A lot of kerfuffle has been made about Animal tracks, this is a feature which tracks your footsteps in City Folk and wears down your grass. Some users unfortunately at launch were completely unaware of this feature. They ran about town like headless chickens, had kids messing about and ground their grass to dust, leaving desert towns in the middle of snowy winter.

Some guides and testers have claimed that it takes 6 months to grow back grass. I think that they are wrong. Shortly before Christmas after a good old moan about the feature, I got off my ass and did something about it. Around 8 weeks later and not incessently watching it, my grass is almost 100% better, I'd say there is about 2% of my town not fully recovered. I haven't had a desert town like some poor folk, but I have regenerated completely bare patches of ground with full coverage of grass in around 4-6 weeks.

Firstly, new City Folk players have nothing at all to worry about, just lay down paths between the shops and houses and you are set.

You have the option of laying down design tiles as walking paths in the game, the seal Wendell will even provide you with them if you feed him the right stuff. You can see them in my pics below.

Once the paths are set you just walk or run on them as much as you like and you dont see any grass wearing down.

WHAT TO DO:

You pick a pattern from your designs page. Lay it on the ground. When you are standing still and you do it, you can lay down two and they will go straight ahead of you. Repeat to make a path. Make sure you use the same pattern for everthing because then when you get a proper tile path from Wendell the seal (by giving him fish) you can swap out your design for the path and it will auto replace all your town tiles with it.

I have them so if you want to you can come over to my shop and just take the designs. I have vertical and I made a horizontal one too. I also have the grass pattern but its really low resolution so not much good.

Then all you do is place the paths on your regular routes. Stick flowers to patch all your damaged grass, use them as band aids. Stick to your paths and in a couple of months you should be good to go. I hear that the grass takes two days before it STARTS regenerating.

It does work but I hear you have to log on as it were each day for the game to register a days growth. I play everyday anyway so its no problem for me. I've had bare patches to solid grass in a few weeks. I also read that it depends on how long you play, as in the grass regenerates as you play. So if you play 1 minute a day your grass wont grow as much as someone who plays 1 hour a day.

I also hear that grass grows faster in Spring, so do this now and reap the benefits of spring rain.

Another good tip is to plant your fruit trees next to paths, this way you can pick up fruit without walking on grass. Otherwise plant your fruit trees on bare areas as designated by the game.

IF YOU MUST GO OFF ROAD (track)

Walk in loops, never walk on the same area twice. Sounds complicated but its not. For a start, never run on grass and otherwise, if you know the way you walk, try not to do it in the same pattern daily. On paths you can do what you want though. A good tip is to leave bare circles in between paths empty so you can hit B to start a run in between.

All of this sounds complicated but really easily boils down to this:

Lay down paths on your regular routes and plant flowers where you want to heal grass. Simple really.

I have just laid down a couple of flowers here to see the improvement. Every week I will take a new pic to see if it recovers.

Pic date: 11th March 2009

You see the area directly in front of my character here? That was bare ground a few weeks ago. Now, completely fine.

Now this is interesting, a house was here so the ground was bare, it has nothing to do with animal tracks, yet my patching with flowers clearly shows how bare patches can grow into grass very quickly, I've had it there for nearly 2 weeks?

Pre-Christmas I had patchy wear all down this slope, I made a path, stuck to it and covered the damage with flowers. Now? It's perfect.

Again this was a bare patch, now almost perfect. Note the two bottom left yellow flowers? That was completely bare too. Now fine. You will notice the edges are bitty where I walked, but next to paths you will see that that is all covered up. (See pic below)

The tiles where those four flowers sit was completely barren 4 weeks ago.

Another guys house was here, now almost recovered.

This is the most interesting pic to me. When I got the game in mid-December this area was completely bare, I haven't touched it, haven't put flowers or trees on it or near it. It has grown by itself, showing that the game does regenerate the grass with or without you. If I had used flowers, this would be 100% solid months ago I reckon.

You see that red tulip bottom right? See how the grass has grown over where it is planted? That is like 5 days of growth.

SteelAttack said:

Weeee! Thanks GG! I am ejaculating all over this thread as we speak.

Yuck, that stuff is toxic and will erode my grass pics.

Oh yeah on flowers. Buy them everyday and plant them. If you have a Nookingtons you are good to go with at least 6 flowers a day.

Flowers planted next to each other make more adjacent flowers so if you have a crap Nooks, do this to make more. Also, what I find is great that when your patches have healed you can simply pick up the flowers you've used before and transfer them to a spot that needs them.

aspro73 said:

I'm glad you told me about this before i start playing, that would anoy the hell outta me.

I wish I had known about it before hand because it was annoying as hell.

Nice guide, GG. Hopefully, it'll help others with less OCD issues than I do.

Right another big tip here, I'm learning all the time.

I got so sick of losing 60% of my investment on the stalk market that I think its been rejigged to reflect online play more i.e they expect people to go online to other peoples towns to take advantage of higher turnip prices.

Anyhow this has what to do with Animal Tracks? Well, I need to plant and collect more fruit trees.

So I noticed that fruit drops in a particular way. It drops in an upside down triangle pattern. So what does this mean for you and pathways?

PLANT TREES NEXT TO HORIZONTAL PATHS NOT VERTICAL.

This way you can retrieve all 3 pieces of fruit without ever having to leave your paths. In the case of trees planted next to vertical paths, you have to go offroad to retrieve 2 out of 3 pieces.

Anyhow, below is something I forgot to show you guys. You see the rightmost vertical line of flowers? This area was completely bare and saw extraordinary growth. I think it was because it is right next to a line of fruit trees. So you can experiment planting flowers and then trees adjacent. One of the Ask Nintendo interviews said that grass grows faster depending on trees and flowers. So it must be true.

Lastly, another experiment I guess. I had to rip up my tiles and shift my path up one square, see pic below.

Notice the date, 14th of March. I planted flowers where the old tiles used to be. I estimate that in 12 weeks time I will see 85% coverage. We shall see.

gamingeek said:

Ravenprose said:

aspro73 said:

I'm glad you told me about this before i start playing, that would anoy the hell outta me.

I wish I had known about it before hand because it was annoying as hell.

Nice guide, GG. Hopefully, it'll help others with less OCD issues than I do.

Got to be honest I really miss meeting up with you. Since Steelo handed the game to his daughters that leaves me with only Travo and his wife to hook up with and being in different time zones means I'm often all by my lonesome.

Once I get into my new house I'll do my damndest to make it happen. but you are aware of my challenges.

Oh yeah, April the 1st has cherry blossoms!

There was a note on the town noticeboard.

Damn right. Now that you mention it there is baseball gear, american football gear in the game, but no soccer stuff. Strange.

I got my Samus helmet today Can you believe it? Only 3 and a half months of saving loyalty points. I am Samus!

Yeah it does. I passed up on the Link suit and hat combo too.

I have a long way to go before I get a Midna Mask. Yes that exists too.