Tips for a New Player?

[Arcana]

I just got a copy of New Leaf and I am about to start it! This is my very first Animal Crossing game and quite honestly until now, I have known literally next to nothing about this series...So, I would appreciate some help starting out. What should I be looking for when picking a map layout? What is the easiest way to earn lots of bells in the first month? ...I was thinking of things like that...I thank you all kindly for all the good advice beforehand!

 

[carp]

picking a good map: choose one without too many curves in the river, so it doesn't waste too much space for future pwps etc, and with less than 3 ponds if possible - also, think about where you would put your house in said town.
easiest way to make bells: firstly, shake fruit off the trees and pick up shells, then get your fishing rod and bug net. at the moment, fishing in the ocean is probably the most profitable. when you unlock the island by paying off your first mortgage after your down payment, you can make 200k+ an hour from catching beetles and sharks in the evenings. turnips are also a risky, but very profitable move for players that aren't very active.

 

[Cosmic Gerbil]

Also, if you have a Perfect fruit on one of your trees, plant it. Perfect fruit looks different from normal fruit. For example, Perfect peaches are golden and normal ones are orange. Perfect apples are glassy and sparkly, while normal apples are red with an orange bottom. After 3 days, your Perfect fruit will grow into a tree. Then shake those new fruits off and plant them too. Perfect fruits sell for lots of bells! As each tree bears 3 fruit, maybe sell 2 and plant one, to keep increasing how many Perfect fruit trees you have.

If you shake a Perfect fruit tree too often (about 3 or 4 times) it may die. The leaves will fall off and one fruit will be rotten. If this happens, chop down the dead tree with an axe, dig a hole to get rid of the stump and plant one of the fresh fruits. You can get an axe from Leif when his garden shop opens

Don't waste bells by paying Reese to get rid of the rotten fruit for you. Dig a hole somewhere else and plant it. It will show as a wilting tree and the next day, it will be gone.

Edit: I couldn't remember how to unlock the garden store. Here is a link about it: http://animalcrossing.wikia.com/wiki/Gardening_Store

 

[Soda Fox]

Since no one has said this yet:

Once a day one of the rocks in your town will produce bells when hit with a shovel (which you can buy from the Raccoon children). My suggestion is to make a hole or three behind yourself and line up as best as you can between the rock and the holes to keep yourself from bouncing back too much.

The reason for this is that the rock will spit out 1-8 times with gradually increasing amounts. If you start to bounce away from the rock and the hole doesn't work, keep walking toward the rock while hitting it with your shovel. If you do this quickly, you can almost always get to the 7th tier of rock money.

Also, any PWPs that are permanent, hold off on until you have a better idea of how your town is laying out. You can erase most PWPs if you decide you don't like them, but the ones that are permanent are there forever.

If you send me a PM, I'll add you to my friends list tonight and show you around my town if you'd like.

 

[visibleghost]

if you are picky about faces, use a guide to see which face you want to get
choose a map you think you will like. you probably dont want an awkward river, toom any permanent rocks or too many ponds.
think a lot about where you put your house, you can't remove it once it is built.
some public work projects are undemolishable (like the cafe and camping tent) so think a lot abou what you want to do with them before placing them!!

some good ways to make bells in the beginning is to sell fruit, sea shells, fish, bugs etc but after a few days you unlock the island and then it's a great way to get money. also do NOT sell the fruit that looks different from all the other fruits. it is perfect. plant it and you will get a perfect fruit tree. the perfect fruit tree will die after a while but you can replant the fruit you get from it. perfect fruit sells for more bells B)

also dont worry too much about making a perfect town or something. if you stress too much about that you might end up not enjoying the game ):

 

[Chris01]

Sell all your seashells on the beach to retail, sell all your fruit on the trees, BUT DON'T SELL THE ONE PERFECT FRUIT THAT YOU FIND, keep it until you have a shovel, then plant and make more money from that perfect fruit that it bears! Also, shake all the trees every days to find beehives/100 bells each day, try hitting the rocks around town to find the money rock or the fake ore rock, also get a fishing rod as soon as is possible as it helps with making money, so does selling fossils. I would also advise talking to all your villagers everyday so to build up a good relationship with them hope this helps even if its a little bit

 

[Miii]

First of all, welcome to the forums and to ACNL! New Leaf was my first animal crossing game, too ^~^ I've been playing it for two years now. So here's some general useful information...

1. You can create up to 4 characters. I would recommend doing this early on so you can pick the perfect spots for their houses. If you wait (like I did) then you might end up with villagers you love and don't want to give up in spots that you'd like to place a character.

2. You earn badges for in-game accomplishments like catching every kind of bug, fish and sea creature, playing for so many hours, doing so many favors for your villagers, writing so many letters, etc. The guy that gives them to you is named Phineas. He's a super cute sea lion c:

3. Villagers recommend public works projects (pwps) that you, as the mayor, can build in your town. They cost money to build, though. Villagers will slowly donate to the pwp, but it's much faster and easier to pay it off yourself. Some pwps are only suggested by villagers with a certain personality type, while others can be suggested by a villager with any personality type.

4. You can write letters to your villagers, and even send them presents (which they'll often put in their houses). You can send them furniture, clothes, and even music (as long as they have some form of music player in their house).

5. After paying off your first house loan (which gets you out of a tent and into an actual house), the old mayor, Tortimer, will appear. You talk to him on the dock on one of your beaches, and he tells you about a tropical island you can go to. You'll be able to visit it the next day. On the island, it's always summer, so you can catch species of bugs, fish and sea creatures that only appear in summer, and even a few island-exclusive species. You can also go on tours, which are like mini-games. Each tour gets you medals which you can spend on items available in the island shop. After you've earned so many medals (50, I think) you can become a club tortimer member and visit an online version of the island where people from around the world can join you. Up to 4 players can be on the island together.

6. There are different kinds of bridge pwps you can build in your town. You can have up to 3 bridges, but if you have all 3, then villagers won't suggest anymore bridge pwps. Keep in mind that you can build a pwp really close to an existing bridge, but you can't build a bridge really close to an existing pwp. Because of this weird rule, I highly recommend you wait until you have your ideal bridge pwp before you build permanent pwps like the cafe, campsite, windmill or police station. Once you build permanent pwps, you can't demolish them, so it's easy to create spots in your town where bridges can no longer be built (I hope that makes sense).

7. Your town has an environmental rating that helps determine how satisfied your villagers are with the town. If you have more than 10 items on the ground, your environmental rating will lower and Isabelle (the mayor's assistant) may tell you that your villagers feel like they're living on a landfill. Keep the ground free of items and weeds. Dig spots (which look like a little star on the ground) don't affect your town rating, and neither does fruit. Baskets of fruit (that you get from stacking fruit in your inventory), however, do lower your rating. To raise your town rating, plant lots of flowers, trees and shrubs, enact the beautiful town ordinance (which eliminates trash from appearing in your ponds, rivers and oceans, and makes weeds appear very rarely), and build pwps like the wind turbine and solar panel. Eventually you can have a Perfect Town rating, which unlocks the flower clock pwp, and (after 15 straight days of having a perfect town) you get the gold watering can, which waters up to 9 flowers at once, instead of one (normal watering can) or three (silver watering can).

That's all the info I have for now :3 Hope this helps you out.

 

[Soda Fox]

I'm on a phone so quoting is not happening, but in the post above, #5 about you house and the island, is slightly incorrect.

Tortimer will come after the second upgrade that costs like 39800 or something close.

 

[Rabirin]

When picking a map layout, I suggest you don't get a map with a pond infront of the train station. If you get a map with a pond infront of the train station, more then not you're bound to have a rock infront of the train station and it can really hinder your progress while landscaping - in other words decorating your town and putting down public works projects.

When putting down public works projects don't go crazy with them, because you will get some better ones suggested to you much later on in the game by your villagers. Also, it's good to note some public works such as the campsite, and the reset center are permanent so once you set them down you cannot move them or demolish them, unless you delete your town so think long and hard about where you are going to put these two things should you want to put them in town.

When playing with others, only play with people you trust. Don't let people in who you think are going to hinder your towns progress it'll be pretty awful if somebody comes into your town and just chops down your trees and so on.

Most importantly upgrade your house as soon as it's available to you! this is important, because once you upgrade your house from a tent, this can help you progress because before you can become mayor you most complete an "approval rating" to 100%. Part of what makes this approval rate go up his upgrading your tent to a house.

Once you upgrade your tent to a house, upgrade it again. This unlocks "the island" which is an island where it's summer all year round, so you can catch bugs and fish there that are noticeably different from the bugs in town. These bugs on the island are worth a lot of bells, so make sure to catch a lot of them!

Bells are the games currency, with bells you can buy clothing, accessories, and you can upgrade your house with them so make sure you have a lot!

Also, you might want to find the money rock, or a gem rock??? (I think that's what it's called) You can find the money rock by bashing a rock with a shovel, you can get these from nooklings. However you can only find a money rock or gem rock once a day, so it's either one or the other. A tip for bashing money rocks, with the shovel dig three holes behind you. That way you won't go out of shot when hitting the money rock. Because if you do, the money rock won't produce any more money to it's full extent.

 

[Arcana]

Thanks for being helpful guys you are all so sweet! >.<

I had a bit of a rough start, I kept getting terrible map layouts (Important locations being in different corners of the map for instance) lol, but eventually I got a map to my likening. It just needs a bridge to be perfect! It does not really bother me much, but hopefully, I can unlock that soon. I already obtained the net, shovel, fishing rod and the watering can and I'm also getting my 1st Ground Floor Expansion today thanks to you guys' money making tips!! ^^

So far so good...Buuut! If I may say...Bees are horrible HORRIBLE creatures! I need to get used to how to avoid them or perhaps catch them? Regardless, yuck! >.<

@Soda Fox: You are super nice! Thank you so much for the offer, I'm sending you a PM! ^^