Posted: 11/15/2009 12:14pm Edited: 3 #0

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%AC:GC Turnip Guide
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%Made by Highguy7612, Mark-Up by aldericon
It seems like a good idea doesn't it? Everyone talks about how much money they make, and you are still trying to get that post office model aren't you? So you think turnips are the best way huh?
Well, you are right, turnips are the best way to make money in Animal Crossing if you do it the right way. But I want to warn you on something. If you want to get 999,999,999 bells in your account, you would need to make 20 million bells a week for a WHOLE YEAR! Just thought I would let you know that before you think you are going to do this is a month. It took me 4 months to get my account to 80 million, so be prepared to spend time playing this game (which could be a good thing).
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So how does this turnip thing work anyway?
Now I'm going to explain all of the things about turnips. You can buy them every Sunday from 6:00am to 12:00 noon. This seems like a long time, but you are going to be spending some time doing other things, like finding Joan. She can be found in a random acre of your town and she moves when you leave the acre after talking to her. When you find her, she sells turnips in groups of 100, 50, and 10. ALWAYS buy 100 (more about this explained later).
Here are the quantities you can buy the turnips for.
When you talk to her on different Sundays you will find that her prices change every time.
Here is an example of her selling price.
This is based off of the Stock Market. Now when/how much do you buy? I'll explain that later. Now that you have turnips, you need a place to sell them right? This is done at Tom Nook's Store. But he only buys turnips from Monday to Saturday, so you must sell them between them. The price changes everyday for Tom Nook, so if you want to play the Stalk Market right, you must play AC everyday and check the prices everyday. If you don't sell your turnips by Saturday, then all of the turnips you bought the previous Sunday will spoil, which means that you lost all the money you spent on them.
On a random day during some weeks, there will be a gigantic “spike” in the price Tom Nook is willing to buy the turnips for. This is the whole key to the Stalk Market.
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Tell me more about these spikes?
Spikes are ALWAYS 8 times what you bought the turnips for. ALWAYS. It will NEVER be anything else. The only way it could happen is if you traveled to another town when there is a spike in that town. I will talk more on traveling to other towns for profit later.
So lets say you bought turnips for 100 bells/turnip...and a spike happened that week, that spike would be 800. It would not be anything else! The normal price could go up to 150, but the true spike is 800. What if you bought them for 75? Then the spike would be 600. Well you would rather have a spike at 800 than 600 wouldn't you? Actually, this isn't the case. Think about it. Either way you are getting 8 times what you spent...so does it really matter?
Everyone always says buying cheaper is better, but I don't believe it matters. People think if they buy for cheap that they can sell on Saturday for more than they bought. That is true, but even if you don't sell for more than you bought, you aren't losing that much. The real profit comes from spikes, so it doesn't matter what the small loses are from previous weeks. By the way, a just 1 spike can make up for 13 weeks of loses!!! Remember that!
People also consider selling their turnips, even if it is not a spike, it is just a high price (like 150), they want to at least make some money. I really advise against this, because a spike could come in the next few days. The lost you take if there isn't a spike is nothing compared to the lost from a high price to a spike.
Here is a high price.
This is a spike, which came later in the week. Can you figure out what I bought them for?
A spike comes between 40% of the time to 60% of the time in a town. In other words, a spike comes on an average of every other week to 1 in 3 weeks. This is an average, you will get streaks!! It has been heard of getting 5 weeks in a row with a spike. But also 4 weeks in a row with no spike.
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How much money should I spend every week?
This depends on how much you have in your bank account at the Post Office (you did pay off all your debt didn't you? If not, I would STRONGLY advise you not to use turnips yet, it would spoil it, believe me), if you have less than a million (which you probably will if you just started) then you should spend about 50,000 if you have it, maybe 100,000. After you make a million, you should be spending 200,000. Do that for maybe a month. Now if you had some spikes, you should have a few million. If you have over 3 million, you can bump it up to about 850,000; or what I am going to call a 'full load' which I will explain later.
Once you have over 10 million, you can really do as much as you want, but buy about the same every week because if you spend 9 million in one week and there isn't a spike, then you spend 10,000 another and there is, you wouldn't have a constant earnings. So I would buy two or three 'full loads'. Once you have more money, and if you have more time on Sundays, go ahead and get as much as you can, the more, the better.
Some people don't have the time for this, so they just buy 100,000 every week, even when they have money. I am telling you right now, it is going to take you an extremely long time to get a post office model, you just would have to spend more, so if you are one of these people, be aware that you probably won't ever get the post office model.
Note: There are a lot of gamers who don't have the kind of time to buy this many or prefer not to, but they still want to make money with the stalk market. I suggest to them that they buy about 10,000-15,000 a week. This way, you still make quite a bit of money, but you aren't spending away your hours every Sunday.
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I never have enough time! What should I do?
Time becomes a factor if you are buying turnips. You may have to do something on Sunday, so you only get 2 hours to buy turnips, which could give you limited time for buying the amount you want. First off, you want to have all 15 slots open, and also have 10 letters for money too. It will save you a lot of time.
I am dropping all my stuff before I go to do anything with money/turnips. Notice I also have all 10 letter slots open.
I refer to 850,000 as a 'full load', it is actually a little more than that. A 'full load' is what I defined as filling every spot in your inventory with 30,000 bell bags, including 99,999 in the money slot, and 10 letter spaces with 30,000 bell bags. This is actually 849,999 bells total. The next load is about 1.7 million, and the one after that is about 2.5 million. And so on. So now if you wanted to spend 2.5 million, you would only have to find Joan 3 times! Greatly reducing the amount of time you spent looking for her for 8 or 9 times.
Steps to Get a Full Load:
First, go to the bank and take out as much as you can. (Make sure all your slots are empty.)
Now you need to move 10 bags to your letter slots.
Now go back and take out another 300,000.
Now you have a full load!
When you find her, you need to drop most of your money on the ground, don't worry, it will stay there. Leave maybe 9 bags in your inventory, and then talk to Joan. You will now find out what the price is, and you may spend all 9 bags and have room left for more turnips, or you may still have money bags left over, this obviously, depends on the price of the turnips. What is important is finding the 'balance' where you fill the most spots with turnips and spend the most amount of money. Some weeks you may be picking up 5 bags, some weeks you may be picking up 6 bags, whatever the price is, you will need to adjust. This is the thing that takes the most time. I can easily spend 3 hours doing this step. It takes a long time. I would recommend having a CD player or something like that because you could be driven crazy of this after a short time.
Note that you want to buy every bag as 100 turnips, don't buy 50 and 10, they are just wasting your time. The only time you would buy those is if you are out of money for the 100, but you still have about 5,000 bells left and you can buy a 50 or some 10s, but other than that, just buy 100s.
With your inventory full of turnips, you need to drop them in the acre as well. After you do that, pick up more money and repeat until you are out of money. Remember you have some in all 10 letters, so use that too, and turnips can NOT be put in envelopes, so you can't get 25 of them at one time.
After you spent all your money and dropped all of your turnips in the acre, go back to the post office and get more money if you wish to continue. Joan will be in another random acre, so she won't always go to the same spot, but I found after a few months of doing turnips, that she seems to have 'favorite' acres. After time, you will find out what those are in your town, but if you are just starting, check through every acre.
When you are done buying, you have a few acres filled with turnips, it is up to you whether you want to leave them there or move them close to Nooks store now. I leave them there and then I get them all on the selling day.
Here are a bunch of turnips from one of the acres.
One other thing you can do, is if it is around 11:55, you can still get a whole round of buying in, because as long as you don't leave the acre, Joan will stay there.
It's 12:02pm.
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During the week:
You need to check prices EVERYDAY. If you miss a day, you may have missed a spike. There are patterns in the weeks, but as of now NO ONE has found a pattern on which weeks get a spike and which ones don't. Therefore you need to buy turnips every week to insure that you make money. If someone were to find out which weeks gave spikes, PLEASE contact me and I will test it out and if it works, I will give you credit! This is very unlikely though, so don't try to pass off some story.
I find that it is a good idea to record your data from week to week. Here is some of the things I recorded:
3-7
New Town: 14,400 @ 110
90, 84, 69, 62, 57, 53
3-28
New Town: 21[/b],000[/b] @ 120[/b]
96[/b]0*[/b], 133[/b], X, 100, 108, 117
In these cases, the date is at the top, then the town (you may be using more than 1). Next to the town is how many turnips were bought and at what price. Underneath are Tom Nook's prices throughout the week. Notice I got a spike on the week of 3-28 (the date is a Sunday). And the X means it was the Raffle, so I couldn't get a price.
If you get a spike OR it is Saturday, you need to sell your turnips. If it is a spike, you can NOT take 15 to Tom Nook's store. Why? It's too much money, you can't carry it all at one time. Lets take the example of my 3-28 week. I got a spike of 960. If I took 15 bundles of 100 to Tom Nook, that would be 1,440,000. Even if it was 800,000 this would not work because Tom Nook doesn't put money in your envelopes. So in this case, I would want to take 5 because 6 is over 549,999. You want to take the most you can under 549,999. Now I 480,000 with me. I can put 300,000 of it in letters. So that leaves 180,000. Now the most turnips I can get is 3. So in this week, I would take 8 to Nooks, leave 3 outside, come in and sell 5, fill my envelopes, then go and get the other 3. Now you can leave the money right outside, or you can take it to the post office. Either way, you can now go and get the rest of your turnips sold (this week it would be 8 at a time, in other weeks it would be different, you just need to figure it out). There is another way to do this. If you want, you can bring 15 turnips, but drop them outside of Nook's and only sell the ones that you can, drop all the money, and then get some more of your turnip there. This will take less trips, and I think I like it better. If you do leave all your money there, it is a good idea to leave areas around the sign posts empty, because if a villager moves there, your money/turnips will go into the police station, and if you forget to get them they will eventually disappear.
Here is an acre outside of Nook's with all the bells.
Make sure that you have the empty space here too, because that is the door of the houses.
There is really no formula, but here is a good way to do it: Try 10 for the first number. 10X *100 or 1000X where X is the price you are selling them for. If it is over 549,999 subtract 1 so now try 9. If it is not enough add to the 10. Repeat until it is the highest number UNDER 549,999. I have never had it be exactly 599,999, but I guess it could happen. Now after you take that number up to Nooks, but as much as you can in the envelopes. You should have an amount left over. Now try 5X * 100 +N or 500X + N, where X is the price and N is the amount left over. After you have it figured out, keep bringing that number to Tom Nook's Store.
If it is a Saturday, you MUST sell them or they will spoil. This will take less time because you can carry more of them with you. That amount depends on the price, so you again need to figure out how many you can take at one time.
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Time Traveling and Traveling to another Town:
Time Traveling (TT for short) is very tricky with turnips, it seems to mess up the 'patterns' and mess up the spikes. It could also spoil your turnips, so I STRONGLY suggest that you don't do it. There was a spike one day for me, and I didn't have time, so I waited a day and TTed back, and it worked, so I don't know what causes weird things to happen. My sister also missed that day, and she tried a few days after me to go back to the spike day, but for some reason, it wasn't a spike, it was a normal number. Basically, use at your own risk.
Switching the clock's time.
Now going to another town has also been tricky with turnips. Lets say that there is a spike in one of your other towns, and you want to take your turnips there to sell them there for more money. This seems like a good idea, but note a few things:
Traveling to another town.
-Turnips WILL spoil if the towns' times are too far apart, they should be within a minute to be pretty safe (not 100% guaranteed though).
-You will probably lose a lot of your villagers because it will take several trips to get over there with the turnips and even more to get all the money back. So if you want your villagers, don't do this.
-It already takes a long time to sell all your turnips in your town, it will take even more time to go through with traveling and then selling (you thought you hated Rover before now, you will even more if you do this).
So these 2 things are not 100% reliable, and I would not suggest doing them every week, maybe once a month if you are willing to risk it.