Oaken Valley - A CC-free Rural Town [update 1.1]

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Author Leto
Uploaded: 31st Oct 2021 at 1:11 PM
Updated: 8th Nov 2022 at 8:10 PM
I added a short list of recommended fixes and mods relevant to the neighborhood at the end of this description.

Update 1.1: Huge thanks to Tigercat58, who brought to my attention that the sims' names all became random if you played the neighborhood on a game in a language other than English. This should now have been fixed, please re-download if you had that issue, I'm sorry.
I found out how to edit bios from SimPE (and now I feel dumb but better late than never), so Mina's missing bio has been added. I also added bios to several townies, some deeper than others. For instance, you now have the story that inspired Ethan Parking's last name, which I'm sure you were dying to know (Ethan Parking is one of the townie children). Almost half of the townie pool now have bios, not counting the animals.
Other minus townie updates:


Neighborhood Description
Oaken Valley is a lush rural town nested between two prominent mountain ranges. Access to and from the nearest city isn't exactly smooth, which is why residents tend to be people who enjoy a slow-paced life close to nature.
The town’s political system is matriarchal. Mayorship is inherited from mother to daughter, and husbands take their wives’ last name. Oaken Valley’s esteemed founder was Isadora Trodden and her great-granddaughter Berenice is now the mayor. Despite Berenice’s relative popularity and the aura of authority of her last name, the community’s growth has brought along alternative political ideals and challenges to her legitimacy as an unelected mayor. Recent incidents resulting in tragic deaths in the community are certainly not helping keep the peace. Can the town build back its close-knit unity or does growth come at the price of dissent and unrest?

Technical Info
You do not need a camera mod to see all the lots of this neighborhood.
You do not need any CC.
You do need all expansions except the Ikea stuff pack to get the full experience.

The unpopulated version of Oaken Valley has no sims in it at all.
The populated version includes townies, strays and adoptable pets, so you won’t need your game to generate more, unless that’s what you want. The only sims I didn’t create or give birth to through gameplay are the service NPCs, and I didn’t make any kids to fill the adoption pool, your game will have to generate those for you.

The neighborhood was built using Maxis's Viper Canyon terrain in lush. It consists of 11 playable households, 19 community lots and 31 residential lots. Some of the residential lots are empty for you to do your own thing but most are fully furnished. Not all lots are shown in the screenshots. I have already uploaded separately three lots from the farmers' part of town plus a starter house from the east side.

Oaken Valley Lore
Oaken Valley has a history, the details of which can be found in its residents’ memories, family trees, relationships, bios, family albums, in community lots and their descriptions, and by bringing the dead back to life. You’ll see that Oaken Valley’s graveyard counts nine graves.



All of these sims can safely be resurrected. I have put as much care into their personalities, skill levels, relationships, memories and bios as I have done with the living. Out of the nine deaths, three are recent and happened in blurry circumstances. You can explore the town and get to know the residents to find out what really happened.

Recommended Play Order
The recommended play order is the one shown in the neighborhood's photo album, where you can read each household's bio: 1. Trodden - 2. Landstrom - 3. Godiro - 4. Harvey - 5. Jansen - 6. Hoang - 7. Trawally - 8. Miller - 9. Runaways - 10. Park - 11. Cleary.

This is my first shared neighborhood. Everything seems to be in order, from the lots’ furnishing to the sims’ information. I’ve done everything in my power to keep everything nice and clean. I’ve gone the long way, playing through generations and letting most memories generate naturally, only doing some careful edits afterwards. The hood checker’s report is clear. Despite all this, please let me know if you do encounter issues. Any constructive criticism or advice is always welcome. I hope you enjoy!



Recommended mods:
- HugeLunatic’s off-grid rug fix: so that all the rugs in my pre-made houses display properly,
- Simler90’s community skills mod: so that your sims actually gain skill points when they buy a ticket to work out at Claire Harvey’s gym,
- Simler90’s biotech station mod: if you want to use the medicine-making station at the Hoang house to its full potential,
- Simler90’s salon chair fix: if you’d like the “Offer makeover” interaction on the chair at Ye-Joon Park’s salon to actually do something,
- Nysha’s fixed sewing machine onesie: fixes the mesh of the toddler onesie that can be made on the sewing machine, which Sylvia Jansen might appreciate,
- if you experience the graveyard's tombstones disappearing, there is a fix to get them back described in this post. Many thanks to Victor_tor for bringing it to my attention! You can download the required FFS Lot Debugger here.

A further suggestion:
- Sun and Moon’s farm animals set: a huge set of interactive animals to populate the barn at the Trawally farm (read the description carefully before downloading, the required “fetch water” and “making hay” mods can also be found at Sun and Moon's Star Factory, among many other amazing mods).
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