1 – A lways try not to worry about other player’s islands

Sound advice for life in general. Lewis Hamilton was a Formula1 champ by 23 years old and his amazing accomplishments don’t remove the achievements from yours. The photographic nature of Animal Crossing lends itself to being shared across every kind of social media. People want to share the results of what they’ve put their time and bells into and there’s some fantastic pieces out there. Recreations of Johto, cities and huge elaborate mansions all lined with elaborate walk ways and rare goodies. This doesn’t make your village any worse by comparison. You need to go at your own pace. If you want to just focus on making a different coloured flower you go do that!

2 – N ormalize having a shorter focus for your sessions

Animal Crossing is built to be played longer than many other games with various features unlocking as the days tick by. There’s nothing wrong with spending a few hours fishing to pay off a debt or building items to fill out a building but if you’re stressing out because your bridge is no way near finished then maybe take a break? These bigger projects are designed to take weeks of chipping away, not finished in one go. The hour long fish just to relax and soak in the atmosphere is where it’s at. Popping on to pick up your fossils, your bells and then picking an activity to relax with. Perfect.

3 – I buy Turnips without a huge investment

Once I’ve dug all the fossils on a Sunday morning, dug out the free 1k bells and sold any duplicates, it’s a quick trip to the ABD and I’m off to buy Turnips. A large chunk of the savings remain savings. Selling Turnips is an easy way to get a lot of bells, investing big and checking daily for the optimum selling price. The problem is it twists Animal Crossing to become less about enjoying a boost to your bells and more about optimizing gains. If you’re using a tracker online to make sure to get the absolute most bang for your bell then it’s like you’re missing the point of Turnips. It’s just another thing to check daily, judge when is worth more and gives you something to talk about with others. Don’t go mad waiting for that 300 bell windfall, a small profit will do and it could always come along another day.

4 – M aybe try not to stress too much about the online sucking

We all get it, the online is fairly clunky. If you just play with 2-3 people and everyone joins at one after another it’s not too bad. You can easily just pop the switch down, message them on a separate app and wait for it to load. Their Switch needs to download the map and data anyways, it was always going to take a while. The online systems for the Switch are always a little janky and Animal Crossing is only going to improve with updates as the quality of life updates drip feed through. For now enjoy making your own fun, running around playing hide and seek or fishing together.

5 – A n idea for a project is great but don’t get stuck in the specifics

Halfway through any large-scale project on your island you’ll hit a snag. There might be a tree you didn’t plan for, a plant not growing properly or a resident who just won’t shift. Failure is just a learning process and you’ll find the more your projects and paths evolve the more the island becomes something that reflects you. When I started out I was using a QR coded setup for paths only to realise that the game gives you landscaping equipment later on, time for a change of plans then! The layout was already there it just meant a bit of tweaking. Full of flowers now but they’ll be handy later on for something special, change can be good after all!

6 – L ets agree to not time-skip

The temptation is there. We all have it. Mr. Resetti is now a helper to get you back to the island centre so the temptation to jump ahead and get the next days fossils, bells and goodies is high. Time skipping in Animal Crossing is just like most cheats in long playing strategy games, once you’ve added in infinite cash, the fun of earning it in real time becomes a drag. The knowledge that you could always skip ahead lingering in the back of your mind. Easier to just avoid it in the first place and when you’ve done everything, go play something else. It’s not like the Switch is devoid of any other titles!

Crossing off any other ideas? Let me know! Personally since the egg day has passed I find the best time in Animal Crossing to be simply relaxing in the evening, fishing or catching bugs and popping along to Blathers to chat. All the while the muddle of flowers continue to grow and try to create new colours.

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