Beginning a New Life in Animal Crossing City Folk

When you begin a new game in Animal Crossing City Life, players of previous Animal Crossing games will find the situation much the same as before. Tom Nook will 'give' you a house, but then attach a price to it. You enter the village penniless or rather, Bell-less. Tom Nook issues a work uniform and demands that you work for him part-time in order to make an initial payment on your 'mortgage'.

A new situation in City Folk is the ability to choose one of four houses located in different areas of your village. Apart from that, however, the first day of your life in your new home will be the same as in previous games.

The tasks you perform for Tom Nook do not differ. He asks you to deliver furniture, deliver a carpet, write a letter to a customer, deliver a tool to a customer and finally post an announcement for his business on the Bulletin Board. If you resent his attitude, you always can sabotage his business a little by warning customers of his greed in your Message... Not that it will make any difference!

Once you complete the last task, you will do a dance of joy and announce your freedom to the world. After this, you can return to Tom Nook as a customer to buy or sell...

In fact, you should be able to buy everything he has to offer for sale AND pay off your mortgage in the first day if you are diligent. The first step is to buy the tools that are offered. In my game, they were: net, fishing rod and watering can. Of the three, the watering can was the only one that I did not use on the first day.

By hunting insects and fishing, you should be able to make quite a sum of money. Shaking the fruit from ALL the trees and selling it to Nook, with the proceeds of all insects and fish, should provide sufficient 'Bells' to buy all the items in his shop and pay off the mortgage at the Town Hall. Shells collected from the beach and sold are another source of income.

I always donate the first fish or insect of any variety that I catch to the Museum and I did that in City Folk and still had sufficient money to pay off the mortgage with about 4000 Bells to spare afterwards.

Here are some of the values of items that can be sold on the first day of gameplay, if you are playing in 'real time', which means November. There are other insects and fish, but these are the most easily found and caught initially.

Insects:

Monarch Butterfly: 140 Bells
Migratory Locust: 600 Bells
Long Locust: 200 Bells

Fish:

Sea Bass: 200 Bells
Octopus: 500 Bells
Barbel Steed: 200 Bells
Bitterling: 900 Bells
Carp: 300 Bells

Shells:

Dall's Top: 90 Bells
White Scallop: 450 Bells
Scallop: 600 Bells
Venus Comb: 150 Bells
Sand Dollar: 60 Bells

Native Fruit: 100 Bells

There are a few other items I have not listed here, as this is not intended to be an actual guide. My General Guide for City Folk will have complete lists of items and prices as always.

In fact, players of City Folk actually can refer to my Animal Crossing Wild World General Guide for information about the game, as most of the items are the same in both games. You will find the same themes and sets in City Folk for the most part, although there are some new themes and sets that did not exist in the DS game. I will confirm the prices of items, but I believe that in most cases, prices will not have changed either.

I bought the Carpet, the Wallpaper and the two items of Furniture as well as the three Tools sold by Tom Nook, then sold the Wallpaper and Carpet back to him. You take a loss for that, but it will add the items to your Catalogue. Completing your catalogue is one of the primary goals in this game. You can transfer a completed catalogue from Wild World to City Folk but I think part of the fun is to collect the items. Once you have everything, it is not quite as interesting. I therefore started with nothing... One day, perhaps, I'll perform a transfer, but not in this initial game.

City Folk is very generous with Fruit and Shells. I found at least three White Scallops and regular Scallops on the beach in the first morning. I was able to catch at least 10 Migratory Locusts and as many Monarchs and Long Locusts without any problem in the space of a couple of hours, while taking some time to fish and collect all the fruit from the trees.

Here's a tip for new players. Shake the trees to make the fruit fall to the ground in the early stages of gameplay even if you do not have time to gather it, as that will allow new fruit to appear on the trees, increasing income potential.

Veteran players will not find anything helpful in this post, but perhaps it will help players who never played Animal Crossing before.

Today is the Harvest Festival! Very exciting indeed...



Migratory Locusts sell for 600 Bells each.