Tips for a healthier save in Sims 3

Lately I've been digging saving the game more and more often. But university courses have made me stay away from it. And take care of my families.

It is not always that easy, you need to work hard until you reach to your desired progress. 

I have learned and discovered some tips for my saved games in The Sims 3. Applying them, it makes your save much faster and your game much healthier.

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• DO NOT overwrite your previous save. It may cause you bugs, save error codes and crashes in between!
• Use the Save As...” option, to save your game under a new name and with the progress you made till you reached that point. For example “Test.sims3”, will be saved under “TestNew.sims3”.
• DO NOT use the “Save and Quit” option! This kills your save and may get you an error code! Actually, many, depending on the amount of CPU the game is consuming!
• When you are trying to name a save, DO NOT use spaces or symbols! This is another factor your save may get an error code or a bug! For example, it’s better to save your game under “TestNew.sims3” rather than “Test New.sims3”. It’s safer to use numbers as well but spaces is a NO for the game. Example: “Oct272020″ is a much safer name.
• Same as the tip above but if you are trying to name your save, please do not use repeated or a combo of letters, such as “fffffffffff.sims3″ or “sksksksksksksksksk.sims3″. The game will identify them as long and the game may not load!
• Before saving, ALWAYS check Edit Town to see if the thumbnails are correct. After the game is saved, do the same before going to either the main menu or restarting the game. If not, you need to delete the progress you have made on the town you were working on before making a new one.
• Same as the first tip. When overwriting the game you will get thumbnail glitches such as a duplicated lot copy in both household and lot or household thumbnail showing up as usual but the lot one appearing blank or empty. This has to do with World Adventures.
• When the household and lot thumbnails are just an invisible family and house icons, this means you have saved in EDIT TOWN mode. This doesn’t corrupt the town or the progress!!!
• When redirected to the main menu, DELETE the previous save if you have saved in the same lot with the same family. You will keep the new one instead of the old one. Old things go away, right? This may fill your drive space.
• If you have less than 4GB of RAM, please open task manager BEFORE starting the game up and check your CPU (how much it consumes) while running the game. If your CPU is more than 60 then we’re having a problem... your save will get corrupted. Close any background programs except for Origin and The Sims 3.
• If more than 4GB of RAM, then we’re okay. No need to check CPU while running the game.

 

The second to last one used to be an index of not getting the save corrupt several years ago before losing all my files. I used to check the CPU all the time before getting my laptop. Now it's no use checking my CPU due to having a higher RAM.

~ Joanne ~