If you’ve ever wanted to turn your household into a lasting legacy built on influence and ambition (and a little bit of drama), the dynasty system that comes with The Sims 4 Royalty & Legacy delivers exactly that. It’s a layered progression system that blends prestige, politics, relationships, and generational power into one cohesive framework.
Here’s everything you need to know about how The Sims 4 dynasties work and how to rise to the top.
The Sims 4 Dynasties Guide
What Is A Dynasty?
Dynasties are essentially a formal family power structure. As well as founding your own, you can find them through the Social Groups menu, marry into one, or join through family connections.
Creating a Dynasty
When you create your family dynasty, you’ll become the first dynasty Head and get to choose the name, crest, and, most importantly, the values for dynasties to live by.
Values
Values define what your dynasty stands for and what it discourages.
They determine which activities and careers are encouraged and which are discouraged. This directly impacts how your Sims behave and how your dynasty earns (or loses) prestige.
There are two types of values: skill values and ideal values. You can choose up to three of each type.
Certain values unlock special ways for members to challenge the dynasty Head. Depending on your chosen philosophies, leadership can be decided through duels, chess matches, or outright fights.
Skill Values
Members who engage in the encouraged skill activities will generate prestige for the dynasty.
Members will engage in these activities more often on their own, but only if autonomy is set to full in your settings. If their preferences are set to dislike that skill/activity, that will also stop them from doing it autonomously.
The more packs you have, the more skills you will have to choose from. Hovering over the skill will also tell you which activities are encouraged for your dynasties.
Ideal Values
These are the values that will sit at the core of your dynasty.
Choosing certain options will also limit your ability to pick others – you can’t have conflicting ideals.
Here is a breakdown of all the different ideals, as well as their encouraged/discouraged activities.
Not all members will agree with you
Each dynasty member has their own personality traits and preferences. Some will fully support your chosen values. Others may secretly (or openly) hate them. Sims who support a value are more likely to perform encouraged activities, and Sims who dislike a value may actively engage in discouraged behaviour.
Changing values isn’t just a button click; it’s a political decision. Make too many unpopular changes, and you could trigger a unity crisis within your dynasties.
Prestige: A Dynasty’s Reputation
Prestige is the main measure of your dynasty’s success and influence.
Every member contributes to prestige through their actions, but the dynasty Head and Heir have a much bigger impact. Their wins (and mistakes) carry more weight.
When your dynasty reaches a new prestige level, two things will happen: the Head earns dynasty perk points, and those points unlock dynasty perks that benefit all members, except outcasts.
But be careful: if members behave poorly, you can lose prestige levels along with the perks you unlocked from them.
How to Gain (Or Lose) Prestige
When an interaction option has an impact on prestige level, you will see either the green or red symbol
You’ll gain prestige when your dynasty acts in alignment with its values. Some of the main ways include:
- Doing encouraged activities
- Working in encouraged careers
- Getting good grades
- Making friends (the higher the friendship the better)
- Hosting social events
- Marrying into other dynasties
- Starting alliances or rivalries
The higher the members’ career level, grades, or event scores, the greater the reward. Interacting with high-prestige dynasties also boosts your own.
Prestige can drop if your Sims:
- Perform discouraged activities
- Work in discouraged careers
- End alliances or rivalries
- Get caught in scandals
More severe scandals and higher-level discouraged careers mean bigger losses.
Prestige also slowly decays over time, so your dynasty can’t just coast forever (but this can be disabled in the game settings).
Dynasty Perks & Inheritable Traits
Perks for dynasties are much harder to unlock than perks from similar systems like the clubs from Get Together. Every prestige level unlocks dynasty perks, rather than points accumulating the more you do a certain action.
Some perks require certain prestige thresholds, and many have three upgrade tiers with stronger bonuses at each level.
Also, only the dynasty Head can purchase these perks. If you open the perks panel using another member of the dynasty, it will all be greyed out.
If you manage to reach maximum prestige, you will be given enough perk points to unlock all of the rewards, so don’t worry about choosing which ones you prefer; they’ll all be yours with enough hard work (or cheats).
Here is what each perk unlocks.
Good Grades
All students will make faster progress with their grades.
Nepotism
Members progress in their careers faster, so they get more frequent promotions.
Tutor
You can now hire a tutor from the services menu on the phone. This is a Sim with a lot of high-level skills and can mentor other Sims in the household as well as help children and teens with homework.
Market Manipulator
Members will have a new PC interaction available, which allows them to increase the value of their stocks.
Arrange Promotion
The head of the dynasty can arrange a promotion for any dynasty member through this phone interaction.
Respected Head
Heads of dynasties with this perk have more successful interactions with each other.
Discreet
Dynasty members will have a higher chance to find other Sims’ secrets, experience shorter scandals and have reduced information broker fees.
Gracious Host
Dynasty members will have an easier time reaching gold in social events.
Easier Alliances
The dynasty’s Head will have an increased chance of success when asking the Head of another dynasty to form alliances.
Matchmaker
Dynasty members will have an easier time building romantic relationships, a better chance of proposal success and an increased prestige gain from marriage.
Friends In High Places
All members will build friendships faster, and those relationships will decay more slowly.
One of the most exciting features is inheritable traits. These are legacy gameplay taken to the next level, as these special perks give babies born into the dynasty a chance to receive unique affinity traits. Over generations, these traits grow stronger, reinforcing the idea of a powerful bloodline.
Unfortunately, these don’t apply to any children who are part of the dynasty before you purchase these perks.
Mental Affinity
Babies born to dynasty members while this perk is active will gain the Mental Affinity Level 1 Trait and will build Mental Skills faster. The level increases for their children, and so on.
Social Affinity
Babies born to dynasty members while this perk is active will gain the Social Affinity Level 1 Trait and will build social skills faster.
Physical Affinity
Babies born to dynasty members while this perk is active will gain the Physical Affinity Level 1 Trait and will build physical skills faster.
Creative Affinity
Babies born to dynasty members while this perk is active will gain the Creative Affinity Level 1 Trait and will build creative skills faster.
Leadership: Heads, Heirs, and Power Shifts
The Dynasty Head is in charge. They’re the only Sim who can:
- Change values
- Purchase perks
- Assign an Heir
- Designate outcasts
- Invite or remove members
Their actions have increased prestige impact, and they receive social advantages within the dynasty.
The Head keeps their role until they die, lose a challenge, or step down. If they die without naming an Heir, the highest-ranking eligible member automatically takes over.
Dynasties with no members left will end, so you need to select a dynasty heir and keep memberships up if you want to keep it going. Dynasty heirs, as your next-in-line, also experience increased prestige impact and social benefits.
Unity: Stability Or Crisis
Unity measures how well members get along.
When relationships are strong, the dynasty reaches stability, and friendships build faster.
When relationships break down, a unity crisis can occur. During a crisis:
- Relationships grow slower
- Friendships change to average level
- Members struggle to get along
- Some may make demands or even threaten to leave
Spending quality time together helps maintain unity, but controversial decisions (like excluding members or changing the values of dynasties) can quickly destabilise everything.
You can also use this cheat stats.set_stat rankedStatistic_Dynasty_Unity 130 to max your unity level. Or change the number to any number between 1 and 130 to change how balanced dynasties and their unity levels stay. This cheat also only works if you have the dynasty Head selected and you have enabled cheats.
Outcasts: Exile, Revenge, or Redemption
If a Sim repeatedly harms the dynasty and refuses to comply, the dynasty head can declare them an Outcast. This will result in them:
- Having reduced prestige impact
- Being unable to become the heir
- Losing access to all dynasty perks
- Struggling to influence others
Some may try to redeem themselves. Others may grow resentful and attempt to blackmail or extort the dynasty head to regain their status.
Dynasties turn your household into something bigger than just a family; they become institutions.
They give us lots of new potential for gameplay – while they are useful for the noble active career, they aren’t limited to activities from this pack, any family can be dynasties and have a set of core family values and priorities.
This is a gameplay feature we can see being used and utilised in tons of generational gameplay and legacy challenges.
What do you think about the new dynasty features? Is there anything we missed? Let us know! You can also read our other Royalty & Legacy guides here.
