Sharksheep
(⨀🞃 ⨀ )◄
General Info
You only can get a villager's photo if your friendship with them is high enough. If they ask you to change their greeting, your friendship is high enough.
You have a 6-10.2% of receiving a photo depending on your friendship. You have slightly better odds (15% higher) of a photo when a gift is mailed to you.
Villagers will take the whole stack of items if it wrapped with wrapping paper from Nook's Cranny. Villagers will only take one item from the stack if it not wrapped.
These methods are assuming that you recently got this villager and you need to build up friendship points.
Easy method
Gift them wrapped stack of 1 giant clam, 2 nonnative fruit, or 3 coconuts, or until you get a photo.
Optimal Method - Slightly higher chance of a photo
Gift them wrapped stack of 1 giant clam, 2 nonnative fruit, or 3 coconuts until you can change their greeting. Then do the stack trick until you get a photo.
Stack trick:
With a full inventory, have 1 stack of at least 2 of the any of the following: Giant clams, gold nugget, pearl, elegant mushroom, or rare mushroom. Gift the item from stack to the villager. The villager will only take one item from the stack if it is not wrapped. They can potentially mail you a photo the next day. This does not work with any fruit.
Fastest method (requires time travel)
Time travel to villager's birthday, give them one wrapped fruit. Check the mail to see if you got a photo. Rinse and repeat until you get a photo.
Q & A
Q. Can't you just order the photo from Nook Shopping?
A. You can order posters from Nook Shopping. Villager photos have a customizable frame and can be set on top of surfaces.
Q. Can you get more than one photo from the same villager?
A. Yes, but it takes a while to get another photo.
Q. I haven't gotten a photo in weeks/months from Villager is this normal?
A. This is how probability works. Sometimes you just have bad luck.
Q. How long does it normally take to get a photo?
A. Without time travel, it takes about 4-5 weeks with the easy and optimal method. I had a villager not give me a photo for over two months. If I time travel and use the easy method, I can get a photo from a new brand villager in a few hours in real life. (It's just very boring and tedious)
Q. I got a photo by gifting iron wall lamps/furniture item/gold nugget/fossils or by doing a request.
A. You can get photos with other items and doing villager requests. I only wrote about the main methods I've been doing.
Author's Note: Wrote a new guide because I think it's very unlikely for Nintendo to change methods to get photos. They haven't for the last couple of updates. I also didn't want people to get confused by the old thread that had discussions on older photo mechanics. I also made it a lot shorter for the people who ignore everything because it was too long. All the technical details can be found in the sources.
Sources: Some stuff is out of date since it was written around 1.4
Friendship Guide
Gifting Guide
You only can get a villager's photo if your friendship with them is high enough. If they ask you to change their greeting, your friendship is high enough.
You have a 6-10.2% of receiving a photo depending on your friendship. You have slightly better odds (15% higher) of a photo when a gift is mailed to you.
Villagers will take the whole stack of items if it wrapped with wrapping paper from Nook's Cranny. Villagers will only take one item from the stack if it not wrapped.
These methods are assuming that you recently got this villager and you need to build up friendship points.
Easy method
Gift them wrapped stack of 1 giant clam, 2 nonnative fruit, or 3 coconuts, or until you get a photo.
Optimal Method - Slightly higher chance of a photo
Gift them wrapped stack of 1 giant clam, 2 nonnative fruit, or 3 coconuts until you can change their greeting. Then do the stack trick until you get a photo.
Stack trick:
With a full inventory, have 1 stack of at least 2 of the any of the following: Giant clams, gold nugget, pearl, elegant mushroom, or rare mushroom. Gift the item from stack to the villager. The villager will only take one item from the stack if it is not wrapped. They can potentially mail you a photo the next day. This does not work with any fruit.
Fastest method (requires time travel)
Time travel to villager's birthday, give them one wrapped fruit. Check the mail to see if you got a photo. Rinse and repeat until you get a photo.
Q & A
Q. Can't you just order the photo from Nook Shopping?
A. You can order posters from Nook Shopping. Villager photos have a customizable frame and can be set on top of surfaces.
Q. Can you get more than one photo from the same villager?
A. Yes, but it takes a while to get another photo.
Q. I haven't gotten a photo in weeks/months from Villager is this normal?
A. This is how probability works. Sometimes you just have bad luck.
Q. How long does it normally take to get a photo?
A. Without time travel, it takes about 4-5 weeks with the easy and optimal method. I had a villager not give me a photo for over two months. If I time travel and use the easy method, I can get a photo from a new brand villager in a few hours in real life. (It's just very boring and tedious)
Q. I got a photo by gifting iron wall lamps/furniture item/gold nugget/fossils or by doing a request.
A. You can get photos with other items and doing villager requests. I only wrote about the main methods I've been doing.
Author's Note: Wrote a new guide because I think it's very unlikely for Nintendo to change methods to get photos. They haven't for the last couple of updates. I also didn't want people to get confused by the old thread that had discussions on older photo mechanics. I also made it a lot shorter for the people who ignore everything because it was too long. All the technical details can be found in the sources.
Sources: Some stuff is out of date since it was written around 1.4
Friendship Guide
Gifting Guide
