I’m almost 700 hours in and don’t have much to show for it. I don’t have a layout, I don’t really have any paths, my island is almost always raining so there’s flowers (and so many DIYS everywhere), and I don’t know what to do or how to exactly go about planning it because I get so overwhelmed with all the possibilities. I haven’t even decorated one room of my house fully, lol. Some of my villagers have little yards and I did make an entrance, but that’s about it. I guess I spent most of my time visiting my friends and fishing than working on my island.
So, where did you begin?
What do you normally do in a day?
I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t been able to play at all and I’m still trying to catch up through July. (Made a few edits since I accidentally posted before I was ready.)
Each morning, I do a cycle around my island collecting daily fossils & weeds, shells, any non-native fruit, sticks, rocks, the washed-up bottle, and digging up the glowing spot. I talk to all of the villagers once on my way around. (Multiple times if one asks for a favor or something.) Then, I assess the fossils, sell them & the fruit and shells, then put the weeds, rocks, and sticks in my storage. Then I hit all 6 rocks, store the materials from those, and check out Able Sisters before depositing the bells I earned.
I planned my island with the happy island designer and it helped me.
I normally talk to everyone, check if theres npc, grind stuff, buy sell stuff and so on.
i open my mail, change my outfit, hit up the ABD, and then do an initial walk around my island on the paths to find fossils. then i do a second lap where i shake all the trees, hit my rocks, pick up weeds/sticks and find any leftover fossils. then i finally get said fossils assessed, go to the shops to sell/buy, and then talk to all of my villagers five times.
as for how i decorated my island. well, it's nowhere near done. i'm a slow designer due to a lack of spoons. first i did the bridges, followed by the ramps, and then, once i had terraforming unlocked, i put down a dirt path that's barely changed to this day. try not to do anything overly complicated at first, just a simple path connecting all the houses/buildings and any landmarks you have. then you can use that as a sort of rough outline and it'll give you an idea of where/how to decorate. well, it did for me at least.
Lately my days have just been:
- wake up
- grab the DIY from whoever's crafting
- grab the DIY from the beach
- check who's visiting
- if it's Saharah, Gulliver, Kicks, Leif, or Redd buy what I need or help them
- TT to the next day
A lot of the items I need right now are from special visitors or DIY's so I'm just TTing to try to get lucky. TT v TT
Huh, I never thought about this before! The two things I always do is just: pick up the single stone that spawns from my rock garden and plant a money tree. I have enough materials/diys/nmt that I don't really bother with the other daily rituals and it takes up too much time that could be spent somewhere else. My day is usually spent decorating very specific areas and only focusing on those parts of the island!
That being said my house still has two empty rooms since I spend way more time with terraforming and gardening haha. For the diy thing, I pile them all into a corner of my beach, it makes that beach messy but it's all in one place at least!
For the planning, I also get very overwhelmed so I don't "plan" or anything, more of just "wow this place really needs some work"
When I'm busy (like now - week 3 of uni) I tend to only go on to do daily activities which currently is just water flowers, check stores stock, check for Redd/Gulliver, maybe give all villagers a gift (prob once a week for this takes a bit of time trying to find them).
When I'm not busy is when I'll actually do decorating. When I first got terraforming I was quite overwhelmed I only had plans for the area around resident services and then I tried to put paths to all the houses. A few houses had paths that didn't connect to the rest of the paths because I was unsure but over time I got ideas for how I wanted to connect them and now everything is connected up. I'd say take your time there's no rush to decorate your island do small areas at a time. And hey, you don't need to put down paths if you don't want to keep a super natural island if you want!
In beginning, I had a real strict routine and now I'm just deadass lazy.
I grab the mail, check the shops, roam the island for weeds, fossils and the diy bottle. Torture a snowman. (I have all the frozen diys)
Attempt to give villagers gifts before I get bored.
Later open the game and work on custom designs at the devil's hour.
Decorating wise, I'm real slow there too. I gotta terraform a lot more but for now working on custom designs feels calmer.
