Fav Villager Gone, Tears Have Arrived. How to get him back?

[GumbyDarnit]

Welp, it happened.
My girlfriend and I played on the same copy of Animal Crossing since launch, and since that day we had Clay, her favorite villager. In the last couple months I hadn't been playing at all, and it was basically on her to be the one to make sure no one was moving. Of course with work lately she hadn't been playing much, and a week later I started the game up only to find he had moved.
We're both pretty damn heart broken, and I'm still to this day upset that AC games don't have some sort of system to prevent this from happening, ya know? Either way, I want to do what I can to get Clay back.

Now I know about the whole 16 villager cycle or whatever it is, which, if I understand it right, you basically have to time travel like hell to cycle out a bunch of villagers til you can get an old one back. However, I haven't time traveled since the day I got the game, and had been playing pretty legit since, so I'd be very tentative on time traveling. Surprisingly enough, I think I'd be more open to just outright hacking Clay back in, but that scares the hell out of me.

Now while I hacked my town a lot back in WW, I've only heard it's possible with NL. Does anyone here have knowledge on how that works? If I hacked my villager back in, would they have memory of me or be treated as a new villager? And probably the biggest thing, is there a risk that attempting to reset would outright wipe my entire town?

If there's any risk at all, I'd want to attempt to just cycle Clay back in for us, but I'm curious on how difficult that really is. Are we talking a couple hours of resets? Are we talking days? Weeks? Does cycling pose a risk of losing the current villagers I love as well?

Sorry for the long essay here, I'm just heartbroken at the moment and looking for any way possible to get him back. Big thanks in advance to any who can help me out!

 

[Crash]

unfortunately any talk of hacking isn't allowed here, so I can't provide any info on that. but I can tell you that once you get back into the feel of TT'ing (and how to do it safely) cycling out sixteen villagers won't seem so bad. it's a pain, but not impossible, and if you don't have a town full of dreamies it'll be even easier.

I'm not sure what you mean by "resets" though -- if you're referring to resetting your town, then yes, that'd wipe your entire game clean and you'd have to start from scratch. you'd be able to get clay without cycling right off the bat, but you'd lose all of your progress. doing the sixteen villager cycle can take weeks or months, it all depends on how much time you dedicate towards it and how lucky you get with getting villagers to move quickly, as well as making sure the villagers you're moving out aren't ones you want to keep. any type of TT'ing poses the risk of losing villagers you like, so I'd recommend looking into the different methods of safe TT'ing so you don't lose anyone else accidentally.

anyway, best of luck! I hope it all goes well for you and you can get him back soon. ​

 

[daynapapaya]

We can't discuss hacking on these forums I would try tumblr or reddit for that specific question...

If no one else has moved out, he's probably in your town's void. If you were to get another copy of ACNL, and borrow someone else's 3DS to start a new town, you could probably drop Clay off right into your new town. But then, if you guys do't really have time for one town, two would be a problem.

Sorry I can't be more help. Good luck!

 

[Dorian]

I agree that you could pick up a new game and try to pick him up from your void. One village you to be repsonsible for, one for her. I am very sorry you guys lost Clay. It's heartbreaking to lose our sweety pies.

 

[GumbyDarnit]

I do apologize, I should have figured that would be against the rules here.
In terms of TTing, my village is actually full of my favorite villagers, and basically only one which I would want to move, which I can image would make cycling them all out much, much more difficult.

I realize now that this is just another one of "those" threads here, but I at least wanted to reach out and ask for some advice.
Greatly appreciate the responses I got, so thank you

 

[Blueskyy]

I didn't understand tt'in safely at first but Google it and you'll find guides that make it easy to understand. I understand you may not wanna tt but it isn't that bad. I was able to fill up my squirrel town in 2 days because of it.