Path tips for newbies like me?!

[mayorclara]

Title says it all. Basically I've finally gotten to a point in my current town where I haven't had the unstoppable urge to reset in utter frustration, so now I'm asking all of you wise mayors out there: do you have any tips for making path placement look good?
I'm kinda struggling with trying to make them look neat and structured but not too prim and proper to a point where it looks too unnatural. My town is and will be very princessy, if that changes anything.

Idk how to end this lol, so thanks in advance ig

 

[NobbyXI]

Decide how complex you want your main path/road. Most paths are 1-3 tiles wide, but you can make them as large as you want. Larger paths generally give your town a more open feel whereas long single paths winding around trees and such can create more of a forest feel. You can obviously mix them up - just be aware that the wider, more complex paths can take 8++ QR slots. It takes me 3 characters to hold all the patterns just for 2 paths, but I prefer complex ones with corners and borders.

Make them practical to connect all major areas of your town. I dunno how much you want to do this, but you can control where villagers move, assuming you have the patience to path your entire town (you can go back and delete path sections after they move in).

Spend some time on QR blogs (JP ones are great. Mix up paths to create a unique personal town, but make them complement each other. For example, if you're using light green grass QR and want to add flowers, choose those that have similar grass tones.This is a long list of various QR blogs: http://merongcrossing.tumblr.com/post/78720957620/japanese-animal-crossing-qr-codediary-blog

Have a general idea of what you want your town to be like. Instead of placing a bunch of random PWPs, try to make them go together to create gardens, parks, residential areas, etc etc. You can place the Zen Garden, Balloon Arch, and Sphinx next to each other if you want, but it won't look good XD

Also, to address your problem of things being too neat vs natural, try incorporating both In my residential section, things are very neat and organized and perfectly placed. I add plants to give it some depth. However, I'm working on a large garden in another part of my town that doesn't use any of my main paths.

My last tip is I highly recommend creating 1-3 other characters and unlock their QR slots. If you delete them, your paths disappear, so think about where you want to place the house carefully.

Idk if any of this helped

 

[Vulpixy]

Not sure if this is the best/most efficient way, but this is how I ended up working with my town so far:

One of the first things I did with my new town was figure out where I wanted my villagers to move in. Their houses take up a 3x3 space with a 1-spacer buffer area (so total 5x5 area). I dropped out patterns to mimic their house locations, then went about dropping in the main pathways using the default "carpet" pattern. Also to note: the spot in front of their door must be left blank (including patterns) so I set up my places like this:

XXXXX
XHHHX
XHHHX
XHHHX
XXDXX
PPPPPPPPP

X= buffer space, H= House, D= space in front of the door, P= pathway

While setting up my pathways I wanted to make sure that I had quick and easy access between the following places: Train Station, Town Hall, Retail, Town Tree, Docks, My house, and finally my little neighborhoods. From there I took the time to add in a few "shortcut" pathways and as I continue I'll add in more smaller pathways to points of interest such as parks, monuments, etc.

While I plotted out the main bulk of my town I ignored any trees/villagers in the way and just continued on as if they didn't exist. Any trees sitting in the way where you want a villager will be automatically cleared out when someone moves into that spot and I only bothered clearing the trees on the pathways. This saved me a ton of time and a lot of axes. It's a little annoying now having houses in the middle of my pathways, but I feel it's better than trying to design the town around them then have to redesign areas once they're gone.

My next step is moving out everyone who's in the way and moving in villagers into their designated spots. To ensure they move in where I want them to I removed the center 3x3 for each housing plot I made (the H's in the above guide thingy), then dropped a pattern every 2 spaces throughout my town. Villagers need a full 3x3 area with no patterns to live in, so forcing them to pick where you want them to go works really well. As a bonus you could leave a pattern in some of your housing plots and have pretty much full control over where/how they move in

 

[mountaintear]

I suggest natural paths just because they look so beautiful and fitting. I personally have a white path with blue flowers as my town is usually set in winter. But, for my second town, I hope to finally have my own natural paths. They look amazing and go well with flower arrangements <3

 

[Vulpixy]

I suggest natural paths just because they look so beautiful and fitting. I personally have a white path with blue flowers as my town is usually set in winter. But, for my second town, I hope to finally have my own natural paths. They look amazing and go well with flower arrangements <3

Do you have any good tips for making natural paths? I plan to have a few in my town and would like to know the fastest way to wear them in/keep them around.

 

[NobbyXI]

Do you have any good tips for making natural paths? I plan to have a few in my town and would like to know the fastest way to wear them in/keep them around.

Unless something's been updated, this is a good guide:

http://ellesanimalhaven.tumblr.com/post/106386246503/ellesanimalhavens-guide-to-dirt-paths

My only problem with the way it's laid out is that, while beautiful, it has so much potential for a villager to plop right on top of it. But I've seen other natural paths that take that into consideration. Just something to be mindful of~

 

[mountaintear]

I've only ever made them by accident, but I'm excited to try in the future. I've heard they don't take much maintenance but I do know that after winter passes you have to start from scratch and redo your paths so that is one annoying aspect xD

 

[NobbyXI]

I've only ever made them by accident, but I'm excited to try in the future. I've heard they don't take much maintenance but I do know that after winter passes you have to start from scratch and redo your paths so that is one annoying aspect xD

If I took the time to do them, I would just TT back and avoid Winter in that town forever if that's the case haha

 

[mayorclara]

Thank you all for the replies! You're lovely!