Jeff's New Horizons Blog

Agent S had a birthday today, and I made sure to stop by her house to attend the party. Hornsby was also there for the occasion. Agent S didn’t waste any time in asking for her present. 😂

I gave her a heart doorplate that I bought at Nook’s Cranny, and she seemed to like it a lot. I hung out for a couple minutes before leaving the party. But Agent S (and Hornsby) seemed to be having a really good time. Happy birthday, Agent S!

When I returned home, I checked my mail. Gulliver sent me a tubeteika, which is a type of hat. I wish Gulliver’s gifts were all furniture, like in the older games. I’d like some more large monuments to decorate my town with, like the Stonehenge he sent me months ago.

Able Sisters had some sports tanks for sale, numbered one through eight. I wondered why there wasn’t one with a nine on it, but then I realized it’s probably for online play. If you were having a race of some sort, each player could wear a different number.

My 2nd Jacob’s ladder…or lily-of-the-valley…appeared today, up on Spectacle Rock. I kind of like having it there.

Regarding visitors, Leif was in town today…but I didn’t buy anything from him. Celeste showed up later on, and she gave me a recipe for a Cancer table.

The game update for July went live tonight, and I promptly downloaded it. After starting the game back up, I had a letter from Nintendo waiting for me. It thanked me for downloading the update, and a snorkel mask was included.

Nook Shopping informed me that new seasonal items were available. I only saw one new item though, some bamboo grass, which is a Japanese item for “Tanabata.”

But most importantly, there was also a letter from Nook Inc. It informed me that the waters around the island are safe for swimming, so wet suits are now available. I rushed over to Nook’s Cranny, and I bought the only one: a horizontal-striped wet suit. It’s ugly as sin, but it will have to do. 😛

I ran to the pier and dove in. Swimming is officially here!

The controls are similar to New Leaf swimming. You can press A repeatedly to swim fast, or hold A to swim a bit slower. You press Y to dive, but this is where the differences begin. While underwater, the camera angle changes to an overhead view.

Catching sea creatures seems considerably easier here than it does in New Leaf. I didn’t have any trouble at all catching anything I found. Maybe I just haven’t encountered any fast critters yet. Of course, I only spent about 15 minutes swimming, but to this point, catching sea creatures seems easier than, say, catching a fish or bug. Just in those ~15 minutes, I’ve already caught nearly one-fourth of the sea creatures in the game.

You can catch other things besides creatures, too. I found myself a pearl!

It can’t be donated to the museum, but it can be sold at Nook’s Cranny for 10,000 bells! Not bad!

I swam all the way around my island. But as you can imagine, the game doesn’t let you swim up the rivers. But hey, I had to give it a try!

Swimming may not be something you’ll want to do for hours at a time, but it is fun in short bursts. It is certainly a welcome addition to the game. Have a good time swimming, everyone! I’ll be back with another entry late tomorrow night. 🙂

One other note: I uploaded a new video today, taking a look at a number of typos and mistakes in New Horizons and some older Animal Crossing games as well. “Kindess” isn’t the only mistake around. 😉 Check it out!

Gulliver was in town today, and he again made a space reference to his UFO-piloting days in Wild World and City Folk.

I helped him out by recovering his five communicator pieces for him. He will send me a reward in the mail.

My frog race course is causing some problems for me. Two of my fossils today were buried in awkward places like this:

It wouldn’t let me dig them up diagonally, so I had to use the island designer app to fill in some water spots with land so that I could dig them up. I could avoid this problem by using certain types of paths (stone or wood) on those spaces, but I don’t want to do that. It wouldn’t really fit the theme of the frog race itself.

I suppose I could use an invisible pattern there… but that could cause a different problem: Kicking off the pattern during a race when trying to run. So I’ll just deal with the occasional inconvenience for now.

Nook’s Cranny had an arcade fighting game for sale, so I bought it…even though it cost an absurd 64,000 bells.

I put it in my arcade at the amusement park, replacing the dart board.

I’ve been noticing a number of blue pansies popping up, so I’ve decided to put them around Hornsby’s house. Even though he currently has pink cosmos around his house, that’s only because I mistakenly thought that was Midge’s house a while back. Oops. 😛 So Midge will now get those pink cosmos.

July is here now, so that means lots of new bugs are out! I caught and donated a horned dynastid, miyama stag, walking leaf, saw stag, cyclommatus stag, and earth-boring dung beetle. It’s weird seeing a dung beetle in the summer, even though it’s not the snowball-pushing kind.

I also caught a new fish, the Napoleonfish.

There are still more new creatures to catch, but the peak season is just beginning. It’s going to be a lucrative summer, and much museum progress will be made. 🦉

My third gold rose is budding, as are a bunch of new blue hyacinths.

That’s all for tonight, but the game update is coming tomorrow night! In less than 24 hours, I may be swimming for the first time! See you then!

It was raining yet again today, and I’m really sick of the rain at this point. Louie summed it up well, and I 100% agree with him on this.

Apple was also discussing the weather. She said she should throw a rainy-day party, where we could all dress as our favorite clouds. I think I’ll be Lakitu’s… uh… vehicle?

Hornsby wasn’t in good shape today. He had a big itchy tongue after eating fish? It sounds like he’s allergic to fish, although he was apparently just reacting to a flea being on him.

C.J. was in town, and he had a challenge for me. He asked me to catch three “big-time” fish in a row, about the size of a zebra turkeyfish.

My first fish actually was a zebra turkeyfish, and then I also caught two sea bass. I completed the challenge, but C.J. doesn’t really have a proper reward for me. However, he does offer to buy my fish at a good price. I sold him all that I had, and then I returned to him a few minutes later after I caught a great white shark. He paid 22,500 bells for it!