Well often using cheats can be worrying since they aren't really explained anywhere officially by EA and when you aren't sure what they do you can be put off using them (since let's face it so much in the game can mess up anyway why risk it with a cheat!?) but I will explain the ones I do know what they do (to the best of my ability!) since cheats can be perfectly safe when used correctly and are designed to "unlock" the advanced building abilities, such as split-leveling, split-stairways, tomb building, dive lot building and way more) The "off" setting for each cheat is the part that appears first (some need to be set to "true" for the cheat to be off, for example)
To open the cheat console: Ctrl+Shift+C
To open the cheat console: Ctrl+Shift+C
Help - Lists the cheats that EA thought people would find most useful.. I think it's rather misleading as it doesn't tell you what the cheats do and only a few actually show so unless you know of their existence, you're missing out! |
JokePlease - Generates a random corny joke for you to sit and not laugh at.. It seems to be there as a bit of a time waster or for the really stoned. |
EnableLlamas Off/On - Well for ages I thought this did absolutely bloody nothing except tell you llamas were enabled or not.. Until I left it on and forgot about it and saw what it did - it basically turns the thumbnails on the notifications of what some Sims say (not a ! notification, something like when they get a love letter) it'll replace the Sim's image thumbnail with one of a llama. |
fullscreen Off/On - Switch between full-screen and windowed mode of the game.
fadeObjects Off/On - When switched on objects will fade when the camera gets close to them.
fps Off/On - Show the framerate at the top right corner of the screen.
Kaching - Add 1,000 Simoleans to the active household funds.
Motherlode - Add 50,000 Simoleans to the active household funds.
unlockOutfits Off/On - Unlocks career and npc outfits in CAS but the cheat must be entered at the select game screen (main menu)
resetSim [SimFirstName SimSurname] - This is incredibly useful as it will reset any glitched/trapped/stuck Sim to a sensible place (usually near the middle of wherever your camera is pointing) and will also reset the motives and happiness of the Sim to what they were before they were trapped. It is important that you type in the sims full name, for example my test Sim is named Derick Von Hugenalley, so to reset him I need to type his entire name (correctly lol an incorrect spelling won't work) alongside the cheat, so "resetSim Derick Von Hugenalley".
resetSim * - Depending on how you look at it, this cheat can either be more or less useful than resetting a particular Sim. Typing this in will reset any, every and all Sims in the world. This can be useful as it's a way of reducing lag (if Sims are generated in an area not routed correctly it can cause the game to lag and jump a bit) and you can be sure that 100% of your game's population will now be in a sensible place (ie wherever the routing has been done correctly) and their motives and happiness set to the middle of the bars. The downside of this is that any interactions (current actions - so anything from talking to another Sim to cooking a meal to sleeping in a bed) will be cancelled, including entire queues in the case of the current active family.
MoveObjects Off/On - Switching this on means that it removes all object footprints. This basically means that you can delete and move objects you normally wouldn't be able to and you can place objects on top of each other. This is basically because this cheatcode "hides" most of the objects function from the game while it's active and makes the object almost like a ghost. If you delete a Sim with this, you will not be able to get them back even if you hit undo so it's not recommended. This is mainly designed for landscaping so that you can place plants closer together and so they look more realistic and used in conjunction with Alt can make for endless possibilities :D You can use this to place objects in buy mode but remember that when the cheat goes back off, their functions will return and having some too close together can cause the stompy "I can't get there!" Simmie tantrum lol so always be sure that it's placed in a way that mean Sims can still use them. ALWAYS turn this off as soon as you're finished using it as you can experience problems in Live Mode (because the game thinks their functions are hidden) and unlike any other cheat completely exitting the game and re-entering the game will not turn it off - infact it will make it impossible to turn off even if you try and you'll need to delete your entire Sims 3 game to a "virgin" copy (In that how-to I did in the Sims Group)
ConstrainFloorElevation True/False - This is my absolute favourite cheat! It's incredibly useful when building as it enables advanced building techniques like split-leveling. What this does when set to false is basically allows you to force terrain adjustments regardless of objects, Sims, and other structures that are above, on or below the area you're adjusting. It allows you to use the level terrain to affect the height of walls, floors, foundations and decks however you like. However, you will need to turn it off in between each specific use - so if you level terrain from a foundation to a wall it will shrink the wall to the height of the foundation (and vice versa), you will need to turn it off and go back to the build mode main menu before turning it back on. This is because the floor level you use it on will make the game think that that is the ground terrain and you won't be able to do the same edits on a higher or lower level. You can also use this to adjust depths of swimming pools and basements and even arched bridges :D Always remember to set it back to true when you're done doing whatever modification since it can cause... interesting effects if you forget about it and leave it on and try and carry on building (speaking from experience lol).
HideHeadlineEffects Off/On - This stops the Sim's thought bubbles and speech bubbles from showing in Live Mode. This can be useful for having more realistic videos or photos but that's really it lol.
AgeUpToNPC Off/On - Entering this with a toddler or baby Sim on your lot will mean that when they have their next birthday they will age up to become an NPC and will be outside of your control from then on. Be warned that it will do any and all babies and toddlers on the lot and you can't specify which sim to age to NPC. Not sure how this could be useful lolol...
AlwaysAllowBuildBuy Off/On - Turning this on means that if there's a fire or burglary in Live Mode on your lot, you will still be able to access build and buy modes.
PlaceFriezes Off/On - Entering this allows you to place foundations and decks on floors above ground level :) This can be quite useful if you want to have part of the roof higher than the rest (I used this on the garages in the car shop lot)
disableSnappingToSlotson Alt Off/On - Turning this on will mean that holding Alt when placing objects won't have any effect. When it's off (it's off automatically) holding Alt when placing objects will mean they won't snap to the grid and therefore allowing free placement and rotation :)
resetlifetimehappiness - Entering this will reset all of the lifetime happiness of the Sims in the world (any who have lifetime happiness or lifetime rewards) to 0 and will remove any lifetime rewards purchased. This is generally not useful as who wants to set all those hard earned happiness points to 0 and remove those useful rewards!? Not me anyway lol.
slowMotionViz [0-8] - Entering this in will make the game move in slow motion lol quite useful for using with Tabmode. 0 turns it off and 1-8 will slow the slow motion down - 8 is slowest
Quit - Entering this will exit the game without saving - it will still cause the little pop up asking if you're sure incase you somehow accidentally type this into the cheat console.. lol
All other cheats need Testingcheats (explained at the bottom because it does a butt-ton) to be on before they'll work:
RestrictBuildBuyinBuildings Off/On - Turning this on means that you can build in apartments (specifically in the Late Night Shells) where you can't usually - you'll get a notification saying "The HomeOwner's Association does not allow this" or something along those lines normally lol.
EnableLotLocking Off/On - Will add a little padlock icon to a Lot's map icon/info and clicking on the padlock will either unlock or lock that lot (the little icon padlock locks and unlocks lol). Locking a lot means that people will be unable to edit or build/buy on those lots - EA use it on their tombs and dive lots. You can use it to unlock a lot if you want to be able to build or buy on it.
DiscoverAllUnchartedIslands - This instantly discovers all the possible islands for the active family. This cannot be undone and you won't get the in-game reward for finding them normally.
buydebug - This unlocks the Debug section of Buy Mode which enables advanced building (for building your own tombs or dive lots) and all the ingame objects that the game uses but that aren't usually able to buy (like school trophies, career rewards) it also contains a lot of objects that can enable advanced building techniques and all the spawners for the collectible objects in game. Turning Testingcheats off will not close Debug - you'll need to fully exit the game for the debug menu to close. I go into more detail about this in the section below.
freerealestate - Makes all the lots in the game free. Cannot be undone, however if you build or place objects after the cheat has been entered they will add to a lot's total like normal.. It's a "set every lot price up til this moment to free" kind of thing.
familyfunds [Household Name] [Amount] - This is useful for assigning a specific amount of money to a household. This cheat initially confused me since I fell into the trap of family-name-must-surely-be-the-same-as-the-household-name. It's not lol. Basically the household name is the one that appears on their maptag/lot-family info and not their surname. It's quite easy when you get the hang of though and especially if your household name is the same as their surname. So for the Starrhart's, they have a different household name since it's the one I had from the start which is Starr. So I have to use "familyfunds Starr 78000" for it to work.
speed [0-4] - Well this is another cheat that is pretty useless lol it basically changes the game speed in Live Mode. 0 is paused, 1 is normal speed and so on.. Pretty redundant since you can just press those numbers in Live Mode for the exact same effect.
maptags On/Off - Turning this off hides all the maptags in mapview in Live Mode.
Testing Cheats Mode
TestingCheatsEnabled False/True - Setting this to true turns on the Testing Cheats mode.
Shift and click on the following objects in Live Mode to access new options:
Mailbox
"Make All Happy" - Fills the happiness bar to maximum of all Sims on the lot regardless of the state of their motives.
"Make Friends For Me" - Adds any Sims in the world that your Active Sim doesn't know to their relationship panel at friendship level.
"Make Needs Static" - Makes the motives for the entire active family fill to the maximum and stay there. In my view one of the cheatier cheats lol.
"Make Needs Dynamic" - Automatically set to this but used to turn off static needs and make the active households motives move around again.
"Make Me Know Everyone" - Adds all Sims in the world that your Active Sim doesn't know to their relationship panel at acquaintance level.
"Force Visitor" - Forces a random Townie Sim to visit your active lot.
"Force NPC" - Clicking this will come up with the NPC Sim options so you can choose a specific NPC to force to pay your Active household a visit.
"Supernatural Population Control" - Clicking this allows you to choose specific occults for the game to add more of to the neighbourhood, alternatively you can also delete entire occults from the neighbourhood through this option.
Work place
"Force Opportunity" - Forces a work-related opportunity for the active Sim.
"Force Event" - This forces an event for the active Sim when they're next working (or immediately if they're working when you click it) and these are anything from getting a raise, having a colleague gossip to your sim or even your sim getting fired! This is definitely a cheat to excise caution with.
"Force All Events" - Although this sound mental it just means more than one event will be forced but how many seems to be entirely random.
Ground
"Build/Buy on this lot" - Allows you to build upon or edit a lot that your active family doesn't own without having to enter Edit Town.
"Seasons" - This allows you to change what the weather is and a lot more, you can set how strong the wind is, how deep the snow is, what the forecast is and how fast trees blow in the wind.
"Teleport" - Teleports the active Sim to the area you clicked.
Any Sim
"Add To Active Household/Family" - Will only show on Townie Sims and NPCs. Adds the Sim to the Active Family.
"Trigger Age Transition" - Forces the Sim to age up - well more accurately, it fills that Sim's age bar to the max. If this is selected on an Elder Sim, they will die.
"Favourite Music" - Change that Sim's favourite music."Edit Sim in Create-a-Sim" - Well self-explanatory really lol it allows you to edit that Sim in CAS."Celebrity" - Edit that Sim's celebrity level and/or celebrity points.
Active Sim
"Modify Traits for Active Sim" - Change the active Sim's traits without having to enterCAS."Make NPC" - Only becomes available when there's more than one Sim in the Active Household and this turns the Sim clicked into an NPC (non-playable character)
Any object
"Object... Delete It" - Deletes that object permanently and hitting undo may not necessarily bring it back.
If Testing Cheats is enabled in Live Mode, you can drag the needs bars up or down as desired and when viewing your Sims' relationships, you can drag the bars on that screen either way to make best friends or mortal enemies really quickly.
If you enable Testing Cheats mode from the "Select Family" screen before loading a family, when you enter the game you can Ctrl and click just below the box in the lifetime happiness tab to add 500 (per click) to lifetime happiness.
If Testing Cheats is enabled in Live Mode, you can Ctrl and click a Moodlet in the Moodlet panel to remove it. Note: If it is motive-induced, the bar related to the negative Moodlet will be completely filled.
Written by Georgina
fadeObjects Off/On - When switched on objects will fade when the camera gets close to them.
fps Off/On - Show the framerate at the top right corner of the screen.
Kaching - Add 1,000 Simoleans to the active household funds.
Motherlode - Add 50,000 Simoleans to the active household funds.
unlockOutfits Off/On - Unlocks career and npc outfits in CAS but the cheat must be entered at the select game screen (main menu)
resetSim [SimFirstName SimSurname] - This is incredibly useful as it will reset any glitched/trapped/stuck Sim to a sensible place (usually near the middle of wherever your camera is pointing) and will also reset the motives and happiness of the Sim to what they were before they were trapped. It is important that you type in the sims full name, for example my test Sim is named Derick Von Hugenalley, so to reset him I need to type his entire name (correctly lol an incorrect spelling won't work) alongside the cheat, so "resetSim Derick Von Hugenalley".
resetSim * - Depending on how you look at it, this cheat can either be more or less useful than resetting a particular Sim. Typing this in will reset any, every and all Sims in the world. This can be useful as it's a way of reducing lag (if Sims are generated in an area not routed correctly it can cause the game to lag and jump a bit) and you can be sure that 100% of your game's population will now be in a sensible place (ie wherever the routing has been done correctly) and their motives and happiness set to the middle of the bars. The downside of this is that any interactions (current actions - so anything from talking to another Sim to cooking a meal to sleeping in a bed) will be cancelled, including entire queues in the case of the current active family.
MoveObjects Off/On - Switching this on means that it removes all object footprints. This basically means that you can delete and move objects you normally wouldn't be able to and you can place objects on top of each other. This is basically because this cheatcode "hides" most of the objects function from the game while it's active and makes the object almost like a ghost. If you delete a Sim with this, you will not be able to get them back even if you hit undo so it's not recommended. This is mainly designed for landscaping so that you can place plants closer together and so they look more realistic and used in conjunction with Alt can make for endless possibilities :D You can use this to place objects in buy mode but remember that when the cheat goes back off, their functions will return and having some too close together can cause the stompy "I can't get there!" Simmie tantrum lol so always be sure that it's placed in a way that mean Sims can still use them. ALWAYS turn this off as soon as you're finished using it as you can experience problems in Live Mode (because the game thinks their functions are hidden) and unlike any other cheat completely exitting the game and re-entering the game will not turn it off - infact it will make it impossible to turn off even if you try and you'll need to delete your entire Sims 3 game to a "virgin" copy (In that how-to I did in the Sims Group)
ConstrainFloorElevation True/False - This is my absolute favourite cheat! It's incredibly useful when building as it enables advanced building techniques like split-leveling. What this does when set to false is basically allows you to force terrain adjustments regardless of objects, Sims, and other structures that are above, on or below the area you're adjusting. It allows you to use the level terrain to affect the height of walls, floors, foundations and decks however you like. However, you will need to turn it off in between each specific use - so if you level terrain from a foundation to a wall it will shrink the wall to the height of the foundation (and vice versa), you will need to turn it off and go back to the build mode main menu before turning it back on. This is because the floor level you use it on will make the game think that that is the ground terrain and you won't be able to do the same edits on a higher or lower level. You can also use this to adjust depths of swimming pools and basements and even arched bridges :D Always remember to set it back to true when you're done doing whatever modification since it can cause... interesting effects if you forget about it and leave it on and try and carry on building (speaking from experience lol).
HideHeadlineEffects Off/On - This stops the Sim's thought bubbles and speech bubbles from showing in Live Mode. This can be useful for having more realistic videos or photos but that's really it lol.
AgeUpToNPC Off/On - Entering this with a toddler or baby Sim on your lot will mean that when they have their next birthday they will age up to become an NPC and will be outside of your control from then on. Be warned that it will do any and all babies and toddlers on the lot and you can't specify which sim to age to NPC. Not sure how this could be useful lolol...
AlwaysAllowBuildBuy Off/On - Turning this on means that if there's a fire or burglary in Live Mode on your lot, you will still be able to access build and buy modes.
PlaceFriezes Off/On - Entering this allows you to place foundations and decks on floors above ground level :) This can be quite useful if you want to have part of the roof higher than the rest (I used this on the garages in the car shop lot)
disableSnappingToSlotson Alt Off/On - Turning this on will mean that holding Alt when placing objects won't have any effect. When it's off (it's off automatically) holding Alt when placing objects will mean they won't snap to the grid and therefore allowing free placement and rotation :)
resetlifetimehappiness - Entering this will reset all of the lifetime happiness of the Sims in the world (any who have lifetime happiness or lifetime rewards) to 0 and will remove any lifetime rewards purchased. This is generally not useful as who wants to set all those hard earned happiness points to 0 and remove those useful rewards!? Not me anyway lol.
slowMotionViz [0-8] - Entering this in will make the game move in slow motion lol quite useful for using with Tabmode. 0 turns it off and 1-8 will slow the slow motion down - 8 is slowest
Quit - Entering this will exit the game without saving - it will still cause the little pop up asking if you're sure incase you somehow accidentally type this into the cheat console.. lol
All other cheats need Testingcheats (explained at the bottom because it does a butt-ton) to be on before they'll work:
RestrictBuildBuyinBuildings Off/On - Turning this on means that you can build in apartments (specifically in the Late Night Shells) where you can't usually - you'll get a notification saying "The HomeOwner's Association does not allow this" or something along those lines normally lol.
EnableLotLocking Off/On - Will add a little padlock icon to a Lot's map icon/info and clicking on the padlock will either unlock or lock that lot (the little icon padlock locks and unlocks lol). Locking a lot means that people will be unable to edit or build/buy on those lots - EA use it on their tombs and dive lots. You can use it to unlock a lot if you want to be able to build or buy on it.
DiscoverAllUnchartedIslands - This instantly discovers all the possible islands for the active family. This cannot be undone and you won't get the in-game reward for finding them normally.
buydebug - This unlocks the Debug section of Buy Mode which enables advanced building (for building your own tombs or dive lots) and all the ingame objects that the game uses but that aren't usually able to buy (like school trophies, career rewards) it also contains a lot of objects that can enable advanced building techniques and all the spawners for the collectible objects in game. Turning Testingcheats off will not close Debug - you'll need to fully exit the game for the debug menu to close. I go into more detail about this in the section below.
freerealestate - Makes all the lots in the game free. Cannot be undone, however if you build or place objects after the cheat has been entered they will add to a lot's total like normal.. It's a "set every lot price up til this moment to free" kind of thing.
familyfunds [Household Name] [Amount] - This is useful for assigning a specific amount of money to a household. This cheat initially confused me since I fell into the trap of family-name-must-surely-be-the-same-as-the-household-name. It's not lol. Basically the household name is the one that appears on their maptag/lot-family info and not their surname. It's quite easy when you get the hang of though and especially if your household name is the same as their surname. So for the Starrhart's, they have a different household name since it's the one I had from the start which is Starr. So I have to use "familyfunds Starr 78000" for it to work.
speed [0-4] - Well this is another cheat that is pretty useless lol it basically changes the game speed in Live Mode. 0 is paused, 1 is normal speed and so on.. Pretty redundant since you can just press those numbers in Live Mode for the exact same effect.
maptags On/Off - Turning this off hides all the maptags in mapview in Live Mode.
Testing Cheats Mode
TestingCheatsEnabled False/True - Setting this to true turns on the Testing Cheats mode.
Shift and click on the following objects in Live Mode to access new options:
Mailbox
"Make All Happy" - Fills the happiness bar to maximum of all Sims on the lot regardless of the state of their motives.
"Make Friends For Me" - Adds any Sims in the world that your Active Sim doesn't know to their relationship panel at friendship level.
"Make Needs Static" - Makes the motives for the entire active family fill to the maximum and stay there. In my view one of the cheatier cheats lol.
"Make Needs Dynamic" - Automatically set to this but used to turn off static needs and make the active households motives move around again.
"Make Me Know Everyone" - Adds all Sims in the world that your Active Sim doesn't know to their relationship panel at acquaintance level.
"Force Visitor" - Forces a random Townie Sim to visit your active lot.
"Force NPC" - Clicking this will come up with the NPC Sim options so you can choose a specific NPC to force to pay your Active household a visit.
"Supernatural Population Control" - Clicking this allows you to choose specific occults for the game to add more of to the neighbourhood, alternatively you can also delete entire occults from the neighbourhood through this option.
Work place
"Force Opportunity" - Forces a work-related opportunity for the active Sim.
"Force Event" - This forces an event for the active Sim when they're next working (or immediately if they're working when you click it) and these are anything from getting a raise, having a colleague gossip to your sim or even your sim getting fired! This is definitely a cheat to excise caution with.
"Force All Events" - Although this sound mental it just means more than one event will be forced but how many seems to be entirely random.
Ground
"Build/Buy on this lot" - Allows you to build upon or edit a lot that your active family doesn't own without having to enter Edit Town.
"Seasons" - This allows you to change what the weather is and a lot more, you can set how strong the wind is, how deep the snow is, what the forecast is and how fast trees blow in the wind.
"Teleport" - Teleports the active Sim to the area you clicked.
Any Sim
"Add To Active Household/Family" - Will only show on Townie Sims and NPCs. Adds the Sim to the Active Family.
"Trigger Age Transition" - Forces the Sim to age up - well more accurately, it fills that Sim's age bar to the max. If this is selected on an Elder Sim, they will die.
"Favourite Music" - Change that Sim's favourite music."Edit Sim in Create-a-Sim" - Well self-explanatory really lol it allows you to edit that Sim in CAS."Celebrity" - Edit that Sim's celebrity level and/or celebrity points.
Active Sim
"Modify Traits for Active Sim" - Change the active Sim's traits without having to enterCAS."Make NPC" - Only becomes available when there's more than one Sim in the Active Household and this turns the Sim clicked into an NPC (non-playable character)
Any object
"Object... Delete It" - Deletes that object permanently and hitting undo may not necessarily bring it back.
If Testing Cheats is enabled in Live Mode, you can drag the needs bars up or down as desired and when viewing your Sims' relationships, you can drag the bars on that screen either way to make best friends or mortal enemies really quickly.
If you enable Testing Cheats mode from the "Select Family" screen before loading a family, when you enter the game you can Ctrl and click just below the box in the lifetime happiness tab to add 500 (per click) to lifetime happiness.
If Testing Cheats is enabled in Live Mode, you can Ctrl and click a Moodlet in the Moodlet panel to remove it. Note: If it is motive-induced, the bar related to the negative Moodlet will be completely filled.
Written by Georgina