Released on March 30, 2015, The Sims 4: Get to Work is the franchise's first expansion pack. This pack's theme centers around work life, providing players with the opportunity to become active participants in their Sims' careers by introducing active careers. In addition to this, Get To Work includes many other additions to the gameplay, giving players a chance to truly engage with their Sims' lives.

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Active Careers previously referred to as Professions, introduces an immersive gameplay aspect for careers in The Sims 4 by bringing back a feature from The Sims 3 Ambitions. Through active careers, players can choose to follow their Sims to work. This means that their Sims won't be disappearing into a rabbit hole during work hours, providing a more interactive experience. During work hours, Sims can complete tasks and earn promotions faster if players decide to accompany them to their job. One such active career is the Detective Career, which enables Sims to investigate cases and solve crimes.

Sources for this article and its images include EA.com and Carl's Sims 4 Guide.

Detective Career General Info And Promotions

Compared to other active careers in the expansion, the Detective career offers a more balanced experience. It has less demanding hours than the Doctor career but requires more involvement than the Scientist career. Sims in this career get to explore various locations as they visit crime scenes, giving them the chance to meet new Sims and discover new places. Moreover, while there is a designated work lot for the Detective career, players will be spending a lot of time outside of this lot, which makes this career quite a unique and fun way to make money.

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The first levels of this career might look quite mundane to some players, but as their Sims progress through the career levels, they will find it much more fun and rewarding. Sims will start getting autonomy on their tasks, allowing them to take on their own cases and unlock new interactions. As an active career, the Detective career does not branch out to two directions and has 10 levels in total.

The initial levels of the Detective career are designed to guide players through simple, single-step tasks such as interrogating suspects or visiting crime scenes. These tasks serve as tutorials, acquainting players with the different activities that Sims must perform to solve cases independently. It is important to note that the case numbers indicated in each level represent the total amount of cases required to be solved. Thus, while each level requires one more case than the previous one, it simply means that players need to solve one additional case to fulfill the promotion requirement.

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In addition, it's worth noting that many of the rewards for completing the Detective career are police station-themed furniture and objects such as jail bars. These rewards can be useful for players who enjoy creating their own unique stories and challenges involving crime.

How To Get Promotions Quickly

Like other careers, certain traits can be more advantageous than others for easier promotions. While specific skills aren't required for promotions in the Detective career, traits such as genius and outgoing can enhance the Sim's enjoyment of solving crimes and interacting with others. Additionally, the Observant reward trait, available in the Satisfaction Points Rewards Shop, can be highly beneficial for Sims to learn more about the Sims they interact with.

Maintaining a Focused moodlet significantly improves job performance, so players should focus on activities that can grant this moodlet before going to work. Many activities that involve solving the case will also increase job performance. Going on Patrol is a job activity that can also boost job performance, but it should only be done at higher levels once enough cases have been solved, and only when the Sim only needs a job performance boost.

How To Solve A Case

Solving a case involves a series of police interactions, starting with exploring and collecting evidence at crime scenes, and followed by various activities at the police station.

However, many interactions during the latter part is only available once enough evidence is gathered, so players should focus on collecting as much as evidence as possible when at the crime scenes.

Crime Scene Activities

A big part of solving a case comes from being able to thoroughly explore the crime scene. Fortunately, when players are at the crime scene, they can pause the game to locate relevant objects and queue actions related to the case. Generally, these objects are easy to identify, as they may be dirty or damaged, or simply appear out of place.

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In addition, players can click on the ground to investigate further and obtain new clues. New objects that are relevant to the case, such as personal items from the suspects, may also appear. Players can take photos of these objects and talk to witnesses. To solve the crime, it is recommended to collect as many clues as possible by ensuring the Sim interacts with every object and witness at the location. Players can also collect witness reports, and the game will guide players loosely to help them speak to the correct Sim to obtain a report.

Interestingly, one advantage of collecting as many clues as possible is the ability to collect evidence for other cases. Once players have collected enough evidence, they should return to the police station to follow up on it and complete additional tasks to help them solve the case.

Police Station Activities

Once back at the police station, Sims can do a variety of tasks that involve the case, such as adding information to the database, building a Crime Map, and issuing an APB. Issuing an APB is ultimately required to make an arrest and becomes available only when players have gathered enough evidence. For players who haven't obtained enough evidence or information yet, paying attention to the Crime Map and deducing clues can be beneficial, as they might be able to get a new clue that was previously unavailable.

Solving the crime relies heavily on whether players have collected enough evidence and paid attention to the clues. Consequently, the likelihood of arresting the wrong suspect decreases as more clues are collected. Players can keep track of all the clues via the Notebook accessible through a Sim's phone. The clues include physical details such as the suspect's hair color, age, clothing, gender, as well as other details such as their personality traits, where the observant trait can be very useful. Players can also use social interactions such as Getting to Know or Discuss Interest to find out more about potential suspects.

Based on the clues, if players believe they are talking to the suspect, they can be arrested and taken to the station to be interrogated. There are various options during this procedure, such as playing Good Cop or Bad Cop, but the ultimate goal is to extract a confession from them, making them guilty. Players should pay attention to how the interrogated suspect looks or behaves. For example, if they appear worried, Bad Cop actions might be more suited, whereas if they are acting friendlier, Good Cop actions might be more appropriate. The whole interaction is like a mini-game based on the player's choices, as there will be a meter that indicates how close the detective is to getting a confession. The confession is only available once the bar is full. Once the confession is complete, the suspect can be locked up, and with that, the Sim will have solved the case.

Players should keep in mind that there are also other activities in the station, such as fingerprinting suspects or booking them, but these actions are not necessarily related to solving the case and are not recommended unless there isn't any other objective that can be performed.

The Sims 4 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.