Is using Turnip Prophet cheating?

[Deleted member 157716]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently on my 3rd island, Koharu, on my first island I used websites like Nookazon and Turnip Prophet to get rich quick. After flatting/ruining my island and becoming rich, I became burnt out and reset my island, I was looking for that nostalgic feeling I had when I first played the game, I'm on my 3rd island and I use the Bell Tree Forums for trading and no Turnip Prophet to calculate my turnip prices, but I want to use Turnip Prophet again. I'm at 4 stars and I need to spend a lot of money to get to 5 stars, and I want to use Turnip Prophet again, is using Turnip Prophet cheating?

Thank you!
- Casper

 

[CinnamonCrab]

I used to use a similar tool way back when I did the turnip market in the wild world days. I personally don't have the energy to remember how spikes work, or even the energy to check prices twice daily -- so I find such a tool to be useful. I wouldn't say that it's cheating at all.

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

I think you should just use it if you want to, regardless of what others might think.

Is using Turnip Prophet cheating? Well, it's probably not what Nintendo wants people to do. But many people also time travel, and some people consider that cheating. Honestly it doesn't really matter at the end of the day! Play the game the way you want I personally use Turnip Prophet all the time, and I time travel. I like having virtual wealth, it's very cash money

 

[Serabee]

I mean, unless it's something that actually hacks into the game (I have no clue what it is, but I really doubt that), then it's perfectly fine to do. "Cheating" is so subjective and honestly just silly- unless you're doing something that risks Nintendo shutting down your account or whatever (which I believe they only do if you're hacking), who cares if you're doing things differently or in a way that wasn't initially intended? It's not like it's a competitive game, so you're not doing anything to hurt anyone else. If it helps you and you enjoy it, go for it!

 

[mnk907]

It's not cheating since you're not actually breaking any of the game's rules. You're not manipulating or changing anything to let yourself do something you normally shouldn't be able to.

At worst it's just exploiting the game's mechanics, but even then it's not so bad. Turnip Prophet doesn't actually GIVE you good sell prices, it just tells you whether you can expect anything good in a given week or not.

 

[moon_child]

I honestly don’t think there’s such a thing as cheating in life sim games because you play by yourself and you’re not really competing with anyone on anything so you know, you can play your game however you want to. Different players have different playstyles so my advice is you do you, do things that suit your playstyle the best and make sure to do something that would make you enjoy the game more and play it more.

 

[Corrie]

Who cares? Do it if you want to. It's your game and games are supposed to be a fun hobby, not something with strict rules.

 

[ForbiddenSecrets]

I don't think the question should be 'is it cheating'. The question should be 'does using it ruin your enjoyment of the game'? If so then don't use it. If you can use it and still enjoy the game then use it. "Cheating" for a single play game is so subjective.

 

[Khaelis]

Its not the intended way of doing turnips, so it is cheating in that sense, but who cares? You're using a tool to give you percentages of what pattern you have. You're using a tool to figure out information you can work out on your own. And honestly? Its not much different than going to a random island with 500+ prices.

Just play how you want to play.

 

[Dream traveler]

I've only ever bought and sold turnips on my own island, and even though I don't really buy turnips anymore because I have more bells than I probably need, I still check my turnip prices daily. I have used Turnip Prophet and other sites, and I don't consider it cheating. It doesn't give you any real advantage, just an idea of what pattern you might have. And I've actually had times where Turnip Prophet gave me the wrong percentages/pattern type and was way off.

I do consider some things in Animal Crossing technically "cheating," but really, who cares?! Like time traveling, technically, yes, it is cheating. You are manipulating the game to your advantage. But it's nobody else's business what you do with your own game. I agree with what everybody else said, play as you like.

I've been playing console games since around 1980 starting with the Atari 2600, and back in the day, pretty much everybody "cheated"!! We used to use cheat codes and exploit whatever glitches and tricks we could find. Half the fun of playing a lot of games was trying to figure out all the tricks and seeing what they did! And sharing our findings with our friends. Of course, we tried to complete games without any help, too. But it was fun using the cheats, codes, glitches, bugs, etc.

 

[Lethalia]

I use Nookazon to make money fast because I don't want to wait 3 weeks to have enough Bells saved up before I can move all my villager houses and build my bridges. I just want to get to the decorating part of the game, so if someone makes an offer to buy my fish bait for 900,000 Bells, I'll gladly take it.

I never saw things like online trading as cheating. I viewed it more as the community helping each other out, and what could be so bad about that? I don't know what Turnip Prophet is, but if anyone created any online resource and you access it and choose to use it, that means anyone else could too. So if they have a problem with it and find the advantage unfair, they could use it too or mind their business. It's your game that you spent money on for yourself, so you can do what you want with it.

 

[Regalli]

I use MeteoNook and use Turnip Prophet when I feel like dealing with turnips (frequently I just don’t.) Is it developer-intended? No, but I’m not entirely sure they intended for the turnip patterns to be memorizable, knowing Nintendo. Does it use info from datamining? Sure. Does it matter? No. Unless you’re actively hacking or modding, Nintendo doesn’t care all that much - they clearly don’t encourage time traveling, which is why turnips are so sensitive towards time paradoxes (wilt when you set the clock back,) but that’s about it, and they didn’t disable it outright. The in-game acknowledgement of turnips being ‘sensitive to time paradoxes’ is a borderline acceptance of the practice as it is. It doesn’t impact other players at all, it’s not hacking the console yourself, so use it without guilt.

 

[Marshmallows]

Do you think you'll get burned out again if you make bells too easily? Whether you use "cheats" or not is up to you to decide if it's going to be a satisfactory experience or not. Cheats aren't bad in of themselves (and by cheats I mean things like developer cheatcodes or even guidebooks.) I consider the turnip price calculator to be a guide... there's no guarantee you'll get a good price, you're just inputting info for probabilities and hints on when the best time to sell will be.

 

[StarlitGlitch]

I remember trying out the NL version (whatever it was called) back in the day but didn't have the patience to keep it up lol.

Personally I don't consider it to be cheating since it's just checking what the numbers might be instead of changing anything in-game, and for the most part you're more likely to get big numbers just by going to another town that already has a high price.

Like others said even if it is cheating no AC player will care, so it's up to you if you think it adds or takes away your enjoyment of the game!
I would technically call TTing cheating since it's trying to change the games in a way Nintendo wants but do I think it's bad? No! It's AC it's not competitive haha

 

[Xara]

i personally think there’s no such thing as cheating in animal crossing. it’s your game, play it however you want.

 

[Ace Marvel]

Your island, your rules, do what makes you happy, this game have multiplayer capabilities, but in the end what you do in your island won't affect others. Don't feel like is cheating, I think is not even though I don't use it, daily because I don't understand it.

 

[skarmoury]

People have different definitions of "cheating" in games, so I say don't sweat it as long as you're having fun. Personally, the only thing I consider "cheating" would be something like breaking the game code and manipulating it (i.e. having star fragment tree, selling Harvey's fences, etc.) but I'm not someone to report or snitch if you're just doing these for fun; I couldn't really care much and I actually think they're pretty neat. I'd just say exercise caution if you're breaking the game code because Nintendo might sniff you out and do something idk.

Anyway, Turnip Prophet just sounds like an app that lets you predict prices based on information in the game, so I wouldn't consider this cheating. It's the same concept with using the weather predicting app, and I use it all the time now that I know my weather seed. Time travelling also doesn't seem like cheating either; if big N really cared about time travelling, they would've just implemented an in-game time like old games instead of syncing the time with your Switch's time.