A Cautionary Tale of Time Travel

[Leebles]

I'm posting this story in hopes that other people won't lose villagers this way. It might be common knowledge, but I haven't seen people mention it yet.

I was short of a lot of Mushroom Furniture I needed. Instead of being patient and trying to trade spare pieces with people, I decided to time travel back to November yesterday. I found that mushrooms had stopped sprouting, even though I was in the right month. Perplexed, I decided that I was on good enough terms with all of my villagers that I could just jump right back into December 2nd without anyone moving out. First mistake.

I found a letter from Bones in my mailbox with his picture attached. I didn't see it coming at all, and made me way more sad than I would have expected. I racked my brain trying to think of anyone to replace him, but I think he might just be the best Lazy villager. Regardless, his empty patch of ground was bugging me so much that I decided to find a new Lazy boy, stat. I remembered someone posting that if you kept going back to 5:59 AM, it would reset the day (every day starts at 6:00 am) and give you a chance to find someone new in the campsite. It seemed foolproof to me, because you would still technically be on the same Tuesday the 3rd - but give yourself a new Tuesday every time. Second BIG mistake.

I reset it three times (only finding one camper, and that was Puck) and found a farewell letter from Agnes. Apparently, all those Tuesday the 3rds had been counted as individual days, counting down to the time Agnes would leave. So there you have it. Be very cautious time travelling, and remember that every 6:00 am reset, no matter that it's technically the same day, still counts.

 

[TheCreeperHugz]

If you want to try for campers, in a new day (or go to 5:59 and enter, then quit and wait for 6am) create a new character. Then check the campsite, and if no one is there (or no one that you like) just go back to the home menu, close the game, open it again and repeat from creating a new character. That way, the game doesn't save when you go in and doesn't count as a day if you don't save it yourself. If there is a good camper, finissh all the beggining stuff with your new character, save, then enter as your mayor and invite the camper to stay

 

[Leebles]

If you want to try for campers, in a new day (or go to 5:59 and enter, then quit and wait for 6am) create a new character. Then check the campsite, and if no one is there (or no one that you like) just go back to the home menu, close the game, open it again and repeat from creating a new character. That way, the game doesn't save when you go in and doesn't count as a day if you don't save it yourself. If there is a good camper, finissh all the beggining stuff with your new character, save, then enter as your mayor and invite the camper to stay

Oh, so it's like resetting the villager's plot! How cool.

What isn't cool is that I just found a new plot for Dizzy house and I already signed on as my main. FLKJ:JKE:LKFJ NO. GET OUT.

 

[Minties]

Also, it has been said MANY times that moving back a day or month or YEAR counts as one day. If Bones moved out, that means he was slated to move before you went back. There's ~5 days from when they can ping to move, you must have not caught his ping. If you hadn't talked to him for a week, he'll get the whole 'wow where have you been' thing and will not ping you until you talk to him again.

 

[Leebles]

Also, it has been said MANY times that moving back a day or month or YEAR counts as one day. If Bones moved out, that means he was slated to move before you went back. There's ~5 days from when they can ping to move, you must have not caught his ping. If you hadn't talked to him for a week, he'll get the whole 'wow where have you been' thing and will not ping you until you talk to him again.

And that confuses me too, because if ever anyone wants to move there will be at least one villager eager to spill the beans. Usually it's Felicity, that gossip. I've prevented a lot of moveouts by getting them to ping me after she told me. But no one mentioned anything about it.

 

[Minties]

And that confuses me too, because if ever anyone wants to move there will be at least one villager eager to spill the beans. Usually it's Felicity, that gossip. I've prevented a lot of moveouts by getting them to ping me after she told me. But no one mentioned anything about it.

I've had to ask two villagers sometimes. Usually when I get to the 3rd day of no gossip, I just ask another villager so I'm asking 2 per day.

 

[Arrei]

Oof. Yeah, this is pretty much exactly how NOT to time travel and how NOT to campsite reset together in one.

My personal rule is to start saving and quitting to look for move pings if the date of the previous move attempt has arrived and no one else has asked to move. It usually catches anyone who hasn't pinged for whatever reason, though there were a couple of times where it took another day for someone to start moving.

 

[lucindaa]

Bones moved out because you jumped ahead multiple days. He was probably thinking of moving but hadn't pinged yet and the jump ate up all the days you would have had until his move day

As for going back to November to collect mush items, I've done it a couple of times. The thing is, when you jump backwards, the game counts it as one day moved forward, but nothing respawns until you move a day forward. So I jumped back to mid November, then moved forward a day at a time, collecting mushrooms and speaking to at least two villagers every day until they wouldn't talk to me any more to make sure no one was considering moving before I moved forward to the next day. I just kept going forward one day at a time that way until I'd caught up to the current date.

It's never really safe to jump ahead multiple days (people say that you can jump ahead safely just after someone's moved out, and it's fine to jump straight ahead to a move date, but otherwise there's always danger of someone unexpectedly moving). You have to be suuuper careful with time travel, I'd only ever move forward one day at a time and make sure to thoroughly make sure no one is moving before going ahead

 

[Arrei]

It's never really safe to jump ahead multiple days (people say that you can jump ahead safely just after someone's moved out, and it's fine to jump straight ahead to a move date, but otherwise there's always danger of someone unexpectedly moving). You have to be suuuper careful with time travel, I'd only ever move forward one day at a time and make sure to thoroughly make sure no one is moving before going ahead

The safest time to jump multiple days is on the same day someone has tried to move and you've turned them down. I've jumped a full year by doing this when I accidentally TTed to January but forgot to change the year to 2014.

 

[lucindaa]

The safest time to jump multiple days is on the same day someone has tried to move and you've turned them down. I've jumped a full year by doing this when I accidentally TTed to January but forgot to change the year to 2014.

That makes sense, I don't like to jump ahead at all though so I don't have any experience with forward jumps. The few times I've TTed has been going back then forward day by day. I almost accidentally jumped forward three weeks yesterday when I was going back to november but forgot to change the month. I would have ended up on December 28th but I don't think I would have lost anyone I didn't want to go since Harry was already planning to move.