Fiber artist, Kirby and Animal Crossing enthusiast, occasional game developer and Minecraft map maker, lots of other things too. Hoping to share neat things I make. She/Her, Aroace, constantly tired
I know "lol look at the mean Wild World villagers" posts are funny, but to balance the scales a bit, have what I call "Wild World villagers being super wholesome"
February 25th is the first day of Spring in the northern hemisphere, and that means only one thing: It's time for the Native Fruit Faire!
What's this? You've never heard of the Native Fruit Faire? Ok, you caught me. It's an Animal Crossing celebration that I made up just to keep life interesting. After a couple months of snow, what better way to usher in the return of grass than to pay homage to whatever your native fruit is?
The Fruit Fair begins on February 25th (August 25th for you southern hemisphere friends!) and lasts one week, though of course this is a made up holiday, so if it's more fun for you to pick the first Sunday of spring and go from there (or whatever you like!) go for it!
How to Celebrate
We celebrate our native fruits in many ways! You can harvest and plant more fruit trees! You can craft fruit DIYs! You can dress in fruit clothing.
Dressing Up
Every fruit has a number of built in DIY clothing, and probably an umbrella too! Some of them look pretty silly, but when is a better time to use them than when glorifying the fruit that grew here first?
You can also make or download custom designs! There's lots of cool stuff out there if you're willing to look, but here's a few examples I think are neat if you'd just like a quick option:
Peaches
MO-YVQY-VRKK-JCSY
MO-11JN-5XCM-2SBP
MO-T6CS-5M83-TKMQ
MO-RL38-4FR3-9FGR
Cherries
MO-H53H-MD7H-762R
MO-MC0G-4R5Q-YD7G
MO-VFF5-917D-CSHG
MO-LY3F-934X-2QCQ
Oranges
MO-XB1L-5BX6-89S5
MO-QXFM-NF2X-NM8X
MO-BVT0-9CLG-B42B
MO-6P8T-KVH6-631R
Pears
MO-PW5P-1FTY-58NP
MO-JMNS-YSH8-6FPS
MO-PFXR-8M20-Q5PV
MO-CX95-PX45-04YK
Apples
MO-J0RT-S36F-BJX8
MO-7WM1-40S8-TCW7
MO-LWHW-82VT-D42W
MO-K78B-RW19-DY2L
Decorating!
Every fruit also has a number of furniture items that can be crafted! Some have more than others but, in a pinch, clothing can be placed. There's also a lot of recipes for different things made from fruit. In the picture above, I've created a little bake sale area!
And be creative! You don't have to stick purely to items that are specifically your fruit after all. What color is your fruit? Find items that are those colors, or plant flowers of those colors! This isn't a built in holiday with themed stuff to collect, so use that creative mind of yours and come up with something you think is cool.
Planting and Harvesting
If you don't have a lot of your native fruit around still, why not plant a few trees? Your native fruit is always available from Nook's Cranny! Sure, they may not sell for as much as those foreign fruits you've planted a whole orchard of, but they're part of your island's heritage and that's pretty neat.
And if you do have a lot of trees around, or just planted a bunch, it's harvest time! Take an afternoon and shake all those fruit trees. How many of your native fruit can you get? And then once you're done harvesting, share them with your villagers or craft them into more fun stuff to decorate with!
Specific to my own island, and pictured above, I have a festival grounds. During the spring and summer, I often have a peach tree planted in the center of it, and in the colder months it's often a bonfire or other thematic item. This past fall I decided to codify that, and decided that every fall I would move that tree to a "year grove" with a marker of some sort, and every spring I would harvest from that tree to plant a brand new sapling in the festival grounds. The old year begets the new. Today, I turn off the bonfire, and on the last day of the Faire I will start the new year with a new tree.
Conclusion
If you've read this far, just know I appreciate you. I feel like a bit of weirdness and person creativity is what keeps the spark of a game like Animal Crossing going. If you decide to take part in a Fruit Faire, I'd love to hear about it.
I adore New Horizons Isabelle, but New Leaf Isabelle is making me contemplate murder. Please, just let me put the 1x1 object within sight of a building 😭😭
It's like, I like the game ok... But New Leaf is without a doubt the most frustrating Animal Crossing I've ever played.
Let's use Public Works Projects as an example. This system is far, far, worse than simply not being able to decorate at all.
First, Isabelle has to follow you to where you want it, and then you have to talk to her to say "put it here". Which makes it really hard to get your positioning just right.
Second, the restrictions on where you can put stuff are absurd. Everything seems to need a whole mile on every side. Like, I'm just trying to place a bench. First I tried between Re-Tail and where I put the cafe, but no go, not enough room. Fair, I guess.
Ok fine, we'll try over by the plaza. A bench on the edge of it would look like, right? I guess I'll never know because this stupid dog won't let me. Fidget around until I finally get a spot she'll allow, except now it's so far away from the plaza there's no point.
Wander around a bit... Can't go on the beach, she won't even let me walk down there. No where else makes sense to have a bench, so I hit her with a net a bit and told her to can the project.
I would genuinely just rather not engage with the PWP system at all if I'm perfectly honest. I would rather open up Wild World or City Folk, both games where "decorating" means "plant flowers and trees, maybe throw down a custom design :)". Or I could go play New Horizons where decorating doesn't suck so much. I don't even really care about decorating that much, but there's no reason for this system to be so awful.
This is far from the only annoyance I have with this game*. It's just the one that's got me particularly annoyed tonight. Over a bench...
*- Other examples include "why does a game that employs bedhead if you have to take a break not also give you access to the hair salon right away?" and "why can't I use my own tools on the island? Why do I have to use your crappy loaner tools?" Also "why tf is the shop you should sell stuff to not also the one you buy stuff from? There's no reason to ever sell to Timmy/Tommy in this game, so why do they even offer???"
