SimGurus said that due to unique depth in Isla Paradiso, it's impossible to create our own dive areas in other worlds. They're wrong. SimGurus also said that hidden islands are unique only to Isla Paradiso, and there's no way we could make one in other worlds. They're wrong again. This is crucial for a Sim who happens to have the Grand Explorer LTW, which needs to discover all hidden islands. What if they live in other worlds? The answer is by moving to Isla Paradiso with the new 1.55 feature. What if I don't want to? Without this way, you're screwed.

The secret of this method is that EA used "Uncharted Island Marker," a marker that's hidden in the game and it will vanish as soon as Sims discover the island. Pretty sneaky, huh? I have a package attached at the end of this post to unlock the marker. Let's start it.

1. I'll choose Lucky Palms as an example. Go to Edit Town and place a regular residential lot anywhere. I'll put it in the middle of the desert.



2. Edit the lot. Just put anything you want there (I don't know if it requires at least an object to define that lot, so if you're not sure, just place a shrub there and you're done). I'll place the treasure chests from WA and IP as rewards.

3. Now, use the testingcheatsenabled true and buydebug on cheats, and use the Uncharted Island Marker in the debug objects.



4. Ctrl + Shift + Click the marker, and it will open up these options.



5. Use "Set Discovery Type" to set how the lot can be unlocked. There are 8 ways to unlock the islands. Choose one that is achievable in your world. (Choosing ScubaSurprise or MermaidSecret is useless in a world without dive lots, for example).





6. Use "Set Effect" to set the fog effect to hide the lot. Anything will do.



Remember to just select the effect once
If you select the effects more than once, the fog will instead use multiple effects and there's no way to undo this! (Maybe by deleting the marker, but I didn't do it because I forgot) This will severely lag due to excessive use of effects. In fact, this is the reason why I made this tutorial in Lucky Palms, since I accidentally did this in Isla Paradiso.



7. After that, the lot will start fogging and it mean's you're done. When you go to map view / edit mode, the lot will be "hidden" and it cannot be accessed.




TESTING

Did it work? Did we actually "hid" the lot/island like the ones in Isla Paradiso? To test it, I'll use Lola Lancaster who lives nearby and give her the Grand Explorer LTW.



Oddly, since the Uncharted Island Map LTR doesn't seem to appear outside Isla Paradiso, we'll use "discoverAllUnchartedIslands" cheat to unlock it. I didn't have time to discover it myself at the time. And heck yeah, her LTW is fulfilled! We did it! She now owns the lot as a private lot.



Now we're sure that these features aren't locked exclusively to Isla Paradiso. I hope this tutorial can be helpful, especially to World Builders!

Thanks, very helpful!

Thank you! This is going to be most useful for DIY'ing my own island worlds because I already know the IP world is going to be too big for my computer to run. :P

Thank you! I am looking forward to testing/using this!

Thank you. I was looking for such a great tutorial like this, to have my own hidden islands in my own world.
Fantastic!

With the fog looking like dense cloud cover, it might be really neat for a mountainous based map, and put all the secret lots up near the peaks that you want cloud cover on.

That would work really nice with Aurora Skies, especially that they can climb up the waterfall by the lake... visually. Too bad, the routing is inaccessible up the hill. :/

Ooo, nice! Thank you. Now it's time to figure out where I will make some hidden lots for my sims to own and explore.

Wow this is great. I like new features to be usable in all the neighborhoods and not just limited to one. Thank you for making this I can understand the simgurus' stating that we can't have the ability to create uncharted islands and dive spots, even though with a little savvy and elbow grease we can. A lot of casual players might not be willing to go through the necessary steps to create them. I think that's why they're unsupported but still doable.

Thanks for the tutorial.

I don't understand why they said these and dive spots were impossible to make. Tomb creation is far more complex and they released a guide to create your own! Using their barrier system is probably more complicated than creating these lots too.

Thanks, but I hate Sim Gurus for lying to their fans!

That barrier system is pointless. We can send our Sim there and unlock the barrier at any time anyway. And it doesn't even seem to work right in my game.

Wow, glad to see this is so easy to do. Can't wait to see what sorts of secrets CAW users will make in their worlds. Time to mash that love button into the ground. :D

Wow! Thanks for this and the mod...If they ever fix the mess of patch 1.55 I will be adding this to several worlds I play. Thanks again.

As you said, there are 8 different discover types...

I take a look at the different types and these are the results:


- CayToTheCity - The "hidden" island can be unlocked if you rescue 35 victims as a Lifeguard...

- ResortMogul - The "hidden" island can be unlocked if your sim owns a 5 star resort...

- PlumbobIsland - Can be unlocked if your sim finds a map inside a bottle... (usually underwater or in treasure chests...)

- LocalsRefuge - There is an opportunity chain you can get from resort desk clerks by asking for an adventure...

- ExplorersReward - Your sim just needs to go there...

- TreasureHunt - Your sim must find 5 map fragments and put it together...

- ScubaSuprise - Your sim must explore a certain underwater cave to unlock the island...

- MermaidSecret - Can be unlocked if your sim befriends a mermaid. The mermaid tells you later where the "hidden" island is...

in my game the Uncharted Island Marker not there

Yes. It's hidden by default. I attached the mod to unlock the marker at the bottom of my first post.

The really challenging part might be setting up another world to satisfy all 8 discovery types I've been working on doing them all in IP.

I wonder if the adventure chain just requires that you have a resort, science lab, dive lot and town hall in your town... that's possible. Seems like any resort desk clerk starts it and the other steps are from a random townie (I think it's random) and the two rabbitholes. You need a dive lot to fight a shark for one step >< (Third step involves kelp, but that you can get at the grocery store )

For Treasurehunt and PlumbobIsland you need plenty of high end seashell/bottle spawners. The riddle/map pieces have a low spawn chance even if your sim finds a bottle, and the chances of THAT are rare enough.

For Scuba Surprise, you'd need a dive lot with a cave set to point to the island, I guess.

If I were to make my own custom world, I'll only make some or maybe just one of the hidden islands. It's a lot of work to be a lifeguard, run a 5-star resort, and maximizing Scuba Diving skill at once.

Yeah, but to me that is what makes the Great Explorer LTW one of the few truly interesting and challenging ones in the game Depends on your playstyle though! Using Twallan's relativity mod really helps with this

Was just thinking about this some more... not sure what causes NPC mermaids to turn up in your world, but they're required too to get em all. Wonder if having dive lots is enough?

Thank you! :lovestruc Very very helpful!

Is it ok if I translate the tutorial in german?

Thank u very much this made me happy. im testing this now out in my new world creation

Thanks for the great tutorial.

I have implemented 5 of the discovery types in my custom caw and 4 of the are successful (Map, Reosrt Owner, Resort Adventure and Mermaid). I am having issues with the last one Scuba. I have set a cave in the diving lot to travel to my lot on the hidden island and no luck. I took a look is Isla paradiso to see how they implemented it and the travel name is the lot name. i can't find any items on the destination lot that creates a connection. If you or anyone knows what i am doing wrong i would greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks :D

Thank you so, this will improve my experience of this pack no end

A really helpful tutorial. I'm following this tutorial to make an uncharted/hidden island on a custom world and, somehow, the lot just doesn't start fogging up when I choose Set Effect.

C-A