NewSO Update 536855 – The New Sims Online

Stranded barmaids near the Downtown Bar are cleared out

A barmaid left over near a Downtown Bar kept spinning in place forever, doing nothing. She came from the bar’s old table-service code, which needs a whole Downtown restaurant that NewSO does not have, so she had nothing to wait for.
The bar stopped hiring barmaids in an earlier update, but any that were already standing on a saved lot were being missed and stayed put. They now retire themselves the moment the lot loads, including the rave-bar versions. You do not need to do anything – or ask an admin to remove them.
Your bartender is unaffected: he still turns up on his own when you place the bar.

The “Pane In The Glass” kitchen and dining set is now buyable: bar, counter, dining table, side table, dining chair, sink, stove, pantry, dishwasher, food processor and trash compactor.
The “Au79” living room set is now buyable: sofa, armchair, coffee table, end table, floor lamp, table lamp, ceiling lamp and a bowl of flowers.
Both sets were already installed with the game but had never been listed, so nothing in them could be found or bought. Search for “pane in the glass” or “au79” in Buy mode to pull up a whole set at once.

After placing the new Downtown Bar, a sim kept appearing and vanishing again nearby, over and over, every few seconds – reported as a ghost flashing in and out.
It was a lounge pianist. The bar tries to hire one the same way it hires its bartender, but she looks for a piano to play, finds nothing she recognises on the lot, and leaves again a second later – so the bar hired a new one, forever.
The bar no longer hires a pianist. Your bartender is unaffected: he still turns up on his own when you place the bar, and still leaves when you sell it.

On a restaurant lot, the P.O.S. register (the host station) was missing its Add Ticket row for anyone who owned the lot or lived there. Take an order, walk the ticket to the register, and the one interaction you needed was not in the pie menu – while Destroy Ticket sat right next to it, working fine.
Staff were left punching orders into the kitchen queue by hand through the admin-only debug menu, typing a menu number 1-5 for every dish.
The register had been set to allow visitors only, which nobody ever noticed on the official job lots because every worker there is a visitor. On a player-run diner the staff are the owner and the roommates, so the game hid the interaction from exactly the people running the place. Add Ticket now works for the owner, roommates, friends and visitors, like every other row on that register.

The Selecting a City hint on the Create A Sim screen told you to visit `tsomania.net` to read up on the city you were about to move into. That is somebody else’s site for a game that is not this one. It now points at our own wiki.
The Bulletin Board and Neighborhood Rules hints both linked to `freeso.org/nhoodrules` for the neighborhood rules. Those now point at our wiki too.
The Making Money and Offbeat hints called the game “FreeSO”. They say NewSO.
The welcome email you get when you register had a TSOMania panel on it. It is now an NewSO Wiki panel linking to our own wiki.
The launcher’s rotating tips told you to “visit TSOMania for a starter guide”. That tip now sends you to our wiki, in all eight launcher languages.

Welcome lots have always given brand-new players double skill and double skill-object pay. Everyone else on the lot earned at the normal rate, so once you passed your first 30 days there was no reason to skill where the new players were.
Now an established player gets the same 2x skill and 2x pay on a welcome lot – but only while a new player is actually skilling there with you. Skill there alone and you are back to the normal rate.
The bonus stays up for a few minutes after the newcomer’s last skill point, so it does not flicker off every time they stop to chat, and it drops as soon as the last new player leaves the lot.
New players are unaffected by all this: they still get their 2x on a welcome lot no matter who else is around.
If a lot’s owner has skilling switched off, or set to roommates only, that still wins – the bonus can double your skill rate but it can never unlock skilling you were not allowed to do.

Closing the chat window used to leave no way back except the Ctrl+H shortcut, which nothing in the game ever told you about. New players closed the chat and lost it for good.
There is now a Chat button in the top left corner of the screen while you are on a lot, in the same spot as the City Chat button on the map. Click it to show or hide the chat window.
The button flashes when somebody says something while your chat window is closed, so you will not miss anyone talking to you.
The first time you ever close the chat, a hint pops up explaining Ctrl+H and the new button. Like every other hint, it only ever shows once.
Ctrl+H still works exactly as before.