Tomoe Hotaru
watching the weeds grow..
[Guide] Safe and "Fast" Cycling Method (get a lost dreamie back, relocate a dreamie)
Hello everyone,
I decided to share the method I used to cycle my villagers with as low of a risk as possible.
The guide is inspired by the method described by Crash in this thread, combined with plot resetting methods to acchieve a very safe but still fast technique.
List of abbreviations
TT = time travel, I ONLY used the system menu to change time in this guide because this makes it easier to use multiple characters.
"exit" = when you are in the game: press the power button and then home to get to the home menu without saving
Introduction: Who is this for?
I had to cycle out 8 of my villagers, while keeping two and trying to reach the 16 villager cycle for 2 villagers I had moved out so I could relocate their houses. So I develloped this method in order to:
This list is not for you if:
How "fast" is this method?
It really depends on how many villagers you can cycle. As I said before I cycled with 2 dreamies and 7 that were constantly changing. It took me about a day to cycle through enough villagers to get my dreamies back for relocation. Without keeping any villager (this is not the guide for you in this case) you will be faster. The more villagers you need to look out for, the more often you will have to "restart" cycling because you need to convince the dreamie to stay and find a new villager in boxes.
How "safe" is this method?
If you follow my guide and don?t start the game with an existing character when anyone could be in boxes or moving in, you won?t have any unplanned villagers move into town and no one you care about leave. Use the "create a new character option" effectively and you will be able to use a more safe version of the method used by many cycling towns.
What do you need to start?
Before we start: about talking to unwanted villagers
People have different opinions on this but I have found that villagers move out much faster if you don?t talk to them or only introduce yourself (innitiate only ONE dialogue). While cycling, the villagers I had only introduced myself to and the ones I had never spoken to, were A LOT more likely to leave.
Therefore, I advise you to completely ignore villagers you want to leave. The less you talk to them, the more likely they will be the first to leave and you wont have to restart the cycling process because a dreamie decides to go. I don?t know if your dreamies? "protection" wears off over time, but for me they always seemed less likely to move, even if the game thought I hadn?t spoken to them for a long time, just because I had spoken to them a lot before. The unwanted villagers I had spoken to once or twice before seemed to be almost as unwilling to move out as the dreamies I had spent a lot of time with.
In the end please follow what you believe in as this topic seems to be very controversial around the community. I can only give my experience and I had the most success with completely ignoring unwanted villagers (no intruduction, nothing).
The Beginning: How do you prepare your town?
1. Prepare your town like you would for plot resetting:
leave NO 3x3 spaces without a design you can lay out a grid in your town like so:
x = design o = no design (but plants or items etc.)
2. Select the new 3x3 spaces where villagers should move and surround them with designs
3. Select your town ordinance wisely
4. Find a villager you don?t want to keep or you want to relocate and get them into boxes:
You can:
(difficult to explain I might add it later but its really not necessary)
The Main Part: How to cycle?
Whoever finds a typo: Congrats! you may keep it^^
If this somehow doesn?t belong in this section of the forum or there is just a better place for it, please move this tread.
If you find an error or notice any mistake I made, please pm or vm me to let me know, Thanks^^
Hello everyone,
I decided to share the method I used to cycle my villagers with as low of a risk as possible.
The guide is inspired by the method described by Crash in this thread, combined with plot resetting methods to acchieve a very safe but still fast technique.
List of abbreviations
TT = time travel, I ONLY used the system menu to change time in this guide because this makes it easier to use multiple characters.
"exit" = when you are in the game: press the power button and then home to get to the home menu without saving
Introduction: Who is this for?
I had to cycle out 8 of my villagers, while keeping two and trying to reach the 16 villager cycle for 2 villagers I had moved out so I could relocate their houses. So I develloped this method in order to:
- not loose certain villagers while cycling
- cycle through unwanted villagers as fast as possible
- clear my dreamies out of the void and be able to re-invite them (after loosing a dreamie by accident or because of relocating it)
- decide who moves where
This list is not for you if:
- you have no villagers you want to keep: in that case check Crash?s guide linked above
- you want to get this done in a few hours: it will take at least a day to get a dreamie back, if not multiple days depending on how many dreamies you want to keep in your town while cycling
How "fast" is this method?
It really depends on how many villagers you can cycle. As I said before I cycled with 2 dreamies and 7 that were constantly changing. It took me about a day to cycle through enough villagers to get my dreamies back for relocation. Without keeping any villager (this is not the guide for you in this case) you will be faster. The more villagers you need to look out for, the more often you will have to "restart" cycling because you need to convince the dreamie to stay and find a new villager in boxes.
How "safe" is this method?
If you follow my guide and don?t start the game with an existing character when anyone could be in boxes or moving in, you won?t have any unplanned villagers move into town and no one you care about leave. Use the "create a new character option" effectively and you will be able to use a more safe version of the method used by many cycling towns.
What do you need to start?
- villagers you want to keep (again check the guide linked at the top if you don?t care about keeping any)
- villagers you don?t want in your town, the more the faster this will go
- spaces where you want the new villagers to move
- an open space of 5x7 spaces to place a house and where you don?t mind grass being removed
- willingness to time travel
Before we start: about talking to unwanted villagers
People have different opinions on this but I have found that villagers move out much faster if you don?t talk to them or only introduce yourself (innitiate only ONE dialogue). While cycling, the villagers I had only introduced myself to and the ones I had never spoken to, were A LOT more likely to leave.
Therefore, I advise you to completely ignore villagers you want to leave. The less you talk to them, the more likely they will be the first to leave and you wont have to restart the cycling process because a dreamie decides to go. I don?t know if your dreamies? "protection" wears off over time, but for me they always seemed less likely to move, even if the game thought I hadn?t spoken to them for a long time, just because I had spoken to them a lot before. The unwanted villagers I had spoken to once or twice before seemed to be almost as unwilling to move out as the dreamies I had spent a lot of time with.
In the end please follow what you believe in as this topic seems to be very controversial around the community. I can only give my experience and I had the most success with completely ignoring unwanted villagers (no intruduction, nothing).
The Beginning: How do you prepare your town?
1. Prepare your town like you would for plot resetting:
leave NO 3x3 spaces without a design you can lay out a grid in your town like so:
x = design o = no design (but plants or items etc.)
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOXOOXOOXOOXOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOXOOXOOXOOXOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOXOOXOOXOOXOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOXOOXOOXOOXOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO
2. Select the new 3x3 spaces where villagers should move and surround them with designs
- keep in mind that a villager?s house needs 1-square space all around it with no stones or other fixed structures
- the space cannot overlap with the 1-square space of any other building
- so basically: a villager house needs only one space gap between it and a stone but two spaces between itself and another villager?s house, a PWP or a town building.
- an example for two plots would look like this:
x = design o = free space
OOOOOOOOOOOOO
OXXXXXO OXXXXXO
OXOOOXOOXOOOXO
OXOOOXOOXOOOXO
OXOOOXOOXOOOXO
OXXOXXO OXXOXXO
OOOOOOOOOOOOO
- a villager plot only needs 1-space between itself and the edge of the map, a river/lake and the traintracks.
- I can?t confirm it but I would guess that a plot needs 2-spaces in front inbetween itself and a river or cliff as this rule applies to character houses.
- leave 2-spaces between the plot and the entrance to the campground just to be safe
- If a villager seems to plot onto the designs but you followed the rules above, post here and/or make a thread with a picture of the plot so other people can help you find the issue.
Notes:
There have been rare cases people reporting that villagers refuse to move in certain plots even though they followed the rules described above. It can happen and to this day we have not found a definitive answer as to why this is happening.
People have been suggesting that the issue could be related to the acres within the game. A map in New Leaf is made up of 20 square-shaped acres measuring 16x16 spaces starting from the top of the map. The theory is that only 3 buildings can be placed within one acre. However, we weren?t able to prove or deny this yet and there seems to be some involvement of random chance with this issue occurring.
Note: I felt the need to put this in here for the sake of completion. However, please don?t let this information scare you away from plot resetting. Only in very rare cases do people experience this issue and it is relatively easy to overcome. If you ever do happen to encounter this, please post here or in the New Leaf section of this forum so people can help you find a workaround. Don?t panic.^^
3. Select your town ordinance wisely
- if you have many hybrids, enable the beautiful town ordinance or all of them will die!
- if you want to grow weeds for the badge, save your hybrids in the storage or in the museum!
- you might not get the gold weeding-badge, but you can get the silver one if you have to do a lot of cycling so it may be worth it^^
4. Find a villager you don?t want to keep or you want to relocate and get them into boxes:
You can:
- talk to your dreamies as usuall
- skip forward two days untill they tell you someone is leaving
- if the villager is a dreamie: get the villager to ping you so you can change their mind
- if the villager is no dreamie: tell them goodbye and find out the day they are leaving
- skip to the day but check if the villager is really in boxes, they can change their mind!
- if the villager is really in boxes: congrats we can start!
(difficult to explain I might add it later but its really not necessary)
The Main Part: How to cycle?
- Make sure your town is prepared and the villager in boxes
- save and exit
- TT 1 year and 5 days back from the date you saved
- load the game with your mayor
- everything should be the same but the house of the villager in boxes is missing
- use this time to change patterns around:
- place a pattern where the house of the villager was if you don?t like someone move there
- prepare a plot of 3x3 spaces where you want future villagers to move, surrounded by patterns - save and exit
- TT 1 year 0 days forward - a new plot will appear
- start a new character
- press B quickly to skip through the opening scene
- walk around with the new character to :
- check where the new plot is
- check who is moving in (you might not want a dreamie to move in when you are cycling because it will be more difficult to cycle if you keep them and take longer to get them back if you let them go later) - "exit" (see abbreviations) and restart a new character untill you are happy with who moves in and where
- if you missed a spot with the patterns and the villager keeps moving there, just load up the game when you last saved (exactly a year ago) and place more patterns. then save. The game will not see this as TT as long as you always "exit" with the new character and don?t save or load the game with an already existing character before you change the date.
- if you are happy with the new villager and his plot, talk to Isabelle and Tom Nook
- place down the house of the new character at the place you selected for it, the pattern-grid in that area will be removed
- talk to Isabelle again and save: the current status of your town will be saved for the first time now!
- delete the new character in the menu
- load your mayor?s file
- as you start up Isabelle will ask where you have been for so long
- walk to where the house of the new character was and "repair" the grid of designs so no villager will accidentally move there
- save the game and exit
- TT 7 days forward - someone will be in boxes now
- start the game with a new character
- check your dreamies?houses:
- if a dreamie is in boxes:
- "exit" without saving
- TT back 7 days
- load the game with your mayor
- let them ping you to change their mind
- get someone else into boxes by repeating the steps I had descibed above, then restart the cycling from the beginning! - If none of the dreamies is in boxes: no need to check other houses, "exit" without saving and continue:
- load the game with your mayor
- Isabelle will tell you who is leaving
- write down the name of who is leaving in a list and mark the names of dreamies you cycle out to relocate them in a spechial color. This will help you to count how many villagers you need to cycle to reach 16.
- repeat the steps untill you have cycled out enough villagers and every house is in the right space!
- wait for a villager to leave
- have someone (a friend with amiibo, someone on the belltree) put the villager you actually want into boxes.
- visit the town of your friend the day after the villager left and convince the dreamie to come to your town
- start with a new character to make sure the dreamie moves in the right space
- save with the new character and delete it
- repair the pattern-grid with your mayor
- repeat untill you have all your dreamies back and in the right spaces
- feel proud after all that hard work!
Whoever finds a typo: Congrats! you may keep it^^
If this somehow doesn?t belong in this section of the forum or there is just a better place for it, please move this tread.
If you find an error or notice any mistake I made, please pm or vm me to let me know, Thanks^^
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