Tip: It's safe to TT to your last game session

[lucitine]

Yesterday, my friend and I had a bit of miscommunication and I ended up putting down a plot before his villager, Nate, was in boxes. I didn't want a random to move in and take Nate's plot, so I asked around to see if Time Travelling backwards to your last save/game session actually counts as time travelling backwards. Unfortunately, most people didn't know and I ended up not getting any helpful responses, so I thought I'd risk my turnips and test it out.

Short answer: No, it doesnt. TT'ing in this way seems to work exactly like it did in New Leaf.

Some key things to note:

• I had shooting stars yesterday night
• Celeste and Flick were visiting
• Turnips were sitting in my house
• Able Sisters was told to relocate
• Iggly asked to move
• My island was connected to the internet because I had a friend over

When I was done playing, I noted down that the save happened at 10:08PM on Thursday night. Went to bed and then waited waited for my friend to tell me Nate was in boxes today.
When he was ready to go, I went to my settings, turned off "Synchronise clock to Internet" and set the time to 10:30PM on Thursday. I wanted to be 100% sure that I wouldn't accidentally time travel to before I actually saved and exited the game. When I logged back in, I immediately checked to make sure that everything was still the same as the last time I picked up my console:

• Shooting stars were still active
• Celeste and Flick were still wandering around
• Turnips were not rotten
• The plot was still empty

I then connected to the internet and flew to my friends island. I should note that my friend was the last person I visited and they live in the same place as me. Nate was in boxes this time around and I asked him to move. Then I saved, exited, reactivated the Synchronised Clock and logged back in.

Everything was successful and working as per normal! I had TT'ed back to my current time and:

• Isabelle announced that Nate had moved in and Iggly was moving out
• Turnips were not rotten
• Able Sisters relocated.

I'm not sure how useful this information will be to people, but I hope it helps if, for whatever reason, you need to time travel.

 

[lucitine]

Bringing this up.

I realised that this could be good for people who might miss days due to work or something

 

[Pickler]

That's extraordinarily useful. You can "pause" the game, essentially. This has huge implications.

For example, if I have turnips at 11:30 pm on Saturday, and I suddenly realize they'll rot at midnight, I can save and quit the game. If I wait for someone to post high turnip prices, even if it takes days irl, I can set my game clock to 11:31 pm Saturday, load the game, and my turnips will be good to sell. The game will think only 1 minute passed.

 

[lucitine]

That's extraordinarily useful. You can "pause" the game, essentially. This has huge implications.

For example, if I have turnips at 11:30 pm on Saturday, and I suddenly realize they'll rot at midnight, I can save and quit the game. If I wait for someone to post high turnip prices, even if it takes days irl, I can set my game clock to 11:31 pm Saturday, load the game, and my turnips will be good to sell. The game will think only 1 minute passed.

That's a great way to describe it and essentially what I needed to do when I tested this

 

[Cthulhu]

Wow, thanks for sharing this. This is incredibly useful information to have. So many turnips and empty plots can be potentially saved!

 

[lucitine]

Wow, thanks for sharing this. This is incredibly useful information to have. So many turnips and empty plots can be potentially saved!

I'm glad you found it useful!

 

[Lotusblossom]

I'm just a little bit confused and dont understand this fully... what exactly do I do ???

 

[Pickler]

I'm just a little bit confused and dont understand this fully... what exactly do I do ???

You can time travel backwards, as long as you travel to a time after your last save. The game won't realize you tt'd backwards.

For example, let's say I save my game at 8:21 am Friday morning. I can quit the game, walk away for a couple days, then when I come back I can change the system settings on my switch to Friday at 8:22 am. The game will think 1 minute has passed, even though several days have gone by in real life. It doesn't count as tt'ing backward because the game thinks it moved forward.