It took me two weeks to get the shovel to show up, but the slingshot? I had that right away! Of course I didn’t know what use it was going to be, and then these annoying balloons started showing up. I’m a bad shot, sad but true, and I managed to down a whopping two of them in my first few months playing the game. Finally I got wise and did some checking, then I started …

Operation Golden Slingshot

It took seven hours over the course of two days but I cracked it’s evil code! Let’s begin, shall we? To get the golden slingshot you have to shoot down a total of fifteen balloon-borne presents; the sixteenth present will have a golden toolbox attached with the golden slingshot inside. The brilliant thing about the golden slingshot is that is casts three pebbles as opposed to the measly one that the standard slingshot flings skyward. This makes future present capturing significantly easier, for obvious reasons. A present has a chance of floating by every ten minutes on the 4’s (ie: 12:04, 12:14, 12:24, &c.). A good strategy is to stand in the middle of your town, both vertically and horizontally, and watch the sky during the fourth minute. When you see the balloon floating over (an event that is accompanied by the gusting wind noise) run up (towards town hall) from the opposite direction of the balloon. For example, if the balloon coming in from the West, you’ll head up and East, cutting it off, which gives you more chances to shoot it down. If you’re too far down (near the beach) you’ll miss it, not to mention that the higher up you are the easier the balloon is to see and thus, aim at. The present will fall against to back wall after it’s shot down and can contain one of any number of items. Be sure to mind the waterfall! Once it’s the fifth minute, it’s over, so you don’t need to spend a lot of time watching the sky.

Presents have six chances of appearing each hour between 10 AM and 3 PM (nothing ever came by after 3:04 PM). With four and five of the so-called “lucky items” in my house and some decent Feng Shui arrangement, presents would consistently appear four out of six times during every eligible hour, giving you plenty of chances to get the golden slingshot as well as a lot of neat items.

Now every town is assigned a code (A, B, or C) that determines which items are going to appear frequently, occasionally, and rarely. So if you’re in an A town like I seem to be, you’ll get neutral and A items a lot, and B/C items much less often. What’s awesome about the balloons? They are assigned a letter too, a letter … different from you town’s! My balloons are B and so B items are always in the presents, so it makes collecting a bit easier and the annoying task of tearing off after balloons while attempting to avoid flowers much more rewarding.
Gulliver

A spaceship!? I’m freaking out an– oh, it’s gone. Yes and for some reason Gulliver is in that spaceship. If you shoot it down with your slingshot his ship will bust into pieces. Bring the pieces to Gulliver and get one of a number of cool items, many of which are the Gulliver items from the Gamecube game. I’d love for this part of the FAQ to be more complete but I can only spend so many nights watching that screen, slingshot in hand. I’ll try harder though.
Credits/Thanks

- Nintendo, for obvious reasons.

- Thanks to animalxing.com for the basic FAQ that inspired me to write this one as well as the item database that allowed me to check all of my info.