It's way easier.  If you become best friends with someone that visits your island then you have the option of messaging that person when you are both playing at any time.  It's good for arranging visits instead of just blindly trying to go to another island.

Edit: by best friends, I mean adding them on the app, not your friends list on the Switch.

SteelAttack said:

This is me everyday, playing a guessing game of who has their gates open of all my friends that play.

I'm still talking about the multiple others who play but we haven't visited each other's islands, like Leo. It is just frustrating that we can not communicate to each other.  Even a generic invite would do.

gamingeek said:

I just message whoever is online via the Nook phone best friend section. "ur gate open?"

That sounds like a booty call. 😅

It started as a prosperous day on the seas.  The weather was bright and the wind was fair.  Our Galleaon sprung to life as it caught the wind and set sail for Plunder Island, where we were to rendez-vous with a cursed dead pirate for the next chapter in our adventure for the Shores of Gold.  The deceased fowl pointed us towards the breadcrum trail to retreiving the treasure of the Trapmaker which sent us deep within the island to retreive her spyglass.  This spyglass, when looked through, would allow us to determine where to find a key she had hidden.  It was a clever puzzle, near too clever for our bawdy band, but we pulled through on merrit of our wit and our latest companion, the honourable Gerald Oogle.  We collected her prized key which turned out to be a not a key, but rather a keg, a keg of gunpowder.  There is little on these seas that screams safety hazzard as a keg of gunpowder does, be it a skeleton pirate running directly towards you while holding one, or a misfired gunshot while you yourself happen to be hauling one.

The keg / key stored safely in our hull, we set out to the island said keg would unlock certain door.  This island, a miserable, unconspicious group of shallow, palm tree riddled banks, hid an intricit system of caves beneath the shores.  These caves had been turned, at the hands of the trapmaker, into a maze of tunnels riddled with traps that would have made Indiana Jones himself rethink his career choice.  After a couple of treks downwards into the earth, courtesy of our own incautiosness and the one hit kill nature of narry all the traps, we managed to find the purpose of the keg: a pedestal to keep it.  Expecting some door to open, we were taken aback by the hordes and waves of skeletal pirates that sprung from the ground, overwhelming us time and time again as we dispatched of them as they did of us, resulting in many a trip back from our galleon through the boobytrapped caves.

These seemingly endlessly spawning undead, a nuissance in and of themselves, also led another, more extensial, type of dread to creep into the minds of our pirate troup.  What if, in our absence, some scurvy, honourless, and most certainly also impotent band of misfits saw it fit to sink our ship?  We would respawn miles and miles away, all our sweat and hard work lost!  It was another blow to morale to even consider this as we bravely battled our boneheaded adversaries.  Luckily for us, we managed to take down the pirate lord cowering behind his crew before our ship was spotted and unceremonously sank.  One would expect the treasure to be in our possession now, but the trickster had not had her way with us yet.

Having retreived a small statue, we were sent out onto the waves again in search for yet another cave on yet another isle.  Mr. Oogle foresaw another fight with waves of foes in our near future, but luckily these were of much smaller scale and put up less of a fight. The Shroudbreaker stone was finally ours!  All that was left was to deliver it back to the avian stack of bones that had sent us out to collect it.

The weather, still fair, promised us a swift return.  Allas, fate struck and the waters turned black around us.  'It is but a skeletal ghost ship' my mate cried out in half relief.  I wasn't too sure...  Before you could say 'no quarter granted' She roared her many heads.  'tWas the feared Kracken, which had managed to sink us before late in a previous quest.  Now however, experience was at our site and our Kracken emergency plan kicked in.  My mate, ever the hero, abandoned ship in our sloop, taking with him our prized treasure and steering his dinghy away from the black and murky waters, leaving me behind to buy him time as I fought the monster from the deep.  I think I bought him a heroic minute, maybe two.

I came by on the calm shores of an island, the watter lapping at my boots.  I quickly found my boat nearby, checked my headings and set out to rendez-vous with the treasure and the rest of my crew.  'There's another pirate ship nearby' I heard him cry from afar.  I replied that they'd hardly spot him, but told him to row away in any case.  I quickly approached his location, spotting the heinous pirate ship from afar.  As he beaconed me closer, shouting at me from over the waves, the other ship spotted him as well.  He was forced to abandon our sloop, treasure in hand as the villanous buckaneers rained down steel death atop of him.   As he swam towards me, praying to all the known gods to keep near sharks at bay, I lowered my anchor as near as I dared, readying my sails for a quick retreat the moment he climbed aboard.  And retreat we did, the faster, lighter ship in short persuit.  We felt vulnerable, our sloop lost to the seas, as a thick fog the like we had never seen before beset us.  We quicly extinguished our lanterns and heard some cannonfire to our backboard side in a vain attempt from the other crew to sink us still as they lost sight of us.  In this thick soup we silently sailed, getting ever closer to our destiny, unsure if this fog herralded yet another danger and possible setback.  Nearer and nearer to our final destination we sailed as the ghost ship that had spotted us before appeared out of the water next to us.  Our emergency sloop was lost to us, we had run all out of life restoring food.  Our morale was low and I feared for my mate's sanity, as he had started rambling about being near to 'ALT-F4' whatever that may have meant.  We decided that we would just ignore the ghaulish galleon and would just crash our ship on the shores of our targetted island.

And that we did.  The moment it appeared from the mists we jumped ship, abandoning it to our persuers.  We searched the beaches, treasure in hand and preciously aware of our vulnerability, as death, any death, would cause us to resurface on an island far away since our ship was lost to the sea.  But at our deepest hour it appeared from the fog: the shipwreck the parrot called home.  I delivered our treasure as my mate kept an eye on the perimeter, ready to sacrifice his own life for the greater good of our quest.  We had succeeded against all odds.  We laughed, we sweared, and we parted ways to meet up another day.

I'm on the fence about a couple of titles.  If you haven't played Mario + Rabbids then pick it up today for $20 bucks.  It is great.

I was looking at Metro 2033 and Diablo.

I’ve been getting serenaded by the sweet dulcet tones of K.K. Slider while getting my kneecaps busted by Tom Nook. Have also been playing through Phantasy Star on the Switch.