Mystery Tour Villager Randomness (of the initial three)

[Sheba]

Hey guys,

I need help because I think something's not as RNG as the wikis make me believe it should be.
I am (still) in the phase where I can invite three villagers from Mystery Island Tours. I already invited a "Normal" and a "Lazy" one, I got some I liked in less than ten tours.
But the "Peppy" ones? Something's up.

My only requirement for a "Peppy" villager is that I want a rabbit. There are 49 "Peppy" villagers in the game. EIGHT of them are rabbits. I am on Peppy-Search-Mystery Tour Nr. 104 and I have not seen a single rabbit. Not a single one. Granted, there's also some others I haven't seen yet (like Audie), but there are definitely some that are everywhere - Pinky holds first place with a total of SEVEN appearances. And with so many rabbits in the "Peppy" category, it should not be difficult to find a single one or take that much time if the odds were equal.

Obviously, they are not. So I wanted to ask here if a) we know of anything that stops certain villagers/species from appearing (time of the day, maybe being generally locked during the initial recruiting, whatever) and b) has anyone gotten a rabbit during the "initial three houses" recruiting as a "Peppy" villager (so Dotty, Bunnie, Ruby, Gabi, Carmen, Bonbon, Chrissy or Pippy)?

I'd be grateful for any help. I don't mind grinding more, I just need to know if it's possible and if there's something I can do to raise my chances. I'm actually close to paying off my house without having done turnips at all, just from selling Mystery Island Tour stuff, and the rest of my island is still in its starting stage because I'm at the tours since over a week now. And no, I sadly don't have amiibos to get my rabbits later; I gotta do it the hard way.

 

[Miss Misty]

According to my notes, I've ran into Gabi, Ruby, and Chrissy on island tours.

edit: Gabi and Ruby were during the first three plots, and Chrissy was afterward.

 

[Jas]

i saw carmen when i was looking for my first three! i didn't keep notes but i think she was the second one i saw? and then audie!

 

[Sheba]

Oh wow, so I have the worst luck in the world then! Incredible... Thank you so much, guys - this shows it's possible, then. Did you play during certain times of the day? I can only play late at night (which sucks so badly because it means the shop is closed...), so I wonder if that might have any effect now.

 

[Miss Misty]

I got the game at release so I don't remember what times of day I went, but I definitely found Chrissy at night.

Now you have me paranoid though since I also mainly island hop at night and I keep running into the same small pool of species (& even villagers in some cases)

 

[Sheba]

Yeah, I just found Wendy again, which brings her up to seven appearances as well, together with Pinky. Others I found a lot are Apple, Tangy, Cheri, Bangle and Bluebear with four or five appearances each and those add up. There are a handful of villagers I only saw once, but overall...it seems like not really equal odds. Makes me wonder if maybe there's something going on - maybe even something that differs from player to player? Hearing that others have similiar experiences with a small pool of species/villagers sucks.

 

[Miss Misty]

I'm at the point where I can find villagers of any personality, and I've seen a lot of Apple, Marcel and Zucker.

 

[Sheba]

When I was still able to get Zucker, I saw him a few times (as in, two times), too... huh. And my friend got Apple, too - actually invited her because she likes her. Now this is interesting. I didn't ever see Marcel, but since "Lazy" was the first I invited after only eight island tours total, with the other two possible personalities also appearing, I definitely have not enough data to say something about "Lazy" villagers except that out of four "Lazy" I saw, two times it was Zucker, once Simon and then came Drago whom I picked.