- Sims 4 Neighborhood Guide - August 7, 2021
- Sims 4 Life Tragedies Mod Guide - June 5, 2021
- Sims 4 Grafting Guide: All You Need to Know - June 5, 2021
Who doesn’t love watching a terrifying horror movie or an intense murder mystery?
But, while most of us enjoy watching characters on-screen committing armed robbery or escaping a kidnapping, we wouldn’t want to experience that in real life.
Heck, most of us don’t even want to experience that in fake life! If you watch any streamer who plays scary games, you’ll find that they’re often too terrified to move forward in a make-believe scenario! At least the Sims 4 is mostly free of life tragedies unless I burn the house down.
Enter the Life Tragedies mod, where awful things happen to good people until they become horrible people themselves. Instead of using video games as an escape, you’ll be escaping from kidnappers, seven different serial killers, and bullies in this mod created by Sacrificial.
This Sim 4 mod improves(?) the game in multiple ways; let’s take a look.
Will My Computer Run The Life Tragedies Mod?
Yes, if your computer can run Sims 4, it can run the Life Tragedies. Life Tragedies works with base Sims 4, but you’ll get an optional hospital visit add-on if you own the expansion pack Get to Work. Sacrificial includes a download link for Windows only on his Patreon.
How to Install the Life Tragedies Mod
To install the Life Tragedies Mod, follow these steps. If you want to know what’s in the Life Tragedies Mod before downloading, go down the section “What’s Included With the Life Tragedies Mod.”
Step 1: Go to the Patreon
Follow the link to go to Sacrificial’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sims-4-life-mod-43335944
Note: Don’t go to his website, sacrificialmods.com, for the download link because it will just re-direct you to his Patreon.
Step 2: Click the SAC_Life Tragedies -MOD- v 1.2.4 Halloween Horrors Link
Scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see two links you can download.
The first one, “SAC_Life Tragedies -MOD- v 1.2.4 Halloween Horrors Basegame.zip,” is for people who don’t own the Get to Work expansion pack. If you download this version and have the GetToWork expansion pack, the mod won’t function correctly (see below).
The second link, “SAC_Life Tragedies -MOD- v 1.2.4 Halloween Horrors GetToWork.zip,” is for players that have the GetToWork expansion. If you download this version and don’t have the GetToWork expansion pack, the mod won’t function correctly (see below).
Note: In both versions, there’s a major glitch that happens if you download the version that isn’t supported for your game. Your characters can’t get major surgery to heal wounds with the wrong download.
However, you can still get rid of the wounds by deleting them. If you want to use the entire mod, check your version before downloading.
Step 3: Download the Zip File
When you click the download links, your computer will download the file automatically. Click on the zip file when the download is finished.
Step 4: Open the Folder by Unzipping it With WinRAR
Open the download file by using WinRaR (or any other zip software). If you don’t have a zip software, WinRaR is free and stays free.
Open the CAS file first, then refer back to this section after transferring the files in Step 5 to open the Files folder, then the Props folder.
Step 5: Moving the Files
Move each folder into your Sims 4 Mod folder, which should be found on your computer by going through your Documents>Electronic Arts>Mods.
You can either create a new folder to store all of your mods or just throw them in unorganized, as I did.
Don’t put your mods two folders deep, or the mod won’t work. If you want to create a folder, you have to take all of the files out of the folder first.
I find it easier to dump everything inside one folder, but this can make life difficult for you if the creator updates their mod.
Note: Make sure you turn on custom content and script mods in the Games Options in the Sims 4, or this and all other mods won’t work.
Your mod should run when you open up the game. If it doesn’t, check your settings to ensure Sim 4 allows custom content or that you created your new “Life Tragedies” folder correctly.
Remember: you can’t have any folders inside of the Life Tragedies folder, or the mod won’t run.
The photo above is an example of putting mods inside of a folder. As you can see, the path reads Documents>Electronic Arts>Mods> Life Tragedies. If your path included one more folder, the mod won’t work.
What’s Included With the Life Tragedies Mod
The Life Tragedies mod includes several unique characters, actions, and locations. The amount of work applied to this mod is extensive, so we’ll separate each included feature by update.
Sacrificial includes modifications for your characters that will make them act in ways that may be upsetting. If you want to try this mod out, it’s recommended you use new Sims.
There’s a big possibility that your Sims could die, become seriously injured, lose money, stay in an awful mood, or break up long-lasting relationships or marriages.
When you install the mod successfully, a new pie menu will appear named “Life Tragedies” when you click on your sims. Once you click the Life Tragedies option, you can choose to turn the mod on or off.
The mod is off by default. We’ll expand on initiating the Life Tragedies mod in the “How to Activate the Mod: Turn Life Tragedies On” section.
Life Tragedies -MOD- V 1.0 BETA
The first version of the Life Tragedies mod came with the following features:
Kidnapping
Sims can be kidnapped by a gang and will request another Sim to deliver a sum of money to them to spare their life. Your Sim will receive messages from the kidnapper to threaten and bride them.
Sims can call the police or agree to meet the kidnapper. Once they meet, your Sim can reject the kidnapper’s offer (Sim dies) or accept (Sim lives).
Fatal Illness
Sims have a chance to develop a fatal illness, which requires a risky surgery with a 20% success rate. Sims with a fatal illness will gain another bar, which indicates how much life they have left. Ignoring the illness will kill them. The Sim can try the risky surgery multiple times, but this surgery could also kill them.
Note: If you have the GetToWork expansion pack, your Sims will travel to the hospital to get the surgery. If not, your Sims will go through a rabbit hole portal and come back with the good or bad news.
Armed Robberies
Burglars will break into your home or other locations you’re currently in (like the hospital) and steal your furniture and money. The burglar could shoot the members of your household, including children. Sims can call the police or beat them up to make them stop.
Sims can also become burglars. When they do, they’ll receive different actions, like “Threaten,” where a Sim points a gun at another Sims, or “Shoot,” where a Sim will shoot another Sim.
Note: Your Sim cannot shoot their own children.
Bullying
All Sims in the game have a chance of being targeted by a bully. These bullies will make fun of you, intimidate you, and beat you up. They can also break into your home, but you can also beat them up to kick them out. You Sim can do the same to other Sims.
Car Accidents
Your Sims may get run over by a vehicle and become seriously injured or die.
Additional Information
Life Tragedies can happen to any Sim in the game, including NPCs. You can turn off tragedies at any time the same way you turned it on, or you could turn it off for individual Sims.
Sims have the option to talk about a recent tragedy.
The player can set the speed in which tragedies occur:
Off>Very Slow>Slow>Normal>Fast>Very Fast
Note: Playing on Very Fast makes tragedies occur very frequently. Every in-game hour, a tragedy will occur.
Life Tragedies -MOD- V 1.1 BETA
The second version of the Life Tragedies mod came with the following features:
Serial Killers
5 serial killers were included in this update:
- “The Killer Nanny: Zanny Antowan
- “The University Professor” Matthew Briggs
- “The Son of Flames” Willard Kline
- “The Disliked Bookworm” Patrick Rodgers
- “The Seductive Lover” Sapphire Hudson
Serial Killers Activation and Traits
Serial Killers won’t show up unless you turn the autonomous tragedy occurrence option on.
Unless you call a Serial Killer to your area by entering the Life Tragedies pie menu, the chance of them coming to your area is 1%. Sims can call them over at their home, as well.
Serial Killers have their own dialogue and your Sims can respond positively or negatively. If you become friends with the Serial Killer, they won’t kill you, but if you make them angry, they will. Ignoring the Serial Killer will keep your Sim safe.
Sims can call the cops on the Serial Killer to get them arrested, even if they haven’t done anything.
Serial Killer: No Mercy Mode
Players can turn on No Mercy mode in the Life Tragedies pie menu. The Serial Killer in your town will kill any Sim they come across for 240 in-game minutes.
Player Controlled Murders
Your Sims can murder other Sims from the Life Tragedies pie menu. Your Sims doesn’t have to be an armed robber to do this.
Sims can kill other Sims in the following ways:
- Fatally stabbing a Sim with a pen
- Fatally stabbing a Sim with a knife
- Gunning down Sims on a bike
- Setting other Sims on fire
- By suffocating Sims with a diaper
- By giving poisoned apples to children and adults
If your Sim was witnessed murdering another Sim by a cop, they’ll be arrested on the spot.
Blood can appear on your Sims clothing after a murder. You can clean yourself off in the shower by choosing the “Clean Blood Off” interaction.
Killers Papers and Posters
You can purchase optional items from the Life Tragedies pie menu called Serial Killer Posters/Papers.
Purchasing the Wanted Posters and Papers will allow your Sim to read the Serial Killers backstory.
Blazing Hot Fame Thrower is needed for the Blaze the Area interaction with Willard Kline. Sapphire’s Cigarette is needed for the Smoke Cigarette interaction with Sapphire Hudson.
Additional Information
Players can disable certain tragedies from occurring from the Options menu within Life Tragedies.
Life Tragedies -MOD- V 1.2 BETA
The third version of the Life Tragedies mod came with the following features:
Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th is added as another Serial Killer in the game. He has his own unique actions. Voorhees could sneak up behind the player to kill them or perform the following executions:
- Lifting you up and stabbing your Sins stomach with a machete
- Throwing your Sim to the ground and stabbing them
- Grabbing your Sims head and smashing it on the ground
- Stabbing your Sims stomach with a machete while standing
- Stabbing your Sims stomach from behind with a knife
- Strangling your Sim from behind
- Shooting your Sim in the head from behind
Player Controlled Kidnapping
Your Sim can kidnap other teen or adult Sims by clicking on your Sim and select Life Tragedies, then “Kidnap Sim to Cave.” A menu will pop up showing the people in your area you can kidnap. Click on the portrait of your victim, and both parties will warp to the Forgotten Grotto Cave.
The kidnapped victim will be added to your household if you have open space in your family unit.
When both Sims arrive at the cave, they can interact with each other. The kidnapper can do the following:
- Torment Victim: Kidnapped Sim will get abused by the kidnapper by slapping them, breaking a glass bottle over their heads, burning them with cigarettes, or cutting off their arm (the animation isn’t graphic).
- Drug Kidnapped Sim: Kidnapper can inject the other Sim with a drug, causing them to pass out.
- Brain Wash Victim: The kidnapped Sim will have a Kidnapped moodlet for 16 in-game hours, which will limit their actions and interactions. By brainwashing the victim, this restriction will be lifted after 2 in-game hours instead.
- Ask Victim’s Family for Ransom: The kidnapper will call the victim’s family to demand §5000, which the family will always transfer to you (in my experience). Once they do this, the kidnapper will tell the family the location of their loved one, give your Sim a §25000 and check on the kidnap victim. The victim’s family members may shoot the kidnapper and give them a fatal injury, which requires surgery. Everyone goes home after the interaction.
Sacrificial continues to update their mod, but the mod hasn’t had a significant update since October, 2020.
How to Activate the Mod: Turn Life Tragedies On
Note: I have Beta Version 1.00, as the other versions wouldn’t work on my computer, so the images may look different from what you see in your version. However, the information on this blog post is up-to-date as of Beta Version 1.02.
After you’ve successfully installed the mod into your Sims 4 game, you need to actually initiate the mod to start experiencing some tragedy. When in the game, click on your sim to open up the pie menus. There, you will see “Life Tragedies…” Click that pie menu to open up the other option, which will be “Tragedies…”
You may get confused at this part because you likely expected the mod to work from the beginning. However, the Life Tragedies mod stays off by default.
I’ve seen many people online say that the mod didn’t work for them when they turned on the game, but the creator, Sacrificial, kept the mod off on purpose to prevent a tragedy from happening before the player could prevent them. They also wanted to make sure that another Sims game or characters could opt out of this experience.
Before we continue on with the Life Tragedies mod, click on “Tragedies…”
Life Tragedies still isn’t activated, but it’s important that you see the options you can choose. From the “Tragedies…” menu, you can make bad things happen to your Sim instead of waiting.
Choose to have you Sims kidnaped, fall fatally ill, get into a car accident, get bullied, or become a victim of an armed robbery. You can’t select these options with the mod off.
To continue with activating the mod, go back to the screen in the image above and select “Enable Life Tragedies In This Save File.”
When you select that option, a text box will come up on the screen that reads, “Automatic tragic events will now occur to Sim in this save file, you can change the tragedy occurrence speed or turn it off from the mod’s options.” This pop-up option confirms that you turned on the mod correctly.
Now, you can take a look at the other options on the Life Tragedies menu. In the options, you can Enable/Disable Automatic Tragedy Occurrence Options (the enabled one is blurred out because it’s already initiated for my Sim,” disable sims reactions to occurrences (they won’t receive debuffs), and you can give any Sim of your choice a bullet wound, or a fatal illness.
You can also turn any Sim into an armed robber, which gives them the option to kill other Sims.
The “Debug…” option lets you mess with the settings. If you received a bullet wound, but you can’t get to the hospital, or you don’t want your Sims to die, you can remove their wounds instantly.
Note: In the Options menu, you can also call a Serial Killer over.
In the Options menu, you can change the Tragedy Occurrence Speed. I turned it all the way up to Very Fast to see what would happen.
Playing With the Mod: My Experience
My experience was just as expected: completely tragic. As soon as I turned on the mod and my Sim got out of the water, I was approached by another Sim who started bullying my Sim by calling her names. After 3 minutes of her throwing insults at my Sim, she started to beat her up.
It wasn’t pleasant, but then I noticed that my Sims character kept laying on the floor and wouldn’t get up. I was worried she was dead. However, my Sim wasn’t dead. She was just taking a bit of a nap after getting the lights beaten out of her.
By the way, I didn’t initiate this conversation. This Sim, who my Sim has never met before, came up to my Sim and beat her up for no reason. On Very Fast, tragedies occur almost every in-game hour.
When I looked at my Sims body, I was pretty impressed with the amount of detail present on her body. You can see the cuts and bruises around her eyes, stomach, and legs. Even the caricature in the corner had noticeable wounds. My Sim looked like she had been in a boxing match, but apparently she is still very inspired.
When my Sims got up, she was affected by debuffs I’ve never seen before, including Healing Wounds and Bullied. For Healing Wounds, the character is hurt for 8 hours, but they still get a “fine” +1 stat.
For Bullied, my Sims gets a debuff of Sad +10 which lasts for 4 hours. These negative moodlets never seemed to go away for my character as the tragedies kept coming.
When the sun went down, one of my other characters got shot by another Sims. You can see the big bullet wound on the side of their body. My Sim was noticeably upset, but I guess I would be too if I was just shot.
I looked through the Life Tragedies menu to see if there was something I could do. A new option, “Fatal Wound,” appeared, so I clicked on it to see if I could cure this.
Fatally Injured Sims can go to the Hospital. My Sim had just been shot, so they had a higher chance of being saved. When I tried to click on the option, it didn’t work. So I went into the debug menu and removed the bullet hole myself. While in the menu, I decided to make my Sim an armed robber.
When I turned my Sim into a robber, he got beaten up a few times before pulling a gun on some cops. It got chaotic very quickly, and no one would arrest him because he killed anyone who could.
My Sim basically committed 10 murders and got away with it, and because the other Sims in the family didn’t see him do this, they weren’t angry at him. That was until he started holding them up at gunpoint and threatening them, which tanked most of my Sims relationships.
My male Sim received a call to go to the country club, and since my two Sims were in a “sleeping in the other room” stage of the relationship, I let him go to this location. He immediately started holding people up at gunpoint. After a day, I was already tired of him, so I initiated a kidnapping.
My Sim was kidnapped by some woman in a pickup truck while he was taking a nap. I noticed that armed robbers don’t sleep well, which is likely a consequence of all the murders resting on his conscience. After he got kidnapped, my other Sim was able to make a phone call to the kidnapper.
When I chose “Report Kidnapping To Police,” the police hung up on me because I’m supposed to wait by the phone for further instructions. So I waited.
After about an hour, I got this pop-up:
I accepted the ransom, and they demanded more money from my Sim. The kidnappers hung up the phone, but when they finished the conversation with the kidnappers, I saw the ghostly figure of my kidnapped Sim. I naturally thought he was dead, but he was eating my food. I’m not sure if this is a glitch, but it was pretty funny to see.
When my Sim called the kidnapper back, I got this pop-up:
My Sim went to go get my other Sim at The Forgotten Grotto. The kidnapper continued to threaten me while I was checking on the kidnapped victim.
Instead of giving her the money right away, I beat up the kidnapper twice.
When the kidnapper got up, my Sim paid the kidnapper, then she shot my Sim and gave her a fatal wound. Still, I rescued my Sim and received this message:
In 2 days, my Sims were beaten up, held for ransom, shot, shot other people, became fatally wounded, and almost died twice. Life happens fast with the Life Tragedies mod.
Support the Creator: Sacrificial’s Other Mods
Please support Sacrificial’s other mods on her website. They’re incredible at programing and creating interesting mods.
Try these other mods by the same creator as the Life Tragedies Mod:
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Question: How do you turn on Life Tragedies in Sims 4?
Answer: Life Tragedies doesn’t initiate by itself. To start the mod, click on your character to open up the pie menu. Next, click on the Life Tragedies pie menu, and you’ll see an option that says “Enable Life Tragedies In This Save File.” Select it, and you’ll see a pop-up with this message:
“Automatic tragic events will now occur to Sim in this save file; you can change the tragedy occurrence speed or turn it off from the mod’s options.” If you didn’t initiate the mod correctly, this pop-up won’t appear. If you didn’t see the Life Tragedies pie menu, to begin with, you didn’t put the mod in your Mod folder correctly.
Question: Do kidnapped Sims in Life Tragedies come back in Sims 4?
Answer: Yes, kidnapped Sims in Life Tragedies come back if you call the kidnapper by opening up the Life Tragedies pie menu and initiating that conversation.
The kidnapper will demand money from you; if you accept, they’ll demand more when you reach the location. When you arrive at the kidnappers’ location, you can save the kidnapped Sim by paying the bribe.
Question: Are the animations in Life Tragedies graphic in Sims 4?
Answer: Yes and no. While the mod isn’t intended for children, you won’t see anything that would be considered macabre. In the version 1.02 update, player-controlled kidnappers have the option to cut off the arm of a Sim, but it’s very cartoonish.
It’s recommended that people who are easily disturbed, squeamish around blood, or are triggered by abuse avoid this mod.
Question: Are toddlers, children, and teens affected by the Life Tragedies mod in Sims 4?
Answer: Yes, toddlers, children, and teens are affected by most of the tragedies in this mod. In Life Tragedies, no one is safe unless you make them immune to the mod by going into the options and selecting “Disable Automatic Tragedy Occurrences for This Sim.”
However, you can’t mass disable tragedies for non-adults, so you may still witness a crime affecting a toddler, child, or teen.
Conclusion: Life Tragedies Mod Sims 4
The Life Tragedies mod is one of the most unique add-ons to Sims 4 I’ve seen. There are a few mods that make the gameplay in Sims 4 more realistic, but it was shocking and exciting to see one that made awful things happen to your Sims.
Players can even be murderers or kidnappers themselves, which is equally frightening yet incredible at the same time.
A word of advice: The Life Tragedies mod is programming genius at its best from the sheer amount of included features and actions, but we can understand why it isn’t your cup of tea.
Some Sims 4 players may find this mod disturbing or unnecessary as people use this game for escapism. However, if you put the tragedies occurrence to very low, the mod stops being a murder-fest. At very low, the Sims 4 becomes more realistic, as bad things can happen at any time.
Have fun kidnapping, burglarizing, and holding up Sims with this new mod!
Other Great Sims 4 Gameplay Mods?