So my husband and I have a first gen Switch. I didn't realize how janky it was until I starting playing New Horizons, and one of the joy cons broke right as the pandemic started. We bought a refurbished joy con, and it was still broken. Finally ordered new ones but they haven't arrived yet. However, we felt it was time to just get a new Switch. My husband also wants to play his own island, and bought his own game. Finding a Switch has been extremely hard (we call local stores on the days they get their shipments, set browser alerts on store websites, nothing). I don't want to contribute to the secondary market where things are wildly overpriced. One of our friends in another country actually hooked us up with one. It took forever to get it to us since his country has stricter lockdown, but it finally arrived yesterday. I was so happy.

Well, short-lived because as I discovered, you can't transfer AC data. I'm still working full time, and I didn't research it well. So I'm bummed. I want to use my new Switch and I don't want to wait for the fix to come through. I've made the difficult decision to start a new island. I can move many of the items and hybrids over, but I hate that I'll have to rebuild my house (just got a 3rd room), the museum, and losing the relationships I've built with villagers. K.K. Slider also finally came to my island this past weekend. I don't have alot of time to play, and it sucks starting over.

However, I'm trying to spin it positively. I didn't like the layout of my town. There were a couple annoying villagers (and I have amiibo cards that I figured out how to use). I thought I would ask everyone:

What advice or lessons would you give if you could start over?

Awe I'm so sorry to hear that you have to start over If I could start over, I would put all my buildings and villager houses in one corner of the island so I can build out the rest of it as I like it and then move everything piece by piece. I've wasted soooo many bells just from moving things around all the time

I have a ton of flowers so if you need some, please come over and take as many as you'd like

Ahh thank you so much! I may take up your offer. And good point about putting everything in one corner. I had to move both my museum and the campsite, and it was spendy.

I agree on the buildings close by & your house
Near port or even hall if your lucky enough.
But I dont agree on the villagers part because
It feels less realistic to me if cram them all into
One area & not make them part of your design.
Its like saying I have villagers but only want my island to look nice.

Sorry for long post , with mine I spread them out

water_cat I agree! I meant that as I develop my island I move the villager houses as I go so I don't waste bells. I've moved every single one of my villagers houses bc I couldn't get the landscape done quite right. I hope that helps!

1. Get a layout you like first, especially on the river mouths and city hall. Those WILL NOT be something you can change.

2. At least make a rough plan of what you want the town to look like. Here are 2 tools that might help with that:

Link Text Goes Here
Link Text Goes Here

3. If you plan on doing a lot of terraforming, trying to move all villagers and shops etc to one section of the island if you can't already place them where you'd like. It'll make terraforming later MUCH easier

4. Have a good friend network/group. DIYs feel like the worst part sometimes, and the stalk market can be cruel. Twitter/Reddit/other sites for finding good turnip prices to sell out can be crueler.