Hi again everyone! It's been years (can't even remember how long exactly) since I last properly played - I remember loading up the game briefly months back (like 10 or 11 months I think, according to my villagers) and I remember there were some updates like that new area out of town and the Cat machine thing outside the town hall? Found that pretty cool since I didn't know ACNL could even get updates! What can people tell me about these things and what else has changed? Could do with refreshing my memory on some of the basics, I feel a bit lost but loving getting back into my old non-TT town!
Oh, you're going to get into so much. The Welcome Amiibo update was huge and it brought people back for among other reasons new house and town design opportunities. Hundreds of new furniture items were introduced, which can be bought in the new area, the Campground, with coupons from the CAT machine. Coupons are earned from daily and weekly tasks which have a bit of a mobile game feel to them (a typical daily task would be to catch a specific rare bug or fish). The Campground also hosts a special visitor a day that for latecomers have essentially new furniture as well (revived DLC).
If you're playing on a New 3DS or have an NFC reader, you can access even more new items from amiibo cards and figures (and trivialize villager hunting because you can literally buy who you want). Two new series of amiibo cards that launched with the update brought back 50 villagers from the Gamecube game and introduced six Sanrio themed villagers. Legend of Zelda and Splatoon figures are also compatible and introduce even more new villagers.
What brought me back was the many quality of life tweaks to gameplay, including a considerably larger storage bought from Nook's Homes and touchscreen based house decorating. It's genuinely refreshing to play again because I used to feel limited by storage and clunky controls. You can shake trees while holding tools now so more people are tending to their orchards this time round haha. The time frame a villager gives before moving has doubled in length so you basically never lose anyone you want to keep.
No new PWPs were added but allegedly you can now control where villagers place their houses using patterns. It's very finicky and you need them everywhere but as someone who didn't think about town customization before it opened that aspect of the game to me.
This all sounds awesome! Been tidying up my old town and sorting out the paths so far, loving the town initiatives idea and the campsite! Any smaller changes I need to know about? Like are PWPs still as awkward to place or do any have less space needed around them?
Thoroughly enjoying this so far! Is this the only update ACNL has ever had?
The biggest one they've had where actual content was released. But for a game to be so revitalized when it was well on its third year is unheard of. And it was free to boot. There were a ton of people who showed up out of nowhere after the update on the islands.
This will definitely be the biggest update NewLeaf will have. I'm sure we'll soon hear word of their next project.
You can sit on rocks now! Decorating your house has been made so much easier with the new controls. The catalog has been expanded! Villagers sickness has been reworked(I'm not sure if they rarely get sick or if they never get sick anymore), and your villagers tell you many more days in advance when they plan to move. New controls have been added for Club Tortimer, where you can't get trapped on the island anymore. And if you plan to use amiibo cards to get villagers, be careful about that because amiibo card villagers rarely ask to move.
