Socializing

The building and dismantling of relationships are based on the interactions you have with other Sims. These interactions are called socials.

Socials are the building blocks of a conversation that steer STC. Each social has a commodity that has an effect on the STC, which in turn has an effect on the LTR.

Selecting the right socials to advance your goals then is very important. We have compiled a complete list of all of the socials in the game and detail the limits on each, as well as certain situations in which you would need or want to use a specific social.

But before you consult that list, you should understand how to conduct a conversation and understand the situations where you can be social.

Social Opportunities

Sunset Valley is one big ball of social opportunities. Some of them fall into your lap—some of them must be sought out and arranged. There are several situations where you can direct the social engagement yourself. (You can meet Sims at work, but you only direct the chance encounters via tone—you do not select actual socials.) Use each of these opportunities to build and bolster LTRs so your Sim can benefit from friendships and relationships. Remember: social Sims are usually happy Sims.

Family

When you create a household through Create a Sim, you can choose to not just fashion a single Sim, but build an entire family to occupy a house. A family does not necessarily need to be blood related. A household can be up to eight Sim roomies living under one roof or any combination of family and friends. You have total control over the social of every Sim inside a family. Naturally, this gives you a bit of an advantage with seeing both sides of a conversation (you can click back and forth between Sims and look at the current STC) so you can direct it to achieve specific goals.

Family members will socialize on their own, but you will get far more benefit out of choosing the socials yourself. For example, if you have a few roomies and you decide you want two of them to take it to the next level, you can direct their socials so that neither of them feels awkward.

Welcome Wagon

When you first move into Sunset Valley and start to settle, two or three Sims will show up on your doorstep to welcome you to the neighborhood. This is the welcome wagon. Now, you are by no means required to rush outside, socialize, and even invite them inside for a long conversation. However, this is a great chance to make a few acquaintances right away, which will get you on your way to learning about new opportunities. Plus, you never know if somebody in the welcome wagon has the potential to one day be a Romantic Interest. You may meet Mr. Right, right away.

The welcome wagon does not linger terribly long. They will give you a couple hours to step outside and say hello before they dissipate back to their homes. The welcome wagon is typically made up of neighbors right around your lot. If you want to make friends from all over town, well, then you are just going to have to explore the entire town.

Meet and Greet

You do not need to rely on meeting co-workers or the welcome wagon to start making acquaintances. Sunset Valley is full of people you can meet at almost all hours of the day. All you need to do is step outside your front door every once in a while. Sometimes, all you actually need to do is just go outside the front door, because a Sim or two will usually walk by your house a few times a day. If you keep an eye on the front stoop, you may make a new friends with minimal effort.

Just wandering through the city is another way to find Sims and interact with them. When you are out running errands, such as going to the bookstore or the supermarket, don’t immediately go back home. Walk around Mirabello Plaza, where you will find a great concentration of Sims. Left-click on one and strike up a conversation. You may occasionally encounter a rude Sim, but for the most part, the folks of Sunset Valley are pretty friendly.

The museum is a good place to find other Sims interested in art. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be there!

Sims who play chess are into the Logic skill, so talk to them about logic-related stuff, like stars, after a game.

Use community locations as meeting places, too. Central Park or Maywood Glen are good places to go and find new friends, but so is the gym or the library. In fact, use these community locations to find Sims with similar interests, which will help you develop LTRs easier than just randomly finding somebody to talk to. If you are an athletic Sim and go to the gym, you will immediately have something in common with the Sims there and have

things to talk about, such as Athletic skills. If you like chess, go to Central Park and hang out at the chess boards to find other logic-minded Sims. You may find other anglers at lakes and the beach.

Chat up Sims at community locations to build your database of acquaintances.

Telephone and Computer

So, you met some Sims while you were out and about? An easy way to keep in contact with them in your personal telephone, which is located in your Inventory tab. When you left-click on the telephone, you have a variety of interactions for further relationships (and possibly even making a new one). You can only call Sims you have met—you cannot call strangers. Here are all of the interactions with the telephone that lead to social encounters:

Chat: Chatting in the most common action with the telephone. You can both call a Sim or answer a call from another Sim and engage in chit-chat. Chat is a good way to keep up with friends and slow decay.

Ask on Date : Ask a Sim you are interested in on a date. If the Sim accepts, the date begins.

Invite Over/Invite to: You call a Sim and either invite them to come over to your lot or you invite them to meet you at a community location, such as the beach or park. If you have at least a modest LTR with the Sim you called, it is highly likely they will accept your invitation.

Call for Services: Sometimes you need a little outside help. Call for Service connects you to a menu of Service Sim services, such as the Police, Pizza Delivery, or a Baby-sitter. For a full list of the Service Sims and their functions, see the Service Sim section of this chapter.

Throw Party : One of the best ways to socialize is to throw a party. There are different types of parties you can throw depending on the desired occasion. Making this call brings up a menu for selecting the type of party, setting the time, setting the dress code, and inviting known Sims.

The computer is another way to keep up with Sims. To chat with Sims you know, left-click on the computer and choose the Chat interaction. From here, you can select with Sim you want to chat online with. Your Sim will sometimes perform this interaction automatically, especially if they are a Computer Whiz. Chatting on the computer helps out with the Fun need and it affects LTR by slowing decay.

Talk to Service Sim Help

Service Sims are Sims who are not friends and neighbors. However, they exist within Sunset Valley and provide valuable services. The entire list of Service Sims is at the end of this chapter, complete with each Service Sim’s function. However, these Sims are not without Social needs. When you call up a Repair Technician to take care of that clogged toilet, for example, you can chat with them directly afterward and make them an acquaintance—or even a friend if you are charismatic enough. Some Service Sims can actually become more than friends. You can have relationships with some Service Sims and even get married.

Parties

Gathering Sims for a party every once in a while is a great way to improve your LTRs or fulfill a party-related wish. As mentioned, to throw a party, you choose the Throw Party interaction from the telephone menu. Once you have the party menu up on-screen, you can designate the invitees, type of party, time of party, and dress code.

There are five types of parties in Sunset Valley:

House Party: The house party is just a nice occasion for friends to come together and socialize.

Wedding: A wedding party is an occasion for celebrating the impending marriage of two Sims. Sims can either get married at a wedding party or have a private ceremony.

Funeral : If a Sim has died, family members can have a wake at a lot to get together and mourn the dead. This is a lot like a house party, but many of the social interactions are based around remembering the deceased, such as Talk Highly About.

Birthday : When it is time to make an age transition, throw a birthday party. Birthday parties are like house parties, but with a birthday cake that causes the Sim being honored to age up.

Campaign Fundraiser: This party is very similar to a house party, but it is only available to Sims in the Political career. Campaign fundraisers are formal parties where, if successful, Sims do not get LTR boosts, but donate cash to a campaign fund.

The funeral is a good way to send off a Sim with proper respect.

When you choose to throw a party, expect to see your guests start arriving right around the designated time. (Thankfully, you get a warning an hour before the party starts.)

Before guests arrive, make sure your house is clean, provide plenty of food, and extend some form of entertainment. Ordering pizza is an easy way to provide food for a party, but you can cook stuff beforehand and have it ready.

For entertainment, you can have objects around your house like a guitar, party balloons, or videogame system for guests to play with when not being wowed by your social skills. Fun objects increase the likelihood that a party will be a success.

Will everybody you invited show up? It’s possible—that depends on your LTR with the Sims you invited and whether or not any of them have to work.

Sims will not come to a party if it takes place during their designated work shift. There is a chance they will show up after work, though. Some Sims will even bring presents. If a Sim brings a present to the party, a note will pop up and tell you what was brought.

Once the party is underway, you need to manage it in order for it to be a success. Make sure that food is out and is plentiful. Make sure those fun objects are where Sims can get to them. And be sure to socialize! Talk to your guests so they feel welcome. Mingle and move around. Be positive.

When the party finally draws down and Sims file out the front door, it’s time to find out if the party was a success. If Sims left your party because they thought it was lame, you get no benefit and suffer the Threw a Lame Party moodlet. If the Sims liked your party, you get LTR boosts with all attendees and enjoy the Threw a Great Party moodlet.

Wedding Party

When two Sims are engaged to be married, they can throw a wedding party and invite over all of their friends and acquaintances to witness the special event. The wedding party is set up just like a regular party. You need to have food and fun at the ready. When the wedding party approaches, the two Sims involved enjoy the Wedding Day moodlet boost.

The wedding is a formal occasion, so guests show up in their formal attire. You should socialize at the wedding party as usual, but the focus is definitely living up to the name of the occasion: wedding. Use the Get Married social on your partner to actually get married. This starts the exchange of vows and rings. The audience just eats this part up. When the ceremony is complete, the crowd cheers. The family of the Sim getting married enjoys a moodlet boost, such as Mother of the Bride.

The Art of the Conversation

So, you’ve approached another Sim, you left-clicked on them, and now you are staring at a menu of different social options. How do you navigate the social structure of a conversation?

Well, your options are partially defined by your LTR, current mood, age, and your traits. Categories of socials include things like Friendly, Funny, Mean, Romantic, and Special.

Special leads to socials that are encouraged by the Actor having a specific trait, such as Bookworm. Inside the Bookworm menu, there will be options to talk about books or the bookstore.

The menu of available social categories appears around your Sim’s head. Left-click on an option to see what socials are available.

Now, select a social from the category to add it to the action queue.

When you select a social, it is added to your list of activities in the upper-right corner, just as if you were stacking interactions with objects. When a current social ends, the next one automatically begins.

But stacking socials is not a wise strategy because you do not want to just babble away about a topic that the other Sim is just not interested in listening to.

Use socials and then watch for reactions. A positive social with a positive effect is noted with a chime and a blue symbol of two Sims next to each other. A negative reaction is noted by two red Sims and a minus symbol.

Being Boring

Talking about the same things over and over gets boring to most Sims. The positive effect of a positive social is weakened the more you use it. Repeating a social can also affect the STC. Continuous droning about the same subjects will nudge the STC into Dull, Drab, or Insufferably Tedious territory. If the conversation ends on one of those STCs, the LTR suffers.

The default number of times you can repeat a social without getting boring is two. And if you break apart a conversation, you can use a social more than twice without any STC worries. Some socials can be used more than twice without dullness setting in, such as Chat.

Chat has four uses before it is boring in a single conversation. However, it can be “recharged” so that the social can be used six times before it is boring. To recharge a social, you just need to break it up in the conversation. For example, let’s say you use Chat four times in a row.

The other Sim is not bored, but is about to be if you use it one more time. So, you change course and Talk About Books. After that social runs its course, you have recharged Chat once. Now you can use Chat again without it being boring. However, if you tried to use it again without another recharge, the social would be considered boring.

Being Charismatic

The Charisma skill not only unlocks a series of socials, but it can also be developed by using specific socials. Socials that push the STC into certain areas help develop the Charisma skill, so look at the commodity of socials to see if they will help instigate a beneficial STC. Once you have reached the STC, socials that prop up that STC or that are directly related to the skill will advance the Charisma skill.

Charisma

List of Socials

The follow chart details all of the Actor-Target socials you can perform in a conversation. Use this chart to judge the effect of a social before using it by looking at the commodity and cross-referencing that with which commodities affect which STCs.

Here is how the chart is broken down: Social: Name of social as seen in the conversation menu Commodity: Commodity associated with the social Actor/Target Age: Ages in which the social is applicable Social Available When?: What prompts the use of the social Required Trait: Social is only available when Actor has this trait Social Encouraged by Trait?: Social is potentially more “powerful” due to Actor’s trait Social Prevented by Trait?: Actor’s trait prevents them from using this social # of Uses Before Boring: Number of uses in a conversation before the social is Dull. Default is two. Exceptions are specified. # of Uses if Recharged: Number of times the social can be used if another social interrupts the re-use of the social

Social Masterlist

Mood-Affecting Socials

Some socials have the power to affect mood. Moodlets inspired by socials are an easy way to lift a Sim’s mood and earn Lifetime Happiness Points. These are the socials that result in specific moodlets. Use them within your household to boost mood as often as you can without being boring!

Moodlet Socials