More Awesome Than You!

I've just come back from a long break from sims 3...and I'm reading about the recent patch that came out. I only have the base game installed, and I'm hearing that the 1.8 has problems. Apparently it disables your custom content from working. I'm a huge CC junkie, so I can't live without it.

Can someone clarify this for me?
Also, can anyone enlighten me to which patch is safe to download? As in up to what version. I would very much appreciate it, thank you.

Thanks for the reply.
I'm sure I'll do the first thing you suggested, but if I use Delphy's installer, do you think I can skip the steps in the link?

It's possible to use Delphy's installer, but it's not ideal. Having too many .package files will slow down the game tremendously. There are some other alternatives, like manually merging .packages with S3PE or downloading witch's .dbc torrent (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17707.0.html). However, I think the method described in that thread will be easier in the long term because it gives you full control over what you're doing and takes less time than merging .packages with S3PE.

Trust me on the "too many .package files will slow down the game tremendously," too. I used the Delphy method on the December Store Update, and my fps went down to 20 from its framelimited 30. When I used the method described in that thread, I was back up to 30 fps.

Do you really NEED the latest patch?  If not, I'd do without for now.

I only installed the patch because I like Awesomemod and Pescado's not making a 1.7/2.2 version anymore.  For some reason, my computer with AM works just fine, no new problems, but it didn't buy me anything either (except the ability to use the newest AM).  It's NOT faster, better, bugfixed, or more stable.

On the other hand, I patched my wife's computer up to 1.8/2.3 just like mine.  She plays with NO hacks or mods except Delphy's breastsliders.  Her game became unstable, specific CC hair randomly disappeared, CTD more often, and eventually she couldn't save a game at all because she was getting E12/E13 errors even on the first save after launching the game.  As far as we could tell, she gained nothing feature-wise.  I ended up rolling back her machine to 1.7/2.2 (thanks to System Restore) and all is well again.

Weird.  Maybe AM is just that awesome and she wouldn't have had problems if only she used it.  ;D

This patch is dreadful... I'd say avoid it, but Pescado's no longer supporting the unpatched AM, and frankly, though this patch did a coiled-up steamer all over my game, it pales in comparison to how annoying it is to play sans-AM. The new patch definitely does have problems. My main issue was slowdown of biblical proportions. ... I'd switch camera view to the park, and, no joke, it'd take a good 15 minutes for it to finish rendering the thing.

Not to mention what a hassle it is to have to deal with all of these workarounds just to get custom contest (Some of which I actually freakin paid money for!) to work in the game. I mean even the stuff I PAID EAXIS for no longer shows up! How dumb is that?

Just grin and bare it. It's inevitable that you'll have to patch eventually, for EP reasons or some other, and Pescado is only going to continue making patches for the latest versions, no matter what new bullshit EA concocts for each update. (Like in this one, you seemingly can't use bike racks/parking spaces anymore because of some "vehicle can't intersect" crap). You might as well just go gung-ho and update as soon as there's a new patch, or wait until AM is fixed to work with it, and for better or worse, it's what the majority of us are going to do no matter how much we try to put it off. The good news is at least that we're all in the same pile of crap together, which makes it all the faster to find solutions to problems and dig ourselves out.

I tried putting that line the the resource.cfg and it didn't work. My CC still isn't showing up. I'm running Vista and I read that you can restore an older Bin folder from shadow backups or something from right clicking on the file and restoring, but I don't get that option when I click.

Try having a read of the threads here (http://sublimesims.net/smf/index.php?board=38.0), there is a specific one for patching, installing .sims3pack issues and a really good simple framework guide.

Use of the manual DBC method is STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED at this point. Decrapify instead.

ooh why is the dbc method not recommended? will it wreck the game?