Time Travelling far into the future!

[pixemi]

My first town is way back in September 2015, I was on a long hiatus due to stressful times at uni.
The big time gap between now and the game is sort of unsettling me, I would really like to catch up the fastest way possible.

But I already have all of my dreamies, they are in wonderful spots, I would not like to change a thing.

Does anyone have any tips how to time travel a bit more efficiently than day by day to catch up with the current time?
Thanks!!!

 

[Qwerty111]

BEFORE GOING ON HIATUS

You can use the tips/tricks in this guide even without prior preparation, but if you do a few things before going on hiatus you can make things a little easier for yourself later on.

Before you go?

Set the town?s ordinance to the ?Beautiful Town? ordinance. This will keep hybrids from wilting and keep the weeds at bay later when we TT.
Most importantly: Take note of the date you last saved/quit your game. You will need this later! (P.S. If you don?t have paper/pen handy, go to your 3DS? home screen and then click the pencil icon at the top to write it in the game notes.)
- - - - -

COMING BACK FROM HIATUS - DO NOT LOAD YOUR GAME!

You must do the following before loading your game!

Go to the Nintendo 3DS? System Settings menu from the home screen.
Choose ?Other Things?.
Choose ?Date & Time?.
Change ?Today?s Date? so that it matches the last date that you played. If you cannot remember the last day you played set it back to a date that you know is BEFORE the last date you played. It is better to choose an older date than it is to choose a date that is sometime after your last time playing.
A tip from stalk-market: ?For those not sure when you last played, you can look in your activity log and check your software library. When you click on New Leaf it?ll say when you last played!?
Make sure the time is set to a time that all your villagers will be awake. If not, change it.
Load your ACNL game.
If you loaded your game on the SAME DAY that you last played, you shouldn?t experience any villager loss. If you load your game anytime BEFORE that day, it is possible for a villager to move if they had already planned on moving. This sounds silly, but TT'ing backwards any length of time greater than or equal to 1 day, counts as just 'one day?.

For example, if it is 12/5 and you TT back to 12/1, that?s 4 calendar days. However, the ACNL game counts this as just '1 day? passing in terms of villager movement.

- - - - -

GETTING BACK TO THE PRESENT

So hopefully, you?ve made it back to the last time you played without losing any villagers- but how do you get to the present day without having to TT day by day? Follow these steps?

Talk to each of your villagers once to make sure you are on speaking terms with them. You can tell if you?re on speaking terms with them if when you talk to them they greet you and then the game offers you the standard dialog box (which is something like ?What?s new?? and ?Nevermind.?)
Once you?ve done that, save and quit your game. Then, reload the game (same day, don?t change the time at all yet).
Walk in front of the villagers that are strolling outside in your town. There are usually 5 of these guys out and about. You?re looking for one of them to 'ping? you. That is, make a surprised emote and then run up to you.
If someone does run up to you, talk to them and see what they say. If they want to move, deny their request.
If none of the five villagers that are outside run up to you, save and quit, then reload the game to cycle the villagers that are in their homes.
If you?ve walked in front of all the villagers in your town at least once, and none of them ping you- save and quit, then TT ONE DAY FORWARD and repeat the process of walking in front of all your villagers until they ping and one of them asks to move. Once this happens, deny the request.
Once you?ve denied a request to move you?re free to TT forward as far as you want. So, after you?ve saved/quit your game, go back to system settings and correct the date/time. Then, load your ACNL game and ta-da! You?re back to the present!

This is a bit of the haitus trick explained here

This is a bit faster than going 1 day back, 1 day back. Hopefully this works, but I haven't tried it myself.

 

[pixemi]

I don't know... This method is kind of iffy to me... Especially since I have to time travel 9 months ahead + pass the new years. Maybe I will try to use it week by week and not suddenly jump ahead nine months.

Also I use the game's clock to time travel, not the system's, not sure if that would make a big difference though.

 

[Kaede]

Dont do it man.
I did what youre thinking of after returning to my town from Kalos and thats when I lost someone.
You would have to check villagers every single time you jump for a mover and chances are you will miss one. And there is no going back.
The villagers have their own internal move cycle and when you deny a request, you lock this system from making any additioal changes for the following day. (The following 'played' day that is)
Now that i learned how to do this, I use this hiatus trick all the time, and every time i deny a request, I consider putting the game down for a bit to get to other games.
It works, every time. Taking months off, whatever, it doesnt matter, just as long as you lock the internal vilager move cycle before you put your town through a long time jump.

Oh yeah, and you can use games clock to travel instead of systems. It makes no difference and thats what i do when i mess with time stuff as well.

 

[katysu]

I agree totally with Kaede - deny the moving request which locks the villagers in and then make one jump to the present.

My query/issue is how you change time - I've always used the system clock to change time, the game picks up the time from the system when it loads - unless you change the time with Isabelle at the front screen.
If you do the latter then the system time and the ingame time will be different and the off set remains unless you manually change them to be the same (using a 3rd outside real life clock with seconds).

I find having the two times showing the same simpler, so I change time on the system - but this makes life difficult if you play other time related games. (I don't).

The instructions given byQwerty111 say use the system clock to change the time - and its how I would do it as its the way I am familiar with.
But as pixemi I'm not sure why the instructions state this way specifically?

An alternative to jumping forward is to load the game on the last day you played as per the instructions and play in the past - as you have a lot of events coming up - Halloween, Harvest Festival Toy day, new year.

 

[King Dorado]

First off-- yes, pass the Beautiful Town Ordinance, but keep in mind it won't go into effect until the next day iirc. So i think you'd want to play at least a second day before making the jump.

Then, once it is in effect, as others mentioned, make sure you get a move-out ping, deny it, and then save/quit. You should be safe to time travel as far forward as you wish without losing any villagers.

Ive only used the system clock for this, so i cant speak to what happens when you use the game clock instead (there's probably a thread about it here somewhere though)

 

[pixemi]

oh hmm I am a bit more comfortable with using this method now, but the clock problem unsettles me a bit. I cannot change the system clock because I have other games which depend on the system's clock... Hopefully it will work!

 

[King Dorado]

I time travelled about a month at a time using this method, just to be somewhat cautious (i gues if you go past three days its truly not cautious, is it?). (some of the villagers cry when they see you; and the worn grass spots are largely regrown)

 

[Skyfall]

First off-- yes, pass the Beautiful Town Ordinance, but keep in mind it won't go into effect until the next day iirc. So i think you'd want to play at least a second day before making the jump.

Then, once it is in effect, as others mentioned, make sure you get a move-out ping, deny it, and then save/quit. You should be safe to time travel as far forward as you wish without losing any villagers.

Ive only used the system clock for this, so i cant speak to what happens when you use the game clock instead (there's probably a thread about it here somewhere though)

THIS. This is what I do when I come back from a big break.

Actually, before I got on a big break, I make sure the ordinance is on plus I have denied a villagers request. If you did not do this, then you do want to go day to day (using system clock) to find the "ping", deny the request, then "time travel" to present day. You should not lose any villagers doing this method.

 

[Ponyu]

I can confirm that you don't have to use the system clock. I have several copies of ACNL and have never lost a villager using the in-game clock to jump ahead.

Basically:
- Go back to the last day you played using the in-game clock.
- Make sure the "Beautiful" ordinance is active as described above, you might have to TT to the next day for that (also using the in-game clock).
- Have a villager ping you (for moving out) and deny their request. Save your game.
- Now use the in-game clock to TT to the present day.

The game remembers that the last day you played, you denied someone's request to move out, and since you haven't played any other day since, no other villager has gotten the urge to move. However, one of them will want to move after the time jump. So talk to all of your villagers (since they won't ping you when you haven't talked to them for a week or more) and then see who pings you to move out.

 

[Katie1313]

What about going in at current day with a new save file? Run around your town and make sure nobody has left, and that nobody is in boxes. I haven't actually done this before, so do at your own risk!

 

[leftTBT]

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[stitchmaker]

I've done it a lot and had haven't lost a villager in my other towns.
Do you have 2 copies on one 3DS? If so the Activity Log wouldn't help with the last date played if you played both copies.
If it just one find the date and play day by day until you get a mover. Stop them and jump ahead with the in game clock.
When you arrive you have to find a mover. Stop them and everything will be back to normal. Make sure to talk to all your villagers to get there where have you been out of the way. If you miss some villagers they can try to skip town the following day.
Doing a save/quit after you stopped a mover should get the other players that you haven't spoke to yet. Or find them in the museum/shops and get it out of the way.

Make sure that you don't jump ahead to a holiday, event or a villager birthday. The villager celebrating their birthday could be the mover.