[Guide] So you want to hack your town? - A Beginner's Guide
So there's been quite a few people wondering recently whether they can hack their town with their current 3ds set up, and I am here today to answer all these questions in one handy guide. This guide will discuss everything you'll need to know about whether you can actually hack, how to set up your hacks, what to do when something goes wrong and the risks involved with hacking your town.
Edit (19/10/17): Homebrew News for 11.6.x!
Notehax has come and gone and Flashcarts are all the range. For just homebrew access however, there are currently no free access points on 11.6. But fear not, Pokemon X/Y/OR/AS is being investigated as a primary exploit and we always have End of Life (EoL) Hax to look forward to.
Edit (08/11/17)
Minor edits to text to avoid confusion over firmware versions
Edit (30/04/18)
Updated "what can I do with a hacked DS?" info sheets link for up to date information!
So... can I hack my town?
Firmware Version 11.3.x and below
Yes! Your town is fully hackable. To get started you'll need to set up a homebrew entry point. On firmwares 9.x - 11.3.x, the entry point 'Soundhax' can be set up. To do so, you'll need access to a computer or a device that can read and modify the contents of your SD card. A phone will be sufficient for N3ds users with micro sd cards. Follow this guide: https://3ds.guide/homebrew-launcher-(soundhax).html to set up soundhax. It will provide you with full instructions + all the files you need!
Firmware Version 11.4.x and above
Well... its not impossible. It just becomes a little harder and instead we explore the following options:
1) Ninjhax and Freakyhax (Cubic Ninja and Freaky Forms Deluxe) are still confirmed as working on 11.5. (FF) and 11.6 (CN) You will need either a copy of cubic ninja or freaky forms deluxe and then to follow the respective website guides to set up the hax. The downside to this is that this is not free, and can be expensive. Freaky Forms is usually cheaper than Cubic Ninja, but will still cost upwards of £20 (~$25).
2) Basehax (Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire) is also confirmed to still work on 11.5! Unlike the ninjhax or freakyhax, basehax requires tempoary access to a 3DS with homebrew already set up in order to inject the save and load homebrew on your own 3DS. Follow the instructions here to set up basehax!
3) The custom firmware (CFW) route can look daunting, but is a sure-fire way to prevent ever loosing access to your hax. CFW is available to install on all firmware versions, although on 11.4 and above, like the previous hax before them it is not free; for 11.4/5 you will require a DS Flash Cart and a small magnet. A list of compatible flashcarts can be found here. At some point in the near future, it will be possible to 'flash' the flashcart with Powersaves, however in the mean time you will also require temporary access to a 3DS with CFW already installed, or a DS lite/DSi that is compatible with your flash cart, depending on what you have available to you and what method you can use. For more information on CFW, Read the front page of 3ds.guide for:
-What is CFW?
-What do I need to know before starting?
See also What can I do with a hacked DS? by Nico_is_not_a_god!
This is not an installation guide, but a run down of what you can do after with CFW. Please see 3ds.guide for step-by-step installation!
So... how do I actually hack my town?
I'm glad you asked!
Once you've successfully set up your homebrew entrypoint, you'll need a save manager to extract your save file. I recommend JKSM. To install the save manager, drag and drop the .3dsx file into the /3ds/ folder on your 3ds's SD card, along with the rest of your homebrew things. Now you'll want to open homebrew and scroll down until you find JKSM. Select ACNL from the list of games and your screen will go all pixelely and weird. If you think it's frozen, its ok! reboot and try again. The user interface of JKSM is very friendly, select 'export save data' and name your file whatever you want. I like to name my files as townnamedatetime, eg: Ocala0607171407, so I always know which is my newest back up. After the manager has finished exporting your save, exit and power off your ds, do not boot into ACNL until we're done!
Put your SD card into your device of choice and navigate to your save, which should be something like SD/3ds/JKSM/ACNL. Once you've found the folder which you just named, drag and drop the whole folder somewhere safe. Always keep a back up of your save!. Now for the fun part, in your favourite browser open up the online save editor and import your garden_plus.dat file. Look at that! it's your town! now you can make changes to your hearts content. Wanna have more than 1 town tree? Sure! you wanna put PWP projects on the beach? Go for it friend! you wanna put all your residents houses in the river? well sure i guess but they might not be very happy about it. Once you're finished making changes press the save button and save it SOMEWHERE THAT IS NOT THE SAFE PLACE FOLDER. I personally save my edited garden_plus in my downloads folder. now in your file explorer drag and drop your edited garden_plus file into it's original location on the 3ds sd card, for me it would be inside the 'Ocala0607171407' folder that I made in our earlier example. It will ask you to replace the file, click yes. Put your SD card back into your 3ds, boot up homebrew and JKSM again but this time click 'import data' and select the folder with your new shiny save in it. Voila! we're done!
Other things the save editor allows you to do include:
1) Move PWP's, including ones that cannot be moved in game! (eg. Cafe, Police station etc)
2) Move existing buildings! (Note: moving the Town Hall and/or Retail will NOT move the cobblestone around it. This is will have to be moved or removed manually with acre editing)
3) Unlock all PWP's! (In the 'other' tab, select "unlock all PWP's")
4) Change your grass pattern!
5) Change the size of your town tree! add more town trees! put a town tree on the beach! live life to the full!
6) Change your villagers to the one you've always dreamed of! Includes Sanrio villagers!
7) Give yourself that Wallpaper Sahara just won't hand over!
8) Change your native fruit! Have perfect fruit trees that arn't your native fruit!
...And more! play around, explore the options and have fun!
My game says the data's corrupt!/ my game says the welcome amiibo update is missing but I had it before! help!
When your data claims to be corrupt after injecting a save this can be for 1 of 2 reasons.
Reason 1 - You've made an invalid map layout.
This will only happen if you've been editing your acre layout. It's actually quite hard to make an invalid layout, as long as it makes sense. Things you can do include: having cliffs on both sides, having more than 1 river, have no river, have more than 1 waterfall and so forth. Things that can go wrong include: using island acre tiles on your town, using incorrect cliff tiles, river flowing the wrong way (although can sometimes work, just looks a bit silly). Finally always keep at least 1 rock and a pond, just to be safe.
Reason 2 - Your injected save file is not recognised as the last save played, and the secure value check has failed.
As the title says, if you try to restore an old back up the secure value check will fail and corrupt your data. To restore an old save, you'll need to update the secure value, which we'll talk about now.
What to do when It all goes wrong
This is what our safe place back-up is for.
Step 1 - Boot into ACNL while holding X+Y+B+A buttons. This will prompt you to delete your data. Select yes.
Step 2 - Create a new town and name it something funny to make your self feel a lil better (funny town names optional)
Step 3 - Do Isabelle's bidding until you can plant the town tree. Plant it and then save and quit.
Step 4 - Export the save of your new temporary town, name it something distinct from your actual town.
Step 5 - Load the online save editor with the Garden_plus.dat of the town you want to restore.
Step 6 - Navigate to the 'other' tab in the editor and click the pencil icon by the secure value. Import the garden_plus of the temporary town you made. The long string of numbers will now update.
Step 7 - Save the edited file and drag and drop it into the folder of the temporary town on the 3ds SD card.
Step 8 - Insert your SD card back into your 3ds, boot up homebrew and inject the file with your edited save. Your town should now be restored!
I have no idea what causes the game to claim the welcome amiibo update is missing, but following the above steps to restore your back up will restore your town, update intact. I've had this message several times but with no obvious cause, if you get this message as well please tell me what you did and maybe we can figure it out together!
This is great and all but what about the risk involved?
Time for my disclaimer: I, birdwithbrow, am not responsible for anything that happens to your save data. Each time you make changes there is always a chance that something can go wrong, or corrupt. Keeping up-to-date back ups and making a back up each time you want to make changes is a great way to make sure you never loose the town that's precious to you.
For those of you worried about Nintendo, the banwave and whether your console is at any risk I will address those now. No console only running homebrew (through any entry point) has been confirmed as banned by nintendo. The last banwave occurred approximately in May 2017 and while it was a little hectic at first, the amount of people being banned has appeared to have reduced or even stopped. The ban only affected users with custom firmware, and homebrew users with no custom firmware do not need to be afraid of being banned.
A few people have wondered whether Nintendo can disable your console for hacking. In a short, Nintendo cannot brick your console for homebrew usage as this violates hardware ownership laws in the EU and recently in the USA. The most nintendo can do is ban you server-side for online play, which is only likely to occur in ACNL if you change your TPC picture and access Club Tortimer.
Apologies for the long post, but hopefully this will be helpful to everyone from those just starting out to complete beginners. If you have any questions, or would like to raise any discrepancies in this guide please comment below!