims 1 quite easily!
Happy simming!
I don't get mail here at Corylea.com, but if you need to contact me, you can reach me at ModTheSims or at Reddit; I am Corylea in both places.
Back to the list of Sims 1 mods