I never expected to do a 2.0, let alone a 3.0, yet here we are a little over a week later. Between the terraforming and multiple gameplay videos and screenshots coming out of PAX East, I’ve found myself constantly thinking of what I want to do. Ceiling items still seem a bit MIA so I haven’t really thought too much about interiors. I’m essentially expecting to do similar to what I did in my New Leaf town for my mayor’s house, but I genuinely really loved some of the other rooms I did and if we can have more rooms this time, I could see myself doing some of them again or even incorporating them into exterior areas.
Outside of my “main” house in New Leaf where I really enjoyed most of the rooms (The only one I didn’t care too much for was the “back” room– I love all the items in it, but I wish I had a better idea that WORKED with putting them out versus it just being a Toy version of Scrooge’s money bin) even though they were just… aesthetic-based general house rooms, my favorite of the theme rooms were the Toy Shop, which did a better job of displaying things than my Plushie-animal-everything room did, The Sky Room which was kind of a expansion of the Plushie room, but more organized, and the Street Cafe. A lot of the Sky Room items I hope to manage to put into my main room this time around while the Street Cafe I may try and work parts of it into the exterior. The Mermaid Room was one of the general house rooms that wasn’t as much of a standard, but if we had more rooms in our house, maybe I’d be able to split it up between new rooms or even just the exterior and interior to make it even better.
I also really liked the Concert Room just in a fun way to do things with the instruments and Gyroids, but the colors were all over the place. The Detective Agency part of the office was fun too, but for a full room, it just felt kind of plain. The Backyard Room was another room where I just really wanted to fit in more things I like, but couldn’t find a place for. Also to run through wheat because it’s fun to. The idea of “items I really like but just can’t work into this room or I don’t have enough space” was pretty much the plan with most of these themed rooms, especially the ones in Emi’s house– the Birthday room is a big example using a combination of the dessert, birthday, and balloon items. The Forest Room and the Autumn Forest were two more examples, though, I suppose some of these I truly could put outside now and mesh into the exterior.
As mentioned, I’d love to try and do some kind of little cafe or dessert area and I think, if I did do more villagers for any reason, it would be for that idea in mind. I wouldn’t branch it out as much as I did in New Leaf, but more to literally be an establishment in the town, like maybe a special Tea Room that has various themed cafe areas, but is still generally a specific facility. It could even work well into really bringing the Street Cafe avenue to life as part of the town. We’ve already seen a lot of different house types for villagers and if we have even close to that for our own character’s houses, I feel like we could really make our own little town, similar to how we did Happy Home Designer’s exterior buildings.
I could also try and merge some of the items I used for the Japanese Shrine room into the area I had in my New Leaf Town. I’ve already seen so many items I can use to take a lot of the areas in Pink Sea to new heights and it’s one of the things I am really looking forward to.
We really didn’t get to see much at all of our personal home exterior options for our own house and while I’d like to hope we’ll see everything from Happy Home Designer and then some, I don’t want to get my hopes up. I feel like making it similar to my New Leaf design is a definite at minimum, but I’d love to see newer stuff too. At the moment, the only thing I really find myself debating on with the home exterior for my own character is the Wreath! I had hoped they would be a general DIY for wreaths where like a combination up to maybe 4-6 different items could work, but clearly that isn’t a thing. I’m really hoping I can maybe do one that is a combination of pink flowers and seashells though to keep things on theme, but I guess we’ll see what options there are.
For now, I’ve done a very rough draft of some kind of map:
It’s absolutely not smoothed over, acres are messy, waterfalls aren’t properly rounded out, and it doesn’t even account for everything! But it’s a very loose idea of what I am hoping to do and really gives me a better idea of how much space we truly have. I’m also still not sure if I will do gardens for all the villagers or not… I guess we’ll see– at the very least, I can probably work with transparent patterns to stop things from growing in their “areas” so to speak.
I have a lot of questions based on if waterfalls can truly curve, if there’s a limit to bridges and ramps, how many villagers can we have max, and even what the minimum is as well. For now, I’ve put in 8 Villager spots to essentially have a spot for each of my top favorites. Of course, we don’t know all the new villagers yet so it’s possible someone besides Cotton Candy Cub could claim a “top favorite” spot as well.
I know I’ll move the facilities around, but they are some of the things I’m most undecided on. Similarly, I don’t know if I want to mix the housing area for villagers and the facilities together, or have them separated like they are in the current rough draft. While not on the rough draft map, I figure somewhere in the upper area above the “Villager Neighborhood” is where I’d put the Camp site and a little camping area, or maybe even below closer to the beach and airport. I’m still not entirely sure, but I do think it would be its own thing rather than part of the Facilities or Houses. Or maybe even just have the facilities in the center with Houses on the sides.
I definitely want to decorate a part of the beach as well, though, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’d like to do and where. I hope it’ll look nice though. Maybe as part of the Camping area or a pool area… At the very least, it’d make more sense to have the Lighthouse closer to the beach, if not on it. I need to see what terraforming we can do on the beach too…
I may even do nearly the entire back in waterfalls, with flowers going around the back and only small places where you can get to the very top of the cliffs. I don’t even know if “two-tier” waterfalls are completely possible, but I’m definitely going to try. In some extent, parts of what I’m really envisioning are similar to Phenac City or Couriway Town.
Or even Waterfall Lake in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
Or heck, some of my favorite FFXIV screenshots.
The idea of being able to essentially do like a Garden and/or fountains and this serene area and just have the water flowing around this center platform is just so beautiful to me and it’s something I hope with all my heart I can do justice to and somehow represent it in my town and really bring Pink Sea to life in a way I couldn’t in New Leaf. Heck, that top side of the cliff where the waterfalls flow and people can’t really reach could even display things in itself.
Not to mention if many of the new items from Pocket Camp come over… I could possibly make the Crystal Shrine of my camp site into an actual area, with waterfalls and flowers and more space and it could be beautiful.
Of course, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself ^^; We don’t even know how long it’ll take for me to get to a point where I CAN fully start setting up my Island. In the meantime, I’m really hoping to get a starting map similar to this:
I like the Airport in the South East mainly and I feel like it’s the best map where I can set in motion most of my starting plans. I also admit I am kind of really hoping for Peaches after learning that your town fruit shows up on your ID Card as I’m guessing it’ll be pink… and I want the pink fruit stamp. I don’t plan to reset at all, but wow do I just hope I get lucky with both the map and fruit. Other things I’m hoping for are the Circle Grass Design and Red for the Airport, though I’d take Blue… or possibly green if not blue or red. Still not stuff I’d reset over (especially if we can maybe redesign it like we could the train station in New Leaf), but I just hope I get lucky with all the things I like.
On the bright side, I’ve already seen a lot of outfits I like at the Able Sisters. The only problem is who knows when I’ll unlock it. I just hope I do before the Seasonal Outfit is gone and that I can quickly manage to get this lovely dress. I’m going to be working so hard to earn as many bells and Nook Miles as possible ><
I think right now my biggest worries are just how I'll deal with crafting. While I don't expect trees to constantly give wood, I am curious how it all works still and worried about running out. I don't think they will-- I'd like to think they will always respawn, but part of me is worried you may need to replenish your trees for more wood which, as someone who just likes to have things set and done with would kind of drive me nuts.
My main issue with crafting is resource management is just not my forte in games, or more accurately, it stresses me out and I generally try to play things in a more relaxed state which doesn't really work if I'm constantly worrying about running out of things or not having what I need. I pretty much farmed for Silver Axes to make sure I wouldn't run before I had the stumps I wanted and while I get that they wanted this whole ground-up approach, I'm still not sold on crafting and am just hoping I'll feel less anxious once I'm actually playing.
At the very least, the larger storage will definitely come in handy so that's definitely one positive. There also doesn't seem to be an item limit for houses this time (or it's higher than it was in New Leaf) which makes me hopeful to be able to do everything I wanted with some rooms where I had to cut back like removing nearly all the wall items in the Kitchen of my Mayor's house.
I am still a bit disappointed about the starting options. I think if it wasn't for the advertisement of being able to choose everything and having Pocket Camp and Happy Home Designer actually give you the options of picking from it all, I wouldn't have gotten my hopes up and this wouldn't have hit me as hard as did, but alas, it wasn't fully clear and maybe if it was just "pick your face and skin and one of eight starting hairstyles" it would've been a bit better, but maybe a bit too specific.
Regardless, thanks to a very lovely Picrew, I will admit my planned starting look has grown on me a bit.
I may pick Black over Dark Brown for the Hair and Brown over Black for the eyes depending on how they look in-game, but I will likely be picking this Face Style and Hair Style at the least. I’m still undecided on the nose, but it will probably be either triangle or circle.
I think the face paint option is really cool, though, I won’t personally be using it. I just really hope Nintendo ends up making a ponytail version of this hair (maybe a bit longer) or the other wavy/curly hairstyle. And a normal ponytail– not a side tail.
I hope we can preview the hair packs before we buy them so I can get a ponytail quickly, but if not, I’ll at least try to imagine my hair longer… Hopefully I can get a vanity quickly too. Regardless, maybe this can help me bear with not having the hair I want a bit longer as there’s a lot of things that seem important to prioritize Nook Miles for like paying off the Island Getaway Package, the Tool Wheel, and more inventory space.
Finally, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Dodo Airlines which is a really cute site where you can make your own Passport* and Boarding Pass:
*Mine is slightly edited to actually use my Villager from Pocket Camp and for other stamps too because I couldn’t decide ^^; But it still originated thanks to this lovely site!
I’m really looking forward to filling out the application as well, but I’m going to wait until I actually start the game and include it in my Day 1 entry :)
It’s hard not to be hyped as new info comes forward from PAX and people keep making such cool things like this, but the game is less than 3 weeks away!! I can’t wait and I just hope I’ll manage to make the progress I’m hoping to.