As we’ve mentioned in our launch day review, EA and Maxis’ The Sims Mobile (Free) is a much better iteration on the popular series’s formula than its previous mobile outing. Still, like most other games similar in style and formula, there are quite a few freemium underpinnings to wade through. We’ve put in the time and effort to get through as much of the game as possible in order to provide some general tips and tricks as to how you can enjoy developing your Sims while spending as little money as possible.

Always Keep Your Sims Doing Something

This is a good tip to start with because with all the different activities and screens that your Sims may be on, it’s pretty easy to forget whether or not they are done with something. Always keep an eye on their status and if you see a big checkmark on their name that means that they’ve completed their task and are ready for a new one. Another thing you’ll need to come track of are your Sims individual energy meters. Completing tasks during activities will lower the overall timer of the activity. So, you’ll want to use that energy as much as you can to cut down on the timers. Another important thing to consider is that you can start an activity even with no energy — you just want be able to do any tasks until it replenishes. To that end, keep an eye out on tasks around your home that replenish energy (such as taking a shower or nap). Each one of these tasks will provide some energy back to your Sim instantly and are on their own cooldowns. It’s pretty easy to miss these things but they are free energy, so always keep an eye out.

Take Advantage of All Activities

The tutorial is going to drive your Sims to certain jobs and hobbies. However, as you get further into the game you’re going to quickly unlock more careers and tasks than your Sims can do at the same time. My recommendation? Do the jobs you want and don’t be concerned with changing them. Each job has its own cool stories, items to unlock, and tasks to complete. Also, depending on the traits you assign to your Sims, some activities will just make more sense for them. Just make sure to do what you want and try to be as efficient as possible.

Practice Good Timer Management

So when I talk about good timer management, I simply mean that if you want to get the most of The Sims Mobile without spending money, you’re going to have to plan things out. That means setting activities for your Sims, monitoring the timers, and making sure you log back into the game to finish the activity and set more timers. When you know you’re going to be away from your phone for awhile (such as going to bed) make sure you take on the longer activities so that you aren’t wasting potential earning capability. This time management should also extend to monitoring your Sims energy. As their energy is replenished during an activity, you can do some tasks to drive down the timers. So, if you can master the energy regeneration compared to the tasks that you can do along with the amount of time saved per task, you can really get a handle on the true time to complete an activity which will increase efficiency in earning currency and experience.

Always Watch the Videos

Is this even a tip anymore? Anyhow, watching ads in freemium games is pretty normal these days. For a small amount of your time, watching an add after completing an activity in The Sims Mobile will bestow additional rewards on top of those that you already earned from the activity. The cool thing about ads is that the rewards scale with the activity you do. Thus, watching an ad after an eight hour activity will give a ton more rewards than an ad after a one hour activity. While this is useful for planning purposes, you’re going to just want to watch as many ads as you can get simply because free currency is free currency.

The Fashion Shop Is Cool, But Don’t Fall Into the Trap

In The Sims Mobile, fashion is everything, and nothing. Obviously one of the big appeals is the ability to customize your Sims fashion in a variety of different ways, including hairstyles, makeup, clothes and so on. But, for the most part, these superficial upgrades to your character are just that: superficial. Even worse, they’re pretty darn expensive as well, with clothing options you probably really want costing a ton of in-game currency as well as premium currency. It would be silly for me to recommend that players disregard a significant portion of the game, but I’d at least recommend that you allocate your limited resources to start on other items that might provide more bang for your buck early on.

One of the few exceptions to the above is Izzy’s Fashion Shop, which is basically the game’s gacha system. Izzy takes Fashion Gems (which can be earned via in-game social events or buy purchasing with premium currency) and uses them to create clothes with special attribute enhancing powers associated with them. You don’t control the type of clothes he makes, you can’t even control whether the controls are for male or female characters, nor do you control the types of power the clothes get. Thus, there’s a pretty big likelihood that you’ll get something that you either don’t like, or offers attributes you don’t care about. While you’ll want to earn Fashion Gems in game as much as you can and cash them at the shop, don’t get suckered into potentially spending your hard earned premium currency to get more of these gems — there are better things to spend them on.

Save Your Premium Currency for More Sim Slots

So what exactly is worth saving your premium currency for? Why, more Sims of course! The game will give you two Sims early on with the remaining two spots available for purchase with premium currency. Unlocking an additional Sim means more activities that you can do simultaneously, which translates to greater earning potential for your playthrough. In my mind, this is one of the best the best that you can spend your premium currency on, so be sure to save all your premium currency to purchase the remaining slots. After that, well, then you can focus on some of the more superficial things.

Take Advantage of Real World Specials

Ok, well obviously this last tip won’t exactly help folks that don’t want to spend any money in the game, but it’s still worth mentioning. The Sims Mobile has a habit of throwing lots of limited time deals at you, with some being very attractive compared to purchasing all the various pieces separately. While I’m certainly not going to advocate that you pick up every limited run sale for the sake of getting things on a sale, I will say that you should look at each one very carefully. If there’s a particular theme on sale that offers some cool funiture pieces, consider saving yourself a lot of time and effort and springing for the sale.

Got any more tips for mastering The Sims Mobile? Feel free to leave them in the comments below!