Category: Nintendo

Shut down the animal schools, snow is here! In the console/handheld AC, there's weather and snow leading up to the full snow day of Dec 11, but in PC it just flipped over this morning. Everywhere except the island is now frosty, whether snow on the coconut palms makes sense or not.

I haven't noticed any actual gameplay changes from the weather yet, but it's early days. I miss Wild World where I'd roll up snowmen, and skid when running, but it crunches nicely under my feet.

I finished the rock stage yesterday, so now my Cool animals can all go up to Level 20. It's pretty loud in the concert pit when a crowd goes over there, and KK Slider's just sitting there trying to play his guitar, man. But now I have another construction box next to it. In a few weeks when all the amenities are built, it'll be nice to not hear hammering and sawing constantly.

And Nintendo announced the gardening and clothing crafting will be coming soon. Interesting they're pushing the expansions out so fast, expected them to wait at least until spring. It's been a pretty flawless launch and support, which I don't really understand how they do it, most mobile launches are garbage for months or years (Poke Mongo, for instance).

I like these day-for-night nighttime shots, since I mostly play in the dark, but it'll be interesting to see how it looks in actual (simulated) daylight.

New animals and furniture just got added: Bluebear, Antonio, Phoebe, and Raddle! And a ton of new furniture, noticeably tiki torches, campfires, some new rugs, medical machines that go Bing!. I had all 40 animals unlocked, and 37/40 befriended, so this is just in time.

Rather than wait for the new ones to appear in random rotation, I'm starting to call them up with the Calling Cards I got from levelling other animals to Level 10 or 15. Never waste leaf tickets on anything temporary, only on inventory, market boxes, and maybe camper paint jobs.

If you visit my.nintendo at least once a week, you can click on your Mii wandering around, sometimes it'll give you coins (Club Nintendo points). Then hit Redeem, and you can redeem both AC-only points and Club Nintendo points for materials, like the ever-scarce cotton; in the app, you can only redeem AC points. I wish I could trade over some Miitomo points, too.

You can mark craftable furnishings as Favorites (star icon) on the order screen, without finishing the order. Do this for all the items you need to summon each animal, and for their special request items, and then they'll be on the star tab, without having to go hunt for the item or look thru contacts again. When you actually craft it, un-favorite it so you don't have to see it in the list again.

After crafting 4 levels of the Cool street scene instantly (but had to wait for materials), for the 5th I'm now back to a giant 48-hour construction box and the endless sound of hammering and sawing. UGH. I'm at 240-something CC now, so I'll finish the holiday items tomorrow, a day ahead of prediction.

• The first few holiday items went quick, and doing the ones with CC (Candy Cane) rewards in the Timed Goals, they're free or even generate a profit. The rest are a little pricey. Every day between the quarry and a few rounds of animal requests I make about 100 CC, so I should have all the holiday items by the 6th. Someone playing more casually should still get there by the end of the month.

• Feature requests filed with Nintendo (More->Misc->Customer Support->Feedback): Market Box Search: Search all friends' market boxes for a specific item, and see a list sorted by unit price ascending. Sort Inventory: A button to sort clothes and furnishings A-Z instead of date-added. Breezy Hollow, the orchard area, has no reason to revisit it except when fruit resets every 3 hours. The other 3 harvest areas all have 2 fruit trees and fish/bugs, so Breezy Hollow should have 2 bug spots. Who knows if some English feature requests are even going to make it to the dev staff, but better than just complaining to the blog.

• I've been thinking about the need for chat. It'd be nice to give feedback on camps beyond a Kudo (which for the daily goals is often just "first in the friend list"). Ideally we could just see our friends' Miitomo accounts and go chat there, it's been dead quiet for a year.
  But then I think of Nintendo's Disney-like purity goals and remember Randy Farmer's BlockChat post. So I'm pondering ways to share a URL with items, say with letter/number shirts in the camper.

These animals are crazy:

But not always wrong:

And sometimes full of wisdom:

via @animalcrossing@twitter.com:

'Tis the season! We've got a fun holiday event planned for you, starting tomorrow, 11/30, at 10:00 p.m. (PST). I can't wait! #PocketCamp

If you want to peek at some of the new presents, Gamepress has a datamine

… Sadly Pocket Camp doesn't have a usable axe, so I can't put on a Santa suit and reenact a holiday movie.

1. Build all of the level 1 tents ASAP, they don't have to be displayed to increase the max level of that style's animals, everywhere in the world. Upgrade to level 2 when you have money, then level 3 when you have a lot of time (when you sleep, for instance).
   I foolishly only did Cool and Cute level 1 first, then went ahead on Cool level 2 & 3, and had several Sporty and Natural animals stuck at max level 7 for 12 hours.
2. Don't ever vend (sell to the bank) any fruit or the uncommon (100 bell) fish or bugs. Animals will request those at higher levels, and pay 10x what the bank does. If you have too many, put them in the Market Box at a reasonable price, under 10x price so people can make a profit!
   I'm selling fruit & common shells for 40 bells each, uncommons for 400 each, and doing good business now. I vend most common bugs & fish down to 6 each, but sometimes put them in my Market Box.
3. You can layout your nice furniture, and use Auto-Arrange when you finish an animal's invite quest, then Clean Up, and it'll restore your furniture layout. Do not sell furniture, multiple animals will request the same items.
4. Hit the cat icon in your campsite to change who's stuck inside with you. I keep those who give good resources (Tex, Apollo) and leave out the ones I need to level faster.
5. Check the Able Sisters market every 6 hours, it changes from Mabel selling shirts, to a skunk selling shoes, to Sabel selling pants and hats (is Labelle in here? I've not seen her). There's no dialogue story like in Wild World, where over the course of weeks or months you learn about their background.
6. Check Timmy Nook's store for furniture you might need in a quest, far cheaper than crafting it. There's no furniture inventory limit AFAICT, shop till you drop!
7. First thing in the morning, request help with the quarry from everyone on your friend list, and anytime you see a shovel icon by their name click in and Lend a Hand; you get 10 or 100 bells when they use it. Once you get 5 friends to help you, wait for a resource you want to be focused, it changes every hour. Don't waste leaves on the quarry, it's just a little cash and a stack of up to 10 resources.
8. Shake all the non-fruit trees, one a day will drop a bag of 100-1000 bells.
9. I always log out in my camper, so the area outside will be reset when I come back.

More detailed info at these longer, often too long sources:

• Sir Tap Tap guide
• TouchArcade beginners guide
• TouchArcade grind guide
• TouchArcade late game guide
• Reddit /r/AnimalCrossing megathread

I've spent 8-12 hours in the last 24 hours playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Not good for productivity, but eh, launch day and sorta holiday break.

Once you get every active NPC's quests done and get all the fruit, which doesn't take too long, all you can do for the next 3 hours is fish the ocean & collect shells, collect bugs, fish the river, repeat. So go get some work done instead. I can see a daily schedule built around AC:PC won't be too disruptive.

The IAP is nothing to complain about. Every previous AC has always cost $40-60 AND been timer-based, grinding bells and rep with NPCs. 3-day timer on growing trees or harvesting fruit in Wild World was a pain. Having to talk to every NPC with the same pointless responses every day for a slim chance they'd tell you their birthday, or give you a gift. Check both stores every day for new items, buy them and sell back so they'd be in your catalog, because there was no other way to advance. That was the AC console & DS experience: SLOW.

In AC:PC, I haven't spent a buck yet, it shows the timers (3 hours for most things), and shows XP and level meters. I'm now Level 16, and earned enough tickets in-game to unlock all 3 crafting slots and get K.K. Slider to sit on his stool and play for me, got 8 NPCs in my camp, and I'm working on an advanced level 3 Cool Tent.

The NPC crafted set requirements before they can be invited are getting familiar: 4 easy items and one super slow one, which would be annoying but I need the break. The premise is ridiculous, "I'd love to visit your camp… if you install exactly the furniture I want!", but it drives you to gather resources and do stuff. Good game mechanics don't have to make sense.

Clothing is very limited. IIRC, AC:WW had 9 or 12 items per day, plus your custom clothing patterns. AC:PC has 3 every 6 hours, and so far all I've got are a few shirts and hats, no new pants or shoes. I'm very disappointed by the Abel sisters this go around, but crafted clothing is "coming", someday, somehow.

Expanding the camper like a house is possible (I now somehow have a loft with a ladder in my VW hippie bus), and a nice easter egg (people have to go into your camper to see it), but you can't switch between multiple custom paint jobs, it costs 5000 bells each time; so I bought the 8000 bell camo job, which at least costs me nothing to restore.

Only thing I can't unlock is the Shovelstone Quarry, I need 5 friends to "assist", and even tho I've friended and requested help from the 6 random mostly-Japanese players who show up in my world, it hasn't unlocked yet, but I'm not spending 20 tickets on it!

Friend ID: 1227 6011 048