1. This is me and Maya, who lives in Sweden. Like, the real Sweden, not just some ACWW town named Sweden. I'm pretty sure that's the farthest global reach I've experienced in Wild World. I gave her a Green Pipe and 1UP Mushroom for a Black Lucky Cat and a Gold Lucky Cat, so it was a fruitful trip for both.
I've also met a fellow from the UK (again, the real UK) who claims that Nintendo gave out different special Mario furniture over there, among them the Mario Mural and the Bullet Bill. Awesome!
2. Almost immediately after I complained about it last time, Nintendo has started sending out WiFi letters much more frequently. It's like somebody at Nintendo woke up and started pushing buttons again. We haven't received anything rare, but at least it is something. The letters seem typically to be attached to a holiday... like August's fireworks night, the Bug Catching Contest, or Labor Day.
3. I still have Elise (one of the rare Toys R Us chimps) in my village, so I started a campaign to snag her pic. So I was talking to her and sending her letters every day. I also have Octavian and Kid Cat in town, so I decided to go after their pics as well.
I'm really bad at getting pics. It's yet another item that the worthless Player's Guide does not discuss, so I have no idea of the best way to do it. There must be a trick to it, since I talked and sent letters for several weeks straight and never got anything from any of the three.
Then one day I saw that Whitney had moved in to town... and I think the wolf characters look cool-as-hell, so I added her into my daily chat/mail plan. And within two days she hands over her pic! The other three jerks are still stonewalling me.
4. Speaking of the rotten Player's Guide, I know there's a certain segment of you out there who, upon hearing me mention the Guide, started scoffing and loudly braying about how you never use Player's Guides because you have the internet, duh.
Well, for a future entry, I'm going to collect the best outright lies about Animal Crossing that I have found online. Yes, you can get a lot of secrets and tips online without having to pay for a Player's Guide... but you also get a lot of complete bullshit that dumbass kids submit to tip sites for the sheer thrill of screwing with people and seeing their awful online handles published.
5. Late one night, I saw this gigantic ugly moth sitting on one of my trees. It was the oak silk moth and I figured it had a good chance of being one of the biggest bugs in the game. So I caught a bunch of them and stashed them until the day of the Bug Catching Contest. Luckily, when I gave them to Tortimer, he did not catch on and say anything like "Howrf howrf, Joe, where did you catch such an obviously NOCTURNAL insect?" So my ringers worked and I won the Big Trophy. Now I need to hide a shark for the Fishing Contest...
6. You know the stupid impossible trading quest that starts with a red turnip and then branches out to include various paths of character trading? Well, I finally finished off the Pascal branch, having received both the Golden Axe and Pascal's Pic. Strangely, the massage chair that you're supposed to give to Tortimer is orderable from the catalog... so you can give the Mayor as many as you want to pay for, and receive a scallop (for Pascal) in exchange. In contrast, Saharah's turban is not orderable, so to finish off that half of the quest means that you are stuck buying red turnips in hopes of seeing Wendell. What a pain in the ass.
7. I have donated over 200,000 bells to the poor faraway town of Boondox and received the Blue Feather. The next benchmark for a new feather is 500,000 bells, and I'm assuming that's total donations, not another 500,000 on top of the 200,000 I have already donated.
It has occurred to me that it would be more efficient if I socked all of my bells in the bank... so I could build up to the rare Post Office prizes, and then dump on the money over to Boondox. But you need to hit 10 million bells to start getting cool stuff out of the bank, so Boondox's scale seems much more achievable.
8. One morning I walked out of my house and, as usual, jumped to my tools so I could switch to the watering can. While I'm dragging junk around in the inventory screen, a smegging banded dragonfly zooms right past me. So I quickly switch to the net and run off after it... and, incredibly, I catch it in one swipe while it tried to route itself around the Museum wall.
9. Using the Player's Guide as a basis (don't laugh), I finally compiled a list of every catalog item I need. It is a nicely sizable list since I pretty much played for months without buying much of anything, instead concentrating on paying off my home mortgage.
The Guide, in yet another tribute to non-usability, presents the item lists in no particular order at all. It ain't alphabetical and it ain't even in the order in which the items appear on the in-game catalog. So after typing everything up, I alphabetized the lists by category, and then sent the lists to my Sidekick. Now they all exist as editable sticky notes, so when I find a new item I can easily delete it out.
Obviously there are a ton of items that I fully expect to never see, like the Post Office Model that you receive for having saved 999 million bells. But I still like tracking the more reasonable items.
