Animal Crossing: Free to Start Edition

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beatbandito
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Animal Crossing: Free to Start Edition

Postby beatbandito » Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:14 pm

Okay, I've been playing this actively (addictively) for almost a week now, and I may have jumped the gun on some earlier assumptions. I've unlocked all the animals, am 28 hours away from the first of 4 final crafting trees for leveling friendship, and other though I did get a $.99 super pack offer of bells at the start, I currently have more than the total of leaf tickets it gives and never used the tools.

The way the mechanics are set up are perfect for taking advantage but... they just never seem to. The only reason to spend money is to try and rush things. Not just speeding up production on buildings, but you can spend money on the following:

access to the quarry for money and decent chunks of important crafting resources
immediately regrow fruit
easier bug catching and fishing
to instantly complete crafting or to craft without resources (doesn't cover bells cost to craft)
to summon an animal onto the map, and to keep completing requests after their allotted 3 for a shift

Now, it helps that I've only missed about one potential fruit gathering opportunity per day, but I've never been in a spot where I felt I needed to use fertilizer. By using friend boxes you can usually pick up a few extra fruit if you need to. The only times I've even gone that low is using the freebie request cards to keep handing fruit over way faster than it produces naturally.

This game is going to be so much super crack. This type of lifeshattering efficiency management is exactly my thing, but even just casual play should be easy to achieve with no pushback. Crafting timers never get in the way of playing, they only impact progress if you're trying to mainline certain animals as fast as possible. Again, they offer you a chance to pay to move faster than you need to. The only annoyingly predatory thing is that fruit spawns on three hour times independent to each tree, as opposed to almost everything else that is timed windows at the end of which there's a universal reset. I can only imagine this is to keep you actively aware that you need to play every three hours to not waste the resource, instead of being able to pick it up whenever and keep working on the current shift if they were on the same timer.

I want to make some kind of comprehensive guide for starting out in this so I can pretend the unnecessary effort I put into these kinds of things isn't exactly that. So expect me to try and edit this first post to slowly include better sorted information on play at some point because the next shift just started and those animals aren't going to get their own fucking seashells.


Super Animal Guide to Crossing:

Animals
There are 40 animals to meet. You unlock them with character levels and they show up around the map.

There are two interactions with animals that are not yet at your camp.

Requests
3 per shift.
Give -
- 2 friendship (sometimes 3, see bellow)
- Crafting Resources (1-2 types, 1-3 pieces)
- 100 - 1000 Bells

Animal will request bugs, shells, fish or fruit. They don't ask for combinations of those categories.

They make requests of two primary types:

1-3 different items, 1-3 of each. 100 Bells for each type of item regardless of number of units, making a max of 300 bells.

1 rare item. 1000 Bells.
Fish: Black Bass or Red Snapper
Bugs: Horned Dynastid
No other options seen

Seemingly randomly you will get a bonus scene, accompanied by extra crafting resources, friendship, or both. Scenes -

- Fish: Smoking / Soup
- Fruit: Smoothies / Fruit Basket (have also gotten soup in the past, may have been a bug or replaced by basket in .9 update)
- Shells: Necklace / Collection
- Bugs: Singing / Painting


Talking
1 per shift
Gives 2 friendship
A few lines of monologue from the animal, usually explaining a gameplay aspect.


You can summon animals to the map for that shift with a calling card and get another set of requests with a request card.

Depending on the animal at levels 3, 5 or 7 they will come to your camp if you craft certain furniture. At your camp the interactions vary slightly.

Requests
1 at a time, given at intervals I haven't totally figured out yet. Otherwise same as on the map.

Talking
1 at a time, same intervals I don't fully understand as with requests, but when one refreshes all animals at camp will. Definitely resets when an animal is invited for the first time.
Give -
- 1 friendship
AND
- 1-3 units of 1 crafting resource
OR
- 100 or 500 Bells
OR
- 2 friendship
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Newbie
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Re: Animal Crossing: Free to Start Edition

Postby Newbie » Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:26 pm

This all sounds good. I am sure I will participate in the discussion once an official version for my region is available.
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Re: Animal Crossing: Free to Start Edition

Postby Newbie » Tue Nov 21, 2017 7:36 pm

Okay, this is apparently now out for all regions. If you don't find me on social media for some reason, my AC code is 9746 7384 124.

They're advertising a Nook chair or K.K. Slider stool for 250 tickets each which will summon the respective animal to your campsite. On the one hand, this is a huge waste of tickets because there's no gameplay benefit to this; they don't do anything except give you short filler comments and play music, in K.K.'s case, but also tickets are pretty unnecessary? Aside from maybe expanding your crafting queue, careful play can supplant nearly any benefit they can provide.
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Re: Animal Crossing: Free to Start Edition

Postby beatbandito » Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:02 pm

You have 45 days for that deal*, so maybe hit second tier crafting before you're sure you don't have better use for ticket.

*and then they can have the offer again for less whenever they want.
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