Skill Book Usage
Also requires the Horse Ranch pack, which did not show up when selecting requirements.
This mod requires XML Injector.
Skills are complicated business, requiring hours upon hours of activities and work for Sims to increase them and eventually max them. Except when it isn’t, because Skill Books exist, and there is suddenly a multitude of Sims becoming master chefs without having touched a stove once in their lives. Or becoming world-record athletes while sitting on a couch reading Fitness Skill books.
This mod makes it so that Skill Books are a bit harder to access. The seemingly magical capacity of Skill Books to grant any Skill?—even those a Sim should not feasibly be able to gain from reading alone?—is now locked behind a Reward Trait. On the Aspirations Reward Store, you will now find a self-descriptive trait called “Skill Book Usage”, costing 5,000 Satisfaction Points, which will unlock the usage of said books. If you want to be able to gain Skills through the considerable ease of using Skill Books, it will be a costly path, so whether a Sim gains a Skill naturally or obtains the trait to use Skill Books will be a meaningful decision.
This block cannot be circumvented. Skill Books can still be picked up by autonomy or indirect manners of having a Sim choose a book to read, but reading the book this way will not beget Skill gains.
Manuals written by Sims are not affected by this, which might encourage Sims writing Manuals in order to pass on their Skill knowledge. Vampire Lore is spared from the block on account of not quite fitting the Skill Book formula.
This mod also changes the Tuning of Nifty Knitting Skill Books, because for unknown reasons they simply do not work. With this mod in, once a Sim has unlocked access to Skill Books, the Knitting Skill Books should work as intended.
Advanced Skill Books being “too easy” for Sims who have 9+ on the Skill is a normal attribute of Skill Books, unrelated to this mod.
Compatibility: This mod contains tuning that affects the Base Game, Discover University, Eco Lifestyle, Get Famous, Get to Work, Horse Ranch, Jungle Adventure, Nifty Knitting, Outdoor Retreat, Parenthood, Seasons, Snowy Escape, and Spa Day.
However, you do not need to own every single pack to use this. The mod is separated into multiple .package files for this very reason. If you do not own a pack, simply delete the SkillBookUsage .package for that pack. Do not keep .packages for packs you do not own, it can trigger an error if you do so. The only .package you cannot delete is the _BaseGame .package, as that one contains the main tuning and Strings for the mod to work.
This mod overrides the _Beginner, _Intermediate, and _Advanced Tunings for every Skill Book in the game and will not be compatible with any other mods that do the same.
