I've run into a frustrating situation... a neighborhood that was playing fine a couple days ago suddenly crashes, after the re-introduction of some CC (that a vague memory tells me I've had trouble with before). If the game crashes before the neighborhood even loads (and by neighborhood, I mean ANY of my neighborhoods), there's no threat to the neighborhood itself, correct? All I really have to do is filter those new CC items, until I find the one that's causing the problem, and I should be good to go. It's only a handful of new items that I've acquired, and up until that point I had no problems.

I should also trash some cache files, correct? Accessories and groups? Or some other ones as well? Or is that not even strictly necessary? If I recall correctly, trashing the neighborhood manager is only done if I've had to back up the hoods from a previous save. But I don't think the problem exists in a specific hood or lot, if the game crashes before I even get there. Does that all make sense, or is my anxiety clouding my thinking here?

Yes, if the lot worked fine before, but starts crashing after you add some CC, chances are there's some item that conflicts with something on that lot, or generally with your game (for instance an EP compatibility issue, a repo'd item, or a GUID conflict. Recolors with excessively long internal name strings can also cause trouble, but can be a bit harder to track down).

Sounds like you're already on the right track here - Find and remove the CC, delete the cache files you mentioned**, and hopefully your game will be fixed.

**the two others are Bodyshop/Homecrafter related, so they usually don't show up unless you've used those programs - but you can delete those too. Cigen is the only useful one, for somewhat faster thumbnail loading in Bodyshop + one of Pick'n'mix's programs that reads thumbnails off of this file.

Tip for the future - put new CC and mods in a separate folder named something like "TEST". It really does help with finding problem content, especially the items that almost immediately cause issues.

I have my CC arranged according to when it was added to the DL folder, so I can always find the latest items. But that's a good suggestion. I think I've sorted this one out; I just wanted to confirm that the neighborhood wouldn't have been corrupted by whatever was crashing the game, as it wouldn't load and therefore couldn't be saved. Thanks - it's always reassuring to get your advice when things go haywire.