Golden Rod Guide by Pixel with the help of Zale.

This guide aims to be a basic guide for the golden rod route. Since no guide is readily available, I decided to make one even if it's just a basic guide.

#Before Starting the Run. Animal Crossing runs require an official Nintendo brand memory card. This is because fake memory cards save faster. Fake gamecube memory cards are very hard to spot, and are even sold at some reputable online stores. As shown by TekkenGodZafina. There are 3 ways to spot fake cards. The first is fakes are missing a round indent on the back of the card.Fake memory cards have all green PCB. Lastly If you look into the memory card the metal in the back should be a solid piece, and not cut out. A resource with better images can be found at Here.

Set the internal Clock on the wii to July 17:00 2030. Every time you save, you have to make sure to delete your animal crossing save data before starting a new run. Animal crossing saves 2 types of save files to your memory card, The town data and nes file. These 2 files take 58 blocks total. You need to delete both before starting a run in the wii menu.

If you don't want to manually make splits. A livesplit file already setup from BeefWellington can be found here https://splits.io/27fa download it, and you're good. If your using an OS other than windows, and live split doesn't work you can use the web based livesplit found here: https://one.livesplit.org/

I also recommend grabbing the fish tracker in the resource page of SRC. It tells you the shadow sizes, and it's useful for keeping track of what you have and don't have.

Important Things to note.

• When fishing you don't want weeds to spawn in your town. To avoid this you need to travel backwards in time.Make sure to keep weeds to a minimum or your town rating will drop, and fish will become less likely to spawn.
• Each fish has a different vision, some having 360 vision like piranha and will easily see the fishing line. Well others like eel who seem to be blind and rarely get on the line. If you're looking for a 360 vision fish you can cast behind the fish, and if it attacks the line you instantly know it's the right fish.
• A Pond is not guaranteed to spawn in your town. Make sure you have a pond early on so you don't have to reset late into a good run.
• The fish tracker is nice and tells you what fish to catch each month, but this guide doesn't follow the tracker completely. I will make notes throughout the guide detailing the differences, and why those differences are there.
• To change the date and time load up the game, when talking to a villager tell them before i go... -> Other things -> Set clock
• If you reset in game you run into Resetti, and lose a lot of time.

A useful resource created by phillup showing all the fish spawn rates can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JVe2wuI3F8BcSWezJt9qKBEwmPStsGJ9pCbFTgJ9GE4/edit?usp=sharing

#Getting Started

Train Segment: In the train segment you pick your character's name, and your town name. Spam through the text with A + B and Name both "!".

Intro Segment After getting off the train your talk to Tom Nook, and he will make take one of 4 houses. Go inside one of the top 2 houses, then immediately exit. Tell tom nook you like the house,and after a bit of dialog he will tell you were his shop is located.Once your done with the dialog go to the train station, and look at the map. I recommend taking a picture of the town using the town capture tool made by Jonas in the resource tab to take a picture of your town. If you don't want to do that you can take a picture with your phone, but the town capture is easy to use and fast. After you're done with the town map, introduce yourself to all 6 villagers in your town, and the mayor then heads to tom nook's shop.

Chores There are 7 different chores you have to do before you can get your fishing rod to start fishing. After talking to him the first time and putting your uniform on, talk to him again. You get your first chore, and repeat for every chore. Well doing your chores look around for a pond. The pond has a 1/3 chance to spawn in the museum , police,and nooks shop acre. These places are the highest chance for a pond. It can also randomly spawn in other acres with no river, lakes or oceans. If you don't have a pond you won't be able to catch 2 fish in may. So make sure you have a pond by looking around the map.

List of chores 1.Plant Trees and flowers outside the shop 2. Deliver a piece of furniture to a random villager. ( He will tell you what part of the map the villager is in). 3.Mail a letter to a villager ( Make sure to pay attention to tom nook he will tell you who to write the letter to. If you mess up your have to do the chore all over again) 4."Help" out a villager. Go talk to any villager and spam b.Ask if they need help. You can get 3 different responses from the villager. 1. He says he has nothing for you to do. 2. He wants you to deliver something, and 3. He wants you to pick up something.If its the first option the dialog just ends, and go back to nooks. If its the 2nd option Say No then head to nooks; If he wants you to pick up something say yes, then head back to nooks without picking up the item. If you say no on the 3rd outcome he will get mad and you will have trouble delivering the carpet/axe later on. 5. Deliver a carpet.( Tom Nook will tell you to deliver a carpet to a random villager.) 6.Deliver an Axe to the villager you sent the mail to. in chore 3. 7."Write" on the bulletin board in the middle of town. Bring up the bulletin board Press A, then Press start.

Go back to tom nook, go though a bit of dialog and leave the store, and your get an inner monologue about being free. After your inner monologue, go back into the store, and talk to nook. Pick other settings, then say code. Then enter the following code for a fishing rod.

u V V e E e @ s j J x J p r B F r b 2 H O x x q z a b M

Capitalization Is important.

Open your gift and drag the fishing rod onto the villager, and Now you can start fishing.

#July 17:00

You need to catch the following fish

River

• Sweet Fish 23%
• Eel 5% Vision: Blind
• Arowana 1%
• Catfish 5%

Lake

• Giant catfish 10%

Fish at the lake until you have a giant catfish. Optimally you want to get away from the lake as soon as possible. River fish will appear in the lake, but at a lower rate than in the river.

Side note: If the last fish you need is eel, change the time to 9pm for a 18% catch rate, but this may in turn be slower since a 5% rate isn't bad and you might catch other fish.

Save and quit by talking to the clay statue dancing next to your house.

#June 14:00

Go to the lake until you have captured Brook trout and Snakehead then head to the river.

River

• Popeyed Goldfish 1%
• Guppy 1%
• Bluegill 10% Vision: 360
• Pale chub 10%
• Brook trout 15%
• Crucian Carp 17% ( If the last fish you need is the Crucian Carp catch it in may at a 12.2% chance)

Lake

• Brook trout 15%
• Giant Snakehead 5%

Note: This route catches goldfish in September since Goldfish has a 2.2% appearance rate as opposed to 1% in June.

#May 17:00

Go to the waterfall to catch a char.Then head to a pond to catch a crawfish and a frog.Head to the ocean for a sea bass, Finally going to the river for the rest of the fish.

You need the following fish

Waterfall Large char 11.1% Vision: Blind

Pond

• Crawfish 53% Vision: 360
• frog 39% Vision: 360
• Kilifish 8% (Can also be found in the river at a 1.1% appearance rate)

River

• Loach 3.3%
• Small bass 5.6%
• Cherry salmon 5.6% Vision: Blind
• Angelfish 1.1%
• Bass 16.7%
• Dace 5.6%
• Rainbow trout 5.6%
• Large Bass 5.6% Vision: Blind
• Carp 15.6%

Ocean

• Sea bass 47.62%

Note: On the tracker Freshwater goby,Barbel steed, and barred Knifejaw are highlighted to catch in May.This guide catches the barred KnifeJaw in September for it having a higher catch rate being 33% in September with a 16.67% in may. For the same reasons Barbel steed 5.3% in august, but a 3.3% in may Freshwater goby is caught in January for it having basically the same catch rate at 3.2% well in May its 3.3%. This means if you catch it somewhere early in the run you can just skip it entirely.

#August 31st 11:58 2029

Run to the ocean for jelly you have 2 mins.If it's not raining in September go back to your house and move down a year till it is raining.

Head to the ocean to grab coelacanth, red snapper and barred knifejaw. then head to the river for the rest.

Ocean(August)

• Jellyfish 85.56%

Ocean(September with rain)

• Coelacanth 11.76%
• Red snapper 58.82%
• Barred knifejaw 29.41%

River

• Goldfish 2.1%
• Piranha 1.1% Vision: 360
• Arapaima 1.1% Vision: Blind

River Ocean Acre

• Salmon 51.58%

#January 17:00

Catch All the river fish, and you're done with fishing.

River

• Pond smelt 42.1%
• bitterling 21.1%
• Freshwater goby 3.2%
• barbel steed 5.3%
• Koi 1.1%
• Stingfish 1.1% Blind.

Run to your house, drop two items unequip your rod from your inventory, save and quit.Load up your game one more time and the mayor will give you the golden rod.