How to Find and Fix Mod Conflicts in Sims 4 with Better Exceptions Conflict Detector
Mod conflicts are one of the most frustrating issues for The Sims 4 players:
— They cause mods and the game to behave unpredictably
— Often go unnoticed at first
— Difficult to diagnose on your own
— Players are forced to turn to support forums or spend hours troubleshooting
Better Exceptions Conflict Detector solves this problem radically: any conflicts that may cause in-game issues will be scanned and presented to the player within minutes.
Conflict detectors often have serious drawbacks:
- Too vague – they show too much information without context
- Misleading – it's not always clear what the actual problem is
- Create panic – players start removing mods that are actually working fine
- Generate false positives – technical conflicts that don't affect gameplay
The Better Exceptions conflict report:
- Does NOT focus on duplicates
- Does NOT show other mod issues (there are separate BE reports for that)
- Shows ONLY actual mod conflicts
- Only if the conflict will actually result in degraded gameplay experience or unexpected behavior
How smart filtering works
Example 1: Real conflict
Better Build Buy and Build Cam are two mods by TwistedMexi:
1. Better Build Buy already includes Build Cam functionality, plus additional features
2. If both mods are installed simultaneously:
- Better Build Buy won't function correctly
- This is a real conflict
- It will appear in the report
Example 2: Harmless duplicate
Imagine you accidentally ended up with two copies of Build Cam:
Even if a resource is being modified by two different files, but the changes are identical, this will NOT appear in the report, because there will be no difference in-game.
If a conflict doesn't affect gameplay, there's no need to show it to the player.
Script mod analysis
Regular conflict detectors simply compare .ts4script files as a whole and flag them as a conflict or invalid file.
Better Exceptions reads, breaks down, and compares TS4 script files with other script mods module by module.
Practical example
Imagine a player installed Wonderful Whims and Wicked Whims simultaneously:
- Both mods contain similar functionality
- With the traditional approach, it may be unclear what the conflict is
- BE will correctly identify that the script files are conflicting
- And will properly show this in the report
The advantage: Precise diagnostics of conflicts between complex script mods, rather than just "these two files are doing something".
Expandable Conflict List
Each conflict in the report includes an expandable list that shows:
- All resources that BE used to determine the conflict
- Technical information about the nature of the conflict
This is extremely helpful for mod creators and TwistedMexi himself, because:
- It provides complete technical information
- Allows checking the conflict detection logic and quickly fixing errors in the code
Handling intentional overrides
Some mod creators intentionally create conflicting files to implement optional add-ons to the main mod.
Example: Main mod + several add-on files, where the player chooses only one.
How BE solves this problem
Technically these are still conflicts, and they do alter the gameplay experience, so they are shown in the report, BUT:
1. Green badge – the conflict is marked with a special green icon, helps visually convey that this is probably fine.
2. "Intentional Override" text – clearly indicates that this is likely an intentional override.
3. Hover tooltip explains what type of conflict this is and why it can probably be ignored
If you see a conflict with a green badge, especially if both files are from the same creator, it can most likely be ignored. This also helps reduce the number of confused players bothering mod creators with false reports about "broken" mods.
How to use Conflict Detector
Frequency recommendations
This type of report is NOT recommended to run frequently.
When you should run it:
1. If you suspect a conflict but don't know what exactly is conflicting
2. For a "spring cleaning" once every few months
3. After installing a large number of new mods
4. If the game started behaving strangely but there are no obvious errors
Step-by-step instructions:
Step 1: Open the Better Exceptions menu
When entering a household, the Better Exceptions Welcome Menu appears in notifications. Click on it.
Step 2: Run the scan
Click on Better Exceptions Menu and select "Check for Conflicts".
Step 3: Wait for completion
The scan will take several minutes. Longer if you have a very large number of mods or an old hard drive (HDD instead of SSD).
Step 4: Review the report
The report will automatically open in your browser when complete.
Reading and interpreting the report
The report is a table with two main columns: File A and File B. Each row = one conflict between File A and File B.
For most players
If you're confident that a conflict between File A and File B exists and is causing problems in-game:
1. You must choose: remove File A or File B
2. It's important to remove the ENTIRE MOD that the selected file belongs to. If it's a multi-file mod, remove all its parts.
Why doesn't BE automatically delete mods?
It's critically important to understand: Better Exceptions cannot and should not delete mods automatically.
Reasons:
1) No guarantee of complete removal
— BE cannot be certain it will remove a mod completely
— Multi-file mods may have files in different folders
— Partial removal will create MORE problems than there were initially
2) Responsibility and control
— Deleting mods is the player's decision
— The player should understand exactly what is being deleted
3) Protection against errors
— If BE makes a mistake (though this is unlikely), auto-deletion would be catastrophic
— Manual deletion gives the player control and the ability to restore files
Statistics at the end of the report
At the bottom of the report there's a small section with statistics:
1. Number of conflicts found out of how many total mod files.
For example: "Found 5 conflicts out of 1,247 mod files".
2. Report generation time
For example: "Report generated in 3 minutes 42 seconds". Depends on the number of mods and disk speed.
Why this is needed:
- Assessing the scope of the problem: for instance, 5 conflicts out of 1000+ mods = a minor issue
- Understanding performance: if the report takes very long to generate, it might be worth optimizing the number of mods
- Work transparency: the player sees that BE actually checked all files
