Animal Crossing Wild World Tips

Imagine, if you will, a place with no worries or cares, where you earn a living by picking fruit, fishing, catching bugs, or even just collecting shells. A place where your neighbours (a funny lot... but in the nicest possible way) love nothing more than to send you letters and gifts... provided you do the same! Indeed, a place where money (and bee swarms) falls from the trees.

No day is ever the same in your Animal Crossing Wild World village. Forget other games, this is an ever-changing microcosm in which your fellow villagers come and go, the scenery and wildlife change with the seasons. Just when you think you have experienced it all, there may be a new surprise, a new discovery.

How do you play Animal Crossing Wild World (AC:WW)? Any way you like! Here are just a few of the challenges that you might choose to take up:

* Make money! In AC:WW you earn bells, which can pay off your mortgage and buy you nice things for your home. Just like real life. Learn what items earn the big bucks, from turnip trading to hunting rare bugs, and you'll soon have a money-making strategy that will make you a billionaire... or should that be bellionaire?

* Make friends and collect their pictures. AC:WW is peopled with a host of quirky villagers who come and go. They are generally friendly but finding your way into their hearts takes more work. If you do win their lasting affections, you'll find yourself the proud recipient of a framed picture of your friend. See my full guide on Animal Crossing villagers which includes how to become popular with your Animal Crossing neighbors and get animal pictures.

* Create a museum. Or, more precisely, fill the empty museum in your village by donating fossils, fish, bugs and paintings. Watch the exhibits grow, commemorating your hard work.

* Go fishing. Fish can be caught for sale or to donate to the museum. Either way, you will need a little patience and a keen eye to catch fish in the rivers and the sea that borders your land. Catch everything from a seahorse to a hammerhead shark. Fish come and go with the seasons so it could take time to catch them all!

* Catch bugs. Like fish, bugs come and go, and have different values. Some are much easier to catch than others, and some may try to catch you first!

* Design clothes. The inhabitants of AC:WW, male and female alike, wear unisex smock-like 'shirts' that come in many different designs. If you visit the resident seamstresses, Mable and Sable, they will tell you how to design your own.

* Try interior design. Collect your favourite style of furniture and use it to decorate your room. Furniture can be bought, exchanged in residents' letters, given as rewards, even shot down from the sky! Oh, and if you want a bigger room for all your stuff, you have to work for it!

Of course, these challenges aren't mutually exclusive - you can work towards them all if you like! Neither are they the sum total of all that AC:WW has to offer. Just see them as a beginning.

On starting a new game, you are the newcomer in town. 'Town' being the word the other Animal Crossing Wild World characters will use, although in fact it is quite a rural little place. These are the buildings you will find.

* Store - At the start, this is 'Nook's Cranny', but as you give Tom Nook (raccoon) your loyal custom his store will grow, offering ever more delights for your buying pleasure. Here you find furniture, plants, medicine, wallpapers and carpets, and the essentials for AC:WW survival: watering can, spade, net, fishing line, and axe. Buy the spade, net and line as soon as you can. By the way, Tom is also your employer... and he owns your house!

* Clothes Store - The Able Sisters (Sable and Mable - porcupines) are the resident seamstresses who make and sell the clothes on offer in AC:WW. They also offer an ever changing selection of hats and masks, special design shirts and umbrellas. Stay fashionable!

* Town hall - The mayor is Tortimer (tortoise), and his assistants (who run the tourist bureau and bank) are sisters Pelly and Phyllis (pelicans). Pelly takes the day shift, Phyllis the night. You'll soon learn which one of these to avoid!

* Museum - The initially empty museum is looked after by Blathers (owl). Upstairs, in the planetarium, you can find his sister, Celeste. Brewster (pigeon) takes care of the coffee shop, where on a Saturday night the ever-popular KK Slider (hound) plays and sings.

* Town Gate - Guarded by Copper and Booker (dogs). See Copper if you want to visit a friend's AC:WW town, or speak to Booker if you are checking the Lost and Found box to get freebies.

In addition to these, you'll have four Animal Crossing villagers, whose houses will be in different parts of your town. As time passes, more villagers will move in, up to a maximum of eight. There's no knowing which Animal Crossing Wild World characters you will get from the large cast created by the Nintendo AC:WW team, and some may well move on after a few days, making room for a new resident. Others will stay much longer. You can influence their decisions, but this takes work and sometimes you'll have to resign yourself to seeing a favourite friend move on.

Tom Nook will keep you right. He's the one who owns the store. He owns your house too, so you have a roof over your head right away. On the other hand, you owe him big time. He'll set you to work, doing chores for him such as planting some flowers around his store and running a few deliveries, so that you can start paying off the mortgage. It's a nice easy intro to the game that lets you get to know the neighbours.

As soon as Tom cuts you loose, you have to figure out how to make bells (money) for yourself.

Fruit is an easy way - your town will have a native fruit which can be shaken (in threes) down from the trees. Sell these to Tom for 100 bells apiece. Or get a spade, dig a whole and bury a fruit to sprout a whole new fruit tree. You'll need to water it if it's to grow, so get a watering can too. Other fruit (that is, fruit not native to your town) is a rarer commodity and Tom will pay you 500 bells apiece, so if you are given or find fruit it is well worth burying it and coaxing a fruit tree to grow. Coconuts sometimes wash up on the beach - look out for them, and plant them close to the shore for them to grow.

Bugs can be caught with a net and Tom will buy these for various prices. A cockroach will get you just 5 bells, but an orchid mantis will earn considerably more (2,500 bells!). You'll start to learn where to find bugs - look on tree trunks, on the ground, on flowers, even under rocks.

Fish are found in both the rivers and the sea, and you'll need to cast your line (press A) to catch these. Don't bother casting your line when there is no fish to be seen. If you do see a fish, try to cast your line near to it and then wait for a tug, and press A to reel it in!

Furniture will be given to you by other Animal Crossing villagers. You don't have to keep it, Tom Nook will buy it, but (being a shrewd businessman) for a fraction of its original cost. You might find furniture in the recycling bin in the Town Hall too.

Clothes can also be sold for a proportion of their original value, and you can find them in the lost and found (Town Hall Gate), recycling bin or be sent/given them by other villagers.

Fossils are high-value items. Look for the star shapes in the ground and then use your spade to dig them up. You'll need to take them to Blathers in the museum to be identified. If it's a new fossil, he will ask to keep it. You decide. If you'd rather sell, Tom Nook may give you a couple of thousand bells for it.

Seashells can be collected and sold to Tom Nook too. You'll find lots of low value porcelettas and sand dollars, but look out for the rarer shells and coral.

And that's all there is to it, really. But don't be deceived, it's by no means a five-minute game as each day is different and the quirky Animal Crossing villagers will keep things lively for you. Then there are annual Events, the changing weather and seasons, new opportunities and characters, and a cast of visitors in addition to your neighbours...

You can find KK Slider in The Roost on a Saturday night. Talk to him and he will offer to play you a song.

You can either type in the name of a song or, if you don't know any, just let him play a random one. Make sure you go and sit down and he will begin.

Afterwards, KK will give you a copy of his song. You can go back to your house, click on your radio or music player, and click the musical note with a plus sign. This will open your inventory and will allow you to select the bootleg copy of the song. Now you can hear it playing in your house any time you like!

Top KK Slider songs include:

* K.K. Bossa
* Forest Life
* K.K. Rock

Why not make a request next time you see KK?

Acorn Festival
For a whole week, you have the chance to collect fallen acorns and take them to Cornimer in exchange for furniture. Collect enough acorns and you'll get all the items in the fungi-themed 'Mush' set! You just need to tap the acorns to pick them up, avoiding rotten acorns. If it's hard to tell the difference, check your inventory. You will see there that a rotten acorn has a bite out of it. TIP: Once you have collected 230 acorns, you'll have all the items, and can sell any remaining acorns to Tom Nook for 100 bells each. He pays the same regardless of the type of acorn - even rotten ones.

Winter: Snow, Festive Trees and New Year
Have fun from early December with the snow. Roll snow into balls and put them together to make a snowman! Use festive decorations in your house to get ready for Christmas (you can find the Festive Tree in Nook's store at this time of year). Although there is no Christmas in ACWW, you can celebrate New Year's Eve with all the villagers. On 31 December, watch out for the countdown clock outside the town hall and twinkling lights on the fir trees. Speak to Tortimer and he'll give you party poppers, then return later for music and fireworks!