animal crossing: new horizons

winter in the western hemisphere: i'm going to freeze to death. survived long enough to name the island, meet my two fellow residents (diva and hammy), and establish that i'm already in debt. set myself the goal of buying each and every daily item, as i found i didn't have enough decorative items in my first attempt to really do anything interesting. whilst raising the necessary bells, i accidentally collected enough of the local fauna to call in blathers and earnt enough miles to pay off my tent-debt and enter into house-debt. perhaps i'll see spring yet.

blathers has arrived and is demanding sacrifices. or, more specifically, fossils. i had forgotten that all the tools aren't immediately accessible; the spade was a welcome addition, as it brought with it buried money bags and their associated trees. the island also saw another visitor: gulliver. i had stopped doing his quest early in my first playthrough, as the reward didn't seem worth running across every beach the island possessed. however, i'm item-orientated this time around - i don't want to miss a thing. also took a trip to a randomised island to gather resources and see who else i could coax over as a resident.

completed blather's collection. it's odd that he simply refuses any further donations after the threshold has been reached. no matter, i can use one of my new house's precious storage slots to store my one remaining identified fossil. ...and all these new fish i've caught whilst trying to raise funds for the most recent batch of daily items. i've sort of accepted that my island is going to look like a hot mess in these early stages now. also, with another randomised island trip, i've now gathered enough resources for timmy and tommy to set up their general store.

museum is now open for business again, thank blathers. i was able to clear my house and front garden of fish/insect containers. got to planting in a big way as leif had tipped up with his store. i don't have anyone online i can rely on for non-native flowers, so this little guy is one of my limited lifelines to introducing some variety. as well as windflowers, i now have mums and tulips warming in the island sun. no luck so far with actually producing new flowers despite watering, but these things take time. also planted coconuts on two beaches nabbed from a randomised island. a related thought: it's odd that you have to plant your native fruit to unlock that stamp, but i guess the game

only checks if that condition has been met on a player action. landed on another randomised island; unfortunately its fruit trees and flowers were indentical to my own island's, so no new varieties today. last action of the day was taking tom nook up on readying the island for more residents, and now there's a bridge to place.

as i placed the bridge yesterday, i got plenty of excercise repeatedly running over it to set-up new homes. i have my fingers tightly crossed that the game queues up the characters i've asked to come to my island rather than selecting a random assortment as and they move in, as i've met a few i like. i'd also forgotten what a pain it is to craft all the interior and exterior furniture for them, so it's been one game day spread across a full real life week of work. also, redd graced the north with his presence, much to tom nook's chagrin. i scrabbled over there with my newly crafted ladder to pick up an academic painting. in retrospect, i probably should have gone for another (they all appear to

be authentic on his first visit), as i believe i also got the academic painting early in my first playthrough, which suggests it's a pretty common one. oh well, had to buy it at some point either way!