# Mystery Island RNG Pattern - solved with data and stats tests



## ctar17

Hello all,

There is lots of talk about the specific pattern that is used for villagers on mystery islands.  I would like to present my findings in this thread and open it up for possible statistics discussions to confirm this theory even more.

First, I'd like to thank Selkie for sending me their data to perform statistical tests on and Sheba and ForbiddenSecrets for bringing up the theory in the first place.  The theory is that the game first rolls for a species.  Once the species is chosen, it then rolls for a specific villager in that chosen species.  The game does NOT roll for a specific villager right off the bat.

Here is the thread where this theory was initially proposed:





						[Spreadsheet] Mystery Tour Villager "RNG" (Peppys only. Spoiler: Species gets rolled first, thus odds are not equal)
					

EDIT: It's clear now! TL;DR: Game rolls species first, then villager if there's more than one in the species, making the odds uneven - less possible villagers in a species mean higher chances for those villagers appearing. Thank you to ForbiddenSecrets for helping me realize this! ---  So, as I...



					www.belltreeforums.com
				




The way the tests were done are pretty straightforward.  People have been noticing the octopuses appearing a lot more than they should as there's only 3 of them.  Therefore, I tested to see if the number of octopuses that actually appeared in the sample was statistically significant than the number of octopuses that we would expect to appear in the sample.

Earlier today, before this theory was brought up, I performed a Chi Square test on Selkie's data to check if it was completely random or pseudo-random or if there was a pattern.  Selkie's data has a sample size of 344.  The expected chance of an octopus appearing using the old theory of the game randomly rolls a villager from the pool of 391 is 3/391.  In the data we would expect one to have about 2.56 appearances in the 344.  The data contained 12.  Here is the Chi Square test for this model:




As you can see, the Chi Square value is larger (much larger) than the value that produces a p-value of 0.05 for a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom (the p-value that is produced with 35.01 is less than 0.00001).  This concludes that the observed and expected are indeed statistically different.  Therefore, the game does NOT just choose a villager at random out of the 391.

After seeing Sheba's thread and ForbiddenSecret's reply with the species first theory, I decided to go back to Selkie's data and perform another Chi Square test using the parameters that the game chooses a species first at random then a villager in that species.  Using this, the expected chance of an octopus is 1/35 not 3/391.  In the sample of 344, we would expect the octopuses to have 9.54 appearances.  Here is the new Chi Square test:



As you can see, the Chi Square value is less than the value that produces a p-value of 0.05 for a 1 degree of freedom test (the p-value that 0.65 produces is 0.42).  This means that we cannot reject the null hypothesis of "The game randomly rolls a species of villager first"  I conclude that the theory that the species is rolled first then one is selected in that chosen species is basically correct.

What is a Chi Square test?
Basically it tests whether 2 groups of data are statistically different. A common use of it is to test whether your observed set of data is statistically different (not due to random chance) from the expected data.

UPDATE:  I have now tested (with the help of more data from TBT users) to see if this theory applies evenly across the board, only 2/35 species didn't uphold the theory, but that is not enough to disprove it all together, and I can attribute it to the nature of RNG.  I conclude that it does!  The chance for a specific species to be rolled is the same for every species.

UPDATE 2: While I have not formally conducted tests on if the game rolls for personality after species or just rolls straight for a villager yet (still working on this), my initial analysis of the new data provided suggest that this is NOT the case.  The game does NOT roll for personality at all (villager 1-5 are locked personalities).  I'm 95%+ sure this is the case, but can't outright solidly confirm that there is no personality roll.  Nor does lacking a personality on your island increase or decrease the chances for that personality to appear on mystery islands.  This also applies to what species you have as well, it won't increase or decrease the chances for a species to appear if you already have 1 or more on your island.

Thanks again to Selkie, Sheba, and ForbiddenSecrets for providing data and/or the theory!

Happy hunting!

Now the big question that a lot of you are wondering...
What does this mean for *Raymond* hunting?
Well, I'll tell you.  The cat is even more elusive than we originally thought!  It means that the chance to find Raymond on mystery islands is very low.  It's lower than 1/391 because there are 20+ cats in this game.  In fact, I have calculated the chance to find Raymond on a mystery island to be about 0.12%  Basically 1 in a 1000.  Good luck!
Other has pointed out a theory that lacking a smug will cause random move ins, i.e. letting the plot fill up, to be smug.  Sounds like this is a much better bet, especially if you're willing to TT to force out the smug to try again!


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## Lumbridge

I appreciate the effort you took to conduct all your statistical analyses. this is very useful!


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## FireNinja1

Does that mean that getting a villager of any given species is uniform? (i.e. two different species are equally likely to be drawn)


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## Bk1234

That is a lot of work! Thank you for your contributions to the community!  I was able to find Reneigh today on a mystery island and now I realize how lucky I was! Hopefully, we will be able to figure everything out soon! I'll use this information when hunting for a villager for my next plot!


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## ctar17

FireNinja1 said:


> Does that mean that getting a villager of any given species is uniform? (i.e. two different species are equally likely to be drawn)



I think this is correct.  If the game rolls species first, then I would assume each species has an equal shot of appearing (1/35)  While I only did this test with the octopuses and found the theory to hold, I would make the assumption that this applies to the others as well.

1/35 is a little less than 3%, so if you're going for a specific species, it could take a while!


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## Aliya

This is a great analysis and was very easy to understand! I'm more than happy to contribute data so I sent you a PM!


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## sicklewillow

Hi, I forgot to ask over the other thread. Will your chances increase when you have one of the species in your island. Like you mentioned previously, I have 0.24% chance to get Kid Cat or Raymond. I have Felicity on my island. Does this mean my chances will increase?


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## ctar17

sicklewillow said:


> Hi, I forgot to ask over the other thread. Will your chances increase when you have one of the species in your island. Like you mentioned previously, I have 0.24% chance to get Kid Cat or Raymond. I have Felicity on my island. Does this mean my chances will increase?



Hi, I do not have the data to test this at this moment, but I would suspect that it doesn't in the way you're talking about...
I could test this out with more data eventually to find out though, my next plan is to test whether there's a different roll for personality after the species one

it will provide a slight increase as Felicity is removed from the cat pool.  Your new chances are 0.260%  A VERY slight increase


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## IndoX

sicklewillow said:


> Hi, I forgot to ask over the other thread. Will your chances increase when you have one of the species in your island. Like you mentioned previously, I have 0.24% chance to get Kid Cat or Raymond. I have Felicity on my island. Does this mean my chances will increase?


Theoretically, yes, but not in the way you're asking. After analyzing the data and comparing it with my own experience (I'm about 500-600 tickets deep getting my villagers) I can probably attest that the game rolls on species first then decides on a random villager of that species. With that in mind, it makes targeting the more common species (i.e cats and dogs) harder. If the odds are the same across all species but the pool of available villagers differs largely you suddenly have villagers that will be more common than others. You're more likely to encounter Marina WAY more often compared to any cat villager, for example.

This is really disappointing, honestly. Considering dogs, rabbits and cats have the most villagers per species it just makes targeting a specific villager within that pool much harder (ie. Raymond or whoever).


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## FireNinja1

ctar17 said:


> I think this is correct.  If the game rolls species first, then I would assume each species has an equal shot of appearing (1/35)  While I only did this test with the octopuses and found the theory to hold, I would make the assumption that this applies to the others as well.
> 
> 1/35 is a little less than 3%, so if you're going for a specific species, it could take a while!


Would you be willing to publish all of the data?


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## ctar17

IndoX said:


> Theoretically, yes, but not in the way you're asking. After analyzing the data and comparing it with my own experience (I'm about 500-600 tickets deep getting my villagers) I can probably attest that the game rolls on species first then decides on a random villager of that species. With that in mind, it makes targeting the more common species (i.e cats and dogs) harder. If the odds are the same across all species but the pool of available villagers differs largely you suddenly have villagers that will be more common than others. You're more likely to encounter Marina WAY more often compared to any cat villager, for example.
> 
> This is really disappointing, honestly. Considering dogs, rabbits and cats have the most villagers per species it just makes targeting a specific villager within that pool much harder (ie. Raymond or whoever).



Yup this exactly!  If a species has more than the average number of villagers/species, all villagers in that species will be statistically harder to find than 1/391

	Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020



FireNinja1 said:


> Would you be willing to publish all of the data?



For all of the data, I do not have the specific names as I just asked for how many octopuses you got in a specific number of islands as the specific names were not needed for the test, only the species.  I have requested the full data, and am open to DMs of more data to perform additional tests!  I was just given "I got 12 Octopuses in 344 islands" which was enough to perform the test to confirm this theory.  I'll go back to retest the theory if it still holds when I get more specific data


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## FireNinja1

ctar17 said:


> Yup this exactly!  If a species has more than the average number of villagers/species, all villagers in that species will be statistically harder to find than 1/391
> 
> Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020
> 
> 
> 
> For all of the data, I do not have the specific names as I just asked for how many octopuses you got in a specific number of islands as the specific names were not needed for the test, only the species.  I have requested the full data, and am open to DMs of more data to perform additional tests!


I'm interested in species count, so what you have is good enough for me.

EDIT: Wait, was the dataset just octopus/not octopus?


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## ctar17

FireNinja1 said:


> I'm interested in species count, so what you have is good enough for me.



All I have for now is what's posted as I specifically used Chi Square because it doesn't require too much and it's easy to use to test out the RNG theory, just how many you got out of the total number really.  I specifically asked for the report on octopuses as there's not many of them and they are memorable so I figured it would be more accessible for people to collect data.

Others have reached out offering me more data to analyze if this holds for all species (which I would assume it does, and the original conjurers of the theory assumed so as well)  The thread posted in my original post is a good resource of data as well.

And yes, it was just octopus/not octopus.  I originally did it to test if it was pulling a villager straight out of the total 391 pool or not.  It's enough to look at and support the species first theory as well, and combined with others noticing this trend, I would say this theory is currently the best we've got


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## Arckaniel

Ohhh now I see why octopi are more common now, I was questioning before why I see a lot of octopi in island tours, then with that data species with more villagers would be rarer now (especially if you're looking for one specific villager of that species) in comparison with species with less, that's very interesting to know, thanks for conducting this test


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## ctar17

Arckaniel said:


> Ohhh now I see why octopi are more common now, I was questioning before why I see a lot of octopi in island tours, then with that data species with more villagers would be rarer now (especially if you're looking for one specific villager of that species) in comparison with species with less, that's very interesting to know, thanks for conducting this test



Yup and combine that with the Octopuses unique look and there was definitely a trend of "heyyyy I'm seeing a lot of Octopuses!"  Techinically they have the same 1/35 chance as any other species, but since there's only 3 of them, these 3 specific villagers will appear a lot more than villagers in species with 20+ like cats (sucks if you're hunting for He Who Shall Not Be Named), and this will cause your brain to pick up on seeing more octopuses as well


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## Arckaniel

ctar17 said:


> Yup and combine that with the Octopuses unique look and there was definitely a trend of "heyyyy I'm seeing a lot of Octopuses!"  Techinically they have the same 1/35 chance as any other species, but since there's only 3 of them, these 3 specific villagers will appear a lot more than villagers in species with 20+ like cats (sucks if you're hunting for He Who Shall Not Be Named), and this will cause your brain to pick up on seeing more octopuses as well


The hunt for He Who Must Not Be Named would be tough indeed AHAHAHAHA


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## Underneath The Stars

ctar17 said:


> Yup and combine that with the Octopuses unique look and there was definitely a trend of "heyyyy I'm seeing a lot of Octopuses!"  Techinically they have the same 1/35 chance as any other species, but since there's only 3 of them, these 3 specific villagers will appear a lot more than villagers in species with 20+ like cats *(sucks if you're hunting for He Who Shall Not Be Named)*, and this will cause your brain to pick up on seeing more octopuses as well



LOL @ bolded part... yes
and this makes a lot of sense! i know this took time thanks because plenty of us have been wondering. makes sense why i keep seeing repeat villagers too, it has to be rolling species first.


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## ctar17

Arckaniel said:


> The hunt for He Who Must Not Be Named would be tough indeed AHAHAHAHA





Underneath The Stars said:


> LOL @ bolded part... yes
> and this makes a lot of sense! i know this took time thanks because plenty of us have been wondering. makes sense why i keep seeing repeat villagers too, it has to be rolling species first.



Others are onto random move ins (i. e. letting the plot fill up) are influenced by lacking a personality whereas mystery islands are definitely not.  If you're lacking a smug, the chances for Raymond to be a random move in are higher than if you went on mystery islands for him, so I would suggest trying the random move in strategy for him...


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## Jinglefruit

I believe early game it preferentially rolls villagers of personality types you don't have yet. This may explain why there were 12 instances of octopus villagers, as opposed to 9 as predicted.
idk sample size, but if jocks and uchi are seen to be less common than the rest (potentially barring smug being less than jock as it's a significantly smaller pool), that'd be a good indicator here for a large team effort, as no matter how many people contribute, we all started with those 2 personalities.

def the case on random move ins at least (as mentioned); but when I was only missing cranky and snooty, I found about half of the countless islands I visited that night gave me cranky and snooty villagers.


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## sicklewillow

ctar17 said:


> Others are onto random move ins (i. e. letting the plot fill up) are influenced by lacking a personality whereas mystery islands are definitely not.  If you're lacking a smug, the chances for Raymond to be a random move in are higher than if you went on mystery islands for him, so I would suggest trying the random move in strategy for him...


It seems island hopping is my only option for Raymond because I got two smug villagers already.


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## ctar17

Gonna head to bed now!  I'll try and answer questions in the morning.

Also accepting data for more tests and theories, just DM me!


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## Khaelis

I have Gladys moving out tomorrow, and I plan on wasting all my Nook Miles finding a replacement villager (hopefully), should be about 15-20 tickets. I'll jot down who I encounter and stuff and PM it to you... if I remember.


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## ctar17

Jinglefruit said:


> I believe early game it preferentially rolls villagers of personality types you don't have yet. This may explain why there were 12 instances of octopus villagers, as opposed to 9 as predicted.
> idk sample size, but if jocks and uchi are seen to be less common than the rest (potentially barring smug being less than jock as it's a significantly smaller pool), that'd be a good indicator here for a large team effort, as no matter how many people contribute, we all started with those 2 personalities.



I haven't formally tested personalities yet, but I suspect that villagers 7 and on do NOT have personality weights (i.e. one personality isn't forced on you in the mystery islands, it certainly hasn't been the case for me).  I had quite the opposite experience where I had a lot of trouble finding a single snooty but found tons and tons of jocks and other personalities but not a snooty and cranky.

Once you go out looking for villager #7, it won't be different than looking for villager #27, I don't think the game changes weights based on "early game" or "late game"  The only exception is the starting 2 (uchi and jock) and villagers 3-5 are normal, lazy, and peppy.  Villager #6 (the forced campsiter) seems to be almost always a smug.


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## ctar17

Hi everyone, I'm back with some more findings.

Looking at more data, I have reason to believe that the game does NOT roll for a personality.  It just goes from species to villager.  Nor does lacking a personality or species make them more likely to appear on the islands.  My data analysis I did today seems to point to this, but I would need a lot more data to formally confirm it.  Very strong lean towards no personality roll, but can't outright confirm it at the moment


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## Dragostea Din Tei

So that means the best time to search for a peppy/lazy/normal dreamie would be with the first 3 plots near the start of the game? Since those are the only ones that are personality locked... I can already see myself spending the first days searching for Beau like crazy  Since there are only two lazy deers that means I have better chances than trying to find Bob


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## Typhloquill

This is really cool! Thank you for the data. If you would like, I can compile a list of all the villagers I saw on tours to help add to the pool. Thi is pretty concrete in itself but I'd love to help if you need it! I'm just a sucker for looking at statistics.


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## sicklewillow

I just found one of my remaining favorite villagers a few minutes ago. Will send data to you as soon as possible.


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## ctar17

Dragostea Din Tei said:


> So that means the best time to search for a peppy/lazy/normal dreamie would be with the first 3 plots near the start of the game? Since those are the only ones that are personality locked... I can already see myself spending the first days searching for Beau like crazy  Since there are only two lazy deers that means I have better chances than trying to find Bob



If you don't mind them not having their cool house then yes.  However, these 3 along with the starting uchi and jock will never get their upgraded houses unless they leave your island and you find the villager again and invite


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## Bk1234

ctar17 said:


> If you don't mind them not having their cool house then yes.  However, these 3 along with the starting uchi and jock will never get their upgraded houses unless they leave your island and you find the villager again and invite


I guess I'm happy that I got Reneigh on a NMT island, instead of at the start!


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## Dragostea Din Tei

ctar17 said:


> If you don't mind them not having their cool house then yes.  However, these 3 along with the starting uchi and jock will never get their upgraded houses unless they leave your island and you find the villager again and invite


The villagers also upgrade their house? I knew that the interior was different for those and didnt mind it as I don't think the new horizons house interiors for the villagers are as interesting and unique as they were in new leaf. How does that house upgrade work?


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## ctar17

Dragostea Din Tei said:


> The villagers also upgrade their house? I knew that the interior was different for those and didnt mind it as I don't think the new horizons house interiors for the villagers are as interesting and unique as they were in new leaf. How does that house upgrade work?



If they're one of the first 5 villagers, their house interior will always be basic.
If they're villager 6 or later, they will come with their normal "upgrade" house interior.  This will be the same for each different villager.
For example, a Fauna invite as one of the first 5 will have a basic interior, but a Fauna invited after villager 5 (6 and beyond) will have her themed house.  Inviting someone else's basic Fauna will result in the Fauna upgrading to her themed house when she comes to your island


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## Dragostea Din Tei

ctar17 said:


> If they're one of the first 5 villagers, their house interior will always be basic.
> If they're villager 6 or later, they will come with their normal "upgrade" house interior.  This will be the same for each different villager.
> For example, a Fauna invite as one of the first 5 will have a basic interior, but a Fauna invited after villager 5 (6 and beyond) will have her themed house.  Inviting someone else's basic Fauna will result in the Fauna upgrading to her themed house when she comes to your island


I had seen the interiors for normal and peppy and actually liked them even if they were basic, but gosh the lazy interior is awful


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## Sheba

Hey, just checked this out as promised! Thank you so much for testing more and figuring out that there's no personality roll! I have still no clue what a Chi Square test is or what any of those numbers mean, but as long as I know now how the game rolls in idiot terms, I'm good! 

I'm not quite sure what the game will want from me next and when I can go island villager hunting again (and if it'll then be with set personalities again and if I can do it once more before putting the housing plots down), but once I will go hunting, I'll collect more data.
Thanks for linking to my little thread, too!  I appreciate it!

	Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020



ctar17 said:


> If they're one of the first 5 villagers, their house interior will always be basic.
> If they're villager 6 or later, they will come with their normal "upgrade" house interior.  This will be the same for each different villager.
> For example, a Fauna invite as one of the first 5 will have a basic interior, but a Fauna invited after villager 5 (6 and beyond) will have her themed house.  Inviting someone else's basic Fauna will result in the Fauna upgrading to her themed house when she comes to your island


Wait, wait, what? My guys will not have their pretty houses? D: I know this is not really the topic of this thread, but this is the first I've heard about this. How do I get my guys to upgrade while on my island? I spent so long to get them now!


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## Raz

Oh, nice...

I think I'm pretty much screwed up because I'm after a specific Dog, Duck, Squirrel and a final villager that will be either another Squirrel or an Ostrich (which means, I would end up with either two squirrels or two ostriches in the island)


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## Edge

Thank you for putting all of this together. I guess if you really want one certain village than to increase your odds of getting them you may want to invite other villagers to your island of the same species as them.


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## ctar17

Data update:

I have checked ALL of the species, not just the octopuses, and have found the species roll first theory to hold across the board (only 2/35 didn't hold, but this is not enough to conclude there is a different chance)!  The chance for a species to be rolled is 1/35, it does not vary by species.

I will update my original post to reflect these findings.

	Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020



Sheba said:


> Hey, just checked this out as promised! Thank you so much for testing more and figuring out that there's no personality roll! I have still no clue what a Chi Square test is or what any of those numbers mean, but as long as I know now how the game rolls in idiot terms, I'm good!
> 
> I'm not quite sure what the game will want from me next and when I can go island villager hunting again (and if it'll then be with set personalities again and if I can do it once more before putting the housing plots down), but once I will go hunting, I'll collect more data.
> Thanks for linking to my little thread, too!  I appreciate it!
> 
> Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020
> 
> 
> Wait, wait, what? My guys will not have their pretty houses? D: I know this is not really the topic of this thread, but this is the first I've heard about this. How do I get my guys to upgrade while on my island? I spent so long to get them now!



Hey thanks for checking it out!  No need to worry too much about the Chi Square test.  Basically it tests whether 2 groups of data are statistically different.  A common use of it is to test whether your observed set of data is statistically different (not due to random chance) from the expected data.

As far as the house upgrading, sadly they won't upgrade .   If you don't mind them not having the upgraded houses then it doesn't matter, but if you really want the upgraded house, you'll have to have them move out and back in again.


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## Miss Misty

Sheba said:


> Wait, wait, what? My guys will not have their pretty houses? D: I know this is not really the topic of this thread, but this is the first I've heard about this. How do I get my guys to upgrade while on my island? I spent so long to get them now!


Like ctar17 said, the only way to get one of your first 5 villager to have their 'real' homes is to let them move out and then invite them again down the line. You may have luck gifting them items, but there's no guarantee that they'll put those items up in the correct places (or at all) and as far as I know, you can't gift them carpet or wallpaper. That is the major downside to island hopping for villagers 3-5 when the odds for dream lazies/normals/peppies is slightly better.


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## Sheba

ctar17 said:


> Data update:
> 
> I have checked ALL of the species, not just the octopuses, and have found the species roll first theory to hold across the board!  The chance for a species to be rolled is 1/35, it does not vary by species.
> 
> I will update my original post to reflect these findings.
> 
> Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020
> 
> 
> 
> Hey thanks for checking it out!  No need to worry too much about the Chi Square test.  Basically it tests whether 2 groups of data are statistically different.  A common use of it is to test whether your observed set of data is statistically different (not due to random chance) from the expected data.
> 
> As far as the house upgrading, sadly they won't upgrade .   If you don't mind them not having the upgraded houses then it doesn't matter, but if you really want the upgraded house, you'll have to have them move out and back in again.





Miss Misty said:


> Like ctar17 said, the only way to get one of your first 5 villager to have their 'real' homes is to let them move out and then invite them again down the line. You may have luck gifting them items, but there's no guarantee that they'll put those items up in the correct places (or at all) and as far as I know, you can't gift them carpet or wallpaper. That is the major downside to island hopping for villagers 3-5 when the odds for dream lazies/normals/peppies is slightly better.


Thanks for the Chi Square test explanation! 

And maaaaan, this is such a bummer about the houses! I've tried to google to see how their houses are supposed to look like and Dotty's isn't that amazing or themed, but I haven't been able to find a picture of Fauna's yet. If I move any of them out, I'll probably never see them again, especially not Dotty, given how horrible it was to find her even with the Peppy restriction. Wow, this absolutely sucks. I thought "Oh nice, I have two dreamies now and am good", but apparently not.  Ugh, the struggle never ends, does it? Thanks for letting me know about this issue, now I need to figure out what to do about it and how in the world I can fix it. Seems like luck is not on my side these days when I finally thought it had turned around yesterday. Well, at the very least it might not be as horrible as imagined if I really have to send my Switch Lite in for a non-reacting Joystick and potentially losing a villager during those weeks then...

Anyway, guess that might mean that I'll have to go even more island-hopping in the future if I am moving these guys out again. 
And while I know it's not on the topic of the thread again: Does anyone know how the amiibo-villagers react? Like, do they have different dialogue from "normally" invited villagers? I never owned amiibos and don't even know if a Switch Lite can use them, but at this point, buying the amiibos might be easier (even though more expensive) than Mystery Island hopping - because yeah, I fully admit that after grinding NMTs for two weeks, I bought a 400-batch from ebay for my spreadsheet test because I was just sick of it all. At least the data made it worth it and managed to help someone, so there's that. Honestly, though, if I had known the houses mess, I would have never done it at all and just picked the first villager available. Still, I would prefer a "natural" way of recruiting villagers and not some magical inviting process. :/ Ah well. Thanks for all the help, guys!


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## Aliya

Sheba said:


> Thanks for the Chi Square test explanation!
> 
> And maaaaan, this is such a bummer about the houses! I've tried to google to see how their houses are supposed to look like and Dotty's isn't that amazing or themed, but I haven't been able to find a picture of Fauna's yet. If I move any of them out, I'll probably never see them again, especially not Dotty, given how horrible it was to find her even with the Peppy restriction. Wow, this absolutely sucks. I thought "Oh nice, I have two dreamies now and am good", but apparently not.  Ugh, the struggle never ends, does it? Thanks for letting me know about this issue, now I need to figure out what to do about it and how in the world I can fix it.
> 
> -snip-



I ended up trading Dom, who was my jock starter, to someone on another site briefly and re-adopting him so he could get his normal house. Maybe someone on here would be willing to cycle them back to you if you want their normal houses? Dom even remembered me when I went to pick him up and he was excited we were going to be neighbors again.

I understand your frustration! The only default personality house I like is the peppy house so I'm not as upset about Audie not getting her own custom house, but it's really annoying when you see what they could be.

ETA: I picked up the exact same Dom I traded so that's why he remembered me (and the friendship level was retained). A random amiibo or mystery island copy villager won't remember you, but if that doesn't bother you, definitely consider it.


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## Miss Misty

Sheba said:


> I haven't been able to find a picture of Fauna's yet.
> 
> Anyway, guess that might mean that I'll have to go even more island-hopping in the future if I am moving these guys out again.
> And while I know it's not on the topic of the thread again: Does anyone know how the amiibo-villagers react? Like, do they have different dialogue from "normally" invited villagers? I never owned amiibos and don't even know if a Switch Lite can use them, but at this point, buying the amiibos might be easier (even though more expensive) than Mystery Island hopping - because yeah, I fully admit that after grinding NMTs for two weeks, I bought a 400-batch from ebay for my spreadsheet test because I was just sick of it all. At least the data made it worth it and managed to help someone, so there's that. Honestly, though, if I had known the houses mess, I would have never done it at all and just picked the first villager available. Still, I would prefer a "natural" way of recruiting villagers and not some magical inviting process. :/ Ah well. Thanks for all the help, guys!


This thread has a pic of Fauna's interior. It's honestly up to you if it's worth it for an interior layout change. I do know your pain - Wade (who I'd like to keep) has an amazing ice/fish/shell themed interior normally, but he's stuck with the generic lazy interior since I got him from an early-game island tour. Once the adoption glitches are fixed, I may end up letting him go and trying to adopt him again from someone who could scan his amiibo for me.

As for amiibo villagers, they act the same as a game-spawned villager would.


----------



## ctar17

Another data update:

I am strongly leading towards an additional hypothesis: 
Having or lacking a personality or species does NOT increase or decrease the chances for that one to appear on the mystery islands.

There is also no data to suggest that the game will place recent villagers you meet on the islands are less likely to appear for a bit.  I haven't formally conducted tests, but have seen some back-to-back or very close appearances, so I believe that this is the case for now.


----------



## Sheba

Aliya said:


> I ended up trading Dom, who was my jock starter, to someone on another site briefly and re-adopting him so he could get his normal house. Maybe someone on here would be willing to cycle them back to you if you want their normal houses? Dom even remembered me when I went to pick him up and he was excited we were going to be neighbors again.
> 
> I understand your frustration! The only default personality house I like is the peppy house so I'm not as upset about Audie not getting her own custom house, but it's really annoying when you see what they could be.
> 
> ETA: I picked up the exact same Dom I traded so that's why he remembered me (and the friendship level was retained). A random amiibo or mystery island copy villager won't remember you, but if that doesn't bother you, definitely consider it.


OMG they remember you? That's awesome! I wanna do this since I worked so hard for my little guys that I formed an attachment before they have even moved in (lol)! To clarify for me as a non-TTer and who hasn't had someone move out yet: I would have to find someone who TTs and wait until my villager is in boxes. Then they would come to my place and get them, I would wait until the next day in my game while they would TT to get my villager into boxes again so that I could come to their place during the next day to get them to move back to me? 

As only Drago moved in with me so far and he's still setting up (everything is still in cardboard boxes), I have no idea how the houses will look like yet. If I end up liking them more than the normal layout for the villager, this is of course moot, but I suspect I might not. Thank you so much for helping me!


Miss Misty said:


> This thread has a pic of Fauna's interior. It's honestly up to you if it's worth it for an interior layout change. I do know your pain - Wade (who I'd like to keep) has an amazing ice/fish/shell themed interior normally, but he's stuck with the generic lazy interior since I got him from an early-game island tour. Once the adoption glitches are fixed, I may end up letting him go and trying to adopt him again from someone who could scan his amiibo for me.
> 
> As for amiibo villagers, they act the same as a game-spawned villager would.


OMG thank you so much! I love her house, it's adorable! And what kind of adoption glitches are there? Ugh I am so out of the loop with how long I've been stuck on island hopping and not really being able to do much in the game...

I hope @ctar17 is not mad with the thread derailing like that? I'll shut up immediately if it's a bother.

	Post automatically merged: Apr 18, 2020



ctar17 said:


> Another data update:
> 
> I am strongly leading towards an additional hypothesis:
> Having or lacking a personality or species does NOT increase or decrease the chances for that one to appear on the mystery islands.
> 
> There is also no data to suggest that the game will place recent villagers you meet on the islands are less likely to appear for a bit.  I haven't formally conducted tests, but have seen some back-to-back or very close appearances, so I believe that this is the case for now.


I can confirm that outside of the 82 collected tests yesterday, I have had several more in the two weeks I searched for my bunny where I had back-to-back encounters with some villagers. I am 100% certain of Audie (since it was the first time I saw her and then twice after another) and having had it happen at least two times with Pinky because Pinky just loves me. And then there were the ones yesterday, so I'm fairly certain you are right that the game doesn't remember or care about whom you encountered last.


----------



## ctar17

Sheba said:


> OMG they remember you? That's awesome! I wanna do this since I worked so hard for my little guys that I formed an attachment before they have even moved in (lol)! To clarify for me as a non-TTer and who hasn't had someone move out yet: I would have to find someone who TTs and wait until my villager is in boxes. Then they would come to my place and get them, I would wait until the next day in my game while they would TT to get my villager into boxes again so that I could come to their place during the next day to get them to move back to me?
> 
> As only Drago moved in with me so far and he's still setting up (everything is still in cardboard boxes), I have no idea how the houses will look like yet. If I end up liking them more than the normal layout for the villager, this is of course moot, but I suspect I might not. Thank you so much for helping me!
> 
> OMG thank you so much! I love her house, it's adorable! And what kind of adoption glitches are there? Ugh I am so out of the loop with how long I've been stuck on island hopping and not really being able to do much in the game...
> 
> I hope @ctar17 is not mad with the thread derailing like that? I'll shut up immediately if it's a bother.



Nope not too mad at all!  Happy to help tbh.  It also allows the thread to move back up on the site for more to see and find out about the RNG mechanics.  I would suggest looking at other threads for your questions first though, as there have been tons about the villager houses and adoption glitches.  It would be nice to maybe bring the discussion a little bit back to the mystery islands though so I can answer anyone else's questions they may have about the stats or data.  This helps me get more ideas of tests to perform to discover more mechanics and also eventually make an FAQ section.  I plan to make a more formal Google Docs with all the info in one place that can be spread around more easily.


----------



## Aliya

Sheba said:


> OMG they remember you? That's awesome! I wanna do this since I worked so hard for my little guys that I formed an attachment before they have even moved in (lol)! To clarify for me as a non-TTer and who hasn't had someone move out yet: I would have to find someone who TTs and wait until my villager is in boxes. Then they would come to my place and get them, I would wait until the next day in my game while they would TT to get my villager into boxes again so that I could come to their place during the next day to get them to move back to me?



Dom remembered me since it was the exact same Dom who moved out of my island! I only TTed to cycle out villagers in the beginning to get my dreamies and to help others find theirs, but all of my villagers were natural move outs. I no longer TT, but I find that it takes a while to get villagers to move out in this game.

Yes, exactly. The villager plot will open up the day after they move out and you will have to wait until they are able to get your villager back in boxes. You will be able to ask them to move back to your island afterwards, just like any other villager trade. They will then have their normal house and not the default house.

Sorry @ctar17 !


----------



## trashpedia

Thank you for the thread! If this is the case, then that’s kinda annoying. A 1/1000 chance for Raymond? Might as well save my NMT for something else. 

Since I have no smug villagers, I think I’ll avoid island hopping when someone moves  out next time because as you said, the game is likely to push in a villager with a missing personality.


----------



## Sheba

ctar17 said:


> It would be nice to maybe bring the discussion a little bit back to the mystery islands though so I can answer anyone else's questions they may have about the stats or data.


Got it, thanks!
I actually have a question, but don't know if it's even valid because I am not that far in the game yet and don't have that function unlocked. If it's stupid/impossible, don't mind me: I would like to know if villagers at your campsite count as "residents". Let's say you're hunting for you-know-who and want to raise your chances of getting him, hence you want to remove as many other cats from the pool. And let's say you have Merry's amiibo and invite her to your campsite. Does that remove her from the Mystery Island spawnpool? I have no idea how long villagers stay at the campsite and if there's a difference between amiibo-invited ones and "naturally" appearing ones, but I wondered if the odds can be ever so slightly pushed for those island-hunting for a dreamie.

Also, not sure how related: How soon is island hunting possible again? I know you can have ten villagers max and I've heard that you have to let whoever the first campsite visitor is move into your town, but when do villagers start to move out (only after the 10th has moved in or could you stay at six and get someone to move out)? And does that influence matters somehow? I would guess not if it's really just a species roll and not a personality roll (since you will not have all personalities with six villagers only) but I wondered if maybe there's another "barrier" in place when you don't have ten villagers yet, just like there is the "Lazy/Normal/Peppy"-thing going on for the first three. As in...the game forced you to get Jock/Uchi/Normal/Lazy/Peppy/Smug at the first six. If you can go down to five, does the game still think you're in that "set-personality" stage of the island so that hunting a sixth, new villager will only generate the personality of the initial six that you're missing now?



Aliya said:


> Dom remembered me since it was the exact same Dom who moved out of my island! I only TTed to cycle out villagers in the beginning to get my dreamies and to help others find theirs, but all of my villagers were natural move outs. I no longer TT, but I find that it takes a while to get villagers to move out in this game.
> 
> Yes, exactly. The villager plot will open up the day after they move out and you will have to wait until they are able to get your villager back in boxes. You will be able to ask them to move back to your island afterwards, just like any other villager trade. They will then have their normal house and not the default house.


Not writing about the house thing anymore (I might PM you if I fail to figure this out when the time actually comes for me and I end up confused, if that's okay!), but in general...do I understand correctly that after the initial three houses, I have only one day to invite someone back in or someone random moves into the then-vacant lot? Because obviously, that would make island hunting an absolute pain if it has to be done in basically 24 hours and the game is so unkind and does just roll for species and not for replacing personality.


----------



## Heartcore

Wow, this makes me feel even better about finding Raymond on a mystery island. I'll have to continue to cherish that little guy. Lol.


----------



## ctar17

Sheba said:


> Got it, thanks!
> I actually have a question, but don't know if it's even valid because I am not that far in the game yet and don't have that function unlocked. If it's stupid/impossible, don't mind me: I would like to know if villagers at your campsite count as "residents". Let's say you're hunting for you-know-who and want to raise your chances of getting him, hence you want to remove as many other cats from the pool. And let's say you have Merry's amiibo and invite her to your campsite. Does that remove her from the Mystery Island spawnpool? I have no idea how long villagers stay at the campsite and if there's a difference between amiibo-invited ones and "naturally" appearing ones, but I wondered if the odds can be ever so slightly pushed for those island-hunting for a dreamie.
> 
> Also, not sure how related: How soon is island hunting possible again? I know you can have ten villagers max and I've heard that you have to let whoever the first campsite visitor is move into your town, but when do villagers start to move out (only after the 10th has moved in or could you stay at six and get someone to move out)? And does that influence matters somehow? I would guess not if it's really just a species roll and not a personality roll (since you will not have all personalities with six villagers only) but I wondered if maybe there's another "barrier" in place when you don't have ten villagers yet, just like there is the "Lazy/Normal/Peppy"-thing going on for the first three. As in...the game forced you to get Jock/Uchi/Normal/Lazy/Peppy/Smug at the first six. If you can go down to five, does the game still think you're in that "set-personality" stage of the island so that hunting a sixth, new villager will only generate the personality of the initial six that you're missing now?
> 
> 
> Not writing about the house thing anymore (I might PM you if I fail to figure this out when the time actually comes for me and I end up confused, if that's okay!), but in general...do I understand correctly that after the initial three houses, I have only one day to invite someone back in or someone random moves into the then-vacant lot? Because obviously, that would make island hunting an absolute pain if it has to be done in basically 24 hours and the game is so unkind and does just roll for species and not for replacing personality.



I do not have the data for mystery islands hunting while there is a campsite visitor, but my gut tells me that you won't find the campsite visitor on mystery islands while they are in your campsite.  Once they leave your campsite, I would guess that they go back into the mystery island pool.  The random campsite visitors stay for 1 day besides the first one.  Island hunting will be possible for you again after you invite your first campsite villager and lay down an empty plot.  You must have an empty plot free (not SOLD) to find villagers on the islands.  Keep in mind that your very first visitor to the campsite must be invited for the game to progress.  They will NOT leave after a day.  Also the first campsite villager seems to almost always be of the smug personality.


----------



## PajamaCat

Wow, thank you for the post! Last time I tried to find a villager I wanted, I kept getting eagles which I thought was odd but now it makes so much more sense. I literally saw Amelia twice within five islands! Guess I'll be saving my NMT's for island improvement stuff since it seems the chances of finding a specific villager are so low.


----------



## ctar17

PajamaCat said:


> Wow, thank you for the post! Last time I tried to find a villager I wanted, I kept getting eagles which I thought was odd but now it makes so much more sense. I literally saw Amelia twice within five islands! Guess I'll be saving my NMT's for island improvement stuff since it seems the chances of finding a specific villager are so low.



Yeah if you're looking for 1 specific villager, especially one in a species with a lot of villagers, the odds are very low.  However, if you're looking for a specific octopus or another species with a low villager count, the odds are higher than average (still less than 1% though, octopuses clock in at 0.9%)


----------



## Bk1234

Just some more of my data (maybe it will help?)
*Note: These are NMT Island encounters from AFTER I invited my first campsite villager.*

1. Doc
2. Benedict
3. Graham
4. Elmer
5. Sherb (invited)

4 out of the 5 were Lazy.


----------



## DubiousDelphine

I should just cherish raymond. he appeared in my campsite as the 6th villager after all.


Spoiler: pic too big


----------



## Bk1234

@ctar17 I hope I find Caroline on a NMT island, it would remind me of your amazing contributions to the community.


----------



## ctar17

Bk1234 said:


> @ctar17 I hope I find Caroline on a NMT island, it would remind me of your amazing contributions to the community.



Awwwww I love you guys!  Caroline is my name so it's only fair for me to love her lol.  Maybe I'll find her eventually too.
Meanwhile the people in the Facebook groups have been pushing their own theories that are contradictory to what the evidence shows...  even when I provide my data, they don't believe it rip.
At least that doesn't happen here so thank you everyone for listening to reason and evidence!


----------



## ctar17

Hey everyone,

If you're now a bit disheartened about the chances of getting a certain business cat villager because it's 1 in a 1000 on the mystery islands pretty much, Calysis has discovered a trick that doesn't involve the mystery islands at all.  It has a higher chance than using NMTs.
Here is the thread for it!  It involves open plots and random move ins.  Check it out!


----------



## Lozz

ctar17 said:


> Hello all,
> 
> There is lots of talk about the specific pattern that is used for villagers on mystery islands.  I would like to present my findings in this thread and open it up for possible statistics discussions to confirm this theory even more.
> 
> First, I'd like to thank Selkie for sending me their data to perform statistical tests on and Sheba and ForbiddenSecrets for bringing up the theory in the first place.  The theory is that the game first rolls for a species.  Once the species is chosen, it then rolls for a specific villager in that chosen species.  The game does NOT roll for a specific villager right off the bat.
> 
> Here is the thread where this theory was initially proposed:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Spreadsheet] Mystery Tour Villager "RNG" (Peppys only. Spoiler: Species gets rolled first, thus odds are not equal)
> 
> 
> EDIT: It's clear now! TL;DR: Game rolls species first, then villager if there's more than one in the species, making the odds uneven - less possible villagers in a species mean higher chances for those villagers appearing. Thank you to ForbiddenSecrets for helping me realize this! ---  So, as I...
> 
> 
> 
> www.belltreeforums.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The way the tests were done are pretty straightforward.  People have been noticing the octopuses appearing a lot more than they should as there's only 3 of them.  Therefore, I tested to see if the number of octopuses that actually appeared in the sample was statistically significant than the number of octopuses that we would expect to appear in the sample.
> 
> Earlier today, before this theory was brought up, I performed a Chi Square test on Selkie's data to check if it was completely random or pseudo-random or if there was a pattern.  Selkie's data has a sample size of 344.  The expected chance of an octopus appearing using the old theory of the game randomly rolls a villager from the pool of 391 is 3/391.  In the data we would expect one to have about 2.56 appearances in the 344.  The data contained 12.  Here is the Chi Square test for this model:
> View attachment 243901
> As you can see, the Chi Square value is larger (much larger) than the p value of 0.05 for a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom.  This concludes that the observed and expected are indeed statistically different.  Therefore, the game does NOT just choose a villager at random out of the 391.
> 
> After seeing Sheba's thread and ForbiddenSecret's reply with the species first theory, I decided to go back to Selkie's data and perform another Chi Square test using the parameters that the game chooses a species first at random then a villager in that species.  Using this, the expected chance of an octopus is 1/35 not 3/391.  In the sample of 344, we would expect the octopuses to have 9.54 appearances.  Here is the new Chi Square test:
> View attachment 243902
> As you can see, the Chi Square value is less than the p value of 0.05 for a 1 degree of freedom test.  This means that we cannot reject the null hypothesis of "The game randomly rolls a species of villager first"  I conclude that the theory that the species is rolled first then one is selected in that chosen species is basically correct.
> 
> What is a Chi Square test?
> Basically it tests whether 2 groups of data are statistically different. A common use of it is to test whether your observed set of data is statistically different (not due to random chance) from the expected data.
> 
> UPDATE:  I have now tested (with the help of more data from TBT users) to see if this theory applies evenly across the board, only 2/35 species didn't uphold the theory, but that is not enough to disprove it all together, and I can attribute it to the nature of RNG.  I conclude that it does!  The chance for a specific species to be rolled is the same for every species.
> 
> UPDATE 2: While I have not formally conducted tests on if the game rolls for personality after species or just rolls straight for a villager yet (still working on this), my initial analysis of the new data provided suggest that this is NOT the case.  The game does NOT roll for personality at all (villager 1-5 are locked personalities).  I'm 95%+ sure this is the case, but can't outright solidly confirm that there is no personality roll.  Nor does lacking a personality on your island increase or decrease the chances for that personality to appear on mystery islands.  This also applies to what species you have as well, it won't increase or decrease the chances for a species to appear if you already have 1 or more on your island.
> 
> Thanks again to Selkie, Sheba, and ForbiddenSecrets for providing data and/or the theory!
> 
> Happy hunting!
> 
> Now the big question that a lot of you are wondering...
> What does this mean for *Raymond* hunting?
> Well, I'll tell you.  The cat is even more elusive than we originally thought!  It means that the chance to find Raymond on mystery islands is very low.  It's lower than 1/391 because there are 20+ cats in this game.  In fact, I have calculated the chance to find Raymond on a mystery island to be about 0.12%  Basically 1 in a 1000.  Good luck!
> Other has pointed out a theory that lacking a smug will cause random move ins, i.e. letting the plot fill up, to be smug.  Sounds like this is a much better bet, especially if you're willing to TT to force out the smug to try again!



This user collected all their data as well in this thread: https://www.belltreeforums.com/threads/459-nmt-island-encounters-heres-the-data-i-collected.508602/

Potentially you could use this and see if there is any statistical variance with a larger sample size? They've got a google doc with all the raw data.


----------



## ctar17

Lozz said:


> This user collected all their data as well in this thread: https://www.belltreeforums.com/threads/459-nmt-island-encounters-heres-the-data-i-collected.508602/
> 
> Potentially you could use this and see if there is any statistical variance with a larger sample size? They've got a google doc with all the raw data.



Yeah I'll just add it to the data I've been using if I ever get it.  I've already got at least 600 plus and adding more data in hasn't really changed anything so far, so it's safe to say that these theories are most likely correct.  The only reason I'm not saying these are confirmed is because I did not mine the data directly and thus cannot find the true formula.  But statistics laws (the Law of Large Numbers) states that with a large enough sample size, it is representative of the overall population.  I don't expect adding more data in at this point to change anything as the sample size is large enough already.  It would help with more complex tests however.


----------



## Sheba

ctar17 said:


> I do not have the data for mystery islands hunting while there is a campsite visitor, but my gut tells me that you won't find the campsite visitor on mystery islands while they are in your campsite.  Once they leave your campsite, I would guess that they go back into the mystery island pool.  The random campsite visitors stay for 1 day besides the first one.  Island hunting will be possible for you again after you invite your first campsite villager and lay down an empty plot.  You must have an empty plot free (not SOLD) to find villagers on the islands.  Keep in mind that your very first visitor to the campsite must be invited for the game to progress.  They will NOT leave after a day.  Also the first campsite villager seems to almost always be of the smug personality.


That's what my gut tells me, too. Hope that if someone ever meets an animal that's in the campsite on an island tour as well, they will let us know. And dang, sounds like island hunting will be so time-sensitive then. Ah well... Dotty moved in today, so it'll hopefully be only a few more days until I can get new data for you. (One for Fauna to move in, one for resident services to be upgraded, one for building the campsite, one for inviting the campsite villager and building the next plot, maybe? So four?)
Also, just because you seem to be good at math and I can't figure it out because percentages will be the death of me: What's the chance of encountering Annalisa? There's seven anteaters in the game. I'm in my mid-thirties and I am too stupid for basic math, which is embarrassing, but then again, I sucked at it in school, too...


----------



## sicklewillow

You just have to do 1/35 times 1/7= 0.41%. You have to get pass the first roll though. You have to pray real hard that it roll to anteaters species first. 



Sheba said:


> That's what my gut tells me, too. Hope that if someone ever meets an animal that's in the campsite on an island tour as well, they will let us know. And dang, sounds like island hunting will be so time-sensitive then. Ah well... Dotty moved in today, so it'll hopefully be only a few more days until I can get new data for you. (One for Fauna to move in, one for resident services to be upgraded, one for building the campsite, one for inviting the campsite villager and building the next plot, maybe? So four?)
> Also, just because you seem to be good at math and I can't figure it out because percentages will be the death of me: What's the chance of encountering Annalisa? There's seven anteaters in the game. I'm in my mid-thirties and I am too stupid for basic math, which is embarrassing, but then again, I sucked at it in school, too...


----------



## Sheba

sicklewillow said:


> You just have to do 1/35 times 1/7= 0.41%. You have to get pass the first roll though. You have to pray real hard that it roll to anteaters species first.


Oooh I see, thank you so much! And that's...almost half a percent, haha. Still not exactly the best of odds, but hey, it could be worse. Not checking the math of my other dreamies, though - that's bound to be much worse and demotivate me.


----------



## sicklewillow

Sheba said:


> Oooh I see, thank you so much! And that's...almost half a percent, haha. Still not exactly the best of odds, but hey, it could be worse. Not checking the math of my other dreamies, though - that's bound to be much worse and demotivate me.


Don't lose hope because somehow the AC gods have blessed my island hopping last night and was able to get one of my dreamies.  Planning to do another island hopping next weekend for my final dreamie. I hope it is as fruitful as the last night.

You will get yours soon!


----------



## BluePing

I’m saving up nmt at the moment and I’ve got just over 30 I think, hopefully I’ll make it to 60 tickets by the time I start going through them ( a few days) just wondering whether you wanted me to post the data on here so you can add it to the data collection. I’ve already started with 5/6 villagers so should be around 65 ish trips


----------



## shootingxtar

I thought it was 1/391 for Raymond and boy were we sadly mistaken LMAO
my bf got godsend lucky then because he found him recently after like 650 tickets and we didn't know it was a 0.12% chance


----------



## ctar17

I did more formal testing to figure out if the game rolled personality after the species roll or not.  I found out that the game does NOT roll personality at all.

The tests were conducted by taking a look at all of the species with Uchis, and how many uchis were found in the data.  I looked to see if the percentage of Uchis found in villagers with a 8 personalities was 12.5% (1/8) or was it a different number.  Using the Chi Square test, I discovered that the actual appearance of the uchis in these species was way under 12.5%, enough to be statistically significant by a lot.  I then looked at all of the species with uchis and the Uchi appearances and compared it to the number of uchis total/number of villagers total in species with Uchis.  I found that these were not statistically significant.  This allows me to formally make the conclusion that the game does NOT roll for a personality at all.  It just goes straight from species to villager.  The last test's results is consistent with this theory, it makes sense that the percentage of Uchi appearances in species with uchi villagers is not statistically different from the percent of uchi villagers in the species with uchis.

*Why did you choose Uchi to test?*
When doing my tests to initial figure out if there was a personality roll, in theory each personality would have a 1/8 chance of appearing.  4 out of the 8 species appeared either significantly more or less than 1/8.  Cranky, Normal, and Jock all appeared way more, while Uchi appeared way way way less, like half as much as it should have been appearing.  Now this could have been due to the fact that not all of the species have an Uchi villager, therefore, after the species roll, sometimes there would be no way to roll an Uchi if a nonUchi species was rolled.  So that's why I then just tested the data of species with at least 1 Uchi.  I tested species with 7 different personalities, including Uchi, and those with all 8 separately.  The 7 personality species test was within the acceptable range, however, the 8 personality species test was way out of the acceptable range, allowing me to conclude there is NOT a personality roll after the initial species one.

*Why didn't you test the other personalities too?*
Once I found out from the Uchi test there was no personality roll, it didn't matter for the other personalities.  The Uchi test alone is enough to disprove the personality roll theory, combined with the fact that 4/8 personalities had a statistical difference in their appearance rate from the 1/8 that would've been had the personality roll been a thing.

*What about the different species?  Did you see if the species roll first theory applies across the board?*
I went back and tested ALL of the species.  30/35 of them fit the test.  The ones that didn't were Dog, Duck, Octopus, Kangaroo, and Ostrich with the first 3 of those being just 1 appearance above the acceptable range for the Chi Square test in my sample data.  Kangaroo was 1 below the range, and Ostrich was 3 above the range.  Since the large majority (almost 85%) of species did fit the test, and it's clear that the personality roll definitely isn't a thing, I conclude that these 5 were just exceptions due to the sample data.  They will eventually even out into the acceptable range as more data is collected, that's what the Law of Large Numbers basically states.  As sample size grows, it will become more and more representative of the full population.

Tonight or tomorrow, I'm going to finish up my Google Docs with all the information and post the link on this thread.  This document should be easier to distribute around and read for anyone who is interested!

If anyone is curious about more things to test for with the mystery island villagers, just drop your idea, and I'll give more thoughts!
Once again, thanks to all who sent data, there is almost 700 island entries so far!


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## Pfoe

Thanks for this writeup. I figured this was the case when I did 1100 tickets a couple weeks ago and saw tons of each octopus. It got even more ridiculous when I had Zucker and Marina in my town, which basically forced Octavian into the 1/35 chance and had me seeing him back-to-back multiple times.

To maximize your chances of finding Raymond, it is advised to fill your island with as many cats as possible. If you have 9 cats in your island, the Raymond probability goes from 1-in-805 to 1-in-490.


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## ctar17

Pfoe said:


> Thanks for this writeup. I figured this was the case when I did 1100 tickets a couple weeks ago and saw tons of each octopus. It got even more ridiculous when I had Zucker and Marina in my town, which basically forced Octavian into the 1/35 chance and had me seeing him back-to-back multiple times.
> 
> To maximize your chances of finding Raymond, it is advised to fill your island with as many cats as possible. If you have 9 cats in your island, the Raymond probability goes from 1-in-805 to 1-in-490.



Yeah the Octopuses really make you think!

Still not too good for Raymond  ... The best methods remain the campsite trick and the random move in being forced to smug.  Both are done by lacking just a smug in your town.  My friend did the campsite hunt last night and found that when lacking a personality, about 50% of campsite spawns turned out to be smug for him.  He also got NO repeats in his hunt, and the 27th smug turned out to be Raymond.  Took him half a day in real time though, and by the end of it, he had TTed all the way to 2022 in his game lol.  I think he only had about 50+ entries though, so it would be interesting to have gotten more data...

His strategy was just be missing a smug.  TT until a campsiter, if it's not Raymond, TT 6 days ahead and then day-by-day until a new campsiter, then rinse and repeat.  And more importantly, spent only a couple NMTs at the beginning to make sure the slot was filled by a non Smug villager he thought he could later later.  (eventually settled on Aurora after about 15 NMTs spent)


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## ctar17

ALRIGHT STOP THE PRESSES!

The dataminers have confirmed my theory!  Yay us!  Thank you TBT for helping this got off the ground enough to be datamined 





credit to Aibo for showing me this and all who helped with data collection/coming up with the theory!


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## sicklewillow

Congratulations! I mentioned it in the other thread that it was confirmed through data mining but I didn't link the discord discussion in it. 

All the data gathering have really paid off!


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## Saga

Yay, confirmation! 

Now I realize exactly how ridiculously lucky I was to find Tangy on my second NMT... And how impossibly lucky I'll have to be to also find Lolly. At this rate I may end up just buying her on the forums...

I guess the good news it that I have a pretty high chance of finding Zucker since I already have one of the other octopi!


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## Hyperslurpie

Not sure if you're still collecting data but I took about 14 trips (which is a small sample size I know haha) but can provide you the data if you need!


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## cactuscactus

Okay, I'm going to start this out by saying that I have never taken a statistics class. However I am currently in three university biology classes, and I have performed numerous Chi Square tests in order to determine if I can or cannot reject the null hypothesis based off of the p value in these classes. To my knowledge, and based off everything I've researched and what my professors have told me, when the p value is less than 0.05 in a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom that means you _can_ reject the null hypothesis. And when the p value is greater than 0.05 in a test with 1 degree of freedom you _can't_ reject it. So I'm a little confused to your analysis given that you said the exact opposite based off of your p values. Again, I have not taken a stats class so I am not an authority on this by any means, but I'm just confused given everything I've researched and learned has told me the opposite in regards to p values. 

I also googled it just to make sure I wasn't talking nonsense and the first website I saw said the same thing. Apologies in advance if my reasoning is wrong, I'm just an animal crossing fan trying to pass my biology classes.


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## Pfoe

cactuscactus said:


> Okay, I'm going to start this out by saying that I have never taken a statistics class. However I am currently in three university biology classes, and I have performed numerous Chi Square tests in order to determine if I can or cannot reject the null hypothesis based off of the p value in these classes. To my knowledge, and based off everything I've researched and what my professors have told me, when the p value is less than 0.05 in a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom that means you _can_ reject the null hypothesis. And when the p value is greater than 0.05 in a test with 1 degree of freedom you _can't_ reject it. So I'm a little confused to your analysis given that you said the exact opposite based off of your p values. Again, I have not taken a stats class so I am not an authority on this by any means, but I'm just confused given everything I've researched and learned has told me the opposite in regards to p values.
> 
> I also googled it just to make sure I wasn't talking nonsense and the first website I saw said the same thing. Apologies in advance if my reasoning is wrong, I'm just an animal crossing fan trying to pass my biology classes.



That's a good observation. In this case, the OP has mislabelled the number 3.841 as a p-value, but it's actually just the threshold that produces a p-value of exactly 0.05 (i.e. let X be chi-sq with DF 1, then P(X<3.841)=0.05).

The first test yielded a chi-squared value of 35.01 which is much greater than 3.841 (i.e. p-value much lower than 0.05), while the second test yielded 0.65 which is much lower than 3.841 (i.e. p-value much higher than 0.05).


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## chainosaur

> about 0.12% Basically 1 in a 1000.



My god, really puts into perspective how lucky I was to find Raymond in only about a dozen tickets.


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## ctar17

Pfoe said:


> That's a good observation. In this case, the OP has mislabelled the number 3.841 as a p-value, but it's actually just the threshold that produces a p-value of exactly 0.05 (i.e. let X be chi-sq with DF 1, then P(X<3.841)=0.05).
> 
> The first test yielded a chi-squared value of 35.01 which is much greater than 3.841 (i.e. p-value much lower than 0.05), while the second test yielded 0.65 which is much lower than 3.841 (i.e. p-value much higher than 0.05).





cactuscactus said:


> Okay, I'm going to start this out by saying that I have never taken a statistics class. However I am currently in three university biology classes, and I have performed numerous Chi Square tests in order to determine if I can or cannot reject the null hypothesis based off of the p value in these classes. To my knowledge, and based off everything I've researched and what my professors have told me, when the p value is less than 0.05 in a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom that means you _can_ reject the null hypothesis. And when the p value is greater than 0.05 in a test with 1 degree of freedom you _can't_ reject it. So I'm a little confused to your analysis given that you said the exact opposite based off of your p values. Again, I have not taken a stats class so I am not an authority on this by any means, but I'm just confused given everything I've researched and learned has told me the opposite in regards to p values.
> 
> I also googled it just to make sure I wasn't talking nonsense and the first website I saw said the same thing. Apologies in advance if my reasoning is wrong, I'm just an animal crossing fan trying to pass my biology classes.



Yeah both of y'all get the gist of what I'm saying.  I just completed my stats class and we were taught that's how to do it.  It does appear to be a mislabeling like Pfoe stated, and that's all it is.  I did go back and correct the language from "p-value of 0.05" to "value that produces a p-value of 0.05" so it's fixed now and the conclusions of the analysis do not change at all.

Basically for 3.841 and the p-value of 0.05, this is what it technically means:

The Chi Square values meaning:
Above 3.841 (which produces a p-value of 0.05) - means that there is less than a 5% chance for the results to be due to natural random chance. Which means we reject the null hypothesis.
Below 3.841 (again, produces a p-value of 0.05) - means that the chance the results occurred due to natural random chance is above 5%.  Which means we cannot reject the null hypothesis.

In my case, 35.01 is much greater than 3.841 and yields a p-value of less than 0.00001.  So we reject that null hypothesis.
0.65 is much less than 3.841 and yields a p-value of 0.42.  So we cannot reject that null hypothesis (the species-roll first one).

The post is quite simplified compared to an actual stats class (I just finished my university statistics for economics majors class today), but above is the technical meaning of the p-values and Chi square values used in this analysis.

Does this clear it up?  Basically had word order switched lol...


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## Lokidoki

So if you run into a octopi villager you despawned Raymond... lol


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## ChrisNewLeaf

Dragostea Din Tei said:


> So that means the best time to search for a peppy/lazy/normal dreamie would be with the first 3 plots near the start of the game? Since those are the only ones that are personality locked... I can already see myself spending the first days searching for Beau like crazy  Since there are only two lazy deers that means I have better chances than trying to find Bob


If you do this though they will have the default houses and not their Unique houses!!


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## Kyneria

ChrisNewLeaf said:


> If you do this though they will have the default houses and not their Unique houses!!


But since we can ''upgrade'' those houses with the help of friends/ cycling users and more, I don't think it's a bad idea! Though it requires some patience


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## ChrisNewLeaf

Kyneria said:


> But since we can ''upgrade'' those houses with the help of friends/ cycling users and more, I don't think it's a bad idea! Though it requires some patience


You mean giving the villager to a friend then getting them back? I didn't know that worked, but still sounds like a hassle! Good to know though


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## Kyneria

ChrisNewLeaf said:


> You mean giving the villager to a friend then getting them back? I didn't know that worked, but still sounds like a hassle! Good to know though


Yep, it works! And the villager remembers you apparently, which means no ''memory resets'' like if you just invite them later through amiibo or find them again in a mistery island. There was a thread about this with some photos for proof, if I remember right the ''experiment'' used a Bam for it


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## rudythefighter

Sorry for the bump. Is there any evidence to dismiss the claim that NMTs hold data from the purchaser?

Example: A friend gifts me 10 NMTs which they purchased on their island. Raymond is one of their villagers. Since they have Raymond already, I cannot find Raymond with any of the NMTs I received from their gift.


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## MossBoss

Not to revive a dead discussion but are we absolutely sure that nothing else (besides species) matters for villagers showing up on islands? This morning within a space of 10 islands I encountered Sydney twice and Peewee twice. If only species matters, the chance of this happening is about 0.0000001%. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Is there some random seed effect not accounted for?


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## Sharksheep

MossBoss said:


> Not to revive a dead discussion but are we absolutely sure that nothing else (besides species) matters for villagers showing up on islands? This morning within a space of 10 islands I encountered Sydney twice and Peewee twice. If only species matters, the chance of this happening is about 0.0000001%. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. Is there some random seed effect not accounted for?



There's no such thing as true RNG when it comes to games. We don't know if the seeder is set from the beginning or you can change it or what causes it change. It's just random and you got bad luck.


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## MossBoss

Sharksheep said:


> There's no such thing as true RNG when it comes to games. We don't know if the seeder is set from the beginning or you can change it or what causes it change. It's just random and you got bad luck.


I guess my real question is whether anyone has tested other factors that may affect villager spawn chance. Looks like personality type has been ruled out as a factor, and I would be very surprised if hobby mattered, but getting two double encounters in such a short span makes me think there might be _something_ else in play. I know with random chance that yeah, sometimes extremely unlikely events still happen, just curious if any more work has been done on this.
I do have a decent working knowledge of statistics and modelling, but I'm also lazy limited on time. So if someone has already done the work, that's great.


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## Sharksheep

MossBoss said:


> I guess my real question is whether anyone has tested other factors that may affect villager spawn chance. Looks like personality type has been ruled out as a factor, and I would be very surprised if hobby mattered, but getting two double encounters in such a short span makes me think there might be _something_ else in play. I know with random chance that yeah, sometimes extremely unlikely events still happen, just curious if any more work has been done on this.
> I do have a decent working knowledge of statistics and modelling, but I'm also lazy limited on time. So if someone has already done the work, that's great.



Here's the write that OP did in collaboration with Ninji and other data miners: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16yHQzdYx4VznhnKSGZdtaKi_Yo8NpDwCYK8dmpR481s/edit

As for the running into the same villagers multiple times, this isn't even a matter of stats. It a matter of code. Everything is pseudorandom and the RNG for the game is just good enough to call it random. What exactly the developers decided to use as their seeder is unknown and imo, not important because whatever calculations is going to be complex enough that to be able to figure out how and to manipulate is probably not worth anyone's time. There's probably some cases where it didn't make it random enough or it is random the person just got bad luck but no one is going to care enough to figure it out and fix a good enough random generator. I've seen videos and know of people who have ran into the same villager many times in a single day or ran into the same villager 2 or 3 times in a row. It's just bad luck.


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## Bk1234

@ctar17 I found Caroline and I love her so much!  Thanks for your hard work and dedication in this thread.


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## Tracie.honeybay

ctar17 said:


> Hello all,
> 
> There is lots of talk about the specific pattern that is used for villagers on mystery islands.  I would like to present my findings in this thread and open it up for possible statistics discussions to confirm this theory even more.
> 
> First, I'd like to thank Selkie for sending me their data to perform statistical tests on and Sheba and ForbiddenSecrets for bringing up the theory in the first place.  The theory is that the game first rolls for a species.  Once the species is chosen, it then rolls for a specific villager in that chosen species.  The game does NOT roll for a specific villager right off the bat.
> 
> Here is the thread where this theory was initially proposed:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Spreadsheet] Mystery Tour Villager "RNG" (Peppys only. Spoiler: Species gets rolled first, thus odds are not equal)
> 
> 
> EDIT: It's clear now! TL;DR: Game rolls species first, then villager if there's more than one in the species, making the odds uneven - less possible villagers in a species mean higher chances for those villagers appearing. Thank you to ForbiddenSecrets for helping me realize this! ---  So, as I...
> 
> 
> 
> www.belltreeforums.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The way the tests were done are pretty straightforward.  People have been noticing the octopuses appearing a lot more than they should as there's only 3 of them.  Therefore, I tested to see if the number of octopuses that actually appeared in the sample was statistically significant than the number of octopuses that we would expect to appear in the sample.
> 
> Earlier today, before this theory was brought up, I performed a Chi Square test on Selkie's data to check if it was completely random or pseudo-random or if there was a pattern.  Selkie's data has a sample size of 344.  The expected chance of an octopus appearing using the old theory of the game randomly rolls a villager from the pool of 391 is 3/391.  In the data we would expect one to have about 2.56 appearances in the 344.  The data contained 12.  Here is the Chi Square test for this model:
> View attachment 243901
> As you can see, the Chi Square value is larger (much larger) than the value that produces a p-value of 0.05 for a Chi Square test with 1 degree of freedom (the p-value that is produced with 35.01 is less than 0.00001).  This concludes that the observed and expected are indeed statistically different.  Therefore, the game does NOT just choose a villager at random out of the 391.
> 
> After seeing Sheba's thread and ForbiddenSecret's reply with the species first theory, I decided to go back to Selkie's data and perform another Chi Square test using the parameters that the game chooses a species first at random then a villager in that species.  Using this, the expected chance of an octopus is 1/35 not 3/391.  In the sample of 344, we would expect the octopuses to have 9.54 appearances.  Here is the new Chi Square test:
> View attachment 243902
> As you can see, the Chi Square value is less than the value that produces a p-value of 0.05 for a 1 degree of freedom test (the p-value that 0.65 produces is 0.42).  This means that we cannot reject the null hypothesis of "The game randomly rolls a species of villager first"  I conclude that the theory that the species is rolled first then one is selected in that chosen species is basically correct.
> 
> What is a Chi Square test?
> Basically it tests whether 2 groups of data are statistically different. A common use of it is to test whether your observed set of data is statistically different (not due to random chance) from the expected data.
> 
> UPDATE:  I have now tested (with the help of more data from TBT users) to see if this theory applies evenly across the board, only 2/35 species didn't uphold the theory, but that is not enough to disprove it all together, and I can attribute it to the nature of RNG.  I conclude that it does!  The chance for a specific species to be rolled is the same for every species.
> 
> UPDATE 2: While I have not formally conducted tests on if the game rolls for personality after species or just rolls straight for a villager yet (still working on this), my initial analysis of the new data provided suggest that this is NOT the case.  The game does NOT roll for personality at all (villager 1-5 are locked personalities).  I'm 95%+ sure this is the case, but can't outright solidly confirm that there is no personality roll.  Nor does lacking a personality on your island increase or decrease the chances for that personality to appear on mystery islands.  This also applies to what species you have as well, it won't increase or decrease the chances for a species to appear if you already have 1 or more on your island.
> 
> Thanks again to Selkie, Sheba, and ForbiddenSecrets for providing data and/or the theory!
> 
> Happy hunting!
> 
> Now the big question that a lot of you are wondering...
> What does this mean for *Raymond* hunting?
> Well, I'll tell you.  The cat is even more elusive than we originally thought!  It means that the chance to find Raymond on mystery islands is very low.  It's lower than 1/391 because there are 20+ cats in this game.  In fact, I have calculated the chance to find Raymond on a mystery island to be about 0.12%  Basically 1 in a 1000.  Good luck!
> Other has pointed out a theory that lacking a smug will cause random move ins, i.e. letting the plot fill up, to be smug.  Sounds like this is a much better bet, especially if you're willing to TT to force out the smug to try again!


What is the odds of finding maple the bear cub on a mystery island


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## Moritz

Tracie.honeybay said:


> What is the odds of finding maple the bear cub on a mystery island


0.18% chance
You can use this calculator to check odds 





						Villager Calculator
					

Calculate the odds of finding a villager on Mystery Tour.



					acnhapi.com


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## Bilaz

You also have to bear in mind that the chance of finding ANY villager twice is way higher than the chance of finding a single specific villager. It always feels like chance isn’t working but it does


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