My Journey to 365 Days in Animal Crossing New Horizons — Part 2

Welcome to another entry of My Journey to 365 Days in Animal Crossing New Horizons, where I aim to achieve a whole year in the game or, at the minimum, to complete the museum or my town. If this is the first entry you see, consider checking out the first one for more context! 

I am pleased to announce that I have survived yet another month! Although I haven't been nearly as consistent as I was during the first one, I have hopes that this is mostly due to being a lot busier with work, not because I'm going to fail, though I may very well be lying to myself.

January has been an interesting month: it started off strong with tons of progress but then suddenly stagnated. This might be because I've been playing for two months now, so the original wonder of the daily chores may have finally worn out, especially since the last thing I want to do after a long day of work is go straight to more tasks!

Still, at the beginning of the month, I was going quite strong! This was further encouraged by the exciting changes, such as the Nookling shop getting a sprucing upgrade! This is the first time — not counting my first playthrough ever — that I get an upgrade without using any time skips or buying out the entire shop daily to speed up the process. I visit every time I play, but I make sure to only buy what I genuinely want, even stopping myself from needlessly hoarding items I won't be using any time soon. In total, it took me nearly two months to get here, so that was very exciting! Unfortunately, Nook's Cranny went under construction on the same day one of my villagers — Clay — got sick, so this meant I couldn't get him any medicine, which was a bit sad for him.

At the beginning of the month, I also managed to finish my second ramp! The first one made my house easily accessible (which was a phenomenal upgrade!), and this new one created a connection to the highest part of the land. Originally, I had a lot of plans involving terraforming, but I had completely forgotten that it wouldn't be available until I completed Nook's K.K. Slider mission, which is definitely going to take a while to happen. This realisation caused me to have to change my plans abruptly, as I'll have to rely on ramps much more than I originally assumed. Now, I've decided to build one or two more to fully connect some of the areas to make a natural park outside of the town square, where I'm hoping to make a little garden!

That being said, though, as I've been taking everything at a much slower pace, this is the first time I don't have a full idea of what I want to do in terms of decoration and locations. I usually had huge plans and would burn myself out by farming for Bells and skipping time, but now, I've let the ideas come to me more organically. I've really enjoyed taking this approach in Animal Crossing — and life in general, really — as it gives me much more breathing space to genuinely enjoy the journey and feel proud of the progress. This eventually got me to very heavily consider skipping QR codes this time around, at least for a few months, if not just entirely. Not only will this keep the shops from feeling stale in comparison, but it'll also stop me from burning out by the sheer options available! Spending hours looking for codes and then spending a ton of hours more obsessing over how to make my town perfect are two things I don't look back to fondly during my other Animal Crossing experiences.

Since I'm not burning myself out trying to get as many Bells as possible every day, I haven't felt the heaviness of Nook's debts! Every time I play, I use some Bells for the Money Tree, some to spend on shops, and some to save in my bank account. Thanks to that, I was able to upgrade my house twice this month (though, now I owe him a whopping 348,000 Bells) when I filled my storage to the brim! Thankfully, this slowness has also allowed me space to think about what I want to do with my home, which is nice. I think I might be going for something a bit more hectic and fun this time, as I've always decorated them very seriously, but we'll see how things progress by the time I even have the items to do anything about it! 

The next thing I tackled during the beginning of my second month was something I had been too scared to try: turnips! I've always understood how it works, but I was too greedy to use my Bells on them and too anxious to even try it out. Unfortunately, I've only been able to buy and sell them once, as every other Sunday, I've either been busy or completely knocked out in bed. Hopefully, as work settles, I'll be able to spend some time relaxing in-game without it feeling like an extra chore. 

As for finding new villagers and decorating, I've stagnated this momentarily. Not only is it a bit time-consuming (which I can't afford at the moment), but I'd rather finish the ramps and the overall town map in my mind first! Afterwards, I'm hoping to bring more life by searching for villagers, creating the campsite, and really using my money to decorate. 

In order to help me focus and encourage me, my wife made me a spreadsheet where I can keep track of a ton of important things, from Fish, Bugs, and Deep-sea Creatures to Turnip prices! If that sounds like fun, she made a blank version for anyone to copy and use themselves!

Well, that's about it for my adventures in Animal Crossing New Horizons. I'm hoping to come back to playing it daily and make even more progress next month! Perhaps by then, I will have my garden and campsite ready!