It’s no mystery, especially after the game has been free to play for a couple years, that the lifeblood of playingThe Sims 4is its expansions - the base game is fine enough, but you’ll always end up wanting more. And in the last decade, they’ve given us everything from weather to the supernatural.
But which expansions for The Sims 4 feel the most essential to my everyday life? As someone who’s made herself in the Sims a time or two in her younger years, I’m no stranger to living with these expansions, so let’s see what living is like.
15Enchanted By Nature
Given that fairies are unfortunately not real (at least to my knowledge), I’ve got to stick this one in last place. I know we’ve got a lot of natural elements added to the game with this – a natural lifestyle and tons of beautiful scenery – but with the main draw being earning your wings, it’s earned its spot.
Plus, I’m not really a very outdoorsy person, anyway. Even if I did strip it down to just the nature, I’m firmly of the opinion that mankind has been working towards air conditioning and walls our entire existence.
14Horse Ranch
Before Enchanted by Nature dropped in early July 2025, though, Horse Ranch would easily have been handed the reins for my last-place pick. I do not enjoy sweating, or bugs, or poop smells, or backbreaking manual labor – horse ownership is simply not in my cards in real life.
I did enjoy the pack for what it was worth, though – I tore Umber Grove from his family and made himfocuson horse training – but I’m not much a cowgirl myself. The only horses I’ve ever ridden were pony rides as a child, and I don’t know that you could force me onto one as an adult. While I do enjoy a good nectar from time to time, I can skip it if I need to be a farmhand to get it.
13Snowy Escape
I grew up in Western New York only 15 minutes from Lake Ontario with Lake Erie not too far out to serve up a winter weather doozy for half the year, in a city my grandfather lovingly referred to as “the armpit of America.” I’ve gotten on the bus to school when the snow was to my hips despite the superstition that wearing your pajamas backwards would lead to a snow day.
I know how to handle myself in the snow, but do Ienjoyit? Not particularly. Now that I work from home, winter is a lot better, but you would never catch me dead out on the slopes of Mt. Komorebi even if I did live nearby. Though the hot springs do sound glorious, and I do live where it’s winter for almost half the year, I don’t like snow enough to live where it happens almost all the time.
12Eco Lifestyle
Listen, I’m all for trying to be more mindful about our footprint – I recycle, mind my water use, decline plastic straws, all the other things a singular person can do to help the planet while corporations spew toxic trash into the air – but Eco Lifestyle offers a lot of things I’m not wild about.
I love saving money and being sustainable, but you’ll never see me dumpster diving. Also, if my neighbor showed up to my door to tell me I can cheat on my partner without him getting jealous but cannot use the stove today, I may enact a Neighborhood Brawl right then and there.
11Island Living
I know I dinged Enchanted by Nature for having fairies, but I’m much more likely to end up on a beach with or without the promise of mermaids than I am to end up in a forested area like Innisgreen, so the same restriction will not be applying to Island Living.
Beaches are great. If living seaside weren’t so expensive, and I weren’t so pale that the only concealer shade lighter than mine in the brand I use is literal white to use as eyeshadow base, I’d love to live in Sulani – working from home would be so much nicer if the ocean were right outside my window.
10City Living And For Rent
While I do love the world of Tomarang, I’m one of the folks of the opinion that City Living and For Rent could easily have been the same expansion pack. We got apartments in both, downtown areas, and more, but for posterity’s sake, I’d put For Rent lower – I’m too poor to be a landlord.
But City Living has a place in my heart, as someone who grew up in the suburbs and loved exploring whichever city she could get to. Between karaoke bars, festivals, and more, I still find myself in San Myshuno in real life as often as I find myself in real-world cities.
9Cottage Living
When I say I grew up in the suburbs, I mean my graduating class had about 300 students but we couldn’t open the windows in the high school during the warmer summer months because of all the farms nearby spreading manure. My little cow town of a hometown feels enough like Henford-on-Bagley to feel familiar.
I also really enjoy cooking with other people, sharing recipes and time and a meal at the end, so the option to start cooking together in this pack would be pretty special to me as we dive into the things I’m actively looking for in packs IRL.
8Get Famous
Though it’s still wild to me that I can Google my name and have my portfolio show up, I’m not a celebrity and I do not ever want to be one. The older I get, the more I value my privacy (outside of telling you about my life in a list on the internet for money), so the thought of being famous myself sounds like agony.
But I’m also very aware of what I do for a living, and I know that my job could not exist without some kind of celebrity spotlight. Ilovedoing interviews and meeting the people who make the stuff I like; I’m private, not inhuman. While I’m annoyed in-game when things pause if Judith Ward shows up, I’d get it, I guess - my musician celebrity crush smiled at me once and I haven’t yet forgotten.
7Life & Death
As far as I know, I am currently alive. And I also know that, despite my best efforts to the contrary on a regular basis, someday, I will eventually die. What a fun, lighthearted list this is turning out to be!
But as a former goth kid who never really outgrew her love for the macabre, I got a lot of mileage out of Life & Death. I really enjoyed the life’s journey mechanic, as someone who likes reflecting on where she’s been as she reaches milestones in where she’s going, even if I can’t guarantee my own reincarnation by doing cool stuff during my life for real.
6High School Years And Discover University
As someone who has already mentioned graduating from a small-town suburban high school, High School Years absolutely nailed most of the experience.I wrote a whole other listabout it back when the pack first came out, and like most people my age, I graduated from high school, even if that was somehow already [redacted] years ago.
But Discover University also feels delightfully familiar. I went to college in two parts, with ten years between enrollments, so I got two very different experiences. The parties, treating assignments like full-time jobs sometimes, doing silly stuff with your friends for a laugh so you don’t tear your hair out? Check. Shame my Sims seem to get further with their expensive degrees than I did, though…
