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So this is the first update on my town in a long time, since I took a break from Animal Crossing for a few months starting in January (and only recently started getting into it again by working on the patterns page). I set the DS clock to the same date in January whenever I turned on my game so that my flowers wouldn’t die, and now I have a lot of catching up to do.
It was a good oppurtunity to finish a project I wanted to do a while ago (but ran into problems with my gridded map), testing for “dead spots” in my town. That probably won’t mean anything to some of you, so for those who don’t know, here are the rules for tree growth from Liquefy’s excellent AC:WW guide:
1) Trees will not grow immediately next to water, cliffs, other trees, rocks, buildings, plazas, signs, and bridges.
2) There are certain “spots” or paths where the game will not allow trees to grow, so that there is room for the villagers to move around when they are outside.
3) Each acre can have, at maximum, 24 trees. Furthermore, each quarter-acre (divide each acre into four equal parts where each quarter-acre contains 8 x 8 = 64 “spots”) can have, at maximum, six trees.
It is not necessary to water saplings. Walking on or running over saplings does nothing. The only thing that matters when growing trees is location.
All trees take four days to grow to maturity.
Get rid of trees by chopping them with your Axe, then digging up the stumps with your Shovel. Use a Shovel to dig up saplings.
One way to guarantee the growth of a tree is to chop down an existing tree, remove its stump, then plant fruit/a coconut/a sapling/money in the exact same spot. This is a good way to start producing coconut palms or foreign fruit trees. (Note that while using this method to start a Bell Tree will guarantee
that the tree grows to maturity, it does not guarantee that the Bell Tree will successfully produce “fruit.”)
The part I bolded, #2, is what I wanted to find out — the dead spots where trees will never grow in my town. It’s just frustrating to be planning a layout of trees and have saplings die when they should grow.
So after picking up all my flowers and storing them in dressers, I began by marking squares red where I’m sure no trees will grow because they’re too close to obstacles (water, cliffs, rocks, buildings, etc.). A good rule of thumb for making sure a tree isn’t too close to anything is if you can dig a hole where you want to plant the tree, and walk a complete circle around it. (So you actually can plant trees next to pavement plazas.)
Then I planted around 12 trees in each acre every day, spaced far enough apart, and recorded which ones grew and which ones died. This is the final result. The darker red squares are the ones I eliminated before starting, the lighter red squares are the dead sopts I found, and I left the spaces white where trees grew:
Isn’t that interesting? I was expecting a random spread of dead spots, not these invisible treeless paths around town — presumably tracks along which my neighbors wander everyday. 😮
Time passed in my town as I was testing for dead spots, so there have been some neighbors changes:
First Pippy packed up and moved, I admit I was quite glad. 😛
Another peppy, Tabby, moved in to replace her. She’s not one of my favorite peppies but I like her. I have a real female orange tabby! 😛
Second to move was Monique.
To replace Monique was not another snooty, but a jock — my favorite jock! Kid Cat is one of the neighbors I wanted to lock in Dafdilly, so I was thrilled to see he moved in! 
Then Antonio was the next to go…
And he was replaced by Samson, so I still have two jocks in my town.
I used to have Margie locked (with Puddles), but decided to unlock her because I would rather have my favorite neighbor Melba. I moved Margie to my dad’s old town Red Bank, though, so she’s still around.
I couldn’t believe it, right after that Melba moved in! So lucky! 😯
I was also lucky to pick up a few rare items that I didn’t have:
Like this garden gnome, I’ve always wanted one.
Well, I guess this isn’t rare, but I don’t think I’ve ever had one and I think it’s pretty cool! 😛
I rarely ever see anything I don’t already have at Redd’s (even though there are lots of Redd-exclusive items I still need), but I just bought this weird raccoon figurine.
My town’s in February now, which means Bright Nights:
I like all the house styles in my town (they’re the exact 4 I decided I wanted while resetting), but I wish new neighbors moving in would pick the pink house style more often. It’s my favorite, and the dark green one, which is my least favorite, seems the most popular. 😦
All the lights are basically the same, but I picked Kid Cat’s lights as the best everyday in the hope that it would boost our friendship level, lol. (I want his picture.) Tortimer noticed.
When I played today, Bright Nights had just ended and Kid Cat was pleased to be the winner. 🙂 Now that I’ve finished dead spot testing I’ll probably move my flowers back, plant trees, and make patterns, getting my town back to how I like it.
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A Forest Life 
Wow! Your awesome Amy!
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Getting to know about dead spots this much!
I dunno how you do it! and i actually get it!
Planting a tree on a dead spot might block a Villager’s way! 😀
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Good Job Amy! and i hope you get to the original date a lot more faster!
Thanks! 😀 I was a bit spooked, feel like I discovered something secret that I shouldn’t have, these weird invisible paths. xP
I know, right? That’s pretty spooky! I think you should post that map on ACC and get it stickied for being such a strange discovery!
I’m glad you know what I mean about the spookiness! I dont think most people would care enough about dead spots for this information to be useful, but occasionally a thread pops up on the AC:WW board like “I’m trying to plant an orchard, but my trees keep dying. What am I doing wrong?” and I always respond to them. 😛
o.o Great post! I love the gribben maps (they’re called gribben right? ) u do your so aplicate with this!!! Oh SAMSON!!!! I had his photo and he is in my town but I haven’t been visiting a lot a casa yet… I hope he didn’t moved 😦 I love bright nights I discovered them with a Jemma’s post lol 😉 They are so fantastic! Specially with the contrast of colors, the white from the snow and the other colorful colors 😉 Great post!
Thanks Emma! The word is gridded. 😛 Oh cool, you have Samson too? I haven’t really got to know him though because I was so excited about Kid Cat moving in. Yeah, Bright Nights is so pretty; it’s a shame my town was so barren during it because of dead spot testing.
I’m stunned. I never would have guessed it’d turn out líke that. I always pictured you’d end with a map with scattered dots too. What an amazing discovery. I’d like to cross “amazing” with “creepy’ but I can’t think of a word right now. It’s certainly like seeing something you weren’t meant to see. Suddenly townies become mere chess pieces that gravitate toward predestined paths, and your town’s inner workings have been exposed 😆 It also feels like those lines are your town’s secret invisible fingerprint, so that’s pretty cool 😛
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Hooray, you got two of your favourite townies! 😀 Melba turning up right after Margie left was cool
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Wow… I stared at that map for a good 20 minutes. It’s just… spooky.
I was shocked too! And I almost feel silly for being shocked because in the guide I quoted, he said “spots” or “paths.” But I still wasn’t expecting that. Each day I recorded the dead spots on a fresh grid (so I wouldn’t get confused) and they looked random. But when I was putting the final grid together, it seemed the paths suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It is pretty spooky, but it’s kind of nice to know dead spots have a purpose and don’t exist simply to mess up people’s orchard plans. 😛
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And I know, I’m so glad, that’s 4/8 dream neighbors down 😀
Lol, your doing it that way and in that order is practically your town waiting for the right moment before revealing everything to you 😆 Next step: deciphering the secret code your town has made visible to you! o_o (Just kidding. I hope xP)
Amazing, this is very interesting! I like your theory about those invisible paths might be where neighbors walk, I was also expecting random spots, but when I saw the image I was amazed! You really discovered something BIG! And planting 12 trees a day must be tiring, although the results were interesting and worth it, I guess.
Aww, you got Samson! He’s really sweet, I liked him when I had him in my town. I guess he came from A casa? Because Emma used to have him, or maybe he’s just a random copy of Samson, lol.
This post has a lot of information, I enjoyed a lot reading it 🙂
I do think neighbors go off the paths sometimes, like when they run up to talk to you. My theory is that the paths are for when they go back to their houses, like when it’s their bedtime or after you’ve given them a fish/bug/furniture, they always walk back to their house to put it in their room. But I might watch their movements a bit more now out of curiousity. 😛 Yeah, it was pretty tedious, but I was determined so I didn’t mind. I’m glad I found something interesting out of it, though, and now I’ll be able to plan trees more efficiently. 🙂 Haha aww, the three of us have all had Samson!
I agree, when they run up to you I’m pretty sure they get off the paths. Haha, this reminds me of when I used to stand next to a neighbors house for minutes (not hours, I was very impatient
) to see if I was lucky and I saw them go into their house, I just loved challenging Animal Crossing to see how realistic were the neighbors.
I think I’ll get back to watching the neighbors more carefully too, now that you’ve discovered this! 😛
Hey Amy it’s been a long time I don’t hear anything about u? And I don’t see any of your fantastic comments in my blog 😀 But that’s no the important thing, the most important is: Are u okay right? 😀 Well hope yes and u can return to this blog… for us here in spain we are in our last days of school! (and the most difficuld too) soo 2 weeks to go and… summer 😀
See you soon I hope XOXO Emma
Yep, even if I’m not posting, chances are I’m okay and nothing’s wrong. xP My summer classes and job just haven’t been giving me a lot of time for AC and I haven’t been checking WordPress much either. But I’ll go check out your post 🙂 Awesome, I hope you enjoy your summer break!
Oh my gosh! I just though of something related to your discovery:
Remember when we planted those “friendship trees” in my Spring Party and I told you none of them grew, they all died? Well, we planted those right in front Filbert’s house, and maybe he used that path to go in and out of his house.
This isn’t really a discovery by my part or something very interesting, but I just though I could comment it with you 😛
Oh yeah, I remember that! It’s definitely a possibility and would explain why none of the trees grew if everything else followed the “rules” (not too many trees in the acre, etc.). If you want to try it again the next time you have a party, we could plant them one or two rows lower than before and maybe they’ll all grow this time. ^_^
I’d love to do that! I’m sure I can find some other spot somewhere, or just a few rows lower sounds good!
Awe, really glad you got your fave townies 🙂 My faverouites are Bob, Nibbles, Dora and Pierce. I have Dora and Pierce and Nibbles in town, but Nibbles is moving. 😦
I’m glad too! Aww, that’s nice, Bob is also one of my all-time favorites, I hope to get him in Dafdilly one day. Good luck in convincing Nibbles to stay!
Aha, sorry only just saw your comment now >w<
So my neighbors are|
Ruby *
Rasher
Sally* (Locked with KidCat)
Patty*
Olivia* (Locked with Portia)
Portia* (Locked with Portia)
KidCat* (Locked with Sally)
Nibbles moved.
Oh, and * means fave neigbor.
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