The Chronicles of Avalith

[Mairen]

Welcome to Avalith! A beautiful place where the pears are always juicy and delicious and the lilies are always in bloom. Join me on an adventure as we explore these lands day by day with our delightful animal companions. There is beauty and magic to be found around every corner. Partake in the delights of botany as we grow flowers, trees, and bushes. Get lost in the excitement of discovering new fish and insects to fuel your desire for knowledge while you visit our museum. Wander wherever your heart and curiosity guides you. Here, I will be chronicling my progress as I work towards making this tropical paradise into an enchanting land where all are welcome.

 

[Mairen]

Entry 1: Finding the perfect map
Here we have my original town map. I reset for almost a full 24 hours before finally finding just the right one for me. My requirements were to have river outlets on either side and the bottom, a yellow airport, pears(1st choice) or cherries (a 2nd choice I was willing to accept if everything else was in order), and lilies as my native flower. I had no preference for which side of the map the dock was on. I didn't want a bunch of smaller beach rocks, but was hoping for just 2 larger ones, which I luckily got. This was, however, a lighter preference that I wasn't going to be bothered enough over to continue resetting for if I got an otherwise good island. I did want the peninsula to be up towards the top, but wasn't bothered on what side it was on.

If I were to be given a choice between a larger peninsula or a smaller one, I would have chosen the larger one, so once again, I lucked out with that aspect. Regarding the secret beach, I had no preference if it was centered or not. The only other requirement I had was I didn't want the town plaza very close to the airport. One of the reasons I restarted my original file was due to a poor location of that. It was originally as close as possible to the airport, but off centered. In this case, I wanted more space between those two facilities.

While resetting, I would go through lucky and unlucky waves. For awhile I was only getting pears or cherries, but the airport color would be wrong. What hurt the most would be when I'd get the right fruit and right airport color, but I'd be missing lilies. My motivation varied between "I am so ready to do this! Persistence will pay off if I just believe! This is going to be fun!" to "maybe I should just accept a different airport color or flower or something...I really just want to start playing.." down to "This game is dumb. I don't even want to play it anymore." I knew, though, that if I sacrificed on a preference, I'd more than likely be restarting again soon enough, looking for the features I wanted.

I can easily say that holding out and fighting until the end was entirely worth it. I was able to get a map with every aspect that I wanted and I couldn't be more pleased by it.

 

[Mairen]

Entry 2: The Lucky Days
As I begin the work of settling on my island, a few particular memories stand out to me so far, all seemingly a product of the insane luck I've been experiencing on my adventure. Luck doesn't usually come to me like this. I'm the one who rolls a 3 out of 100. Or is tripping and falling right into a puddle. Or going into a shop to purchase something and having the item "just sold out a minute ago." I don't feel bad for myself in this regard, I've come to peace with it and have accepted things as they are. So when things start going oddly in my favor, I cannot help but wonder what manner of stars have aligned for me.

The very first day that Nooks Cranny opened up, they had not one, but two houseplants for sale. Plants are my all time favorite item to fill my house with (even offline), so I was filled with absolute joy upon walking into the shop that day.

During the first 5 mystery islands I visited, 1 of them was a non-native flower island, one was a bamboo island with non-native flowers, and one was tarantula island. I still haven't decided if that was good luck or bad luck, as seen pictured above. If nothing else, it did allow me to pay off my home loan (though I only had the 1st bag upgrade thus far.) Also on those islands, I found 1 dreamy of mine, (Clay), one dreamy of my friend (Flora), and Skye, who isn't a dreamy, but she's a wolf (my favorite animal), and the cloud pattern on her is rather cute. So out of all of the villagers I could have ended up with from those islands, she's certainly a very lucky find!

Of the first 5 days on my island, 3 of them were rainy, so I was able to catch the coel-something fish (that I can neither spell nor pronounce). Plus I've been gifted with 4 wild hybrids on my cliffs from the rain.

Today, I decided to start inviting some favorites to my campsite via amiibo cards I possess. Naturally, I chose my #1 favorite villager, Wolfgang, to be the first. When I went to tap in his card, I received this strange message stating something like: "wolfgang isn't available, we'll connect you to his voicemail." of which, it said something like "sorry I'm not here right now, I'm in the middle of moving." I found it to be entirely strange, since I had successfully used his card on a previous file, so I tried using his card again, and got the same result. After a thorough google search, I learned if a villager is already planning to move into your town, this will occur. All you need to do is place an empty plot down and they'll move in the next day. Despite not being a time traveler, I had to make an exception to find out what was going on with this. Just as my research stated, upon examining the house, I was greeted with the message of "this plot is reserved for wolfgang." From what I have figured, he was in someone's void, and despite having a 1/402 chance, the one villager I wanted the most just happened to be the one who was bounced over to my island. I was delighted to discover that I could skip the standard 3-day campsite experience and get him in immediately.

 

[Mairen]

Entry 3: Journey for the stars
Despite not having terraforming unlocked yet, I decided to get to work with placing some of the decor around my island in an attempt to boost my rating up to 3 stars. I placed a fence around the town hall, planted 2 native fruit trees (which are going to be replaced with palm trees once that becomes possible for me), made some stalls which I customized with our town colors (rainbow of course!), and placed our native flowers on them. For good measure, I threw a fountain in front of the whole arrangement for the time being.

The rest of the decor placed around isn't really worth showcasing at this time, as it's more scattered than actually set up with any purpose. I have an outdoor bath on one of my beach rocks, a lighthouse on the peninsula, some cherry blossom decor on another beach rock, a small orchard containing 3 of each tree, a bonfire with some log benches on one section of the beach, and a pool on another section of the beach. I also have a very small playground started with the few appropriate items I have for that.

At this point, Isabelle is simply telling me that we should invite more villagers to the island, so that's what I'm focusing on as well. I currently have 7, and tomorrow will be Boone's 3rd day of visiting my campsite, so I will soon have 8, which is what I had in my original file when I received 3 stars. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll start seeing my rank increase very soon. Yet despite my eagerness to unlock terraforming, I have no actual plan other than perhaps a mountain town with lots of valleys, waterfalls, and scenic lookouts.