How do I safely stop playing New Leaf?

Xsy

Xsy

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I want to take a break. After 300 hours of gameplay, the game is finally becoming a chore. The only reason I play now is to make sure my cuter villagers don't move out.

Is there a way I can stop playing without worrying about my best friend Chief moving out unexpectedly?
 
Unfortunately, there is no way you can completely stop playing altogether without having to worry about villagers moving out. Try getting on for about half an hour or less every 3 days and walking by all your animals, seeing who pings, and/or talking to see if there are any moving rumours. You can also time travel each night to keep the game on the same day if you wish, so that nothing changes while you're on your break.

I completely stopped playing for a week when I became occupied with real-life things and I started my game again to find Fauna, one of my favourite dreamies who had been kindly gifted to me by a stranger, in boxes. It is my biggest New Leaf regret and I personally found it much worse than the dull and frustrating feeling of doing New Leaf activities when it feels more like a chore than a game. Good luck.
 
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If you make a note of the last date you played you can go as long as you want without playing, just set it back to the last date you played and nothing will have changed.

I do this all the time in my spare towns.
 
Faery said:
Unfortunately, there is no way you can completely stop playing altogether without having to worry about villagers moving out.
Click to expand...
There is, actually! The two methods I know are:

1. Write down the current date. When you feel like playing your game again, change your system clock back to this date before loading up your game. The game will think not a single day has passed, and so things will be exactly the same way you left them. Assuming you'd like to go back to the current date, carefully TT day by day until someone pings you to tell you they're going to move. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can safely leap forward to the current date again.

2. This is by far my preferred method, and is basically an easier version of method 1. Just keep playing the game until someone pings you to move out. Shouldn't take more than a few days. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can now take a break from the game for as long as you'd like without anyone moving out.
 
1. Set the beautiful town ordinance.
2. Convince a villager who is thinking about moving out to change their mind and stay.

That's all you need to do. As long as the last day you played the game, you got someone to not move out, then you can take a hiatus safely. You don't need to time travel.

I can't guarantee it will work 100% of the time of course... but it's always worked for me.
 
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Hana-Nezumi said:
1. Set the beautiful town ordinance.
2. Convince a villager who is thinking about moving out to change their mind and stay.

That's all you need to do. As long as the last day you played the game, you got someone to not move out, then you can take a hiatus safely. You don't need to time travel.
Click to expand...

Campy said:
There is, actually! The two methods I know are:

1. Write down the current date. When you feel like playing your game again, change your system clock back to this date before loading up your game. The game will think not a single day has passed, and so things will be exactly the same way you left them. Assuming you'd like to go back to the current date, carefully TT day by day until someone pings you to tell you they're going to move. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can safely leap forward to the current date again.

2. This is by far my preferred method, and is basically an easier version of method 1. Just keep playing the game until someone pings you to move out. Shouldn't take more than a few days. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can now take a break from the game for as long as you'd like without anyone moving out.
Click to expand...

I... I didn't know this. Neat, thank you for those tips, my soul is finally free from its prison.
 
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Manzanas said:
I... I didn't know this. Neat, thank you for those tips, my soul is finally free from its prison.
Click to expand...
I did not know this either, thank you to everyone who enlightened me and corrected my false information. :) It would still not be fun to have to TT back to the present date after using that method to take a hiatus, but it's definitely better than losing a villager!
 
Campy said:
2. This is by far my preferred method, and is basically an easier version of method 1. Just keep playing the game until someone pings you to move out. Shouldn't take more than a few days. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can now take a break from the game for as long as you'd like without anyone moving out.
Click to expand...

This is beautiful! Thank you so much. Might be the most useful bit of info I've picked up on this forum! It's obvious if you already know about the first method you mention, but it's so much more elegant that I never thought of it:)
 
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Campy said:
There is, actually! The two methods I know are:

1. Write down the current date. When you feel like playing your game again, change your system clock back to this date before loading up your game. The game will think not a single day has passed, and so things will be exactly the same way you left them. Assuming you'd like to go back to the current date, carefully TT day by day until someone pings you to tell you they're going to move. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can safely leap forward to the current date again.

2. This is by far my preferred method, and is basically an easier version of method 1. Just keep playing the game until someone pings you to move out. Shouldn't take more than a few days. Tell them to stay, save and quit, and you can now take a break from the game for as long as you'd like without anyone moving out.
Click to expand...


I always wondered this too. Very useful information! But with method 2, what happens all the days the clock is ticking away since there's no time travel? I'm guessing because the game isn't loading up, no one will have time to want to move despite days going by?
 
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I think you'd need to write down the date and time you stop playing somewhere so that way when you decide to come back, you can just time travel to that time and date and it'll be as if nothing happened. I'm on a pokemon frenzy atm so I had to do this too so that my cute dreamies don't move out.
 
Lav:) said:
I always wondered this too. Very useful information! But with method 2, what happens all the days the clock is ticking away since there's no time travel? I'm guessing because the game isn't loading up, no one will have time to want to move despite days going by?
Click to expand...
The way it works is this... On any given day, there can only be up to one villager in the "going to move" phase, where the date in the future that they are planning to move is pre-determined, and you have up to that date to convince them not to move out. The way the game detects if anyone has moved out when you boot it up, is that it checks to see if there is a villager in their move-out phase who is past their move-out date. The game won't retroactively put a villager in the move-out phase who wasn't already, so only a villager who was planning to move out the last time you played the game can possibly move out, and if you have convinced them not to then they won't, and because there can only be one villager thinking of moving out at a time then nobody else will either.
 
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Hana-Nezumi said:
The way it works is this... On any given day, there can only be up to one villager in the "going to move" phase, where the date in the future that they are planning to move is pre-determined, and you have up to that date to convince them not to move out. The way the game detects if anyone has moved out when you boot it up, is that it checks to see if there is a villager in their move-out phase who is past their move-out date. The game won't retroactively put a villager in the move-out phase who wasn't already, so only a villager who was planning to move out the last time you played the game can possibly move out, and if you have convinced them not to then they won't, and because there can only be one villager thinking of moving out at a time then nobody else will either.
Click to expand...


Ahhh, I get it. Thank you for this information :)
 
SoSu said:
This is beautiful! Thank you so much. Might be the most useful bit of info I've picked up on this forum! It's obvious if you already know about the first method you mention, but it's so much more elegant that I never thought of it:)
Click to expand...

Glad I could help!

Lav:) said:
I always wondered this too. Very useful information! But with method 2, what happens all the days the clock is ticking away since there's no time travel? I'm guessing because the game isn't loading up, no one will have time to want to move despite days going by?
Click to expand...

Yep, it's just like you said. Since you quit playing the game on the day you stopped someone from moving, no villager will 'get the opportunity' to start thinking of moving again until you load up your game after your break. :)

Edit: Hana-Nezumi provided a much better explanation. Thanks!
 
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I used the second method that was described by Campy, it works perfectly! I was a little anxious at first but I have no bad surprise when I decided to play again :) It's very useful since I won't have time to play with my second town a lot, so I can take break and feel relieved at the same time; no cutie will move out from BourgVoeu n_n
 
I like the idea of leaving the game and changing the actual ds clock back when you need too... But what I do is I go on everyday and keep going back to 6am that same day everyday if I forgot or simply wasn't bothered to play (if that makes sense)
 
Just like Campy said, the first method will allow you to actually 'freeze' your town. Let's say that you wanted to stop playing on the 20th of April {4/20 ( ͡? ͜ʖ ͡?)}. So, remember the date, and after--let's say--two months--you want to go back to playing New Leaf without wanting any villagers to disappear. Change the game time back to 4/20, or 4/21 if you want to go 'one day ahead', and it'll be like nothing has happened.

P.S: 420 ( ͡? ͜ʖ ͡?)( ͡? ͜ʖ ͡?)( ͡? ͜ʖ ͡?)
 
Hana-Nezumi said:
The way it works is this... On any given day, there can only be up to one villager in the "going to move" phase, where the date in the future that they are planning to move is pre-determined, and you have up to that date to convince them not to move out. The way the game detects if anyone has moved out when you boot it up, is that it checks to see if there is a villager in their move-out phase who is past their move-out date. The game won't retroactively put a villager in the move-out phase who wasn't already, so only a villager who was planning to move out the last time you played the game can possibly move out, and if you have convinced them not to then they won't, and because there can only be one villager thinking of moving out at a time then nobody else will either.
Click to expand...

This. Thanks for explaining it so well, I was about to start, but this is very well put. :)
 
View attachment 70028
You will not quit Animal Crossing....


...Seriously though, I agree with a lot of things the previous posters said.
Things such as recording your last acnl session. If you don't want villagers to move, write down your last acnl session, somewhere where you'll actually check it, and when you think you're ready to play again, tt to that same day. But you can only do this if you don't mind tt'ing/if you're going to take a short break.

Another way is, but I know you're not going to do this because what you just said-- acnl is a chore now-- but, you can check for about 5 minutes who will ping to move. But the above is the move preferred way.
 
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