Jeff's New Horizons Blog

The June Bug-Off was held today, so I went up to the plaza and spoke with Flick to get it started. I quickly realized that having a large, fenced off desert without flowers or trees is not very conducive to a bug-hunting competition. 😛

And when you consider that I stopped to shoot down a balloon present and fish out an arapaima, it’s probably not a big surprise that I only caught five bugs in my first attempt (for a score of 7 points).

But still, that first round kicked my overall point total over 200. So Flick should be sending me a prize in the mail tomorrow.

I continued competing in several more rounds, scoring 6, 11, 15, 10, 9, 11, 7, and 11 points, respectively. In this picture, Tybalt watched me reach my highest score of the day (13 bugs = 15 points).

It was time to redeem my points for some prizes, so Flick gave me a butterfly backpack, three ladybug umbrellas, a bug aloha shirt, a butterflies wall, two termite mounds, and a spider doorplate.

When I played later, nothing was going on. K.K. wasn’t around for his usual Saturday night show because of the Bug-Off. And Midge was just talking about a turnip book.

But I saw on the bulletin board that I have two villager birthdays coming up in the next eight days: Agent S on July 2nd and Apollo on July 4th.

See you next time! Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 🙂

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.

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.

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

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. 😛

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.

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.

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!

Yesterday, Gulliver was in town, washed up on the beach as usual. I collected his communicator parts and returned them to him.

Tybalt asked me for a new catchphrase to replace “it’s scary,” which I taught him way back in October. 🎃😱 So I told him to say “like a tiger” instead.

Apollo was saying that I should promote his good ideas, so that they can start inspiring people. This dialogue reminded me of something they’d say in New Leaf when someone would recommend a new public works project (PWP) to the mayor. 😛

Last night, Xavier came over to test out my new race. He shared his thoughts with me, and he sent me an item I added to the course. Thanks, Xavier!

Today, I received my reward from Gulliver: He sent me a geisha wig. I snatched it from the letter and put it in storage…even though I can’t imagine ever using it.

Jolly Redd was in town, at the north beach. He had a fake scary painting, a fake famous painting, a scenic painting that looked fake, and a detailed painting I wasn’t sure about. However, the detailed painting was different from the five other detailed paintings I’ve seen in the past. So I thought my odds were pretty good, and I bought it.

Poor Eloise was sick with a cold. Actually, Margie has been sick in my Wild World town lately, so I’m wondering if there’s some elephant disease going around. Perhaps it’s a pachyderm germ, or maybe they just have their trunks in a funk. 😛

I gave her some medicine, and she rewarded me with a baby romper. What, she wants me to dress up as a baby? 😕 At any rate, I hope she starts feeling better soon.

Midge is continuing to use her recent catchphrase, saying that it’s good to unexpectedly bump into a friend…in the air.

Then I worked a bit more on my race course. I probably spent at least half an hour adding a new section that only adds about five seconds of length to the race. 😂 But the final stretch was too basic, and needed to be spiced up a bit.

Speaking of the race, I plan on hosting it Thursday at 5 pm Eastern time for people on Twitter. For more info, see my tweet.

However, I’m probably not going to have Friday Night Forest this week. But I’ll be back with another entry soon!