Jeff's New Horizons Blog

Shortly after starting up the game today, I attended the completion ceremony for my 5th incline. It’s now much easier to climb up Eagle Mountain.

I then spoke with Flick at the plaza to begin the first Bug-Off! The Bug-Off seems to work much like the fishing tournament; we have three minutes to catch as many insects as we can.

On two separate occasions in my first game, I caught bugs that Louie was trying to get. 😂 Sorry, big guy. 😛

I caught a total of 9 bugs in my first attempt, which earned me 11 points. I sold my bugs to Flick, and I played four more rounds. My subsequent scores were 14, 12, 11, and 8. I seemed to be doing worse each round, so I stopped there.

I redeemed my points for the following items at 10 points each: a ladybug rug, butterflies wall, spider doorplate, toy centipede (ughhh), and a bug aloha shirt. The spider doorplate was my favorite of the bunch. It has a spider on a web, and it says “Welcome.” It would be great for Halloween, but I went ahead and put it on my door now.

Overall, I enjoyed my first Bug-Off. The time limit thing seems to work better with bugs than it did for fishing. With fishing, there’s so much randomness because it can take a fish 20+ seconds to take the bait and it’s very annoying. Bugs can be caught quickly and easily, assuming you can find them.

Note: My net broke after my 1st and 4th rounds. I know some people think the fact that tools break in New Horizons is realistic, but I disagree. Occasionally, sure, but two bug nets breaking in the first 12 minutes of a bug-catching tournament? No, that’s not realistic. And these were regular nets, not flimsy nets. 🤷

At Able Sisters, I bought a space suit and a bunny hood. I am now Astro Bunny!

When Astro Bunny I shook a tree, a surveillance camera fell out! I wonder who put that up there! I know Agent S is a spy (oops, was that a secret?), but I didn’t think she’d be spying on the residents of Forest!

Louie’s lights were on tonight, indicating he was home. But I was unable to enter his house. This is a glitch I’ve encountered at least two times before. I hope this gets fixed in next week’s update.

The black roses in front of my house have been spreading like wildfire, and I’ve been growing so many that I didn’t know what to do with them all. So I finally decided that I will line more of the paths near my house (leading up to town hall, for example) with black roses, replacing the red hyacinths I previously had there. There are still plenty of red hyacinths elsewhere in town, after all.

Since I achieved perfect (5-star) island status yesterday, I was expecting to see some lily of the valleys (aka Jacob’s ladders) in town today…but I did not. Unless they appear as buds first and I just didn’t realize what they were. Actually that seems plausible (if not likely), due to the way flowers work in this game. If any of them bloom tomorrow, I’ll be sure to mention it in the next entry.

I hope you all had a successful Bug-Off (or at least those of you in the northern hemisphere), and an enjoyable Day 100 (or whichever day you may be on). See you next time! 🙂

Ryan sent me a frog model in the mail, to use as decoration for my frog race course. Thanks, Ryan.

Because the Bug-Off will be held tomorrow, K.K. Slider had his performance moved up to today. K.K. deserves better than this! 😛 But I joined Apple and Shari for a performance of K.K. Parade.

Even though I like the taller characters in New Horizons and New Leaf, I have to admit that the frog suits looked better on the smaller characters in older games.

I cleaned up the frog suits and frog caps lying on my beach and put them into storage. I also put out another throwback container on my race course. When I was done, I went to town hall to ask Isabelle about my island evaluation. To my surprise, Forest is now a five-star island!!

For my reward, Isabelle gave me a golden watering can……recipe.

Imagine going on a TV game show, and winning the ultimate prize: blueprints so you can make your own dream house. 😛 Still, I went home and made my first golden watering can.

I then watered a bunch of my black roses with it. It’ll be interesting to see if some gold roses sprout up.

I decided to put in another incline in the northwest part of town. It will connect the beach there with the cliff that leads up to the campsite. It’s also near the other incline that goes up to Eagle Mountain, so getting around that area will be a lot more convenient as of tomorrow.

Without even trying, I had a good day of fishing. I caught a hammerhead shark, an arapaima, a coelacanth, and a great white shark. Of course, with my house now fully paid off, I’m entering the phase of the game where bells aren’t as important. But it’s still satisfying to catch those huge fish anyway. 🙂

I’ll be back for the Bug-Off tomorrow, so I’ll see you then!

Shari was visiting Rizzo today, and I couldn’t figure out why either of them would want to hang out with the other. 😛 Shari said that Rizzo kept grinning, as if he’s up to something! Yeah, you can’t trust that rat. 😛

When I ran into Hornsby, he looked all bundled up. But he said that Forest was the best-tasting island. He insisted that everything tastes great. Hornsby, you’re being weird again. How many times do I have to tell you to stop licking people?

Saharah was in town, and I bought a circuit-board flooring and a rice-paddy wall from her.

I made my final preparations and then posted on Twitter to see who was available. I opened my gate with a Dodo code. Samzyy, Bran, Logan, William (from Columbia), Meli, another William (from Kanto), and Max joined in. I led everyone over to the race course, where everyone put on a frog outfit. 🐸

I did not give everyone a run-through of the course, so the first run was blind. I told them the rules, which is basically just that they are free to move left or right; there are no assigned lanes. Just hop through the course, and then climb the wall at the end and turn on the shower first. Here is the video, showing two runs of the race.

William from Columbia won both times! Congrats, William!

It seems that most of them enjoyed the race, although several of them commented that it was too short. I wish I could make it bigger without sacrificing half my town to a multiplayer game that’s only going to be played occasionally, you know?

One of my dream requests, which I mentioned in a video before, is for a designated play area (perhaps on a barge) that could be used for homemade games and races, without taking up space in the town. That seems unlikely, so any future games or races I make will probably be limited to this stretch of land near Forest’s west coast. (Unless Nintendo eventually allows multiple islands per Switch, that is).

Anyway, this was my first time running the race with a full group of frogs. And I noticed some things that need to be fixed. One area (in the Frogger-like road part) had an path through the “cars” with no resistance…where frogs didn’t have to squeeze through. I ordered another throwback container, and I’m going to work on fixing that to make the race more balanced.

Before everyone unfrogged themselves, I had everyone fall into holes at the amusement park. I’ve been trying to do that for a long time, but the last few Friday Night Forests haven’t had a full house. And that’s why Wi-Fi Moments #6 didn’t start with falling into holes, like the first five episodes did. 😛

I told everyone they could shop, explore, or follow me for a tour. But William (from Kanto) left (or disconnected), Bran left, and everyone kinda scattered. 😂 So I ended up not giving a proper tour…but I’m getting to the point where I should be thinking about a video town tour sometime soon.

We talked a bit about the game update that’s coming next week. It’ll add swimming, diving, sea creatures, Pascal, a pirate version of Gulliver, and more.

Anyway, Ryan also joined in and we ran another race to show Ryan (it was just me, Ryan, and Samzyy). Samzyy won the race.

Not long after that, people started leaving…and others who already left returned. It was almost like a revolving door for a few minutes there, so I just ended the session. 😂 Thanks to all who came! I hope you enjoyed it. 🙂 I’ll be keeping the course up for a while, so we can probably do a race at every Friday Night Forest for a while…although there will not be a FNF this week.

Later on tonight, I was surprised when I caught a new fish. I thought it was Blinky! But it was just a barreleye. 🛢️👁️

And just for fun, here is Breezy’s cute froggy art she left on my bulletin board.

There may or may not an entry tomorrow. But there will be one on Saturday for the Bug-Off. Hope to see you soon! Have a toad-ally great day!