The Sims 4's October 27 patch is shaping up to be a big one. The Sims Team dropped the official Laundry List today, and the headline numbers are hard to miss: over 150 bug fixes, a food and dining overhaul, new player-requested body options, and 375 dishes added to the Family Recipes system.
The update lands on October 27 as a free base game patch.
What the food and dining overhaul actually changes
This patch targets cooking, eating, and restaurant behavior across the base game and multiple packs. A few of the standout fixes:
- Sims will now prefer eating leftovers when hungry instead of cooking a brand new meal every time.
- The "Open" interaction on fridges has been moved to the front of the pie menu, a small change that came directly from Discord Dev Q&A feedback.
- Sims are more likely to stay seated while eating at a table.
- Food will no longer end up in display cases or other places it does not belong.
- Sims can now drag food prepared by another Sim into the fridge.
- Autonomous grilling during snow, rain, ice, or storms has been stopped (requires Seasons).
- The Pressure Cooker obsession is over. Sims will no longer use it compulsively.
- Pricing and calorie values have been retuned for all food and drink items across the base game and every pack.
For Dine Out owners, the patch addresses three specific restaurant issues: Sims failing to show up for waiter shifts, customers wanting to socialize too long before being seated, and customers leaving food uneaten or drinks undrunk before checkout.
New muscle and weight toggles
Based on feedback from the Discord Dev Q&As, the patch adds new game options to toggle muscle and weight changes on or off across an entire save file. On top of that, individual Sims can have these toggled independently through new self-interactions. The two settings are completely separate from each other, so you can turn off muscle changes while keeping weight changes active, or the other way around. These options do not apply to pets.
All self-interactions, including the new toggles, have been reorganized into a "Sim Options..." category accessible by clicking on the active Sim. This follows a similar approach to recent quality-of-life reorganizations, like the phone silence options added in the June update.
Family Recipes gets 375+ dishes
The Family Recipes feature has been expanded significantly. Over 375 pre-existing dishes from the base game and all packs have been added to the valid recipe pool. That should give multi-generational households a much deeper rotation of inherited cooking knowledge to work with.
There is also a new "Quickly Decorate" interaction for items made with the Baking Skill. It uses a swipe animation when baked goods are not on the center of a countertop, which should speed up the decorating step for off-center placements.
Major bug fixes from the community tracker
Several of the patch's highest-priority fixes came directly from EA Forums bug reports:
- An endless loading issue when placing lots that used Move Objects heavily has been resolved through a navmesh update.
- The infinite white screen when loading saves with residential rentals is fixed. Some lot details in affected saves may need rebuilding, but you can load back in.
- Bartenders can now take food and drink orders while socializing, practicing tricks, or doing other bartender behavior.
- Getting bitten by a werewolf now properly transforms Fairy Sims into werewolves without black visual corruption. A separate werewolf transformation visual bug has also been fixed.
- Two different causes of Sims freezing mid-game (after napping and during route planning) have been addressed.
- Reborn Sims from Life & Death are now properly added to existing households and appear in Create a Sim.
- Infant Sims will fall asleep in cribs without needing extremely low Energy.
Crash fixes and what is coming next
The patch includes about 10 new crash fixes. The team noted that the 10 crash fixes shipped in the September update resulted in a notable decrease in crash rates across all platforms.
Two other small additions: televisions can now be locked to specific Sims (similar to how computer locking works), and the save backup system has been adjusted to calculate slightly differently.
Looking ahead, the December update will target major top community issues and high-priority automated crash reports. The team says there are around 25 potential bugs on the list, though they expect to fix roughly 10 depending on how investigations go.
Source: Sims Community via Google News - The Sims