Having trouble with the reset for villager spots trick

[lady kitsune]

Since xmas eve I have less than ten villagers so I've been starting each day as a new character to check my town for a new villager house, so I can do the reset trick if they pitch up in a bad spot. Today when I checked around there was no one so I then went on as my mayor and this time in town there was a spot marked out for Gruff, predictably he was in a crap spot.

Any ideas as to why when I played as a new character no one new was in town but they were later when I played as Mayor? I still will only have 9 villagers when Gruff moves in and I don't want another one to be in a bad spot.

 

[effluo]

Did you save with your new character when you saw no plots? If you don't and have less than 9 you have the potential of someone showing up when you load your mayor.

 

[Ras]

I don't know if you want to do this, but if you have 8 villagers and want to be guaranteed of a plot (so you don't have to keep wondering if one will be there), set your date a couple of months ahead. When you first get down to 8, the game is in no rush to give you a ninth villager, so you never know if one will be spawned. When the game thinks it's been months, it will be desperate to give you a ninth. When I got down to 8, I set ahead to May and there was a plot every single time I reset. I saved as my secondary character, deleted that character, set back to the current date, and Whitney wasn't even moved in--she was a roped off plot (because of the oft-mentioned, "no matter how long you travel backwards, the game sees it as one day" mechanic).

 

[lady kitsune]

Did you save with your new character when you saw no plots? If you don't and have less than 9 you have the potential of someone showing up when you load your mayor.

No I didn't know that would happen, I thought if no one showed up on a new character then that would mean it was safe to load up an existing one.

I never have any luck with where the villagers park themselves, the last three have all been in awkward spots and I was determined this time to not let that happen.

I still only have nine so I better start saving with the new character then.

- - - Post Merge - - -

I don't know if you want to do this, but if you have 8 villagers and want to be guaranteed of a plot (so you don't have to keep wondering if one will be there), set your date a couple of months ahead. When you first get down to 8, the game is in no rush to give you a ninth villager, so you never know if one will be spawned. When the game thinks it's been months, it will be desperate to give you a ninth. When I got down to 8, I set ahead to May and there was a plot every single time I reset. I saved as my secondary character, deleted that character, set back to the current date, and Whitney wasn't even moved in--she was a roped off plot (because of the oft-mentioned, "no matter how long you travel backwards, the game sees it as one day" mechanic).

If I do that is it likely that other villagers may have moved out?

 

[Yen Quest]

I had a similar problem with my old town, but it was slightly different. I did the new character trick thing a few times since I know someone will move in that day, and it does work to some extent. Not exactly sure the amount of retries until this disappearings happening, but I'm assuming that I might have hit a spot where the game doesn't register the new villager/plot at all. I try maybe 3 more times to no avail (no villager, no house plotting). I then decided to load up my main since I assumed I'm out off the hook, but of course, there it is, a new villager moved in the middle of no where.

Since I decided to restart my town anyway, I tried doing this again with time-travel and the like. It seems that villagers will want to move out after 5 days of inactivity, and maybe move in 3 days after someone else moving out. If you're positive you're suppose to get a new villager, but see no plots, set the game down for a while and start up a new character later. It might be some building up data that is messing around with the game, so you want to clear it up a bit by restarting (similar to clearing browser cookies/cache with computers).

 

[Ras]

If I do that is it likely that other villagers may have moved out?

As long as you tell someone to not move before, it should be totally safe. It has been for me. You will be loading up with a secondary character, so you would see if anyone has moved. This was with the 3DS clock, and I don't know anything about changing the date with Isabelle.

I won't give any more advice along these lines right now, though, because I have a cold and am pretty light-headed. My thinking is probably pretty off right now.