My town is turning into a desert. I've planted fields of flowers over the worst areas and have been watering them religiously for a week now with no signs of change. Has anyone actually been able to regrow their grass this way? Also if the grass ever regrows, will I still need to keep flowers on it and water them everyday? This is way too many flowers for my tastes. Watering them all is overwhelming even with the golden watering can.
I've been careful to not run except on my paths but now I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I thought running was when you held down the L or R buttons and that just using the joystick was walking. Am I mistaken? How did it get to be so bad? Even though I invest hours every day into improving my town and making my villagers happy, I envy my husband's underdeveloped town just because it still has all its grass. He only plays maybe an hour every evening.
Thank you for any advice/anecdotes. I'm getting discouraged and need some hope. ;_;
I was TTing to move someone out once and I was doing it on a very stormy day. To my surprise, when I went forwards I found that the grass was regrowing quite quickly, even on areas without flowers. I managed to patch up a lot of grass just traveling back and forth from that day.
Yeah tt'ing helps a lot. Another thing that has helped me was before tting, plant flowers around the edges of the brown patches, it seems to help shrink it and then each time you time travel, move them in a little more toward the center of the spot. Most of mine disappeared in no time.
Yeah, when you're time traveling you can actually see the grass grow back to normal. It's really fast in my opinion. If you're not into time travel, then I guess you'll just have to live with it?
I think it just takes and really, really long time. Loads of flowers around the area, and I guess TT helps if you want to do that. I just stick to not running, at all. Saves the grass.
I noticed that watering my flowers did nothing, probably because I was always walking over the areas that I was watering.
If you're like me and don't want to TT, then I would highly suggest changing your ordinance to Beautiful, creating paths, and not walking over the worst areas at all. It'll take longer than TTing, but it'll still grow back.
Running on paths does not save the area underneath. Lots of people actually like to make dirt paths this way, so they know exactly where to run to get it aligned. If you don't want ANY dirt spots, then I recommend not running at all in your town.
Flowers & Rain both help grass grow back faster but you must not WALK OR RUN on it. Stepping on it, no matter the speed, will stop the growth for that day. TTing works only if you play at least 1 hour per day your tting past. Watering helps but it's not necessary if you have Beautiful Town in effect. Beautiful town also increases the regrowth rate. The path Method works best if you walk only or almost only on Paths. I'm currently regrowing my grass as well, I was getting massive bare patches.
EDIT: Walking does wear the grass but at a significantly slower rate than running. I only know because I never/almost never run in town and I still got bare patches and dirt paths.
My town is being swallowed up by flowers and I can say that it will only help if you literally don't walk on that patch of grass at all except to water those flowers. Besides time traveling, the only thing that I've noticed works is if you don't walk on that patch for about two weeks or so. So once you take away the flowers (not like they really help if you're constantly walking on it) and walk on it normally, the grass will just die again. I'm pretty sure that running on paths also destroys the grass underneath. Paths don't protect the grass, so at this point, I can only suggest not running.
I invest a decent amount of time into the game as well and I totally sympathize with you. Pretty much my entire southern half of my town has huge dirt patches or dying grass because of my narrow town layout (so I can't just "avoid" dying grass because I literally only have one path to go to get to everywhere), and I don't even run. And I don't want to time travel. So I think we're in the same sinking boat, and I've been trying to grow grass back since the beginning of July. Recently, I had one or two days in a row that was storming all day. I watered the flowers on the dirt patches, and I didn't even see any growth after all that.
I'm also getting really discouraged because you only have three fantastic options. 1. Time travel. 2. "Simply" avoid that patch (I say simply because depending on your town layout, it may not be feasible, and don't forget about when your grass does grow back, it'll just die again once you start walking on it). 3. Play the game once a day for an hour. I wish I could give you some hope, because I could really use some as well.
*cries with SonatinaGena* Since the beginning of July? That's distressing! If I end up in the same place I'll probably resort to option 4: cover it all with tiles. D:
Thank you so much for the suggestions so far. Good to know that grass usually spreads from other grass. I'll pay attention to my few remaining patches. I'll also switch to the beautiful town ordinance. I thought it only affected flowers but would be happy to be wrong.
My paths are so I know where I can run, I'm ok with dirt under there. What bothers me is the dirt everywhere else. I've been resisting time travel in this town so I'll report back in a week or so. Maybe with a dream address at last? People seem to look down on towns without much grass so I've been too shy to share until I can regrow mine. ;_;
Anyone know if it's possible to run with just the joystick? How fast can I go and still be safely walking?
In my town, my grass wear has actually gotten WORSE with lots of flowers, mostly because my villagers stomp all over the flower patches watering them I think (I have flowers all over almost every empty place in my town, hundreds of flowers.) They're ALWAYS walking around on my flower beds. The only places that are still fairly green are spots between trees with NO flowers. I have Beautiful Town ordinance now (for a few days now) so I'm hoping that will help eventually, but my previously very green town is turning into a brown ugly mess.
I was going to give up on trying to regrow my grass too. I've had flowers over 2 house spots for over a month now and it is getting worse. I won't change to Beautiful town as I can only play at night and need Re-Tail to be open past midnight. I'm going to move the flowers to other areas and suck it up and live with it. If a villager is due to move, I'll begin creating a new character and resetting until they decide to move in on top of an already created dirt spot.
But yeah, I have a lot of dirt spaces despite having paths (nice and worn underneath them!) and if leaving them rather than having to walk on them to water them every day makes it better, then that's what I'll do.
I have grass-wear all over my town and it's completely irritating since it's so unnecessary. And I don't see it ever going away since this wear created paths that I must continue to use, so there won't be much grow-back. I also never, ever run in my town.
I just cannot understand why Nintendo thinks this is such a cool and ‘great’ feature. This is a game where a toddler leaves home, travels to a random town (alone), becomes mayor, earns millions of bells, builds and furnishes a mansion, digs up dinosaur bones on a daily basis and maintains a beautiful town filled with trees bearing 3 gigantic fruits on each. So, is grass-wear supposed to make it all seem ‘real’ and believable? It’s not supposed to be real and believable. It’s a fantasy world with bold and colorful imagery so something like grass-wear should be optional (the ‘Beautiful Town’ ordinance should prevent it as it prevents weeds).
I love the AC series because it’s not a ‘game’ as we know typical games. It’s creative, relaxing, humorous, and timeless with no end. I wish that there was an option to remove all of the ‘game’ from this game, like grass-wear, incessant jelly-fish spawning, the overreacting to silly mosquito bites and of course, the random house placement and sensitive villager move in/out schedule. I would love a ‘creative’ mode that removes all of the unnecessary ‘game’ and gives more control to the mayor in terms of villager house placement, their clothing and their home interiors.
I don't think watering your plants by hand helps. You have to wait for it to rain or storm. Flowers on the outside of the dirt patches help, as others have said. It'll come back
Flowers does not help grass regrow, you just have to not walk on it at all.
The reason people say that you should plant flowers on it is because people don't usually walk on their flowers.
I have also noted that my flowers are doing absolutely nothing to affect my grass growth. I'd go as far as saying they are making it worse as I am having to trudge through them to water them all. It's receeding all over the place.
I do know from TTing my first town before deleting it though that if you jump ahead 2 months all grass will grow back. I am considering doing that on my main town.
I agree, grass wear basically punishes us for playing the game. It's frustrating that walking and villagers seems to wear it down too. We have no way of controlling it. ;_; If my grass still hasn't grown back by the time I get all the pieces in place for making a dream of my town, I'll have to TT to fix it, basically risking everything.
