Part 8: Modding Maybes

These are the Mods that I would consider to be completely optional. Optional but still worth a look as they will add a ton to your game :)

Simlogical Prisons- create your own prisons
Simlogical Teleporter- Choose a neighbour from the menu, and they appear by the painting or shrub.
Simlogical Mortgages- Very simple concept - purchase and sale prices are reversed, so when your sim buys it, they get a loan or mortgage, and when they sell it, they pay back the loan. While they have the shrub or shrubs, each one charges the family funds interest or rent per day. If they haven't repaid the loan when they move out, they don't get the full value for the house, and the next family take on the debt (but get the house cheaper by that amount)
AND
Simlogical Lot Income Rights-Allows a sim to purchase "Income rights" for any lot. On Apartment Lots, Hotels, or Dorms he will receive the rent or nightly room charges from those lots, using the special Lot Income cheques, included in the zip

*The Mortgage Shrub used with Lot Income rights = On other types of residential lot, if you use my Mortgage Shrubs, the lot rights owner will receive the interest from those. That will enable you to set up a normal lot to play as if a rented lot. These two used together could potentially be a great way to set up a proper Noble/Serf relationship where they pay him rents directly to live on and farm the land, thus ensuring a steady income for the Nobility.

Simlogical Color Keys- This is for players who wish to identify their Sims into categories or classes that the game does not already recognise. A typical use might be for social classes: Aristocrat, Serf etc. Use with Visitor Controller.

Simbology Autonomous Casual Romance (ACR)- Having this in the game is simply wonderful, watching a couple of peasants run off together for an autonomous cuddle is just the best!

Inteen -While Inteen conflicts with quite a few things, I still keep it in my game and sacrifice some other things for the realism it brings in the form of miscarriages, teen marriage and teen relationships in general. For the medieval period, when a girl being married at 13 was not uncommon, and when carrying a child to term was entirely up to chance, I find this one to be a necessary add.

AlmightyHatGestation-Based Aging-I've never liked the default aging of TS2. Never felt that I had enough time with my Sims and I prefer not to play with aging off. So this is perfect for me. Not only will it give your Sim a long, and satisfying life span, but it works with ACR to give you realism in terms of fertility and pregnancy. Read more on Hat's site.

AlmightyHatG-Rated Religion (based on Chris Hatch's hack) A very creative mod that adds functional religion to your game. Set up your deities, tenets and places of worship and just let your Sims do their thing naturally. And with the fabulous modding community, more and more new religious features are being added to use in conjunction with this mod all the time.

Crammyboy Community Lot Time -So this one is very much up to your own judgement. It has technically not been updated to work with the UC. I did quite a bit of digging and asking around before putting this in my game, but I have no regrets. What this does is make it so that, if you send a Sim out at 5am to a Community lot and have him leave for Home at 3pm, when that home lot loads, he will not arrive until 3pm. Traditionally in TS2, even if you spent all day at another lot, when you got home, it would be at the same time you left it. This always felt cheaty to me, so when I read about this mod, I knew I wanted to try it out. Do your own research on it before deciding whether to put it in your own game, but I can say I have had no issues with it myself.

Squinge's Mega College Pack -If you do decide to use the Community Lot Time (above) you will see that it does not work properly in University worlds. Something about time being different there. In any case, something I've found that does work (and something I initially wanted to do anyway) was building your own University in your home 'Hood. I tested this out in my testing hood and was able to send my newly-aged up YA to a building that I had designated as a library to write a paper, off to classes and all while having him come home every day to his parents. You can also build dorms for the traditional experience, but this mod will give you options galore. I personally plan on building a Royal University in the hood where my Nobles live :).

Boiling Oil's Feed Baby (with Nursemaid addons)-Allows any adult Female (an Teen I think) to breastfeed or bottle feed any baby on the lot. Gives you the ability to hire a nursemaid if you wish!
Boiling Oil's Realistic Gardening -Makes the yields a bit more realistic so that your Gardener Sim can't become a millionaire easily just by selling some nice lettuce. Also includes hacks for Fish and Composting in the set, so make sure to look at them all.

Chris Hatch's Plan Baby Outfit -Self explanatory!

PiouPiou Realistic Sickness -Because the Middle Ages were brutal.

Mog Hughson'sPostal Service-"Even though Sims have a mail box on every lot, I personally think there is a huge gaping hole in the game because there is no way to send cards, parcels or letters to your friends. I imagine that those people who play Historic hoods could really do with this since they won't use computers and can't remotely improve relationships by sending e-mail to their friends, but also even in modern day times it's just nice to receive (snail) mail."
Become an author ... without a computer -This mod allows you to write a novel without using a computer. Great for your historic hoods, or generally poor authors who can't yet afford to buy a computer.

"The Witch Suite"
I effing hate the goofy sparkles and Good/Bad Witch and green skin rubbish they force on Witches. These will make your witches look just like normal Sims.
No more magic aura for witches and warlocks
Normal Skin for Good and Evil Witches
No Witch Names

CJ Plantbaby Changes - Plantbabies now get only half the skills of the parent sim. They also get half badges but that was already in the base code. Nature enthusiasm will set to the predestined hobby (if you have FreeTime) and genetic personality will be set correctly.
CJ Brothel Woohoo -Sims can now open a brothel and make money at the world's oldest profession. [NSFW]

CJ More Customers -Smooths out the wildly random customer populations that made it nearly impossible to run profitable businesses during the night.

Christianlov All-In-One and Nanny -Allows you to hire a Sim in your hood as a worker at your house. Good for hiring Peasants as housekeepers or lesser Noble ladies as ladies-in-waiting to your Royals.

DocDoofus Slower Aspiration Gains -Slows down the gains, I'd really only use this is you are also using a mod to extend Sim lifespans.

Cenotaph of the Tribal Covenant - Buy/Sell Infants/Toddlers -leave spare children out to be taken away by an ogre. Epic.
Don't worry, they go into the adoption pool :)

BV Axe Throwing Skills& Fitness Patch- This upload patches the Bon Voyage "Axe-olutely Throwing Station" so that it builds body skill, fitness, and - if FreeTime or later is available - sports enthusiasm. The rate of increase is set to be the same as the Bench Press, Butterfly and Leg Press Exercise Machines.

AL Social Groups for Playables -if you put a specific object in the inventory of a playable sim, that sim will behave like it belongs to the assigned social group.

Enable "Rent Furnished Apartment" Outside of Debug Mode -"It always irritated me that you had to enter debug mode in order to rent a furnished apartment, and digging through the apartment door files did nothing for me. So, I delved into the AL objects.package file and found that, while the pie menu was in the actual door's files, it was being overwritten by a nearly identical one (except, with the Rent Furnished Apartment option present). All I did was set the option to show up on the regular pie menu, and so far, it's worked perfectly."

Sponge Bath Hack-Sims wash on all sinks

I also have a mod called Loientbollemeis Slower Skill Gain, which slows my Sims skill gain by 6x (again, useful because they have extra long lives) but I can't find it anywhere. If anyone would like it, I can upload it to my SFS to share. (ETA: The DL link is here Lientebollemeis Slower Skill Gain )

I also have a ton of Pescado's mods from his FFS Director's Cut. It really is personal preference which ones to use, so I would suggest just going there and browsing through the ones you like. Since the FFS doesn't come with descriptions-check out this page that Blushing Rose put together with descriptions of each mod. One of my favorites is yellowpee, cause NOBODY pees blue!

All in all, read through sites like MATY, Cyjon's, Boiling Oil (Leefish), Simlogical, Garden of Shadows, PBK, Medieval Smithy, Almighty Hat and MTS for stuff that YOU want to add. There is so much stuff out there in way of hacks!

NOTE: Please be sure to download the Hack Conflict Detection Utility from over at Paladin's Place/Simwardrobe.*. Use this to check for conflicts but also, read through the creator's notes for all your mods to make sure that some conflicts aren't already known and sometimes, perfectly safe.