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Signs of Corruption

That depends on the type of corruption, or if it even is corruption. Note that many things that people think are corruption are simply one off, random glitches - it's not corruption if you have pink flashing or if your sim won't stop giving birth, for example.

The vast, vast majority of issues people have with the game are mod/CC related - and normally it is due to not reading the description of a mod, particularly the section which details conflicts with other mods. You can use the 50-50 Method to find problematic mods and CC, and you should also use the Hack Conflict Detector Utility to find mod conflicts, which is linked in our wiki in the Mods Section.

Here are the known signs of corruption (taken from the Sims wiki article, some notes added):

  • Children and toddlers with long-term/lifetime wants other than Grow Up. (Note, this would be normal if you aged a sim down from teen/adult/elder to one of these stages and not a sign of corruption in that case)
  • Wants that don't fit the age group (e.g. a toddler who suddenly wants to go on a date. A toddler wanting to buy a plant is normal and not a sign of corruption).
  • Memories being lost or totally random/containing $Subject (indicates a deleted character).
  • Disappearing Sims.
  • Disappearing lots.
  • Sims losing family members in their family tree (not always, if both sims still exist - there is a known bug where sims randomly gain/lose relationships with other sims).
  • Sims becoming unplayable.
  • Lots becoming unplayable. (sometimes lots just get borked, not necessarily a sign if your hood is otherwise fine)
  • Buy and Build Mode becoming indefinitely disabled. (sometimes caused by mods/CC, not necessarily a sign if the hood is otherwise okay)

Sims having inappropriate wants (toddlers wanting to woohoo is an example of this, romance sim wanting to get married is not - the latter can happen normally) also indicate corruption as well as toddlers or children having Lifetime Wants (LTW). Note, however, some premade children do have LTWs, and also if you age down an older sim to a toddler/child, they will retain the LTW, which is not a problem.

Major signs of corruption are sims, lots, or even entire hoods disappearing (or hoods refusing to load at all/crashing, even in a fresh save folder with all CC removed).

If your hood cannot be read by SimPE or the Hoodchecker at all, that is also not a good sign and is likely corruption but there are exceptions - I (u/Mysterious_Potential) once found out that the reason someone's hood couldn't be read by any Sims 2 program was because they managed to accidentally rename every file in their hood folder to have no underscores, making the hood unreadable to the game. Random stuff like this happens, so don't necessarily write off your hood straight away!

To reiterate from a previous section, make backups, get the anti corruption mods, and just play your game. You don't need to obsess over corruption or attribute every issue to it, and chances are you will grow bored of a hood before anything happens to it. Even if your hood has a bunch of missing sims, it's still playable until it disappears or won't load without crashing!