PSA: About Star Fragment Trees (updated!)

[naranjita]

there is so much unnecessary fearmongering regarding glitches and hacks in this game, it's insane. like this picture:

This was posted on Facebook:
View attachment 261129

there isn't even any proof of this screen being in the actual game. this picture, and I don't mean a screenshot of this in-game screen, I mean this specific file has been posted in so many websites regarding so many things. guys, look what happened to me! I left an island pressing - and this screen appeared! I duped a Royal Crown and my save file was ruined! I bought a star fragment tree and Nintendo deleted my save, look at this save corruption screen! and they all post this exact file. no one has ever thought of taking a picture of this in-game screen with their phone. heck, no one has posted a version of this picture highlighting the "start over" option. it's always this exact same file. I'm starting to think this screenshot is a hoax. no one has provided any evidence of these trees actually causing dead tiles either. it's all hearsay.

can I guarantee that these trees are safe? obviously not. you should definitely err on the side of caution and not make them or buy them. but I also can't guarantee that they will ruin your game, which a lot of people are irresponsibly saying. and like, I get it. it's nice and comforting to think that people who have cool things that we can't acquire, like these star fragment trees, will get divine retribution and lose their saves. but that is just not how this works.

judging by how this thread has been going I feel like this comment will fall on deaf ears, but please, please don't fall for fearmongering when proof isn't provided. a tweet of one person saying "this happened to my friend!" isn't proof. a screenshot that has been posted a million times with no proof of it even being in the game isn't proof. absolutely stay safe and don't purchase hacked items, because you could possibly be banned from Nintendo Online if Nintendo starts punishing people for hacking the game (although afaik they only really punish hackers in competitive games, like Splatoon). but don't believe crap without proof, for goodness' sake.

edit: and I can't believe y'all are criticizing that reddit thread just because people in there are being rightfully skeptical and not believing unsubstantiated claims. guys, please, apply some critical thinking. you probably don't believe those stupid chain messages your moms send you on WhatsApp, why are you believing any of this?

 

[Dormire]

They looked pretty, but I knew that they were hacked in as I saw those heart diys that weren’t in game yet....sucks for the unfortunate victims that don’t know better and were unaware.

Spoiler

Also, everyone talks about nh having glitches and saying It was rushed, but nl had it too? I recall hearing about save issues and corruption before it was released In june of 2013 as Japan got it first (sorry I know it’s off topic but I didn’t know where to put this)

The heart crystals are actually from the wedding event. It's a legitimate item but not the tree itself.

But, yes. Stay away from it.

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

edit: and I can't believe y'all are criticizing that reddit thread just because people in there are being rightfully skeptical and not believing unsubstantiated claims. guys, please, apply some critical thinking. you probably don't believe those stupid chain messages your moms send you on WhatsApp, why are you believing any of this?

how is adding someone as a best friend similar to chain mail?
on the reddit thread there is someone calling it a sob story if youre affected by it which is more unnecessarily rude than skeptical. the stories could be fake but thats not really the point.

 

[Neechan]

The heart crystals are actually from the wedding event. It's a legitimate item but not the tree itself.

But, yes. Stay away from it.

Thanks For the heads up

 

[naranjita]

how is adding someone as a best friend similar to chain mail?
on the reddit thread there is someone calling it a sob story if youre affected by it which is more unecessarily rude than skeptical. the stories could be fake but thats not really the point.

I'm not talking about the discussion about whether people should add best friends or not. never even mentioned that in my post. I'm talking about people not believing stuff without proof. don't try to derail my point, please

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

I'm not talking about the discussion about whether people should add best friends or not. never even mentioned that in my post. I'm talking about people not believing stuff without proof. don't try to derail my point, please

ok....sorry????? youre not going to get a good point across if youre going to be overly aggressive

 

[naranjita]

ok....sorry????? youre not going to get a good point across if youre going to be overly aggressive

how am I being aggressive...

 

[Dormire]

Thanks For the heads up

The fact that unreleased items are just being presented out in the open like it's no big deal is so funny and people say it's the TTers that spoils content. I mean, *I* didn't even know it was a DIY ingredient until a twitter user said it was.

 

[Neechan]

The fact that unreleased items are just being presented out in the open like it's no big deal is so funny and people say it's the TTers that spoils content. I mean, *I* didn't even know it was a DIY ingredient until a twitter user said it was.

Same, I was wondering where the heart crystal Ingredient was from.

and TTers are limited, as I think you can’t get them unless you hack them in (hence why these Edited Id items are dangerous)

 

[DJStarstryker]

I'm not sure if the things that villagers say we did is reported to Nintendo I think this feature is more like the rumors in New Leaf like "flowers' friend" and so.

However, when we came back from May Day Tour, Tom Nook asked us if we liked or not the event. And it's probable that the answer went directly to Nintendo

No, no. What villagers say isn't reported to Nintendo. I mean statistics on just about everything. How many turnips you sold, when you sold them, how many profits you made, how many fish did you catch today, how many of those were sea bass, how many times did you hit rocks today, etc etc.

The villagers DO, however, use SOME of those statistics to comment on things you're doing.

 

[glow]

please, please don't fall for fearmongering when proof isn't provided.

your post is the only one that has called out a lot of these unsubstantiated claims. like i've been trying to find posts/ or individual users who report their save being corrupted/their nintendo online accounts banned due to this and all i find is users trading/selling the trees

not saying these items are "definitely safe" or anything especially with potential patches/updates but yeah.

/shrug

 

[Aardbei]

No, no. What villagers say isn't reported to Nintendo. I mean statistics on just about everything. How many turnips you sold, when you sold them, how many profits you made, how many fish did you catch today, how many of those were sea bass, how many times did you hit rocks today, etc etc.

The villagers DO, however, use SOME of those statistics to comment on things you're doing.

Oh my God I don't know if I like that

 

[naranjita]

your post is the only one that has called out a lot of these unsubstantiated claims. like i've been trying to find posts/ or individual users who report their save being corrupted/their nintendo online accounts banned due to this and all i find is users trading/selling the trees

not saying these items are "definitely safe" or anything especially with potential patches/updates but yeah.

/shrug

exactly! look, I'm not a hacker. I barely have the knowledge necessary to install mods for freaking Skyrim, I definitely can't tell you that these trees are safe. but just like you shouldn't trust me if I told you that they're 100% safe and won't hurt your game in any way without me providing proof of it, you also should not trust people saying that they're corrupting saves or "creating dead tiles" without evidence, either. I mean, SOMEONE should have recorded a video of this happening, right? the Switch has an in-built recording feature. everyone owns a phone that can record videos. yet not a single video of this phenomenon exists?

I'm sorry if this sounds rude, or aggressive, or hurts anyone's feelings, but the evidence provided throughout this thread is absolutely laughable. a reddit post saying that these trees "are known" to corrupt save files (whose save files? who has documented this?). a Facebook post posting this STUPID image that I'm sick of seeing at this point, never in video footage, or in any language other than English. a tweet of someone saying that something happened to their friend.

stay safe, don't buy these trees, don't buy rumors without evidence.

 

[Miss Misty]

snip

Okay let's be honest. People aren't criticizing the reddit thread for being skeptical, they're criticizing the reddit thread because it - like every other reddit thread - is full of chuds who think they're smarter than everyone else. The "gentleman and a scholar" types who come up with some hypothetical where it's all the victim's fault so they can blame the victim without it being victim blaming.

As to this thread and whether or not there is substantial proof... I mean not to be rude but... let's call a spade a spade. The kinds of people who needed to be told that these trees were hacked in are the kind of people who shouldn't have hacked items at all. The 2x1 duping method from a few weeks ago led to a bunch of people following a step by step guide then complaining about the bugged tiles that got created in their homes, because they didn't realize what they were doing to their game. I mean you're right, this probably isn't going to lead to absolute and total save corruption/Switch bricking for every single person, but it probably will lead to unusual, unique glitches on people's islands as Nintendo puts out patches that may impact the hacked code. What you call fearmongering I call saving kids and coding-illiterate people from heartache, and saving the people that first group runs to for advice from a headache.

 

[naranjita]

Okay let's be honest. People aren't criticizing the reddit thread for being skeptical, they're criticizing the reddit thread because it - like every other reddit thread - is full of chuds who think they're smarter than everyone else. The "gentleman and a scholar" types who come up with some hypothetical where it's all the victim's fault so they can blame the victim without it being victim blaming.

As to this thread and whether or not there is substantial proof... I mean not to be rude but... let's call a spade a spade. The kinds of people who needed to be told that these trees were hacked in are the kind of people who shouldn't have hacked items at all. The 2x1 duping method from a few weeks ago led to a bunch of people following a step by step guide then complaining about the bugged tiles that got created in their homes, because they didn't realize what they were doing to their game. I mean you're right, this probably isn't going to lead to absolute and total save corruption/Switch bricking for every single person, but it probably will lead to unusual, unique glitches on people's islands as Nintendo puts out patches that may impact the hacked code. What you call fearmongering I call saving kids and coding-illiterate people from heartache, and saving the people that first group runs to for advice from a headache.

okay, but the people making up these lies about save file corruption aren't glitchers or hackers (glitchers and hackers openly make fun of that "save corruption" screenshot, for example). it's coding-illiterate people telling other coding-illiterate people that duping items can corrupt their game or whatever. this isn't hackers telling a white lie in order to protect people's games, it's people who don't know how any of this works lying to other people who don't know how any of this works. and I don't think it's healthy to encourage telling lies and expecting people to believe things without evidence.

edit: something else I want to say before I bow out of this thread since I genuinely don't want to hurt anyone's feelings: this isn't about people believing that doing X or Y will ruin their save. objectively speaking, there is no harm being done in people believing that these trees, or the dupe glitch, or anything else will corrupt their save. what worries me, what I think really is a problem, is blindly believing things without proof, or believing in flimsy evidence like a tweet saying "this happened to my friend!". this is something that goes beyond animal crossing. think critically, think for yourself, look for evidence before you believe something you see on the Internet. it's not about the belief itself; it's about how people start believing in that thing. I don't know how to say this any more nicely.

 

[Mello]

lots of words

You make a lot of good points here, really you do. I'm confident duped items/items obtained via save editors (so long as they're legal items, like stuff that can actually be obtained ingame. ie, no perfect fruit or such) will not do a thing to your save file. I'm just seeing a lot of people rallying behind the idea that pretty much anything can corrupt your save, without any actual proof that whatever they're claiming corrupted their game, actually corrupted it. People claim receiving duped items corrupted their data. No proof, but let's buy into that anyway.

Also, in this specific case with the Star Fragment Trees... just... don't... plant them. It's not that hard, honestly. People not sure if it'll cause them problems? Just stay on the safe side and don't plant them. Resist the overwhelming urge to plant the trees that could cause issues. I know it's difficult, but we have to try.

 

[lackless]

I'm sorry if this sounds rude, or aggressive, or hurts anyone's feelings, but the evidence provided throughout this thread is absolutely laughable. a reddit post saying that these trees "are known" to corrupt save files (whose save files? who has documented this?). a Facebook post posting this STUPID image that I'm sick of seeing at this point, never in video footage, or in any language other than English. a tweet of someone saying that something happened to their friend.

stay safe, don't buy these trees, don't buy rumors without evidence.

Ah! Not to dispute your point as it is true that I’ve seen... what I assume to be the same screenshot of the save glitch multiple times, but I remember seeing an equivalent screenshot of the same corrupted save data screen several times in the Japanese AC twitter community, one of whom I think posted a video of their switch? I’ll try to dig around and find it.

 

[Dormire]

Ah! Not to dispute your point as it is true that I’ve seen... what I assume to be the same screenshot of the save glitch multiple times, but I remember seeing an equivalent screenshot of the same corrupted save data screen several times in the Japanese AC twitter community, one of whom I think posted a video of their switch? I’ll try to dig around and find it.

You mean this?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1250666455923699714

 

[naranjita]

You mean this?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1250666455923699714

I stand corrected on this point; the screen is likely real. I assume someone actually got their data corrupted, took a screenshot of that screen, and posted it somewhere. I still think that very screenshot is being used to claim that any number of random things cause save data corruption.

 

[lackless]

You mean this?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1250666455923699714

Ahh!! Yes that’s the one!
A quick search around google and I was also able to find this one in German: https://www.archyde.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-users-report-corrupt-scores/

Which appears to show the screen after you say no to restarting your data. I do think it’s prudent to be skeptical but at this point I feel like it’s safe to say that the glitch does exist, although the causes might be unknown.