First Year Having a 3DS; Any Tips, Tricks, or Secrets?

SuperSaiyanFife

Me and my buddy will going to our fifth PAX this year, but our first with DS's in hand; so you might say its our first real PAX Prime, lol. I know we'll be flooded with Miis, and more Miis galore! Im really looking forward to having it with me. Other than Miis and having something to do in a 3 hour line; is there any other activities or events I should be aware of that maybe arent on the schedule or are cult classics? Any tips on getting the most out of the games when being flooded with Miis? Mii game suggestions as I only have the ones it comes with?

Getting really excited at this point; cant wait to see everyone up there!

zerzhul

Always be streetpassing.

Keroan

Every day I'm streetpassin'

*Dances Wildly*


But seriously, it's great for lines. You might want to download the extra games that are available for purchase (if you're interested) through streetpass. Some of them are quite fun... I'm addicted to flower growing.

Also, make sure that any DS games you are interested in have streetpass turned on. You'll fill each game's limit for streetpassers (usually about 10) in .01 seconds so you'll get lots of goodies and gear! My favs for that are Animal Crossing and Mario Kart. You'll always be able to find someone wanting a race in the area and Animal Crossing collects a lot of cool houses/furniture.

Any multiplayer game will basically be bursting with users.

zerzhul

Yeah some of the streetpass games are actually pretty fun. I enjoy doing them whenever I can during pax.

tkywa

You can only store 10 tagged Miis at a time. Then you have to greet them and use them in games before you can get more. But there's a way to double that if you're about to be next in line and you need to close the DS.

When your 3DS is full, load them up to the greeting queue (when your Mii says hello to everyone who you've tagged) and then close the lid when they're all lined up to say hi. This saves them for the mini games and takes them out of the tag queue. Then you can close the lid and another 10 will fill in behind the first group. That way, you can process 20 people later when you have time instead of 10.

Another thing is to just keep your 3DS going at all times. The airport? Street tags. The hotel? More tags. Lunchtime? MOAR. You'll basically be tagging with PAXers at all points of your journey. I also suggest making a PAX specific greeting, it's more fun and it's nice to see all the PAX-related greetings when you go through your tags later at home.

Solelron

and if you arep laying the streetpass games, choose which ones you want to do. you won't have time to do them all with full teams and still enjoy the con..I usually do puzzles and maybe one other..but with the new games, who knows

Wraith90

Update your DS before you come. That will show you all of the picture pieces before you start streetpassing and give you a couple for free.

Also, second on keeping it running in the airport, I have streetpassed a person 3 times when going through Minneapolis airport, have no idea who he is but I get him every time.

tkywa

Yeah, airports are great at all times, not just PAX! Good time for the elusive international tags as well. Sometimes they have those Nintendo Spot Pass kiosks too. For example, outside the Delta Lounge in EWR has good Nintendo Zone reception, and I may have shamefully hunkered outside it to grab Animal Crossing stuff in the past.

Keroan

tkywa wrote: »

Yeah, airports are great at all times, not just PAX! Good time for the elusive international tags as well. Sometimes they have those Nintendo Spot Pass kiosks too. For example, outside the Delta Lounge in EWR has good Nintendo Zone reception, and I may have shamefully hunkered outside it to grab Animal Crossing stuff in the past.

If you are collecting states (it tags people from each state as they "arrive" in your plaza), airports are great for it. I'm still looking for Arizona and the Northern Canadian Territories.

Also, you'll drain your battery pretty fast so I keep mine on low light mode and battery saver mode when possible.

mzsylver

Always make sure your games have the latest patch (like Smash, Monster Hunter, Pokémon, etc). Have fun =D

jukkakhan

As mentioned above, you're going to be Streetpassing a lot of people. If you try and do all the Streetpass games you're gonna be very busy, so just stick to the ones you're interested in. The one I do most consistently is collecting puzzle pieces. If you have Streetpass enabled games, keep them handy so you can clear them out as well. Last year I filled up my village in Bravely Default and I upgraded all the shops in no time flat. Check out http://www.streetpassing.com/

If you have multiplayer games that have download play, those are awesome line activities/ice breakers. You can beam the game to other (3)DS's near by and they can play along with you without having the game card.

Khadour

If you're planning on using it a lot, make sure you either have an external battery and USB charging cable, or get one of the extended replacement batteries that have a much longer life than the default battery. And ALWAYS be streetpassin' . . .

DuelLadyS

Well, there's one time to not be streetpassin'- don't check your 3DS while walking! A pet peeve of my non-3DS owning fiancé is watching the speed of the crowd slow down because a couple of people decided to check their stuff in the middle of the walkway. Save it for when you're not moving. PAX has plenty of lines for that!

I also second the 'prioritize your games' suggestion. It can easily take an hour to play all the games when you have a full queue, you're simply not going to be able to do so. I give priority to puzzle pieces because they're fast to collect, and much easier to do with real people then play coins (less doubles!) If you buy the full set of games, I'd suggest skipping Mii Force and the zombie one (forget the name) because they take up too much time and focus for one stage. Aside from that, decide for yourself what you want to finish most.

YoungFrey

I also agree on selectively Streetpassing. There are 1438 puzzle pieces. Even with the new feature you can buy to speed up greetings, that is probably at least 1.5 minutes a batch, or 3.5 hours to fill them all in. And that is by far the quickest activity to complete in there. Find Mii will take you a loooong time to fully beat (it's something like 10 clears), because the effectiveness of Miis depends on the number of times you've met them. And at PAX it'll usually be 1. But it does reward some awesome hats eventually, so it's a calculated choice.

The question worth asking is "after PAX, do I want complete Streetpass games, or awesome memories of cool people"

SuperSaiyanFife

So the castle game; you run through it once or multiple times?

YoungFrey

SuperSaiyanFife wrote: »

So the castle game; you run through it once or multiple times?

This is from memory so I might be off a tiny bit. One time to unlock the harder version. Then 3 times. That unlocks the final version. Then you run that 7 times or something to collect all the hats. It takes a long time.

Erkenhelm

If you have Pokemon, I recommend looking into the PAX Pokemon League, it's a lot of fun!

kropotkin

Another bonus at PAX is that there are a lot of international people (like me) who attend, meaning you get regions outside of the US. If you tag me, you'll get England as a region for example, which people seem to respond to positively.

Living in London means I typically get 10 tags a day and I have all of the puzzle pieces, ALL OF THEM, which also makes me quite popular. Current Streetpass count: 5634

Aside from Streetpassing there are a selection of games on the 3DS that are favoured and are played a lot; these include Mario Kart, Monster Hunter 4 and Smash Bros.

SuperSaiyanFife

kropotkin wrote: »

Another bonus at PAX is that there are a lot of international people (like me) who attend, meaning you get regions outside of the US. If you tag me, you'll get England as a region for example, which people seem to respond to positively.

Living in London means I typically get 10 tags a day and I have all of the puzzle pieces, ALL OF THEM, which also makes me quite popular. Current Streetpass count: 5634

Aside from Streetpassing there are a selection of games on the 3DS that are favoured and are played a lot; these include Mario Kart, Monster Hunter 4 and Smash Bros.

Yeah, played Smash at last years PAX and it was amazing. Pretty much the reason I dropped my wall and bought a 3DS, lol. Also have Mario Kart and Pokemon Saph. Sounds like Ill be spending most of my time playing the streetpass games; which is great! I was thinking about what classic title I would want to buy and have for PAX. Really glad I posted this because now Im just going to buy one streetpass game and call it good. Heck, if I have anytime to play a game on Friday Ill be prepping for that Mario Kart 7 tourney.

One week. One week and its here.(I consider PAX starts on Thursday because were all up there miilling around in excitement).

vespachica

Shoutout for Animal Crossing: New Leaf because if you get streetpasses of others who play that game there's a section you can go to in AC:NL that has furniture you can just buy vs. wondering if you'll come across it someday.

kropotkin

Animal Crossing New Leaf features an evil creature called Tom Nook. He and his entire family are nothing but scum whose sole purpose is to make everyone else's life a living hell purely for monetary gain. I loathe them. Other than that it's an awesome game!

HAiRU

I just got my 3DS last week, I will probably hang out at the handheld lounge most of the time. I was also looking into participating in Mario Kart 7 and SSB4 Tourneys.

Garet_Jax

This is probably a long shot, but did anyone else pick up the recently-released 3D Streets of Rage 2? That's a game full of short-ish levels that are perfect for lines, and it only requires a local connection to play co-op.

I've always wanted to try running through it with another person!

SuperSaiyanFife

Holy Crap!!!!! I did one Mario Kart tourney. If I was on my DS at all the rest the weekend, it was streetpass. Not only was it non stop, ive created an addiction! So many puzzles!!!! Beat Find mii I twice, Find mii II once, and have over 550K in my Warriors Way army. DS changed PAX on such an extreme scale; obviously for the better. Thank you again to anyone that replied here; hope you PAX was amazing.