The Sims 4 Paranormal Investigator career | Becoming a Paranormal Investigator and building the Medium skill
The Sims 4: Paranormal Stuff Pack is a little different from what we've seen in the game of late — offering your Sims the opportunity to become spirit mediums and ghost busters, in addition to the usual selection of new clothes and furniture to decorate their worlds.
With the new pack, Sims can now join a branch of the Freelancer career known as the Paranormal Investigator track, and improve their Medium skill to see greater success on the investigations they undertake.
So, if Phasmophobia has become a little heavy for you and you're looking for some light relief along the same lines, this guide will tell you everything you need to know about becoming a Paranormal Investigator in The Sims 4:
- How to join the Paranormal Investigator career in The Sims 4
- How to complete freelance Paranormal Investigator gigs in The Sims 4
- How to build the Medium skill in The Sims 4
How to join the Paranormal Investigator career in The Sims 4
In The Sims 4 you get the chance to freelance in a number of interesting careers, including computer programming, digital art, copywriting, and — with the Paranormal stuff pack installed — paranormal investigation.
Freelance careers work a little differently from traditional careers in The Sims 4. There are no career levels to progress through — instead, your Sim joins an agency and picks up freelance gigs from them. Instead of an hourly rate of pay delivered in a daily pay-check, your Sim gets their money only when they've completed a gig. But on the upside, instead of set work hours, your Sim can pick up gigs when they feel like it and work somewhat flexibly to complete the job — just so long as they meet the deadline.
And finally, every branch of the freelancer career is linked to a single skill — in the case of Paranormal Investigators, it's the new Medium skill added with the stuff pack.
Joining the Federal Bureau of Spooky Investigation (which really sounds like its budget should support a few full-time employees, but whatever, freelance it is…) is a little less conventional than just applying for the job. You'll need a Paranormal Investigator License, which can only be obtained in a couple of ways.
Interacting with new special NPC Guidry the Ghost will reveal that he used to be a Paranormal Investigator in life, and that he retains some of his old career connections even from beyond the grave (which actually makes perfect sense when you think about it).
Impress Guidry with your mastery of the Medium skill and he'll put in a good word for you — just tell him 'I want to become a Paranormal Investigator' to immediately get the option to join the Federal Bureau of Spooky Investigation.
Alternatively, if your Sim has at least 3,000 Satisfaction Points burning a hole in their pocket, they can purchase a Paranormal Investigator License at any time from the Rewards Store.
Either way, once you've got a license — which shows up as a Reward Trait on your Simology panel, incidentally, so don't worry about misplacing it — you can apply for the Paranormal Investigator career like any other, by going to the 'Work' tab of your Sim's phone and choosing 'Find a Job'. Don't forget that Paranormal Investigator is a branch of the Freelance career, so you'll need to join that first and then select Federal Bureau of Spooky Investigation when you're prompted to pick an agency.
You'll have to quit any other careers your Sim is currently working in to join an agency — no moonlighting or part-time freelancing gigs for you, I'm afraid. You also can't technically freelance for more than one agency at a time, though it is possible to switch back and forth between agencies whenever you like under the 'Work' tab on the phone (though doing so may result in resetting your job performance and therefore losing related bonus pay).
How to complete freelance Paranormal Investigator gigs in The Sims 4
Getting a gig as a Paranormal Investigator
Once your Sim is a fully-fledged (well… fully-freelance) member of the Federal Bureau of Spooky Investigation, you can pick up gigs from them in a couple of ways: either by looking under the 'Work' tab on the phone, or by checking directly using the 'Career' tab in the Simology panel.
Unlike other branches of the freelancer career — which feature a variety of available gigs that change every day and are locked off according to your Sim's skill level — there are just three types of Paranormal Investigator gigs, all of which your Sims are welcome to try their hands at from the start:
| Gig Name | Base Pay | Difficulty | Spectre Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner Paranormal Investigation | §750 | Easy | Friendly |
| Adept Paranormal Investigation | §1,500 | Medium | Mysterious |
| Expert Paranormal Investigation | §3,000 | Hard | Evil (plus chance of encountering Temperance) |
Once you've decided which gig you want, click on it to add it to your Sim's Career panel. You can only have one active gig at a time. You can cancel gigs at any time, but at a cost to your job performance (which, incidentally, is a lot harder to build in freelancing versus traditional careers in The Sims 4) — so be careful where you're clicking!
Completing a gig as a Paranormal Investigator
All gigs in the Paranormal Investigator career begin at 9:30pm — which residents of haunted houses will quickly come to recognise as half an in-game hour after the property's paranormal shenanigans kick off for the night.
Unlike with the other branches of the Freelancer career, once gigs in the Paranormal Investigator branch start you are presented with two options: immediately accompany your Sim to the gig; or let them go to work on their own off-screen, like a normal work-day in most careers. (Most freelancers in The Sims 4 work from home, but that's understandably impractical in this case.)
If you choose to accompany them, you're instantly transported to a random residential lot elsewhere in your save file, which for the purposes of this gig will be a haunted house (regardless of whether it's actually on a haunted lot or not). Your Sim then has until 6:30am to fill up the investigation metre and exorcise the haunting. You can extend the gig timer once to give your investigator until 8:30am, but that's the absolute final 'deadline' for completing a gig.
There are a few things that contribute towards filling the investigation metre:
- Removing accursed objects. Spooky haunted objects will spawn on the lot periodically throughout the night. Instruct your investigator to give them a good kicking and they'll disintegrate. The arrival of a new accursed object is usually accompanied by a (sometimes genuinely creepy) musical sting, so it's worth turning your game sound up if you usually play with it on low.
- Appease spectres. Spectres (the little chibi balloon ghosts that are unique to the Paranormal pack) have a chance of spawning during the investigation. You can appease them by offering them a crafted item from your own inventory or — if you get desperate and don't mind taking a severe emotional hit — a piece of your Sim's very own soul. If the spectres accept the offering, they'll agree to leave and even drop a little paranormal gift for you in return.
- Perform ceremonies. You can perform ceremonies using the séance table or séance circle to fill up a sizeable chunk of the investigation metre. Unfortunately, since it's unlikely you had the forethought to equip every house in the game world with a séance table, this can be effectively locked off to you if you don't plan ahead. Sims with Level 5 in the Medium skill can create a séance circle that bypasses the need for a table. Otherwise — since you can't access Build/Buy Mode during a gig or pack a séance table in your Sim's inventory — you're going to have to do without.
How to build the Medium skill in The Sims 4
For Paranormal Investigators in The Sims 4, the Medium skill is their bread and butter — it's really the only thing (other than completing tasks before the deadline) that makes a Paranormal Investigator good at their job.
Unlike the majority of the skills in The Sims 4, which go up to Level 10, the Medium skill is capped at Level 5.
Sims build their skill in mediumship using the new séance table item introduced in the pack. (You can dress up the séance table — or any other table, for that matter — with the new crystal ball object as well, but despite looking really cool during a séance it doesn't intrinsically help to develop the Medium skill.)
All interactions with the séance table help to build the Medium skill, as well as each having their own unique effects:
| Interaction Name | Required Skill Level | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Commune with the Departed | 1 | Gives a pop-up on the notification wall with a message from a ghost |
| Sense Spiritual Volatility | 1 | Tells you if the current lot is haunted and if so, whether the spectres there are friendly, mysterious, or evil |
| Perform a Ceremony | 1 | Reduces spiritual volatility (only available on haunted house lots) |
| Perform Group Séances/Ceremonies | 2 | Sim can lead others in performing séances and ceremonies, including those with no Medium skill |
| Invoke the Dead | 3 | Summons a random ghost or, if there are no ghosts available in the save file, a random spectre |
| Summon Bonehilda | 3 | Summons Bonehilda for a period of in-game time |
| Ghastly Ritual | 4 | Sim transforms into a ghost (or Bonehilda) for four in-game hours |
| Create Séance Circles | 5 | Sim can create fully functional séance circles anywhere, instead of being tied to séance tables |
| Summon Guidry | No skill requirement; must have Paranormal Investigator License reward trait | Summons Guidry for a period of in-game time |
If you have The Sims 4: Realm of Magic game pack installed as well, Spellcasters will build the Medium skill slightly faster than other Sims. Being in the Focused emotional state also helps Sims to build Medium skill quicker. Other than that there doesn't seem to be any specific trait that boosts the rate at which the skill develops — but if we find one, we'll let you know!