Getting Amiibo Neighbors

Good morning everyone and welcome to another lovely day in Pandemia. This time I am actually talking about my Animal Crossing island and not the world of chaos surrounding us. I’ve talked about this being my first Animal Crossing game before, but also that in truth I played a bit of Pocket Camp. During my brief time playing that I did manage to bond with a few of the Campers, one specifically was Cherry the Goth Death Metal Dog. So when I found out that you could summon specific Villagers and get them to move in via Amiibo Cards, I had a goal. I always do a certain amount of nonsense to finish my goals but this one was considerably more than normal. The whole process of faking out an Amiibo Card is something I might get into in a later post, but for now I am going to focus on the actual process of getting someone you summon to move in because like many things in this game it is clear as mud.

The entire process becomes available when you build the campsite on your Island. You unlock the ability to build a campsite shortly after you have upgraded Resident Services from a tent to a proper building the comes complete with a nifty brickwork town square. If I am correct the sequence of events to get to this point looks a little something like this:

  • Pay off your first loan and upgrade tent to a house
  • Invite three new villagers to your island via island adventures
  • Build Nook’s Cranny Store
  • Place a Bridge
  • Designate land and craft random nonsense for the three villagers
  • Wait for them all to move in
  • Upgrade Resident Services

So much of the things that happen in this game happen on a very strict schedule and I am sure someone out there has a flowchart of all of it. After you get your campsite however you need to wait a full day, and then the next day a random camper will show up. You need to recruit this first random camper to your Island and wait for them to move in and clear out the campgrounds. Upon returning to Resident services you will get the ability through the ATM machine to summon an Amiibo to your campsite.

So the rules appear to be that you can use an Amiibo or an Amiibo Card, of which there are 400 of them release in 4 different 100 card series. The prices on cards vary wildly and you can pick up a Cherry card on Ebay for everything between $15 to $50 depending on the seller. Sealed packs of cards are now going for around $20 each because we are in the crush of the release of a popular Animal Crossing game. I “acquired” Cherry and was ready to begin the process. I scanned the card in and got a screen that looks a little like this where you invite her to your campsite.

Almost immediately she shows up in the campsite and you can begin the process of interacting with whomever you scanned. You have to talk to them a few times before they give you a dialog that asks you to craft a souvenir for them. If it is something that you don’t have the pattern for they will supply that as well. I thought to myself that surely once I handed off the item I would get a prompt to invite them, and for the most part that is the sequence of events that played out. However after the first time inviting them they said that they weren’t quite sure and would like me to invite them back some other time.

This process played out three more times. The next morning I would summon Cherry to the island first thing and after a throw away dialog she would give me one asking for an item. I would go off and craft said item and once again on the second day I got the “invite me back again” prompt. However finally on the third day I got one where I managed to convince them to move to the island. They state that they will go talk to resident services, but immediately returns telling you that Tom Nook says the island is full. So here is where I did things in the wrong order for a bit. I thought okay… I will go make a new campsite which costs 10,000 bells and then when I invite her back the next day she will move in. However the next morning I wake to find a random islander had purchased my fresh new spot.

So once again I summoned forth Amiibo Card Cherry and after doing some research and following down a handful of Reddit and YouTube Rabbit trails, I found the error in my sequencing. Upon inviting your Amiibo and getting the dialog about the Island being full, you need to go ahead and make a new plot of land like I was originally thinking. However the thing I did wrong is you then need to go right back to your Amiibo and talk to them again. They will talk to Resident Services and this time around Tom Nook will tell them that they can move in immediately. The very next day you should see your Amiibo moving in and you have successfully jumped through all of the stupid hoops it takes to recruit someone.

So to summarize the sequence of events in list form:

  • Build Campsite
  • Recruit First Random Camper
  • Get the ability to Summon Amiibos to Campsite
  • Summon Amiibo – Day One
    • Craft Random Souvenir
    • Get Shot Down
  • Summon Amiibo – Day Two
    • Craft Random Souvenir
    • Get Shot Down Again
  • Summon Amiibo – Day Three
    • Craft Random Souvenir
    • Get Move In/Island Full Dialog
  • Pay Tom Nook 10,000 Bells to Make a New Plot
  • Talk to Amiibo Again and get successful Move In Dialog

Why yes I do have a yellow diner seat on my beach… thanks for noticing. The other interesting thing that I have learned through this entire nonsense process is that you can use this trick of summoning campers to kick Villagers off your island once you have reached the point of being full. Apparently the entire process follows as normal, but when you have finally convinced the person and get the move in dialog, it asks you if you have heard of anyone who wants to leave the island. You then get a prompt to choose one of your Islanders that you want to swap for the newcomer. Upon doing this the Amiibo goes off and talks to this Islander and the next day they begin moving out and a few days later your new Amiibo arrives. This is in part why I am considering talking through the nonsense process of acquiring Amiibo cards through other means, so that you too can punt annoying islanders. However that is a discussion for another day.

One last thing… I have a sign up sheet for an Animal Crossing Info exchange. If you sign up, I will end up dumping the relevant information into another google sheet and then sharing it back with you. The idea being that it tracks pertinent information like type of fruit, flowers and what stores you have access to. Feel free to add your info.

1 thought on “Getting Amiibo Neighbors”

  1. Everyone and everybody is playing this game now, it’s so hard to resist buying it !! Help! Trying to save money here, but cute pictures and stories everywhere!

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