Tip: How to change the age (and appearance) of any playable Zoi or NPC [Uses cheats]

[DivineManifest]

Use the following steps to change the age (and appearance, gender preferences) of any playable Zoi or NPC, while retaining their existing relationships.

In case you want to stop ageing Zois, use the option in the game settings to stop aging the Zois you control, and for all NPCs if you wish so. I have found this to be a better way to limit or progress ageing, and change the age of specific Zois with the following trick.

Important:
Make a new save before the next steps, so that you can go back if needed.

In the game -

1. Enable cheats in the Psyguide, if you haven’t done so already.
2. Have in frame, the Zoi whose age you want to change. Get the camera near the Zoi, or select the Zoi.
3. Open the cheat console ctrl+shift+c
4. Use the cheat showZoiInfo true to get the Zoi’s ID, whose age you want to change. Note down the ID in a notepad or somewhere. You’ll need it again later.
5. Use CustomZoi <ZoiID> to get in the CAZ.
6. Save the Zoi as a preset.
7. Save any outfits you need as presets by going to the respective slots - everyday, school, party, summer etc
8. Exit from CAZ to the game.
9. Exit from the game to the lobby. You may choose to save the game, does not matter.
10. From the lobby, enter CAZ.
11. Apply the preset of the Zoi you just saved, whose age you want to change.
12. Customize the Zoi’s age. Say Senior to Young Adult. This is where the magic happens!
13. You can also change gender preferences if you desire so.
14. You can change the everyday outfit to suit the new age, to differentiate the Zoi from the previously saved older Zoi version.
15. Save the Zoi as a preset. This step is important! (Save the entire Zoi as a preset, not just the face)
16. Exit to the lobby.
17. Get back in the game.
18. Use CustomZoi <ZoiID> to edit your Zoi. CAZ will open.
19. Apply the new age preset that you just saved. It will be the first one in the Zoi preset list. Also identified by the new age outfit that you had applied to differentiate between ages of the same Zoi. (Else the presets can look the same).
20. Change any outfits you may want to, by applying previously saved outfit presets. Select the Everyday outfit category. (Else whichever other outfit category is selected, that outfit can become the everyday outfit in the preset).
21. Save the Zoi as a preset.
22. Complete to exit.
23. Save the game to a new save file.
24. Exit to lobby. Load the newly saved game. (Read note below for this step)

Note:

Sometimes, (seen in some games, not all), the zoi whose age has been changed, may continue to display mannerisms of the previous age. For example a Senior zoi whose age has been changed to Young Adult may occasionally walk with a bent back like a senior. So after the age is changed, immediately save your game, exit to the lobby and reload the saved game. Then the zoi will act as per their newly set age.

The Zoi retains their relationships from before the age was changed. So you can change the age of a Senior husband to a Young Adult, and his relationship with his Senior wife will be maintained.

You can use the above steps on any Zoi, including NPCs to age them up or down, change faces, bodies, outfits etc. at any time in the game, while retaining their existing relationships.

Hope this helps.

[Samuriko]

You can also keep reapplying the preset as much as you want, and the Zoi will keep their relationship bars and marital/family status.

Once you have your whole family saved, when they get to senior (or just before, because senior have a 50-50 chance of dying, even upon entering the age group at midnight), you can re-import them as children if you want and have that family always alive but cycling thru the age groups.

Thanks for the detailed, step-by-step info !

[Jackie7Sims]

Thank you so much for this information I was shocked how my Zois had aged since I visited them 1 day ago.

[EllaEstella]

Thanks a lot @DivineManifest!

This is realy helpful. For me playing with normal aging not so much to change age but this is great to change bad outfits or even appearance of my Zoi`s friends or adjust the children of my Zois.

[JoyIsFunner]

@DivineManifest

Save the game to a new save file.

Do we have to save to new file every time we change each zoi in the world, will this lead to 10 save files that need to be deleted and only keeping the newest file?

[DivineManifest]

You can save on the existing save and reload that save. So new save file need not be created. I do that most of the time.

I noticed that the game sometimes vaguely remembers the zoi’s previous age Save - reload save fixes this. Hence the step.

[JoyIsFunner]

Awesome, thanks for guide and all of the extra tips you have included, very nice

[inzonto33_0002]

I don’t understand why changing the age o Zoi involves 26 separate steps, which need to be completed in a precise order with no mistakes. How dumb is that?

[EllaEstella]

Just a quick question here: this workaround works perfectly if you want to have the current Zoi just in a different age group. But is there a way to just remove some days from the current life stage?

I tried to change the Zoi into an older life stage with this method first and then changed him back to Young adult. I was hoping that the Zoi now would be at the beginning of his Young adult life stage. But this is not the case - the game seems to remember even through the entire change to adult and then back and puts him in the middle of the young adult life stage as before. Does anybody know how I can get the Zoi back to the beginning of his current life stage?

If I understand correct the stopaging cheat affects the entire family? Is that correct? So if I only want 1 Zoi out of the family to not age for a certain time this would not help?

[DivineManifest]

@EllaEstella

Just a quick question here: this workaround works perfectly if you want to have the current Zoi just in a different age group. But is there a way to just remove some days from the current life stage?

At this point, there is no way to specify a certain age using the CustomZoi cheat. There is a wishlist post by @Samuriko to allow specifying age of a Zoi in CAZ.
Give us an option in CAZ to input an age number for our ZOI

Perhaps I should change the title of the original post to “how to change the appearance and the life stage (and not age)”

I tried to change the Zoi into an older life stage with this method first and then changed him back to Young adult. I was hoping that the Zoi now would be at the beginning of his Young adult life stage. But this is not the case - the game seems to remember even through the entire change to adult and then back and puts him in the middle of the young adult life stage as before. Does anybody know how I can get the Zoi back to the beginning of his current life stage?

At this point of time, the CustomZoi cheat allows to change only appearance and the life stage; but not the age or number of days within that life stage. It is a front end to enter CAZ. If age could be specified in CAZ as wishlisted, then it could be used with the CustomZoi cheat to position a Zoi at a certain life stage and age.

If I understand correct the stopaging cheat affects the entire family? Is that correct? So if I only want 1 Zoi out of the family to not age for a certain time this would not help?

I think stopAging cheat works only on the active playable Zoi, not the whole family. Though I haven’t used this cheat for months, so I could be mistaken.

[Samuriko]

@DivineManifest

I think stopAging cheat works only on the active playable Zoi, not the whole family. Though I haven’t used this cheat for months, so I could be mistaken.

Yes it works, and it persists if you save/reload the game.
So you’d have to freeze family members when they reach the age you want,
Then export them (they will keep their current age, but we still cannot export newborns, toddlers, and Adolescents, which is a real annoyance).
When you make a new game, you can import each of your family members and as said, they will have the age where you froze them at.

If you want different ages for siblings, as long as they aren’t from the 3 blocked age groups, it works.
It’s really annoying there’s no “SetAge X” cheat nor a box to set an age number in CAZ.

[EllaEstella]

@DivineManifest Thank you very much! And there is nothing wrong with the title of your guide, it does what it promises and I have used it several times already

My question was just very specific and I was not sure if this method would help here as well. This is why I tried it out also for this case.

I never used the stopAging cheat before but this is really the one to achieve what I was looking for.

@Samuriko Thanks a lot! Now tested it in my household and the stopAging cheat really stops the aging only for this specific Zoi and also keeps after reloading in the same save file. Thanks for your support!

Also upvoted your suggestion with setting specific days in a life stage: this would great!