Have you flattened your island before?

[Nicole.]

I am very close to flattening my island and also understand the time and amount of bells it will cost me to do it. Right now, I'm very bored of walking around the same island and I'm hoping it will give me something to do. I have a lot of inspiration from other dream islands that I've seen so I'm not stuck for ideas in any way. I have sufficient funds in my ABD for demolishing and reinstalling bridges/inclines where desired after terraforming, so I guess there's nothing stopping me.

I'd mainly like to know other people's experiences with flattening their islands and any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Are there any of you out there that are doing it right now?

 

[InstantNoodles]

Nope though I have terraformed heavily because my island had a very weird diagonal 2nd level and anything that's diagonal is difficult to decorate!

 

[dizzy bone]

I just worked off what I had bit by bit rather than flattening it because I wanted some aspects of my old map intact... although now I don’t really care about that at all . I think if I ever do redo my island sometime in the future I will flatten everything. I would not want any area of my new island to look the same as my island right now so flattening the island would help with that.

 

[JellyBeans]

i never fully flattened it because I thought i'd find it too overwhelming, but I did flatten sections of it just so I could have a clean canvas. same as dizzy bone, I think if I ever decided to redo my island but for whatever reason didn't want to reset I'd probably flatten it all so I don't choose the easy option and leave areas intact

 

[Pintuition]

Like the others said, I think taking the flattening in stages is probably the easiest (and even most cost effective) course. I tried to approach my island in sections so I didn't have to tear down everything at once. It was helpful not only to keep my sanity, but to keep the rest of the island accessible as you make changes.

It might also not be a bad idea to look at your island map and use the grids to create a plan for reconstruction! I know I certainly spent a lot of time trying to fit it together. It's almost like puzzle pieces, if you tackle a few small sections again, your island will be looking great in no time!

 

[Lavulin98]

I didn't flatten my island fully, but I did take out almost all the hills out of my island and only let some little hills in the northern part, simply bc I don't like hills. haha I wanted flat land. lol

 

[Luxsama]

Yup! I flattened my entire island as soon as I got terraforming. My island felt very small and stuffy since the top half was basically all cliffs.

 

[ForgottenT]

Multiple times.

 

[Sharksheep]

Mostly flatten it but I did it in sections. Although I did raise and lower this one section like a hundred times because I couldn't make up my mind

 

[Pikabun]

I did more than half but then end up planning where the terraforming should be so if you plan to have some mountain part maybe you could keep some area.

 

[Arckaniel]

I did, well kinda, I didn't remove every cliff but I removed a lot of it, what I did that is more drastic however is the long river I had, I completely removed it and reshaped it...

 

[Hobowire]

Most of my island is flat because the ledge takes up 1 tile space going up 2 tiers. So... Not entirely.

Fish still spawn with 2 tile wide space.

All about min maxing!

 

[Stella-Io]

I kinda did flatten my entire island but I'm going section by section. I only kept ramps if I needed them until I could destroy them, and the elevated lands I did keep are still going to be elevated lands. I closed up all my water sources too so I had NO RIVERS. I removed the one bridge I had (that didn't even go across a river, it went to a small island in the middle of a big pond).

As for tips, def go section by section it will be alot less overwhelming. Put EVERYTHING on the beach. Your house, villager houses, shops, as much as you can cause I don't think everything can actually fit on the beach all at once (I have 2 south facing rivers).
I literally drew a rough version of my town map on grid paper, drawing out the beach rocks, beaches, river outlets, permanent stuff like that. I have an album on my phone of screenshots of island inspo I wanted to use for my island. I drew rough area of where I wanted each thing to be. Because I didn't do all the math and go literal square by square, I had to be lenient with where I put stuff. I made one area bigger than I thought it would be, which causes me to shrink other areas to compensate.
ALWAYS have a ladder on you, esp of you want to demolish everything first. You will also need so, very, many shovels if you're redoing the landscaping as well. So many.

 

[Snowifer]

I didn't flatten my island, but I know 2 people who did. One of them has rebuilt their island, while the other is still building.
I think that doing your island in sections is the best way to do it

 

[Holla]

No I had planned to keep terraforming to minimum so it was easier to leave my island as is and modify the existing land. I mostly changed the size/shape of one of my cliffs and made one part of my river lower to add more land to work with on the other side.

 

[TheSillyPuppy]

I didn't flatten my island because I didn't need to. Miraculously, I was able to move all 12 houses, each in one go, in different sections of the ground level of my island. However, this involves quite a bit of upfront planning -- it took me a couple of tries to find an optimal order for moving everyone's house.

 

[justalittlemad]

I've completely flattened my island and removed all water sources numerous times to play with the layout and design.

 

[Jhine7]

I nearly did in the very beginning, it was definitely worth it to get everything going where I wanted it to.

 

[Nicole.]

Yup! I flattened my entire island as soon as I got terraforming. My island felt very small and stuffy since the top half was basically all cliffs.

I agree that excessive cliffs does create an overcrowded feel, which is actually the type of feel I'm thinking of going for. How long did it take you to flatten the whole island? And how did you go about flattening it, e.g did you move everything onto your beach, shovel over the rivers?

 

[SirSean]

You people have a lot more patience than I do lol. I just flattened the upper part of my island and it felt like it took ages to do.