The Sims 4: Needs & How to Fill Them

In The Sims 4, your sims have a basic list of needs that you must be taking care of to keep them happy and make sure that they are working at their maximum potential. These needs (also known as motives) will cause your sims to gain negative moodlets and emotions if their needs are low.

If your sim’s needs are low enough, they won’t be able to do the things that usually make them happy (i.e., painting a picture or writing books). When your sim’s needs are high, you’ll get a happy moodlet because your sim is well taken care of and a happy sim can do anything!

Knowing how needs work and how you can fill them is an important lesson in every beginner sims players game. So, let’s dig into the 6 different needs and all the different ways that you can fill them.

How to Cheat Your Sim’s Needs

Like most things in the sims, you can cheat your sim’s needs and make them super happy! All you need to do is hit ctrl + shift + c and then type testingcheats on into the cheat dialogue box that appears at the top of the screen.

Then you can shift-click on the mailbox and choose fill needs and you can choose either household or world. You can make your entire household happy in one swift click!

If you’d rather cheat needs for a single sim, you can shift-click on that specific sim and just choose make happy and this will fill all of their needs at one.

You also have the option to disable need decay when you shift-click on the mailbox, this will halt all decaying of needs for your entire family.

Types of Needs

Bladder

This is one of the most straightforward of the needs, as it just requires that you use the bathroom, as soon as possible! You can get your sim to use the bathroom at any point, not just when they really need to use the bathroom so it’s a great need to plan ahead for.

The more your sim drinks (either drinks like milk from the fridge, or mixology drinks from a bar) the more often they’ll need to use the bathroom. This also works for food, the more you eat, the more you’ll have to go!

If you let your sim’s bladder need get extremely low, they’ll end up peeing themselves and this is an embarrassing moment for any sim. They will pee themselves, and end up being completely dirty and will require a shower. They will get an embarrassed moodlet, and if you let your sim get embarrassed enough, they can die from the emotion.

It’s best to plan ahead when it comes to your sim’s bladder need. Get them to use the bathroom as often as you’d like, and don’t let them get into the red or they may pee themselves! You can pee in a number of places, of course, toilets, but you can also pee in the oceans of Sulani, or in a specific type of bush!

Social

Just like humans, sims have an intense social need that they need to fill. They are always wanting to socialize with other sims (unless they have the loner trait). A sim who hasn’t had any time to socialize lately will end up getting a sad emotion and that will only get better if they talk to someone.

You have a few options for filling your social needs. The first, is calling your friends or family, however, this will only raise it a little bit and face to face communication is always better. You can also go on the computer and choose socialize and chat with people in a chat room.

Of course, spending time actually talking to other sims is the best way for you to increase your social need. It will only take a few social interactions to get the job done, and this need decays slower than others. I’ve had sims go entire days without talking to anyone else.

It’s important to note that sims with the outgoing trait are going to need to talk to other sims way more often than regular sims. Also, sims with the loner trait are going to need to socialize way less often.

Energy

A sim’s energy need is going to be really easy and simple to understand, and can be filled easiest by just going to sleep in a bed or taking a nap on a couch, lounge chair, or pool float. Your sim’s energy will slowly decrease throughout the day, and they’ll be ready for bed around the same time each night, depending on their schedule.

A sim who is super low energy won’t be able to do anything at all, they’ll get so tired that they will just collapse on the floor for a few hours.

An important thing to understand is the quality of a bed in The Sims 4, since the higher the bed quality the better sleep your sim’s will get. Each bed has a different level of energy that it will give your sims and is done in a 10 point scale. The least expensive bed with an energy level of 10 is over 8,000 simoleons, so it can be a really great thing to save up for so your sims will spend less time sleeping.

An inexpensive bed will make sims wake up with sore backs, especially if you put your adult sims in the least expensive children’s bed, as it is labeled as uncomfortable for adults.

One awesome thing about sleeping is that all of your sim’s emotions will be entirely wiped out for the time that they’re asleep. This is awesome because if your sim is feeling any sort of intense emotion, you can put them to sleep and get them to try and wear some of that negativity off.

Hygiene

Your sim’s need to be clean for them to feel great, and showers are one of the best ways to get your sims to feel emotions. You can raise your sim’s hygiene need by taking a shower, bath, washing hands, brushing teeth, or going for a swim.

One of my favourite things about showers in The Sims 4, is that you can use them to get your sim to feel emotions.

• A bubble bath will give your sim a playful moodlet
• A thoughtful shower will make your sim feel inspired
• A brisk shower will make your sim feel energized
• A steamy shower will make your sim feel flirty

Fun

The fun need has the biggest number of things you can do to fill it, so the options are really endless and they depend a lot on your sim’s traits and personality.

• A sim with the bookworm trait will find fun in reading
• A sim with the creative trait will find fun in painting
• A sim with the genius trait will find fun in playing chess
• A sim with the geek trait will find extra fun in playing video games

Of course, you can do any of these things with any sim to raise their fun, however, it’s nice to do things that your sims enjoy more to get their fun need higher, faster.

When your sims fun gets low, they will start to feel tense and when a sim is tense they will pretty much not want to do anything. Sims can get tense from working hard at work or school, or other events that happen when they’re out. Increasing a sim’s fun is the only way to make them stop feeling tense, quickly.

Hunger

A sim with a full stomach is a happy sim, just like humans. The hunger need is filled by eating meals, of course.

You have a few options to feed your sims. You can get them to eat quick meals, however, they are less effective at filling your sim’s hunger need and they’ll be hungry in no-time. Also, a lot of the time a quick meal will give your sim some type of negative moodlet, like uncomfortable, because the food will be poorly cooked.

It’s usually better to just prepare an actual meal, because it will fill your sim’s hunger more and keep them full for longer. Thankfully, you can make a group serving of food (either 4 or 8 servings) and put the leftovers in the fridge. Then for a few meals when your sim gets hungry, you’ll be able to just click on the fridge and choose get leftovers.

Final Thoughts

Keeping your sim’s needs high is the best way to make sure that they are as successful as possible and keep making you money and taking care of their children, if applicable. Being in a good mood will ensure better work performance, and more successful projects like paintings and woodwork.