Regrowing grass questions

[Lunarbug]

Man, there's been so many conflicting reports on what does and doesn't work for grass regrowth that it's been getting really frustrating. I heard about watering flowers helps, but even if it does the chance of stepping on the square seems to negate the benefit. Heck, my grass around the flowers is wearing down from me stepping on it to water the flowers on my dirt patches. It's a losing battle. I did notice that a former house plot was regrowing grass (slowly) without my intervention, so I'm thinking of just letting it run it's course.

Is it really confirmed that the Beautiful Ordnance helps grass growth? I can stand to switch over to it, and I've considered it just for the time it will save me. I've heard accounts of both it working and not, so I've been hesitant.

Nintendo, ya dun goofed.

 

[FraudulentDimetrodon]

Is it really confirmed that the Beautiful Ordnance helps grass growth? I can stand to switch over to it, and I've considered it just for the time it will save me. I've heard accounts of both it working and not, so I've been hesitant.
Nintendo, ya dun goofed.

I've had the Beautiful Ordinance on since my second or third day of playing and I haven't seen any drastic help. If you're still walking on the grass to even do something like watering flowers, it doesn't really help repair that grass or to even negate its effects. Maybe if you literally don't walk on the grass at all, it may speed up the process slightly, but at that point, I don't think it matters too much since not stepping on the grass is the only thing that repairs it, if that makes sense. If you're already not stepping on the grass, you've already done pretty much everything you can do.

Yes, if there was literally one thing I could change about this game, it would be the grass. I really wish that it would be possible to fix this, but given that the deterioration is still here from City Folk, I don't think that anyone is really wanting to fix this.

 

[Twisk]

I can definitely relate! I have lots of dirt patches in town that have expanded since I first played, along with new patches created by villagers moving away and projects demolished. On top of that, I've been trying to work on creating dirt paths in certain areas, so I'm purposefully adding even more dirt to my town, and starting to wonder if this is a wise decision. :/ Making dirt paths was a pre-game goal of mine; I thought some of the pictures of dirt paths I'd seen in City Folk looked so nice. But so far, the dirt paths I currently have are not what I envisioned. They're kind of messy and sometimes the dirt paths join with other dirt patches nearby. Close-together dirt patches have a tendency to join together, and dirt patches have a tendency to expand if you walk on them at all.

I can also relate because I really don't want to have to resort to time-traveling to grow my grass back. So I'm just trying to be patient and not be too much of a perfectionist at this stage in the game, trying not to let the dirt bother me. I figure I have plenty of time to perfect my town in the future, and I can always make growing back my grass more of a priority then. From my perspective, it's still pretty early in the game (I plan to play for a long time), so I don't want to constantly be worrying about grasswear all the time as I play, that would be no fun. I want to feel free to explore my town for fossils, or to go fishing, etc. I'm sure no one would judge your town or think poorly of it just because you have some dirt -- it's a problem we can all relate to, I think, and many are unhappy with the grasswear feature.

Some of my thoughts/tips:
- I second that flowers don't seem to help too much in growing back grass. I don't even know if they help at all. I would suggest completely avoiding walking on spots you want to grow back.
- I don't think the beautiful town ordinance really helps with grasswear, except for the fact that flowers don't wilt anymore, so you won't have to walk all around town to water every single flower.
- Walking very slowly might create less grasswear than walking quickly. But it's probably not practical to slowly inch around town like that.
- If you plant bushes or trees in dirt patches, then that would prevent anyone from walking on that spot at all, hopefully helping to speed up the grass re-growth process.
- Patterns don't prevent grasswear, but paths can help keep the grasswear in town in one place.
- Try not to be too quick to build-and-demolish projects. At the beginning of the game I was like, "I'll build a yellow bench here because, hey, I can always demolish it later." But then demolishing it creates a dirt patch, which will either take a fair amount of time to re-grow, or it will expand and create an even bigger dirt patch. T_T

 

[FraudulentDimetrodon]

- Walking very slowly might create less grasswear than walking quickly. But it's probably not practical to slowly inch around town like that.

Has... there actually been legitimate precedent for that helping? Because I've honestly been trying this for the past three days because I'm that desperate. I haven't seen any improvement yet, but I meant to try this for at least two weeks before passing any sort of judgment. Although I'm honestly hoping that it doesn't work because that would mean that I would have to walk like that until the end of time to prevent my grass from wearing out again.

I went over to someone else's town the other day and I actually forgot what it was like to actually walk at normal speed. It felt so fast. x_x

 

[modernreptile]

As much as I don't want to admit I have a grass problem... I've noticed there are areas that my grass has grown back, and areas were it hasn't.

Small patches (like a square or two in size) I've seen grown back in like a week's time. It's the bigger patches, where I actually have to walk on the bare ground to water my flowers, that I see no progress on. These are big traffic areas that everyone walks on; mainly in front of my bridges, and in front of Marina's house, which is right next to my ReTail. I don't really TT and don't have the beautiful ordinance set up, so that maybe why growth is really slow. Luckily, since I have so many flowers in these areas, the bare patches don't seem to be getting any bigger.

One thing I try to do is try to only load my game once a day, put my game to sleep when I'm not playing for a short time, and only shut the game down when I'm finished playing for the day. I find that when I'm constantly reloading the game during the same day is when my grass really deteriorates. I'm going to follow everyone's advise here and start with the edge of grass and work inwards. Good luck with your progress!

 

[BellGreen]

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As long as you walk on your paths, it shouldn't be a problem. However, try to walk on your paths. If you don't have one, you'll have to deal with it.​

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[idiotcurl]

The grass wear in my town is honestly so bad that I've wanted to scrap everything and start my town over. I thought about it and realized that I'd just be wanting to do that again in a couple months when the grass wear got bad again. There's a huge dirt patch in the southern half of my town where I walk between the dock and Re-Tail, as well as dirt patches around my river for when I go fishing.

Since it's been a thing since City Folk I doubt they'd get rid of it, but I really wish Nintendo would realize that nobody wants grass wear and makes some sort of patch to fix it. Heck, I would PAY for a patch to get rid of it.

 

[BellGreen]

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I would like no-grasswear path as well. It looks ridiculous, just saying.​

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[Stevey Queen]

When I did the reset trick and deleted the house during like my first week with my town, I planted flowers immediately and 1 month later there has been no change. It's still dirt. About two weeks ago or so, I had to delete a character to make room for a bridge that Isabelle wouldn't even let me make. The dirt patch has no flowers at all and it's already growing back. So I don't get grass at all.

 

[Twisk]

Has... there actually been legitimate precedent for that helping? Because I've honestly been trying this for the past three days because I'm that desperate. I haven't seen any improvement yet, but I meant to try this for at least two weeks before passing any sort of judgment. Although I'm honestly hoping that it doesn't work because that would mean that I would have to walk like that until the end of time to prevent my grass from wearing out again.

I went over to someone else's town the other day and I actually forgot what it was like to actually walk at normal speed. It felt so fast. x_x

In City Folk there was some research done on grasswear, and it was found that if you walk slowly enough on a certain square, the grass won't wear away further (but it won't grow back either -- it'd stay the same). But I haven't really read any in-depth research done on the grasswear in New Leaf, so yeah, there's no proof that the same would apply for this game. I wouldn't expect you to see results after just three days, though... maybe a week or two? And that was a sort of a throw-away point in my list, since I don't think many people would want to walk that slowly all the time. You have dedication! But good luck with growing back your grass

 

[Midgetsc]

I run around all the time on my game, and I never lose grass. Haven't lost it in CF, either. Or WW, if it happened in that one.

I'm kinda curious to see what people mean by "desert" though. If anybody has one, can I view it? XD