Maxis announced in a live stream on Tuesday that The Sims 4 is getting a build feature that fans have wanted for over a decade—and that feature is live as of today.
Configurable stairs, people. They're finally here. Going into the build mode, you can place stairs like usual, but there is now a tool that lets you swing the stairs on a center axis to split them in the middle and have them go in different directions. L-shaped, U-shaped, T-shaped, switchback—it's all there.
No more messing with foundations and wall heights. No more placing your stairs before you build anything else in your house. You can also change the length of each stair section and rotate the entire staircase to fit wherever you want it to go in your house—and you can do this with every single staircase in the game. And, as long as you have the height clearance, you can make the staircases overlap.
Not only does this speed up the process for building aficionados, but it makes creating houses so much easier and accessible for players new to The Sims. Without learning those now-obsolete building tricks, you could only place stairs that went in a straight line to the floor above.
Additionally, due to some limitations that the game imposes on placing objects (without cheats), you can't place the bottom of one staircase perpendicular to the top of another without making a larger landing area than what you would normally see in real houses. Each staircase automatically gets a floor tile added to the top and bottom of it that you can't delete because it's part of the object, and therefore can't delete it without deleting the entire staircase.
You can watch the new feature in action below. The video covers other build and buy items added to the The Sims 4 with the latest update as well, like new patio furniture, and clothing and building styles inspired by Muslim culture.
