Jeff's New Leaf Blog

My first stop today was to talk to Big Top, who was out walking around. He told me he turned 180 degrees in his sleep and woke up on the opposite end of the bed. I’m having trouble picturing an elephant just fitting in a bed, let alone having room to turn completely around.

I then went into the Re-Tail store and saw that they had a metal guitar. I bought it.

Outside, Yuka was dropping hints that she wanted me to write her a letter. She then compared Pete, the letter carrier, to a matchmaker. Uh, no. No. No. No. Don’t get any ideas, Yuka. I don’t like you in that way. Or in any way.

I quickly ran away from Yucky Yuka. I’d rather go to work than talk to her! So I went to town hall and talked to my assistant Isabelle. I decided to change my town tune to The Final Countdown. Animal Crossing: New Leaf comes out one month from today (in America at least), and I know a lot of you are counting down to that. I’m also counting down to the 4th season of Arrested Development, which will be available on Netflix later this month. If anyone wants the notes to The Final Countdown, enter BAB-e–zCBCBA-zz.

I continued talking to Isabelle, listening to all her tips for living in Forest. She then asked me to get a seashell for her.

The way she was talking, it almost seemed like she had a crush on me. But when I came back with a shell for her, she thanked me by giving me three cherries from her hometown. I planted them near my house.

Her mother sent them to her, and told her to share…because that’s what good puppies do. That sentence left me rather speechless. So she’s a good puppy? Am I supposed to give her a treat now or something?

After finishing up listening to her tips, she gave me a watering can. That was nice.

However, I’m probably not going to be doing a lot of watering. In Animal Crossing games, flowers are not a priority–at least not at first. For now, I have projects to fund, a house to expand, ugly animals to evict, and so on. (Just kidding about the evictions). I’ll deal with flowers later on. For now, I want to be able to run around town and get stuff done.

Anyway, I headed over to Nookling Junction for my fortune cookie. I knew which item I’d be getting after reading this fortune.

The Master Sword, of course!

You know, in previous Animal Crossing games, the Nintendo items like this were relatively rare and didn’t come along very often. But in just a week, I’ve already got the Mario Kart kart, a green shell, the Master Sword, and two masks of characters from Zelda games.

I have to wonder, are these things too easy to come by? I guess it depends on how many of these Nintendo items are in the game, but it seems odd to be getting a Nintendo item practically every day–and without spending a bell too. But for now, I’m not complaining. I just realized I’m going to need a dresser for storage though…

My battery was about to die at this point, so I stopped playing for now. I might go back and play some more later to try to earn some bells. I’d like to pay off my bridge and then get started on some other community projects. Well, bye for now. See you soon!

UPDATE: After my 3DS was done charging, I went back to Forest for some nighttime fun. I took the boat to the island, and caught some new bugs and fish.

While diving, I also pulled up some seaweed.

I then decided to try another one of the Tortimer tours. This time, I did the dragonfly one. You have five minutes to catch as many dragonflies as you can. I caught five, which earned me a Silver Tortimer award (whatever that means) and four medals.

The tours always seem to take place in the daylight, even though it was after 11 p.m. when I played. I’m not exactly sure how that works, but oh well.

After that, I returned to Forest; I donated my new catches and sold the rest. I paid 70,000 bells towards my bridge; it still needs about 58,000 bells before it’s paid off. I also tried out my watering can. The flowers glisten after being watered to let you know they’ve been watered. But the surprising thing, at least to me, is that they keep glistening! I watered some before I left for the island, and they were still shining when I got back. Okay that’s all for tonight, see you tomorrow!

As mayor, I’m expected to personally greet each new animal that moves into town. So today I did just that, as I went to meet and greet Forest’s newest resident, Big Top. I don’t know him yet, but he’s already my second-favorite resident (behind Aurora of course).

I then made a trip to the island. It was actually still light outside!

I neglected to mention this yesterday, but my other island fruit (besides bananas) is mangos. Leila, who I assume is Kapp’n daughter, wants to “play store” and will buy things from you. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have very much money. Still, I played along at least this one time.

After catching some island bugs and collecting some fruit, I returned to Forest. In Nookling Junction, they had a star globe for sale. It looked pretty cool, so I bought it. “RCP, here, have a globe. heh heh horf.”

Over at the museum, I donated a fossil, and then looked around a bit. I found Yuka in the fossil room, with the other dinosaurs. I must admit the amber looks much better in this game. But Yuka is as nasty as ever, complaining about the museum.

Typical of her to complain about everything. Give me a break, you whiny marsupial. I’m working on it.

I then returned to my house to take a look at my star globe, as well as a green shell I got from my daily fortune cookie.

That’s all for tonight, but of course I’ll be back tomorrow with another update. In the meantime, check out this video of my first trip to the island that I recorded yesterday.

I noticed another house going up just south of my own house. Big Top will be moving in tomorrow. I’ve never had Big Top in the earlier games, but the three superheroes (Big Top, Kid Cat, and Agent S) are definitely some cool characters to have around.

I then headed south, to the dock. As expected, Kapp’n was there, ready to take me to the island! He does charge 1,000 bells for the round trip, but that’s okay.

As expected, he still sings about cucumbers…

…and other topics as well.

Several members of Kapp’n’s family can be found in the shop there.

But then I want out to explore the island. At last! Animal Crossing has bananas!

I had to borrow a wet suit, and then I could swim!!

The island has summer bugs, so I borrowed a net (you actually can’t use your own because Kapp’n keeps your equipment until you return to the boat). I caught a number of summer bugs on the beach and on palm trees.

When I was done there, I signed up for the shellfish free-for-all tour. This is one of the games that Tortimer hosts. You have five minutes to catch shellfish by diving underwater. The goal was to catch three of them, and that’s exactly how many I caught.

Because I met the goal, I earned one medal.

Back at the shop, items can be bought using those medals as currency. They actually don’t accept bells there. A wet suit is available for 40 medals. If you buy it, you can go swimming back in your own town. I definitely want to get one of these, but it may take a while.

I then headed back home.

With my mini-vacation over, I needed to get back to work. I am the mayor, after all.  My development permit is complete and I can now start my mayoral duties. There are two main things I can do right now. One is to enact ordinances. You can make your town a night owl town, where stores are open later and animals stay out longer. Or you can have an early bird town, which is just the opposite. You could also choose to have a beautiful town or a rich town. There is a 20,000 bell fee to enact the ordinance though, and I was a couple thousand short.

The other thing I can do as mayor  is to begin public works projects. You can choose various town upgrades; I looked at the list and decided a bridge was the most urgent need.

I chose a spot near my western waterfall. Lloid the gyroid is placed at that spot to accept donations. The bridge will require 128,000 bells before construction can begin.

With my mayoral duties done for now, I went shopping. I bought my fortune cookie at Nookling Junction, and I got fortune #50.

I redeemed it and got a Fi mask. Great, now I can annoy myself.

I wanted shop at the Able Sisters, but they were already closed. Wow, they close at 9:00 p.m.?  They close earlier in each game. On GameCube, they stayed open until 2 a.m.  In City Folk, they closed at 11 p.m., and now 9:00.

That’s exactly why I need to convert Forest to a night owl town. So I sold some things and then returned to town hall. I quickly signed the Night Owl ordidance into law.

That’s all for today, check back tomorrow for another update!