Early AC:NL misconceptions

[Charcolor]

Animal Crossing New Leaf was my first Animal Crossing game (even though I've been alive long enough to have played City Folk and maybe Wild World) so I definitely had some misconceptions about the game when I first played it (which was on December 27, 2014. Aoki's birthday is coming up!)

• It was winter when I first played, but I didn't realize the season was based on the season in real life. I thought the snow was a sign of how deteriorated the town was and when the town gets better, grass grows.
• I didn't know about snowmen. I thought snowballs were trash and I had to destroy them to raise my approval rating
• I thought I was supposed to prevent villagers from moving out. My original villagers all stayed in my town for a very long time as a result until I realized moving was allowed. Then I let Gruff go.
• I had absolutely no idea that Nookling Junction could be upgraded. I had it up until February or March, and worked on upgraded it only after my girlfriend told me I needed to in order to get Club LOL.
• I also had no idea about emotes and was amazed when I saw my girlfriend using them (she was the first person I played online with ^^')

What about you? Share your early misconceptions about the game (or even just Animal Crossing in general)!

 

[Hamilton]

When I began playing Wild World, it was the flower fest. I stole every single one of my poor villager's flowers and placed them around my house. Zero regrets. It was actually super fun tbh. xD

 

[Belle of Pripyat]

When I began playing Wild World, it was the flower fest. I stole every single one of my poor villager's flowers and placed them around my house. Zero regrets. It was actually super fun tbh. xD

I did the same thing! And I won!! LOL

 

[Shimmer]

Wild World was my first Animal Crossing game and I had almost zero prior knowledge about the series. I just remember that my cousins had the game and showed me and I really wanted it because the villagers were so cute. xD So I jumped into it head first.

I remember that when I first worked for Tom Nook, I had accidentally changed shirts from the work shirt to another one that one of my villagers gave me and I actually got scared when I yelled at me. xD So after that, I was scared of Tom Nook and when he asked me to write an ad on the messaging board, I made sure it was a good one. xD

 

[Mairmalade]

When I was young playing the AC for the gamecube I filled my house with fun things and had areas to house visitors. I'd mail letters to a couple of my friends in town inviting them over and giving them a time. I'd go in my house at that time and wait thinking they would come.

 

[TheEchoTimes]

When I first got Wild World, I didn't donate ANYTHING to the museum. That carried over a tiny bit into New Leaf, leading to Salmongate, a year-plus-long affair.

 

[mayortash]

I started on Wild World way back in the day.

I remember I didn't know that the time would be the same as the in game time. I didn't play once until super late in the evening and all my townies were asking where I had been all day.

Kind of the opposite to you, I didn't realise I could prevent people from moving out. I lost Alice in a few days cause I didn't know I had to talk to all my townies to get them to stay.

I also didn't know about hybrids and I remember randomly having some red and white roses next to each other and then one day a pink rose had grown! That sparked a huge flower breeding obsession which still continues to this day.

 

[Sholee]

I thought that putting paths down could prevent grass deterioration so I was running like a mad woman on them until I wanted to change the directions of my path and saw that everything underneath was barren.

 

[Charcolor]

I thought that putting paths down could prevent grass deterioration so I was running like a mad woman on them until I wanted to change the directions of my path and saw that everything underneath was barren.

oh, i forgot about my first experience with patterns! i thought putting one on the ground would make a sign, but it didn't. i freaked out and changed it to all white to match the snow, but it didn't look natural so i looked up how to remove patterns from the ground. i felt pretty dumb when I found out.

 

[ZetaFunction]

When I began playing Wild World, it was the flower fest. I stole every single one of my poor villager's flowers and placed them around my house. Zero regrets. It was actually super fun tbh. xD

I did that too! Except I usually didn't participate in that event. I was greedy, so... to save bells, I'd wait until after the flower fests to steal every villager's flowers and put them around my house. It was free, I couldn't say no.

I thought that putting paths down could prevent grass deterioration so I was running like a mad woman on them until I wanted to change the directions of my path and saw that everything underneath was barren.

I literally did that this summer/fall in my New Leaf town and now I don't even use patterns for paths anymore. I don't want visitors to run on them.

 

[dizzy bone]

I thought buried items would help with plot resetting... it did not.

I had no idea about the re-tail method when doing for big bell trades. I thought the only way to do it was to go to the post office (and I was even more shocked when someone lead me to an atm machine in their house lol)

 

[ForeverAFlame]

Actually, my first conception was BEFORE i even played a animal crossing game.

I had never heard of it, and (Okay, I admit it.) I used action replay because I was a little crybaby when I lose Mario Kart DS (I sucked.) And then one day, I say the title "Animal Crossing: Wild World" on the Action Replay menu.

I thought It was some kind of hunting game.
Wow, was I wrong.

 

[Reese]

I thought the same thing about preventing villagers from moving out haha. In Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (the only other life simulation game I've played nearly as much as New Leaf), there's a character who will leave the game forever in the fall of the first year if you don't help him get a job so he can stay in town. So the first few villagers to ask me to move made me think of that, and I stopped them because I thought not doing so would completely alter the course of the game/my town

Also for at least the first few weeks of playing I thought everyone had the same villagers lmao.... I followed some people on Tumblr who played and posted pictures and I happened to have a villager or two in common with one of them, so I just assumed the villagers I didn't recognize would move in later on. The first in-game experience I had with other villagers was in the first dream town I visited, the official Nintendo town, and I was confused at first, but somehow came to the conclusion that when visiting a dream town the "regular" villagers were just replaced by wacky different animals... to make it more weird and dream-like?? I don't know what my line of thinking was.

Oh I had an early Club Tortimer experience where a guy told me he had Katie in his town, presumably asking if he could bring her to mine, but I had no idea who Katie was and thought he was talking about a villager (possibly misremembering Kitty, who I had at the time, and I might've still at this point thought everyone had the same villagers). But I wasn't totally sure and didn't want to show my ignorance so I was just like "ok"

I'll come back if I remember more because I'm sure there are many lmao

 

[Vintage Viola]

When I first started playing Animal crossing GC I didn't donate any bugs, fish, fossils or anything to the museum. And I didn't really know about villagers moving away (I thought the ones you started with stayed lol) and weed growth. So when I stopped playing for four months and came back, I was shocked to see all the weeds, roaches in my home, and at least three people had moved away lol. I ended up losing Ribbot because of that. I also use to steal flowers from people to decorate my own house, but it seems a lot of people did that. I did the same thing when Nook gave me flower seeds/saplings to plant in front of Nookling Junction xD

Oh, and when I found out there was a 90,000 bell cheat you could use three times a day with Nook, I stopped earning the money the honest way and TT a lot to use the code.

 

[MeghanNewLeaf]

When I first came across Wild World I had no idea how to save. One of my sisters had just found the game (it's a long story haha). I didn't know how to make Bells or fish either, but I guess after a while I just managed to figure it out on my own.

 

[Twisterheart]

When I started playing City Folk (my first game) I thought that when a villager moved they would just move to a different spot in town. I didn't know they completely disappeared from your town. I also thought that all town maps were the exact same, and everyone started out with the same starter villagers. I was shocked and very upset when I reset, only to find out it was a new town and new villagers...

I also didn't know that you could have Blathers check a fossil, so everytime my villagers asked for a fossil I would try to give them one straight out of the ground. I never understood why they refused to take them.

And with New Leaf, I heard that whenever you put on a wetsuit your socks will disappear. I thought that meant they would literally disappear forever, and you would lose them. So for a while I always took my socks off before I put my wetsuit on.

 

[mayor-of-ivyvale]

I didn't know your town name and mayor name were permanent so I named mine something off the top of my head and regretted it so much I reset everything Best animal crossing decision I ever made though because now I have a town I love.

 

[radioloves]

When I started out with animal crossing wild world I had no idea about hybrids and breeding flowers until I started playing the new leaf version since I haven't done that in the previous game, I thought I should try at least and then I got super adddicted. Also wasn't very familiar with the public work projects and the dream town and what the whole concept was about until, I saw youtube videos of many others dream towns and got inspired to decorate and develop my own town.

 

[KaydeeKrunk]

The biggest misconception was that I thought it was a kids game and that it looked stupid! I would have never gotten it on my own until I had friends who got it and showed me and then I became really obsessed! I didn't know it was so important to do your little daily chores and stuff so my first go it took a long time to get that good town rating, especially because I left a lot of stuff around that I didn't know was trash. I also thought that you were stuck with your villagers once you got them, which I hated cause I had this creepy mouse with a deep voice that would hit on me and be a creep and I hated him! I also thought that I had to pick up the seashells and stuff every day or my beach would become over crowded with them, like the weeds in town...

 

[Shinylatias]

When peppy villagers say something like "Number..exceeding..brain..capacity!" when you talk to them alot, I thought they were the super smart ones ._.