Homebrew I Need Help Getting My Animal Crossing Save

[Sheep64]

Before I start I feel that I should mention that my knowledge of 3ds hacking is intermediate but I just got back into it after having left last November.

I want to retrieve my AC: NL save file if I still even have it from years ago. I don't know exactly how to go about doing it though. I don't have 3ds save data backups of it or whatever, I just know that if I have it, it's saved on one or more of the many 3ds backups I've saved on my PC in the past couple years.

Unfortunately I don't own a physical copy of AC: NL, I bought it digitally so it's on my main 3ds.

I should mention now the 3DS' I own
o3DS 11.2.0-35U (I believe it still has A9LH on it.)
n3DSXL 11.6.0-39U (This is my main 3DS that has my nnid with ACNL on it. It has B9S)
2DS 11.2.0-35J (I don't know what purpose this one would serve in this issue. No CFW; Soundhax)

If needed at all I own a copy of Cubic Ninja for whatever reason I may need an entry point like that.

Most of the backups that I've made from the SD card that I had played AC on come from the o3ds. Out of the backups I've tried, my o3ds doesn't seem to recognize them.

What do I do to get my save of Animal Crossing save? I assume the 3ds saves Animal Crossing stuff to the Nintendo 3DS folder on the root of the SD card. I just don't know how to go about loading those on my o3ds since I tried doing so already and the 3ds didn't recognize it like I mentioned earlier. Actually, it might have, I just didn't have access to a CIA installer to install ACNL and actually check for saves.

I apologize if any of this was poorly worded, if I need to elaborate on anything just ask.

 

[Lacius]

The question is how you backed up the save file in the first place. Are you saying that you backed up all of the contents of your SD card at one point, and that's your save backup?

 

[Giodude]

Before I start I feel that I should mention that my knowledge of 3ds hacking is intermediate but I just got back into it after having left last November.

I want to retrieve my AC: NL save file if I still even have it from years ago. I don't know exactly how to go about doing it though. I don't have 3ds save data backups of it or whatever, I just know that if I have it, it's saved on one or more of the many 3ds backups I've saved on my PC in the past couple years.

Unfortunately I don't own a physical copy of AC: NL, I bought it digitally so it's on my main 3ds.

I should mention now the 3DS' I own
o3DS 9.2.-?U (I don't remember for sure, it either has rxTools or A9LH on it.)
n3DSXL 11.6.0-39U (This is my main 3DS that has my nnid with ACNL on it. It has B9S)
2DS 11.2.0-35J (I don't know what purpose this one would serve in this issue. No CFW; Soundhax)

If needed at all I own a copy of Cubic Ninja for whatever reason I may need an entry point like that.

Most of the backups that I've made from the SD card that I had played AC on come from the o3ds. Out of the backups I've tried, my o3ds doesn't seem to recognize them.

What do I do to get my save of Animal Crossing save? I assume the 3ds saves Animal Crossing stuff to the Nintendo 3DS folder on the root of the SD card. I just don't know how to go about loading those on my o3ds since I tried doing so already and the 3ds didn't recognize it like I mentioned earlier. Actually, it might have, I just didn't have access to a CIA installer to install ACNL and actually check for saves.

I apologize if any of this was poorly worded, if I need to elaborate on anything just ask.

There's alot here to read, but what I gather, you backed up an old 3ds sd card to your PC, and you need to extract a save from it. Sadly, each 3ds nand has its own unique encryption, which is also refreshed every time a system transfer is done or it's formatted. In short, you need a nand backup from that 3ds while that app was installed. If you never formatted or transferred the 3ds since then, even if acnl is deleted, you can still recover that save with a nand backup and an otp.bin. If the 3ds is lost, retrieving the save is impossible. If the 3ds is on 11.6, you could probably use NtrBootHax to hack it. Tell me if I'm missing anything.

 

[Sheep64]

The question is how you backed up the save file in the first place. Are you saying that you backed up all of the contents of your SD card at one point, and that's your save backup?

What I mean when I say backup is that I literally just take all the contents from the root of the SD card and dump them into a folder on my PC and label it.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

There's alot here to read, but what I gather, you backed up an old 3ds sd card to your PC, and you need to extract a save from it. Sadly, each 3ds nand has its own unique encryption, which is also refreshed every time a system transfer is done or it's formatted. In short, you need a nand backup from that 3ds while that app was installed. If you never formatted or transferred the 3ds since then, even if acnl is deleted, you can still recover that save with a nand backup and an otp.bin. If the 3ds is lost, retrieving the save is impossible. If the 3ds is on 11.6, you could probably use NtrBootHax to hack it. Tell me if I'm missing anything.

That's about right on everything. I have made NAND backups of the o3ds in the past and I have yet to look for them but I am almost positive that I do have backups. If I do, what should I do from there?

 

[Giodude]

What I mean when I say backup is that I literally just take all the contents from the root of the SD card and dump them into a folder on my PC and label it.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



That's about right on everything. I have made NAND backups of the o3ds in the past and I have yet to look for them but I am almost positive that I do have backups. If I do, what should I do from there?

I need to look more into it, but if you have a nand backup and an otp.bin from the console, i know you can restore everything fine. You'll have an otp.bin if you installed a9lh in the past, just make sure it's from that 3ds. If you find that, I'll look the rest up.

 

[Lacius]

That's about right on everything. I have made NAND backups of the o3ds in the past and I have yet to look for them but I am almost positive that I do have backups. If I do, what should I do from there?

Assuming you have the same 3DS you made the backups from, then you should attempt do the following:

1. Backup your SD contents
2. Remove the files and folders from your SD card
3. Copy the contents of your SD backup to your SD card
4. Attempt to boot your Animal Crossing save file

If this doesn't work, then you should follow these steps instead:

1. Use GodMode9 to make a NAND backup
2. Use GodMode9 to restore a NAND backup from around the time you made the SD backup that you're trying to restore
3. Backup your SD contents
4. Remove the files and folders from your SD card
5. Copy the contents of your SD backup to your SD card
6. Attempt to boot your Animal Crossing save file

If you're able to get your Animal Crossing to boot the save you want, then you should use JKSM to make a decrypted save backup.

Edit: If the first set of instructions doesn't work for you, the second set of instructions is unlikely to help either.

 

[Giodude]

That also works^. Forgot you still own the 3ds.