Tired of trying to squeeze a whole giant photo studio into your fashion photographer’s cramped city apartment? Frustrated that your astronaut needs a house with a yard big enough to hold—of all the absurd things—a private rocket ship? Bored of the career options in game? Then you need Career World.
Career World is a pack-integrated, detail-oriented save file meant to maximize the gameplay potential of the Sims 4. It does this primarily by creating realistic, vibrant community spaces for your sims to play out their career ambitions. Key features include:
An expanded number of community lots with tons of stuff to do and see—plus lots of good-looking residences created by the insanely talented creators on the gallery.
More interactive stuff in the open portions of worlds, including toddler play equipment everywhere there is child play equipment by default.
Ready-to-play: there is at least one pre-made sim in every career, at least one pre-made sim pursuing every aspiration, and at least one owned version of every type of ownable business (retail, restaurant, vet, rental residential), so you can just hop in and play any ambition you want without doing a ton of tedious setup.
Local flavor: different worlds are set up to have their own advantages, drawbacks, cultures, laws (N.A.P.s that make sense!), and featured career opportunities.
Gameplay variety: whether you prefer to play with families or singletons, elaborate mansions or run-down hovels, rags-to-riches or pre-made jillionaire celebrities, this save file has assets that cater to many different gameplay styles.
Sensible setup: Libraries actually have books in them! Lot landscaping matches the world it’s in. The EA townies in this save file already lead cohesive lives, complete with jobs, living spaces, preferences, pronouns, lifestyles, outfits, club memberships, pets, relationships with others, and cultural knowledge. And lots of other things that . . . you know . . . make sense.
If that all piques your interest, keep reading for specifics of the save file. Upcoming posts will give the full creator credits and detail the Career Challenges I have created to guide you in getting the most out of playing it.
SPECIFICS (totally optional reading; feel free to skip down to "REQUIREMENTS" if you're not interested):
Each world in this save file has been set up to highlight and create featured gameplay opportunities for specific careers. Some of these are obvious and in line with what Maxis already did, like actors in Del Sol Valley, conservationists in Sulani, etc. but some are additions/decisions I've made, like lawyers in Uptown San Myshuno or Engineers in Oasis Springs. And some careers are distributed across several worlds, depending on the flavor you want to play (Hip-Hop musicians, for example, have their own spaces to spin records and remix beats in Willow Creek, while a pipe organist will find their concert venues among the many historic churches of Windenburg). A full list of location/career pairings can be found in the Career Chart detailed in the next post.
The gameplay opportunities largely consist of community lots set up to mimic active workplaces, so that sims in "work from home" careers can actually do those tasks in a workplace setting, often with clubs of co-workers who will show up and do workplace tasks. But there's also opportunities for sims in regular careers: once your artist, musician, or chef reaches at least two stars' worth of fame, for example, they can be an artist-in-residence in San Myshuno's Arts Quarter, where they will find a totally sweet rental penthouse tricked out with equipment for every kind of art (including culinary) plus have special spaces to show their work or perform in the nearby 1,000 Words Art Gallery. Read through my lot descriptions for more opportunities like these!
To enhance the specificity of the worlds in this setup, some of the smaller worlds are treated as parts of others in terms of design choices:
Glimmerbrook is now the secluded back side of Mt. Komorebi, where the big, old, traditional-style houses can be found. (The spellcaster population has relocated to Willow Creek, where the culture has a healthy respect for—and deep fascination with—the occault.)
Forgotten Hollow is a hidden—some might even say, “forgotten”—part of Windenburg.
Moonwood Mill is yet another defunct industry in the mountains above Evergreen Harbor (there was a road down the other side of the mountain to San Myshuno, but it's been closed for years).
Magnolia Promenade is an island in the midst of the Willow Creek bayou. Also, Newcrest is simply a newer development extension of Willow Creek. (Because come on, of course it is. They have all the same vegetation and the fancy neighborhoods share the exact same streetcar system.)
San Sequoia is the suburb on the outskirts of San Myshuno, with it's one-and-only subway station in Anchorpoint Wharf providing easy and fast transit into the city.
Hidden workplaces are part of the world they obviously belong to by their scenery: Hospital and Police Station to Willow Creek/Magnolia Promenade/Newcrest, Science Lab to Oasis Springs, and Movie Lot to Del Sol Valley.
I have unofficially introduced “world traits/challenges” and “neighborhood traits/challenges” into this save file. There is no explicit in-game system for assigning traits or challenges to entire worlds/neighborhoods, but certain lot traits make more sense when blanketing an entire world or neighborhood, particularly the ones that relate to natural disasters or the environment. So, you will find some worlds in which every single lot has a copy of a certain trait or challenge, making that trait a “world trait/challenge.” The world traits/challenges are as follows:
Willow Creek/Magnolia Promenade/Newcrest = “Gremlins” (I have found that this challenge best mimics the effects of occasional hurricanes. All your stuff breaks and floods your house with water. Can be counteracted somewhat by adding “Gnomes” trait.)
Oasis Springs = “Sunny Aspect”
Del Sol Valley = “Quake Zone”
Sulani = “Volcanic Activity”
Mt. Komorebi/Glimmerbrook = “Geothermal”
Henford-on-Bagley = “Wild Foxes”
Selvadorada = “Grody” (that is, if you drink from the pipes; Moctezuma’s revenge may be avoided by drinking natural spring water instead)
Tartosa = “Romantic Aura” (not a natural trait, but Tartosa has been so thoroughly marketed as a wedding destination that this affects the way sims see it).
Copperdale = "Teen Neighborhood"
San Sequoia = "Child's Play" almost everywhere, except for a couple of more adult-focused lots where that didn't make sense.
Chestnut Ridge = "Wild Prairie Grass"
Evergreen Harbor has a world challenge that I envision being changed into a world trait. Every lot starts with “Grody” because of groundwater contamination. As neighborhoods enact the “Green Initiatives” neighborhood action plan, I suggest removing this trait from all the lots in the neighborhood and replacing it with “Natural Well.” Plants are great at filtering water before it reaches the aquifer!
Specific neighborhood traits/challenges are as follows:
The Grimm’s Quarry neighborhood of Evergreen Harbor is a smaller, localized “Quake Zone” due to the ground instability introduced by years of mining.
The Crumbling Isle in Windenburg has localized “geothermal”—and lots of hotsprings!
Belomisia Jungle in Selvadorada has “Creepy Crawlies” on every lot.
The University of Britechester campus is rumored to be haunted, so every building (including the old library in Gibbs Hill) has the “Spooky” lot challenge. Hey, even if it’s not true, the rumors would freak you out a bit, right?
Every building on the Foxbury campus in Britechester was built using green architectural practices (“Eco Lot”) and has “Fast Internet.”
There is no grid in the Bramblewood in Henford-on-Bagley, so all houses in this neighborhood are “Off the Grid.”
Hopewell Hills in San Sequoia has updated it's internet service to "Fast Internet" for the many telecommuters who live in that suburb.
Riders' Glen in Chestnut Ridge is known for having particularly "Great Soil" for growing nectar.
There are "Wild Foxes" up in the mountainous mesas of Galloping Gulch in Chestnut Ridge.
There are lots of street cats in the Morensong neighborhood of Tomarang, so all its lots are "Cat Hangout"s.
People go to the Koh Sahpa neighborhood in Tomarang for some "Peace and Quiet."
All obviously maritime neighborhoods outside of Sulani and Tomarang (which have very calm oceans and are therefore probably behind windbreaks) have “Bracing Breezes” as a neighborhood trait due to wind off the sea. These neighborhoods include Port Promise in Evergreen Harbor, Porto Luminoso in Tartosa, The Crumbling Isle and Lykke Centre in Windenburg, Anchorpoint Wharf in San Sequoia, and nearly every neighborhood in Brindleton Bay except for Sable Square.
Certain entire neighborhoods have the “Good Schools” trait, because this does not make sense as a thing affecting only one household. Neighborhoods with good schools include The Pinnacles in Del Sol Valley, Ridgeline Drive in Newcrest, the Spice Market in San Myshuno, Gibbs Hill in Britechester, Senbamachi in Mt. Komorebi, Prescott Square in Copperdale, and Hopewell Hills in San Sequoia.
This isn't exactly a trait, but I've had a sim go around and give maximum upgrades to every single appliance in the Wakaba neighborhood of Mt. Komorebi, so the tech works really well there.
I've also done quite a bit with the Neighborhood Action Plan system from Eco Lifestyle. When you first start the game, you will find that max neighborhood action plans are already in effect in all occupied neighborhoods. I have carefully selected many of the current N.A.P.s by local area; all desert neighborhoods, for example, have water conservation policies (except for the wasteful, privileged celebrities who occupy The Pinnacles). If you would like to change the current N.A.P.s you're welcome to, but be aware that changes may have unintentional consequences on your neighbors (removing “Free Love” from Strangerville neighborhoods, for example, will destabilize the Eclectic Arts Household, who are presently a throuple).
You’ll notice that in some cases, neighborhoods have more specific identities than they had in the vanilla game: the three neighborhoods / three islands of Sulani, for example, are now the tourist island (Lani St. Taz), the island where the locals live (Ohan’ali Town), and the national park/nature preserve (Mua Pel’am). In most cases, this was just a matter of leaning in to the identities that were roughly—but not fully—established by the game designers. In others, I have reassigned neighborhood identities specifically in service of the careers theme: Mirage Canyon in Oasis Springs, for example, is now the “FutureSim campus,” modeled after the work/living/recreation “campuses” of real-life tech conglomerates like Google or Microsoft. Plus, FutureSim is now not just the company that employs scientists, but the parent company of Rainy Day Entertainment (the tech guru employer) and Obscure Logistics (the engineering employer). I have created a number of such employment clusters, where sims in related professions are now in some kind of conglomerate (all the writing professions in subsidies of Walrus Books, all regulatory and civic jobs under the municipal government of San Myshuno, etc.). Look for them in the club descriptions/lot descriptions!
Every single lot—including hidden lots—in this save file has been changed, except the rare ones that are genuinely impossible to change like the movie studio, the redacted lab in Strangerville, and the temple in Selvadorada. So have fun exploring!
Since expanding the number of community lots was a big part of the theme of this save file, In some worlds you may not find many empty houses for you to move your own sims into. In any case where I have completely filled the residential lots in a world, I have made sure to leave at least one of them as a rental residential with some open units for you to move into. In the case of larger worlds where too many community lots wasn't an issue, I have tried to consolidate townies and leave many houses empty, so you have lots of options. The empty houses/units have traits and locations that make them particularly suited to certain careers, so read the descriptions and do a bit of shopping around to find the perfect one for your sim’s ambitions.
Some special notes concerning the four-in-one lots, a.k.a. the variable lots of the type(s) that came with Eco Lifestyle: several of the variable lots either don't actually have varieties or have been set up for specific gameplay variations:
Changing San Myshuno City Hall to a marketplace will decorate all the offices for Winterfest and cause a kind of craft/gift fair to be held on the top floor. For obvious reasons, I encourage doing this during Winter and changing it to something else during the other seasons. Changing it to a community garden will add greenspace to the top floor. Changing it to a makerspace will add a daycare center on the top floor—handy if you’re playing a family sim and want to bring your kids to work. Each of the four variations also changes the décor in the top-floor event space, so if you’re hosting a charity benefit party or wedding reception or something you may want to flip through in build mode and change the lot type to whichever one jives best with your event.
Changing the Science & Tech Centre on the Foxbury campus to a marketplace will cause the “freshman fair” to appear on the ground floor and spawn signage outside. This is just a regular marketplace, but I like to pretend it’s one of those start-of-year events where all the on-campus clubs advertise to the incoming students. I recommend doing this for one week in Fall, then changing it to something else. All of the other venue types for this lot are identical; all that will be affected is what the NPC sims do on this lot (makerspace will have them using the fabrication lab, community garden will have them gardening in the biology greenhouse, and community space will make the place basically empty of NPCs).
The Old New Henford Fair is a seasonal festival lot: marketplace=Winter, makerspace=Spring, community space=Summer, and community garden=Fall. Just vote during the weekend the season changes to keep this up-to-date. Unfortunately, the programming on the community space lot type means NPCs will not visit the festival in the summer, so I have set up some clubs for Henford-on-Bagley residents that meet at the festival grounds in the hopes that you’ll find the locals there when you visit the fair.
Zosul Taman in Tomarang actually works as intended for these four-in-ones: you can change it to an actual community garden, marketplace, makerspace, or community space, and each one features a completely unique lot by a different creator. (Hint: if you're looking for a wedding venue or playable temple, you want "community space.")
All of the other four-in-one lots (San Rio Park & Mercado, Steampunk Gardening, the Maker’s Market, The Munchkin Menagerie, etc.) are not really meant to change; they are only four-in-ones by coincidence, since the lot type I wanted it to be happened to be bundled into the community space thing. I do not recommend changing them, or they will not function as intended.
And finally, a special note on the high school auditorium in Copperdale: since having the same prom week after week gets boring, I have created several seasonal and holiday-specific variations on the formal dance and uploaded them to the gallery under the hashtag #careerworld. All you have to do to get them is enter build mode in the auditorium sometime before 7pm on Saturday, select the "Formal Dance" tab, and download your desired prom for the upcoming week from the selections on the gallery. Your next prom will now have a new decor theme!
I have kept all of EA’s original townies (and supplemented with a few new sims on a very limited basis), but moved them around to worlds that particularly feature their careers, and in some cases given them new careers that make sense (Marcus Flex, for example, is no longer unemployed but rather a Personal Trainer living in Del Sol Valley). This has meant doing some reshuffling of households, so you may see EA townies living in combinations you don’t expect; in each case, I have rewritten the household blurbs to explain the new situation. Townies now also belong to a multitude of clubs I have set up specifically for this save file, often career-related so your sim's co-workers will show up where and when they should to make all the community lot workspaces feel vibrant.
The way that EA set things up, there were several townies with the same career and some careers with no townies (all the Discover University professions, for example), so in some cases I have added new sims and/or switched townies' careers—again, in ways that make sense—so you will have at least one sim in each profession that you can just hop into game and play with. Households have been renamed so you can see which jobs you would be playing with if you chose to play them (except in cases where there were too many adults to specify in the household name; then you’ll need to read the description to find out).
I have made some non-career-related alterations to the townies, as well, because this save file is all about detail, depth, and realism. Sims’ cultural backgrounds are now reflected in their knowledge, skills, traits, and some outfits (Examples: Moroccan sims will know City Living recipes from the Moroccan food stall, all Latinx sims now have some measure of Selvadoradian Culture skill, inhabitants of Mt. Komorebi and Tomarang have utensil preferences for various kinds of chopsticks, formal outfits for Indian sims draw on the clothes introduced in the Fashion Street kit, etc. Plus, all townies speak the proper languages if you use Frankk's Language Barriers mod.). Reasonable preferences have been set for all townies who were made before the Dream Home Decorator update (and enhanced every time new preferences are released, as with Growing Together), and appropriate hot- and cold- weather outfits for all the ones made before Seasons came out. Households outside of Brindleton Bay have pets. People who have backstories of being exes are now actually exes, and the same with current romantic interests, best friends, etc. (plus I added a few of my own: how will the Izzy Fabulous love triangle resolve?). I have also moved previously unhoused townies into appropriate living situations (swanky apartment, Brytani Cho!), and included at least one playable sim for every type of occult.
Currently, all households with teens are marked as “played.” This is basically to prevent the game from messing up teen careers by resetting existing teens as high school-specific NPCs. Most other pre-made households are categorized as "other," but with neighborhood stories disabled so that they will stay in the jobs--and career co-worker clubs--I have set for them. Neighborhood stories is still enabled for random spawns.
As you might have guessed from “pack-integrated,” this save file requires nearly every pack in order to show up properly—but not quite all. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I buy Journey to Batuu.
Unlike the sims team, who create sparse builds so the game will run effectively on every machine, I have stuffed the save file with elaborate builds by multiple creators that take full advantage of The Sims 4’s potential as a creative tool. Thus, you will need a decent gaming system to run it effectively. I don’t know what specific specs it requires (or have any inkling of how to figure that out), so if you have a mid- to high-end machine just try it out and see if it works. If you’re trying to play on a cheap laptop, you’re probably better off with the default game.
This save file is almost CC free. The ONLY mod you need in order for the save file to show up properly is Zerbu’s More Selectable Icons mod, and even then the only consequence of not downloading it is that all the clubs and some holidays will have the placeholder llamacorn for an icon. So it would be very easy to play this completely CC free if you wish. There are a few more mods that I recommend (see below), but they are not even remotely required for the save file to run.
Because so much of what makes this save file special is centered around community lots, it may not be ideal for all simmers. If you are one of those people who is allergic to loading screens, this is probably not the save file for you.
If none of that scares you off and you’re ready to play, read on for the installation instructions!
INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1: Download whichever mods you plan to employ in the save file (if you don’t want to use any mods, skip straight to Step 3):
Zerbu: More Selectable Icons
Recommended Mods (if you want all the stuff I’ve put on community lots to stay):
Simularity: No More Wilting Flower Arrangements
Supported Mods (totally optional stuff the save file is set up to do right):
Aramiteus: High School More Classmates
Frankk: Language Barriers (AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT USING THIS MOD: If you want to use Language Barriers with my carefully-managed selections, you MUST install the mod BEFORE OPENING THE SAVE FILE. Opening the save file without Frankk’s mod installed (or without script mods enabled—check your box!) wipes all language data from the game. If you decide to install the mod later, it will reassign all languages according to Frankk’s rules, which do not correspond accurately to the way this save file is set up or to many sim’s backstories.)
Step 2: Once you have downloaded your desired mods, you’ll need to unzip them. For this, you’ll need a program like WinZip or PeaZip. To get this program, download it from the website, then run the resulting .exe file by double-clicking it in your downloads folder (or, at least, this is what you do if you have a PC. I have no idea how any of this works on a Mac, sorry! I'm sure tutorials are available elsewhere online).
Now that you have an unzipping program, right-click on your downloaded mods and select “extract.” You can either extract them directly to your mods folder (MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods) or chose “extract here” to unzip the files, then copy-and-paste them into your mods folder. Either way, the unzipped files need to wind up in your mods folder.
Step 3: Backup your existing saves. To do this, go into MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 and right-click on the folder titled “saves.” Select “copy,” then paste the folder to any other location on your computer. I usually just copy it to the desktop so I don’t lose it, but you may have an alternative hard drive or other location where you like to back up your saves.
Step 4: Download and unzip the Career World save file, but DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR MODS FOLDER! Put it in the saves folder instead (MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/saves). If the number of the save file matches the number for a save you already have in game, change it to any number you do not already have a copy of, but keep the same number of digits. To get more specific: by default the Career World file name is “Slot_08252028.save” and if you happen to have another save file with that exact same file name (unlikely), the game will overwrite one with the other. If that’s true for you, you can change the file name on Career World to “Slot_09252028.save” or “Slot_08252027.save” or anything else that replaces a digit with a different digit, but you cannot change it to “Slot_1.save” because the game needs a total of eight digits in the file name to run the save properly.
Step 5: Open your game, click the save file titled “Career World,” and start playing!
01/15/24 Quick Note: The Sims 4 currently has some game instability that seems to be related to the For Rent pack, so I have two available downloads for you, a pre-For Rent version and a post-For Rent version (updated on 04/15/24 to add Crystal Creations and institute some data-saving measures to stabilize the game—see my post on the "Performance Update" for details). Take your pick on the basis of whether or not you have that pack and/or feel comfortable playing with its features.
Career World save file WITHOUT For Rent
Career World save file WITH For Rent
