Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 6

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Audie finished moving in today and Margie started her own unboxing procedures.

Tom Nook also announced that Resident Services would be closed tomorrow as it was being upgraded and Isabelle would be coming to help! While I was sad that we would not be able to access Resident Services while everything was being upgraded, I was excited for the upgrade.

Meanwhile, had visited a friend’s town who already had the Able Sisters shop. I wish there was some kind of catalog feature as not only did it take like an hour, my inventory was so full, I had to come back looking awful. And then, of course, that was when Mira decided would be the perfect time to teach me a new reaction.


I’m sorry you have to see me like this

Once again, not much ended up happening overall, but I did finally catch an ant!

And I hung out over in Sami’s town too.

I felt bad for not having an instrument though… The apologetic reaction is absolutely going to get a lot of use.

Unrelated really, but I love how she waves after returning back home:

And once again, it’s just really beautiful to look out sometimes.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 5

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So, while my husband and some of my other friends had gotten Gulliver already, I still hadn’t seen him. Alas, today was today as the first thing I saw as the screen booted up was him passed out on my beach. Honestly pretty useful considering nobody tells you anything otherwise unless a villager randomly speaks up.

And thus, I quickly went off to meet him to help him with his task.


To be honest, I’m not super fond of his new quest of finding 5 of his machine parts. I liked the trivia questions. And between the shovel being able to break, the fact that this is the only way to get a fairly rare material, and you need to help him 30 times when him showing up is completely random to get the golden shovel just puts a lot on something that should be a fun optional event. They’ve also given Gulliver so many other items like masks and things he didn’t used to have and while I would’ve been okay with more worldly landmarks, I wish things we could wear kept to the Able Sisters instead.

Anyway, since I finished the plots for Nook immediately, 3 random villagers were actually set to them– Alfonso, Audie, and Margie. I have nothing against any of them, but none were any of my top 8 favorites. Originally, I was kind of upset for finishing so quickly as if I spent time roaming Nook Miles Islands, I could’ve found villagers I wanted to invite that would’ve claimed these plots instead. However, I later found out that the first 5 villagers you get (your starting two and the three from building these plots) have “default” homes that are separate from their original houses. I’d like to hope maybe this could be patched in the future once you fully pay off your loan, but regardless, it made me feel a bit better about having not found them just yet after all as I’m sure their houses would be really cute.

Regardless, I still made sure to greet Alfonso now that he was all set (and had greeted him in boxes yesterday).


It was nice of him to give me a gift and I hope we can still be friends even when he eventually moves.

With plots done, things were relatively lowkey. I had no tasks from Nook and wasn’t really in the mood to do Nook Miles grinding, but I did spend some time with friends!

Zed came to visit for one and he even caught an Oarfish!

I also stopped by Sami’s who was kind enough to craft some stuff for me.

And went to Carina’s later on as Celeste was there and a Meteor shower was going on! While I had gotten to see a Meteor Shower at Rune’s, Celeste wasn’t in town so I wasn’t able to get the Star Wand recipe so it was nice to finally meet her in this game.


I wished until I hit the 200 for the Nook Miles goal.

Later, surprisingly, I saw Celeste in my own town, though, no meteor shower. She mentioned she could tell me a story if I had any zodiac-related things so I brought her an Aries fragment. I hope I can eventually show her all of them.

I hope one day I’ll have my own meteor shower, but for now, I’m just happy whenever Celeste shows up.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 4

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A new day had dawned and I was immediately greeted with a phone call. And as mentioned, these phone calls got old almost immediately.

When I start playing, I generally have an idea of what I want to do and am ready to go so just getting stopped here for this dialogue when it is LITERALLY explained when I interact with the box is incredibly jarring and kills my momentum.

On the bright side, I got my first Star Fragments.

I actually find these really pretty. I want to get so many more of them. Not just for all the recipes, but maybe to put some around town…

But best of all, the museum opened!!

I genuinely don’t have enough words for how much I love the museum. It’s breathtaking and while I’ve always adored the museum, I’ve never wanted to complete it more than this time.






I loved how it built up as you donated more things. It actually gave me a lot of inspiration for how I hoped to use waterfalls and other water elements in my own town.

And because it wasn’t a busy day enough, we also met Daisy Mae today and got our first run-in with the turnip business.

I had pretty high prices, but I bought some anyway… And well, it worked out as a friend in a different timezone had managed to get decent prices for me to sell which helped a lot with the bell earning.

Our first bridge was built too and while I get that it was a free bridge, I do wish we still got to pick the style– I don’t have plans to keep it and I feel kind of bad about it.

And I even finally got to learn about customization!

I really wish we could recolor everything :/ Here’s hoping Reese & Cyrus make a return and they can customize what we can’t. Unfortunately, Nook didn’t have any other tasks for me and thus, with my loan paid off as well, I turned my focus to the museum.

While I was finally able to demolish the donation pile for Blathers by finally bringing everything to him, I still had things I needed to catch and managed to make some progress in that department too.

I also visited friends! I hung out with Carina and Puku at their towns.

And went to my husband’s town to say Hi and also meet with Saharah.

I also continued to look longingly at waterfalls for the day I may too have beautiful waterfalls.

I have to say in general, the game is really pretty. I don’t necessarily mean a graphic perspective (though, I do think they’re nice– it’s just not my area of expertise), but just it’s really nice to just look out into the horizon, no pun intended. Like it makes me think of a postcard or desktop wallpaper or something.

The constant best friend notification kind of ruins it though. I’m not sure why it has to buzz every time someone gets online– it already tells us. If they send a message to us or to everyone, I can understand the chat notification lighting up, but the best friend notification does not need to be alerting as much as it tends to.

With a lot of progress on the Northern Hemisphere though, it was time to take a trip down under to the Southern Hemisphere for some more donations for the museum.




Just seeing how the museum grew already and how it changed at night just added to how amazing it is.

Outside of Museum progress, I did try to do some work on my house too. I’m not super proud of it, but it’s at least something for now.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 3

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Day 3 was probably my worst nightmare when it came to hoping for a more relaxing day. I just wasn’t prepared for how intense crafting could get, but that was only half the issue.

I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though, so let’s start from the top when I ended up helping Gulliver out.

Honestly, I miss the worldly trivia questions. Especially when my shovel can break so quickly while digging things up :(

On a semi-positive note, Nook’s Cranny opened up!

As for why I say “semi-positive”, while we obviously get a lot more shop items, it feels a bit of a downgrade when it comes to selling things, especially for those with “odd” sleep schedules. My allergies are all over the place and sometimes I may be up for most of the night until very early morning and then just be out of luck. It just feels silly for them to switch from a 24 hour place you can sell things to a 13 hour place unless you want to use the dropbox and lose 20% of your profits. And like, yes, you can place things outside, but that isn’t fun and honestly, the penalty for the box is unneeded– just the having to wait until the next day is more than enough, but it’s faster and I’d use it more often if I didn’t lose any of my pay and didn’t have to sit through Timmy or Tommy calling me to let me know the money was added when I’d expect as much anyway just based off the information given from it whenever I go to use it.

At the very least, Mabel was there too which means getting to see clothes for sale soon which is always nice as I really didn’t want to stick to a designed outfit for my main outfit again.

Regardless, here was a lot going on today though besides Gulliver’s appearance and the opening of Nook’s Cranny. Everything with Nook’s Cranny yesterday was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the big task today– setting up three new housing plots and furnish them with freshly crafted items. The crafting was an issue in itself, but the biggest problem was the fact that these plots were HUGE. Due to the fact that they required having a “yard” with certain items outside, the plots, which usually are 4 x 3 (and you can more or less work with 4 x 2) were suddenly 9 x 5. I had plans for where I wanted all the houses and with this requirement, there was no way for me to actually fit them. I didn’t have the resources to take care of trees and was just at a loss, in the end needing to place them all somewhere I didn’t care for just keeping in mind I’d be able to move them in the future.

Either way, that didn’t make it less anxiety-inducing to place them:

This is ridiculous for what essentially became this size in the end:

To make matters worse, after struggling with all the wood and iron I needed for Nook’s Cranny, I then needed tons to make all these items for these plots. It made me feel so incredibly defeated. Resource management has never been my forte, but part of it is I just can’t deal with constantly doing the things to earn them. I find it too repetitive and it’s the fastest way for me to get burned out in a game.

On the bright side, not long after making progress, Tom Nook called and gave me access to the ladder.

And despite my frustrations, I did get them done.

And while I felt some sense of accomplishment, I mainly just was happy it was over. I even got my first reactions which was unfortunately unlocked shortly after being harassed by a bee.

I did end up having to go to islands more for materials, but it did let me stumble upon an island that I found absolutely beautiful. Plus, I even got some new fish.

And thanks to Mo, I got a start on my pink flower collection. I am going to need so many T__T

I also got to shop while there and so my husband finally got some new clothes too and I bought some new things as well:

Harvey then ended up showing up on the island and told me about his island. While I’m not super into photos, I immediately went over there.

It isn’t really my thing, but I’ll probably at least do it for poster unlocking. Now if only my Amiibo cards weren’t currently packed :(

When I asked Tom Nook for any further tasks, he unfortunately had nothing for me right now.

And to make matters worse, upon finishing the plots, three villagers automatically were set to move in– Alfonso, Audie, and Margie. I don’t have anything against them nor do I hate any villager, but they weren’t who I wanted and if I realized, I would’ve spent longer looking around on islands to invite three people before finishing them… But I just didn’t realize and it’s one of my biggest regrets. The only solace I really have is that the first five houses are all “starter” houses in a sense– they aren’t the villager’s proper rooms and never will be, so at least when I DO get all my dream villagers, they’ll have the house of their dreams too.

Regardless, in the meantime, I continued amassing items for Blathers’ as, unfortunately, the museum was under construction today and would not be opened until tomorrow.

At least I certainly have a lot to contribute. I also got to visit a friend’s town and wish on some stars. Here’s hoping something special will arrive tomorrow too.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Day 2

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I essentially took it a bit easier. Partially because I had been up for over 24 hours by the time the day rolled over at 5AM, but mainly because I worked so hard preparing on Day 1, there wasn’t much I HAD to do. Most of what I wanted to do either involved running around on semi-outdated information ooor just luck which is a bit frustrating, but lets start with the things that actually went somewhat well with the game itself progressing after everything I finished yesterday.

I headed over to Tom Nook’s tent for an update to see he and Timmy in deep conversation.

Timmy wanted us to build him a store and needed 30 of each type of wood plus 30 Iron Ore. This was… not a good feeling, honestly, because that is a lot of materials and I still had been struggling quite a bit. I also accidentally destroyed some of my rocks (I forgot eating fruit can be used to break them as well as lift trees and had wanted to have a stock full thinking I had more control when I could use it… and at the time, I had no way to reset them and didn’t think of just picking up a tree and putting it back down) and thus, iron was not something I had much of. And considering we needed these materials for many other things, it was really frustrating needing to give up an entire stack of each.

This may be the case for some people, but certainly not for me.

Regardless, what I COULD get done was continuing my house loan goal of paying it off every day:

Most excitingly, Blathers was here and I had quite a lot to give him.



I may have been a bit TOO prepared though as I still had quite a lot left for him.

With the sadness of continuing to have an army of random sea creatures and insects outside my house, I continued forward and got revenge from yesterday’s mishaps by catching a Wasp:

Something I never really expected is this game has probably been the best I’ve been at catching them. Or maybe I just found a good strategy of dealing with them.

I also found my first golden spot. I wish we could still get a golden shovel from them.

Regardless, it was back to work and to my surprise, Teddy and Mira actually tried to help out with the shop project.

As a side note, I feel like this game could have so many really pretty wallpapers. The sky is especially lovely.

Anyway, thanks to Blathers showing up, even if I wasn’t able to give him everything, he DID give me two very important recipes– the pole and the shovel so I could dig up fossils, but also so I could see the rest of my island. I also finally got to find one of my waterfalls.

When picking my island, I mainly focused on things I knew I would be unable to change since I knew Terraforming is a thing eventually. I just really underestimated how long it’d be, but also it kind of kills me that I just have two barely able to be seen side-set waterfalls while so many people I know not only have lovely frontal waterfalls, often two-story ones and multiples. I think for what I’m hoping to do, my island is a great starting place, but right now, it still feels kind of hard to deal with.

Like I helped out Blathers, I made sure to help out Timmy the same day too and got Nook’s Cranny all ready to go along with all the materials.

And with the airport now open, I was finally able to take a flight to some of the Nook Miles Islands.

I also spent some time in my husband’s town.

One day I’ll have amazing waterfalls too.

A big surprise was running into Wisp as the day came to an end.

It took a while, but I eventually found his spirits.

I hope so too, Wisp.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Days 0 and 1

It’s kind of crazy that we’re finally at the launch. I’ve been so excited to play and it’s nice for it to be happening finally. I will be streaming Twitch every day barring any issues and then uploading to Youtube after. This page will also continuously be updated to keep a general track of my progress.

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It’s hard to believe that the game is finally here after so long. It’s such a nice break from everything going on, honestly, and I’m really happy that I’ve been enjoying it despite my apprehensions with the crafting system. I will say there are still some issues, but none of it changes how much fun I had– I do think it’s going to test a lot of people’s patience though.

It started off meeting Timmy and Tommy at the airport to check in, picking our map, and creating my character. I’ve said it before, but while it has grown on me, I was a bit disappointed by how limited the starting options were.

Considering some of the big features were having so many options and being able to change whenever, I really expected it to be more like Pocket Camp or Happy Home Designer and not through unlocking a handful of things. The ponytail especially is used on a handful of things and yet it wasn’t even a starter one either T~T

Though, honestly, I think my least favorite part of this was the outfit. Normally, the outfit I got with the eyes I usually ended up getting (which I have kept even now out of habit) I really liked and this was just… not my style in the slightest.

Regardless, despite my issues with character creation, I feel like I got pretty lucky with nearly everything else. I ended up getting a map I really like:

The red airport along with Mira and Teddy as my villagers:

And cherries for my fruit:

Red was one of the ones I wanted most, Cherries were one of the 3 options I was hoping for (AND it’s pink on my passport which was the only reason I was hoping for Peaches more), and Teddy is actually one of the only Jock villagers I really like (though, the new sheep, Dom, seems cool too). Mira is also one of the few Uchi I’m fond of. I don’t know if they will stick around or not just yet, but I will admit the opening sure made me attached to them.

After setting up my own tent, I made sure to help them with theirs.


I sadly didn’t have any waterfalls in sight, but it works for now and to be honest, I’ll probably have to move every single building at some point.

Despite that, the bonfire party was a really sweet bonding experience and really warmed my heart, honestly.

It was a group effort to name and all of us shouted out different ideas.

Pink Sea was voted in unanimously in the end though.

And thus, my villager got to add “Resident Representative” to her long resume of things she has done.

We then toasted some fresh cherry smoothies to celebrate. (Why… have I never had a cherry smoothie?? I need to.)

With some final chatter and last gifts from Nook, it was time to head to bed.

And that finished up the tutorial day– aka Day 0. After a very odd dream of K.K. Slider talking to us, we finally hit the next day.

Tom Nook ends up waking us up to give us our Nook Phone and tell us about what we owe him.

Of course, I have no bells to my name and thus, Nook comes up with a solution with the Nook Mileage Program.

With that, we’re free to finally get moving and one thing I was surprised about was I already had Mail. Three letters from Nintendo, apparently.

I also updated my Passport. I love that Cherries are a pink stamp, as is my zodiac sign.

We then got a DIY Crash Course directly from Nook so we could finally craft stuff (also I ditched my blue plaid shirt).

Mira and Teddy were quite nice. Mira gave me a new recipe to make an umbrella while Teddy ended up giving me a new hat.

I then started bugging Tom Nook for some tasks while working towards the 5,000 Nook Miles I had to reach to pay off my current loan and get an upgrade to a house. There were a handful of Nook Miles items I wanted outside of the 5,000 needed and I needed to earn 98,000 bells for the next house upgrade so I began a routine that had me almost constantly going around the perimeter of the small area of my Island I was on.

Once I had paid off my initial 5,000 bells and gave Nook 5 creatures to convince Blathers to come, there was really nothing to do except wait until tomorrow… but I like preparing so I went kind of hard on it.

And that was all I really needed to prepare even more. Just because the museum didn’t exist yet didn’t mean I should sell all my stuff. Now that we were able to put items outside, I used that to my advantage and put the first item of each outside my tent.

I also bought the Pro Designer planner for a nicer dress until I could actually get some official clothing and the Pocket Organizer for more inventory space. I know there has to be another one (probably when the tent upgrades into Town Hall), but it really can’t come soon enough.

I also got the Tool Ring, which I’m still having trouble fully getting used to (also why can’t it keep our tools in it versus taking up inventory space??), the Pop Hairstyle Pack for my ponytail, and a few random accessories. I bought a Nook Miles Ticket as well, even though I couldn’t use it yet as all Airport functions were closed down for the first day. It still looked pretty nice despite being “closed” though.

I played somewhere between 10-11 hours on Day 1 doing all these goals. My tools broke over 50 times. If I had to say my biggest complaints with the game, it’s the breaking of tools (for Flimsy, fine, whatever, but anything beyond that is unneeded and even then, not all materials can constantly be gotten), some of the excessive rarity for certain materials for recipes, and most of all, the brick walls.

Animal Crossing has always been a game that you played to relax and go at your own pace. But you run out of things to do within an hour or two of Day 1 at MOST. You can’t visit friends. You can only wander around in circles in the same starting area you have until things have progressed further. It feels really slow and while I could more or less deal with it because I enjoy having moments to prepare, I know that isn’t the common idea. To make matters worse, the regular versions of the crafting items barely feel worth it with how annoying iron ore is to get versus shaking trees for some branched to repeatedly make the Flimsy tools.

I never time traveled to get ahead, but there’s a lot of reasons people did and making it so things need to be patched in (I generally fell out of interest with Splatoon to the point where I stopped checking in relatively quickly– I don’t want that to happen here and I don’t MIND finishing a game. One big update is fine, but constant little ones that are anything beyond a monthly free item get annoying to me) just feels like furthering that waiting progress.

I think what frustrates me the most is that you’re locked to such a small amount of your island at first. My first part is already so cluttered and even once I can jump across, I’d be too worried about it breaking to WANT to put things over there. I will have to move every single facility already, I can’t even try to imagine what I want to do because I have so little to work with right now and it’ll be a long while before I get to that point.

There’s still a lot I want to do and I think right now my big goal, besides trying to keep up with loans to pay them off the next day immediately, is trying to get all the bugs and fish that will be leaving when this month ends. Unfortunately, not everything matches up with New Leaf so I feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes down to it.

Among all the craziness, I ended up getting stung by a wasp twice and fainting… But it unlocked a new Nook Mile card so it wasn’t all bad. Teddy, meanwhile, seeing my face ended up teaching me how to make medicine with my DIY staton and thus, I was healed back up very quickly.

The Villagers are kind of weird in this game. I’ve never really gotten a task to help them out and everything feels so quiet in a way. They also react a lot more personally to things, but at the same time, Teddy had no reaction to my character appearing back after his suggestion. It’s honestly a bit crazy how random it can be.

I still haven’t fully figured out how DIY stuff unlocks. I actually ended up unlocking more trash recipes after finding so much. Sadly forgot to screenshot it though.

I will say I don’t feel all the controls are always explained well. I still haven’t figured out a better way to organize my inventory as an example beyond dropping and picking things back up. And how long it ended up taking me to get a Sling slot because I missed the R second page and thus, missed out on so many of them. I did, however, get a pretty cute closet and some nice boots from recycling the ones I fished up.

While I did miss out on so many, the ones I have gotten have been all over the place, having become a lot more random. I did, however, get these super cute boots which went nicely with my recolored pattern dress.

I think my only complaint with the dress is I wish it could have the poofed shoulders with some long sleeves like the Lolita dresses have.

Regardless, all that was left was the hair and while I had gotten the mirror from a DIY Recipe in a bottle, I was an Iron Ore short :( Thankfully, due to the lovely balloon gifts, I got dropped off a package of ore and thus, had my ponytail hair.

I REALLY hope more hairstyles get added in updates. I would love to see a ponytail version of the wavy hairstyles so much.

Pocket Camp to New Horizons (and a Special Delivery!)

With my Animal Crossing: New Horizons-themed switch in hand and the game itself being available in just a few hours over in Australia (and a couple more after that in Japan), we’re getting really close to its release. They recently finished up a special fishing event with Tom Nook, Timmy, and Tommy along with a special code we can redeem starting early tomorrow morning for some items in New Horizons and so I wanted to share some screenshots from the event and one other special thing.

Not to mention, today is Merengue’s birthday! So a very happy birthday to my great assistant. Here’s hoping she’ll be with me in New Horizons sometime soon…. though, likely not on her birthday.

The choices were “Happy Birthday!” or “I did know!” and honestly I wish I could’ve picked both because I DID know, but the first felt more appropriate to say…

As for the event, we had to fish for the New Horizons versions of fairly familiar Fish for lovely New Horizons-themed items.

The fishing rod is pretty neat (and thankfully doesn’t break unlike the suffering I will soon be facing in New Horizons), but I didn’t get to use it for long:

I expected a special goal version too– maybe even a gold version of the special one, but no, it was just the usual gold rod which wa sa bit disappointing.

I still enjoyed the event though.

And it was really neat seeing the new fish models.

I also had fun doing the HHA missions too.

While not NH-related, I also made a small update to the Afternoon Tea Cafe as I got the Tea Cup Fountain and well, that was incredibly on theme so:
img src=”https://www.crystal-dreams.us/Random/ACPC/20200318023743.png”>

Finally, yesterday I also got my adorable bag from being one of the winners of the Pocket Camp Club contest!!

The cute logo on the back:

It’s a lot bigger than I expected (and also a bit shorter– I expected it to be more long and stocky over short and stout, but I still love it), but it’s really great. It also came with this cute Thank you-manual:

New Horizons Plans 3.5? Or just random excitement I suppose.

Because if there wasn’t enough from the PAX Videos, there was even more extra footage revealed the following week of direct feed some people were able to get. I spent all day looking through videos and while most of them had a tendency to show the museum over and over (I love the museum too guys, but…), the biggest highlight for me was seeing some new furniture and especially, a lot of new clothing.

Being completely honest, Animal Crossing (before Pocket Camp) was always a mixed bag for me with clothing. There was never anything I SUPER liked– my favorite top/dress was changed from pink to blue when in City Folk:

(Credit for CF Princess Top)

And I never really managed to find a replacement. The dress I liked best after that were the Fluffy Dress and the The Pink Lace-up dress (though, I found it a bit bright). The Ballet Outfit was also kind of nice, but I preferred dresses with sleeves. Maybe a sleeved one will exist through New Horizons. The Kiki and Lala and My Melody dresses that were introduced in the Welcome Amiibo update were also really cute at least. I probably would’ve used the My Melody one if it was a bit of a more pale pink (or the Kiki and Lala dress if it had long sleeves) and I wasn’t already attached to the pattern dress I was using.

I’m also really hoping we could see a pink variant of it (and maybe the Princess set in general) considering all the different colors in this game. That said, some items seem to have 3 or less recolors, if any, and I’m not sure if some items just don’t have multiple colors or if not all colors always show up in Able Sister’s and just what recolors they have in stock that day. I guess we’ll see at least. I’m also curious if you need to buy every color for the catalog or if only the “original/main” color will show up…

I feel silly getting so hyper-observant and focused on the clothing of all things considering I have no idea when I’d even be unlocking Able Sisters, but with clothing like this how can I resist? (And heck, this isn’t even everything I’ve liked…)

Video credits: 1, 2

I’m pretty sure the top left one is New Horizon’s version of the Pink Lace-up dress and not only does it look amazing in general (plus it’s a more pastel pink), it has my two favorite sleeve types together– Poofy Princess Shoulders and bell sleeves. At the moment, I feel like that may be my main dress, but it’s hard to say as SO MANY of those are just… really great? When they first mentioned the Star Wand to quick-change outfits, I kind of shrugged it off as I don’t usually change my outfit anyway as there’s not many I like, but I may have to actually consider it this time. These weren’t even everything I saw that I liked– just a few highlights.

Heck, even the wigs are cute:

(Video Credit)

While I generally don’t prefer wigs as I can’t wear a cute hat with them, I would make an exception for that. Especially a ponytail version (but I’d still prefer an actual hairstyle):

Disclaimer: This is an edit!! It should be obvious as my edit skills are poor, but just incase…

I really hope there will be a wavy/curly/ringlet-y ponytail sooo badly :( Or maybe one can be added at least… I feel like there could still be a handful of hairstyles we haven’t seen yet as there’s still ones like this one we really haven’t seen outside of a single short video:

(From one of the videos in the crafting section on the official site)

The closest otherwise is a short ponytail with sideswept bangs or the bun with the long wavy side bangs. There’s also a lot of hairstyles introduced through Pocket Camp that we haven’t seen and I feel have a good chance of coming over. Pocket Camp has SO MANY unique items and it’d be a shame if they are kept solely to that game as they could open up all kinds of opportunities in this one just like Happy Home Designer. Still really hoping we’ll see ceiling items.

Anyway, besides my failure at deciding what the heck my character’s “main” outfit will be and hairstyle woes, I’ve also been struggling on a Town Tune and if I should still use the same as I did in my original Pink Sea town:

There’s 7 themes in that video including the one I used for New Leaf. I’m also tempted to try and see if I can make a town tune from part of SHE’S by Letter from one of the recent Japanese commercials for the game as it’s an absolutely beautiful song and I think it could work really well.

But yes, feel free to vote for what you think!:

What should my town tune be?

  • Town Tune #1 (33%, 2 Votes)
  • Town Tune #3 (17%, 1 Votes)
  • Town Tune #5 (17%, 1 Votes)
  • Town Tune #6 (17%, 1 Votes)
  • Try and do SHE'S by Letter! (17%, 1 Votes)
  • Town Tune #2 (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Town Tune #4 (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Town Tune #7 (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 6

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It’s crazy to think we’re less than 2 weeks out now. I can’t wait to finally play :) I just wish knowing the fruit stamp would show up on my ID card wasn’t making me reconsider my no-resets policy… 💔 (Sorry Resetti T__T)

I hope I at least get a nice spot for Dodo Airlines… And I really hope there will be more bridges and ramp styles than we’ve seen (and maybe even a customization for Town Hall and the Airport like New Leaf had for Town Hall and the Train Station) as I didn’t super like any, but I’ll probably be using the Stone, Brick, or white fence ramps depending on where I’m putting it and probably stone bridges otherwise.

On a side note, and one of the other reasons I’m really excited, is after my general aesthetic of cute things, teddy bears and plushies, animals, pink frilly things, waterfalls/fountains, and pink + ocean colors together, I absolutely love travel motifs. My dream has always been to travel the world so things like… old passports filled with stamps and even just the idea of traveling hype me up so much. It’s part of why I absolutely adore the Plane Ticket from one of the France pre-orders and the Press Kit given out by Nintendo France. The “suitcase” is beautiful and the bottle of sand?? Amazing. I have a small collection of sand bottles and just, there’s so many little details. As much as I am looking forward to bringing Pink Sea to such a new level with the terraforming option (WATERFALLS EVERYWHERE PEOPLE!!! …I promise I’ll use my new powers in moderation), I really hope to find a way to bring that travel motif into the Island as well. At the very least, I’m definitely completing all the Nook Miles to get all those stamps and it’s one of my favorite parts about them.

Edit as of March 12th: With with one of the recent new trailers, I just need to scream once again about Waterfalls because LOOK AT THESE!!!:

These look absolutely amazing. We get an idea of how close ramps can be (maybe even closer??), my double decker waterfall idea is pretty likely, I could do a combination of tall, short, tiny, and double waterfalls… There’s so much I’m hoping to do. I sure hope I can do it.

Latest Pocket Camp-ness and random thoughts

I’ve been playing a lot of Pocket Camp again lately. Partially due to wanting to finish up some loose ends (getting villagers I need, getting everyone to at least level 15 for new items to craft (I’ll go for 20 for each after and each milestone in steps after that), and just generally “preparing” for Pocket Camp-New Horizons Collaborations), but also because with New Horizons so close, I just really want to play some Animal Crossing and as much as I adore New Leaf, I’m super paranoid about messing up again and still kind of bummed about not getting to go through all these Dream Addresses due to my capture card dying (at the very least, it’s an easy fix if I ever manage to get that sent in).

Pocket Camp, as frustrating as it makes me, is a lot quicker to just pick up and at least not worry that all my villagers abandoned me and my hair has become an unruly mess as I stayed in my camper for months. There’s also no cockroaches so that’s nice.

But even ignoring my Animal Crossing kick and the easy pick up of Pocket Camp, I also just can’t resist some of the new outfits:

This pink dress and adorable pink boots? Perfect and also one of my favorite shades of pink.

Picking between that and the Princess dress is hard, but I figured a change was worth it for a bit. As much as I love Princess dresses, I really love casual frilly dresses too.

I also really loved this dress as well:

Unsurprisingly, I could not resist the new earrings. I’m still not sure what I’d say is my “default” outfit in this game with the amount of dresses I just really adore, but my camp site continues to barely change:

I don’t think it ever really will. Maybe if we get an Amenity I like better. At the very least, if we ever have more space, I’d likely add on to it, but that’s it. I really hope the items I’ve used could show up in New Horizons though as I’d love to try and set up a nice area using a lot of the same things.

In general, I have mixed feelings about most of my other set-ups (mainly due to having issues working with the space given with how large some items are), but part of it is there’s just so many items I like too.

I’ve also managed to somehow finish the gardening event as my friend’s list is clearly better at this than I am.

I don’t know if I’ll finish the “hard challenges” part. I have yet to finish one, though, this has been the closest I’ve gotten so maybe something will happen before it ends. While I hate the gardening events, I genuinely love the cutscenes at the end so I do wish I had an easier time completing them. Unfortunately, I just find them too stressful to really deal with.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would change things in Pocket Camp and why it bothers me and after recent situations in another mobile game I play that features customization, I realized a huge issue is that Pocket Camp, while yes it is for Animal Crossing fans, a large focus is honestly for those who play games with a lot of customization. And while this doesn’t apply to everyone, a lot of them are very impatient and/or kind of selfish. And by that I mean an update can happen and if they finish the content and there isn’t new content within 24 hours, they start complaining. Similarly, older events can’t stay around to participate in because it’s considered an “eye sore” if they constantly have to see something they have no interest in or it’s out of season.

And I think that easily explains a lot of Pocket Camp’s choices along with the constant events. But as an Animal Crossing fan, it’s so overwhelming and completely against the principle of the game. If you focus only on items you want or maybe your favorite villagers for the like… memories and certain events, it may not be as bad, but as someone who likes collecting everything and loves seeing all the cut scenes, it’s actually really disheartening. And considering these types of things are a large part of Animal Crossing, it does make it a bit pay to win.

I feel like Pocket Camp could really use a Premium version (not a subscription, a premium to buy) alongside an option for a free version as is as a lot of the recent issues can be pinned down to three specific factors: Constant Events, the overuse of Gulliver, and Fortune Cookies– all which can only really be a little less of a burden if you invest leaf tickets into them. So, general ideas on how things could be different:

  • Fortune Cookies – Cost Bells. Have ones that can show up randomly be cheaper (maybe 2,000-3,000) and then you can buy them outright for 5,000 or 23,000 for 5. Scratch Cards could still be used, but you could also use Leaf Tickets to buy a specific item instead. This would get rid of the large issue of gambling as the real money currency wouldn’t be attached to that part. Similarly, don’t expire fortune cookies or just make it so “out of season” ones have a limited stock each day and/or are more expensive.
  • New Villagers – They should not be gotten through Gulliver or the Treasure Map situation. This was silly to do in the first place and is just a huge pain. A new villager should just be guaranteed to take up one of the four spots the first time you met them and there should always be at least 2 villagers you haven’t invited to your camp yet (including a new one), if any, out to do favors for.
  • Gulliver – In general, only being able to get extra cargo with leaf tickets is stupid. Instead, it should require more materials equal to the amount it took the sale (IE: If it took 140 Points of Cargo for Gulliver to go to the island, it should be 140 more per each extra piece of cargo you want). This would continue the point of Gulliver to help get rid of excess items versus another leaf ticket drainer. Like fortune cookies, leaf tickets should only be used to pick something specific from the Island– possibly even without waiting for Gulliver to return.
  • Events – They just… need to not have so much overlap and honestly more time. Most people don’t mind having a break or taking more time to gather resources. And if they have to, add them permanently as being able to be crafted (with
    • Gyroid Gathering Events – Should just be general crafting events with only existing materials, Gyroid counts should be less (or spawns should be a lot quicker), and/or let people buy the special material with bells in addition to finding it.
    • Event goals shouldn’t have exclusive items attached to them. More of the items from the event themselves and/or things to help with the events (IE: Nets for Fishing Tourneys, Honey for Bug Tournaments, Flower Feed for Gardening Events, etc.). This goes for the new month-long ones that need you to hit pretty much every single event. There’s been plenty of times now I’ve liked the final item only in one of these and could never get there (and even buying all the bundles with the “goal increase” item, I still fell short…).
    • Gardening Events – Flowers shouldn’t take 3 hours to grow. 1-2 hours is already long enough. Some of the counts are awful, especially with the sucky catch rate. People who play alone would not be able to finish unless they use Leaf Tickets and even then, there’s no guarantee if they have particularly awful luck. Also a way for friends to leave some even if there are no free flowers would be nice. More often than not, I end up having tons of whatever it is we need to catch left over because everyone I want to leave them to is full and anyone who isn’t doesn’t need any.
      • On a similar note, alternate colors should not be through the “hard goals” section and that should just be used for additional colors. Recolors should be available through the normal part of the event or flower trades with Lloid.

I don’t even really have an idea for the map feature. I kind of hate it, to be honest? But I think how it works is fine, it’s just not my way to play things and I usually use Leaf Tickets to auto-complete for every Villager. Just Villagers really shouldn’t be part of it. All the other materials? Sure, fine. Having Leaf Tickets while gambling with bells? That makes sense and works. I just don’t care for this mode at all, but I don’t think it’s a bad feature outside of tying villager maps that you get from Gulliver to it (which getting villagers through Gulliver was silly in the first place).

There’s a lot of little things I can think of too like I wish we could let Villagers know we made something versus needing to invite them and place it (not to mention get the crafting recipe without inviting them) or just wanting better ways to organize things. I still think Storage shouldn’t be a subscription service.

I will say if I ignore all the things I’m missing, Pocket Camp can be a bit more fun, but as someone who loves to collect everything, I just feel a little sad to know I’m missing out, even though it’s a lot less stressful to play this way.

My New Horizons Plans 3.0 (PAX East and Maps) and expanding from New Leaf’s Pink Sea

I never expected to do a 2.0, let alone a 3.0, yet here we are a little over a week later. Between the terraforming and multiple gameplay videos and screenshots coming out of PAX East, I’ve found myself constantly thinking of what I want to do. Ceiling items still seem a bit MIA so I haven’t really thought too much about interiors. I’m essentially expecting to do similar to what I did in my New Leaf town for my mayor’s house, but I genuinely really loved some of the other rooms I did and if we can have more rooms this time, I could see myself doing some of them again or even incorporating them into exterior areas.

Outside of my “main” house in New Leaf where I really enjoyed most of the rooms (The only one I didn’t care too much for was the “back” room– I love all the items in it, but I wish I had a better idea that WORKED with putting them out versus it just being a Toy version of Scrooge’s money bin) even though they were just… aesthetic-based general house rooms, my favorite of the theme rooms were the Toy Shop, which did a better job of displaying things than my Plushie-animal-everything room did, The Sky Room which was kind of a expansion of the Plushie room, but more organized, and the Street Cafe. A lot of the Sky Room items I hope to manage to put into my main room this time around while the Street Cafe I may try and work parts of it into the exterior. The Mermaid Room was one of the general house rooms that wasn’t as much of a standard, but if we had more rooms in our house, maybe I’d be able to split it up between new rooms or even just the exterior and interior to make it even better.

I also really liked the Concert Room just in a fun way to do things with the instruments and Gyroids, but the colors were all over the place. The Detective Agency part of the office was fun too, but for a full room, it just felt kind of plain. The Backyard Room was another room where I just really wanted to fit in more things I like, but couldn’t find a place for. Also to run through wheat because it’s fun to. The idea of “items I really like but just can’t work into this room or I don’t have enough space” was pretty much the plan with most of these themed rooms, especially the ones in Emi’s house– the Birthday room is a big example using a combination of the dessert, birthday, and balloon items. The Forest Room and the Autumn Forest were two more examples, though, I suppose some of these I truly could put outside now and mesh into the exterior.

As mentioned, I’d love to try and do some kind of little cafe or dessert area and I think, if I did do more villagers for any reason, it would be for that idea in mind. I wouldn’t branch it out as much as I did in New Leaf, but more to literally be an establishment in the town, like maybe a special Tea Room that has various themed cafe areas, but is still generally a specific facility. It could even work well into really bringing the Street Cafe avenue to life as part of the town. We’ve already seen a lot of different house types for villagers and if we have even close to that for our own character’s houses, I feel like we could really make our own little town, similar to how we did Happy Home Designer’s exterior buildings.

I could also try and merge some of the items I used for the Japanese Shrine room into the area I had in my New Leaf Town. I’ve already seen so many items I can use to take a lot of the areas in Pink Sea to new heights and it’s one of the things I am really looking forward to.

We really didn’t get to see much at all of our personal home exterior options for our own house and while I’d like to hope we’ll see everything from Happy Home Designer and then some, I don’t want to get my hopes up. I feel like making it similar to my New Leaf design is a definite at minimum, but I’d love to see newer stuff too. At the moment, the only thing I really find myself debating on with the home exterior for my own character is the Wreath! I had hoped they would be a general DIY for wreaths where like a combination up to maybe 4-6 different items could work, but clearly that isn’t a thing. I’m really hoping I can maybe do one that is a combination of pink flowers and seashells though to keep things on theme, but I guess we’ll see what options there are.

For now, I’ve done a very rough draft of some kind of map:

It’s absolutely not smoothed over, acres are messy, waterfalls aren’t properly rounded out, and it doesn’t even account for everything! But it’s a very loose idea of what I am hoping to do and really gives me a better idea of how much space we truly have. I’m also still not sure if I will do gardens for all the villagers or not… I guess we’ll see– at the very least, I can probably work with transparent patterns to stop things from growing in their “areas” so to speak.

I have a lot of questions based on if waterfalls can truly curve, if there’s a limit to bridges and ramps, how many villagers can we have max, and even what the minimum is as well. For now, I’ve put in 8 Villager spots to essentially have a spot for each of my top favorites. Of course, we don’t know all the new villagers yet so it’s possible someone besides Cotton Candy Cub could claim a “top favorite” spot as well.

I know I’ll move the facilities around, but they are some of the things I’m most undecided on. Similarly, I don’t know if I want to mix the housing area for villagers and the facilities together, or have them separated like they are in the current rough draft. While not on the rough draft map, I figure somewhere in the upper area above the “Villager Neighborhood” is where I’d put the Camp site and a little camping area, or maybe even below closer to the beach and airport. I’m still not entirely sure, but I do think it would be its own thing rather than part of the Facilities or Houses. Or maybe even just have the facilities in the center with Houses on the sides.

I definitely want to decorate a part of the beach as well, though, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’d like to do and where. I hope it’ll look nice though. Maybe as part of the Camping area or a pool area… At the very least, it’d make more sense to have the Lighthouse closer to the beach, if not on it. I need to see what terraforming we can do on the beach too…

I may even do nearly the entire back in waterfalls, with flowers going around the back and only small places where you can get to the very top of the cliffs. I don’t even know if “two-tier” waterfalls are completely possible, but I’m definitely going to try. In some extent, parts of what I’m really envisioning are similar to Phenac City or Couriway Town.


Or even Waterfall Lake in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

Or heck, some of my favorite FFXIV screenshots.

The idea of being able to essentially do like a Garden and/or fountains and this serene area and just have the water flowing around this center platform is just so beautiful to me and it’s something I hope with all my heart I can do justice to and somehow represent it in my town and really bring Pink Sea to life in a way I couldn’t in New Leaf. Heck, that top side of the cliff where the waterfalls flow and people can’t really reach could even display things in itself.

Not to mention if many of the new items from Pocket Camp come over… I could possibly make the Crystal Shrine of my camp site into an actual area, with waterfalls and flowers and more space and it could be beautiful.

Of course, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself ^^; We don’t even know how long it’ll take for me to get to a point where I CAN fully start setting up my Island. In the meantime, I’m really hoping to get a starting map similar to this:

I like the Airport in the South East mainly and I feel like it’s the best map where I can set in motion most of my starting plans. I also admit I am kind of really hoping for Peaches after learning that your town fruit shows up on your ID Card as I’m guessing it’ll be pink… and I want the pink fruit stamp. I don’t plan to reset at all, but wow do I just hope I get lucky with both the map and fruit. Other things I’m hoping for are the Circle Grass Design and Red for the Airport, though I’d take Blue… or possibly green if not blue or red. Still not stuff I’d reset over (especially if we can maybe redesign it like we could the train station in New Leaf), but I just hope I get lucky with all the things I like.

On the bright side, I’ve already seen a lot of outfits I like at the Able Sisters. The only problem is who knows when I’ll unlock it. I just hope I do before the Seasonal Outfit is gone and that I can quickly manage to get this lovely dress. I’m going to be working so hard to earn as many bells and Nook Miles as possible >< I think right now my biggest worries are just how I'll deal with crafting. While I don't expect trees to constantly give wood, I am curious how it all works still and worried about running out. I don't think they will-- I'd like to think they will always respawn, but part of me is worried you may need to replenish your trees for more wood which, as someone who just likes to have things set and done with would kind of drive me nuts. My main issue with crafting is resource management is just not my forte in games, or more accurately, it stresses me out and I generally try to play things in a more relaxed state which doesn't really work if I'm constantly worrying about running out of things or not having what I need. I pretty much farmed for Silver Axes to make sure I wouldn't run before I had the stumps I wanted and while I get that they wanted this whole ground-up approach, I'm still not sold on crafting and am just hoping I'll feel less anxious once I'm actually playing. At the very least, the larger storage will definitely come in handy so that's definitely one positive. There also doesn't seem to be an item limit for houses this time (or it's higher than it was in New Leaf) which makes me hopeful to be able to do everything I wanted with some rooms where I had to cut back like removing nearly all the wall items in the Kitchen of my Mayor's house. I am still a bit disappointed about the starting options. I think if it wasn't for the advertisement of being able to choose everything and having Pocket Camp and Happy Home Designer actually give you the options of picking from it all, I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up and this wouldn't have hit me as hard as did, but alas, it wasn't fully clear and maybe if it was just "pick your face and skin and one of eight starting hairstyles" it would've been a bit better, but maybe a bit too specific. Regardless, thanks to a very lovely Picrew, I will admit my planned starting look has grown on me a bit.

I may pick Black over Dark Brown for the Hair and Brown over Black for the eyes depending on how they look in-game, but I will likely be picking this Face Style and Hair Style at the least. I’m still undecided on the nose, but it will probably be either triangle or circle.

I think the face paint option is really cool, though, I won’t personally be using it. I just really hope Nintendo ends up making a ponytail version of this hair (maybe a bit longer) or the other wavy/curly hairstyle. And a normal ponytail– not a side tail.

I hope we can preview the hair packs before we buy them so I can get a ponytail quickly, but if not, I’ll at least try to imagine my hair longer… Hopefully I can get a vanity quickly too. Regardless, maybe this can help me bear with not having the hair I want a bit longer as there’s a lot of things that seem important to prioritize Nook Miles for like paying off the Island Getaway Package, the Tool Wheel, and more inventory space.

Finally, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Dodo Airlines which is a really cute site where you can make your own Passport* and Boarding Pass:

*Mine is slightly edited to actually use my Villager from Pocket Camp and for other stamps too because I couldn’t decide ^^; But it still originated thanks to this lovely site!

I’m really looking forward to filling out the application as well, but I’m going to wait until I actually start the game and include it in my Day 1 entry :)

It’s hard not to be hyped as new info comes forward from PAX and people keep making such cool things like this, but the game is less than 3 weeks away!! I can’t wait and I just hope I’ll manage to make the progress I’m hoping to.