Day 15: Keaton, Extreme Lag

At the museum today, Blathers informed me that the stegosaurus is now complete. I believe this is the first dinosaur I’ve completed so far.

The complete stegosaurus in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons museum.

Today’s bottle message contained a recipe for a mountain standee. But since these bottle messages seem to be showing up every day, I may stop mentioning them in the blog, unless they contain something particularly interesting. And someday, we’re going to have all the recipes and we’re just going to hate bottle messages. 😛

Keaton the eagle has officially moved in, so I welcomed him to the island.

Keaton: Oh, Jeff! Glad to see you. The Keaton Express has arrived on Forest!

While up on the mountain (and yes, I know it’s a cliff, but I enjoy calling it a mountain :P), I found a lost item! I didn’t realize these had carried over from New Leaf; or at least, it’s a feature I hadn’t even thought about.

I picked up a lost item!

I asked Shari about it, and she said it wasn’t hers. But she suggested that I ask Louie about it. So I did, and sure enough, it was his. I don’t know if that was just a coincidence or if Shari knew. But regardless, Louie gave me a clothesline pole for returning the item.

When I shot down a blue balloon present, I found a recipe for a cherry-blossom pond stone. It was my first cherry blossom recipe; I built one and put it outside of my house.

Louie was drinking on the bench outside of town hall. So I sat next to him and took a picture. 😛

Louie takes a drink while sitting on a bench in ACNH.
He was drinking one of Cranky Kong’s potions.

As for my town progress, Tom Nook informed me that Isabelle will now start keeping track of the island’s reputation. Forest only has one star (out of five) so far, and Isabelle said we need more residents. So Tom Nook sold (yes, sold) me a housing kit so that another villager could move in. I placed it on ground level, but north near the cliffs.

I redeemed some Nook Miles for a fountain, but it was just a recipe. And for some odd reason, I need a drinking fountain (along with 20 stones and 8 iron nuggets) in order to craft it. I’ll have to work on that another day.

Around 10 p.m., I opened my gate for Friday Night Forest. Ben, Patrick, Benji, Ros, T Zelda, Jesse, and Marlie came over for a visit. After an impromptu ocarina concert, we fell into holes from a new bench configuration. When I did this with eight spaces in a row, people on the far ends couldn’t see the other end. So this way, everyone should be able to see everyone else, and hopefully, get a good picture.

Eight players fall in holes.

I set up four stools in my house, because I want to test out merging. Everyone basically tries to fall in the center, and then goes back to their stools. The object is to get two or more people merged in the center. This worked in City Folk, but unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce it in New Horizons.

Four stools in Jeff's house.

Back outside, someone started shaking a tree and a branch fell. Then another, and another, and another. Tons of branches kept falling, and I didn’t realize you could get that many from one tree! That will be helpful when I need to craft more pitfall seeds!

Lots of branches fall from one tree.

Speaking of pitfall seeds, they came in handy when I decided to have a sumo tournament. Some of the players were placing bets on who they thought would win. 😛 In the first round, TZ beat Patrick, Jesse beat Ben, Ros beat Marlie, and Benji beat me. 😛

Before starting the 2nd round, TZ and I did a non-tournament match between City Folk veterans. 😛 To my surprise, I actually won my first sumo match in New Horizons. TZ left after that.

In the semifinals, Benji beat Jesse. Jorge arrived, so he took TZ’s place in the othersemifinal, beating Ros. In the finals, Frogboy (Jorge) slaughtered the Butcher (Benji). 😛 Congrats, Jorge! And good game, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the sumo tournament! 🙂

Jorge defeats Benji in the pitfall sumo finals.

After the game, I started to dig up the leftover pitfalls, and Jorge tried to pick up his prize winnings (mostly money bags). However, we began experiencing some major lag. I was spinning my shovel, Jorge was semi-hunched over and unable to pick up his bags, and others were frozen or repeatedly squatting.

But the lag got worse…much worse. When I went into Keaton’s house, the view stayed on the outside of the house. For literally a full minute, I could see Ros trying to enter Keaton’s house. Then, the screen went black…and stayed that way for over six minutes! Then, the loading icon showed up for another minute. And then I was finally in Keaton’s house…over 8 minutes after I entered his door!

Jesse left quietly and returned, which kind of reset us all back to the airport. However, the lag was still a problem. Look how far Shari was from me when she acknowledged that I spoke to her. 😀

Shari: How many times am I gonna bump into you today? Hang on.
Well, at least Shari is social distancing. 😛

We tried vaulting across the river repeatedly, and we often ran into invisible objects. Perhaps the game still thought someone was there, who had already crossed? I don’t know, but it was rather weird.

Ben left, and soon, we all got disconnected. I reopened, and I was joined by Benji, Ros, Jesse, Marlie, Patrick, Maria, and Red. I didn’t notice any lag this time. At Ros’ suggestion, we took a photo on the beach. It looked really nice with the cherry blossom trees in the background.

The Friday Night Forest crew.

Ros left, and Valentine joined in. Since we were able to move freely between rooms now, we played a few rounds of museum tag. But around 12:30 a.m., I ended the session. Thanks to all who came tonight, it was fun! 🙂

Earlier in the day, I posted a video about pitfall sumo. It shows what you need, how to set it up, how to play, and it shows a few battles that I recorded yesterday. Check it out if you’re looking for a good online game to play in New Horizons.

Have a great weekend, everyone! See you next time! 🙂