The new island I made a few days ago on my old switch has given me pretty darn good luck with random villagers. I wonder if it has anything to do with the island having a completely straight shot to the plaza from the airport?
- First came Olive on a mystery island (who looks similar to Poncho in terms of facial features so automatic move-in for me).
- Audie and Filbert just randomly came by.
- Jacques is my first campsite villager who was a longtime resident of my main island, Wahu, on my main switch. He's so cool.
- While searching mystery islands again, I found another former Wahu resident, Scoot, on my third go. Given that I actually regretted moving him out previously and that he's essentially a meme for the jock personality, I decided to let him stay on the new island. He's not leaving now!
Unfortunately, the two starter villagers were those that I didn't really care about (Sylvia & Teddy) and I replaced them with amiibo villagers. In terms of "natural" villagers, Audie, Jacques and Scoot will be permanent residents, while Olive and Filbert I may replace in the future, but I'm not sure yet.
Now if you wanna hear my bad luck, well, the first island I made before the new one on my old switch had some villagers I really wanted out ASAP. For starters, Boots was one of the first two, and I don't like
any alligator villagers. It really didn't help that I later got
PIETRO as my campsite resident. That's already two villagers that dress like guys from the circus. I kicked both of those guys out as soon as I could.
The other random villagers I got were okay, but not exactly who I wanted:
- Reneigh is, of course, a newer-to-the-series villager, but I really wanted Katt as my sisterly villager instead and was quickly replaced.
- Anchovy was the only villager I was considering to keep, but unfortunately I had to kick him out to move Beau in.
- Chevre is popular, but I think she's overrated in my opinion. I don't really like how she looks.
- Bubbles. I don't really like hippo villagers, but I'll give her credit in that she doesn't look completely weird.
- Diana is cute (as well as almost all the deer villagers), but she didn't match the theme I was going for.
- Angus is actually a pretty cool bovine, and I think he's the 2nd best bovine villager behind Patty. But I wanted a cranky villager of a different species.
- T-Bone, another cranky bovine. I didn't need two villagers of the same personality and species.
So, yeah. It's a grind for some if they do the mystery island/time travel campsite methods, and RNG seems to work its magic for some and go bad for others. I had a little bit of both lately.
tl;dr - New, restarted island I made gave me cool villagers. Pre-restart island gave me duds.