Four Easy Ways To Jumpstart Your “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” Island

One of the hottest games of 2020 that kept many sane throughout quarantine is “Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” Since its release, the gaming community has seen a new surge of excited “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” fans, yet an older “Animal Crossing” community has thrived for years. Since the game’s first release in 2001, a ‘secret’ community of AC fans have discovered Easter eggs in order to enhance the AC experience. They have also created ways to communicate with one another in order to share designs and trade valuable goods.

Have You Played Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” is the perfect game for players of all ages! Similar to “Sima” and “Harvest Moon,” “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” allows players to create a unique world. Players have a full range to customize their character with diverse skin tones, hairstyles, and outfits. When the game starts, players will find themselves on an empty island laid out as a blank canvas. Players can upgrade and decorate their homes, design their island’s layout, catch fish and bugs, find fossils, and complete challenges to win Nookmiles.

The point of the game? “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” has no ‘end game.’ Instead, it allows the player to escape into a relaxing world with endless opportunities to explore. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” appeals to an audience with aesthetic music and graphics that change according to the time of day. The game’s ability to customize various aspects according to the player’s tastes makes it a fun challenge for any creative mind. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” is only available for the Switch console and can be found in the App Store for $60.00.

1. The Money Tree

Since the beginning of the game series, players have grown and harvest fruit trees for profit, randomly given a startup of either cherry, orange, apple, pear, or peach trees. It is widely popular for players to try and collect all the fruit trees. However, if done correctly, another form of a rare tree exists: The Money Tree.

Every day a player can see a glowing light illuminating from the ground in a random place on the island. A player can dig at this spot using the shovel and replace the light ray with a hole. It is very important that a player does these steps in the correct order, or the chance for a Money Tree will be gone for the day.

Before covering up the hole, a player must first bury 10,000 bells in that hole, and then a tree sprout will appear. In the following couple of days, a Money Tree will grow, and a player can shake it to receive the reward of 30,000 bells. Once shaken, The Money Tree will not bear any more bells and becomes a fruitless tree. With this in mind, some players choose to keep their Money Trees on their island unshaken as decorative tokens to show off to other players.

2. The Money Rock

In “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” players will need to gather specific materials to create tools and furniture. A player can hit rocks and receive either rocks, clay, iron, and sometimes a rare gold gem using a shovel. Yet now and then, a player will hit a rock, and a bell will appear. This means a player has struck gold or, in other words, the Money Rock.

To get the Money Rock’s full benefit, a player will create a blockage to ground itself stuck in place so it cannot be moved backward. Standing one block against the rock, a player will create two holes to block being pushed back when hitting the rock-like seen in the photo above. And then it becomes fair game; while hitting the rock with the shovel continuously, a player can receive a total of up to 32,000 bells.

3. Nookazon

Pick up your phone and create an account on Nookazon. Created by fans for fans, Nookazon is an online trading community where “Animal Crossing” players can trade valuable goods, fruits, clothing, furniture, and bid on beloved villagers. Originally a player would have to wait months to slowly collect villagers they wanted on their island. Nookazon speeds up this process and allows the players a place to bid on their desired villagers without the wait.

4. Custom Designs

What makes “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” unique compared to other “Animal Crossing” games is that the player can customize their island from top to bottom. New features like terraforming and placing furniture outside a home excites players, but a fan favorite skill is utilizing custom designs over the years. Let’s be real- not everyone is an artist, but there is a fix for that!

Communities have been created for Animal Crossing players to share their custom designs with one another! One of the most popular custom designs communities can be found on Instagram under the name @ac.customdesigns.

Time To Create Your Dream Island

From gathering bells to engaging in the online “Animal Crossing” communities, these are a few of the skills you can do to jumpstart your island from average to the island of your dreams!