Advice for building paths?

[MayorMeagan]

Hello

Currently, my town is basically one large hybrid garden. I have all my hybrids placed for optimum growth potential (mostly in a checkerboard/grid pattern). I've visited a lot of dream towns with beautiful paths and flowers lately, and decided to try and emulate them because I really liked the way they look.

My main problem is that I don't know where to start. And a big concern of mine is that I'll have to chop down a bunch of trees and drastically alter the layout/appearance of my town.

To the people who have paths in their town/know about paths: where do I begin? Should the paths go all over the town or only to landmarks (the police station, the coffee shop, etc.)? What the heck do I do with all my flowers? (Ideally I would still have them positioned in a way that they could spawn hybrids, I.e. Not all side by side, crammed together in a small space.)

I'm sorry if I seem like a noob, lol. any advice is appreciated. If anyone has a dream address that would give me helpful ideas, that would be great too. Thank you in advance <3

 

[MayorMeagan]

Bump

 

[Reineke]

The first thing to consider is which villagers you want to keep, because, if their homes are permanent fixtures of your town, you'll need to plan around them.
The next thing you want to think about is how much space do you have to work with? This mostly has to do with the river, since the shape of your river determines how many free blocks you can have pwps, trees, bushes, etc placed. A lot of people chose rivers that gave them huge spaces to work with specifically for paths and large pwp arrangements, whereas a more winding river creates more intimate cozy areas. Which leads to the next question...
What style of path do you like? More specifically do you like wider paths or narrower ones? Curved or very straight/angular ones? Textured paths or natural dirt ones?
Think about the dream towns you visited and make note of what you liked or didn't like, and soon you'll have a list of aspects you can work with to make your ideal path.

As for where to put your paths, you can determine this a couple of ways. You can either start by finding your favorite part of town and making that a "feature" and having roads come up to it, OR you can start from where visitors are most likely going to enter your town (the train station or town square) and plan it from there. Or you could do both of those things and connect them in the middle. There's no right or wrong answer! Just go with your gut.

 

[classically.trained]

In my town I lined my paths with hybrids, and I put hybrids around my villagers' houses and my public works. When I want to breed hybrids I typically do it on the beach, which could be an option for you . It's also good because it means they're out of the way and less in danger of being trampled by visitors.

 

[Chicha]

I would start with your house or train station to try out paths. It honestly depends whether you want to start once you have all your villagers or just do it along the way. If you're worried about trying to keep villagers original, I recommend doing path placing when most of your villagers are asleep. It's very likely you'll want to chop down trees that are in the way so I'd definitely invest in a bunch of axes. Trees grow back in a few days so it's not as bad as you may think it is. As others said, putting your hybrids on the beach can help (just keep in mind if villagers live close to the beach, they'll likely plant flowers there as well).

I found it very easy to start with my house to test out the path, slowly making my way towards the bridges and main buildings. In my town, the path goes throughout the town but honestly, do what's comfortable for you. I recommend trying all types of paths until there's one that feels right to you. Maybe make a second character just in case you like a border path best?

Don't overwhelm yourself by doing it in one day. I would spend a few days (maybe a week) to adjust. Good luck!

 

[MayorMeagan]

The first thing to consider is which villagers you want to keep, because, if their homes are permanent fixtures of your town, you'll need to plan around them.
The next thing you want to think about is how much space do you have to work with? This mostly has to do with the river, since the shape of your river determines how many free blocks you can have pwps, trees, bushes, etc placed. A lot of people chose rivers that gave them huge spaces to work with specifically for paths and large pwp arrangements, whereas a more winding river creates more intimate cozy areas. Which leads to the next question...
What style of path do you like? More specifically do you like wider paths or narrower ones? Curved or very straight/angular ones? Textured paths or natural dirt ones?
Think about the dream towns you visited and make note of what you liked or didn't like, and soon you'll have a list of aspects you can work with to make your ideal path.

As for where to put your paths, you can determine this a couple of ways. You can either start by finding your favorite part of town and making that a "feature" and having roads come up to it, OR you can start from where visitors are most likely going to enter your town (the train station or town square) and plan it from there. Or you could do both of those things and connect them in the middle. There's no right or wrong answer! Just go with your gut.

That's very helpful, thank you! I have a few villagers that I'm cycling through at the moment. Maybe half of my villagers are permanent. The idea of having to re-plot my paths when someone moves in/out isn't really that daunting to me, though.

I have been wondering about PWP placement as well, because a lot of the projects that I want haven't been suggested yet.

- - - Post Merge - - -

I was actually thinking about lining my paths with hybrids did you use one type of flower for all your paths? If not, how did you "break them up?" Or did you have roses next to lilies next to cosmos?

- - - Post Merge - - -

I think part of what's giving me trepidations is that it seems like such a daunting task. And there's so much I haven't figured out yet. I've started laying down some paths, but I'm like, "what if I get halfway finished with this and don't like it? Or what if I finish it completely and later decide that I want to change my town layout again? Then I'll have to go through all this again"

 

[Reineke]

For PWPs I placed QR codes to remind me that something was supposed to go there that I didn't have yet and planned around it while I waited for the villager to request it.

For flowers lining your path, you can use any that you like. I did a randomized pattern of colors and types within a limited color pallet, but all of one type of flower or one color is fine too. If its all one flower, though, you might have offspring flowers grow on your path. On the other hand, villagers will always want to plant flowers on the path too, so this isn't too big of a deal. After a while you'll just know where the path is, and pick up the offending flower.

As for the last bit of having to do it all over again, yes, this is certainly a possibility! But take heart, you probably won't be reworking the entire layout, but just bits and pieces of it as you tweak it here and there. At least that's my experience. Once you get the parts that matter most to you done, the rest will gradually fall into place. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. x3

 

[classically.trained]

I was actually thinking about lining my paths with hybrids did you use one type of flower for all your paths? If not, how did you "break them up?" Or did you have roses next to lilies next to cosmos?

I've grouped my hybrids by color. I typically try to match the hybrids around my villagers' houses with the color scheme of their house. Otherwise I just go with a color scheme that I think will look good with an area. And sometimes I alternate flower types within a row while other times I just use one flower. It really comes down to personal taste.

 

[GTsTentacleChow]

My first and only tip: HAVE PATIENCE!!!
Villagers are RUTHLESS when they move in and will not hesitate to move ON your path.
They're also very tedious to lay out, especially if you need the patterns over more than one player.
If you're making them yourself, you're going to find some kinks, so I'd recommend scanning a path that you like.
Have fun with them! They're so pretty when they're complete. It's well worth it in my opinion.