What mistakes did you make when you first started your island?

[Pyoopi]

A mistake or stupid determination?

I was on a mission to make money trees and buried 99k bags of bells in the glowy spot. Until it was determined that the max was 10k. RIP

 

[poweradeex]

Planting LOTS of flowers, now my island is covered by fields of different flowers and I need to clean it up.

 

[DJ-Mika]

New Horizons was my first ever Animal Crossing game, so I knew absolutely nothing about this game; it's mechanics, it's secrets, etc. NOTHING

My newbie mistakes:
-Picking an island layout where my Resident Services was literally a few inches from my air port My island was flat and undecorated for the longest time, so I didn't notice just how short it was until I finally started to seriously decorate, and it drove me nuts; it felt so restricting and seeing everyone else having these grand open entrances didn't help I know I could've restarted to "fix" it, but by that point I was so far into the game and had almost everything that I wanted/unlocked that it would've been a pain to start from scratch, also my island held memories and I didn't want to delete that so short entrance it is <XD

-I didn't know that the glowing spots in the ground was an opportunity to plant bells to grow money trees; I would dig it up, take the money, and fill the hole XDD I did always wonder why the hole would still be glowing even after you got the "treasure" inside so that was probably a little bit of a hint lol

-When I got my first shooting star event I didn't know you could actually interact with them. I just saw the falling stars, thought they were pretty, and went about my business

-I didn't know that NMT were a finite resource and I thought you could use the same one over and over again

-I didn't know that your first 5 villagers would begin with starter homes, so while most of my starters were eventually cycled out my one starter that I genuinely liked was stuck with a starter home Again, I know most people would kick and then re-invite to fix that, but again memories and I wanted to keep her as my oldest resident so I stuck with it (but thanks to the update that's no longer an issue and I'm glad I kept her! )

 

[BunAndButt3r]

Many of you entered NH having played previous AC games, so if not for New Horizons, maybe in a previous AC game where you were less familiar?

Even though I started ACNH right after it was released, it was my first main-line game (I had been playing ACPC). Now that I'm starting a new island, I'm looking back at mistakes I made originally!
- I definitely ate the fruit mom sent.
- I didn't hit rocks in a quick enough succession, then wondered why it took so long to get iron nuggets!
- I sold the bed Luna gave me, because I didn't know items were unorderable.

Anything, or just me?

A big mistake I made was deciding I was going to recreate the Gerudo Desert to be my island. After pulling an all-nighter just flattening my island, I also had to put the sand path on top of it! In the end, I finished the island, but I eventually wanted grass again, so I had to get rid of all of the sand, and then build new cliffs from scratch. It took forever, and I wished I hadn't flattened my island!

 

[lakeside]

It's not a mistake I could have avoided, but my only real regret is my main character's name. See, my birth name is very feminine, and in early 2021 I chose a more neutral name. I started playing on launch day, exactly a year before I came out, so it was unavoidable. I also started using he pronouns. I was able to change my character's style to male (which is absolutely wonderful! I'm so happy Nintendo allowed it) but everyone is still calling me by my deadname. Oops! I'm getting used to it, though.

 

[Bluebellie]

I realized later on the game that you can organize the order of the villagers. I had to move them all out, and move them back in with the order that I wanted.

I also thought that the two south river months would make things easier and more symmetrical. That’s not the case at all. I think it made everything harder to design, but I did manage to work around it. I don’t mind it right now.

Many times throughout the game I’ve had to move a house or building here and there and here and there and back and forward before I knew where I wanted to place things. I I was moving things all around until the layout made since again. I spent a lot of bells and a lot of time doing this.

 

[BoonyBoo]

A mistake I was petty enough to restart my island over was decorating my island's grass with those little cottage-core patterns you see creators making on the internet. It took me a while to realize it but I wanted my island to be natural, which even included the grass. The patterns were too easy to accidentally scrape with your foot anyway. Another thing was terraforming. Again, what I really wanted was a natural island. I thought I knew what I was doing, but when I went back on New Horizons after a break and saw how weird I made my island look, I had to Thanos snap and reset everything. Pettily, the name too. I named that little avatar after my stupid past YouTube names. I finally named her something I'm most okay with (Brownie). Due to everyone sharing their experiences with losing money and money opportunities, I might as well share my epic L with turnips. I bought a crap ton of turnips to make bank. my pockets were completely full of turnips, and lots were outside, they were selling for a decent price, but the clock struck noon and the price dropped before I could get to the turnips from outside. Stupidly, ever so stupidly, did I forget that you must absolutely never go back in time with turnips. That's what I did to desperately reach that high price again, but much to my despair, the rest of those turnips were ROTTING. I gambled by way back to being able to pay off my home loans, but gosh did that memory burn itself into my brain.

 

[CuriousCharli]

Some of my biggest regrets are:
* Selling Nintendo or Dodo/special items I can never get back, accidentally or ignorance thinking I could get them back somehow.
* Letting Frita go/switching her out just to reset her house to her diner when I could of just waited, granted I didn't know Nintendo would make it a thing.
* Letting villagers go without gaining their photo, I seem to have it in my head I have more than what I actually do because of this.

I do remember messing up something big but I don't remember so I guess it doesn't matter now xD

 

[LoserMom]

I flattened my entire first island and then immediately regretted it and lost all motivation to terraform/decorate it soooo I restarted lol

 

[Snek]

1. For the longest time I bad no idea how to get the golden axe. I thought I had to cut down many trees in order to accomplish this...

2. Not resetting for the fruit and airport colour. At the time I didn't think about it because my fruit was orange so I thought an orange/red airport was ok. With all fruits its a bit different.

3. Placing flowers together like in NL, hoping they reproduce that way. When I found out it was different, I felt I wasted a lot of time.

 

[Violet Witch]

My biggest mistakes (that I can remember) were not collecting star fragments the day after a meteor shower, and not villager hunting when I had an empty plot before it autofilled. I'll never forget when Beardo joined my island and how badly I wanted him out... that was when I decided to take the plunge and start buying amiibo cards and trading.

 

[tiffanistarr]

I remember waiting forever for 3 stars, the furniture getting is pretty slow in early game. I did not know that you could place fish and bugs and it counts as decorating…..

Earlier this year, i decided i wanted to have a little springcore moment, but im extra so i ended up putting custom designs ALL OVER. I’m talking all over. They make the island look beautiful. However, spring has come and gone and i’m ready to move on and try something new. Now im stuck with kicking the custom designs off. It’s almost tempting the restart, but i have maxed bells and hundreds a thousands of miles and hundreds and hundreds of nook mile tickets. So flattening my island is the most logical, but omg it’s going to take so long

 

[AlyssaAC]

Not choosing a good island from the start. The first island I chose had pears and a green airport and green is my least favorite color. Plus, my resident services was way too close to the airport, so next time I’ll choose one that is farther away from it.

 

[Telula]

Randomly plopping my villagers' houses on the island with no thought to how to make them work layout-wise. Got most of them on the beach right now and this time I'm going to make sure they have a better flow with my setup.

 

[Hypno KK]

I wouldn't call this a mistake per say but when pumpkins were announced, I planted a lot of them, thinking they'd be like normal farming games and disappear after being picked.

Needless to say, they don't lolol. I have looooads of pumpkins.

I did this too. I had way too many pumpkins for a while!

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

Planting too many flowers because Isabelle told me that would increase my Island’s rating. Well it didn’t and those flowers took up 90% of the unoccupied space on my Island and I couldn’t get rid of all of the unwanted ones fast enough and my rating dropped and Isabelle kept telling me that Islanders were complaining about the flowers!

 

[-Blue-]

Nook told me to eat fruit. I did that and wasted my first Nook Mile ticket. I ended up destroying a lot of the rocks. And resources back in launch day were hard to come by.

 

[kyle on saturn]

i originally wanted my resident services to be straight ahead from the airport, it ended up be slightly to the right and not too far, i also picked a map with 2 middle river mouths, both of these arent a big deal and easy to work around, i refuse to reset even if i dont play too much

 

[Lunamoona]

Many of you entered NH having played previous AC games, so if not for New Horizons, maybe in a previous AC game where you were less familiar?

Even though I started ACNH right after it was released, it was my first main-line game (I had been playing ACPC). Now that I'm starting a new island, I'm looking back at mistakes I made originally!
- I definitely ate the fruit mom sent.
- I didn't hit rocks in a quick enough succession, then wondered why it took so long to get iron nuggets!
- I sold the bed Luna gave me, because I didn't know items were unorderable.

Anything, or just me?

Oh jeez one of my villagers had a stupid catchphrase and he asked if he should change it i accidentally said yes and put his new catchphrase as his old one it was a really dumb catchphrase and it spread around my entire island i couldn't bare it so i restarted

 

[Lullaboid]

Letting my flowers get out of control. I think many people made this mistake at some point. It's just so much harder to move them or get rid of them than in previous games.