Collecting Villager Portraits (ACWW, Week 4)

I haven't been posting much because of A) the holidays, B) ill health,
and c) new employment. I will probably get back to writing a little bit
more, but my work schedule has made wi-fi trips rather difficult. I
might get back to trying though.

MASSIVE SPOILERS START NOW

Info on villager portraits starts at the very end. Feel free to skip
right down to there.

Lyle ripped me off. I paid 3K for personal accident insurance on his
first visit and 6K for property insurance on his second trip. (And yes,
apparently he *does* show up every Saturday to arrange Redd's visit.)
By his third trip, I now had two forged paintings, which I handed over
to him. Next day, I had my payment...200 Bells. WHAT! I paid at least
8K for those two! At this rate, I will need to get *58* more forgeries
to ever get ahead...Animal Double Crossing Lives...

It took Redd's third visit before I could actually buy a real painting
that Blathers would take. And it showed up in the catalog this time, so
I can order as many more copies (at 2K per) as I want, which is nice.
Obviously, this is going to be the only way we're going to be able to
complete our art galleries...

During my 8 months playing AC GC full-time, with three coordinated
villages, I never managed to round up two of the 30 paintings. I had a
weird aversion to asking for codes--I mean, I could have finished the
gallery in my first month if I'd wanted to, but I was trying to make
the game a bit more challenging. (And I did.)

This time, I *can't* set up more than one village, and wi-fi is a lot
more amusing than trading codes, so I suppose I start heading out to
peddle my Lovely Paintings soon. The 52 piece fossil gallery is hard
enough, but you get new fossils every day, and at worst, they're
duplicates. One possibly forged painting every week results in a
predicted completion date of something like three years. I'm not going
to play that game, and I'm pretty sure that's the way Nintendo wants
it.

Finally snagged my first coelacanth...I'd read they were on the list
for this month, but I thought only during rain storms. Haven't seen a
second, though I have hooked many tuna. Reaction time on those two is
something fierce. I miss about half, if not more.

My apple and palm trees are slowly multiplying. (Oranges are native.) I
only have two more to go. Really, I need to get out more.

I paid off my 598K mortgage (the second floor) on the 23rd, and got my
second large downstairs room the next day...Along with a 728K mortgage.
Now at 520K. On a weekend or sick day I can usually nail down 100K as
the hours while down...

You know, I haven't seen or read of any get-quick-rich-schemes in this
ACWW. White turnips are a joke, and I've not heard that anyone is doing
all *that* well growing red ones. The strangest story I read on
Gamefaqs is of the couple who spent all day wi-fied together while they
tried to raise the 1.2 million bells required to buy the crown. All
they could do to get the jingle was fish like heck...All day...But they
did it, soooo...

And yes, seeing the crown at the Able's kind of blew my mind. And I
thought the King Tut mask was expensive.

I left my DS in dormant mode too long at work, so I lost a day, but
eh...I was only out 30K bells. The lecture by Resetti was more than
sufficiently annoying to encourage me not to do that again. But I
didn't know how long the battery was going to last...

My slingshot skills are now excellent. I'm hitting just about
everything, sometimes three a day. Picking up on the "wind blowing" cue
is tricky--especially if there is nothing obviously in sight, but hey,
it's critical.

I had three sick villagers in the span of one week. Medicine cures them
after two doses and you get a nice gift if you see them the day they
get well.

Haircuts have been completely dissected, in case anyone cares. Probably
took the Time Travellers all of two days to do it...There's a very
comprehensive guide about it on Gamefaqs. In case you're *really*
worried about your hair, anyway.

Interesting Game Mechanic: In case you haven't noticed, the official
"recycle" time for WW is 6 AM. Funny...I thought it was midnight in AC
GC. But anyway, 6 AM is when all the new dig spots pop up, the
snowballs come back, certain holidays start, etc.

Speaking of snowballs, I saw my first dung beetle pushing one around
the other day. Didn't have a net, though. Saw my first cockroach that
wasn't busy flying away, also...No net. Sort f accidentally dug a mole
cricket, too...No net. I am now always carrying my net.

My snowman luck is also rather weak. Only four winners so far. I want
my snowman TV back!

Blathers is quite literally blathering on more than often lately. He's
had something like three different scripts about how much he hate bugs.
They're not as long as Resetti's, and you can interrupt them. Is there
some point to this, though?

NOW ON TO POTRAIT INFO...

Probably some of you know this already, but eh, maybe not. I found it
out on my own, with almost nary a clue that these things existed. A few
days ago I got tired with all the junk in my house and started mailing
it all out to my villagers. I never did this in GC because my letters
were often rejected and I never really got anything back worth
mentioning.

But now...All my letters have been accepted and I started getting some
rather nice items. I'm still only at something like 149/562 in my
catalog, and that's just with furniture, so there's a well better than
even chance I get something new everytime.

And yesterday, after my second round of this, I got three portraits
from different villagers. Huh! I'd only seen two references to this,
one in-game, and one on Gamefaqs, and they were both vague. In size,
these portraits resemble the Tom Nook Portrait from GC, but, natch,
these are all personalized to the specific animal. They do not show up
in your catalog, either! I have *very* distinct feeling that *every*
different animal might have their own requirements for you to get their
own portrait, but I'll speculate more when I have the time.

So if you want what looks like to be a *massively* difficult goal, now
you have it. Collecting all the fossils? Pshaw. Collecting all the art?
Go wi-fi. Catching all the fish? Simple. Netting all the bugs? Seems no
harder than in GC... Nailing all the gyroids? Well, we can trade extras
now.

But getting all the portraits?

Anyway, on that note, I'm out of here. Have fun in WW. If my life gets
more structured, I'll try and do some wi-fi trips over the weekend.