This is the story of a girl that's really unlucky. I haven't had a peppy villager on my island since Bangle moved out. I've been struggling between Bunnie, Rosie, Chrissy, and Audie. Bunnie, Rosie, and Chrissy have all been in my previous New Leaf towns and I really enjoyed them, especially because peppy villagers are my absolute favorite. I decided, however, that Audie would be my main goal. Her design is so cute and so is her backstory, and she's the one villager that I haven't had in my town before.
So, I spent 107 NMTs just to try to get any of them. (This totals to around 300 NMTs already spent.) 20 tickets in I found Bunnie. My idiot brain thought "Oh, you have a lot of tickets! You have plenty of time to find Audie!" 2 tickets later I find Bunnie again. An omen. Nervously, I continued on my quest for Audie. This mistake would lead to my ruin. Bunnie never showed again. Audie never showed. Rosie and Chrissy abandoned me. 107 NMTs later and I still have no peppy villager. Desperately, I TT ahead to see if I could at least fill the empty plot with ANY peppy villager. It was Chops. Your newest villager is usually the hardest one to get out and I had no more NMTs. The campsite method was my only hope.
45 villagers and 20 hours later and I finally have her in my campsite. (If anyone's interested, I recorded what villagers I had along with how many of each personality type I got. I didn't get any duplicates which is amazing to me. I stopped counting after the last few though so the numbers are a little inaccurate.) Next step was to try to get her to move in and replace Chops. The guide I was using mentioned the card game and said to reset if you lose, but all of the comments said that it would be okay to try again after going through a few dialogue options. She first wanted to play the card game for some furniture which I lost twice but I didn't reset and it was still fine. She then asked to play the game to decide if she would move in. I lost and she said something akin to "I'm not moving here lmao bye." I talked to her over and over again (this is the first camper I've actually spoken to to try to get to move in by the way). and she just kept rejecting my requests over and over. Finally, after I'm on the verge of tears, she agrees to play again. I win and she asks to replace Coco. I reset and go through everything again. My second time she asks to replace Chops. It's over. I have won. I started this search at 2 AM with my NMT's. She agreed to move in at around 1:30 AM the next day. The only break I took was the 3 hour break to sleep (which was only because I passed out orz)
Would I recommend the campsite method? Yes, but I would not recommend literally ignoring food and sleep to do it lmao. It's easy to do and I had no duplicates which differs from island hopping. You also have a higher chance of getting a villager with the personality type you're missing. I also learned that Isabelle does, in fact, tell you if you will have shooting stars that day. I saw a debate going on in a different thread about that, but she told me multiple times. This method also fixed Redd for me because he completely stopped showing up since I got my first painting and he's now here today. I would also suggest having some hybrid breeding plots set up because all of my patches are now overfilled with hybrids.
Sorry this post is long, but I wanted to document this experience as well as help anyone decide what method they should use for searching for villagers! Wishing everyone better luck than I had with getting their dreamies lol.
Also a side note, I find it interesting that Isabelle tells you about meteor showers... whenever I have one, Isabelle never mentions it in the announcements for me.
