To get abducted in The Sims 2, buy the expensive Farstar e3 Telescope, have your Sim use it at night, and keep them at it until the beam comes down. Abduction is a base game event, so it works in every edition, and in the Legacy Collection it was one of the first things Maxis had to repair after launch. This guide covers the telescope, the timing, who can come back pregnant, the cheat route, and what the 2025 patches fixed.
The Telescope Is the Whole Trick
There are two telescopes in Buy Mode, both under Hobbies. The cheap AstroScope lets Sims look at the sky but never triggers an abduction. Only the Farstar e3 Telescope, the tall expensive one, can call the aliens. Place it outdoors or by a window and let your Sim pick it up from there.
Click the telescope and choose Stargaze, which is the night interaction. The daytime option, Look Through, is what makes neighbors come over and complain (or slap your Sim), so it does nothing for abduction. Long-standing player documentation puts the abduction window at roughly 7 PM to 2 AM; the chance per use is low, so plan on several nights of Stargaze before it happens. Knowledge Sims often roll a want to be abducted, and satisfying it pays out aspiration points on top of the alien baby.
This needs no expansion. The Legacy Collection includes the base game and every expansion and stuff pack except IKEA Home Stuff, so nothing here differs from the older Ultimate Collection.
Who Comes Back Pregnant
Any teen, adult or elder can be taken. Only adult males come back carrying an alien baby, and per long-standing player documentation, elder males can too. Female Sims and teens are returned unchanged apart from memories and a few hours off the lot. That makes the male pregnancy the only unmodded route to an alien-hybrid Sim: green skin, black eyes, the works. The baby arrives roughly three days after the return, the same clock as a normal pregnancy, so our Sims 2 pregnancy guide covers the rest of that stretch.
Alien children inherit the hybrid genetics and can pass them on, which is how Strangetown’s Curious brothers got their start. If you want the baby to grow up quickly, see how to age up a baby.
What the Legacy Collection Patches Changed
This is the section that did not exist in 2025. When the Legacy Collection launched, the abduction cutscene was broken. The first Legacy patch notes (February 4, 2025) said Maxis was “investigating an issue where during certain cinematic events (such as Alien Abduction), the Sim can be reset and the event fails” and suggested keeping every other Sim off the lot while it plays out. Patch 2 got the scene working but, in the team’s own words, “still missing the alien baby.”
The April 3, 2025 patch (#7) closed it out: “Alien Baby Sim is missing from Alien Abduction” and “A member of the Curious family would sometimes not appear in the Alien Abduction” are both listed as fixed. Verified against those notes, a fully updated Legacy Collection now runs the whole event, baby included. If you are on an old install that never updated, that is why the pregnancy never showed up.
The one habit worth keeping from the early patch advice is to let the abduction happen with as few onlookers as possible. Send the rest of the household to bed first.
Forcing It With Cheats
If you would rather not wait, open the cheat console with Ctrl + Shift + C and enter boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true. With that active, Shift-clicking objects and Sims adds debug menus; player documentation describes a forced-abduction option on the telescope’s debug menu and an alien-pregnancy option on the spawnable Tombstone of L and D. Maxis noted in the first Legacy patch that this cheat “will cause the game to periodically show various dialogue boxes with debugging information,” and that this is expected behavior, so turn it back off when you are done. Our Sims 2 cheats list covers the rest of the console.
Save before you start. If the event glitches, reload rather than saving over it; the Sims 2 save guide explains the difference between saving and quitting without saving.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need an expansion pack for alien abduction? No. It is a base game feature, so it works in the Legacy Collection, the Ultimate Collection and an original disc install alike.
Which telescope works? Only the Farstar e3 Telescope, the expensive one. The AstroScope can be used all night with no result.
Can a female Sim get pregnant from an abduction? Not in an unmodded game. Only male Sims return pregnant, which is the series’ famous inversion.
Why was the abduction failing in the Legacy Collection? The launch build had a bug that reset the Sim during the cutscene, and the alien baby was missing until patch 7 in April 2025. Update the game and it works.
Does the abduction hurt my Sim? They come back with drained needs and a memory of the event, which can be good or bad depending on their aspiration, but nothing permanent beyond the possible baby.
For everything else in the series, our Sims hub has the full list, and the Sims 3 abduction guide covers how the later game handles the same event.