Seeds (hacking)

A seed is an item originally used as a debugging tool in to test the placement of map objects found all over town, including buildings, trees, rocks, and other structures. When a new game is created, the game automatically drops these seeds in random (but somewhat consistent) placements to create the new town, which leads to the addition of full-grown trees in random parts of the town, the locations of buildings such as neighbor homes and shops, and so forth. An example of consistent seed drops include the checkpoint, which will always be dropped on the farthest north of town.

As of May 20th, 2014, Nintendo Wi-Fi connections have been shut down, so accessing and  online (therefore encountering seeds online) is impossible.

Seeds in the inventory
Since seeds are not designed to be accessed in normal gameplay, game enhancing devices such as Action Replay are used with special codes to add them to the player's inventory. When added to a player's inventory, they will take up whichever pocket is designated. Sometimes the seed will not appear as any kind of icon (meaning that while they are there, the pocket appears empty), but other times, it will take the form of a leaf, much as furniture.

The name, however, will be glitched, ranging from a blank name to several random characters.

Using a seed
To use a seed, a player must select the seed and drop it on a part of an empty ground. Although this will create the sound effect that an item was dropped, this often will not display the desired object automatically. Instead, the player must also enter and exit a building, or save, quit, and reopen the game to have the object appear where the seed was dropped.

Abuse of seeds
Common uses of the seeds in vandalizing a player's town can include the following:


 * Planting trees in pathways or in front of building doors. These can prevent players who do not have an axe and a shovel from reaching other areas, such as inside a blocked building or on the other side of a blocked bridge. The threat is mild, however, because the player can chop down the tree and dig up the stump.
 * Planting rocks in pathways or in front of building doors. These are a more harmful upgrade to planting trees because they are more difficult to remove. Buildings can be blocked, and the town gate is sealed, preventing anyone else from entering the town. If a rock is planted outside a door just when a player boots up the game, the player can be caught in a loop where they enter and exit the house.
 * Planting extra buildings on the map. Although this alone is not necessarily a threat, the addition of a building that was added onto the map can be responsible for some glitches. Aside from these problems, however, extra buildings themselves are not necessarily a threat on their own (granted they are planted in clear areas and in moderation), and can even give a player access to buildings or objects normally seen only after certain events are done or during certain dates, such as Tom Nook's final upgrade to his store, Gracie's car, Katrina's tent, Redd's tent, and so on.
 * When the player enters a planted building, one noticeable glitch involves the player "walking through doors". This especially applies to other buildings, such as Katrina's Tent or Redd's Tent, which have a different animation for opening their "doors" than other buildings. Another glitch is that seeded buildings tend to make no sound effects present when its door is open.
 * A more important glitch involves the extra buildings causing the game to lag or freeze, usually if there are far too many buildings for the game to process.
 * Planting a building on top of or near an existing building. Not only may this make both buildings inaccessible, but it can also cause further problems, including lag or blockage from the affected building. Sometimes, if the new building is extremely close to the old one, graphical glitches can occur between the two, including both of them "fusing" or overlapping each other like a joint building. This can apply to many kinds of buildings, including neighbors, the player's homes, and other important facilities, and if the new building interferes with activity done in the old one, it can cause the game to make a loop of the player performing action they cannot complete but they cannot (such as exiting their home), prevent other player's from visiting the affected player's home or crash the game.
 * Planting a seed inside the player's home. Although this is usually done on the player's own accord, the player can drop a seed inside their home on the floor or on a table. Although this will not trigger the desired object to appear inside the player's home, it will still cause a glitch where the item will not be visible or retrievable, but still fills a tile in the room, preventing it or the table that holds it to be removed. This can not be reversed once the game is saved.
 * Planting too many seeds in general. If there are too many objects on the map, it will cause the game to strain over processing all objects placed on the map and may have a strong chance of causing game play to lag or freeze. This can include anything from too many buildings to too many objects in a select acre.
 * Players planting rocks or another permanent fixture in the town where it blocks an important area of some sort. This not only makes the real building unusable, but it can make the town have less square footage.

Brick seeds
In addition to "regular" seeds detailed above, another sub-category of seeds include "Brick Seeds". Although brick seeds also vary in their uses and some of the uses overlap with the list above, the main intent for brick seeding is to either break the other player's game by corrupting the game's memory or the player's DS by crashing its hardware, hence the term "bricking". There are many forms of brick seeding described, and while they all are designed with the intent of permanently corrupting and crashing the target's game and/or DS, the method chosen may hint toward how to resolve the issue.


 * Adding a multitude of buildings in a select area or in front of an existing building. If there are too many huge buildings, such as multiple copies of a Town Hall, Nookingtons (Tom Nook's last store upgrade), Museums or other big stores, clustered dangerously close together in a select area, there is a chance either the game will crash every time the player goes to the area or near it, or the game will crash upon loading the town as early as in the title screen.
 * Adding extra neighbors on the map. The game is capable of including only up to eight neighbors in one town. If the player exceeds the limit, the game will crash as early as during the title screen.
 * Adding multiple huge objects on or near the player's home. This is not only overwhelming as-is by loading too many objects, but can potentially crash the game either as when it is loaded (and before the player leaves the house) or as early as the title screen. It can also trap the players in a loop of entering and exiting their home.

The methods of how a brick seed works is not limited to here; many other methods take advantage of even more commands that involve manipulating event flags normally not possible during Wi-Fi, including activating select areas where players will trigger the "stung" effect (normally triggered if they are stung by a scorpion or a tarantula), causing the game to freeze.

Removing seeds

 * Seeded trees can be removed as any other regular tree.
 * Players may use their own Action Replay to reverse the damage with select codes, including third-party de-seed codes or use it in a combination with other game hacking programs, including Aibohack's Animal Crossing Map Editor, which can remove nearly every seeded object.
 * Using the DS's clock to fast-forward time to prompt the extra neighbors to move usually does not work, especially if there is more than one extra neighbor.
 * Depending on the situation, erasing data and creating a new game is another solution.