Any advice about villager hunting?

[Ellen_from_Waihekiwi]

Hello everyone! I'm planning to go hunting for Raymond cause I think he will make great friends with Lolly and all of my other villagers and I don't have enough money to enter the auctions for him! Do anyone have any suggestion? Are there any time traveling/resetting techniques that work better than other ones? Is there some way to minimise the amount of nmt you use? Should I use the campsite or the mystery islands? Any advice is gold!
Tysm and stay safe everyone

 

[marshallows]

oh..oh man lol i was about to be like "just have fun! ^^" but then i saw who you're looking for. though i've definitely seen people who've gotten realllllyyy lucky and got him in about 5-10 tickets. personally, i cannot relate because i spent almost 400 myself trying to find him but i never did. i ended up getting him through a good friend's campsite.

i guess what i can give you as suggestions is to be very patient lol. island hopping can get really tiring real fast if you're keen on just getting one villager. i guess you can stop and do other things like gather resources along the way so you don't entirely come back empty handed but that really stretches your searching time by a lot. it's all really rng dependent like i've kinda touched upon previously about people finding him quickly vs me who spent x amount of tickets and didn't find anything. if you get tired, take a break and come back to it!

if you don't have a smug on your island yet, it doesn't hurt to try out the campsite method first to see how it goes then embark on your island hopping hunt. all in all, i really wish you best of luck! ^^

 

[Ellen_from_Waihekiwi]

The thing is that I always waited thinking "maybe I'll stop wanting him once I get other lovely villagers" but in the end I really like him and I feel like I should give it a shot! Now I pretty much have all my other dreamies thanks to a lot of people here, but I still feel that hole that only Raymond can fill <3
I don't have any smug, so the campsite will work better?

 

[marshallows]

found a pretty good guide that i think would be able to explain things a lot better than i would you can check out about the campsite method to get him.

also forgot to mention but the campsite trick does require time traveling so if you're not comfortable with that, i highly suggest against it in that case and just go with the old fashion island hopping method!

 

[seularin]

it’s pretty difficult to get a specific villager (except octopi ; esp cats tho)

i was hunting for lolly and thought id let someone else randomly move in, hold an open plot for amiibo orders, or just end up inv someone else after using 15 tickets

i took an hr break and went back to hunting and found her on my first ticket

 

[Ellen_from_Waihekiwi]

it’s pretty difficult to get a specific villager (except octopi ; esp cats tho)

i was hunting for lolly and thought id let someone else randomly move in, hold an open plot for amiibo orders, or just end up inv someone else after using 15 tickets

i took an hr break and went back to hunting and found her on my first ticket

Aww good for you!! Lolly is such a cutie

 

[yoohamsta]

The campsite visitor will most of the time be a personality you do not have, while villagers you see on mystery islands can be any personality. If you specifically want to get Raymond and don't have a ton of NMTs I think finding him through the campsite will be more likely unless you get super lucky island hopping. If you have all personalities on your island timetravel to make the smug villager leave then use the campsite plus timetravel to find Raymond, there are 35 smug villagers so that's a 1/35 chance. Mystery Islands can be any personality and there are 391 villagers so that's a 1/391 chance.

 

[BalloonFight]

Advice kind of really depends. If you want a guaranteed way to get Raymond, TT'ing the campsite method is the best sure fire way. It will still take a while, but odds are it will take way less time than island hunting. An advice for finding him on islands, would be to load your island up with other cats that you find along your way, as if you have 5 or 6 cat villagers on your island, the pool from where it rolls once you get the cat roll will be significantly higher to find Raymond.

It sounds like you already have quite a few villagers on your island that you already want to keep though. Assuming that's the case and you don't already have multiple cat villagers already on your island, I'd definitely go with the campsite method to get him.

Also to put it in perspective, I've done around 2300-2500 tickets island hunting while cycling villagers in and out. During that time I've had Bob and Ankha on my island basically since the beginning. I still haven't ran into Raymond once. I've also seen a friend of mine find Raymond 2nd ticket, without any cats on her island. Hope RNG is good to you if you go the ticket route haha

 

[MartijnE]

Ehh have a nice stack of NMT laying around and have patience.. It's all random and there are like 408 villagers?
You either get lucky and find the ones you like quick or it might take ages. The great power of random name generators.