So I know some of you have had corruption issues with your game, so today, I am going to help you, most of you perhaps tried to bring "NPCs" into your families, some are good, some are bad, so I will list them.
Bad (They are package items, do not add.)
Bigfoot Bigfoot(This does not apply to the bigfoot character from Exotic Destinations, as they are cloned from this object template. The clone is an active Sim with playable character data.)
Bird
Father Time
Food Table Judge
Genie
Good Witch Cat
Grim Reaper
Hula Zombie
Ideal Plantsim
(This is not a normal PlantSim, it's a hidden one)
Mrs. CrumpleBottom
Penguin
Pollination Technician (Unlike Pollination Technician #9, this isn't a character with a data file.)
Remote Control Car
Robot (Like a SentryBot, not Servo)
Rod Humble
Santa Klaus
Stinky Skunk
Skunk Skin
Spectral Assistant
TemplateDog
Therapist (Shrink)
Toddler New Year
Witch Doctor (Shaman)
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If you add any of these, back up your families, remove them, and reset your game data (Drive letter>User>Documents> EA Games >The Sims 2) Delete
Now incomplete data
BigBoss (The Big Boss was a scenario similar to the Headmaster Scenario that EA abandoned before the game's release.)
Break Dancers
Carpool Drivers
Fire Dancers
Food Stand Chefs
Human Statues
Neutral Witches
Ninjas
Repo-men
Social Bunnies
Social Workers(In the event she's spawned through the Gypsy as a blind date, delete her with the move-objects cheat, just in case. Do not interact with the Social Worker or attempt to set any flags on her using SimBlender (or similar), for example, Crush or Married/Joined. This applies to all of the unsafe NPCs that visit lots.)
Tour Guides
Villain (Unsavory Charlatan)
Wise Old Man
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NPCs that are believed not safe to play as and/or add to your household
Bellhops
Ghost Captain
Hair Stylist
Housekeeper
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Safe ones?

Bartender(Safe, but their plumb-bobs may be in the wrong place.)
Burglar(Safe, but may continue with sneaking behavior.)
Evil Mascot (Cow)
Cheerleader
Mr. Big/The Diva(Safe, but will continue to primp frequently.)
Exterminator(Safe, but their plumb-bobs may be in the wrong place.)
Grand Vampire/Vampiress
Gypsy Matchmaker(Safe but will continue with spit-polish behavior.)
Headmaster(Safe, but their plumb-bobs may be in the wrong place.)
Mascot (Llama) (Safe, but may continue to wear the llama costume in certain circumstances even when changed out of it.)
Nanny
Safe but will continue with insane behavior.
Professor(Believed safe but Drama Professors will continue with flirty behavior.)
Slob(Safe, but will continue to burp and fart frequently.)
Streaker
--------------------------------
Safe

Barista
Bigfoot(This is for the Bigfoot character seen from your forest vacation's secret lot. Not to be confused with Bigfoot Bigfoot (NPC), which is an object as listed above. The name for the safe Bigfoot will be ____ Bigfoot, depending on the one loaded first.)
Butler
Cash Register Clerk
Cafeteria Chef(The one which is spawned with ShinyTyme Cooktop in University subhoods.)
Chef/Cook(Not to be confused with a Food Stand Chef, who is an NPC.)
Chinese Delivery Person
Coach
Delivery Person
Dining Podium Host
DJ
Dormie
Downtownie
Firefighter
Gardener
High Witches/Warlocks
Hobby Instructor
Landlord
Maid
Mail Carrier
Masseuse
Newspaper Delivery Person
Obedience/Pet Trainer
Pizza Delivery Person
Police Officer
Repairman
Reporter
These are NPCs that may come to owned business lots, browse the shop, and review it. They can't be distinguished from townies, unless they are seen taking notes(Otherwise known in real life as "Secret/Mystery Shoppers".)
Server/Waiter
Social class townies(These are townies that will move in to apartments and are dressed in clothes relative to their social class.)
Townie
This includes townies that are employed in an owned business.
Tourists(These are townies that you will see/meet at a Vacation Destination dressed in tourism clothes. Any children coming with them will not wear tourism clothes, such as Pong King.)
Vacation Destinations Locals(These are townies you would normally see/meet during a vacation in a Vacation Destination and will be dressed according to the theme of the vacation. They will be wearing clothes that represent the area, such as Jace Fuchs wears lumberjack clothes.)
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Credits to Wikia for the NPC list that I have studied for months
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Now extra strategy
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Some mods can corrupt saves (Known from experience)
There are programs out there that can check packages, if you think that's the reason
Over use of testingcheats can also cause corruption on some cases, use Mootilda's hoodchecker to see, this can also find missing character files, if you find them, use SimPE to delete them, may or may not work, worked for me though.
If you have more than around 17 of Unknowns in the list of a neighborhood, it begins corrupting the hood unless you have some NPC mods around that add to it.

Anyway, that's all for today, Helena MCR, outta the Way.

Nice work Helena, You might also find these mods helpful to avoid corruption!

Also, I didn't know that about Testingcheats, where did you find that info from?

A few friends that played the game with me learned the hard way, without bringing NPCs in.

Are you sure thats the cause? Sometimes things just corrupt 'naturally'. I have Testingcheats on all the time. What happened to your game?

I know there was a long standing belief on the old Sims 2 forums that "not turning it off before quitting the game caused corruption", but I believe these were myths. The only real danger is messing with options that you don't understand - or clicking something by accident.

Ummm - I think you'll find this all listed at the wiki. I mean, that's kind of what it's for.

Hello and welcome, but you do realize you are preaching to the choir here, right? Kind of like the new back up singer going right up to the leading choral lady and saying "I'm going to help you sing better!" Ah thanks?? The Wiki page was created and is maintained by members from MTS. We all know about the Wiki page and corruption.

I agree with both @Bigsimsfan12, @maxon and @joandsarah77: Indeed the list of no-no characters is not hard to extract from the Wiki, but I also think that with a little logical thinking, it wouldn't be really hard to guess which ones are safe and which not.
I'd never even have considered, for example, making any of the unsafe characters controllable even for a second, let alone moving them in with any family. And for me it wasn't hard to guess what characters not to use, even without a list.

As for the testingcheats: My testingcheats has been on ever since I knew about it. I have never had any issues because of it. Sure, I've had corruption twice, but both times I know where it came from, and it had nothing to do with testingcheats.
Sometimes it also depends, I suppose, on how much you know of how the game code works, and how responsible you are with the use of cheats and debug options. And importing badly made custom objects or mods can cause a lot of harm too.

Apart from that, though, great job. Many people's games may improve as a result of this list, if they don't know about the existence of the Wiki. Which you won't find many of, here.

I'd like to point out that the Witch Cats you summon are safe NPCS, clones of the Good Witch Cat same as the _______ Bigfoots are clones of the Bigfoot Bigfoot NPC.
I have done little research though it should be kind of understandable from the fact you can control them via the control pets cheat and they show up with full character data in SimPE.

Somewhere I read that people were worried about the strange extra dimensional felines so I did some manipulation of them to see if corrupt would result. Nothing has so far fallen apart.

So Feline Familiars should be added to the safe? List in my opinion with a note similar to the bigfoot one.
(Not the safe list as I am just a regular simmer and the tests and results I have done are only in game or character checks in SimPE. Maybe someone who has experience with the modding and data exploration of the game would be able to prove that my result is wrong.)

Does that make sense to anyone?

@ HelenaMCR Nice of you to share this information all those what causes "corruption " can be found on the Wiki list.
But there are still newbies or late comers to the game that may not know what can cause corruption or even know that the Wiki, exist on this subject so this list may help them.

But to be "real" there are some simmers that may have been playing for years and still do things to cause corruption in their game not knowing.
Many years ago I did not know "not" to play around with Mrs. C ( The hag ) and my game went to the dogs.

I know a simmer friend who play the game for years going way back when the EA Sims 2 site was very active, she really taught me a lot about the game I was a newbie then.
When I later mention to her in 2013 that the " remote control car" was control by an NPCs she was shock to find that out. So really a simmer can play for years and still learn and find out things that can corrupt your Sims game. Sharing is good

I've just recently found out about TS2 corruption tendencies. Before that, I was reading discussions here and the word "corruption" kept coming out so frequently and ubiquitously, that I just kept thinking "TS2 players are obsessed with game corruption!" Soon I realized how ignorant that was, since I just recently started playing again and people here seem to have years of experience. At that point, I really didn't know of the game's weaknesses in this segment. Maybe because the main cause of corruption seem to be the Sims themselves and I've never experimented much with the Sims' relationships, or NPC-s for that matter. I guess I don't even spend that much time in live mode, compared to the majority of veterans here. I don't remember I've ever had game corrupted to the point of it becoming unplayable, even many years before when I was younger. TS3 has slightly different problems, and besides corrupt CC, most dangers an average player faces, can be fairly restrained with Twallan's Error trap mod.

The most useful tips I've read on that many times mentioned wiki page about TS2 corruption, was about proper deleting characters and dangers of moving owned community lots to the bin. I guess I could've slipped there eventually, if I hadn't been warned in time, since I play OFB excessively. Also, thanks to experienced lot creators over at CFF, I learned how to clean out Sims' references from any used lot, so that was also really helpful to me, as a dominantly builder and decorator type of player.

To make things more fun, you also have lot corruption and Sim corruption. I just experienced the lot corruption a half-hour ago. Everything was going great, no hassles, I go back to the lot after the Sim on it had a hot date with another Sim, and crash! This was a Maxis lot I've used many, many times before. No new CC. I've played the Sim before with no problems. Moving the Sim and bulldozing the lot were the only things I could do. I'm suspecting some sort of bad save or other like cause. Fortunately, for me, this is very rare, and USUALLY (knocks wood), moving the Sim fixes it. Fingers crossed. I kind of like this Sim, and he's a new father. (Knocks wood a few more times.) Plus, he's a newlywed. I would hate to cowplant him as a wedding present.

There have also been times when I've had a Sim that messed up gameplay so badly I had to off the poor thing.

This game can drive up your blood pressure sometimes.

Well, that's really unfortunate. I hope such "lot corruption" never happens to me, I'm definitely more attached to my lots than to my Sims! . Interestingly, in RL I'm a complete opposite of a materialistic being; I have absolutely no attachment to material possessions, and I'm extremely attached to my people. But not in The Sims, there lots are my true babies. :lovestruc

Backup. Often. Prevention is probably most effective in such cases, and one of the most important steps in keeping the game what it should be - relaxation, and not additional cause of anxiety and headache. I have an external hard disk specially dedicated to my Sims games, primarily for saved games backup, my exported lots, and classified downloaded CC and mods storage.

I just recently and I do mean recently found out about something I had never heard of just two or three days ago called "Super Duper Hug Bug" I ran across a thread about it. http://modthesims.info/t/508487
Now please don't ask me about it, I still don't know a thing even after joandsarah77 and BoilingOil explain it to me. All I know is it have something to do with a "Maxis Code" that already exist naturally in the game dealing with Tokens and a bit of other things

There is a solution for it and one of the Master Mind Modders namely BoilingOil have it here call NO Sims Loaded http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=1665
Now if you ask me have I learn more about it the answer is yes and no, all I know is I place the solution mod in my game. lol

The only way I can understand what may be happening in the game or households is for example let's say more like a room with a mess of junk in it that need to be clean out, in a way to keep the junk from piling up over and over again, namely like Sims tokens is to have this solution.

If any one should go to that link read everything "carefully" and a good idea to read the comments there by other simmers some answer are there.
Or post a question to BoilingOil.

Well, since this was a Maxis lot, I found it more of an annoyance. But any lot I create, I move to the lot bin and package it, just in case I want to use the lot again, or something botches up if I convert it to another use, such as a community lot to a hotel. And backups from time to time are a must. Better to lose a day, a week or even a month than lose a hood you've had for months or years. I'll automatically back up a hood or game if I download a new mod, do a 50/50 or vanilla test, right before I play a vacation hood for the first time, or consider a custom NPC ( or am not sure), try something new and/or extensive in Sim PE or try something extensive and/or new in-game. (Needless to say, I back up often.) And frequently, I'll back up if I haven't for a while. Far too often, we see people having problems, and if we ask if they backed their game up at any point, find out they never did. There often isn't a whole lot we can do to help them.

I never knew that anything over a certain amount of Unknowns can cause problems. A sudden influx for no apparent reason, sure. I'm tempted to count the ones I have now, but probably prefer not to know.

If there are mods that corrupt saves a list would be helpful. Although, are you sure you didn't just save while exiting? That'll screw it up.

Regarding the Unknown Character files, there's 5 that are listed in my SimPE as Unknown, but instead are objects found in the object.package files of the game. Here's the 5 I have (and which I suspect many people will have up to Mansion & Gardens Stuff or Ultimate Collection):

All of these are located in my latest EP/SP, C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package

Interesting. It's nice knowing the identities of some of these mystery Unknowns. Thanks for the info!

I have 10. Five of them are the ones above. The others, I would guess, are my four custom PTs and the bumper car NPC. Those are the ones that show up as unknown in Hood Checker as well.

It wouldn't be so hard to HAVE 17 Unknowns with the custom NPCs out there. I think the key phrase is, as Helena MCR wrote, do you as a player have any idea what these are? If you add a bunch of custom NPCs such as the PTs, some of Rebecah's animals, the bumper car from Echo's set, etc. and the numbers add up, you oughtn't worry as much. Just do understand you can't just yank the custom NPCs out, and it would be wise to make a test copy of your game and see if you like these NPCs first. Custom NPCs are not bad at all IF you like them and want them in your game. But it is probably a good idea to not overdo them.

@gazania: that made a lot of sense! I believe I have 15 or so Unknowns in each of my hoods, and I've known for years that these are exactly those special object-style creatures (EA-made or custom, that isn't important) and the PTs from my multi-PT set.

Oh, dear, I'm making sense? I'll have to work on that!

Also, I know I was one of those making a huge fuss about the Hug Bug, but I've made peace with it. Kind of. In view of other more-worrying game nonsense, it's mainly an irritating nuisance rather than a hood- or game-breaker, and even if you get it, there are steps you can use to make sure you won't be bothered by it in-game, though if you already have it, it still may be lurking on your lots. The main thing is that if you consider uploading a lot, you either:

1. Don't.
2. Simply tell people, "I've been hug-bugged. I have no idea whether my lot will cause you problems. Please hasten forward quickly and download that No Sim Loaded mod that BoilingOil kindly provided if you haven't already. Now. Then you can download my lot. Got it?" or
3. If you have the game on disks, use Any Game Starter.

The good news is that there is no such thing as double-Hug-Bugged, Hug Bug V. 2 or Hug-Bugged Plus if you have the No Sim Loaded mod and happened to download another Hug-Bugged lot. You got it, you took care of it to the best of your ability, the end.

I have considered Unsavory Charlatan (his name and surname, I believe). My knowledge Sim ladies find him very attractive - and I'd like to find out why A bit of a dark horse, he is, too, isn't he, joining players for games and turning up in the relationship panel? One day I am going to take a gamble on him in a throwaway hood!

Although my game have spawned some very good-looking bar tenders, I have avoided them, safe or not safe, since they will probably be pretty useless once made playable (no skills, etc).

I believe there is some protection in the vanilla game - I remember trying very hard to have one particular Sim interacting with Crumplebottom - with no results. So to interact with the old bag, you will have to cheat/use mods - which is probably a good indication that she should be left alone.

@gazania:

You're too kind, thank you! :D

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@Justpetro:

On the Unsavory Charlatan experiment: it's good that you plan to do that in a fresh test hood, because that hood is doomed already!

On the bartender front: I've made my share of bartenders controllable by having playables marry them. They cause absolutely no trouble. My favorite playable - and the lead character in a story I told years ago on TFM's Naughty Sims Asylum - was born as a bartender named Xena Short. And even after 6 years, that hood is still playable as ever, and Xena is very much alive, has turned into a lesbian Plantsim, met Aliens about a half dozen times, and is the mother of some 6 or 7 kids, and the father of 8 others. Anyway, the point is: bartenders are safe to make playable! And if you want to talk about useless... Most premade playables are more useless than bartenders. The Tinkers have a teenage daughter who had to have been fed hot air for many years, because neither mom nor dad has ever learned to even boil water!!!

On Crumplebottom and others who need cheats and CC to make playable or even have a conversation with: indeed. THAT is a good, strong indication that you should stay the frack away from the character in question!

Yes - throwaway hood it will have to be, but I can satisfy my curiosity

I know premades are useless generally - but the second generations are not - which means the bartender will be quite the outsider. (They are there now, though, if I should need them later )

I'm not sure the bartender comes entirely without skills, though. And even if (s)he does, you could still give them some reasonable skills using testingcheats. Some players justify much worse things for some of their sims, so I don't see how it should stop you from playing a good-looking bartender.

Tempting

Ofcourse it is... That's why I suggested it. Hey, you didn't think I let Julien Cooke marry Xena to do *him* a favor, do you? I did it, because *I* wanted to play her!



The hair she has here, is what she came with as a bartender. I never changed it, because I think it suits her!