King Tut Race

Yesterday, I received my detailed painting in the mail from Jolly Redd. I took it up to the museum, and Blathers confirmed that it was authentic.

Detailed Painting - June 24th, 2021 - Donated by Jeff

At 5:00, I started rounding up some racers for my King Tut Race. I had three authentic paintings to give away as prizes, so I planned on holding three races. Samzyy, João, Adrian, Xavier, Abdoulaye, and Alec came over. We hung out at the oasis while I tried to find an 8th player to join.

Seven King Tuts hanging out at the oasis.

I wasn’t having much luck, so I decided to start the races with just 7 players.

King Tuts racing and falling.
Run. Fall. Repeat.

I really enjoyed the races! It was funny seeing all these Tuts running around and falling every few seconds. 😂 We raced twice, and Xavier won both times! Congrats, Xavier! He won two paintings.

I was finally able to get an 8th player, and Chuck joined in. When we raced again, I actually won the race. 😛 Since I didn’t need my own prize, we raced a 4th time. This time, Adrian won. I also gave him an authentic painting as his prize.

Here is my video showing two full races (plus a few bonus clips from the other rounds as well):

A bit of trivia: Wonder why I used bamboo stopblocks in some areas? I made an effort to keep the course three full spaces wide for basically the entire race. But space was a little tight in some areas, and the stopblocks only take up one-half space of width, while fencing uses a whole space. So that allowed me to keep those areas wide enough to allow people to run around a fallen Tut.

Today, Leif had a stand set up at the plaza, but I didn’t buy anything from him. And I noticed that after 10 p.m., he was already gone! Most of the special characters stick around longer than that (even if they stop selling things), so that surprised me a bit.

I did find Wisp in town tonight, and he asked me to gather up his five spirits. After a full trip around the outer part of my island though (basically everything except Peach Park), I only found two spirits! So three of the five were in (or near) Peach Park. 😛 When I took them all back to Wisp, he rewarded me with an essay set.

Bones asked me if I noticed a really good smell the other day. He said it was Apollo’s shampoo, which smelled like apples and yogurt parfait. I was tempted to ask why he was sniffing Apollo’s “hair,” but he is a dog after all, so his strong sense of smell provides a good excuse. 😛

Bones: Amazing! Science made a shampoo that smells like yogurt parfait... Way to go, science!

My race course is a large area to keep fully enclosed, so I added a couple of openings in the fence (with stools added) to function as escape hatches. The idea is to allow me to pass through relatively unhindered, while keeping the openings inconvenient enough to deter any potential cheaters from trying to take a shortcut during a race. I could also dig holes on race days to further discourage cheaters.

An escape hatch in my King Tut race.

And if you watched the video, you saw that the pitfall field caused some problems. In particular, some players were glitching/lagging through the pitfalls unscathed, while everyone else was blocked by the Tuts already in pitfalls.

So this is how I plan on changing the pitfall area. I’m not removing the pitfalls, but they will be spaced out so they don’t completely block traffic.

Planned changes to my King Tut Race course.

Here’s another bit of trivia, courtesy of Samzyy, who pointed it out to me: My frog race video was posted one year ago today. That was a lot of fun, and it’s been my 2nd most popular New Horizons video to date. (My top ACNH video so far was Wi-Fi Moments #1.)

The Bug-Off is coming up tomorrow! I hope I remember to play before 6 p.m., because I tend to play later. Good luck with your bug-catching, everyone!