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Emotions: How to get them and what they can do for you.
By now you have probably experienced the wide range of emotions that your Sims can fall into in the Sims 4, but if you are looking to improve your gameplay a little, be it just having your Sim families run smoother or if you are doing a challenge of some sort and want to do better, this guide can help!
The guide is split into three sections. The first section will detail the various emotions, the easiest and most reliable ways to get into them and the benefits they bring to the table when you enter them. The second section discuss how to maintain the desired emotion at any given time, especially in the face of other conflicting emotions. Lastly the third section will talk about emotional auras and how to use them for maximum benefit.
Inspired
Inspired is my personal favorite emotion in the game, and thus we will start with it first. Being inspired confers the following benefits:
• Faster skill gaining in the Cooking, Gourmet Cooking, Painting, Piano, Writing, Guitar, Violin and Mixology skills.
• Operating at a higher effective skill when performing actions related to the above skills.
• Immunity from “Writer’s Block” tense moodlet when writing books.
Inspired unlocks the “Talk about Dreams”, “Describe New Idea” and “Propose Crazy Scheme” friendly social interactions. All three are about equal in terms of relationship gains and time to execute, and I have yet to have them rejected. Since most social interactions will cause a Sim to be bored with more than two repetitions, adding three more new socials allows you to have 6 more friendly social interactions with a Sim in a single setting…useful if you are trying to gain relationship points with a Sim quickly in one sitting.
Some of the best money making aspects of the game, namely writing and painting are all boosted by the inspired mood. The whole notion of operating at a higher effective skill level is important. A skill 4 cooking Sim is going to more reliably make excellent quality meals compared to a skill 2 cooking Sim. However, if a skill 2 cooking Sim becomes inspired before they start cooking, they operate as if they had a 4 skill, making their dishes more likely to succeed (and conversely, less likely to set the kitchen on fire)
Browsing art on the computer is the fastest and most reliable way to obtain the inspired mood for teens or older. For children, reaching a creative skill of 5 unlocks the “Daydream” self-interaction, which gives an even more powerful and longer lasting inspired moodlet. This sadly goes away when the child becomes a teen.
Interesting to note, that “Foodie” Sims gain access to a more powerful version of “Browse Art” called “Browse Recipe ideas” which gives a +2 inspired moodlet. This benefits you even if you do something other than cook. Being skilled in art or one of the instruments will eventually open up “research art/piano/guitar/violin” on the computer. This is a potentially more powerful, but riskier alternative to “Browse Art” a successful use of this interaction will give you an 8 hour long moodlet, (rather than just the 4 hour long one you get from thoughtful showers or browsing art). However, it carries the risk that your Sim will not find anything inspiring during their research, at which point they will get a +1 tense 8 hour moodlet rather than +1 inspired.
Inspired is one of the emotions that cannot be made into an emotional painting. That said, there are plenty of career reward objects that give inspiring emotional aura objects. (Those will be covered in the emotional aura section).
One other thing to note that when you reach a +8 or higher in inspired, your Sim becomes “Very Inspired”. This distinction is important as it further amplifies the effects of being inspired. You gain even more bonus skill gaining and operate at an even higher effective skill. Even if your Sim is capped out at a 10 skill, you can boost their effective skill even higher than 10 with moods.
Confident
• Confident boosts your effective skill and skill gain of Charisma
• Confident unlocks the Show Off Muscles, propose crazy scheme and Bold Pick Up Line
Confident is a tricky emotion. Sure, it is listed as a positive emotion and your Sim can never die from it, even if they become very confident. When your Sim is out on the town to make friends or maybe even get a little romance, it is an ideal emotion to be in. But it is also the bane of creative types. Cooks and artists, upon making something of great quality, will gain confident moodlets. This more often than not forces them out of inspired and thus make continued work in their creative art less effective. Confident does not confer a penalty to their effective level. In fact it boosts everything a little bit.
Where confident really shines is in its unique romantic interaction: The Bold Pick-up line. Not only is the bold pickup line more often accepted compared to the normal pick up line, it provides some very large boosts to your Sim’s romantic relationship. It’s best use is to turn a normal friend (or a complete stranger) into a romantic interest, adding that romance bar and paving the way for some of the other standard interactions to be accepted. I would argue that when starting a brand new romance, confident is more useful than flirty. The higher effective charisma level well make rejections (and thus embarrassment) less likely.
The quickest and easiest way to become confident is brushing your teeth. This can be done at any sink. Since every community lot includes sinks you can easily grab (and refresh) your confidence moodlet whenever you need to. Psyching self up in the mirror is also a quick and easy way to gain confidence. The fact that both can be done in most bathrooms means you can get yourself a +2 confidence moodlet whenever you want.
Great if you want it, but difficult to get rid of if you don’t, confident is the perfect mood for any social interactions.
Energized
If you want athletic skill than you want energized! (See also Motor skill for children) Energized is a very useful emotion…if a bit specific. If your goal isn’t the athletic or motor skill, there are fewer actions and skills that benefit from being energized compared to, say, inspired or focused. Being Energized also unlocks the following useful interactions.
• Enthuse about interests, Hip Bump
• Exercise option (Sit Ups, Push Ups, Stretch)
These, like the extra friendly socials opened up by the other emotions, work the same. They give you a greater diversity in social options and give a healthy amount of relationship gain. There is added benefit, however, which I will explain later.
Another gameplay enhancing interaction is the “Take Speedy Shower”. This replaces the “Brisk Shower” option on the shower if you are already energized. It has the benefit of being the fastest way to gain hygiene (outside of a moodlet solver).
The true power of the energized emotion is its ability to farm up aspiration points. While every emotion has emotion-specific whims, energized generally has ones that are quick and easy to fulfill, often in rapid succession. Doing sit ups, going for a jog, doing a hip bump, running on a treadmill… all are easy to access, take just a few Sim minutes to perform and are still worth 25 points apiece. They also don’t have any whims that try to take them out of that emotion.
Energized is a little tricker to gain at-will. The most reliable way is to take a brisk shower. Having a skilled cook, while energized, create a protein plate meal can let your Sim eat their way to an energized moodlet. Having an active Sim in the house (besides your Sim) allows access to the “Fire up” interaction, which gives out an energized moodlet.
Playful
Playful is on the border of a good emotion and a bad emotion, though the game classifies it as a good one. Functionally it boosts only Comedy. It does not boost mischief (or any other skills for that matter). As far as interactions, you get one of each category except for a friendly one. You get “make a flirty joke” under romantic, Flash Crazy eyes under funny, Imishly pester under mean and Slap’em Silly under Mischief. Playful tends to be the result of, rather than the goal of, social interactions. Often you’ll be running the confident or flirty emotion and playful will hijack the mood. Staying away from any and all ‘funny’ interactions is a way to keep it at bay if you do not want a Sim to be playful.
Willingly becoming playful is very easy. Browsing funny videos on Sims.tv is the easiest if your Sim is alone and simply telling jokes and doing other funny interactions will naturally make your Sim playful if they have someone to talk to.
Playful is indeed one of the deadly emotions. It progresses from playful, to very playful to hysterical. If your Sim is hysterical, they are in real danger of dying. Having them go to a mirror to “try to calm down” is probably the best course of action should this happen to you and you want the Sim to live. On a side note, you can also make silly faces in the mirror while playful to become even MORE playful.
…if you want a Sim that you control to die, however, death by playfulness is actually probably the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to kill a Sim. Do anything to get them playful, even the 4 hour long +1 moodlet you get from browsing Sims.tv is enough. Then have them drink a happy potion. Happy potions can be purchased from the rewards store for 200 aspiration points. Because happiness adds to the strength of positive non-happy emotions, and playful is considered a ‘positive emotion’ the +100 happy moodlet from the potion will be added to your Sim’s playful mood, quickly bringing them to Hysterical levels and in real danger of death.
Flirty
Flirty does what it says it does, it helps you out in the romance department…but not as powerfully as you might think. Flirty boosts no skills (since charisma is governed by Confident) and there are no jobs where going to work flirty is the preferred mood.
Making your Sim flirty opens up many new romantic options such as “Kiss Hands”, “Sexy Pose” and “Offer Rose” at lower relationship levels and interactions like “Passionate Kiss” once the tone of the romantic interaction has progressed further. These interactions seem to be on par with the standard romantic interactions like flirt, though they tend to have a lower chance of rejection. Like with other social interactions, the extra flirty interactions allow you to get more diverse interactions without fear of being boring. They don’t seem to, however, have the same ‘Oomph’ in romantic relationship gain as Confident “Bold Pick-up line”
More important than getting YOUR Sim flirty is getting your Sim’s partner (or potential partner) flirty. Being flirty seems to increase the chances that your Sim will respond positively to romantic interactions, even if the Sim initiating the interaction is not flirty.
Flirty also has an impact on woohoo. Woohoo can yield several different moodlets after the deed is done. The best one is a +2 Happy “Fantastic Woohoo”. Having BOTH partners be flirty during woohoo will net you the Fantastic Woohoo moodlet for both Sims involved. This isn’t so useful if your Sims are going straight to sleep afterwards, but if they will be up again, that +2 happy is a healthy boost to whatever else they are doing.
The two easiest ways to become flirty are to take a steamy shower or to freshen up in a mirror. Researching Pickup lines on the computer also will do the trick. If you are trying to use flirty to boost the quality of woohoo, it is suggested that invest in some flirty emotional aura objects for the bedroom rather than trying to manually get moodlets. That said, do enough flirty interactions between Sims and Sims will naturally reach a flirty state on their own in much the way you do playful by telling jokes. When you are doing a date event, the flirty mood will often come about on its own (barring rejections and embarrassment).
Focused
The king of skills and arguably one of the most useful moods to be in (On par with inspired). Fishing, gardening, Handiness, Logic, Programming, Rocket Science and Video Gaming are ALL boosted by the focused mood.
Focused does not provide much in the way of new interactions, but social interactions aren’t really the domain of focused. It is about the skills. Focused boosts the speed at which children and teens do their homework and getting help from their parents will give them a focused moodlet.
The easiest ways to gain the focused moodlet on demand is to browse Simipedia, examine a fossil (Obtained by digging). Doing research in the intelligence database becomes available early on in the secret agent career which can give a two DAY long +1 focused moodlet which is longer than just about any other positive moodlet you may receive.
Happy
Happy is an awesome emotion to have because of its sheer flexibility. Happiness adds its strength to any other positive emotions if there is one present. However, sometimes it might behoove you to remain just in the vanilla happy mood itself.
The mood boosts the skill gains of ALL skills. The effect is not as potent as being in that skills relevant mood, but if you are switching from one activity to another quickly, being happy will give boosts to everything. Happiness also lets you operate at a higher effective level for everything.
There is only one unique interaction that unlocks from being happy, “Heartfelt Compliment”. There are other interactions like brighten day and flatter that have the green happiness mood tab on the interaction, but these actions are also unlocked by gaining levels in the charisma skill and, with enough skill, can be done even if your Sim is not happy.
As far as gaining the happiness moodlet, There are TONS of things that can make your Sim happy. The easiest (and most repeatable) methods are upgrades. A bidet on a toilet, jets on a bath and an auto soap dispenser on a sink will give out +1 happy moodlets every time your Sim uses the bathroom.
Socially, nothing beats the “Brighten Day” interaction. A single interaction will give a +1 happiness moodlet to the person who’s day you are brightening. If you control both people, they can trade brighten days.
If you have some good flirty decor and a romantic partner, a quick woohoo session can be a very fast way to get yourself a +2 happiness moodlet if you skip any sort of foreplay or other romantic interactions.
The ONLY time happiness can be a problem is if your Sim is playful and it is boosting playful to dangerous levels. In the next section we talk about how to deal with competing emotions and get your Sim into the emotion when YOU want it.
Uncomfortable
You are going to be seeing a lot of this. Uncomfortable is a universally bad mood to be in. There is zero positive use for uncomfortable; you don’t even get emotional whims from it. When your Sim is uncomfortable, your one and only job is to get them out of that mood. Uncomfortable comes from three sources.
Low Needs – Specifically hunger, energy, bladder and hygiene. When these four needs get low, they will spawn their respective uncomfortable moodlets. Unlike most moodlets, these are not time based, they are strictly based on the level of the need. As the need gets lower and lower, the strength of the uncomfortable moodlet increase. The only way to get rid of them is to increase the need fulfillment.
Cheap Items – Some items will leave behind a bad moodlet after use due to their poor quality. These moodlets won’t impair the need restoration, but will leave your Sim with a negative moodlet for several hours. Unlike need based moodlets, these are time based and will be expire eventually. Actions like taking a bath or sleeping in a good bed can hasten their removal. Ultimately the best way to avoid these moodlets is to never buy the cheapest category of item for any class of item, and avoid any item with the term “Uncomfortable” in the description.
Dirty Items or Surroundings – Over time, items will become dirty with use and will need to be cleaned. If you ignore the filth and use a dirty item anyway (for something other than cleaning) your Sim will pick up an uncomfortable moodlet. Further, dirty items, dishes and garbage all act like mood aura items that exert the uncomfortable moodlet. While we don’t know the exact values, if you let too many dirty items accumulate in a room, it will soon give an environmental uncomfortable moodlet. The moodlets gained from using dirty items can be burned off, but the environmental moodlet won’t go away until the room is cleaned.
Angry
Angry is most often the result of negative interactions with other Sims. Rejected pranks and mean interactions all lead to angry exchanges and angry moodlets all around. Angry can also also come from mood aura paintings. Otherwise, angry is a pretty avoidable mood. This is good because it is one of the three emotions that can kill you if it reaches too high of an intensity.
Angry can be burned off by working out, taking a cold shower (the same action that can burn off flirty) and calming yourself down in the mirror. All sources of anger (Besides mood auras) can be burned off in this manner, and the only time you’ll encounter an angry mood aura is if you go out of your way to paint an an angry painting AND enable it’s aura.
Why would you want to be angry? The Mischief skill builds slightly faster when your Sim is angry. However, they gain the same benefit when they are happy so going out of your way to make your Sims angry might not be worth the effort.
Embarrassed
Another universally bad emotion, embarrassed is often the result of failed social actions. When flirty actions are rejected, embarrassment is often the result. But it is not the only source. Being walked in on when your Sim is using the toilet or shower by someone other than a romantic interest will also cause embarrassment. Simply entering the room is not enough to cause it, the game checks for line of sight.
The other two heavy hitting sources of embarrassment are peeing yourself and being rejected when proposing marriage. Both of these can cause VERY intense embarrassed moodlets when they happen. Embarrassment is a lethal emotion and can kill when your total embarrassed moodlets reaches +6 “Mortified”. If your Sim becomes mortified, they will not die instantly, but rather are at risk of dying. Getting them immediately to a bed to “Hide from Everyone” will both protect them from embarrassment death while burning off the moodlet quickly. Calming down in a mirror can also be used to burn off embarrassment. A perk “Shameless” can be purchased that will make your Sim completely immune from embarrassment.
Sad
Sadness is a mostly negative moodlet. It almost entirely shuts down your flirtation options and slow their walking speed. The primary sources of sadness come from death and mood aura paintings.
The act of another Sim dying can leave a very powerful and long lasting sad moodlet on the surviving Sim(s)… or it could do nothing. The deciding factor is if your Sim witnesses the death or not. If they don’t see the death or the dead body, they won’t pick up a sad moodlet just because a loved one died.
Sims will autonomously want to mourn the dead at a gravestone or urn, which also gives sad moodlets, but you can prevent this by selling or ‘releasing spirit to underworld’ the graves. Keep in mind that you need to keep gravestones/urns if you want a chance of interacting with the dead Sim as a ghost.
Sadness can also come from a low social need. Much like uncomfortable, as the social need gets lower and lower, a stronger sadness moodlet will appear. Simply refill the social bar to get rid of it. Sadness moodlets can also be passed from one sad Sim to another non-sad Sim via social interactions. Do your best to keep depressed Sims out of parties or the whole room could feel it.
Bored
Another entirely negative (but non-lethal) emotion, boredom will be caused when the same interaction is used too many times. People love a good knock knock joke, but by the 3rd or 4th one in a row, it will cause boredom. Also, using a skill-related interaction with someone who doesn’t have that skill can sometimes cause a bored emotion in the listener. Unlike many of the other emotions, bored doesn’t have ways to “burn it off” and decrease its timer more quickly. You either have to ride it out, or get a more powerful emotion to overcome it.
Thankfully, being bored isn’t the worst thing in the world. It isn’t good for skill related tasks, but it does have emotional whims that are easy to fulfill and generally helpful such as reading a book, playing a game or going to bed. That said, I wouldn’t go out of your way to make your Sims bored. Contrary to what you may think, having a low fun motive does not cause your Sim to be bored. It causes them to be…
Tense
Another negative but non-lethal emotion, tense is caused by two primary sources. The most common source is a low fun need which will manifest ever-increasing tense moodlets. The other primary source of being tense is work or school. While your Sim can come home with any number of different emotions from work or school, tense is the most common, especially if you had them “work hard”. Disasters in the house (such as fires) will also cause tense moodlets, but luckily, tense is extremely easy to get rid of.
Showers, baths, calming down in front of mirrors, playing video games, and working out can all ‘burn off’ tense moods quickly and easily. There is one other effect. The specific moodlet ‘writer’s block’ which is a tense moodlet that can appear when a Sim is writing while in a mood other than inspired, will forcibly block them from writing any further until that specific moodlet is eliminated or expires. In fact, the writer’s aspiration relies on this happening to progress past the first level.
Dazed
Dazed is a (hopefully) rare negative emotion. Dazed comes from two primary sources: Losing fights and being electrocuted. Avoiding fights is the best way to avoid losing them. As for repairing electronics, it is best to use a Sim with a higher handiness skill when repairing them to avoid electrocution. Having the handysim also be focused will further reduce the risk of shock.
Dazed is not a lethal emotion by itself, but leaves your Sim vulnerable to death by electrocution. A non-dazed Sim who gets shocked by a piece of electronics will never die, they will simply pick up the dazed emotion. However, if a dazed Sim gets electrocuted, they WILL die. And being that dazed lowers your effective skill level for all skills, a dazed Sim is more likely to both a 2nd repair attempt. Dazed is hard to burn off. The most effective method is just to have your Sim sleep it off; an emotional whim that dazed will often suggest anyway.
The number one way to burn off just about any non-need-based negative moodlet is to have your Sim sleep. The “Asleep” mood will overpower all negative moodlets (besides needing to pee) and yet still cause them to count down while your Sim snoozes. Gaining energy is something your Sims will need to do anyway and having them wake up with their negative moodlets gone will let them be more productive during their waking hours.
Emotional Death
Emotions have different intensity levels. Once a Sim reaches the highest level of a specific emotion, they will eventually be greeted with death. There’s only so much Embarrassment, Anger and Hysteria Sims can handle. To learn more about Emotional Death, read our The Sims 4 Death & Ghost Guide.
Emotional Memories
Memories in The Sims 4 serve a more important role than just filling up your in-game scrapbook. Memories can now be used to push emotional states onto your Sims, with just a click of a button. Emotional Memories are especially useful when trying to advance in certain skills, careers, and relationship goals. To learn more about Memories and Emotions, see our Emotional Memories Guide.
Emotional Purity
In our previous section, we discussed some of the tactical uses for each of the emotions. However, what good is an emotion if you can’t have your Sim adopt it when you need them to. There are many ways to give your Sims moodlets of the desired emotions but often times you will find your efforts thwarted. Ironically, it is not normally bad emotions like uncomfortable or tense that spoil the brew, but rather unwanted positive emotions of other flavors.
Say, for example, your Sim is fine and you need them to be focused to build up their gardening skill faster. In this case, simply telling them to browse Simipedia or study a fossil will get the job done. Getting to the desired emotion of focused was simple and straightforward.
Now let’s say they come home rocking a bad moodlet. Tense from work, maybe in dire need of a shower. In these cases, you have some bad moodlets competing for the dominant emotion. So just going off to browse Simipedia is not guaranteed to get your Sim focused. That said, negative emotions are easy to deal with. Tense? Play some video games or calm down in the mirror. Uncomfortable? Deal with whatever motive is low first.
Since you can “burn off” time-based negative emotions, and fix need-based emotions by addressing the needs of Sims, the issue of freeing up your Sim’s emotional state is still straight forward. Fix environmental based moodlets by cleaning up one’s environment, so that focused (or whatever other positive emotion you want) can take the helm. You just have an intermediary step.
The problem comes when your Sim is in a different dominant emotion. Using our running example. Let’s say your Sim has the active trait and comes home from work energized. That’s great if you want them to go work out, but problematic if you need them to be focused. Since energized is a positive emotion, there is no way to “burn off” or the moodlet faster than it would normally count down.
How do we fix this? There are several ways to “burn off” emotional timers.
When I say “burn off” I mean to perform actions that force a moodlet’s timer to count down faster. There are some emotions that can be burned off, though not every moodlet can be. The items you want to have available is a bed, a mirror and a bathtub (or shower/bath combo). With a bed, you can burn off sad and embarrassed moodlets with the cry it out and hide from the world interactions respectively. The mirror has the “Try to calm down” interaction that can burn off playful, angry, embarrassed, and tense.
Lastly, taking a bath or bubble bath will burn off many uncomfortable moodlets. Keep in mind that this does NOT work on need-based or environment based moodlets. If a Sim is uncomfortably hungry, taking a bath will not fix that. If a Sim is sad from a low social need, crying it out wont’ help either. Addressing their needs or the environment is needed to remove those moodlets. In a pinch the 500 point “Moodlet Solver” will instantly refill all needs and wipe out any negative emotional moodlets.
Prevent Emotions
Keeping on top of your Sims needs is the best way to ward off negative moodlets, but warding off unwanted positive moodlets is another thing entirely. The biggest source of potentially unwanted positive moodlets is traits. The 9 traits in the emotional category (Active, Cheerful, Creative, Genius, Gloomy, Goofball, Hot-Headed, Romantic, Self-Assured) and one lifestyle trait (Insane) all share a common behavior: They randomly spawn 4 hour moodlets.
A goofball Sim will occasionally get a +1 playful moodlet showing up. Insane is even more random as their random moodlets can be of any of the 9 emotional types, and it can be different each time, making it very unpredictable. While these traits can be beneficial if they are related to what you want your Sim to be doing, they still can have drawbacks. Many of them can spawn tense moodlets if you don’t do their related activity.
If you are going for emotional purity and maximum flexibility, it is best to avoid these traits…with one exception. The Cheerful trait acts like the others with the happy emotion. However, because happy moodlets convert themselves to other positive emotions when those moodlets are present, it never acts as a barrier to getting to the desired emotion. It only serves to make that emotion stronger.
Overcome Emotions
It is not entirely clear how the game handles two different emotions when they are tied. A Sim who is +1 Energized and +1 Focused might manifest either dominant emotion. You can’t always count on a tied emotion to swing your Sim’s emotional state. Luckily, getting your desired emotion to be 1 higher than the undesired one guarantees that it will be your Sim’s dominant emotion. If you want to brute-force this, you can drink the various mood potions available from the aspiration rewards menu.
Each will give you the listed emotion at a +100 strength…for 3 hours. It is easier and cheaper simply to seek out two different activities to boost an emotion. In the above example of trying to become focused over an unwanted energized moodlet, simply browsing Simipedia alone might not do the trick. However, browsing Simipedia AND studying a fossil will give two +1 focused moodlets which will overcome the +1 energized. Just keep in mind the execution time of the 2nd moodlet. While your Sim is busy obtaining their second moodlet, the first one’s timer is counting down.
Emotional Auras
Finally, the most powerful weapon in getting your Sim into the desired emotion is that of emotional auras. The Sims 4 build mode organizes every house into distinct rooms. What space is defined as one room versus another is important for build mode, as you can stretch, move or even import/export rooms in build mode. But that isn’t what this guide is about. This guide will cover the other important aspects of rooms: Emotional Auras.
You can identify an object as having an emotional aura by the item card. If the item lists the type of emotion, then the aura can be toggled and it will radiate that specific emotion if the aura is toggled on. If it simply says “Environment” then it radiates the “Happy” mood and you cannot toggle the aura off.
You will notice that each of these items, in addition to telling you the ‘flavor’ of the emotional aura will also have a number listed. This number is important to how the game handles moodlets generated by the aura.
If a room has a total “Score” of 2 or lower, then no moodlet will be generated. The aura is simply too weak to impart ANY emotional moodlets on Sims who enter that room. From a score of 3 to a score of 10, a +1 level of the Aura will be given to any Sim entering that room. Any Score that between 11 and 44 will give a +2 version of that mood.
A score of 45+ (for Happy) or 48+ (For other moods) will yield a +3 moodlet version of the moodlet. The score of items in a single room is cumulative. You don’t actually need walls at all. Once you draw out a ‘room’ you can knock down the walls and still have environmental objects work within that ‘room’ the same as they do within a room with walls.
When it comes to different kinds of auras, you can combine both regular environmental objects AND mood-specific objects in the same room. While each tracks their thresholds separately, they don’t overwrite each other. You could, in theory, give any Sim a +6 boost to a desired positive emotion by having 45+ points of mood aura objects for both the specific mood in question and general environmental objects.
Unlike Happy environmental scores, two mood-specific scores do NOT stack. If you have both, say, confident and playful mood aura objects in the same room, the mood-specific object with the highest effective score will determine the given environmental moodlet.
Note that when you place mood-specific objecs with an emotional aura, the aura always defaults to ‘off’. When an object’s aura is off, it does not contribute to the environmental moodlet score for it’s listed mood. You must individually turn on each mood-aura object on. If the object has many functions, (like a computer) you might need to look under “More Options” to find the emotional aura toggle.
Dirty objects such as dirty items, trash piles, puddles and smelly dishes act as their own “mood Aura” objects. While you cannot see the individual values for each object, they seem to obey the same threshold. A single dish of spoiled food won’t give Sims entering the room the uncomfortable moodlet (except for possibly neat Sims) but 3+ smelly dishes will, and the uncomfortable moodlets, just like the positive ones, can grow higher than just +1 so keeping a tidy house is important.
So what’s the best way to obtain these mood aura objects? The easiest and most cost effective way is through the plumbob unlockable items. These are obtained by having purchased previous expansion packs. They pack a LOT of mood aura points for their cost and can quickly and cheaply get a room filled with the mood aura of your choice. The two main problems with these are 1: You can only get them if you owned past Sims 3 expansion packs, and 2: Let’s face it, they’re pretty ugly.
❗ If you plan to share a room or house with the Plumbob Reward Objects, keep in mind that players will not find it unless they have “include unowned content tab” selected.
The next most reliable way of obtaining mood aura objects is through painting. Every positive emotion except for energized can be done by a painter. The higher the skill of the painter/quality of the painting, the more aura points it is worth for determining how powerful that painting’s aura is. A master painter can easily create works that have a 8+ strength in their mood aura. They can even fill rooms with the negative emotions “Angry” and “Sad” via emotional paintings too if you so choose to do so.
The two hold-outs are Inspired and Energized. If you want to fill a room with energizing items (that aren’t the plumbob lamps) the best source for them is the entertainment career. Keep in mind that even though you only get reward item upon reaching the unlocking level of the career, it allows you to buy more copies of it if you so choose. Some of the crystals (found in digging piles) also give off energizing auras if you have a collector in the house.
Inspired is MUCH easier. The writing and painting career tracks both feature tons of inspiring décor objects that are cost effective and easy to obtain.
This leaves us with the question: WHY do we want mood aura objects? After all, our first section talked about all the ways you can easily pick up moodlets of a desired type. As you play, you’ll find that mood aura rooms are far more useful and powerful than individual moodlets.
A Sim with an environmental mood aura will never have that moodlet expire. While most individual moodlets last only 4 hours and the ones that last 8+ are hard to get, mood auras do not care about the passage of time. A Sim could sit and skill in the same room for 12 hours and they would have their mood-aura moodlet from start to finish without having to stop their action to ‘refresh’ it.
As mentioned in the emotional purity section, an emotion aura room is great at overpowering unwanted positive emotions. A +2 focusing room will let any Sim easily ignore a stray +1 energized moodlet they may have picked up, Simply by walking into a room, for example. Mood aura rooms also lets your Sim ignore uncomfortable moodlets. This allows your Sims to remain in place skilling longer before low needs sour their mood.
Lastly, when combined with non-environmental moodlets, mood aura rooms can help a Sim reach the “Very” levels of their desired moods. Specifically, reaching a total of +8 will bring a Sim into the “very” levels of a positive mood. You can get a +6 by maxing your environment for both the mood in question and happiness. All that is needed is another +2 from non-environmental moodlets, which is easy to obtain. As explained in the first section, reaching the “very” level of a mood amplifies its benefits to you. (Note. If you are altering the mood levels of a room by adding or removing objects, the Sims might not adjust their environmental moodlets until after they finish their current active action.
I hope this guide helps guide you through the emotional rollercoaster that is the new emotions system in The Sims 4. Weather you are just playing casually, attempting a challenge, making a story or buiding and designing rooms, knowing the ins and outs of the emotion system can help you accomplish what you are trying to do more effectively!
