Time travelers: what made it worth/not worth time traveling for you?

[Mr Wumboloni]

What are the pros and cons you personally faced? Did you lose your favorite villagers? Or perhaps you gained your favorite villagers and more. I'm curious as someone who doesn't TT but have visited a few islands that have.

 

[goro]

I've time traveled in small increments to get the Able Sisters and the town hall. I don't like waiting for a day for something to be built.
I time traveled for 8 days to get my island homes together in the little "hotel" I had. There were no cons, and I'm really glad I did it since it got Beardo to move out. Best thing I've ever done tbh.
There's no real cons if you time travel in small increments other than your turnips spoiling, from what I've seen. Time traveling in large gaps (I mean a month or more) has various potential consequences however, but I haven't attempted myself.

 

[Nefarious]

I don’t TT to fully progress my game as that would make playing it after everything is complete boring for me. I do use it however to fix placement mistakes on buildings and bridges. I’m also thinking about using it to try and breed blue roses faster. They only have a 1.6% success rate and the red hybrids that are needed for them won’t always have the ability to breed them. The chances on them are ridiculous when playing it day-by-day.

 

[shayminskyforme88]

Mostly just did time traveling for Villager related stuff (ie. getting someone to move out). One good thing in this game is that villagers can’t leave without first telling you so you cannot lose anyone unless you tell them to leave.

Pros:
-Got rid of the villager I wanted to get rid of.

-More flowers since you pass through time so they are given the time to multiply

Cons:
-You get spoiled to seasonal changes like you see things ahead of time rather than be surprised at seasonal changes.

-bulletin board gets messed up. Got the announcement that Nook’s cranny will upgrade on the day that I got a villager in boxes so I moved time back. Store announced reopening when I moved 1 day ahead from original date so the announcement on the board about the upgrade came after the announcement for reopening for business.

-Losing daily nook miles from the machine unless you time travel 1 day at a time and check in.

-Lots of weeds (could be a pro or con depending how you think of it, also depends how far you travel)

 

[Dormire]

Pros:

1. Don't have to endure my tinnitus going louder and louder due to the repetitive acoustic music that is drilling my head. (Hourly music is timegated until Day 8.)
2. Can delete bridges/inclines without screaming to the void after wasting 198k bells AND 10k bells AND waiting for 24 hours just because I placed the incline/bridge one tile off-center by accident.
3. Can yeet and box villagers for people who wants my Amiibo-available villagers without waiting for 4 months (it's every 2 weeks they have a chance to move so it's VERY random...)
4. Can move buildings faster without screaming to the void (see #2).

Cons:

1. Turnips are a ticking timebomb now you purchased some.
2. The shops will tend to keep the same clothing choices the more you TT (esp if it's a month+)
3. If you forgot to check your ABD your streak is broken (which I always do.)
4. Mom actually sends you letters/gift by the numbers of days you go and not by current time (i.e I TT'd for 4 months so for mom, it's been 4 months even though you TT'd back) so you often get like birthday cakes when it isn't your birthday which is annoying. (Not sure though, but I got a homemade cake from mom suddenly...)

 

[hammyc]

To be honest, I time travel because i care more about the design aspect of animal crossing than I do the life simulation part of it. If I grinded out the game in real time, I would get bored so what makes it worth time traveling to me is getting my money’s worth out of the game, which I wouldn’t have doing dailies.
Circumventing the 5 item limit on catalog ordering is one pro, being able to move buildings and build bridges and inclines quickly to achieve a nice looking island is another, not having to wait for trees and flowers to grow, etc.
The only thing that I would really see as an issue would be turnip exchange, but I don’t do that anyway. The other would be villager move outs but NH got rid of that feature and it didn’t happen to me in new leaf because it was on a predictable schedule.
I do like experiencing the seasons in real time though, so aside from trying to get a specific autumn diy the last couple days, I will be keeping the date I change to within two weeks of the current day and just going back and forth.

 

[birdsquad]

Mainly to cycle out villagers and give myself a chance to get the ones i want, and give other people ones they may like. Hybrids and nooks cranny updating were an unexpected bonus, as well as the 2 diys a day that you can get per day.

I typically prefer to play day to day because it keeps me more engaged, once I get all my dreamies im most likely gonna settle back into real time play as i landscape my town. My typical TTing is literally to run around and check if any villagers ping me to move, grab the 2 diys and then go to the next day, rinse and repeat.

 

[SarahsNY]

I only started to time travel when I unlocked KK, after that I felt like I had earned it if that makes any sense. I mostly use it to finish up bridges and stuff, as well as moving houses. Once to cycle out a villager for a trade for another.
I don’t do any trades related to in-game bells, so I earn all of the money through these things myself as well. It’s just annoying to have to wait for all those houses to move, as I’m not always going to be in the mood to terraform and stuff.

 

[noodle'ssoup]

Pros: I got to quickly experience content in a game where it's drip-fed to you, very valuable in a situation like, oh, say, a pandemic
Cons: I busted through a lot of content in a game that's unfortunately shallow in its current state

I live for the late game at least, so there's that

 

[Debs2107]

I only did it because I wanted the story progression faster since it was my first time playing and I wanted more stuff.

 

[Zura]

I've time traveled in small increments to get the Able Sisters and the town hall. I don't like waiting for a day for something to be built.
I time traveled for 8 days to get my island homes together in the little "hotel" I had. There were no cons, and I'm really glad I did it since it got Beardo to move out. Best thing I've ever done tbh.
There's no real cons if you time travel in small increments other than your turnips spoiling, from what I've seen. Time traveling in large gaps (I mean a month or more) has various potential consequences however, but I haven't attempted myself.

I don't TT myself because it's against my motives, but I do think doing it to unlock the building or pwp early is completely valid. The games tutorial is around 2 weeks long! Wtf Nintendo? You're practically begging people to TT at that point lol

Although there's always people that ruin nice things. Id definitely say a con for TTing is the exploiters that constantly take advantage of people.

 

[CrankyPirate]

I time travelled to get rid of one of my villagers, Barold, who ruined my town. I travelled day-by-day just to get rid of him, not knowing that villagers only move out every couple of weeks. I travelled like a month ahead but finally managed to evict him. In the meantime all the shops were built up .....

 

[Annika.]

Personally, I only time travel in where I start in the past and catch up to the present. I have no interest in gaining something from the future, but first my copy arrived late and now I decided to reset my island. For me this seems fair because I exchange the temporary waiting times for a lack of progress in balloons, fishes, bugs and such. I'm behind even if I have a more fast-paced experience at the moment, it seems like a fair exchange to me. But in the future I won't time travel (unless I decide to restart again, which I see no reason to now), I have other games to play.

 

[FireFox]

It's pretty nice to time travel for fun. If you missed something in one season you can go forward or backward to that specific season to get supplies and items in that time. If you time travel it can be relaxing and fun.

 

[Xara]

i time travelled ahead by about a week - i went about it on a day-to-day basis; i dug up fossils, checked the stores, etc. doing this, however, made the game feel more like a chore and i got burnt out really quickly and that’s why i probably won’t time travel like that again - i time travelled again to june just so i could catch a shark and i haven’t time travelled since aha

 

[Larimar]

In New Horizons, I havent time traveled outside of turning the clock back a couple hours to get the rest of the items during an event, and going forward a day and then back trying to get an item from isabelle's morning announcement but never even got it. In both situations I put my clock back and resumed playing normally :O I dont want to end up somewhere down the line where I want a specific item but cant because it was seasonal, and I'd prefer not to TT in large chunks like that even if it's safe.

I'm not completely against letting myself time travel in this game, but I like to limit it to situations like this. I might even consider doing it for the sake of getting moved buildings and other projects done sooner too. The work load is a lot bigger for me in each day in this game than it was in New Leaf (A day in NL would take about 30 minutes, a day in NH would take over an hour) and I dont have the energy or focus to play quite for that long x'D

With the way I'm currently doing it I don't think theres much of a con. Even in New Leaf where I did nothing but TT, I hardly experienced drawbacks. In NL it was either I got burnt out from TTing or I give up from trying to play daily from missing a few days, so in that case I wouldnt exactly call being burnt out a con since it was a lose-lose situation both ways, but that's just in my personal experience :O

Since NH is fresh and the current thing, I feel more confident in my ability to keep up daily this time!

 

[Mayor-of-Bliss]

I wasnt going to but the stay inside thing happened so now I dont really care anymore.
I use it to move villagers because they take more than two weeks to ping a move out.
I've had every villager (except the new ones) in my years of playing. I dont really need villagers I dont like in my town. Again.
Pros-
Get rid of villagers I dont like.
Shops restocked.
Breeding flowers faster.

Cons-
Clearing the mail and bulletin board
Now I have too many flowers take an hour to fix it
Hearing my villagers be sad they missed me.

 

[Mairen]

I gave in and time travelled on my old file. Nothing extensive, and it was well after I had been terraforming for a few days. I reached a point where I realized I would not only be moving all 10 of my villagers houses, but the campsite, museum, general store, and clothing store, I lost patience. I also had a section where I was connecting 3 bridges into a triangle pattern and didn't want to wait to see if that was actually going to work out or if I'd need to come up with a different plan for connecting those rivers. So in the end, I gave in and skipped forward one day, then back. I did that twice just to get a start on moving some of those buildings around and to test out the bridge placement. Oh my goodness I felt so guilty after doing that, that it lost all sense of satisfaction that I thought I'd feel from doing so. I just felt such a disconnect from my town afterwards for some reason. So that, plus the fact that I was extremely displeased with the location of my plaza, and the realization that I had traded for so many diy and felt ashamed I didn't take the time to unlock many for myself, caused me to eventually make the difficult decision to restart.

Thankfully my current playthrough has been going so much better than my original file. (Of the 5 mystery islands I visited, I got one with a non-native flower, one was bamboo island with non-native flowers, and a 3rd one was tarantula island). I found Clay (one of my favorite lazies) on one island, Skye (I never had her but I'm quite fond of wolves and she seems really sweet) on a second island, and Flora (one of my friend's dreamies) on a 3rd island. The first day after being built, the general store was selling two houseplants (my favorite decor). I could go on with other lucky instances in this current file but I fear I've rambled enough. But yes, I time traveled once and instantly regretted it.

 

[angesradieux]

Personally, I was super impatient to get to the point where I could customize the exterior of my house, so I time traveled to speed up the upgrade process. I also wanted to move all my villagers to one section of the island and I was too impatient to wait ten days to move all of their houses. I haven't really experienced many cons. I just like being able to control the pace of the game. If I'm not in a hurry to do anything, I'll play day by day, but I also like being able to move projects along quickly enough to hold my interest. I'm probably also going to move the museum, and I have some bridges and inclines that need to be replaced. If I had to wait 2-3 weeks to get my villagers and other buildings where I want them and add bridges and ramps, I would probably end up just getting fed up with it and not bother.

 

[Bioness]

Villagers in this game don't move out without asking you first, so the only con to time traveling is weeds (which are no where near as bad as previous games) and turnips rotting.

I time travel because I don't like waiting for things to build or villagers to move out.