The best Sims 4 expansion packs and DLC are the ones that open up new avenues for creativity and give your Sims a richer daily life. Sure, The Sims 4 is a free to play game, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting more–more experiences, more adventures, and more items. The iconic life simulator has over 100 bits of add-on DLC available from kits of household clutter to adding werewolves and vampires into the base game.
The Sims 4 has four main types of DLC: Expansion Packs, Game Packs, Stuff Packs, and Kits. These vary in size, with Expansion Packs being the largest, and kits being the smallest.
With an Expansion Pack you can expect major new features including careers, Traits, Skills, Sim types, and locations – usually fundamentally impacting the base game in some significant way. Game Packs are slightly smaller in scope, offering a themed add-on, often consisting of one of the above features. Stuff Packs add items, decor, and clothing–usually with some pieces that impact gameplay or can be interacted with. Kits are mini collections of items that are often just static decor, adding a bit of spice to the way you dress your Sim or decorate their house.
Get To Work
- Type: Expansion Pack
- Release date: March 31, 2015
- Main selling point: Get a real job
Get To Work is a great Sims 4 Expansion Pack if you like to maximize your roleplay, specifically. Instead of sending your Sim off to work and twiddling your thumbs for a few hours, this pack lets you go to work with them, controlling their actions and making sure they’re promotion-worthy (or at least that they don’t lose their job). The pack introduces three new careers that allow for this human-Sim teamwork: Doctor, Detective, and Scientist.
You can also elect to create your own business–clothing store, bakery, cafe, bookshop, art gallery, etc–with the retail feature. The pack adds a load of Build Mode items and gadgets to help you run a successful enterprise, as well as new Skills to help your Sim create their own products through Baking and Photography.
City Living
- Type: Expansion Pack
- Release date: November 1, 2016
- Main selling point: A new metropolitan life filled with festivals and the joys of paying rent
City Living takes your Sims out of the suburbs and plants them firmly into big city life. Instead of white picket fences and tree-lined avenues, San Myshuno is all about lofty apartment buildings, high-flying careers, and rich cultural festivals. The neighbourhood itself is a more densely-populated area than Sims may have been used to so far, with multiple tenants living in the same apartment block. It’s a great way to make neighbourly friends and learn new things… or create enemies for life.
The pack adds several new careers that fit the theme, from Politician to Art or Food Critic. There is also a new line of work in pursuing Social Media influencing, being seen at all the hottest spots in town and keeping your followers updated every time you change your clothes. Festivals add a bit of spice to your Sim’s daily routine, offering varied activities around their interests, such as the Humor and Hijinks Festival, the Romance Festival, or Geekcon. City Living also introduces Food Stalls, which are both a great place to eat and a terrible place to work.
Cottage Living
- Type: Expansion Pack
- Release date: July 22, 2021
- Main selling point: Cute and cuddly animals, jam, and handicrafts
In contrast to City Living, if The Sims 4 base game was a little too much like modern life, perhaps Cottage Living will be more your speed. This adorable, whimsical pack brings the cottagecore aesthetic to the game, so expect lots of natural colours, frills, and foraging supplies.
Henford-on-Bagley is the new world introduced in Cottage Living, a quiet town where many residents have elected to go off-the-grid and grow their own produce. Build Mode features plenty of thatched roofs and cobbled streets, while new animals (and their living quarters) are introduced for your Sim to care for, gather resources from, and befriend. Llamas, cows, and chickens are all available to adopt, while foxes, rabbits and birds roam wild.
Growing veg is also a lot of fun, and if you manage to grow a beautiful specimen you can even enter it into village competitions or turn it into delicious preserves. It’s a super cozy pack for when you just wish the world was a little nicer.
Vampires
- Type: Game Pack
- Release date: January 24, 2017
- Main selling point: Rule the night and create occult drama
If spooky vibes are your thing, Vampires is the Sims 4 game pack for you. Vampire Sims can be chosen in Create-a-Sim, or turned during gameplay by seeking out one of Forgotten Hollow’s ancient fang-toothed families. Invite a vampire to drink your blood, and you’ll soon be cringing at the sun and avoiding garlic.
Vampires no longer need human sustenance–there’s no more bladder meter, and energy is replaced with Vampiric Energy. Hunger is replaced with Thirst, an indicator that your Sim needs to find a juicy neck, fast. New skills introduced in the pack are Vampire Lore, where your Sim can research the eternal evil lurking in the town, and Pipe Organ, which is a proficiency on the world’s spookiest instrument.
The pack also adds new Aspirations, clothes, and Build Mode objects which create a much darker vibe than the base game.
Realm of Magic
- Type: Game Pack
- Release date: September 10, 2019
- Main selling point: Bring some witchy energy to The Sims 4
This Game Pack compliments the other supernatural Sims DLC, but with more of a focus on magic than malevolence. The new world of Glimmerbrook (and the fantasy neighbourhood of The Magic Realm) is a place where your Sim can buy magical paraphernalia like wands, brooms, and instructional tomes. Spellcasters are a new type of Sim, a life state with access to a world of magical powers at their fingertips.
Spellcaster Sims can also pick familiars, animal companions who help them achieve whatever witching needs done that day. Plenty of Build Mode and Create-a-Sim items are added, meaning you can goth up the place to your heart’s desire.
Dream Home Decorator
- Type: Game Pack
- Release date: June 1, 2021
- Main selling point: Modular furniture and becoming a hater
Dream Home Decorator is not without its issues as a pack, but what it lacks in gameplay it more than makes up for in new features and customisable furniture. If you’re more of a builder than a roleplayer, this pack will make it possible to craft the house of your dreams.
While the pack’s Interior Designer career is a little dry, the addition of modular furniture means Build Mode is more flexible than ever. You can finally create that 400ft sofa, or the weird and wiggly chaise that curves around each corner. Modular shelving units and furniture that all match a toned-down pastel colour scheme are also welcome additions, as is the new Like and Dislike feature that lets you decide your Sim’s personal preferences and maintain a consistent personality.
Strangerville
- Type: Game Pack
- Release date: February 26, 2019
- Main selling point: One of the most interesting stories the Sims 4 has to offer
The Sims 4: Strangerville is one of very few modern Sims expansions to follow a linear storyline. It’s a perfect pack for people looking for more structured play, or just fans of conspiracy theories and creepy tales of the unknown…
The pack has a distinctly desert theme, think Area 51 vibes, adding trailers, hippies, and old airforce surplus to Build Mode and Create-a-Sim. The Military career gives you special clearance to explore some of the twisted goings on in Strangerville’s Secret Lab, where you try to prevent the other residents from becoming ‘possessed’ (a new emotion that sends your Sims loopy). Although the new Trait, Squeamish, might prevent you from doing much to stop it.
Paranormal Stuff
- Type: Stuff Pack
- Release date: January 26, 2021
- Main selling point: The return of beloved NPC Bonehilda
Another slightly creepy kit, Paranormal Stuff adds exactly what you’d think: a load of unnerving and unknown content to the game. The much loved and missed NPC from previous games, Bonehilda returns to sweep up after you–or even become friends–and new Skill, Medium, means you can hold seances and commune with those beyond the veil.
There’s also some really nice furniture in this pack if you like your dark woods, rich fabrics, and whimsical wallpaper patterns, as well as interactive objects like crystal balls and seance tables. New lot type, Haunted House means you’ll be getting a few more visitors than a regular abode, while tiny little Specters can be befriended, appeased, or enraged. You might want to avoid the latter if you value your peace.
Nifty Knitting
- Type: Stuff Pack
- Release date: July 28, 2020
- Main selling point: Get crafty
Knitting is a hobby that transcends age groups, a traditional pursuit for older folk, and a non-phone-related activity to keep the hands of younger people busy while they watch TV. Nifty Knitting adds the Knitting skill to The Sims 4, as well as an Etsy-like selling platform where Sims can buy and sell homemade goods. Sims can knit clothes, plant hangers, rugs, toys, and more–and can even pass the skill on to others.
If you’re trying to make a cozy crafty house, the pack also adds rocking chairs and the ability for Elder Sims to ‘reminisce’. Nifty Knitting’s most unusual quirk is that aside from adding a ‘focus’ radio station, it also added one for metal.
Discover University
- Type: Expansion Pack
- Release date: November 15, 2019
- Main selling point: Relive the hazy days of higher education without the price tag
The Discover University pack is great for people who like to micromanage their Sim’s development, as it introduces the full experience of university, including moving away from your family and learning to look after yourself. Right from when Sims enter their teens, they’ll need to start paying attention to those grades if they want to have their pick of courses.
The pack introduces two rival universities, Britechester and Foxbury, each with their own mascot and history. You can move your Sim into student accommodation, join clubs, and study–or just party all night. The better their grades, though, the better they’ll perform in their adult careers after graduation, so a focused university experience could set them up for life.
The Robotics Skill will also be of interest to some, with the ability to build and automate Servos, a new life state. After graduation, you can go on to become an Engineer, or pick one of the other new career paths: Education, Law, E-Sports Competitor, or Soccer Team Player.
