How to “choose” the first villagers that move in your town
So, do you know the first villagers that move in your town, after your initial five ones? Yeah, you can “choose” them. Actually, you choose if you want them or not.
By this method, I was able to get Tammy and Gaston into my new town 😍 (so worth it!!).
Here’s how to do it (plot resetting):
Log in a new character, on that day, without entering your own character.
Walk around town and see if there is any house being built. If so, check to whom it belongs.
Do you like or dislike the villager? If you dislike, you can repeat the steps above until you find one you like.
However, if you (finally) like the villager, you have to register your character as a citizen (go to town hall + build home + go back to town hall + save game).
When the game saves, you successfuly have your villager! You are free to delete the character by demolishing their house, or keep them if you want to! Don’t worry, your villager will move to your town regardless, since you saved the game.
OBS:
Make sure you log into a new character (New Save File). DON’T log in your character/mayor, or the game will save before it starts, and you won’t be able to change the villager;
The process may take long, since the game chooses the villagers randomly (don’t give up!!).
do you have any tips on how to make your town pretty without hacking?
what makes a town pretty to you? it’s definitely possible to make a cohesive, visually pleasing completed town without hacking. it will take longer and could benefit from lots of careful planning. i do have some town planning suggestions which may be helpful, let me know if you’d like more specific advice 🌱
tldr tips: research > collect > plan > apply!
t i p s i n m o r e d e t a i l :
suggestions for planning a new town-
research research options for your town that are appealing to you, that compliment your town’s backstory or theme if you have one. if you don’t have a theme, just choosing a color palette alone helps narrow down the options and creates a nice cohesive feel for a town.
mood board make a folder or pinterest board with lots of inspiration photos, maybe flower color combinations, pics of all the pwp you’d like in your town, screenshots of landscaping from other people town’s, illustrations, photography, whatever inspires you and helps you to visualize how you want your town to look.
rough draft make some sketches of your town map and create a general layout for your more permanent features and paths.
collect if you’re ok with time traveling, time travel a lot so you can get weeds if you want them and to collect tons of saplings, bushes, mushrooms, flowers, etc. every new day you time travel, talk to villagers to unlock the pwp you want while you’re buying up plants from leif and bringing home flowers from island tours. also, breed special color flowers on the beach so villagers don’t mess with them.
plan imo, extensive planning before committing is really important when it takes so long to unlock features and gather sources. spend time planning out where e v e r y t h i n g will go using design tiles in game so you can be aware of spacing and placement restrictions. google acnl pwp placement guide and find out how many tiles a building/pwp occupies and the buffer area around places in which things like bushes and trees cannot grow. your town might look like a qr code wasteland for some time but having to rearrange things once they’ve been built can create a domino effect and change the way sections of your town relate to each other. it’s easier to change that stuff if you just have to move the design tiles. also, it’s helpful to use fruit trees and bushes you don’t like to test out tree/bush placement which you can later switch out for the ones you want in your town.
work big to small place houses/pwp and connect these places with other points of interest like the town plaza, retail, the beach and so on, with paths first. then plant trees and bushes around these spots. stuff like flowers and mushrooms can be rearranged easily so those are the things i like to place last. this process is made much easier when you have markers dictating where things will go. i like to place small objects next to/ in front of focal points and keep larger objects like trees and bushes deeper into the background. i personally enjoy a more staggered random plant placement rather than a fence like row of trees or bushes or flowers. i absolutely do not condone copying other people’s landscaping layouts, but it do think it’s helpful to take note of where other people are placing their plants. study how they arrange plants by size, how to visually round out a sharp corner, how to frame a focal point. every time you pan up the camera you have an opportunity to create a little stage. i really enjoy when there is a focal point, which could just be your mayor or a pwp or whatever, that is directly surrounded by short plants like clovers weeds and flowers, and towards the edges of the screen the plants get bigger and more dense.
that’s kind of all i can think of right now, again if you additional advice or suggestions feel free to reach out!
ALSO mischacrossing has just started livestreaming a new leaf playthrough on twitch (sunday+ thursdays 12-5pm EST i believe) where she is creating a new town, Sprout, with the help of her viewers without the use of hacks. if you cant catch the stream live, she is also uploading the streams to youtube the next day. if you’re interested in seeing how someone else makes a town without hacking you should check it out!
For Hermit Crabs, grab all the shells that look identical to Hermit shells and move them to a designated spot of your choice, then you'll know if a Hermit Crab spawns, because there will be a spare 'shell' that you haven't picked up; Hermit Crabs start to spawn at 7:00pm and later.
For Easy Money, if you already have all the insects that spawn on fruit trees/normal trees, cut them down and leave just the Palm trees, go to the island at 9:00pm or later, and rare beetles will spawn extremely frequently; take caution while walking, you could scare them off pretty easily.
This one is obvious, but scare off any small or thin (eels) fish you have no intention of catching to make larger fish and fish with fins spawn more often; nighttime is your best chance to make serious money off of Sharks.
Does anyone have tips on making your town look nice without hacking? It seems like more often than not the people here who post pictures of their amazing looking towns achieved them through hacking, and that’s not an option for me.
Don’t forget to play acnl on Halloween so that you get your extra special spoopy furniture/mask from Jack!!! He pops up at about 6:00pm and be sure to bring him candy!!!!
Whenever you start up your game, everyday, four fossils spawn, with one pitfall seed. I hate it with a passion.
I went up to the top corner of my town a few weeks ago to put an end to this. (See picture, sorry it sucks)
The buried item in the corner between the fence and the cliff is the pitfall seed. Since it's buried somewhere in my town, no more will spawn. And it's out of the way so I'll never run over it ever again.
The other three buried items, I'm testing to see if gyroids will spawn, bc I get a bit annoyed when they spawn while looking for fossils. I will update this whenever it rains and I can see if they spawn!
I hope this helps if you're looking for a way to not worry about pitfalls! -mayor brittany
hi! i was wondering if you had any tips for designing a town in acnl? i know that's super general but i was wondering of maybe you have any rules you go after or how you decide where to place pwps and such ^^
Hello, sunshine! Thank you for the question!
Designing a town is actually quite simple. I’m obviously not going to give you the “run wild with your imagination” talk since you asked for tips and rules, so here’s a guideline instead.
-Pick a map that suits your heart. This means that it should have the waterfall in the right place, the beach cliff the right size, the campsite in the right spot, the hall and Retail in the right places, the town fruit should be the one you want, the river should run the way you want, and usually, you should have as few ponds as possible. If you don’t know what you want for the rest, try to think of what could have the most open layout possible. Oh, and which map has the waterfall running south!
-Pick a theme. There are so many themes that you can choose from it’s wild! The most common ones seem to be Pink, which can include the sub-category of dessert, and forest with its subcategory of Fall Town. You can look up “acnl town” for inspiration or you can make your very own theme. Mine is basically “fairy tale”, but yours could even be “big city”, “farm”, “desert”, “the Arctic” (oh, that one would actually be so original!), “Halloween”, “Hawaii”…etc.
-Make a list of dreamies for your town and decide where you want them to go. This is painstaking, but worth it in the end. In my town, I have Marshal, Flurry, Diana, Peaches, Muffy, Leonardo, Merengue, Stitches, Pinky, and Chief. They all fit the theme one way or another, be it the color of their house in respect to the surrounding environment or their species. I would strongly suggest having at least one character from each personality type. Since all the characters of a personality type have the same dialogue pool, it would be incredibly boring to walk around and talk about The. Same. Thing.
When you decide where you want them to go, you have to make sure it looks neat in the grand scheme of things. Maybe have one giant row with a neighborhood, maybe do a small cluster in one corner and another small cluster in another.
-PWP, since that’s the one you asked: for Public Works Projects, you have to decide what to place in accordance to your theme. If you want the square topiary, for example, you may have a lush forest theme. Or maybe you made your whole town into a manor and this is part of your garden. Whatever it is, it has to match. You then have to group your picked PWP projects based on which ones go together. You have the instrument shelter and flower arch picked out for your forest town? Maybe have a cluster of trees with a clearing made by the arch with the instrument shelter inside. It could have a few spaces around it like a hidden grotto and you could place some mushrooms here and there. Very mysterious! Very fairy town-esque.
I usually come up with little individual ideas like that, place them accordingly (so like the hidden grotto may go in the corner of the map) and then connect them. You should get some paths to do that. If you want a big city theme, get streets and sidewalks. If you want a sweets town, maybe put little chocolate designs as a path. You could do a brick path for a pink town or anything else you desire. Another option some people, including, I, picked, is a path made of clovers. You could even combine the aesthetic of clovers and tile by having one clover, one tile, one clover, one tile.
As for the sides of the paths, you should either try to place trees or lights. I absoutely love both, but I usually use trees instead. Also, make sure to keep in mind how tree-heavy your theme is. If the amount of trees you use has to be on a slider, consider metropolitan to be the low end and forest town the high. If you need to have a lot of trees, make it your mission to fill out your town with trees.
-In the end, consider asking for assistance on ACNL Trades. Before Welcome Amiibo came out and I was working on my town, lots of wonderful people helped me through that blog. Of course, you have to search for your own help other times. Most people in the community are generally very nice, though.
