Well, more than 2 weeks now and none of my earlier problems have resurfaced.
I've had one weird family inventory glitch, I suspect celebrities are responsible. I've had several Sims in several savegames travel back and forth with no problems; then I sent two 3-star celebs to Egypt. They left Sunset Valley with nothing in family inventory, while in Egypt they bought a treasure chest and they both got one of those random celeb freebies; one got a stove, the other got a couch.
So, after returning from Egypt there should be 3 things in family inventory: 1 treasure chest, 1 stove, 1 couch.
None of those things were there, instead I found: 3 random paintings, 1 microwave, 1 alarm clock and 1 giant fountain.
That doesn't even make sense... *sigh*
This is so hard to avoid, celebrity is not exactly exclusive in Sim world. It spreads from Sim to Sim like a contagion and the only way to avoid it is to quarantine your Sims in their home. Pretend you're playing Sims 1, basically.
However, I believe that the adventure board issue is caused by our friend Grimmy. It always seems to start happening around the time that sims start dying, and if you leave and return, the problem occasionally fixes itself. Unfortunately, any time I think I have this confirmed, the game does something to lead me to believe otherwise.
Hmm, not that Grimmy isn't a suspicious character, but I'm getting the problem almost right away, day 1 or 2. Sims will check for adventures and find nothing although making them try again (on the same day) eventually brings something up.
I'm starting to suspect entire adventure chains have gone missing; there's one in particular I'm fairly certain about. It's the one in China that will teach your Sim martial arts - according to Carl's guide the adventure that should start it off is called "Potent Signs of Potential". I remember this one from way back, Sims are supposed to be able to get that very early on with visa level 0.
Well, I simply cannot get that to roll and I have been looking for it. However, if I take my Sim to martial arts level 1 I will get the next stage of that chain right away (spar 2 times with local Sim -> meditate for 2 hours at Scholars Garden and so on).
Now, this worries me. What if those "empty" adventures on the board are like placeholders for adventures that can no longer be triggered? This particular adventure I can trigger myself by teaching the Sim martial arts, but what about ones where you need a key to access a tomb or something.
it's odd how many bugs have been caused by patches as opposed to the ones fixed by them, no?
It's getting depressing, especially when they don't get fixed again. That excavation bug is now a year old, far as I can tell.
I'm considering rolling back my game to an earlier patch level. I just need to decide which one will give me the most features I enjoy with the fewest problems.
