Part of what makes Sims 4 a great life simulation and an overall fun title is its ability to let players see their created characters grow from one stage of life to the next. While aging up your sims – the term used in the game – can present challenges in itself, there is just that warm satisfaction from seeing your baby sim grow up to be a fully-fledged adult. Fortunately for us, Sims 4 offers several ways how you can age up your characters.
In this guide, we will be showing you the many ways how you can age up your sims in the Sims 4.
How to Age Up Your Sims
Let us first begin by letting you know that Sims 4 has seven different life stages for each sim. Here they are by order: baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult, and elder. Here is how you progress from one life stage to the next manually.
Using a Birthday Cake
In Sims 4, whenever someone blows out the candles of a birthday cake, they age up. To do this, simply make a cake by clicking on the oven in your home, selecting ‘Cook,’ and then ‘Cake.’
The game will then give you an assortment of cakes you can bake, choose one that you prefer. Just make sure that you choose something that is mostly seen on birthdays.
After your character is finished baking the cake, click on it and choose ‘Add Birthday Candles’ using any adult sim. Note that younger sims cannot do this step, only adults.
Now that the candles on the birthday cake are lit and ready to be blown, choose whichever sim you want to age up.
If it’s a toddler or a younger sim that you are trying to age up, they’ll need the help of an older sim. To do that, choose the option to help them blow out the candles.
Keep in mind that the sim who blows the candles will be the one to age up.
Baking a birthday cake and letting someone blow out its candles is perhaps the easiest way to age up any character in the Sims 4.
We recommend that you do this step while also throwing a Birthday Party Social Event. Not only will your sim’s journey to the next life stage be more fun doing this, but they’d also be happier. After all, who wouldn’t want company on their big day?
Letting Them Age Up Naturally
If you don’t want to be troubled by manually aging up your characters, simply wait for them to grow up naturally. It isn’t the most fun way to age up sims but is still an option.
The amount of time a sim will take in each life stage varies relative to the stage they are currently at and the ‘lifespan’ duration you have chosen in the game’s settings. Below is the time spent in days of a sim at each life stage on the ‘Normal’ lifespan setting.
- Baby – 0-3 days
- Toddler – 7 days
- Child – 13 days
- Teen – 14 days
- Young Adult – 24 days
- Adult – 24 days
- Elder – 10+ days
To let your sims age up naturally, just play the game and let the days pass. After consuming the days’ threshold for each life stage, they should automatically transition to the next.
By using a Cheat
If all else fails there is always the option to use cheats. After all, the Sims 4 is a single-player experience, so there wouldn’t be any repercussions from using cheats.
To use cheats to age up sims, you must first open the cheat console by pressing CTRL + Shift + C. On the menu that would open, type ‘testingcheatstrue’ and then input ‘cas.fulleditmode.’
After that, shift-click on the particular sim you want to age up and select ‘Modify in CAS.’ This will let you input any age within the game that you’d like for that sim to be on. The transition will happen immediately after using the cheat.
That is it! Those are your options on how you can age up your sims in the game. Remember, it is your game. It ultimately falls on you how you want your experience with it to turn out.
