Various Tweaks

I just cleaned up my page of the old Tweaks posts, they will all be collected here from now on. I'm adding them back little by little to che

I just cleaned up my page of the old Tweaks posts, they will all be collected here from now on. I'm adding them back little by little to check them, so for now I'm only going to post the ones that have been tested.

UPDATES:

16/05/2026

• Updated for May 12 Patch.

  Gameplay Socials

• Deprecated

  Replace Burnt Hood (Fixed by EA)
  
  Some of these mods require the Core Library (*)
  Click on the category to open the file folder on Drive.

Basegame

• Faster Autonomy and Less Idles [ VIDEO ]: Makes autonomy faster by reducing the likelihood of them choosing to run an idle instead of a target interaction. Makes them less likely to stand by without running an interaction for long times. Basically autonomy in The Sims 4 is slow not because of the lag but because Maxis made it this way on purpose, likely to give players the time to catch sims before they do something stupid and to give them time to stop interactions before the relationship goes downhill. This mod makes the game far more challenging and unpredictable so you've been warned, this is especially true if you use the tropes from Growing Together and Lovestruck.

• Gameplay Socials (*) : I think I never posted this before. These are a couple of social interactions with gameplay effect that I think are missing in vanilla game.

  • "Discuss Hurt Feelings" with sims that have a negative sentiment towards another sim. The interaction is under "Friendly" -> "Deep Thoughts" and, if successful, reduces the duration of said negative sentiments by a small amount.

  • "Leave me Alone!" is a mean interaction (under "Mean", no subcategory) that once ran on a sim, makes them leave the other sim alone for 6h (only works if you have autonomy on, the other sim will not pick the active sim for conversations). I made this one when For Rent came out, Maxis changed something and sims now socialise way more to the point of being annoying especially when another sim is doing something else like cooking.

  • "Request Alone Time" is the nice version of the interaction above, under "Friendly", same effect but it won't make your sim lose relationship point with the other sim if successful (the interaction fails if the sims don't know each other enough, it will still have the gameplay effect but the other sim will see the request as rude). Children will never take well this request.

  Effect of both these interactions can be stopped earlier by running "Announce Being Open to Chat" under "Friendly".

• No House Fires : prevents fires in residential and rental lots.

• No Motives Distress Autonomy : Stop sims from autonomously solve motives when they get to red.

• No WooHoo Dance : removes the silly dance sims do when the request to woohoo is accepted.

• Replace Burnt Hood  (Deprecated) : the stove hoods don't have the option to replace them when they catch fire and are by far the most likely to burn when there is a fire. This adds the option to replace them without having to enter Build and Buy.

• Selective Auto Chat [^] : changes how Sims autonomously decide to start a conversation.

• Watch Tutorials on Sim.TV (*)  - Autonomy Add-on : Adds a new category on the computers under "Research" to have Sims watch a bunch of tutorials to increase most of the skills in game. Autonomy Add-on makes the interactions autonomous.

• Sleepwear Outside : Allows Sims to go out of their house wearing sleepwear

• Unlocked and Re-Tuned Music Festival : This unlocks the Music Festival from the 2021 live event. I never saw it at the time because I wasn’t playing the game back then, and live events hold no appeal for me. Maxis spent resources creating interactions, animations, objects, and audio tracks for this event, only to lock them permanently behind a timed promotion in the hope of keeping players hooked on their increasingly unstable game. Those resources could just as easily have gone toward fixing bugs.

  I unlocked it partly out of spite, and partly because it’s one of the few things that actually happens in Willow Creek. It also serves as proof that Maxis could refresh the older worlds if they wanted to.

  The event has been re-tuned to behave like a proper festival. It now appears on the calendar and includes a dynamic event sign similar to the City Living festivals. I also moved it in the evening. Update Walkby Overhaul main file if you use it or the even will not work.

EXPANSION PACKS

University

• Classes Cost More  : Increases the cost of classes.

• Change Outfit for Classes : Sims will change into a weather based outfit before leaving for classes

• Higher Scholarships : Increases the money you get when applying for scholarships.

• Less Auto Bike : Increases the distance at which Sims will autonomously choose to use the bike when it’s in their inventory. Additionally, prevents controlled Sims from placing the bike in their inventory, although NPC Sims will still do so.

• Longer Terms : Makes University terms longer (2 weeks). Don't install this mid-game, once installed in a save it cannot be removed while sims are enrolled.

• Choose Bike Helmet (*)  : allows for setting a specific helmet for the bike.

Snowy Escape

• Self Sustaining Lifestyles : lifestyles will not decay once the Sim gets them.

Seasons

• Change Outfit When Inside (*) : Sims autonomously change out of cold weather when inside a building, and change to cold and hot weather when outside in cold or hot climate. There are other mods doing this but they didn't work the way I wanted. This one is not extremely aggressive to allow for going in and out of a building without the Sims changing instantly (it takes about 30 minutes in a building for the autonomy to kick in), also the controlled Sim is not affected.

• Random Umbrella for NPCs  : Does what it says. There are other mods doing this but they didn't work the way I wanted.

• Sync all Radiators from Thermostat (*) : I love the radiators from For Rent but I'm not going to go one by one to sync them with the thermostat so I added the function to sync them all at once:
  
  
  Also inconsistencies piss me off: with the heater from Snowy Escape, cats have a nice little interaction where they seek heating from the thing. The interaction also works on Vampires' radiator but these ones aren't tagged properly for it to work. NOTICE: this flags the objects as CC because it overrides the object catalogue to add in the tag.

Get to Work

• Alien Abduction Chance from the Small Telescope (*) : I shouldn't have asked my wife to give the game another chance cause now she has too many requests. This is another one of her requests: reintroducing the chance of alien abduction from the small telescope because there is none. This mod adds the same chance the big telescope has to trigger the abduction on the same interaction (Search for Truth, lev7+ logic skill) that maxis left out, Sims 2 syle. It's not boosted. No overrides, just a buff. Here is a picture because testing was hilarious.

Get Famous

• No Reactions To Less Famous Sims : Old small tweak I've been asked to update. Stops celebrity Sims from getting excited about Sims that are less famous than they are.

• Celebrity Tweaks (*) : This goes to replace "Dancing is not Performing", because that mod wasn't mine and it required too many overrides while offering too little control. This new mod gives you full control over when you want the celebrity to be performing by adding a toggle "Perform for Crowd" (it can be used on NPC celebrities too), the Sim will shine while the option to perform is enabled. The option doesn't persist, it will be set back to off on changing area (including entering CAS). It also adds their own pie menu to celebrities and moves some hard to find interactions (fame shine, walk style toggle, disguise) into such pie menu, and adds an interaction to wear the disguise directly from the Sim without using a mirror.

For Rent

Radiators Tweak [NEW] : While testing, objects around my lot kept randomly catching fire. After ruling out everything else, the issue traced back to radiators.

The cause is straightforward: radiators reuse the tuning from the Dine Out heating lamp. The fire VFX was removed and the buff changed, but the underlying behavior was left intact... including the random fire broadcaster. This is also why radiators can receive the fireproof upgrade.

This module replaces that behavior. Radiators no longer start fires and instead follow a more consistent failure state: they can break and leak water.

A new upgrade has been added to prevent leaking, replacing the original fireproof functionality. The leaking VFX used for this mod is from City Living, the repair/upgrade animation from Season so you need those two packs for this file to work correctly.

GAME PACKS

Realm of Magic

• No Magic Sages Outfits : requested. This is already included in Expanded Realm of Magic, don't use it together with that mod.

• Remove Post Casting Animation : Removes the confident/smug animation spellcasters run after casting spells.

• Don't Turn NPCs into Spellcaster not needed anymore, the filter disappeared from the files.

Vampires

• No Pyjamas for Coffins  : I don't like vampires changing to sleep inside coffins.

Outdoor Retreat

• Create Campfire and Bonfire Everywhere (*) : allows creating a campfire everywhere on and off lot (natural ground only) by clicking on the terrain. Updated and moved from its own post.

My Wedding Stories

Send Wedding Participations (*) [NEW] : allows you to send wedding participations from the mailbox instead of going around asking Sims to be guest of honour etc. in person.

STUFF PACKS

• No Hamster Costume for Rodent Ghosts  (My First Pet) : I hate the fucking obsession with these stupid costumes.

• Customisable Dust (Bust the Dust) (*): remade of a series of old mods to remove dust bunnies, the audio on dust state change and the dust piles. This time, you get to set it in game
  
  
  because I change my mind too often. By default:

  • Dust bunnies only spawn in Glimmerbrook and the fairy world.

  • Audio doesn't play.

  • Dust piles are allowed to spawn.

  You can choose your preferred settings from the front door.

• Mop The Dust  (Bust the Dust) (*) : Allows for getting rid of the dust with a mop or broom instead of the vacuum.

OTHER

• Decluttered Calendar : One thing I can’t stand when you have several of the more recent EPs installed is how cluttered the calendar becomes. Every other day there seems to be a festival somewhere. Maxis appears convinced that festivals are the best feature imaginable and keeps adding more of them with every expansion, but in practice they become a nuisance after you’ve visited one or two. They also tend to cause lag if you happen to play on a lot in a neighbourhood hosting a festival.

  This mod overrides the drama node scheduler to declutter the calendar and space festivals out more reasonably. It is tuned for a 14-day season length, but everything I changed is commented in the file.

  If you are comfortable editing the tuning and keeping it updated after patches, you can easily adjust it to suit your own preferences. Existing festivals will not be cancelled, you need to wait until the next scheduling cycle to see the effects in an existing save. (PS: Prom and some other festivals happen yearly with this tweak)