Monday, June 30, 2014

Animal Crossing New Leaf // Bell Guide!


Hey guys!
So, as Animal Crossing New Leaf is pretty much my favourite game at the moment, and I have been playing it for over a year now, I thought I would write some guides to various in game things that people seem to struggle with. All of the things in this guide have been tried and tested by myself, multiple times, so I know for a fact that they work! Also, in my household we have 5 copies of New Leaf between us, so it means we have more towns to try things out in too :)
I decided to do a guide about the best ways to earn bells - the currency in all Animal Crossing games - as you need to raise a lot of bells over time. Bells are used for pretty much everything, from paying off your mortgages and decorating your house to paying for public work projects and ordinances in your town, as well as getting rewards from the post office as and when you hit savings milestones. At the time of writing this, I do believe that my balance is around the 30m mark, and the majority of that is from doing the various methods mentioned below.

THE ISLAND METHOD
This is both simple and effective, and best for those of you who enjoy catching bugs and fish on Animal Crossing. Once you have unlocked the island (I think it's roughly a week or so after you start the game, but I'm not 100% on that because I've not made a town for a while now) take a trip there - it will cost 1000 bells per trip. Once there, go outside and talk to Lloid, the gyroid (he's the brown thing near the entrance) and borrow the axe and shovel from him - these will automatically be returned to him when you either go on a tour or leave the island. (you don't get bells from completing tours, but you will earn medals instead, which is the currency on the island - some of the items on the island are rare and can only be found there, so it's well worth saving up some medals just in case - the cabana and mermaid sets are island exclusives, for example)
What you will need to do is chop down all the fruit trees that aren't coconut trees and dig up the stumps (you can leave one tree just in case you want to try your luck at catching rainbow stags, but bear in mind you will be spending a LOT of time chasing away fruit beetles and horned dynastid beetles) Once this is done, make sure all you have is palm trees on the sand - you can shake them and plant more if you feel like you don't have enough, but leave some space between them.
Once night falls in your town - 7pm - come to the island, and between then and around 7am, catch the bugs that land on the palm trees. They range in price from 6,000 bells for a goliath beetle to 12,000 bells for golden stags and horned hercules. Ignore the small bugs on the sand, and hermit crabs - they're not worth very much - and I usually ignore the butterflies, but an emporer butterfly is worth 2,500 bells. Once your pockets are full, go and put your bugs in the box next to the counter inside - if you don't do this, you will lose everything in your pockets when you go back! Repeat until the box is full, then go home and sell everything, and repeat as many times as you like.
If you prefer fishing, do the same as before, but look out for anything in the water with a fin sticking out. They range from an ocean sunfish, which is worth 4,000 bells, to a shark, which is worth 15,000 bells. Also keep an eye out for longer shadows in the water - sometimes they will be sea bass (which are next to worthless, so throw them back if you end up catching those) and sometimes they can be fish that will be worth several thousand bells.
Also, whatever you do, DO NOT SELL TO THE SMALL KAPPA INSIDE THE HUT. She does not pay very many bells for your items. Retail will offer you the best price for everything, and if you have the bell boom ordinance on, you will be paid around 20% more for your items!

TURNIPS/THE STALK MARKET
Every Sunday morning in your town, between 6am and noon, you will see Joan, a warthog who sells turnips. Prices will vary from 90 bells per turnip to 110 bells per turnip. I usually buy mine for as low as I can, and usually end up spending around 1m bells in total (I store them in my wardrobe too)
If you do choose to do this method, DO NOT TIME TRAVEL, AS YOUR TURNIPS WILL SPOIL AND BE WORTHLESS.
Every day at Retail, there is an option to check the days turnip prices - it will change once a day, so it's different in the afternoon than it was in the morning, and you cannot check it on Sundays, as that is when Joan is around. Check your prices every day, and if you see a price you are happy with, sell - some of the highest I've seen are around the 600 bells per turnip mark! If you have more than one town, or play with other people, get them to check their prices too. You can also check online - one of my favourite forums, the bell tree forums, has a thread especially for people with high turnip prices in their town (you will usually have to leave a tip, but as you can make several million from selling, this will not be a problem - it's only polite, after all)

PREMIUM
On the board outside Retail every day, you will see that they have at least one item that they will pay more for - the premium item. It changes daily, so don't worry if it's something boring one day, as it may be something amazing on others!
Sometimes, it is more generic, such as furniture (so if you have things that are high in value anyway, such as thrones, that would be the perfect day to sell those) but some days it's more specific, such as perfect apples or sea bass.
For me, the best days are the ones where perfect fruit is on premium - on one of my towns recently, I had perfect apples on premium, and in my backup town I have perfect apples, and lots of them, as it's mainly being used as a holding/cycling town at the moment (more on that either later or in another post) so I decided to try and earn some bells.
I shook all the perfect apple trees, and replanted all the ones that died (every perfect fruit tree lasts between 4 and 7 harvests before dying, and when it dies one fruit from each tree will be rotten - you can either throw this away if you have a trash can, or Retail will charge you 100 bells to dispose of it for you) then headed over to the other town to sell. Each pocketful  (16 baskets of 9 perfect apples) got me 860,000 bells, and I had multiple pocketfuls, so I earnt several million bells just from selling some fruit.

SELLING VILLAGERS AND ITEMS ONLINE
When I was active all the time on forums, I learnt that there are a lot of more "popular" villagers in demand, and that people are willing to pay crazy amounts of bells to obtain their dream villagers, especially the more popular and maybe harder to get ones. A good example of some of these villagers are Marina, Marshal, Diana and Beau, to name a few.
If you have one of the more popular villagers and you don't want them, when they tell you they want to leave you could make an account on a forum (if you don't already have one) and advertise that they are for sale - ONLY DO THIS WHEN THEY HAVE A LEAVING DATE, AS A LOT OF PEOPLE GET FRUSTRATED IF YOU SAY YOU HAVE A VILLAGER AND IT TAKES FOREVER FOR THEM TO LEAVE
Often, people will want to see proof that you have their dream villager, especially one of the more popular ones, so be prepared to allow them to visit your town to check that you do actually have them - some people rip others off by saying they have the villager, when in reality they don't, and they just steal their bells, so be careful.
Another way to make bells is to sell rare items to others - there are also different regional items a lot of the time, especially at events, so if you're from one region and someone from a different region wants something that's regional, they can either buy it from you or swap it with you. This can also be applied to items such as the hair bow wig (which used to be in massive demand) and certain furniture sets - the 7/11 set and the sloppy set are some that used to go for a lot, so if you have those you may be able to get some big bells!

OTHER
My final tips for you are to collect the shells on the beach, shake trees and collect the furniture and bells that fall out of them (also, try and catch the bees if you can - if not, you can always sell the hives that fall out the trees too!) and sell any duplicate fossils once you've had them appraised at the museum.
Also - every day in your town, you will have a rock in a different place - hit it with your shovel, and ore will come out! Ore can be sold for up to 4,000 bells for a gold nugget. Every day, you will also have one rock in your town that will spit out bells when you hit it with an axe or shovel - you can get up to 32,000 bells on a good luck day, 16,100 on a normal day or 8,200 on a bad day!

So, those are my main tips to help you earn bells so you can make your Animal Crossing town as amazing as you can! If you have some other ways that I did not mention in this blog, please leave them below, as I'm always looking for new things to do in the game (I play most days, so I get bored of the same routine)
Also, if you enjoyed this post, please let me know, and I will do some more Animal Crossing and other gaming blogs soon!

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