The Sims 4's next patch drops on October 27, and the official Laundry List is out now with the full rundown. This one centers on food, dining, and drinks, packing over 150 fixes alongside some welcome new features. Here's what's changing and why it matters for your saves.
New muscle and weight toggles
One of the headline additions is a pair of new Game Options that let you toggle muscle and weight changes on or off across an entire save. You can also set these per-Sim through new self-interactions, and the two settings are independent of each other. Want weight changes active but muscle changes off? That works. The toggles do not apply to pets.
This came directly from player feedback during the Sims Team's Discord Q&A sessions, and it addresses a long-running request from players who want more control over how their Sims' bodies change during gameplay.
Family recipes get a major expansion
The Family Recipes feature from the Business & Hobbies pack now covers over 375 pre-existing dishes across the base game and all packs. That includes a large number of cultural dishes. A small number of items were excluded for technical reasons or because they didn't fit the concept of a "family dish" (graham crackers, for instance), but the coverage is now close to the full recipe catalog.
Dine Out gets some overdue attention
Dine Out has been a pain point for years, and this patch tackles several of the pack's most persistent problems:
- Waiters who failed to show up for shifts because their Sims had conflicting roles from other packs should now arrive properly.
- Customers will socialize less before being seated, so they stop chatting endlessly in the lobby instead of sitting down.
- A variety of cross-pack interactions were breaking the dining flow. The team says they fixed what they found during testing passes but acknowledges some may remain, and they're asking players to keep reporting issues.
- Customers should now actually finish their food and drinks before checking out.
Food and fridge quality-of-life changes
The smaller food-related fixes add up to a noticeably smoother kitchen experience:
- Sims now prefer eating leftovers from the fridge or counter instead of cooking a new meal every time they're hungry.
- The "Open" interaction has been moved to the front of the fridge pie menu, saving a click every time.
- Sims are more likely to stay seated while eating at a table. Multi-tasking issues that caused them to stand up mid-conversation while eating have been addressed.
- Sims will no longer place food in display cases or other inappropriate spots. Dining tables and countertops are now prioritized.
- A full tuning pass has updated pricing and calories for all food and drink items across the base game and every pack.
- A new "Quickly Decorate" interaction for baked goods (Get to Work) works when the item isn't in the center of a countertop, fixing a route failure that previously gave no clear explanation.
- Sims will no longer autonomously use grills during snow, rain, ice, or storms (Seasons).
- The Pressure Cooker obsession from For Rent has been toned down so Sims actually use other cooking methods.
Top community fixes beyond the kitchen
Several high-priority bugs unrelated to food also got resolved:
- The endless loading screen when placing lots built with heavy Move Objects use has been fixed through a navmesh update.
- An infinite white screen when loading saves with residential rentals is resolved. Some lot details in affected saves may need rebuilding, but you can load into your worlds again.
- Bartenders can now take food and drink orders while they're socializing, practicing tricks, or doing other bartender behaviors.
- Werewolf bite transformations no longer cause black visual corruption on Fairy Sims or during the active werewolf transformation sequence.
- Frozen Sims after naps or other interactions have been addressed, along with a separate freeze caused by routing planning.
- The Life & Death Rebirth process now correctly adds the new Infant Sim to the selected household.
- Infant Sims fall asleep in cribs without needing extremely low Energy.
TV locking and a new Sim Options menu
Two bonus quality-of-life additions round out the patch. Televisions can now be locked to specific Sims the same way computers can. If you've built a play room for a child but the adults keep using the TV, you can restrict access.
All self-interactions (Disable Attraction from Lovestruck, Rock Paper Scissors Preferences from Adventure Awaits, Utensil Preference from Snowy Escape, the new Physique toggles, and more) have been grouped into a new "Sim Options..." pie menu category when clicking on your active Sim.
The save backup system has also been improved to track better between long gaps in play sessions.
Crash fixes and what's ahead for December
The patch includes around 10 new crash fixes. The team also shared that the approximately 10 crash fixes from the September update led to a measurable decrease in crash rates across all platforms. Many remaining top crash reports are tied to outdated or conflicting mods, and the team has added code guardrails where possible.
Looking further ahead, the December update is targeting around 25 potential bugs, though the team expects to fix roughly 10 depending on investigation outcomes. The list includes performance degradation after extended play, increased load times across platforms, gamepad controllers failing after a few minutes, Error Code 801 during lot travel, and an inappropriate sibling relationship bug. A potentially significant PS4 crash fix is already being tested.
After December, the next large patch is planned for early 2027.
For the full list of fixes and links to the original EA Forums bug reports, check the complete Laundry List over at Sims Community.
If you're interested in other recent Sims 4 quality-of-life improvements, we covered the June update that finally let you silence phone spam earlier this year.