In the first of this series of indepth reports about The Sims 3 World Adventures, we will be looking at what would make a sim want to go on a world adventure, the mechanics of how to get there and back.

We will also be looking at the fine points of extending a trip through the acquisition of visa points and also through other means.

In addition, we will also be looking at where sims stay when they are abroad and how and when they can acquire their own home from home.

If you have read my indepth reports about The Sims 3, you already know that I consider Sunset Valley and Riverview to be two very attractive places to live. Also, before long, I am sure that there will be other captivating new worlds that are created by the community or added in future expansion packs by the developers themselves. After all, EAxis added new neighbourhoods with previous EPs for TS and TS2 so they are bound to do it again. So, if it is nice enough at home, why would our sims want to uproot themselves and travel?

Personal Choice

From my review of this expansion, I pointed out that it was not for everyone. If you have bought this EP, you will want your sims to go adventuring at some point. There is some tweaking of the original game but in my opinion, definitely not enough to make it worth buying for that alone. Therefore, the player will send their sims adventuring because they want to and not necessarily whether it is something the sim wants. It's good to play God at times.

Wishes

At some time, a sim will get a wish to visit a foreign land.

As the lifetime reward points from these are quite good and if the sim has enough funds (or is prepared to kaching enough funds), it makes perfect sense to select this wish and send a sim on an adventure.

Opportunities

At some point, an opportunity may present itself that involves visiting a foreign land.

These may be based on skills, careers or come from the community itself. From experience, I have had one sim be given the opportunity to compare jogging in Egypt to how it was back home. Another opportunity came from the town spa wanting a sim to take a photograph of a famous tomb that they could hang up in one of their rooms. A third opportunity involved taking part in a riddle competition in China. I am quite sure that there are more of them to be found. The rewards from these opportunities can be quite good and in one of the above examples, it actually paid for the trip itself.

Financial Gain

Although the three new countries are very beautifully designed and offer a lot of experience, I very much doubt sims would go adventuring just to go sightseeing. There has to be some monetary reward.

I will go into further detail about this in a forthcoming report focussing on Adventuring but there let us just say that there are plenty of opportunities to make money in one form or another. Whether it being paid in simoleons, finding them in cashbags or reselling certain minor relics and gems or even from taking plenty of photographs, there are many ways to make money when in one of the three foreign countries. In this case, we see Melody Miles with some of her accumulated relics.

As you can see, there are quite a few reasons to go on a world adventure.

Now you've made that decision, which we knew you would have as otherwise you would not be reading this, we will look at the procedure on how to get your sims abroad and back.

Either using the cellphone or a computer, it is no different. There is an option that comes up called "Travel". If it is greyed out, it means that it has not been long enough since the last trip. If that is the case, wait a few hours or days until it is no longer greyed out. Otherwise, just click on it and the Trip Planner interface will come up.

Select Destination - There are three locations in ascending order of price to go on an adventure there. China, Egypt and France. We will be looking at each of these countries in detail in subsequent indepth reports.

Days - This is affected by the minimum level of visa that one of the travelling party has. The higher the level of the visa, the longer the sim can stay. For those who have not travelled to a destination before, the maximum length of time that they can stay is three days. In this illustration, marked in red under the amount of days, is the level of visa required. As both of this tour party have Level 0 visas, they can stay for only 3 days.

Travel Party Members - The tour leader, who is the one who booked the trip, can add any other household member that is a child or older to the tour party. Babies and toddlers cannot go on holiday and should be left in the hands of a responsible adult sim and not an NPC babysitter. Unless that bug is fixed soon, it is something that you do NOT do unless you want heartache for the loss and headache from trying to fix the situation.

Once the trip is booked and paid for, your sims either get into a taxi or the family car and drive off. The next thing we see is the loading up screen for the destination accompanied by appropriate music and hints and tips, which are not specifically for where they are going.

This part of the procedure takes ages. As of the time of writing, no patches have come out to speed things up. It takes a couple of minutes, although someone with a state of the art computer might get it a little bit quicker although I am yet to hear about anyone who has made it to their destination in under a few minutes.