Help, I ruined the Witch Doctor!

[artieanole]

So a wonderful bug that with Freetime, you know, the one where NPC's come hanging out at your Sims house in the middle of the night.  I decided that it might be fun to have a witch doctor live in the back yard, so I used the addneighbortofamily cheat to add him.
Now I can't get rid of him, and his character file is altered so that whenever I go to the mysterious hut on Twikkii Island he constantly attempts to repair his appliances and won't stop.

Is there a way to reset his character file or something to get him back to normal?  Or do I have to nuke my game and start over?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Sivany]

You could try deleting his character file since that should force the game to generate a new witch doctor when you next go to his secret lot and hopefully the new one won't be corrupted.

Follow the deleted 2 tutorial in the war room section of this site in order to get rid of him. You'll need SimPE and the lot debugger but it's fairly simple to follow.

[artieanole]

Where can I get SimPE and the lot debugger?

[Annan]

Have you heard of this nifty little thing called "Google"? You just kind of type what you're looking for in the box and it finds things for you! It's like magic, I swear.

[Sivany]

Annan is right about google, but since I'm feeling generous: the lot debugger is available on this site, do a site search and you will find it.

That said if you haven't used either of these before you may find deleting the character file quite tricky. You could give it a go though since there's no harm trying providing you BACKUP first!

[jolrei]

To delete a character, search here for "Deleted 2 Electric Boogaloo" - there is a tutorial on how to safely delete characters.

If you can't follow it, it may be safer just to kill the borked witch doctor by satellite or something and let the game generate a new one.

Rule of thumb:  Don't mess with the special NPCs.  If the game does not naturally allow your sims to move them in or marry them in, they probably should not be cheated in.  20-20 hindsight FTW, I know.

[artieanole]

Yep yep, no kidding... but that stupid bug having random NPC's wander by at all hours of the night was so tempting.

After flexing my brain a bit I've managed to figure most of this out.

This group certainly operates using "tough love" eh?  (Not that that is a bad thing.)

Thanks for the help.

[Zazazu]

Ya think?

Get, I believe, nohobbyspam, as well as antiredundency if you don't already have them. Both can be found in the Freetime folder.  That should cut down on your NPC visits.

[Sivany]

If you can't follow it, it may be safer just to kill the borked witch doctor by satellite or something and let the game generate a new one.

I just didn't think of that. My brain obviously likes to make things as complicated as possible!

This group certainly operates using "tough love" eh?  (Not that that is a bad thing.)

Yep definitely. And by responding in good humour you appear to have passed the hurdle most people fall at (by complaining of rudeness/immediately making excuses for themselves).
I've never had any NPCs wandering past my house at any time of day or night, but I have both those hacks Zazazu mentioned so I recommend getting them. Best to put those NPCs out of temptations way!

[Kyna]

The sims knocking at your door at all hours of the day & night are probably the result of a backfired beauty or friends wish on the lamp, and is apparently normal game behaviour.  The only buggy part of it is that NPCs you shouldn't interact with (such as the witchdoctor, when he's outside of his own lot) shouldn't be doing it.

[jolrei]

The sims knocking at your door at all hours of the day & night are probably the result of a backfired beauty or friends wish on the lamp, and is apparently normal game behaviour.  The only buggy part of it is that NPCs you shouldn't interact with (such as the witchdoctor, when he's outside of his own lot) shouldn't be doing it.

Yes, the wandering witch doctor thing may be a sign of other borkage.  Time will doubtless tell.

As to visiting townies at all times of day or night, I have never done a beauty or friends wish in any of my households, and have also had nocturnal visitors (2am) on a couple of lots where there has never been a lamp.  My working hypothesis is that this is just normal weirdness.

[Sivany]

Isn't one of the romance sims aspiration benefits supposed to have the same effect? I think it's the fourth one in the chain, the one where the sims reputation has supposedly spread through the neighbourhood making members of their prefered sex more likely to drop by.

[Jelenedra]

I don't think it's functions the exact same way, I think it just makes all the walk-bys a certain sex. There do seem to be more of them though. They don't go knocking on doors though.

[J. M. Pescado]

I've seen some peculiar walkby behaviors, that run as far back as at least Seasons. Spilt Pee Soup would show up at The Butt's house, ring the doorbell, pee on the doorstep, and run away.

[artieanole]

Just for everybody's edification, I did kill off the Witch Doctor but whenever I would return to the hut it would resurrect him in the state that he died, and then he would proceed to work on the appliances and getting electrocuted over and over and over again.

I successfully deleted him using SimPE which restored the Witch Doctor back to normal.

An interesting artifact about the Witch Doctor is that he would get a new voodoo doll in his inventory every time a lot was loaded.  I ended up with about fifteen of them before all was said and done, and now they reside with the sim the witch doctor was living with.