Getting back into this game with a brand new family. Well, sort of new. I errased the history and skills of my favourite sim, turned her back into a teen, slapped a new name on her, and paired her up with a totally new sim
Anyway, despite having played the game plenty in the past, I've discovered some lovely little things about the game that I never noticed before.
First,
sims can slide down spiral staircases (or at least, teens can). If one of my sims hadn't done this autonomously I don't think I would have
ever discovered this. It is quite possible I would have continued to never have a reason to click directly on a spiral staircase and discover that option. Also, itt seems like a lucky break. I've only seen it happen autonomously that one time.
Second,
Witches have a chance to instantly complete their homework. I like the Witch life state and have used it before, and I'm sure I've seen this in the past and just never noticed. But this time I have two teen witches, and having them do homework together only to have one instantly stand up with 100% homework stood out. At first I thought it was a bug, or a mod issue, but I notice this listed as a feature while browsing the wiki page on witches. It's quite handy.
Third,
conversion ritual is way better than I thought. This is likely a revelation to no one but myself, but I never really used the conversion ritual in the past, and that was very silly of me. In addition to all the stuff I've sold, I now have an unplanned collection of butterflies and fish, a stash of gems and metals, and a bunch of seeds now planted in my garden.
Fourth,
curses don't seem to hurt relationship (or at least, not all of them do). I've not had my sims curse each other much, but I wanted to see how it works when one witch curses another, and I figured the bladder curse would be the most benign to use. Doesn't seem to make the cursed sim mad at all. Maybe I'll test this with some of the more malicious spells. The only time I've ever used a lot of curses was against the sim who woke me with a megaphone at university. I had a lot of fun playing the mean sim for once, but because of all the mean interactions, I never noticed if the curses had much effect between bouts of fire blast and taunting. Most sims can't win a fight against a brave occult.
Fifth,
texting options. Not sure which EP added it (probably University). Never noticed I could send mean or friendly texts before. Seems like a good way to help keep friendships from decaying without spending too much time on the task.
Oh, and I shouldn't make sims dance together so much. I usually have sims dance together, but I've now noticed
how many more dance moves sims have when dancing solo. They still seem to talk to each other and gain relationship, and it's nice to spice things up.
There is also some natural story arc developing between my sims. They're in a relationship, and one of them has been using the love charm to make some quick friends, and her girlfriend doesn't seem to like any of the sims I did that with. I'm seeing some upsides to my own entertainment if my sims don't like all the same people. I see some potential to make a story out of this that I wasn't planning on.
