🌿 Hobby Life — Clubs, Classes & Friendships

Give your Sims more to do, more to learn, and more reasons to connect!

Hobby Life introduces a complete hobby and extracurricular class system to The Sims 4. Enroll your Sims in classes, customize their schedules, develop skills, meet fellow students, and let the world around them discover new interests.

With 62 built-in hobby clubs covering 61 EA skills, Hobby Life adds new opportunities to everyday gameplay. 21 clubs are available with the base game, while the remaining clubs unlock automatically when you have the corresponding packs.

✨ Features

• 🎨 62 built-in hobby clubs across six categories.

• 📅 Customizable schedules with automatic attendance.

• 🏫 In-person rabbit-hole classes and 💻 online learning.

• 📈 Adjustable skill progression speed.

• 💰 Free or paid classes with customizable fees.

• 💬 New friendships, hobby conversations, and invitations.

• ❤️ Shared-club relationship connections and moodlets.

• 🏘️ Autonomous NPC enrollment and world management.

• 🧩 Automatic discovery of compatible custom skills.

• 🌍 Optional integration with Home Regions.

📱 Getting Started

Open Phone → Social → Hobbies & Interests, or select Hobbies & Interests on a computer.

Choose Enroll in a Class, select a category and hobby, then customize the schedule, attendance format, and payment option.

Your Sims will automatically attend their scheduled classes. You can also view their weekly schedule, change class settings, skip the next session, or withdraw from a club.

All classes are organized into six categories: Sports & Wellness, Arts & Creativity, Intelligence & Education, Cooking, Nature & Crafts, and Social & Self-Improvement.

🏫 In-Person & Online Classes

In-person classes take place as rabbit-hole activities. Sims leave for their scheduled class and return when it ends. No custom venues or lots are required.

Online classes allow Sims to learn from home using an available computer. At the scheduled time, your Sim will find a computer, sit down, and begin learning.

There are 11 built-in clubs with online learning support, including programming, writing, chess, debate, and other suitable hobbies.

Automatic attendance is enabled by default. Sims receive a reminder 60 in-game minutes before class. A class is considered missed after 30 minutes of lateness, and at least 75% attendance is required for completion.

⚙️ Customization & Settings

Click a mailbox → Hobby Life Settings to configure the mod.

💰 Class Fees: Choose between §0, §50, §100, §200, §300, or §500 per paid session. The default is §200. Individual enrollments can be free or paid.

📈 Skill Progression: Choose fast, normal, slow, very slow, extremely slow, or custom progression (2–200%). Automatic mode adjusts to your game's lifespan settings.

📅 Calendar Integration: Display your household's hobby classes in the in-game calendar.

💬 Social Encounters: Allow Sims to meet other participants during classes.

❤️ Social Features: Customize hobby-related moodlets, invitations, shared-club connections, and relationship bonuses.

🔔 Notifications & Attendance: Manage reminders, automatic attendance, and retry behavior.

🏘️ World Autonomy: Control how often NPCs independently enroll in classes, leave clubs, and choose new interests.

Important: Calendar integration and social encounters are disabled by default. Enable them through the mailbox settings if you want to use these features!

👥 Friendships & Social Interactions

Hobby Life adds hobby-related social interactions. Sims can discuss their interests, talk about recent classes, share experiences, invite others to enroll, and suggest attending classes together.

Sims who attend the same hobby club may develop a shared-club relationship connection, which can later change to a former-member connection.

Social encounters, invitations, relationship bonuses, and emotional events can be customized independently.

🏘️ A World Full of Hobbies

NPCs can discover and join hobby clubs autonomously, making your world feel more alive.

Choose between disabled, cautious, or active world autonomy. Adjust enrollment probability, limit how many clubs NPCs can join, and decide whether they can leave their classes.

You can also manually assign hobbies to individual NPCs, selected households, random groups, or Sims without existing hobbies.

By default, the active household is excluded from autonomous enrollment, and manually assigned classes are protected from autonomous withdrawal.

🌍 Home Regions Compatibility

Hobby Life includes optional compatibility with Home Regions by Kuttoe.

🏫 In-person classes respect regional restrictions when determining which Sims can attend the same class together and meet each other.

💻 Online classes are not restricted by region. Sims from different worlds can participate in the same online course and meet one another.

The integration works automatically when a compatible version of Home Regions is installed. Home Regions is not required to use Hobby Life.

🧩 Custom Skill Support

Hobby Life can automatically detect compatible custom skills from other mods and create additional hobby clubs for them.

Custom clubs are separate from the 62 built-in clubs. You can also change their categories through the mailbox settings.

Compatibility depends on how each third-party skill is implemented.

📦 Requirements & Installation

Base Game Compatible: Hobby Life does not require any specific expansion, game pack, or stuff pack. The base game provides 21 built-in clubs, with more available when corresponding packs are installed.

Required libraries:

• Lot51 Core Library

• XML Injector

Installation:

1. Download and extract the Hobby Life archive.

2. Place the HobbyLife folder in Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/Mods.

3. Install the required libraries separately.

4. Enable Custom Content and Script Mods in the game settings.

5. Restart The Sims 4.

When updating, replace the old mod files but keep your HobbyLife/Data folder to preserve your settings and data.

Tested game version: 1.128.90.1030.

💚 A Note from the Creator

Hobby Life is a personal project I've spent a lot of time developing and testing, but I may still have missed a few things.

If you encounter a bug, notice something isn't working correctly, or have suggestions for improvements, please let me know in the comments! Screenshots and a short explanation of what happened are especially helpful.

I'd also love to hear how Hobby Life fits into your Sims' stories. Thank you for giving my mod a try!

— MacGrat 💚