Writing good letters?

[Imnotcrazyhopefully]

Hey there, so I find writing the letters for villagers to be pretty tedious. It takes a while, and if I don’t make it somewhat long and comprehensible, they don’t like it. But also, one time I sent a letter to Dom and he said it was too long? It was like 3 sentences lol. So Im wondering what the game constitutes as a “good” letter, and if I’d just be able to reuse the same format with minor changes each time. Any ideas?

 

[Jhin]

I've genuinely just been spamming letters containing nothing but one line and a half of 'aaaaaaaaaaaa' and none of my villagers seem to care in the replies. Then again I always attach some sort of trivial gift (like 100 bells or fruit) so maybe it cancelled out them sending back a letter telling me my writing was rubbish.

 

[DJStarstryker]

I pulled out a USB keyboard to connect to my Switch today. It makes what was once a tedious job much much faster. Don't know if that's an option for you. You can sometimes get small USB keyboards for only like $5-10.

This article is the closest thing I've seen to looking at how Animal Crossing works with letters. We don't know for sure if NH's letters work the same as previous games or not, but I haven't seen evidence that they don't either.

 

[Mayor Monday]

Even in the older titles, I wrote long letters and filled the paper.

I think I did hear somewhere that if you write longer letters, it heightened the friendship with your villager. I'm not sure if it's true. Nonetheless, it's fun to do it anyway!

There is this guide that may help you: https://www.thonky.com/acww/letter-writing-tips

Though, as stated above, we're not too sure how the NH letter system works. So there's that!

 

[Imnotcrazyhopefully]

Ah thank you so much!!! I really appreciate the resources. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to buy a USB, but currently it’s difficult for me to buy things on my own (it’s complicated). And the more new horizons is out, the more info I’m sure will be available on this :>

 

[John Wick]

I gave up when I found they put a monetary value on friendship.

If you don't send them a gift worth $2500, they won't send you a gift.

 

[Clock]

That’s interesting, I usually write in one or two sentences when I write a letter and they had no problem with it.

 

[Sephiroth]

Letter writing doesn't do anything in terms of friendship in New Horizons. This was revealed in a slew of data mines a few weeks ago.

 

[Acies]

That's an interesting question and Nintendo could have used this chance to improve the evaluation of letters, but as of now, they are rather pointless. However, I do enjoy receiving letters.

 

[Saaga]

Both Japanese and English guides state that writing letters improves your friendship with villagers, but there is apparently a glitch found on the datamine that makes writing have no impact in the game.

Spoiler

Getting really fed up with these glitches, did they even test the game before releasing it?

I write them letters with a meaning, asking about their well-being, commenting what we did today or a an event that happened to me and so on. Even though I know the AI doesn’t care what I write to them. I could just write gibberish and they would still reply back how amazing my last letter was.

 

[m00ngoose]

This is interesting - I'd been wondering if there were any criteria for letters. I normally write them a single sentence complimenting them in some way, but I had wondered if there was any point and if I should just resort to nonsense.

 

[whimsycreator]

I usually try to write long (“complete”) letters and it’s funny that I usually take on the villagers’ personalities when I do. (For example, when I write to jocks, it’s usually some random stuff about muscles, and when I write to peppy villagers, I use interjections like “totally” and “yay” and say things they usually would.)

It’s honestly embarrassing, considering they aren’t real. But I just want those virtual friendship points... but I did stop once I realized letters don’t even build friendship points in this game (as of right now.) :v

 

[Snowifer]

I don't send letters to villagers since it does nothing for friendship. I do send letters to my friends when I mail stuff, but I usually don't bother with long letters since I usually play in docked mode and don't have a keyboard. It's not worth the strain on my hands to type a paragraph. It's usually a silly word about the item I'm sending.

 

[purple_vixen]

I saw somewhere state that we get friendship points when the villagers write back - I don't know if that was what was determined to be broken in the datamine. Even if it has no friendship value, it is sometimes helpful if you want to gift a villager more than one item a day. Although letters to friends are capped at two per day, I have sent villagers three gifts attached to letters per day with no issues.

As someone else has previously stated, letter writing is much easier with a USB keyboard, and you can buy them from eBay for as little as £5. I often wished for a full keyboard in Wild World and New Leaf days.

I write about my day, or make general small talk about things that I would ask the villager about if I could - do they like their neighbours, is this their favourite fruit that I am sending, is it redundant to gift wrap an orange?

 

[Hirisa]

I try to send letters every other week or so with a piece of gift wrapped fruit. They write back with gifts sometimes but I’m really just writing because that’s just what was done on the GC version. And I like the replies. Megan has been writing me sweet letters on her own and I think it’s so precious.

 

[MyLifeIsCake]

In WW I wrote thoughtful and weird letters to my villagers. They would actually respond if you wrote something weird/nonsensical and be mad at you haha. I don't write anymore because it's too time consuming to write with the on the switch screen as opposed to the stylus.

 

[soomi]

I write one or two sentences! I know they don't read it, but I just do it for fun! Haha

It is tedious though. I hate how we have to keep talking to Orville - it slows me down when I want to write to everyone.