The Sims 4 Cottage Living is out! You can now explore Henford-on-Bagley, meet the animals, run some errands for the villagers, and try your hand at canning.
Unfortunately, this expansion pack also brings a series of glitches and bugs of its own. Here’s a list of the most frequently reported issues just a few hours after the official release.
List of Sims 4 Cottage Living bugs and glitches
Cottage Living pre-orders won’t download
Many users can’t download and install the expansion pack. But we may have a few ideas on how to fix this issue.
This situation is even more frustrating if you pre-ordered the game but it’s not there. EA has already acknowledged the problem and they’re working on a permanent fix.
Hey Simmers 👋 Purchase and preorder issues are being resolved. If you are still experiencing download problems or missing Gnome on the Go bonus content, please submit a ticket to https://t.co/IzX6MLNno0 and include as many details as possible for our team to investigate further.
— The Sims (@TheSims) July 23, 2021
It seems that EA forgot to charge you the cost of the pre-ordered game. Try canceling the pre-order and buying the expansion pack again. The game should download without any problems.
As a quick reminder, the gifts are for everyone who bought the DLC before the 2nd of September.
Contact EA for further help.
Houses have no doors
Many gamers complained none of the houses have any doors. Unfortunately, it seems you can’t place any either. When you try to add a door, the game simply shows you an error that says Script call failed”.
This issue is usually caused by outdated versions of Basemental mods. Update your mods and check if the issue is gone.
Simple Living Lot Challenge has no effect
The Simple Living challenge doesn’t change anything in the game.
Add the Simple Living Lot Challenge to a community lot, add a fridge or some other cooking item if there isn’t one already, and try to cook. You’ll see that nothing has changed despite the challenge.
There’s no fish in the pond
The game lets you build really nice ponds. However, when users try to place the Fishing sign, the game says there’s no fish in the water.
My sim stocked several ponds with fish, clicking the fishing sign, but I can’t see any fish in the water.
Make sure the fishing sign is deep enough. Try moving it to a deeper spot in the pond and check if you can stock and fish. Thanks for the tip @Pandasaurus!
Other bugs
- The pub owner is not manning the bar.
- Some players are having lots of lag and stuttering in full screen, and the game may become unresponsive for a few seconds. The good news is that it doesn’t crash.
- Some gamers can’t complete the errand for Kim Goldbloom. Namely, they can’t deliver the cheese and beef Wellington.
- Cottagecore audio is too loud and scratchy. To fix the problem, you can disable background music and audio.
- Incorrect gender tag on pants and hairstyles. Some pairs of pants and hairstyle options are tagged for the wrong gender.
- The rabbits in Cordelia’s Secret Cottage sometimes get stuck, and there are no interactions available with the animals. Restarting the game doesn’t help.
- Some gamers can’t buy cows, seeds, or chickens. That’s really annoying because you can’t plant seeds, grow your own crops, or add eggs and milk to your inventory.
- Other gamers complained their Sims won’t cook anything. Check if there’s something left in the oven, or lock your Sim in the kitchen.
- Sometimes, animal sheds won’t complete the clean action. As a result, the game automatically removes your cow or llama from the shed as not cared for.
- Possible workaround: Ensure all your animals’ needs are in the green, then try and clean them. Thanks for the tip @Anya!
- If your chickens are dirty and have clouds of stink around them, discuss preening with them. Additionally, travel to a different area after cleaning the coop. For more information, see Sims 4 Cottage Living: How to clean your chickens.
Have you encountered these bugs as well? Did you also experience other issues? Let me know in the comments below.
References:
Yup, I cannot stock the pond either. BUMMER
I was having the same issue, but found that I didn’t have the fishing sign deep enough. Once I moved it to a deeper spot in my pond I was able to stock and fish.
Excellent tip! I’ve updated the article. Thanks Pandasaurus!
Any Produce like eggs and meat and such will break retail locations. The Lice Cold Freezer breaks and will cause no customers to spawn as long as cottage living produce is inside. Cottage Living produce must be sold using a shelf, table, the floor, or the bakery/deli showcases
Thanks for mentioning this. I constructed my pond with bb.moveobjects enabled and was able to stock it but didn’t seem to be able to fish in it. Each time I hovered over the greyed out “fish” option on the pond, it kept suggesting that I buy the fishing sign I already had. After this, I tried moving the sign around after loading back into the game before having bb.moveobjects turned on, and the sign was behaving like it was obstructed where it was placed. After moving it further into the pond, and in a non-obstructed area, I was able to fish with no problems! I’m still not certain that bb.moveobjects was a factor, but something to try for those still experiencing the issue, maybe?
I have the animal shed on my lot, but I cannot purchase a cow or llama. How can I fix this?!
Same, I’m so sad.
My sims won’t cook together i don’t know if it’s because I’m trying with someone out of my household but that shouldn’t be a problem in The first place. It’s annoying. The sim waits for them and then they just start cooking normally and RHE other person just stands there or just doesn’t do the interaction
Can’t buy cows, seeds, or chickens.
Took me days to get the download even though it said I already had the content. Llama and cow goes to a new home even though fed, cleaned and shed cleaned. Sims get stuck constantly and won’t move on. Even after exiting game and going back in, which is annoying itself because game takes so long to load. This is so buggy, they should give people a partial refund.
Anybody else seeing the bug where plants revert to previous growth stages having gone into overdrive? I’m also having a bug where selling foraged plants to the creature keeper doesn’t remove them from my son’s inventory, which essentially amounts to an unlimited money cheat on my R2R cottage sim. It’s super obnoxious–but since my plants keep reverting to dirt piles every night (even when under cover), I guess that’s the only way for me to make money. I wish they would play test these packs with ALL of the other packs installed so they know what pack interactions are going to cause the game to break. I was really looking forward to this pack, but it’s not fun when it doesn’t work right!!
“My plants keep reverting to dirt piles every night”, I think this is a known glitch. Many players complained about similar issues in recent months. I guess the devs were to busy working on Cottage Living to roll out a hotfix for this bug.
I am having the same issue! Help!!!
I’m having the same issue
I tried to report it to EA but the site wouldn’t even work
I entered a chicken and an egg in the fair but when it ended they never returned to my inventory!
Check Your Household Inventory 🙂
Get a script error when placing sinks even base game sinks.
My chickens were dirty and I couldnt clean them or the coop.. the coop says it is clean so I use a cheat the make the coop dirty then clean it a d my chickens were still dirty. They also didnt go in or out of the coop without me telling them
Hi Destiny,
Try discussing preening with your chickens. Travel to a different area after cleaning the coop. You can find more details in this new guide.
Hey i seem to not be able to intract with fridges and stuff i click it and nothen pops up and i cant clean out fridge or put stuff in it
Uninstall your mods and repair the game. Or sell your fridge and buy a new one. Check if the issue persists. The bad news is that many players have complained about similar issues recently. My guess is the fridge is glitched. I hope EA releases a hotfix soon.
Check your household inventory, that’s where mine was ❤️
Same but eventually I found mine… dont remember where but not the normal inventory
I can’t stock the pond too. But also my plants keep dying constantly even when I’m tending them every day (and one of them was even perfect quality). Eventually I gave in and hired a professional gardener
but even then, they still kept dying so it’s definitely a bug.
The annoying pond bug is affecting many gamers. Hopefully, EA will fix it next week.
About your plants, many players have complained about similar problems. By the way, have you tried putting your plants in your household inventory in build mode? You can put them back in the ground after a few seconds.
I play on ps4 not pc so i dont have modes but i tried replaceing it and if i click it it takes a few mins to open like its lagging but ty for advice being partly blind makes it gard to do things myself
Yep, plants die even when tending them. Why bother. Also I play for a couple hours, save and when going back in, game reverts back to previous state.
I can’t go to work. When clicking on the computer to find job the action just doesn’t happen or appear. I have to do step by step to get them to the computer. I was then able to choose a job. Interior design select job would not work, the button does nothing.
I can, but when work like be an actress or an interior designer, i just can’t choose the job that it should be there like the agency for the actress, and the house for the interior designer. What an annoying things
I have this exact problem
I preordered Country Living and cannot download. There are two instances of CL in my Origin and one has the download link but when I click, nothing happens. Also, Origin shows that I purchased CL but I have not been charged for it.
I called the help line, they are aware of this. call them they will reset it for you and you will buy it again.
I have troubles with buying furniture with build mode, even though I have more than 180k, it still saids insufficient fund.
Live mode is glitching. It wont show my household and has a messed up screen. I have removed all of my mods and its still the same.. I need some help
Henford-on-Bagly won’t even open for me. It’s just a blank screen.
I have this issue also. I really hope they fix this. I can get all the stuff from build/buy, but cannot get into the new world at all, goes white screen for me too.
Do you have mods? I had this same issue, but I was able to fix it by deleting my TwistedMexi mods.
I am very mad right now I just got the new cottage living and I can’t play it.i have a family that im wanting to use but it keeps acting as of I’m moving my family instead of getting them from the gallery. Normally When you get a family from the gallery you get 20k or more depending on how many people you have but instead I am only getting 13k for 4 family members and when I push the play button it still try’s to make me place them I can’t get out of it AND it is saving it EVERYTIME without ME saving it if anyone is having this problem please let me know. So I know I’m not crazy are just being stupid.
I have the chicken coop and the animal shed but no matter how many times I click “purchase animal” (it will even allow me to select which cow or llama I am wanting) the animals never show up. My sim also doesn’t get charged for the purchase.
Similarly to that, I am also experiencing the issue where when I buy seeds, they don’t show up in either one of my sim’s inventories, so my sim cannot plant seeds either.
I am also having an issue with the games UI. I have none of my mods or CC installed and yet all of the icons along the borders of my screen do not match what they’re categorized for. For example, the inventory panel’s icon is a yellow check mark that changes into a calendar when I hover over it.
Finally, a small bug I have also noticed is that when I am filtering my inventory, build/buy, and CAS items, there is a tag with just three dots (like this, “…”) that takes up a significant space in the filter bar and won’t go away no matter how many times I click on it.
Restarting my game has had no affect on these bugs.
Same
same
I have the exact same problems! I don’t know how to fix it. Restarting the game and repairing the game doesn’t fix it either!
same for me…
This is the exact same issue I am having. I cannot purchase animals.
same. i have reset my game multiple times and it won’t work. i hope they fix it soon bc i was so excited for the new update.
Mine is doing all these same things. Is there a fix?
Woah, exact problem to a T! Any fixes yet???
Whenever interacting with the chicken coop my cursor disappears and I can’t move, It can be fixed by leaving the game or going to manage menu but it gets annoying having to do that every time I try to interact with the coop.
*manage worlds*
I’m having the exact same problem on console. Try to interact with chicken coop and then can’t use cursor for anything until I exit to manage world or exit game. So annoying.
Same issue. It wont let me toggle back to my sim either. Makes me not want to even play
It won’t let me place the pond animals in the pond it’s just a fly picture in build mode then nothing shows up in live mode. Also I keep getting glitches where things float and I am unable to delete them or interact with them at all.
I can’t fertilize large crops; trying to interact with chicks freezes sim, Llama and Cow sheds get filthy right after cleaning, some errands in Finchwink do not complete, Build/Buy very laggy, if you have your sim queued to do something and a pet interrupts Sim is stuck in loop have to reset sim
when trading a coe/llama/chicken for meat/ingredients and produce, nothing happens. hte animal disappears but i dont get the produce or meat.
Did you check your after a day or two? Thats were i found my stuff.
Can’t buy seeds or animals normally. Had to cheat them in build mode and when I tried to get chickens into the coop, the screen came up with a pinkish/purplish dot in the middle and froze. Had to completely shut the game down without saving. This happens when I try to stock ponds as well
When trying to place a existing 64×64 lot onto the lot in the new country living map it comes up with system error. And then acts as if the house I there but invisible.
Now I cannot place this lot on any other 64×64 lot in the game it always comes up system error
Yes! Same. No door placements, fish in the pond, can’t buy cows or llamas. Ugh…
I love the content in this pack, I’ve played it for about 10 hrs game play so far. I’ve encountered ALOT of bugs (even more so then normal.. ha). I play on the Xbox platform and am currently on a lot in the new world that came with the expansion, here are somethings I’ve noted, the last being the most frustrating of all.
1) When clicking on the chicken coop to either clean or gather eggs, I run the chance of my curser completely disappearing. (I’m usually able to remedy this by opening the start menu to trigger the curser to come back when I exit the start menu.) However, this does not work, I have figured out that if you go to ‘manage worlds’ and then go back to your lot, your curser returns(it’s just tedious).
2) when cleaning out a barn, my sim completed the action, however, just stood there “T” posed. I used the ‘reset sim’ command and this was ineffective. The only way I could ‘unstuck’ this sim was by again, going to ‘manage worlds’ then returning.
3) This one gave me flash backs to the Sims 3 Xbox console bug that literally turned your game into a useless piece of plastic as when you hit a certain amount of days, the game freezes and crashes, and no patch was ever created to fix this making that game unplayable. While on the same lot, I was awaiting one of my Sims to come back from work (and yes, I was about to get promoted) so I had my other sim do tasks and speed up the time, suddenly time froze on the clock, but everything else was still sped up in motion. The only button I could use was the start, I tried going to ‘manage worlds’ and this was not effective as my game would crash. I tried three times to get this save to work. Finally, I restarted my Xbox in hopes that I would be able to progress with this family, I mean, 10 hrs of game play lost would be a blow enough to put down that controller for a while.
Wish me luck!!
Wow! That’s a long list of issues. Sorry to hear that.
On a side note, many of my friends who play the Sims on Xbox prefer to wait for a couple of weeks before getting the latest expansion pack. They do that to buy EA more time to fix the bugs.
The work around I’ve found for the beef Wellington and cheese quest is to make sure you click on the cheese and separate it into single servings. For some reason the full cheese block doesn’t count.
I’m having trouble with cooking all of the new recipes, my sim just freaks out and acts like there is routing issues when when she’s in a giant kitchen with every appliance and plenty of space
Interesting tip! Thank you for sharing the information.
I can’t find the arrow now after I tell my chicken/rooster to go back into the coop. I don’t know why this is happening only in this expansion pack. Geez. What an annoyance.
I had no problem putting fish and bugs and all that but i cant get my crops or seeds or cow or chickens or anything no matter how many times i click and hit buy!
Can’t play the game at all, freezes during live mode and build mode. I get about 5 seconds of play in and it freezes and hangs, I have to force quit to get out of the game.
Have restarted computer, and repaired the game multiple times. Removed mods folder, tried it all. Still not working…
i just bought the pack and i can’t even get onto the world. everytime i go to manage worlds and try moving to the new world, it goes completely blank. i’ve also noticed that when i press the settings or to save something, it appears glitchy.
Have played for about 10hours on Mac (have all expansions, packs, kits, etc).
A few glitches:
Main one – error (102:c10f4391:c72a2f96) trying to get into already played game – suggests a reboot – have done, nothing changes.
During game play:
Fridge opening takes a long time to load.
Occasionally food that I’ve moved to fridge comes back into inventory.
Otherwise was fine, and now can’t play.
Hi Anika,
Sorry to hear you can’t play the game.
By the way, have you tried these solutions to fix error 102? Hope something helps.
Just keeps crashing with/out mods
I had a rooster get “stuck” inside the coop. I kept getting the option to call him back, but every time I used the new “focus camera” option it would zoom in on the coop. I got a notification that he was thinking about leaving due to neglect, and no matter how much feed got scattered and no matter how much I tried to have my sim call him out, he wouldn’t eat. I checked through the relationships panel and it said the rooster was dirty, unhappy, and starving despite the coop being clean and the hen in the coop being fine. I had to sell the rooster and my sim never got money… and the rooster wasn’t fully gone until a fox scared him out. The slots available even counted the rooster as gone until the moment he got scared out of the coop- right before he disappeared due to already being sold (still didn’t get the simoleons though).
I may have also had the bug where grocery items go back to the inventory from the fridge, but I had assumed I had forgotten to move them when I looked at my sim’s inventory and suddenly he had spoiled milk as well as nearly-spoiled groceries. I can’t quite count that as a bug right now as I may actually have forgotten, but seeing someone else have a problem means it could have been a bug.
Hi Aurelien,
Speaking of dirty chickens, have you tried discussing preening with your chickens? Travel to a different area after cleaning the coop. Check if the issue persists.
My issue with the chickens is that sometimes a chicken will freeze and wont move.
Hi ummm I have restarted my game and uninstalled then reinstalled and then farm animals wont show when I buy cows lamas and chicken they purchase but they don’t come it says empty on the coop and barn please look at this if you get the chance.
Is it normal for your animal shed to be filth every day? Also the cow is dirty everyday.I’ve also been experiencing the lag. Especially when trying to cook or check the fridge.
No, that’s not normal. Unfortunately, many players complained about similar issues. Although they regularly clean the sheds, the game keeps saying they’re dirty.
My game is stuttering and lagging after working perfectly after the first fresh install. All mods were removed and updated with not affect. I hope this gets fixed soon. It doesn’t crash entirely yet. It’s just annoying not being able to click on anything while it’s seemingly buffering on some level.
Other worlds are broken for me – when you go to a lot in another expansion world, it has a bunch of “!” in triangles, and if you enter the lot – regardless if it is a vet or bar or otherwise, it’s marked as residential and the lot is empty, even though there was a pre-gen there. I did a fresh install and absolutely no mods.
I can’t complete Agnes’s quest that involves harvesting a homegrown pumpkin. No matter how many pumpkins I grow and harvest, whether I “harvest crop” or “harvest all”, that item never checks off!
I’m having the same problem 🙁
I put one of my chickens in my inventory and now I cannot find it in either of my sim’s personal inventory or the household inventory.🤷🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️
I can’t sell items from my inventory for any of my sims that I was previously able to like collectibles, fruit etc when I try to use the drag and sell. This has only been since the last update and since adding cottage living.
Can’t stock pond/fish and my game lags like crazy. Time will stop for minutes at a time. I had my game open for 4 hours yesterday and could barely get through 2 days of gameplay… really annoying when trying to play with a huge new pack.
me too.. I thought it was just me
Cant buy seeds, chickens, or cows and Lammas, cant open the screen where you offer help to like the mayor or something and I get a hot pink circle shows up and I’m stuck and I have to exit the game I also am unable to stock fishing ponds please can you look at these I will come if I find more
Do you have UI cheats mod if so you need to delete it repair game reinstall UI cheats plus if you have whicked whims you need to update it there was one July 21 but then again July 24.
I can’t interact with the emerald pond at all to fulfill the mayor’s request. The cursor has the red no sign and everything.
The pub and park in the world that came with the pack will like break in the middle of loading in snd it will pop me back to the manage world page and say that the lot is broken and incomplete. But my sims will be there when I go to click play on them. It’s just annoying. Restarting the game doesn’t work and I already removed mods. Sims also won’t come to my house2 – welcome wagon didn’t work and employees won’t come. When sims are invited they will never show up. Delivery system is the same. It never comes
Hi Mallory,
Sorry to hear you’re experiencing so many glitches. By the way, I’ve seen many reports about the welcome wagon event. You’re not the only one experiencing this issue. Hopefully, EA will fix all of these bugs soon.
I can’t do anything with my sim because after a few seconds my sim stops responding for 2 minutes or more in live mode. The only way to fix them is if I reset her just for her to do it again.. She also can’t talk to the bunnies or birds and freezes during those interactions. I thought it was just me
I can’t purchase things like groceries, cows, llamas, and chickens. The only thing I can buy things from is the food delivery app. I think it might be mod related.
Could be. Move your Mods folder to your desktop and check if the issues persist.
I cant deliver the beef wellington or the cheese to the creature keeper even though I have mulitplas in my inventory. It keeps saying I dont have cheese. Anyone have any suggestions how to fix this or have the Sims team not come up with a workaround for this yet?
Click on the cheese and separate it into single servings.
Ummm a giant this appears like from my sim with there skin color and its not really noticeable but yall may wanna check it out. also cant get cows,chickens,orlammas and seeds
I don’t usually get bugs after new packs, but this one is a doozy.
-no fish in pond
-my plants are dying WAY too quickly even when I’m constantly caring for them and evolving them. Then they keep reverting back to mounds of soil after they’ve already evolved, without the season changing
-my chickens keep freezing, and there’s nothing I can do to fix them. Can’t delete them, can’t sell them, can’t even MOVE them as they move back to the spot they originally froze in, and the ones that aren’t frozen keep standing around still most of the time anyway
I really hope EA fixes these bugs soon because my game just crashed after a few hours of playing and I don’t even feel like it’s worth opening it again. So frustrating.
Anybody else having a problem with trading animals? I’ve tried trading two different chickens and each time the game immediately crashes-not even freezing. Really dissapointed! Also, is there a way to make your chickens not afraid of the foxes once you befriend them?
Hi Candice,
There are several things that you can do to make your chickens a bit more comfortable around foxes. Get a Fox-Be-Gone alarm and install it on your coop. You need to run some errands for the villagers to unlock the necessary Livestock Upgrade parts to get your hands on a fox alarm. Then, place your coops near llama sheds. Llamas hate foxes, and they’ll spit on them keeping them away. You can also get a dog as a pet. Hope this helps.
Here I can’t seem to achieve the errand called Welcome to Henford-on-bagley!
It says I gotta catch a fish from the lake and I tried both the pond and the lake, caught a fish at both places but I can’t seem to get the tak to complete.
I can’t use the ducks or swans in the ponds. I try placing them and all I see are the legs, no bodies. I have tried a number of pond depths and sizes and nothing happens. Anyone else seeing this?
I play on the Xbox one. Every time I touch the chicken coop my mouse freezes and I can’t do anything unless if I reload the game.
My eggs aren’t showing in sims inventory or household inventory.
I don’t know if it’s just me but I have plenty of apace on my x-box, good internet connection, and my disc is clean but I’ve spent over two hours today stuck on a loading screen. Every day takes over twenty minutes to load (yay) but never this bad..,
Found a possible workaround for not being able to clean your llama or cow. Make sure all your needs are in the green, then try and clean them. That’s what worked for me, but the bug didn’t even show when I went back in the save to try and isolate which need it was. Let me know if anyone finds anything!
Thanks for the tip, Anya! I’ve updated the article. Hope this workaround does the trick for other players as well.
I have a problem where none of my animals age even though I clicked the age option, when I bought a cow my SIM was a young adult now my Sim is an elder and the cow is still a young adult, this also causes problems for the chicks because they don’t age up and I can’t get any more eggs.
I can’t build a rocket ship after i bought cottage living pack😭 I really need to complete the Nerd Brain Aspritions but i don’t have the option to build Rocket ship
Can’t stock the pond, and gardening is just plain BROKEN. All plants, even the wild ones not on my active lot, are dying. They devolve quickly, usually not lasting even a full Sim day, then they’re just dead and I have to start again. This is in every world, regardless of lot traits and eco footprints. Across the board, gardening is broken.
Hi Christine!
Have you tried placing the fishing sign in a deeper spot in the pond? Many players confirmed this workaround fixed the issue for them.
Unfortunately, gardening has been broken for months. Plants often start emitting green stinky smoke, and then quickly wither and die. Let’s hope EA fixes this bug soon.
The only glitch I am having is certain times I click on the grocery guy and this big boxed pink thing comes up and completely closes my game. It also happened to my daughter as well except it happened to her once at the pond and it did it three times on mine when I tried to help with errands.
hire a service option is missing in my sims 4 this expantion pack & after updated this is not show a hire a service option plz solve my this problem.
I have a couple of issues. None of the gifts that I get from the animals are showing up in my inventory. I restarted and repaired the game and it’s still the same. It’s been a week. I also have an issue with rabbits being in one spot and there are no interaction options. Lastly, food in my fridge goes bad 2x a day even if I just prepared it. I’ve tried different refrigerators and it’s the same thing.