If you bought a Bundle of The Sims 4 packs and need quicker access to download them, the icons on the Main Menu will now take you to the download section of the PlayStation Store. During the initial loading of The Sims 4 there was a black void that seemed to last forever.

The Sims 4is getting three big additions in as many months, developer Electronic Arts just announced. The first, launching today, brings ghost Sims back into the mix. Next month, the game will get swimming pools. And come December, Sims will get some new careers. All will be free for Sims 4 players.

There's some other stuff coming to The Sims 4 before the year is out as well. Alongside the ghosts that are arriving today, for instance, EA is also adding a set of Star Wars-themed costumes for the Halloween season and several new eye colors for Sims. EA is also making a handful of new cheats available. Sims 4 players can get the new stuff today by simply downloading the latest patch for the game through Origin. As with the ghosts, all this other stuff is free if you already own The Sims 4.

EA didn't give an exact date for either of the next two additions, nor did they specify what additional careers will be added in the December update. And there's still no word on whether The Sims 4 will be getting new toddlers at some point in the future. As for the burning question of a Mac version of The Sims 4, all they had to say was: 'We know our players on Mac are looking to hear more. We are working on it. When we have more to share, we'll bring the news to you right here.'

• C: Users (name) Documents Electronic Arts The Sims 4 tray) Script file formats: Please remember any script files/mods must NOT be unzipped and placed as it is (Zipped, 7zip, WinRAR, Etc.) but everything else should be.
• Pets / Sims 4 Downloads. This lets you use our service free of all ads and unlocks access to our popular Download Basket and Quick Download features.

Ghosts are the most important addition arriving today by far. Much like toddlers and swimming pools, their absence in the latest installment left many fans of the series upset and disappointed.

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I spoke to Sims 4 executive producer Rachel Franklin over the phone yesterday about the new update, and she emphasized that much like the new Sims themselves, the ghosts in The Sims 4 will have a wider range of abilities than the ones in previous installments. They can multitask the same way they did when they were alive, and they'll be subject to all of the same emotional whims as well. The main difference here is that when a ghost Sim gets into a particular mood, their entire character lights up with a particular color—red for angry, pink for flirty, and so forth. And yes, 'flirty' means that ghost Sims can pursue romances with other Sims living or dead, so you'll be able to live out your Patrick Swayze fantasies anew.

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What stood out to me in Franklin's description is the fact that ghost Sims carry over certain traits depending on the way they died. If a Sim went up in flames, for instance, he or she will try to start some new fires in the afterlife. So be careful not to upset these ghosts—unless you're looking to make some more, that is, which is totally valid as well. A Sim that died from a particular emotion (anger, embarrassment, and hysteria are the three deadly ones in The Sims 4 so far), meanwhile, will radiate that emotion and affect the living Sims around them.

Here's a quick guide that Franklin provided for how to reintroduce ghost Sims to your household and get started with the afterlife:

• When a Sim dies, they become a non-playable ghost.
• Use the 'Invite to Household' interaction to make a ghost into fully playable member of your household!
• Ghosts can have relationships, get married, woohoo, hold jobs, build aspirations, earn traits, or just be!
• Ghosts have a unique post life experience based upon how they died…
• Sims that died by hunger seek to satisfy their hunger in the afterlife.
• Sims that died by overexertion and old age find they prefer to take it easy in the afterlife.
• Sims that died by fire have a new interaction available to them...my advice, try and not make them angry.
• Sims that died by an emotional death can radiate their emotion onto other Sims.
• Sims that died by electrocution, when angry, have a unique interaction to break electronic devices. They also seem to really enjoy the 'Hand Buzzer' social.
• Sims that died by Cowplant have the desire to harm and help the plant world. They can cause plants to die when in a negative emotion, but will care for plants when in a positive emotion.
• Ghosts can possess objects, and they can repair broken objects when possessed
• Ghosts have new interactions available to them, such as 'Ghost Scare,' 'Pass Through,' and 'Talk About Death.'
• Level 10 Gourmet cooks have a new recipe 'Ambrosia', which can be used to bring a Ghost to life (or give a Sim renewed life)!
• There is a new gardening flower type, the Deathflower, which can be used by a Sim to save themselves or another when visited by the Reaper!

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Despite their otherworldly abilities, ghost Sims are still subjected to the same household limitations as living ones. That means you can have a maximum of eight playable Sims in a particular household. Nonplayable ghosts, meanwhile, go about their business the same way that living NPCs do once they come out of the tombstone at night. Franklin noted that it's technically possible, therefore, to create a world in The Sims 4 filled entirely with ghosts. Killing all of them might be tricky, though. So if you're anything like me and want to get started on a post-apocalyptic Sims wasteland, check out our guide on how to kill in The Sims 4.

UPDATE (1:11 pm): And the update is now officially live and available to download. As with all Sims 4 patches, it should begin downloading and updating automatically once you launch Origin before beginning the game proper. I also put in an extra line above to respond to questions in the comments about a possible Mac version of The Sims 4.

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To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.

We’re no longer hosting The Sims 4 patch notes on EA Help. To find them, head to ea.com, AHQ, or The Sims Forums.

Sims 4 Update Patch

Update: 01/31/2019 – v1.13

Hello Simmers!

Happy New Year! What do you mean that was over a month ago? How is it February already? Anyway, we are on track to keep our New Year's resolutions on track with this update that kicks off 2019 with new features for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Simmers along with even more content coming, like Get Famous.

What’s New?

• Ever wanted to create your own secret subterranean base or mountain top lair? No? Just us? Well, whatever you chose to do you can do it with the new terrain manipulation tools. To start having greater control of your builds simply: Select Build > Terrain Tools then select the shovel icon and get landscaping.
• Sometimes I sit back and think what it must be like being a Sim living in a Sims’ world. Then we added first person view into The Sims 4 and now I can see everything my humanoid Sims see, from their perspective. Simply select your preferred Sim and press and hold R3 (PlayStation 4) / RS (Xbox One) for a second and you’ll see the world through your Sims’ eyes. Press and hold again to return to the normal view of the world.
• Your Sim can start their career as a Style Influencer. Starting out as an observer and reporter of currents trends, you’ll work your way up to defining what all the coolest Sims are wearing.
• Millie Bobby Brown is visiting The Sims 4 and is available in My Library to add to your Worlds.
• Baby Ariel hoodie, sweatshirt and crop top clothing options are ready to attire your Sims in CAS.
• We have a whole new tutorial system which should help new Simmers , and perhaps even veteran Simmers, get to grips with the game, the controls and features of The Sims 4 that you might not have known about.
• There is a whole lot of celebration going on in the Holiday Celebration Pack with new objects, decorations, clothing and a Yeti, or if you opt for it in a different color scheme, a Bigfoot. You can quickly find all the new Holiday Pack items by using the filter in the sort options.
• If you don’t feel like celebrating just yet, there are new hair styles, clothing items and even new recipes for your Sims to cook.
• When someone asks you what you do for a living, do you tell them the truth or do you come up with something more exotic like “Social Media Influencer”? If you can’t bring yourself to explain, fear not as you can now name your own career. Simply use your Sim’s phone to Register with the Ministry of Labor, and add the job title and description to whatever suits your lifestyle.
• Lin-Z, The Sims’ very own Smart Speaker. Listen to music, play trivia, order a pizza and control your lights with this new gadget to name a few of the Features of the Future!.
• There is a new “Show Whims” option that you can find in the Game Options menu under Gameplay. Show or hide your Sims’ whims at your whim.
• The Simology Panel has had an overhaul. Now you can expand and collapse sections of the panel to show the information that is the most important to you while hiding everything else until you need it.
• The Relationship Panel has a new filter so not only can you can see who are your real friends and family but you can filter your relationships to show who are your Coworkers.
• MORE community created creations, including some from our very own SimGurus, have been added into My Library for you to enjoy. As SimGuruJill’s CletusBobs would say, Wooooo Dawggy!!!

General Issues

• When you take the hammer to your Lot you probably don’t always want to remove individual objects one at a time. Select and drag will now allow you to remove larger areas of objects in one go. Of course, you can still remove one at a time, if you prefer.
• Collecting things is always fun and did you know, The Sims 4 has lots of Collections to complete? For example, you can not only collect all ten Sugar Skulls, you can show them off with pride in their own display case.
• Gardeners were very particular about when they would come and tend your garden, usually when your plants were almost dead. Now, you can hire a gardener if you have plants on your lot.
• Randomly generated neighborhood Sims have expanded their tastes in clothing and won’t limit their choices to just City Living and Vampires.
• Some Sims just aren’t fans of the sunshine and would rather live underground, if they could. Well two levels doesn’t leave a lot of room to get away from the world, how about FOUR levels deep? You got it.
• Children who need help from another Sim to spray a monster under their bed could previously only select from Adult aged Sims. They can now select from Sims of other ages as well.
• Foundations on buildings were previously lit upside down. Now they’re lit right-side up!

Get to Work

• Retail counters that become dirty can now be cleaned once again.
• Doctors will no longer be assigned a nurse’s outfit as their work clothes when reaching level 7 of their career.
• As a detective, attempting to fingerprint a criminal that’s inside a jail cell will no longer cause the detective to idle in place.
• Male Sims wearing steel toed boots paired with a skirt (I don’t understand the world of fashion) would previously have their legs disappear.
• Scolding a Sim for inappropriate behavior while on an owned retail lot will no longer cause your own Sim to become uninvited and unable to access the building’s interior on their retail lot.
• The “Lice Cold Retail Freezer”, and the “Cat Loves Food Inc. Professional Grade Warming Rack” will once again update their appearance when food is placed inside them.

Get Together

• Baristas will now leave the Cafe lot once their work shift is over.

City Living

• Haggling over prices with vendors at stalls will now result in the correct price being displayed that the household will actually be charged.
• Holiday decorations (requires The Sims 4 Seasons) that can’t be removed will no longer appear on apartment balconies.
• Tricksy little gnomes will no longer spawn outside your apartment unit during the Holiday Gnomes tradition (requires The Sims 4 Seasons).
• Made improvements to simulation lag in certain San Myshuno neighborhoods.
• Plants at festivals will grow harvestables that are ripe for picking once again.

Cats & Dogs

• Cats do as they please, they shouldn’t ever get stuck on the top of surfaces if you lecture them about jumping on surfaces. Doesn’t mean they won’t jump on surfaces when you aren’t looking though.
• You want a particular color of whiskers on your cat? So be it, your cats will retain the whiskers color you assign to them in Create-a-Sim.
• Elbows should only bend in certain, expected, ways regardless of what T-Shirt you are wearing.

Seasons

• Sims will no longer have difficulty decorating the Ever Delightful Evergreen Holiday Tree when it’s placed adjacent to certain wall decorations.
• Sims may now WooHoo in leaf piles that build up outside of a lot.
• When raining, NPCs will now correctly put their umbrellas away when going indoors on venues.
• Father Winter will no longer choose to move into a home in your town.
• Each color of the “Umbri Umbrella Rack” now costs the same amount of simoleons to purchase.
• Gnomes will no longer break unbreakable objects.

Outdoor Retreat

• When using Manage Worlds to edit a lot in a destination world, the Build Mode catalog will no longer show debug items without using a cheat.

Dine Out

• Repairmen that are called to restaurants will now properly fix any broken objects on the lot.
• The Jazz radio station is now available on all stereos.

Vampires

• Vampires will no longer attempt to “break in” to venues, which was previously preventing players from traveling or saving their game during the break in.
• Vampires who started burning in the sunlight while traveling away from home will no longer continue to burn when returning home and retreating inside.
• Adjusting a Vampire’s Dark Form can no longer occasionally cause issues with the Sim’s other outfits.
• Vampires will no longer automatically help themselves to a plate of food after cooking a Family or Party sized meal.

Parenthood

• German and Polish Simmers, we have good news. You can now use the Volunteer option in your Sims’ phone and give Sim time to the cause that appeals to you the most.
• The low hanging “Mason Multi-Jar Lighting” will no longer cause Sims to route fail when placed in rooms using medium height walls.

Jungle Adventure

Sims 4 Ghost Patch Download Free

• Sims will no longer receive invites to the bar in Selvadorada, which would previously leave them stranded in the jungle.
• Only one protective item will now be consumed at a time when it’s used to save a Sim from various animal attacks while exploring the jungle of Selvadorada.
• The Latin Music radio station is now available to select on cheaper stereos.
• The Cantina venue in Selvadorada will continue playing festive Latin music, even if your Sim chooses to not pay their household bills on time.
• Sims will no longer route fail when attempting to unpack their sack lunch while exploring the hidden areas of Selvadorada.
• The explorer shirt will no longer cause oddly colored patches of skin to appear on the back of Sims’ necks.
• Tooltips on relics should now correctly appear after a Sim has learned about the relic’s curse or blessing.
• The value of a relic that has a crystal inserted into it will now display properly in the relic’s tooltip to include the value of the crystal.
• We tightened up the graphics on the Selvadorada map icon.

Kids Room Stuff

• Songs on the Tween Pop radio station are now labeled with the correct artist and song title.

PlayStation 4

• We found that bloom effects on the PlayStation 4 weren’t working as intended, now they do... Blooming lovely!

I expect you probably want to go and try out those new features so it’s time to close this out and let you dig in.

-SimGuruLegacy

Hello Simmers!

‘Tis the Seasons to be jolly, almost! As we approach the end of the year, we looked at some of the more requested features from console Simmers to bring to this update. As well as feature requests, we focused on stability improvements and prepare your Sims for one of the most requested packs. Let’s jump in to what’s new.

What’s New?

• The Main Menu is important - you can start a new game, resume an existing game, see what packs you have, check the control scheme and… that's about it. Turns out that you wanted to do more, so how about switching which pack background you see? While on the Main Menu simply press Left or Right on the Right Stick to cycle through the backgrounds from The Sims 4 game and some of the packs you have installed. Best thing, your preferred background will be there the next time you return to the Main Menu.
• To Save or not to Save? That is the question! For some Simmers, 5 saves was not enough so we have bumped that up to a 10 save capacity plus your Autosave.

General Issues

• Some of the tutorials contained images that were inexplicably different sizes; we did a pass and now they are perfectly aligned.
• Autosaves should always be represented by a portrait of your Household, but there were some opportunities for it to be blank. We have refocused our cameras and readied the photographer to generate accurate Household images for your save games.
• Glass Roofs weren’t quite as glass as we would have liked with sunlight not reacting as we would have hoped. With a bit of polish, the glass lets the light shine through just like you would expect.
• Oakenstead and Cypress Terrace in Willow Creek are some of the largest lots. They aren’t so big that daylight should act differently compared to the rest of Willow Creek.
• Building takes skill and a creative eye. What it doesn’t need is a camera that appears to have a mind of its own. Now the build camera will stay on the floor you are working on, it is up to you when you want to move up and down floors.
• The Camera Speed setting seemed to have its own speed in mind and it wasn’t necessarily the one you wanted.
• Sometimes you zoom in on your Sims to check out what they are up to, but sometimes you couldn’t zoom back out. Now you can!
• Live dragging objects makes moving things around a lot easier. Being able to Live Drag objects into a Sims’ inventory takes that a step further.
• We addressed an issue which saw performance levels drop in some Lots and only recover if you travelled to a different Lot.
• 'Change Personality Traits...' panel for the Re-Traiting Potion can be backed out of, if you change your mind about changing your personality traits that is.
• When creating your Sim, the profile icon had an distracting side effect as it updated to your changes. The profile icon will instead update when you have finished making adjustments and de-selected the active slider.
• More community creations have been added into My Library.
• We have dealt with a number of nasty issues that led to some stability issues.

Get to Work

• A good detective follows the clues and solves the mysteries. Previously it was difficult and even impossible to investigate when you arrived on the scene. We polished the magnifying glass and isolated the witnesses so now you can investigate and solve your way to being the best detective in town.
• Part of solving a crime is to talk with witnesses. While we can’t guarantee the answers you get will help you solve the case, the “Chat with Civilians” lets you talk with the Sims without having to repeat yourself a second time.

Get Together

• While in Club Manager and accessing the Club Perks, the controls sometimes jumped around like a Sim on the dance floor. That made it difficult to select your options. Things are a lower tempo now, except the music beats.

Cats & Dogs

• Everyone loves pictures of their Cats & Dogs but that doesn’t mean the camera should magically gain another frame. Now you get 5 photographs per photography session and no more, so pick your shots wisely.

Vampires

• Vampires may not be able to see their own reflections, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be allowed to remove facial features you added and changed your mind about. Eye Sockets/Brows/Mouths/Eye details can all be removed by selecting them again in CAS.

PlayStation 4

• Simmers are creative by nature, so it came as little surprise that you needed more space to save your creations into My Library. There is now significantly more room to save additional Lots, Rooms and Households without compromising on what to keep.
• The Sims is a colorful world, and if you tilted the camera just so, you got even more color thanks to the multi-colored walkways that would appear. We toned down the color scheme, so now the walkways shouldn’t look like a rainbow fell onto the ground anymore.
• If you bought a Bundle of The Sims 4 packs and need quicker access to download them, the icons on the Main Menu will now take you to the download section of the PlayStation Store.

Xbox One

• During the initial loading of The Sims 4 there was a black void that seemed to last forever. While it is part of the loading sequence, it should be a lot shorter, meaning less time wondering whether your TV is still turned on.
• If you prefer to buy your packs in bundles, you may have noticed that the pack icon on the Main Menu incorrectly informed you that you didn’t own the pack. The pack icons should now accurately reflect whether you own the content or not regardless of how you prefer to shop.
• If you purchased a Bundle of The Sims 4 packs and hadn’t installed them, the Main Menu icons will now correctly reflect the packs you own.
• Xbox One X owners may have noticed some lower than expected shadow detail cast by Glass Roofs while zooming out. This has been rectified so the shadow detail is more detailed at all zoom levels.
• Additional texture quality improvements have been made to allow Xbox One X owners to get more from their hardware.

As always, we appreciate the feedback and do read all the comments so be sure to let us know what you think of the changes once you have had a chance to try them out.

- SimGuruLegacy