Building Your Island: Tips and Tricks for Animal Crossing New Horizons Beginners

Animal Crossing New Horizons is one of 2020’s hottest games and we have curated a beginner-friendly ACNH guide to maximize your gaming experience!

Announced during the E3 Expo 2019, Animal Crossing New Horizons has already become one of Nintendo‘s bestsellers, already surpassing Nintendo’s Pokemon Sword and Shield sales, despite the ongoing coronavirus situation all over the world.

Animal Crossing has been a popular game series since 2001 where the player lives in a town with other villagers, fishing, catching bugs, and finding fossils. Its latest release, Animal Crossing New Horizons, still bears the same game design the series is known for in a new setting: a deserted island. Furthermore, New Horizons takes advantage of the Nintendo Switch Online feature, enabling players to visit other players’ islands, or even receive visitors themselves.

With Animal Crossing offering a form of distraction and a way to keep in touch with friends without going outside, more people are choosing to play this interactive game. This Animal Crossing guide contains some useful tips and tricks you should keep in mind while building your island!

1. Collect and collect resources

Image Credit: Nintendo

The number one and most important thing you have to remember in this ACNH guide is to collect resources such as wood, stones, clay, and iron nuggets. These are resources you can collect from every tree and every stone on your island, and you can collect them once a day. This tip is especially useful for collecting iron nuggets as they are hard to come by.

These resources will then be used to make your DIY tools such as fishing rods, shovels, and axes. On the other hand, the fishes and bugs you are able to catch using your tools can be sold to Tommy and Timmy Nook, or donated to Blathers for the museum on your island.

2. Donate five bugs and fishes to Tom Nook

Image Credit: Nintendo

As soon as you are able to catch five unique bugs and fishes using the DIY tool recipes Tom Nook gave you, head over to his tent to donate it. This will trigger an event where his friend, Blathers, will call to build a museum on your island! The next day, Blathers will arrive and you will continue donating 15 more unique fishes and bugs – plus fossils! As soon as you reach 15 donations, the construction for the museum will begin.

3. Talk to and befriend your villagers

Another thing to mention in this ACNH guide is that you should always talk to your villagers! Chatting with them at least once a day can help improve your relationship and they may even start giving you a gift or two! Even more, when your island has finally moved its residents to houses, start visiting your villagers’ houses and you may catch them crafting. Talk to them while they’re crafting and they may just give you the DIY recipe for it. It can be a tool, furniture, decoration, or houseware – you’ll never know unless you approach them!

4. Trade in Animal Crossing forums

Image Credit: Nintendo

Trading or selling Animal Crossing items is a great way to obtain rare items, items you need, or the money you need to pay for the bridge you’re building on your own island. You can usually find these groups in forums such as Reddit or even on Facebook where they’ll post about their spare DIY recipes or items such as fossils or iron nuggets that they are willing to give away. Some will give it away for free while some will require something to trade it with – like a Nook Miles Ticket.

Another great use of these forums is that you can find players posting about their own villagers moving out – and maybe, one of them is a villager you’d want to live on your own island!

5. Take advantage of Nook Miles Tickets

Image Credit: Nintendo

Nook Miles Tickets – or NMTs – are tickets you can use to visit randomly-generated islands in the Animal Crossing world. This is a great way to collect more resources, fishes, bugs, and fossils. Visiting random islands is also a great way to invite Animal Crossing characters to live on your island – which you will definitely need to do to unlock terraforming!

NMTs can be obtained by exchanging your Nook Miles on the machine located inside the Resident Services building.

6. Use the 3D Island Planner App

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av5GDHwTKGg&w=560&h=315]

Terraforming is an exciting feature in the game that allows the player to basically change the layout of one’s island. You can tear down or create cliffs, paths, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls. While exciting, it is also a huge task to plan out your entire island. That is why, in this ACNH guide, we are introducing you the Island Planner app! The app comes with a 3D feature and in-game tools that can help you replicate and plan your island’s design easier before building it in the game.

Another great thing about the app is that it provides the user to different angles of your island, making sure you have designed your island the way you wanted it to!

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