by Alex Prestia
Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn’t have a set win-state. There are some milestones, goals, objectives, and steady progress. But there’s never a set point where Tom Nook comes out and says, “You’re good, dude. Nothing else to see here. Go ahead and call it a game.”
That can be difficult for some people. The best advice is that ACNH comes down to creativity. Set goals for yourself based on what kind of island you would dig living on. Take your time and make it nice. Treat your island like an ever-growing garden, rather than a college course with an exam at the end. Come up with a daily routine that lets you appreciate the game in small chunks. That way you won’t feel like you need to grind for hours catching fish just to keep up. ACNH days match up to real life days and pretty much everything updates on a daily rotation. The best way to play the game is to come up with a daily list of chores fun island activities such as: watering flowers, shaking trees, weeding, checking the store, visiting the Nook Miles Machine- then do them as regularly as possible. Past the basic stuff, there are some tricks to maximize the number of DIY recipes and pieces of furniture you find per day. This way you’ll have an ample arsenal of furniture choices for when you decide to build your fifth seaside café area.
Then there are the daily visits from NPCs. These interesting animals come by each day with different sets of exclusive items. Knowing which days they’ll show up and how to find them can save a lot of frustration. So unlike other guides, where dunking on your friends as viciously as possible is the goal, this guide won’t teach you how to win Animal Crossing. Instead this guide is going to help you maximize your days spent on your private island paradise with the goal of making it a place where you can chill out from all the vicious dunking of your CoD, Fortnite, Smash, Kart, or whatever game you go to to pummel noobs impaired life.
The Basic Routine: Overtime I’ve settled on a very simple way to take care of my island and get everything done. I start at the area in front of my house, loop around the beach, hit the rocks nearby some well manicured flower gardens, head into Nook’s Cranny, and so on. All of this is on a basic path that covers my whole island. This lets me hit all of the daily basic tasks on a simple, memorable circuit. Hitting Rocks- everyday hit every rock. Dig two holes behind you so that you won’t be pushed back and can get all 8 crafting materials. Even better, place some furniture or fencing around rocks so that you can skip digging the holes. Saving up these crafting materials may seem trivial, but its the easiest way to generating easy money over time. Digging up fossils- this is where it helps if the paths winding around your island are extensive, there will be at least 4 fossils a day to pick up, appraise, and collect. Filling up the musuem is a fun challenge plus selling the extra fossils you net is a good source of income. Checking the Nook Shop/ Tailor Shop/ Town Hall- pretty self-explanatory. Buy whatever new shiny things popup. Collect free Nook Miles from the Nook Stop terminal. Don’t forget to check what seasonal items are being offered on the Nook Stop. From champagne to Hongbaos, its always cool to see which new items will show up in the game.
Water Flowers- water the flowers you’d like to cross-breed. Remember that even if it only rains for an hour that day you don’t need to water them again. Do easy Nook Miles Challenges- If there’s a bonus for taking a picture, go ahead and do it for those Nook Miles. Miles are tedious to farm and crucial to getting new villagers, so take any chance you get to rack up easy ones. All of these basic things can be done in whatever order pleases you. Once you’ve got your path down its time to learn some of the trickier mechanics to optimize daily tasks. Collecting DIY recipes and furniture: ACNH slowly gives out items, DIY recipes, and clothing each day. There’s no quick way get every item, only consistency will help fill that Nook Stop catalogue. The recipe app and catalogue need to be patiently built up, however there are a few tricks to maximizing how many new items you can get in a day. DIY recipes are these neat little cards that allow players to craft their own furniture with materials. Some of the coolest sets of furniture, wallpaper, and clothes in the game can only be crafted this way and will never show up in the store. One does not simply buy these recipes, they need to be slowly collected over time. Each day that players boot-up ACNH they can quickly get 2 DIY recipes. Players who check in more than once a day can get up to 5. The first recipe can be found each morning on the beach as a Message Bottle. Check back later that night for another Message Bottle. There’s 2 right there.
The next DIY recipe requires socializing with your neighbors. Ever walk into a villager’s house and see them working on a DIY project? This isn’t random; the game selects one villager at all times to be working on DIY. Simply visiting their house and talking to them will get you another recipe. Knowing which houses to check is simple. Smoke will be coming out of the chimney of any villager who is in their home. Check all of the houses until you find the villager engrossed in a DIY project. After that you don’t need to bother checking any of the other villagers’ houses, as there will only be one villager making something at any given time. I mean, you can still go in just to talk with them, but you don’t have to. Checking your island at different times of the day will change which villager is doing DIY and which recipe you can get. Up to three different villagers will undertake a project each day. The times that they switch between projects depends on the villager’s personality type along with when you started playing that day, but the general schedule is 8am-12pm, 12pm-4pm, 4pm-Late.
As for the more classic style of Animal Crossing furniture- the stuff you buy rather than make- the 3 to 6 items that the Nooklings offer in their little island shop is pitiful. Stop relying on the crooked Nook twins and use these tricks to find more furniture than what’s offered in Nook’s Cranny. There are some randomized events like shooting down balloons and talking to villagers when you see thought bubbles over their heads. These will just sort of occur throughout the day. The next thing you can do to find more items is shaking trees. Just like there are guaranteed to be two trees with wasp nests per day, there are also two trees with items just waiting to be claimed. My suggestion: equip a net before shaking them and claim your item or new wasp friend. Don’t fret about the wasps. They’re kind of a blessing once you get used to dealing with them. Like furniture, there are only going to be 2 wasps per day. Plus if you stand directly in front of the tree before shaking it, all you gotta do is mash the A button once you see the wasp’s nest falling. Bang. 2,500 bells at Nook’s Cranny. 3,250 if you wait for Flick the lizard-dude and then sell them. That’s 7,500 per day while finding free furniture. So shake those trees until you’ve gotten your to items. Just remember, only trees that don’t grow fruit will be able to spawn a furniture item. This includes cedars and regular trees but not fruit trees that don’t have fruit becasue of a recent harvest.
On top of that, you can get up to 10 more items per day by giving away your old useless stuff. Each day you can give a gift to each villager on your island. If you give something cheap, like a fruit or iron nug, there’s only a small chance they’ll give you an item in return. If you give them something good (the game’s code dictates that ‘something good’ means it sells for more than 2,500 at the Nookling’s store) they’ll be guaranteed to give you an item in return for your gift. That item may be furniture, clothes, or even a rare portrait of themselves. For players who want to collect as much furniture as possible but maybe don’t have all that many spare Bells sitting around, giving the equivalent of 2,500 Bells to each villager every day sounds rough. That’s where The Great Pumpkin scam comes in. Pumpkins. They seem pretty useless outside of October. The pies good, and roasted seeds are a treat but any more than once or twice in the fall and they’ve overstayed their welcome. But in Animal crossing, and I’m not sure if this is a glitch or what, pumpkins are much more valuable than they appear. This has lead to what only I seem to call “The Great Pumpkin Scam”. See, the Nooklings only pay 350 per pumpkin. If I was to give a pumpkin to a random villager, say Drago the Alligator, he should value it as trash and only give me an item in return one fifth of the time. However, through some odd oversight, giving any villager a pumpkin always gets an item in return. 100% of the time. Better yet, it doesn’t matter which color of pumpkin you give them. Plus, they neatly stack in your inventory. Look, I’m not sure if this is a glitch or some goofy mechanic intended by the developers, but as of the 1 year anniversary of this game, pumpkins are automatically regarded as being worth 2,500 bells when gifted to a villager. Trade trash pumpkins for glitzy items. Everyday. You’re welcome.
Trading with other players is also a good way to get more furniture and recipes. For example, I got super obsessed with the surfboard seasonal item, but was dismayed that only one color of it showed up in my shop. Luckily I had some buddies and we traded around the different colors till I had all of them. Same goes for DIY recipes. Some recipes seem to be more common for some players than for others. Ask around, see what people are interested in. If everyone who visits your island remarks on how they’ve never seen a stone lion-dog in the game before, yet you’ve gotten like 8 recipes for them, keep a few. Could use them to trade or give as a gift. Just don’t keep too many recipes laying around. You can’t store DIY recipes and too many left on your island, even on tables, will bring down your 5-star rating. Finally, both the Message Bottles and shaking tree methods work on Mystery Island Tours. I recommend always checking the beaches (50% spawn rate for Message Bottles) and shaking trees whenever you’re out trolling for a new villager. Be wary- one hornet nest will also spawn on each mystery island. Bring a net. Daily Visitors: Time to talk about the NPCs that visit your island each day. There’s a lot of confusion about this topic because it has been updated since the game’s original release. Then it changed again in a subsequent update. And for all we know, it may change further in the future. Somehow ACNH is now a game with a meta that shifts as frequently as Smash Bros. Ultimate. So keep in mind this is guide is being written as of the first anniversary of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. First off, K.K. Slider will visit every Saturday. Daisy Mae will sell turnips every Sunday before 12. This takes care of the weekends, you can be sure of what you’re getting when you play on those two days. Now for the weekdays, there are 9 rotating weekday visitors: C.J., Flick, Gullivarr, Gulliver, Kicks, Label, Leif, Redd, and Saharah. As you may have noticed already, there are only 5 weekdays each week. So four of those characters will not visit per week. The game is pretty smart and implemented a mechanic so that you won’t go too long without Redd showing up. It keeps track of who came the previous week and gives priority to the others the following week. That way, in a two-week span, every one of them is guaranteed to visit. Make it part of your daily routine to talk to these dudes, all of them have some function or another. Even Leif. Actually especially Leif now, since I told you about the Great Pumpkin Scam and he’s the only fella that sells pumpkin starts outside of October. Be patient and don’t sell expensive fish or bugs until C.J. or Flick shows up, respectively. They each offer 1.5x the price the Nooklings do for any wild creature you bring them. Redd is frustrating. Even when he shows up there’s no guarantee he’ll bring anything worth donating to the museum. Exercise patience. You aren’t going to complete the art exhibit in the museum for quite a while. Time-travelling works for some people and glitches Redd for others, so be careful. Make sure there isn’t an item blocking the spot on the beach that he uses for his ship’s gangway. There’s also the night-crew. Each night there is a chance of Wisp or Celeste showing up. Wisp gives rare items and Celeste gives DIY recipes from the Celestial item set. She’ll only show up when there’s a meteor shower. Wisp appears randomly but never before 10pm.
Finally there’s Pascal. You can meet him once per day by diving for sea creatures in the water surrounding your island. He’ll ask you to trade a scallop for one of his items. Typically this will happen the first time you catch a scallop that, but it sometimes takes catching a second or even a third scallop before he shows up. He’ll give you a pearl or a DIY recipe from the Mermaid item set and dispense some dope wisdom like: “Ice is just water that's lost its spirit of adventure, maaan” -or- “They don't make movies like they used to. They probably can't. That equipment must be busted by now.” He’s my favorite. From Here, it’s up to you: Once you’ve done your daily routine you are free to make your island better however you like. Come up with an interesting idea for a themed area while you were going through your circuit? Go start it. Need some quick cash? Check the hot item board in front of Nook’s Cranny. A lot of the daily hot items are great for turning excess crafting materials into Bells. Feeling some fishing? Do it. Just make sure to wait for CJ before you sell anything too valuable. Gotta get your real life day started? Mad respect for having real life obligations, go ahead and get out there. For me the daily routine is best enjoyed right after waking up, with a podcast playing and a cup of coffee in front of me. Helps me set a flow for the day. However you do it, remember that ACNH is best treated like a little garden: water it, be patient with it, and don’t overdo it. Oh, and here’s one more Pascal quote to grow on: “Every sunset is just nature dunkin' on us, nice and slow. She's making sure we know she owns the court.”
Comments