Finally got the Legacy Edition, and plugged in my old 'Hood and Downloads. Now, first of all, I am pleasantly surprised -- many of the horror stories I had read before taking the plunge are apparently inoperative. No purple flashing, etc. The 'hood is intact, everybody's there, and everything (more-or-less). NOTE to anyone who is trying this at home: when I first plopped in the 'hood and fired it up, I had blue objects everywhere -- indicating "File not Found." But after I exited the game and started again, everything (or almost) was there, almost no blue objects at all.

That's the good. The bad: some of my Sims are absolutely butchered, and a lot of my custom outfits are not showing up. Which leads me to a question: do clothes, hair, and whatnot need to be in separate, named folders now, or is it okay to have them just loose in the Downloads folder (which is where I have most of mine). If they need to be subfoldered, problem solved. If not, then oh, boy, do I have a job on my hands. The game nicely puts random clothes, hair, and even faces on Sims who, for one reason or another, do not have their proper gear (or the game is not finding it). Which is nice, but I had some really beautiful Sims who are now not-beautiful, and it will be an adventure trying to fix them.

All of the behavioral mods appear to be broken, no surprise because my original install had EPs only to Free Time (Pets exclusive), and now with the Legacy Edition, I have all the EPs whether I want them or not. So I'm going to be hunting.

Looks like the Inseminator doesn't work. Again, might just need a new version. Haven't tried SimPE or the other utilities yet, but am hoping for the best. The height changes I made in SimPE back in the Day are working, but the outfits and skin tones are not, which may be a function of the game not locating them yet.

There is something weird going on with the cars. I have a bunch of custom cars, and I made a bunch of custom paint jobs to go with them. And the weird part is that some are showing up, and some are not. A car which had one custom paint job might now have another -- or the same one. Or, in one case that has me scratching my head, the car itself doesn't show up, even though other instances of it do on other lots. Needless to say, that was my favorite paint job (doesn't everybody want a candy-apple-red '65 Mustang?).

Haven't played much, yet, as I am just nosing around seeing how the different lots and Sims look. I had a no-aging mod that I won't know if it works or not until I play a whole day with a family. But I wanted to post a quick progress report in case any lurkers are thinking about taking the plunge. Buckle up, it will be a ride, but it might not be too bad.

-- Mal

Make sure CC is properly enabled, and that you have meshes for everything that need them.

The blue-flashing items are most likely repo'd items that can't find the master meshes. Make sure you have those, and also make sure you have the CEP installed (in case the items are repo'd to maxis items). That goes for items that lack recolorability, too (mostly is an issue for maxis items and items repo'd to those, but there could be excepions).

If CC isn't enabled or is missing from the game (for some reasor another) at the point you're starting up your game, you'll most likely find sims to be wearing other clothes/hair/etc. You'll also find that lots don't have the correct furniture. Most of the time they'll not revert back.
The best way to go around this is to first install CC and make sure it's properly enabled (don't go into your old hoods, but load a previously unused hood, or a new hood) before you load any of the hoods you want to use CC in. That way you go around the issue of missing CC on both lots and sims. If you visit the lots accidentally, make sure not to save, as current changes will save as-is.
You can make sure all the CC is there, then replace the backup (?) files for just the hoods again, and things should be fine.

You don't need to subfolder - loose in the Downloads folder works fine - subfoldering is more for your own sanity, and is a good way to keep track of mods/defaults/etc.
If you subfolder, make sure the entire filepath for each file doesn't go over 256 characters (short folder/filenames, plus few layers of subfoldering helps), as the game doesn't read past this. Apparently the default Steam path is a bit longer than the EA version of Legacy, so this oculd count negatively towards the filepath length.

You are going to need to update a lot of your mods to AL/M&G compatible versions. FT versions might work if they're the last version, but make sure to check what the mod creator has said, if the documentation is still available. If you can't find something, try the WCIF area.

The Insimenator should work (it's AL/M&G compatible). Depends which version you got - there's three different, OBJ, Dest, SIM, they all work slightly different but do mostly the same. OBJ only adds objects, which are somewhat hidden in the catalog- I think if you do Misc/misc/all or some such, they show. Dest (I think?) has destination menus, and the SIM version also has sim menus. If I remember correctly, that is.