Animal Crossing End of Day Report

I’ve spent 8-12 hours in the last 24 hours playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Not good for productivity, but eh, launch day and sorta holiday break.

Once you get every active NPC’s quests done and get all the fruit, which doesn’t take too long, all you can do for the next 3 hours is fish the ocean & collect shells, collect bugs, fish the river, repeat. So go get some work done instead. I can see a daily schedule built around AC:PC won’t be too disruptive.

The IAP is nothing to complain about. Every previous AC has always cost $40-60 AND been timer-based, grinding bells and rep with NPCs. 3-day timer on growing trees or harvesting fruit in Wild World was a pain. Having to talk to every NPC with the same pointless responses every day for a slim chance they’d tell you their birthday, or give you a gift. Check both stores every day for new items, buy them and sell back so they’d be in your catalog, because there was no other way to advance. That was the AC console & DS experience: SLOW.

In AC:PC, I haven’t spent a buck yet, it shows the timers (3 hours for most things), and shows XP and level meters. I’m now Level 16, and earned enough tickets in-game to unlock all 3 crafting slots and get K.K. Slider to sit on his stool and play for me, got 8 NPCs in my camp, and I’m working on an advanced level 3 Cool Tent.

The NPC crafted set requirements before they can be invited are getting familiar: 4 easy items and one super slow one, which would be annoying but I need the break. The premise is ridiculous, “I’d love to visit your camp… if you install exactly the furniture I want!”, but it drives you to gather resources and do stuff. Good game mechanics don’t have to make sense.

Clothing is very limited. IIRC, AC:WW had 9 or 12 items per day, plus your custom clothing patterns. AC:PC has 3 every 6 hours, and so far all I’ve got are a few shirts and hats, no new pants or shoes. I’m very disappointed by the Abel sisters this go around, but crafted clothing is “coming”, someday, somehow.

Expanding the camper like a house is possible (I now somehow have a loft with a ladder in my VW hippie bus), and a nice easter egg (people have to go into your camper to see it), but you can’t switch between multiple custom paint jobs, it costs 5000 bells each time; so I bought the 8000 bell camo job, which at least costs me nothing to restore.

Only thing I can’t unlock is the Shovelstone Quarry, I need 5 friends to “assist”, and even tho I’ve friended and requested help from the 6 random mostly-Japanese players who show up in my world, it hasn’t unlocked yet, but I’m not spending 20 tickets on it!

Friend ID: 1227 6011 048