So i've been playing the game since a couple days after release. I've played it every day since I got it, and lately i've been wanting to take a break. But I know that villagers do move away if you leave for too long, and I really don't want to lose any of my villagers, I like all of them. So my question is, how many days can I not play the game without any of my villagers moving?
If you don't want any villagers to leave, write down the day you stop playing. When you want to come back, TT back to that day, and it will be like you never left! You'll need to slowly TT back to the present if you like playing day-by-day, though, so if you left for a few months, you'd have a lot of work to do.
Thanks for the answer, but I really don't like to TT. What I really want to know is the maximum number of days I could not check up on the game before my villagers want to leave.
Villagers typically ask to move out every 2 to 5 days. So you can't really wait long before you run a high risk of losing someone. So, you'll either have to TT to avoid it or else risk losing someone you like.
You don't need to TT. If you can bring yourself to do this, keep playing until a villager asks to move (this happens every 2-3 days on average) and stop them from moving. You can now quit your game and take a break for as long as you'd like without anyone moving. But keep this in mind: if you leave the game for a good while, the day you start your game again someone is pretty much guaranteed to start thinking about moving, so make sure to find out who that is in time.
How do I know this? I've done it three times now, my brother once, and I've gotten a lot of confirmation from other people.
I don't think you need to TT, since there's a method for moving villagers out where you skip year by year or month by month, and in that method one of the steps would be as though you hadn't played in one year and no villagers move out on that step.
Just get a villager to ping you, tell them to stay, then leave the game alone. When you return, someone will probably be thinking about moving. See if anyone pings you then. If not, save and quit, then reload the game and try again until someone pings. If you want to be on the safe side, you can always start up the game the first time using a new side character and then check on that map Porter gives you whether someone is gone from your town.
You can also load the game when you're reading to start playing, save and quit, TT one month forward (make sure there are no events coming up on that date) with the 3DS clock, use a new character to check if someone is missing, then TT back to the date you're on and load as your mayor. The missing villager will ping you when you go looking for them or bring it up in conversation (if not, save and quit, and load the game again, then go find that villager again) so you can say no and know nobody will ping for a bit.
But keep this in mind: if you leave the game for a good while, the day you start your game again someone is pretty much guaranteed to start thinking about moving, so make sure to find out who that is in time.
