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Let’s dive into some of my first actual gameplay moments with the update! Read on to see who I invited for my first coffee date at the Roost, first gyroid, DLC shenanigans, all that good stuff.

I updated my game live on stream on November Nook 5th, and my community had the sweetest and silliest Twitch hype train during Isabelle’s announcements, which we had trouble getting through as a result. Typical typical, I’ve always had trouble paying attention to her announcements, and now she actually had news for once, and we were hyping through it 🤣

Something interesting about my experience with the Roost is I had to really work for it first. If I were updating my first island Ithaelia to 2.0, I wouldn’t have to worry about it, but here in Citalune I’d been treating my gameplay mostly as a decorating project and hadn’t worked on my museum hardly at all! So I had to fish, catch bugs, dive, unlock Redd to come to my island and buy a painting, the whole shebang. So the first couple times I played the update, I couldn’t even check out the Roost!

When I eventually unlocked the Roost, the first coffee date I had was with my favorite NPC Celeste. :’) I love Celeste a lot because of our shared love of Astronomy, but she didn’t talk about the stars as much as I’d like. It wasn’t a true coffee date with her because she invited her brother Blathers. Fair, fair, he probably needs the caffeine boost

One of my favorite NPC invite experiences was when I scanned in Phyllis! All I was hoping for was a return of the classic Phyllis sass, but to my surprise (seriously I got a jump-scare), I got the whole crew. Here’s a clip of the occasion, but again, just a warning that I had a jump-scare from one of the pelicans at the beginning:

It’s nostalgic seeing this drama because I remember blogging A LOT about the pelican love triangle as I learned about it in Wild World. I think I even have a blog post here called Pelican Drama

Saharah has opinions about how you treat her rugs. She reminds me of those librarians who cringe even at personal books with the dog-ear bookmarks

What a mood, you have to know the AC devs knew exactly how relatable this was when they had Gracie (who now seems to be more of an easygoing artiste than a roast-your-look type), say this line.

My first gyroid is what the broader AC community has officially dubbed the bong gyroid! I think it’s really called a whistloid or something similar. I ended up sending it to a pal who I thought would appreciate it!

I love that Harv’s island brought all these classic NPCs together in such a cute and functional way! I think my favorite functionality definitely has to be Cyrus’s customization, it’s so useful to be able to change the color of things that were previously uncustomizable, and not to have to rely on customization kits as much!

I also love so much that Tortimer is back, just makes me happy to still see him around. He has such an interesting arc in Animal Crossing being the mayor from GameCube to City Folk, to all his new roles since. I wanna design a vacation home for him. I’m kinda bummed that I’m a filthy time traveler though, because I missed on seeing Cornimer!! Cornimer making a return is so wild for me & my community because I’ve had a bot in my Twitch channel since 2019 called Cornimer_Bot. Besides helping to keep track of general commands and functions, he also has a feature where you can type !fortune into chat and he randomly spits out one of the old Acorn Fortunes from the Acorn Festival! I even had a Cornimer emote back in 2019, which I brought back recently in honor of the return 🤣

Happy Home Paradise is interesting for me because I get so much more invested in island design. I’ve known this about myself since Happy Home Designer! However, there was one night recently when I was feeling super low and depressed (the holidays can be a rough time of year for my job), and mindlessly escaping to some easy home-decorating for my villagers seemed to hit the spot. I’ll share some of the designs I’ve done so far below!

Eloise’s reading haven

Olivia’s Land of Nod

I like Olivia’s house fine! I think her interior, though, reminds me of one of the things I struggle with HHP. I can’t shake that based on Olivia’s tastes, she would probably like something elegant, classy, maybe with lots of purple. So I did this design with those headcanons in mind, but I’ve seen other Olivia homes online that I like better. So I guess I end up doing decorating that I feel like fits the villager but doesn’t personally inspire me as much?? So that’s why I prefer island decorating, where I’m the boss, can do whatever I want without pre-conceived bias or directions, and with much more freedom.

Deirdre’s Autumn paradise

It’s so nice how easily you can use weeds as decor in HHP! I wish we could do that on our own islands, I always dread trying to get my taller weeds in the right places.

Papi’s Ode to Wooden Furniture

Lastly, a few shots with Wardell :’)

I love our arc together. Went from proclaiming “who is that guy???” in the Direct, to him being one of my big favs. ❤️

There are still aspects to the update I’ve yet to dabble in as much: a big one is cooking! I guess it’s because I haven’t really gotten a lot of good food recipes yet. Feeling like my first cooking should be pizza 😎🍕

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