Pinning Villager with the Shovel

[chet_manley]

So, I've pinned villagers with shovel holes around in the past in attempts to try to get a particular character to ping me. I tried the maneuver today and pinned Bill against the side of a house with pits around him so that he could not move. I would run to the other side of the map, then in five or ten minutes I'd head back and hope that he pinged me.

I was doing this solid for about an hour (setting the system down and doing work in between) and one of the times went closer to fifteen or so minutes. When I returned, Bill wasn't there, and was sitting on a nearby stump.

Is there a time limit to how long a villager will stay pinned in a spot? Is it because other villagers started coming outside when the clock turned that it reset Bill's location? Or is it because I took longer to check up on him than the standard five-to-ten minutes I was employing before?

 

[Khaelis]

It mostly depends on the time of say, but villagers have a schedule. If something prevents them from getting somewhere, they'll just poof out of the holes. Often happens in the afternoon hours for me, so I tend to do it in the evening. In the afternoon, I can normally keep them pinned for 30 minutes, give or take. But in the evening (after 8PM), they normally stay pinned for upwards of two hours for me.