Sims 4 Needs and Motives: How To Keep Your Sims Happy And Alive

Just as you do in real life, the digital people who occupy the worlds of The Sims 4 have needs that have to be fulfilled, or else they won’t be happy and something bad will probably happen. Potentially something really bad, like dying. Fortunately, meeting your sims’ needs is not the most complex affair–our digital people aren’t quite so complicated as real people are. Still, a little knowledge goes a long way, and you’ll find more than a little knowledge below as we break down how needs work and how you can best address them, whether it be through activities your sim partakes in, or permanent lifetime rewards that allow you to ignore them entirely. Let’s dive in.

The Sims 4 Needs list

Hunger

• Solution: eat food
• Related perks: Hardly Hungry and Forever Full

If your sim doesn’t eat food, they’ll get hungry. If they continue not eating food until their hunger gauge depletes entirely, they’ll soon die from starvation or, if they’re a child, be taken away by Child Protective Services and adopted by a different family. Because the stakes are pretty high with this one, hunger is the only need your sim has that absolutely has to be dealt with every time, because it’s the only baseline need that is guaranteed to kill a sim if it’s not addressed. So don’t forget to make your sim eat.

There are two reward perks that will make dealing with hunger much, much easier. Hardly Hungry (4,000 reward points) will dramatically decrease the rate your hunger gauge depletes, and Forever Full (10,000 reward points) will make it so your hunger gauge will no longer deplete naturally.

Energy

• Solution: sleep, drink caffeine
• Related perks: Seldom Sleepy, Never Weary

One of the most annoying aspects of human life is the consistent need for sleep, and your sims are no different than you are in this respect. Sims need to rest, and if they’re tired they’ll be worse at all tasks they attempt, gain skills more slowly than usual, and have an increased risk of injury during certain tasks, like rock climbing and building robots. The best way to replenish your energy gauge is by sleeping. You can also drink coffee for a burst of energy, but that’s only a temporary solution–your characters will need to sleep eventually. Vampires have two additional methods for resting: sleeping in coffins, and dark meditation.

Fortunately, the stakes for this need are fairly low–if your sim’s energy bar depletes all the way, they’ll just pass out on the floor, and will otherwise be fine aside from a temporary negative moodlet. But there is one big danger: If a sim runs out of energy and passes out while swimming, they’ll drown.

There are two unlockable aspiration rewards related to energy. Seldom Sleepy (4,000 points) will make your sim’s energy gauge drain much more slowly, and Never Weary (10,000 points) will completely remove your sim’s need for sleep. Likewise, a fully upgraded vampire won’t need to sleep, except to replenish their vampire energy.

Bladder

• Solution: use a toilet
• Related perks: Steel Bladder

After your sim eats, the waste from the food has to go somewhere, and that somewhere is hopefully a toilet–because using a toilet will completely replenish the bladder meter. The only real risk with this need is your sim pooping their pants, which makes them dirty, smelly and embarrassed.

The Steel Bladder aspiration reward (2,000 points) will make your bladder meter deplete much more slowly. The Hardly Hungry and Forever Full perks also help with the bladder need, since this need only goes down when your sim consumes food–they’ll never have to use the bathroom if they never eat. Or you could approach this problem from a different direction with the Shameless reward (2000 points), which will make it so your sim doesn’t mind pooping themselves.

Hygiene

• Solution: take a shower, brush your teeth
• Related perks: Antiseptic, Forever Fresh

As your sim goes about their business, they’ll gradually become dirtier and stinkier, and that process will go faster if they do vigorous activities like working out or doing WooHoo–or pooping their pants. Bathing will completely take care of this need right away, and a sim can also brush their teeth or wash their hands for a small boost to their hygiene meter. If you have the Laundry Day stuff pack and have placed laundry machines on your sim’s home lot, they’ll also need to wash their clothes, which will get dirty just like their bodies do.

The hygiene need can be mitigated using two aspiration reward perks. Antiseptic (3,000 points) will make your hygiene meter decrease slower, and Forever Fresh (8,000) will prevent you from ever having to bathe.

Fun

• Solution: do things your sim enjoys
• Related perks: Carefree

Just like you, your sims need to do things to entertain themselves, or else they’ll lose their minds–or, more specifically, they’ll get really tense and ornery. But the solution is pretty uncomplicated: Your sim just has to do something they enjoy. The options are pretty limitless, as they can play video games, play with their pets or children, playing competitive games like sports or chess, and hobby activities like fishing, swimming, and working out all will satisfy the fun need as long as your sim actually likes doing it. You can look, or choose, your sim’s preferences in Create-a-Sim if you aren’t sure what they like.

But you don’t even really need to figure this one out, because if you let your sim operate autonomously they’ll almost always handle this one on their own. Seeking out fun stuff to do seems to be the main operating mode for autonomous sims.

If you don’t want to ever have any fun, the Carefree aspiration reward (2,000 points) will prevent your sim from ever getting tense, which negates the effects of a low fun meter.

Social

• Solution: talk to other sims, or the toilet
• Related perks: Independent, Needs No One

Sims are very social beings, just like we are, and spending time with other people is a crucial part of their lives. If your sim’s social meter depletes too far, they’ll become cripplingly sad and depressed until they talk to somebody. Actually going outside and directly interacting with other sims, or inviting sims over to hang out, is probably the most obvious solution, but there’s really no need for in-person interaction–chatting with others on the computer or social media also will raise your social meter. And if you want to get really introverted about this one, your sim could get the talking toilet in build mode and become friends with it, removing any need to deal with other people.

The Independent lifetime reward (2,000 points) will make your social need deplete much more slowly, and Needs No One (5,000 points) will negate this need entirely.

Vampire vulnerabilities

• Solutions: carry an umbrella, and drink plasma from sims, fruit or plasma packs
• Related perks: Tamed Thirst, Sun Resistance

Vampires have two unique needs that regular sims do not: They need to drink plasma from other sims (this replaces hunger), and they need to not stand in direct sunlight or they will suffer and eventually die. The sunlight thing is fairly simple to deal with–just carry an umbrella, and your vampire sim will use it when they go outside during the day.

Plasma is more complicated, because drinking from other sims is generally frowned upon, even though it doesn’t technically harm them–and if you get too thirsty, your sim will temporarily go feral and randomly attack another sim. If you don’t mind the reputation hit, drink away, but if you want your sim to stay on good terms with folks, there are two alternative and benign sources of plasma: buying plasma packs on the computer and picking plasma fruit from a plasma tree. Plasma trees grow wild in Forgotten Hollow, and you can use a plasma fruit to plant your own plasma trees.

The vampire skill tree has perks that can permanently deal with both of these vulnerabilities, however, though they’ll take a while to unlock. Tamed Thirst, a max-level vampire skill, will make it so your sim will never have an adverse reaction to thirst. And Sun Resistance is a fourth-level skill with three tiers that will let your sim become a daywalker.

Mermaid hydration

• Solution: drink water, bathe, swim
• Related perks: Forever Fresh

Even in their human form, mermaids need to stay moist thanks to the hydration need, which replaces hygiene for this particular form of being. But because it uses the hygiene meter, your mermaid sims won’t die from dryness, they’ll just get very tense and annoyed and won’t be able to use their mermaid-specific abilities. But this is an easy fix: Mermaids can increase their hydration with any water-related activity aside from sitting in a hot tub. So, taking a bath, going swimming, or drinking water will do.

The Forever Fresh perk, which permanently solves your hygiene need, will also have the same effect on the hydration need for mermaids.