The Sims 4: How to ensure a healthy game!

From time to time everyone has issues with their game. Usually caused by out of date custom content and mods when a new update is released for the game. Sometimes you can also have errors even if you do not use custom content or mods. We are going to go over a few different ways to ensure that you have a clean and healthy game, and steps you can take to understand your errors and issues in The Sims 4.

Using ‘Save As’ instead of ‘Save’

Sometimes save files can become corrupt after saving the same file over and over again. To help prevent this problem, it is good practice to use the “Save As” feature to save your game instead of using “Save” or “Save and Exit”.

What is the difference?

“Save” and “Save and Exit” will both directly overwrite the same save file over and over.

“Save As” will prompt you to create a new save with a new name, or overwrite an existing save of your choosing.

How to Backup your Saved Games

It is a good idea to occasionally create backups of your Saved Games. So that if the save file you are using becomes corrupt in the future, you still have a working backup.

The Sims 4 game cache is located in: Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims4/ (as pictured below)

Once you have found your “Saves” folder, right click and select “copy”.

Go anywhere outside of your Sims 4 Folder (example: Desktop, Documents, etc) and right click any blank area and select paste. (as pictured below)

You now have a backup of your saves file that you can use later if needed.

Clearing your Cache in The Sims 4

Cleaning up the cache files for your game can help the performance of your game as well as fix many issues you could be experiencing. The “Cache” files are the games way of saving information about your current game. From time to time these files need to be deleted and regenerated by the game. It is best to do this quite often, especially after a new game patch or after adding/removing lots of custom content or mods.

The Sims 4 game cache is located in: Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims4/ (as pictured below)

Step 1: Delete the localthumbcache.package file in the main directory in the The Sims 4 document folder.

Step 2: Open up the Cache folder, and delete all of the files that end in .cache.

Step 3: Open up the Cachestr folder, and delete all the files inside.

Step 4: If you have a folder called onlinetumbnailcache, you can delete this entire folder.

Step 5: If you have any files called “LastException” or “LastUIException” or “LastCrash” you can delete them as well.