Full FeedFive suggestions for Animal Crossing: City Folk newcomers
With the recent release of Animal Crossing: City Folk, its likely that a lot of players are encountering the series for the first time. After all, the Wii may be the first gaming console for many people, and so these players may be unfamiliar with the tips and tricks Animal Crossing veterans may have developed throughout Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing: Wild World to get by.
On top of that, there are some new elements added into Animal Crossing: City Folk, which returning players may initially be a bit unfamiliar with.
So, after exhaustive playing over the past two weeks (my house is already two stories), we’ve put together a list of five tips that might help you do better in Animal Crossing: City Folk. Hopefully, after reading, you’ll find it a bit easier to handle and manage your new virtual life.
Check the City the second you log on.
The first thing you’ll want to do, once you’ve started the game, is head to the city. Well, at least until you’ve collected all of Phineas the walrus’ prizes. Phineas isn’t a regular visitor, you never know when he’s going to be in the city and he’s only in the city square during the day. But, if he’s there and you talk to him, he’ll give you a free bubble wand, pinwheel, balloon or bunny balloon.
It may seem small but these accessory items are incredibly cute and Phineas is the only way to acquire them for free. So, at least until you’ve gotten one of each, you’ll want to check the city for him. Personally, I’m still trying to get my regular balloon to complete my souvenir set.
Follow the speech bubbles.
This next tip is helpful for people who have visitors that don’t have Wii Speak. When you type a message with the keyboard and send it up, a speech bubble appears on screen. If you look at the other person’s speech bubble, it will tell you the direction of your visitor. As you run towards your WiFi visitor, the bubble will move closer to the center of the screen and get larger. Then, once you’re right next to each other, the bubbles will appear directly over your head. If you’ve invited someone over, but lost track of where he/she is, this is like the Animal Crossing equivalent of a GPS.
Join an Animal Crossing: City Folk community.
If you want to meet Kaitlin and Katie, get a town filled with different kinds of fruits quickly, upgrade to Nookingtons (the largest Tom Nook store) or have a full auction house, you’re going to need to make some friends with the game. Kaitlin or Katie will only end up in your town, ready to be reunited, if you’ve been playing with someone over WiFi. The Nookingtons expansion only happens after you’ve paid enough mortgage money to Nook and some WiFi visitor has bought from from Nook’s store. The auction house in the city is filled with items other WiFi people have decided to display. And, while you could probably get coconuts on your own, it could be difficult to get non-native fruit without making friends and trading.
People with WiFi will also want to hunt around and find some reliable City Folk friends. The best way is to join some sort of community dedicated to the game. (I like the adult Animal Crossing: City Folk community, for older players of the game, on LiveJournal.) Just make sure you specify ahead of time rules for your town - for example no digging, no trampling flowers, no cutting down trees, etc. An added benefit of joining a community means you may have an easier time of finding specific furniture or clothing.
Have reference pictures when making Pro designs.
People who spend 350 bells at the Able Sisters tailor shop to create a Pro design, where you design the front, back, right and left sleeves of an outfit, will want it to look perfect. So, the best thing to do is first pay a little visit to Google or your favorite online clothing retailer. Look through and pick out your favorite clothes. If possible, try to get both front and back pictures of the outfit you want to recreate. Then, if you can, either print (if you have a desktop) or have the computer nearby (laptop) when you’re creating. That way, your clothes will look most authentic.
I’ve spent a great deal of time designing in Animal Crossing: City Folk. Since my town is Midgar, I’ve decided to make quite a few Final Fantasy heroine outfits but recently have expanded a bit (after receiving a request) and begun creating some Baby the Stars Shine Bright dress replicas. If you enjoy it, and get good at it, you may find that other players from communities may be willing to pay bells for custom clothing or flags. (Readers: If you’re interested in a possible follow up article on outfit design, or a gallery of my City Folk clothing, let me know in the comments.)
Fish!
December 2008 is a month with eight very delightful fishy friends swimming in the rivers and ocean - the coelacanth, stringfish, tuna, lobster, ray, football fish, koi and red snapper. These scaly creatures are exceptional, as Nook will pay more than 2,000 bells for each of them. The majority of them are understandably rare although I’ve had no problem reeling in football fish and snappers. On a regular day, stake out the streams in town. You may just find a 15,000 bell stringfish, or perhaps even a 2,000 bell koi.
The best thing to do though, is wait for a snowy or rainy day. Then, clear out your inventory completely, and carry your fishing pole. Head to the ocean, and start casting. Coelacanth, worth 15,000 bells, only appear on rainy or snowy days, and the chances of catching all the other rare fish increases. On a day like this, the ocean is your friend, since the coelacanth, football fish, lobster, ray, red snapper and tuna are all waiting there for you. The least valuable fish there are the football fish/lobster (2,500 bells) and the most valuable are the tuna (7,000 bells) and elusive coelacanth.
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there’s a lot more fish available in december than the 8 you’ve listed. i’ve caught 13 different fish so far, and haven’t even caught a few of the ones you listed yet.
i also have nookingtons and haven’t had a traveler come in on wifi because my wii isn’t even set up for online play yet; i’ve only had it for 2 days. instead of having a traveler come in just create a second character in your town and buy an item with them.
your first tip is pointless though. you should get rid of it and replace it with information about turnip trading. i’ll just leave some tips for future readers in this comment.
if you want to make bells fast in animal crossing here’s what you do:
on sunday between 6 am and noon find joan wandering in your town and buy white turnips from her (red turnips are a waste of time and money). invest ALL the money you have in white turnips and then throw them all in your house. personally, i don’t buy turnips if joan is selling them for more than 100 bells apiece, but that’s just me.
everyday (except sunday) go talk to tom nook BEFORE noon and ask him for his price on turnips. if he’s buying turnips for more than you payed for them go ahead and sell them; instant profit. if he’s buying turnips for less than you payed for them wait until after noon and check his price again. he gives two prices a day; one before noon, and one after noon. i usually don’t sell unless he’s offering more than 170 bells apiece.
your turnips will only last for one week, so if you wait till saturday and don’t sell them you’ll lose all the money you invested. it gets kind of risky waiting until after thursday so i usually just sell as soon as nook offers a price that will get me back the money i put in. turnips won’t last through time traveling forwards or backwards so don’t try and go back in time once you get to the end of the week if you still haven’t gotten a good price.
on December 7, 2008 at 05:22 PM - LINKYes, there are more fish available. However, they’re worth less than 2,000 bells. Since the primary concern of new players is earning money, they’ll want to focus on filling up their pockets with the most expensive fish. :D
You do make a good point with the Stalk Market (turnip trading). I didn’t mention it because it can be extremely risky. If you’re just starting out, it may be smarter to at least get a second story on your house before you start risking money on turnips.
Red turnips, however, are a good investment. You can only get one a day.
I didn’t realize Nookingtons upgrade would happen without WiFi. Mine upgraded after a friend bought while visiting through the Nintendo WFC, so I figured that had something to do with it.
on December 8, 2008 at 12:38 AM - LINKAnimal Crossing Wild World is awesome!!!
on December 18, 2008 at 04:33 PM - LINKI play it everyday, and I’m getting City Folk for christmas. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A good way to get exotic fruit and help complete your catalog, send a letter with your native fruit (in my case: pears) as a present to everyone in your town. Ignore other people in your household or other accounts you have, just the native people, which should be 10 other people. You need to write a complete sentence, simply writing “hi” or “thank you” will not work. I tend to write “A gift for you.” or “Thank you for being a friend.” <sorry for getting the Golden Girls theme stuck in your head ;) >
The first two days I did this I received different fruits a long with furniture and other items. The second day I received a few more fruit but much more furniture. All of the fruit I planted (to insure growth, chop down an existing tree, dig up the stump, and bury it in that spot). I then also planted the first few crops of the trees when they started bearing fruit.
I still do this everyday, it only takes a few mins. and it’s nice to get 10 letters with 10 presents every morning. It’s also making my catalog fill up fast. If you have more than one character, do this with each one.
I have also found out how to avoid the fighting between my kids over the items in Tom Nook’s store. You can take items and drop them in the recycling bin in Town Hall, save and quit, then go in as another character. Go to the recycling bin, pick up the items, close the recycling bin, then open it again and put the items back. Then save and quit and do it with another character, or go back to the original character and have them pick the items back up. As long as an item is in your pocket, even just for a second, it will show up in your Nook’s catalog (unless it is a “special” item, such as Snowman or Mario items.)
I hope this helps some people.
on January 10, 2009 at 01:04 PM - LINKman you guys don’t know good money. Fishing man catch the shark in august it’s worth 15,000 or get the hammerhead that gives you 8,000
on February 12, 2009 at 05:52 PM - LINKIf you need money let me know i have an unlimited amount of money… you can find me on the animal crossing community… (google it its the first one that comes up) or email me and we can exchange friend codes…. i have alot of eveything and i duplicate things for almost everyone and for free… i always love meeting new people…
on April 23, 2009 at 08:05 PM - LINKWell,when you send your native fruit to animals in your town…..you can write stuff like ‘Thanks for being a good friend’ but I think the key is to at least write the word ‘Fruit’ in it I think it will be a 40% bigger chance you will get un-native fruit! (Which means you’ll probably get more fruit than furniture!) Have Fun!
on May 11, 2009 at 10:29 PM - LINKHe wont move, for 5 months have tried to kick out Rasher. did everything from boppin him with a net, pitfalls, pushing, not talking to him for weeks; reporting him to Pelly; he still won’t move. Called Nintendo and they said there is a site from gameplay that tells how to “kick out neighbor”. I can’t find it. i cant enjoy the game anymore and i hate to restart a town. please, can anyone help me.
on June 26, 2009 at 09:56 AM - LINK@ Dorchee - Don’t ignore him. If you do, you’ll possibly miss his moving convo.
Every time you see Rasher, push him. Push him all around until he gets mad at you. If he asks you for favors, always turn him down. I hope that works, it’s always helped make characters I didn’t like move.
on June 26, 2009 at 01:12 PM - LINKI think that the next animal crossing should have the ocean however it should be more like the first animal crossing with the island however it should have a large city on the other side that has a few restaurants a strip mall, a race track where you can beat on cars or horses something like that and earn extra money. I don’t think that they should have an annoying captain that sings the same old songs over and over and over again. I also think that animal crossing city folk has a good concept however keep some of the same things but add to it more. I really like the fortune teller, the shoe shiner, the stylist, I really didn’t like that character Dr. Shunk his jokes were awful. I also like the Gracie place but lower the prices a little that stuff was expensive. I think that Redd should go. Some of the stuff that he sells like the forged painting was a really good joke but spending that much to get a fake and have it thrown into your face. I think that the next animal crossing game should have a patio that you can descent with a few cool things. I think that you should have the option to go live in the city after you pay off your entire mortgage. Or at least maybe like have a place to live there. Have the friends code perhaps and have your friends either join with you at the city when there online and talk to them. If you have more then one of your friends in the same place you could link up and talk to them. Lets say you have three people that are in your friend code thing and you could talk to all three of them. Like for instants you can listen in on the conversation with other characters in your town and listen in on a secret that two of you character are talking about about. Like a gossip but with more then one person that is registered on you friend code something like that. I also think that you should be able to do this on the next Nintendo hand held. I would like to also see more real life stuff that people go through every day of there lives. Also once you have started a new town and character you should give it some personality. Adjusting his attitude make him or her more likable or disliked to other characters in the game. I would also like to see Nintendo make all games transferable to an external memory like the SD card however have the external memory formatted to be fixed to the same consoled and that it can’t be used by another console. Like you go to a friends house and you try to copy the game onto his console but you can’t the code from your console is different then what you friends is there for you can’t use it other you can. I guess have it copy right protected to your console and yours alone. I would also like to see that the game has a lot more mini games. I didn’t really feel much interest to the hide and seek. I also think that some of the older characters could go. I didn’t really like the camel, the walrus. I think that’s all that I would like to see change
on September 8, 2009 at 08:06 PM - LINK