Me too, he's my pal!!! I had him in my first AC town, in ACCF back in 2008. He had a house down on the beach near Nook's. Then he showed up at random in other AC games, and in ACNL I used my amiibo card to get him too. He writes me the sweetest letters.... never seen any AC letter so nice and caring.
I prefer the island hopping because it shows the effort you went to getting that specific villager and it makes having them on your island much more special I think.
I'd still island hop for a while. Who knows? Might run into an old friend or a friends dreamie. I'd only buy them outright if I was seriously desperate.
I would just buy the villager but not for hundreds of NMT. Island hopping is fun at first but if you’re doing it to find a certain villager, it can become frustrating. I did have 5 tickets, however, to search for Sherb and found Sherb somehow on the 5th island. So when you get lucky it feels amazing. Just realize most times you’ll go through a whole day possibly and never find the villager you want on the islands.
Now if you have several villagers you’re open to finding, I’d island hop for sure. No offense to sellers on here, but some people are absolutely ridiculous with what they demand when selling villagers. I would not pay hundreds of NMT for a villager even if I had hundreds.
I would personally just give them away to my friends because I wouldn't want that many tickets cluttering up my storage, hahaha. But if I had to choose, I would use it to buy who I was after. I imagine that island hopping takes time, and it's not a 100% way of guaranteeing you'll get who you want. If I had the means of securing the villagers I wanted by outright purchasing them, I'd be more than happy to go that way.
I would personally try island hopping. I think it is more fun. I am sitting on 40 tickets now, waiting to use for when one of my villagers asks to move. I think it is better to limit how many tickets you use in a day however.
I'd definitely go island hopping ! I prefer playing the game as it was designed, plus I feel like I appreciate the villagers more when I get them myself, with no help. AND I've already fallen in love with villagers I didn't even know about, just because I was so focused on the "famous" ones
I'd probably go island hopping and maybe finally find hybrid island. Not really looking for any specific dreamies atm. Orrr I might spend it on some furniture shopping or buy some art of my island resident hehe
i’d island hop as despite my luck being cruddy, i actually really like island hopping lol. plus, i feel more accomplished and happier by finding my dreamies myself rather than buying them from people aha
I legitimately think I get a dopamine hit from Island Hopping even though it's disappointing like 80% of the time. It's totally like a gachopon machine.
If I had 600, I'd definitely island hop. It's fun to discover a new villager that you like, even if they weren't a dreamie. I'm also a sucker for RNG-based things.
This kind of reminds me of a post I saw on twitter the other day. There was a player who spent 1000 tickets searching for Al but had absolutely no luck in finding him. Eventually he gave up on island hopping and decided to post that he was trading away Raymond and 800 tickets for Al. Needless to say, he found Al!
My own experiences with island hopping are a little mixed(Beau and Judy were my first lazy and snooty villagers that moved in naturally). I found Merengue, Tia, Zucker(Tia and Zucker weren't dreamies but I'm still fond of them!), and Raymond(this one took forever though) on islands. I then spent a bunch of tickets island hopping for dreamies but had really bad luck. So I just traded tickets for the rest of my dreamies. If you're looking for someone specific I would probably go with trading for them as opposed to rolling the villager gacha. I traded for Fang on this forum and the rest on twitter(I know. I was really worried too). I haven't been scammed or anything, but maybe I just had really good luck? Anyways, I wish you luck on finding your dreamies!