Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Camp

  1. Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Campaign
  2. Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Campfire
  3. Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Camper Van
  4. Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Camper
Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Camp

Random animals in your camp, every 3 hours, will have a chance for you to speak with them to gain either bells or materials. One(1) random animal will have a request. There is also a random chance for an animal to ask you to find a random item for them in the various areas of the game. The first pocket upgrade will add a third row for a total of 30 slots. Second Inventory Space Upgrade The second inventory upgrade isn't available until you upgrade the Resident Services tent to a.


Animal Crossing debuted as a weird, unique, and very Nintendo-like video game in 2001. It resembled popular life- and farm-sim games, where your experience in a small, riverside village revolved around simple tasks and monotony. But Nintendo added a very special pinch of time and patience.

There simply wasn't much to do in a given day after fishing, fossil scavenging, and running basic errands. That was the point. You were supposed to hop in, do your daily virtual regimen, leave notes for other players in the same household, and come back in a day or two. That formula has since shone for over a decade, with follow-up entries adding online support that essentially expands that 'cozy little household' feeling without breaking the game's core loop.

That's why fans were understandably excited about the series getting its first smartphone entry, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which is now out on Android and iOS. The series' mix of simple, bright graphics, cute animal friends, house decorations, and quick-hit daily tasks seems like perfect tap-and-go gaming fodder. And many of the series' best and weirdest trappings are in this smartphone version. But before addressing any of that, we have to look closely at how Nintendo converted this game from a fixed-price, retail offering to a free-to-play microtransaction disaster—and how that has rotted Animal Crossing's most rewarding elements from the inside-out.

The opposite of free-range

Like other Animal Crossing games, Pocket Camp starts with you arriving at a new, outdoorsy locale. Instead of moving into a new town like previous games, you're asked this time to run a campground. You must attract campgoers from nearby, which you do by completing errands, picking up supplies, and crafting your neighbors' favorite furniture and decorations. Doing all of this is as simple as tapping the screen. Tap to walk. Tap to pick stuff up. Tap to talk to a pink, sweater-wearing dog. Tap to drop a fishing line in a river. Tap to catch a butterfly with a net. Anything you've done in an older AC game is easy to do by way of taps, and Nintendo designed this to work as well as you could imagine.

The first huge difference in this game, however, is that players no longer wander around a single, large town. Instead, Pocket Camp's map is broken up into smaller, discrete zones, and when you go to these, you can only do one major action. If you go near a shoreline, you'll have a fishing rod in your hand. If you head to the bug-crazy Sunburst Island, you'll only have access to a net. This disrupts the feel and flow of Animal Crossing in surprising ways. Instead of free-flowing and emergent gameplay, where you happen to see a rare bug or a fish's shadow and make moves to switch out inventory and capitalize, you're instead just heading to specific locales and farming the crap out of them until their supplies are exhausted.

When you wipe out certain supplies, particularly from fruit trees, you are promptly shown a three-hour timer. Want more cherries? You can wait a few hours for the tree to naturally produce more... orrrr you can spend your limited supply of fertilizer to make those fruits appear immediately. Want to speed up fishing? That's what new 'fishing nets' are for, which auto-catch a slew of fish. They, too, are limited.

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These kinds of supplies can be earned in the course of normal gameplay, but more of them can be purchased with the game's paid currency, called Leaf Tickets. And Nintendo makes sure you know how much stuff you can spend those Leaf Tickets on. For example, all of the region's denizens ask you to run around and fetch them certain supplies; doing this rewards you with both friendship points and experience points. When you've fulfilled a denizen's desires, you then must wait a few hours for them to come up with new requests... or you can spend a limited 'request ticket' to make them impatient and ask for more FP- and XP-earning tasks. (Should you run out, these request tickets can be purchased with Leaf Tickets.)

Why would you be in a rush to bump these denizens' desires so quickly? Why not just go run around the island and busy yourself with other Animal Crossing-esque tasks? Because, again, you can only do certain things in each zone, and that means you can no longer do a lot of series tasks. Those include: hunting for a variety of bugs based on time of day; digging up fossils; digging, planting, and arranging flowers; designing your own clothing; hanging out at a cozy cafe; and anything relating to a museum. The series' standard museum is gone, and nothing here replaces the casual, months-long collect-a-thon it fueled.

Ticket taker

Your campsite works more or less the same as your houses did in previous games. Place and arrange all matter of furniture, rug, plant, and other cute objects however you see fit. In order to get the region's quirky creatures to visit your campsite, you'll need to complete enough tasks to earn enough friendship points, at which time they'll demand certain furniture be placed in the campsite before they stop by. Do this, and the game will automatically (and temporarily) place whatever objects your demanding rabbit or pig friend wanted. A cut scene will play out of them sitting on all of your stuff with smiles, and then you can go back to placing furniture however you see fit.

Pocket Camp's loop works as follows: do tasks for critters to earn FP and XP, which unlocks your ability to 1) craft a greater variety of furniture and decorations and 2) meet more critters. At first, getting FP and XP is pretty easy, especially with a flood of new critter friends in the early goings. However, this process slows down remarkably, because you stop meeting new friends and instead must make older friends happier, which becomes more expensive and time-consuming. They start to want nicer, more expensive furniture items, including the larger 'amenity' items.

I mentioned crafting up there, which is a series first. And unfortunately, it appears Nintendo instituted this whole crafting system just to dump a soup of confusing currencies into the game. You don't just collect the game's old virtual currency of 'Bells' (which are still here and never cost real money). And you don't just accumulate those paid Leaf Tickets, which are also rewarded during standard gameplay. Now, you must also account for—ahem—paper, cotton, wood, preserves, steel, four types of 'essence,' 'friend powder,' and sparkle stones. And that's just after 24 hours of play.

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You'll receive different amounts of each currency after completing tasks, and this becomes a blur of visual noise after a while. Like, great, I got some shinies for giving Beau the Deer some fish. I'll figure out what those mean later. But when the time comes to craft something, and you're out of, say, cotton (which has been in seriously short supply in my testing), Nintendo is quick to remind you: just spend some Leaf Tickets to make up for your missing, required supplies.

Leaf Tickets can also be spent to speed up any item-crafting timer, and every item runs on a generation timer. Early crafting items only take 1-3 minutes to generate, but already in my brief impression-period testing, I've been asked to create items that take 12 hours. For a little over $2 worth of Leaf Tickets, Nintendo can make that 12-hour wait go away (and it generates an exact Leaf Ticket price for whatever the timer is in any given circumstance). Players can also spend Leaf Tickets on more simultaneous crafting slots and more inventory slots.

It’s not just about the money

I can already see the payment wall coming right at my face. As my Pocket Camp friends become more demanding, I'll need more, harder-to-get fruits and fish (which I can speed up by using limited, sometimes-paid boost items). Then they'll demand longer-timer furniture and items, including supply-specific amenities. And the primary way to fulfill these few, basic requests is to hop from menu to menu and between very limited-instance zones, with a very basic suite of taps and menus to tap through in order to make everyone happy.

Worse, the interconnected nature of old AC games has been devastated. You can visit friends' campsites, but all you can do is look at how friends have arranged their items. There's no true interaction on their campsites. No ability to leave notes, no talking to their unique residents, and no version of 'I can get more apples or fossils from my friend's island' here. Instead, you can put a few of your collected items up for sale, which your friends can only access in a bland menu and trade you the 'Bells' currency for them. (It's much faster to blow limited-use items and Leaf Tickets when you're low on supplies.) You're also encouraged to tap through your friends list and demand people help you access a 'mining station' mini-game, which takes forever to do via the friends list. This mini-game, too, is more easily accessible by spending Leaf Tickets.

The problem isn't having to pay for AC:PC's content, which isn't even required at first, thanks to a 'welcome to the game' bounty of Leaf Tickets and other limited-supply items. If it came down to it, I wouldn't be against paying for the good parts of this game. I love the music, the world design, the quirky characters, their cheeky dialogue, and the furniture designs. I love when the tapping controls let me do standard Animal Crossing tasks like catching fish and collecting bugs. I love using my fingers to arrange various items and furniture to my liking and then watching little walking, talking animals hang out on my couches and play with my barbecue grills.

The problem is that Pocket Camp is severely tuned to push you into hurry-up-and-wait situations, as opposed to letting you freely melt into the world and be subject to the patience-is-a-virtue systems of its predecessors. Those are all gone. If you spend at least $60 on Leaf Tickets, you can accumulate every single item and placate every denizen in a few long marathon sessions, just tap-tap-tapping away between menus, currencies, and tiny zones. That goes against the spirit of the series, which might be OK if more gameplay systems were implemented to make up for this transition to mobile screens and fewer buttons. But the designers haven't added anything to the experience.

As a result, this isn't Animal Crossing. This is a scam. Nintendo should be ashamed for attaching such predatory practices to one of its most family-friendly properties, and nothing short of a full-scale redesign will fix the FarmVille-level rot within this shiny-looking game.

Listing image by Nintendo

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is still an adorable, open-ended hoarding and courier simulation like its predecessors. If you wanted to pinpoint its overall goal, however, it would be getting each animal in the game to join your Campsite. Inviting an animal to your Campsite begins with befriending them to a certain level and crafting their five favorite pieces of furniture.

Step 1: Become Friends

When you meet an animal at one of the four camping islands stationed around the map, you’ll be able to fulfill requests—for fish, bugs, etc.—and chat with them. Both of these increase their friendship score (as long as the dialogue option is red), leveling their friendship up when they earn enough points. If you tap on an animal’s name in your Contacts list, you’ll be able to see their current friendship level, as well as what they need in order to be invited to your Campsite.

Most of the animals you meet early in the game will need to reach a friendship level of three, while later animals will require level five, and the last set will need to hit level seven, to be invited. Below the level requirement, there will also be a list of five pieces of furniture they request before they’ll accept an invitation. If you already own a piece, it will have a green checkmark next to it. If you do not, there will be a direct button link to craft it.

Step 2: Craft Furniture

While you’re working on building your friendships or after they’ve reached a high enough level, you’ll need to make the animal’s furniture requests. You only need one of each requested item, and you do not need to place it in your Campsite. Furniture often takes multiple hours to craft, so we recommend purchasing the permanent extra crafting slots with Leaf Tickets (tap the plus sign at the top of the crafting menu) so you can craft multiple pieces of furniture at the same time.

Animals often share requested furniture—for instance, both Carrie and Roald ask for a Kiddie Rug before they will visit, but you only need one rug for both—so you can usually make progress with multiple animals at the same time. Once you have crafted all of an animal’s requested pieces of furniture—and their friendship level is high enough—you can invite them to your Campsite.

Step 3: Invite Them

When you craft the last required piece of furniture for a specific animal, you’ll usually get a pop-up notifying you that they can be invited and asking if you wish to do so immediately. If you dismiss this, you can also invite them by heading into your Contacts list, tapping the animal (they’ll have an “Invite me!” banner on their icon), and then choosing “Set up Manually” or “Set up Automatically” below “Special Requests.”

Way

We always choose “Set up Automatically,” which simply clears your camp and fills it with their five requested pieces of furniture. After the invitation is complete, you can undo this and your camp will go back to the way it was.

Free Way To Earn Crafting Slots In Pocket Campaign

Step 4: Managing Visitors

If you invite an animal to your Campsite and there is space available, they will stay and hang out indefinitely. You can visit with them at the Campsite anytime you like, and they will only leave if you manually send them home.

Once an animal has successfully been invited to your Campsite—you see the cut scene where they’re enjoying the furniture—you can then invite them to return any time. This is one of the biggest benefits to recruiting an animal to your Camp: you’ll always be able to call them there, whenever you like, for free.

To send an animal home or invite an animal back, go to your Campsite and tap the cat face icon on the right side of the screen. You’ll see a list of who’s currently hanging out at your Camp. If you tap on an animal’s icon, their details page will appear along with the “Send home” option. If you want to invite an animal to your Campsite, tap an empty slot with a plus sign and then choose your invitee from the list of available contacts. You can only host eight animals at a time, so if all slots are full, you’ll need to send someone home before you can invite someone new.

If an animal you invite to the Campsite was currently on one of the external camping islands, that island will be empty for the remainder of the three-hour rotation. They aren’t replaced by another animal immediately, so be sure you’ve completed any requests before asking them to come over.

Crafting

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Step 5: Choosing Guests

Animals at the Campsite are always available, so it’s easier to level up their friendships through regular visits. You can also have a friendship-boosting chat with animals at your Campsite fairly regularly—about once every 40 minutes—which is much more frequent than animals camping on the external islands.

Because of this, we typically fill our Campsite slots with animals we want to level up. Once animals reach level 10, they give larger rewards for completed requests. A good strategy is to invite animals to your Campsite, keep them there until they reach level 10, and then send them home so you can fulfill their requests when they show up on the other islands (and fill their Campsite slots with new animals below level 10).

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Key Points to Remember

The key takeaways are:

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    • Every animal has a set of requirements that must be met before they’ll visit your Campsite
    • Once you fulfill those requirements and successfully invite them, they are permanently available to bring to your Campsite whenever you want
    • When an animal is first invite-able, there will be a banner over their icon in the Contacts page. Animals you’ve already successfully invited will have a colorful background instead of the plain white
  • You don’t need to keep an animal’s requested furniture in your Campsite after their first visit: you could have a totally empty Camp, and any animal you’ve invited will happily stay put
  • It’s easier to level up an animal’s friendship at your Campsite, so invite animals you want to level
  • There are two main areas in your Campsite: Furniture and Amenities. Furniture makes up the central area that you fill with tables, chairs, etc. Amenities are the large structures in the back of the Camp, and we discuss these in a separate guide.