Developer livestream is scheduled for 11 am Pacific on Wednesday, February 28, 2024. It will be on their Twitch and their YouTube. Time Zone Converter for when the livestream will start in your own time zone: http://tinyurl.com/bdf94mcv
Base game update will be Tuesday, February 27, 2024 and the usual time for updates is 10 am Pacific. Time Zone Converter for when base game update will happen in your own time zone: http://tinyurl.com/4ztb8vwy
Updated to add Thunder released a Bug Fix mod for the issue with weeding while gardening after I released my video: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bugfix-tend-fix-94711697 Note this bug fix requires Lot 51 Core Library which is also linked on their bug fix post and Thunder states that it is compatible with LittleMsSam’s gardening workaround fix.
Note that the links that follow are just a handful that I saw that seemed ‘popular’, here’s a link to EA AHQ to see what other bugs are reported and if you don’t see your bug, and have tested in a mod and cc free game (which means nothing in your mods folder but the resource file which the game automatically generates), then do a bug report making sure to fill out the template. https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/bd-p/The-Sims-4-Bugs
I also cover what I noticed was coming in the Base Game Update and some information from some tweets from after the Livestream.
Create a Sim
Showed the CAS for males and females, teen and up. Showed CAS for infants through children (female sim used)
They also mentioned the four new aspirations & five new traits, these were also mentioned in the blog post
Four New Aspirations:
Location: Fount of Tomarani Knowledge (all about wanting to explore the world & immerse themselves in this culture)
Deviance: Seeker of Secrets (all about snooping & having a ravenous appetite to know about your neighbours and the hot gossip)
Popularity: Discerning Dweller (all about wanting to be a great tenant & great neighbour too)
Fortune: Five-Star Property Owner (This Sim wants to be the best Property Owner the world has ever seen!)
Five New Traits:
Cringe,
Generous,
Nosey,
Child of the Village,
& Elder specific, Wise. You can assign wise if you create an elder sim or it maybe earned when a sim ages up to elder if they had level 10 logic or genius trait (but didn’t seem to be guaranteed). Elders can also get it through the Growing Together self discovery system.
Build Mode
New hot tub has faux rock facades.
New grill, which is a reward for one of the two new events (reward for a good potluck)
New mailboxes – for single home, for duplex and for apartment
Marbles and hopscotch (only children can play with marbles, but anyone can collect. Hopscotch primarily for children, but teens and up can use).
For Rent signs (one for ground and one for wall)
No shoes from SE moved to Base Game. Can set it on shoe rack and there is a new sign for the For Rent pack.
Also showed new awnings, doors, rugs, curtains, curtain ‘rod’
Pressure cookers and kettles.
Note new colours are being added to some base game appliances (so there are more colours to match the new pressure cookers and kettles & ice cream maker/popcorn maker)
Will also be able to boil water in microwave in addition to using the kettle.
Also showed new foods.
Mini fridge
Another narrow dishwasher (but needs full counter)
Squat toilets
Toddler potty
New plants
Water heater, air conditioner, electrical fuse box, solar water heater & radiator.
Water heater &electrical fuse box have gameplay associated with them for any lot.
Air conditioner and radiator have some functionality if you own seasons.
If you don’t want functional ones, they have decorative versions.
Pool floatie (reward for the other social event, pool party).
Also showed the furniture, which was based around some different woods and some plastic chairs, new kitchen counters and more.
Dingy decals to make things look grungy and lived in.
Residential Rentals
Showed from map view some existing residential rentals.
Note they aren’t just apartments, you can have duplexes, townhomes, in law suites and single room rentals.
They then showed how the tool worked using Pique Hearth (Pancakes’ home but placed in Newcrest).
They did who what it looked like with the cheat that removed the unit limits (cheat is: bb.increaserentalunitcap on/off )
They also stated that there is a save limit, which was already mentioned in the blog post (they said 100, but the blog post says 99 per save). Note Rebecca said she tried the limit, and she didn’t recommend it. 😊
Rating depends on what’s in the unit, but there’s nothing required.
They also mentioned the limitations. You can’t build them on Sulani water lots, penthouses or in vacation worlds (also mentioned in the blog post).
Note if you want to start over, you can essentially assign all rooms to one unit and then start over.
World of Tomarang:
They showed the world, two neighbourhoods.
Morensong – bustling downtown/busy city with four lots including one that starts empty (40×30, they had their livestream family on it), a national park, a residential rental lot (has one premade family who owns the lot and one empty ‘apartment’) and regular residential starter home. This is also where the night market is, which seemed to start at 6 pm. There is a rabbit hole temple.
Koh Sahpa – more relaxed neighbourhood with two empty lots, a lounge (with the new hot tub), a regular residential lot with a premade family & another residential rental with three units, one of which is empty, the other two are occupied by the premade family from the gameplay trailer. This has the tiger sanctuary, which is a rabbit hole.
I heard third hand that the lots were built by EA.
Gameplay:
They showed their livestream family.
There are few things that will pull things out of their units into the common space. They’ve tweaked autonomy so that sims are more likely to use exercise equipment, grills, do gardening, use laundry (if you have Laundry Day and use laundry). They also mentioned that the mold ghost has some interesting interactions for gardening but that they hadn’t had any luck getting a mold ghost during their practice runs.
The lot they had built had the main home and two rental units which both had a bedroom and bathroom, and the living room and kitchen were shared space.
Coming to base game is the ability to switch to a household by selecting the door/lot, vs having to go to manage worlds (though you can still go to manage worlds).
They showed renting out the third unit (the second unit was rented by the male sim’s father). They showed the ‘Fill Vacancy’ screen. Maintenance starts as ‘poor’.
They showed some of the rules you can activate. No Noise, No Loud Noises, Maximum Occupancy (infants don’t count towards it), No Trash Overload, No Ghosts and they thought there was also a No Pets rule but they were only playing with base game and For Rent.
There have been some sims added who will be available to rent out to. You can rent to sims who aren’t already living in the world.
Note they show the option to ‘unjustly evict’ which can change to be ‘justly evict’ if the tenants have broken rules/not paid rent, etc. But if you unjustly evict you may be subject to fines.
They show the rabbit hole temple that’s in the Morensong neighbourhood. There’s a children’s play area in the neighbourhood area. They also showed the night market area. They show a rabbit hole building that’s a Fish Market where you can buy food.
Night Market:
Lights up at night, seemed to start at 6 pm.
Craft Stall: There’s a craft stall where you can buy various things, including two different tassels, which are collectibles you can find throughout the world through various means and as you discover them you unlock lore and when you complete the collection you unlock an item. You can also get marbles, which is the second collection that comes with the pack.
Food Stalls:
There are three food stalls, Vegetarian, Drinks & Desserts, and Non-Vegetarian.
They then travelled to the Hoh Sahpa neighbourhood.
The Tiger Sanctuary (rabbit hole), is close to the lounge. It’s not open at night, but you can sneak in, but if you get caught you may get banned (they didn’t get caught but had gotten caught on previous attempts while doing trial runs for the livestream). During the day you can Visit or Support the sanctuary. You can experience fun and interesting stories, and if you support the sanctuary, you may be able to bring home ‘something adorable’ (I expect the toy tiger). They got a pop up for sneaking in and had a choice of two options and got some animal crackers. You can see glowing eyes at night (the tigers).
They also show some nosy interactions (spying on sims).
There’s a ‘cave’ in this neighbourhood that you can explore and learn more lore.
They then show ‘breaking in’ (not the same as burglars). If you’re successful, there will be a timed event and your sim can snoop and may learn a secret about the sim who lives on the lot. If you don’t leave before the break in event ends, your sim may (will?) get caught. They showed an example of a secret you can learn. You can break in on a regular residential lot too. Also note that this is something you can initiate, this is not burglars, it’s really for snooping. Note that you need to be a kleptomaniac to be able to steal. Note that you can blackmail them (this will hit the relationship, but you can earn money) or you can keep the secret, which can help boost the relationship.
They then returned home before the break in event ended.
They showed the pressure cooker and kettle. The pressure cooker is something that they put the food in and then leave it to cook. The kettle you turn on to boil and you can leave. Once it’s boiled, you can choose from the various options (different teas, which they showed, coffee and hot chocolate).
They also showed the mold. They were allergenic mold piles. They cleaned up the ones in the kids’ bedroom. Mold can form if you have the lot challenge on, which can be on any lot, and you need to leave plumbing dirty for it to spawn. The sims seemed to be dazed from the mold.
Note that there is a second lot challenge that is available for regular residential lots ‘maintenance troubles’. This is a default ‘challenge’ for residential rentals (so it’s not available to turn on or off). For the mold piles, you can clean them, destroy them with fire or you can deploy a ‘Mold-B-Gone Bomb for 750 simoleons. The latter gets rid of all the mold, they showed it at the end). Your sim will dress in a bio hazard suit when cleaning/deploying the Mold-B-Gone Bomb, so there doesn’t appear to be an exterminator you hire.
They showed a maintenance event. You can hire someone to look after it (two options, cheap contractor and expensive contractor) or your sim as the landlord can look after it themselves or they can leave the tenant to deal with it. There’s a water leak, haunting event, they mentioned insects too. So, there are different types of maintenance events.
After the maintenance event, they used dev cheats to put down a toxic mold pile (which made me think it takes some time for it to get that bad). They then demonstrated getting rid of the mold with fire (which gave them the fear of fire). They let the fire go for long enough to get rid of the mold pile, and then they put the fire out. They then got rid of the rest using the Mold-B-Gone Bomb. That got rid of the rest of the mold.
Some Early Access Content went live after the walkthrough. This was only Base Game and For Rent and was an early version, so there could be difference from what comes out next week.
Base Game Update:
Bug fixes from Laundry List (see my separate video).
In addition to the noted bug fixes, it seemed like there are some small ‘quality of sim life’ changes coming in the base game update:
Sinks can be assigned as being bathroom, kitchen, or all (see tweet)
You can switch to a different household from live mode (on the apartment or lot).
More swatches for the expensive base game fridge, stove, microwave, and coffee maker so they will match the new appliances and existing ice cream maker/popcorn maker (the latter two require Cool Kitchen or Movie Stuff packs respectively).
Snowy Escape ‘remove shoes’ option coming to base game.
SimGuruNova Tweets re the Pack from After the Gameplay Walkthrough:
A lot more gameplay, it couldn’t all be shown in one short play through as they happen naturally over time (i.e. more time in game was required).
Answer re where landlords can live/how many properties they can own:
Number of secrets:
Blackmailing vs keeping secrets:
Tomarang ‘Truths’ that can be learned from premade Tomarani Sims:
If you have any questions, need troubleshooting help or want to share your own Sims game play with other friendly Simmers please head over to my Facebook group, Sims Sanctuary or my Discord
Here are my written notes about the livestream re the Horse Ranch pack and the base game update (expected to be at 10 am Pacific, Tuesday, July 18, 2023, link to time zone converter for when that will be in your own time zone), information seen afterwards, and the laundry list that came out before the live stream.
My video overview, which will include my thoughts, will follow, link will be added when it’s available.
Note the livestream was prerecorded due to scheduling conflicts, so things shown in the livestream may be different in the game because they are still finalizing the pack. Though apart from an edit at the end to show a child riding a horse, the rest of the ‘stream’ seemed to be recorded in one take.
Horse Create a Sim (‘CAS’):
More than 30 breeds in the game.
Horses can have up to three traits from a choice of eleven traits (aggressive, brave, defiant, energetic, fearful, free spirit, friendly, independent, intelligent, mellow, needy).
Traits can impact how horses interact with sims.
Sim scan develop fears of horses.
Can start as foals (as well as full grown horses) in CAS.
If horses are born in game, they can have special traits that you can only get when born in game.
However, both foals born in game and those created in CAS using the genetics option, will inherit physical attributes from parents.
Similar to cats and dogs, there is a full colour wheel for putting brushes, stamps and stencils on horses. Horses have some unique stamps for blazes or ‘snips’ and some unique stencils.
Including a bow tie stamp (already available for cats and dogs) and star stencils (new for horses)
Horse Accessories:
Two blankets, one hat, one flower crown, a bow and a flower for the tail and leg wraps (‘leg warmers’). Didn’t see the unicorn horn there, but it was shown in the horse CAS tweet The Sims shared later and it was shown in the CAS previously shown on the EA app.
Screenshot originally show in the EA app.
Horses have two outfits. An everyday and a riding outfit (the latter has a variety of tack (horse equipment), including a saddle and bridle and a blanket or saddle pad plus reins. It’s mostly Western gear but there is some English gear). Horses will automatically change into the riding outfit when they are being ridden.
Link to my video on the CAS / Build/Buy Items shown in the EA app. AS of July 15, 2023, they are no longer shown, though they will come back at release at the latest as they always show the items under the pack view on the main menu.
Sims Create a Sim:
I don’t think everything was shown.
Chaps aren’t an accessory they are on some bottoms.
A lot of outfits have both a ‘clean’ look and a ‘dirty’ look.
Kids: Two girl tops and two bottoms.,
Toddler: one top and one bottom (chaps)
Infants: very cute horsie onesie
Three moustaches
Accessories – wild rags (oversized bandannas). There are two different styles. Found under necklaces. Note there may be clipping with some things, but they left it to work with whatever you want.
6 new male hairstyles
3 new base game native American hairstyles (mentioned the collab with Native American consultant Stacey Parshall Jensen).
Two New Sim Traits:
Rancher (under lifestyle): These sims excel at ranch life and take pride in their work. They enjoy ranch chores and caring for their livestock.
Horse Lover (under social): These sims share a strong bond with Horses. They have an easier time socializing with and caring for Horses than other Sims.
Two New Sim Aspirations:
Champion rider under Fitness
Nectar aspiration under Food
They didn’t show any details on these aspirations.
World of Chestnut Ridge Overview:
13 lots in three neighbourhoods. One empty lot (so three by each GC (ChrissieYT, Doctor Ashley, Ninnster & Simproved) plus one empty)
One neighbourhood had three lots, the other two have five each.
Lot sizes per tweet by Matthew J. Fahey, Principal Designer at EA for the Sims.
Note they started in the Riders’ Glen Ranches’ Neighbourhood, which has five lots:
one empty 64×64 residential lot
two residential lots have premade sims on them (40×30 and 30×20)
the other two residential lots have homes built on them (30×30 and 30×20)
Need to befriend horses, which was already shared in the Behind the Sims livestream and the gameplay trailer.
Skill: horse riding skill. In the beginning you can walk and trot, but eventually you can sit a canter.
Community board: Each neighbourhood has one and you can place one on any lot from build mode, though most of the options are also on your sim’s phone.
Prairie grass: grows in the neighbourhood. Horses will graze on it; you can harvest it by hand and search on it (it’s like a ‘loot box’). Can hand feed horses or stock your feeder with it.
The prairie grass is a new lot challenge and grass will spread (I’m glad it’s a challenge since those aren’t limited)
You can also pay to load feeder vs using what you’ve collected.
Showed horse stalls with ‘beds’: two different types plus different colour variations (you can assign beds to horses).
Horses both eat and drink water, so some basics needed for looking after them are horse beds, a feeder and a waterer.
If you don’t want to spend a lot of time looking after the horses, you can hire a ranch hand (can do from phone in addition to on the community board).
Note the ranch hands are scheduled to work everyday from 7 am to 7 pm, however, when the SimGuru’s returned back to their sims’ ranch around midnight, the ranch hand was still there.
Ranch hands can help with livestock care (not sure if that includes Cottage Living animals, hopefully it does), take care of plants and fix things that are busted.
There’s a box to put manure in so you can use it later as fertilizer.
Different qualities of poop. The better you look after your horse, the better quality the poop is, i.e., better the fertilizer is.
You can see the horses’ needs (seems to be when you hover over them?).
They showed the early purchase items, but also a few things in the pack.
New BBQ and new recipes: Three sisters chili (base game Native American dish) plus two more (Bison stew & Wild Nut Soup)
Plus Pan de campo (classic Cowboy dish) – they will bring that as a welcome wagon food vs the fruit cake.
Two new social events:
Ranch Gathering (can grill, dance, drink, socialize with neighbours)
Ranch Animal Day (focus more on four-legged friend and showing them off to your friends)
Plus, new ‘bedroll’ (i.e. sleeping bag from Growing Together).
They hit the trail to see Chestnut Ridge’s neighbourhoods.
Galloping Gulch Neighbourhood & Gameplay There:
There are only three lots in this neighbourhood. One is lived in, one is not lived in and one is a rental lot.
I noticed they landed in on their horses (But they seem to get on them before they left)
Montana style neighbourhood, with canyons
Perfect spot if you want to be away from civilization.
Big map for horses to travel around.
There’s waterfalls and stone bridges.
If you have seasons, weather will be more arid. However, if there is a storm, horses can get spooked.
Lots of D&D influence. Dreadhorse caverns (when you explore it there are good written stories, surprises, and rewards). Seems like it is similar to the caves in Island Living and Snowy Escape.
Lots of winding bends. Lots of story telling to discover, big vistas to enjoy. There’s something to touch around every corner to make it more interesting to explore. (Paraphrasing their words)
Can do jumping/barrel racing. Fun location for riding.
Also, lots of rest spots
Great fishing spots
Pee/woohoo bushes, plus the occasional outhouse.
Waterfalls, sims can swim in water under them. No mention of horses being able to swim.
New Appaloosa Neighbourhood & Gameplay There:
This neighbourhood has a ‘small western town’ feel to it and has five lots:
The Rusty Horseshoe is a great stop (nightclub?)
Oak Barrel Nectar bar
Small empty starter home (20×20 lot)
Home for Premade Sims
Dukes Hall (which is 40×30 park/national park lot across from the Equestrian Center)
The Equestrian Center is in the neighbourhood space, and it closes at 7 pm.
There are four competitions (Jumping, Barrel Racing, Endurance Riding and Western Pleasure Riding (art of how chill your horse can be while you are riding)). You can earn simoleons (big bucks? and plaques) from competitions and you can advance to more advanced competitions.
They gave a preliminary look at the painted ceilings which are coming in the free base game update.
You can ride your horses into the dance hall (Rusty Horseshoe).
Cowpoke dance shown.
Clothing store where your sims can choose and change outfits, general store (These are in the public space vs being lots but aren’t open all the time).
General store, closes at 10 pm (was closed when they were there).
Mini Goats and Mini Sheep:
Phone can be used to buy mini goats and sheep, no limit on how many you can buy. (Possibly computer?)
Mini animals: ‘black sheep – so expensive, wonder why?’ was what was said (costs 2000 simoleons). The others cost different amounts (150, 200 and 400 simoleons).
Sheep will provide simoleons when you shave them.
Goats will give milk.
If you have cottage living, feeds into that system (wool and milk).
They eat weeds and bugs in the garden. They can roam all over your ranch and they are very cute!
Sims can count sheep when they are trying to go to sleep (I had wondered if that was trailer magic!).
Nectar Making:
Found under activities.
This is a skill (the sim with more skill was level 5, wondering if that’s the max level, similar to juice fizzing)
Taps into everything you can grow, including trash nectar.
Occult sims each have a special nectar they can make (i.e. with the plants from those packs?).
Stackable nectar rack. If you put your bottles in the rack, they will stack up too. Aging nectar increases it’s value.
Once you crack a bottle it will only last a few days, so I expect it lasts indefinitely if it’s unopened. You get multiple servings from a bottle.
You can drink nectar from a glass or from the bottle.
Build/Buy:
Two different ranch signs that can be customized with different things. Animal iron work signs (horses, sheep, goats and cowplants and ones that match Cottage Living (cow, llama, and chicken) that you can add. Some signs can be unlocked.
Free cam mode coming to build mode in base game update.
Ceilings. Pretty much any floor tile can be used for the ceiling. They showed the icon you use to access the ceiling.
Plus, new flooring/ceiling from the pack. Night sky (not the top swatch).
Also, coming in the free base game update – more colour variants in floor tiles.
New door for base game with ‘ranchy patterns’
Horses can go through doors, but only some doors are available when a sim is riding a horse (they are labelled ‘mounted horse mountable’). The mounted horse rideable doors are available on medium and tall walls.
They cut to the next morning where they showed off child getting on and riding a horse.
No indication given on how long the gallery maintenance will take.
New Console Control Feedback Thread
The May 30 update brought more changes to console controls and EA has closed the old thread and created a new one. From what I’m seeing on the new changes, is negative.
Link to new thread I recommend going over there to comment with your feedback. Hopefully they are quicker to respond this time then they were last time.
New Mod to Bring Back Relationship Gain When Taking Photos:
If you want to share your own Sims play with other friendly simmers, have any questions, or need troubleshooting help please head over to my Facebook group, Sims Sanctuary or my Discord
If you have any questions, need troubleshooting help or want to share your own Sims game play with other friendly Simmers please head over to my Facebook group, Sims Sanctuary or my Discord
Links for bugs mentioned in my video, and if available mods to fix the issues and/or Crinrict reports summarizing the issue:
GRO = Growing Together
BG = Base Game
This list is split into two types, ‘bigger bugs’ that have a bigger effect on game play (10 in that section) and minor bugs that are more of a nuisance and have a smaller impact on game play (6 in that section).
Note that if you are using mods and cc and are experiencing issues, make sure you test in a mods/cc free save as they may be causing problems, even if you’ve updated. Please check either Luth’s mod tracking list on the Sims 4 forums or Scarlett’s mod tracking list.
Note some issues have been fixed as of April 26, 2023 which is noted under the individual points.
Initially it was thought that this was tied to Laundry Day and that disabling the LD stuff pack would help. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, so the cause seems to be unknown. If you’ve experienced this, here is some information that EA would like (screenshot from bug report):
3.Parents need to be introduced to infant (BG): Note the issue with this is the parent/caregiver won’t be able to look after the infant until they are introduced. You can hire a nanny to introduce your sim to the infant, or if someone else on the lot is known to the infant, have them do the introduction. If you have MCCC you can use the ‘set relationship levels’ and then choose friends (lower level may work, but that was the option I choose) and your parent will then have all the options to look after the infant. It was initially thought to be tied to the beloved trait, and that may be one cause, but I’ve had it happen with sims who don’t have the beloved trait.
4.Sims lose milestones, including infants (GRO): Note one issue with this as it pertains to infants, is that they don’t seem to be able to get the milestones again and losing them can reset their progress and then they can’t progress any further. Some people found it was triggered by rotational play, others by sending the infants to the grandparents and others just by travelling. Not sure if just going into manage worlds might cause an issue.
5.Sims have all the same name/CAS corruption(GRO + Other): Note that there is a similar existing bug, but it can also be caused by GRO if you try to change traits after sims have learned extra self discovery traits. i.e. either by using the cas.fulleditcheat or if you download a sim from the gallery with extra traits learned through self discovery. See Crinrict’s report for more information.
Second key bit of advice from Crin's post: THIS ERROR CAN SPREAD to other households and even other Saves! If you see this error in CAS with the names or traits, "close your game completely without saving if you run into the error and reload the game." https://t.co/OGy4CqXLMD
6.Teens and Children change appearance due to loose tooth (GRO). The ability to lose a tooth has been temporarily disabled for PC/Mac (Mar 24/23 update) and console will hopefully get the same update shortly while EA works on a solution to this problem. Since the issue is not actually fixed, the bug reports are still open.
7.Pregnancy not Progressing & Relationship Telemetry Hooks Last Exceptions (BG): Neither of these are happening to everyone, but it is an issue for some people. For the never ending pregnancy, some have found that switching to another household has allowed the pregnancy to progress, but that doesn’t seem to be working for everyone, or possibly even many people. There is a bug fix mod for both these issues, which may be related. Fixed in April 18, 2023 game update.
10.Issues with the Mountain Climbing Excursion: The new issue is that the mountain climbing excursion is not progressing. There was an old issue where there was no check mark to select the members. There’s a work around for the latter. You currently need bug fix mod for the excursion not progressing, there is no other work around. Fixed in April 18, 2023 game update.
1.Items Removed pop-up appears when no items removed (BG): This is an older bug, but seems more common since the infant update. You get a message that items from unowned content have been removed but nothing appears to be removed from your build/lot.
Here is where the lots are in San Sequoia (sims can’t walk on the grassy area around these two lots, they can walk on the road and a dirt path that doesn’t show in this map view)
General Advice:
⚠️ Just a general piece of advice I saw Turbodriver give on September 21, 2022 is that if you are experiencing issues with saving, it’s best to save the game in gameplay (i.e. from live mode) versus from manage worlds. ⚠️This can help prevent some issues with corrupting saves. So I recommend if you are editing your world from manage worlds, go into your household/a household and then save the game. While this refers to the issue happening in modded saves, I have seen people have a problem even in unmodded saves.
Maple Simmer 