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It took months of work, but I finally finished my cobblestone path for my Shire-themed island Bywater! I consider it quite the accomplishment and I’m pretty proud of myself! It’s 46 pieces, took a lot of careful steps, and on top of that, I’ve never considered ‘random’ path arrangements like cobblestone to be my specialty. The inspiration behind the path was the Hobbiton movie set, which has lots of similar cobblestone on a mixture of dirt and grass winding throughout the hilly streets and hobbit holes. If you want to see all my designs, check out this page as always, but read on if you want some extra info on how to use this path.
Creator code:
MA-0515-5045-1390
- 46 slots, but not all of them have to be essential.
- blends in with early Spring grass (for example, all my photos were taken on March 19th)
- If you use the path, I would love to see! Also, if you post about your town on social media, giving credit or a link back somehow is always appreciated and helps me out. I’m aforestlife on all social media.
Tips for Using the Path
This path is pretty complex, and I could see how even just looking at the pieces could turn people away! So I thought I would give some tips and explain what some of the pieces are for.
Scan the pieces in order
My first tip is to scan the pieces in the order that they appear in my creator code menu! If you scan them in one by one, starting on your first pattern slot, it will end up being displayed in what I think is an organized way.
When you’re done scanning in the pieces, it should hopefully look like this in your designs section:
Here’s a version with labels for each one. If you’re path savvy, this might be all you need:
Hopefully you’ve seen some of the popular 9-slot paths and know how the common pieces work! The standard horizontal, vertical, and corner pieces that you can mix together for various turns and wind-y goodness. And the “fill-in” pattern that goes in the middle to make things wider. But I’ll explain some of the more confusing pieces below!
Diagonals
There are a few different widths of diagonals you can play with~
Wide Diagonals
One type of diagonal is a wide one created by the outer corner pieces, the inner corner pieces, and the fill-in pattern in the middle.
Skinny Diagonals
Another is a skinny diagonal path formed from the turning/corner skinny pieces! I feel like this one and the wider one should be pretty easy to figure out.
Medium Diagonals
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think these “inner diagonal” pieces for medium diagonal paths are a little less common though, or not needed for some paths. So I’ll explain these a bit more with a graphic!
The “inner diagonal” pieces are basically pretty similar to the “inner corner” pieces, except instead of just one inner corner tuft of grass, there are two inner corner tufts of grass on opposite sides. This makes it so you can connect it with the outer corner pieces to form diagonals!
Skinny Variety Pieces
I definitely want to explain why there are two extra pieces for skinny-horizontal paths and skinny-vertical paths! I could see how it could get confusing, but basically, it’s just for variety! If you want to save a few slots, you can totally skip the extra ones, and just scan in the main ones. The problem is, it might look repetitive for any skinny path that goes in a straight direction for a long time.
Something to keep in mind is that it’s only the *MAIN* pieces that will connect well to other pieces of the path! The extra pieces are just meant to add some variety to long, straight stretches of a skinny path.
Connector pieces for skinny paths merging with wider paths
This is *definitely* the most complicated aspect of the path and the thing that makes it most visually overwhelming in looking at the amount of slots! The great thing is, you don’t have to use every single piece if you don’t plan on merging skinny paths with wide paths in particular spots. Because that’s all these pieces are for: *every* possible connection between skinny paths merging with wider ones.
The pieces I’m referring to here are circled in purple! I don’t know how else to explain without it being overly complicated, but I decided to show some examples of these merger pieces being used around my island as examples:
Other uses
You can definitely get creative with how the path winds, forks, and merges! Another usage I thought I’d throw out there are stone patios. You can even have little holes in the stone patios using the inner corner pieces:
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or confusions about using it! I think I’m pretty much done with this path for now, which means no season variations or extra pieces for the forseeable future. I’ve got too much else I’d like to get to, and I’m pretty happy with it how it is (and ready to move on after working on it for months, haha!). I hope the path might be useful to someone else out there! 💚
A Forest Life 
Hi Amy, I’ve been reading your blog since NL days and I just want to say how incredible this is!
It’s kind of mind-boggling to me how you were able to visualize all the pieces in your mind and work out the ways in which they would slot together. I can’t even imagine it. A whole new level of spacial-processing intelligence that most people can’t comprehend, it demonstrates so much talent. Amazing work 🙂
Bywater looks truly gorgeous!! Just absolutely insanely beautiful. I love all the little design details, the colors of the flowers, everything!
I’m not quite sure why I’m posting this when I don’t even have NH XD (I can’t really justify buying a Switch for rl reasons, so I’m still happily bumbling along with New Leaf, and your old blog posts have given me so much joy and inspiration in that respect!), just saw the new post and wanted to add my praise!! Have a lovely day in Bywater~
This comment was really sweet and even made me emotional, thank you so much :’) From hearing that you followed from the NL days, and hearing you say how difficult it looks like it was to piece together. It definitely was, and that was a bulk of the work, but I didn’t visualize it in my head, I had to piece it together pattern by pattern basically ❤
Thank you so much again for the kind words! I hope you’re enjoying New Leaf, still such an amazing game 💕
Awww :’) Honestly you deserve allllll the praise! ❤ Your creative design talent, eye for color and attention to detail shine through in everything you do! (I could really see you setting up a successful real-life business as an interior designer or landscape garden planner, if that’s something you ever want to do… Go for it! ❤)
It’s a beautiful path and I’m certain that a lot of people will enjoy making use of it in NH. I think it’s wonderful the way you share your hard work freely, by the way 🙂
Oh absolutely, I’m still loving New Leaf! I got into the 3DS very late, so it’s still cutting-edge tech to me XD Love dipping into the original HHD, too. Sometime earlier this year I had a great time visiting your DA for Citalune 1.0, I loved it so much! My absolute favorite place was the Moon side in general (the moon pond! the witch’s cottage!), and especially the tavern, each little detail was perfect. I adored the dining/main room (so homey and cozy!) and the guest room with the bunk beds. Really lovely concept!
From what I’ve seen of NH there’s seemingly a much broader scope for uniquely themed islands, mainly I suppose because of terraforming and the ability to place items outdoors, but to me it’s still so impressive and charming to see what people (=you!) achieved within the more rigid limits of New Leaf. And just knowing how much sheer effort certain items take to collect, e.g. the number of white carnations and white dandelions in your town blew me away! I hope to enjoy NL for a long time to come. Let’s hope Nintendo keep those servers up for a while yet 🙂
Hey, I have been trying literally dozens of different paths on my island and not feeling satisfied. I was thinking about restarting it all, which I’ve done many times already. But FINALLY i found this one and it looks very good on my island. So THANK YOU.
YAY! I’m so happy to hear that, that’s awesome. 🥺 Thanks for telling me! ❤️
hiii, ive tried like a million different paths for the walkway leading up to the shrine on my island, but never ended up liking any of them, then i found your path and it worked perfectly! admittedly, i had to use a sad budget version of it with just a few of the slots because i didn’t have room for the entirety of the path unfortunately, but i still love it so much! my island is very different in theme from bywater (it’s actually a more urban japanese island) so i was surprised by how well this cobblestone path suited it. thank you so so much for posting. 🙂
Wow, I’m so glad to hear that! :’ ) Thanks for sharing ❤️