With its slow-paced gameplay and cozy vibes,Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis a great way to relax. Unfortunately, all that relaxation can sometimes have a negative impact as it becomes easy to fall into bad habits in-game, especially if you’ve already completed the main objective and had K.K. Slider perform.
Once you’ve seen the credits roll inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, the only thing left to do is continue working to get your island up to a 5-star rating. This can require a significant amount of dedication to decorating and maintaining your island, so don’t make it harder on yourself by letting bad habits slow you down.
10Time Traveling To Speed Things Along
Taking Things Slow Is Part Of The Animal Crossing Experience
Perhaps one of the easiest bad habits to fall into for any game that runs on a real clock is time traveling. This involvesadjusting the time on your device so that the game interprets it as if this amount of time has passedand is primarily used to skip through long waiting periods or jump to specific days of the week. While it is a great way to get tasks done quickly, move villagers instantly, and progress the story, it also ruins the point ofACNH.
When games are designed to work on a real-time clock, there’s usually a reason.Animal Crossingwill never be a fast-paced game. Instead, it actively encourages the opposite, finding various ways to slow you down.Completing your island is something to be done steadily over time. If you rush through, you completely miss the intention of the game and ultimately only hurt yourself by running out of things to do too quickly, and you may even be penalized.
9Using Flowers To Avoid Decorating
Flowers Are Great, But Your Island Isn’t A Garden
Picking a design for your island is probably one of the hardest things to do. Some players opt to focus their entire island around one theme, while others create sections for various activities. There’s no wrong answer, and any of the ways you decide to design your island can get you a5-star island rating. However,many players often find themselves overwhelmed by ideas, or lacking them completely, and revert to the same general fallback solution.
If you genuinely like the idea of flowers covering your island, try to think outside the box. Maybe create a unique pattern or shape that can be seen by visitors, or work on breeding some of the harder-to-achieve flower hybrids.
Flowers inAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsare beautiful, butwhat originally starts as a garden somehow seemingly turns into an entire island overrun with flowers. Rather than coming up with an idea, it’s much easier to fill in the empty spaces of the island with flowers and convince yourself that your island just has a natural look.Animal Crossingencourages creativity, so stop using flowers as a way to fill in areas and avoid coming up with new ideas.
8Shopping Without A Purpose
It’s Hard To Resist Good Deals, But Is It Still A Good Deal If You Don’t Intend To Use It?
Another easy bad habit to fall victim to isshopping without the intention of actually using what you’re buying. Since the stock at Able Sisters and Nook’s Cranny rotates daily, it’s fitting that you’d want to check every morning to see if there’s anything that catches your eye. Unfortunately, the fact that things rotate out can also create panic purchasing in whichyou buy something you have no plans for, simply because you don’t know when it will be in the shop again.
Ultimately,this results in an overflowing inventory,where you now need to unload some of the items you bought. If you have no room for them, then you have wasted money on something that will take up a slot in your inventory. The same goes for clothing. Shopping for clothing is great, but if you never actually bother to change your character’s outfits, then why did you buy your 10th pair of shoes?If you don’t have an idea for an item now or in the future, let it pass by.
7Forgetting To Sell Turnips
You Buy Them Every Sunday, Only To Forget To Sell Them
Turnips inAnimal Crossingare one of the most significant things you’ll purchase throughout your playthrough, as they serve as one of the main ways to increase your Bells. For this reason,you can only purchase them on Sunday mornings from Daisy Mae, and then you are required to sell them Monday through Saturday the following week. The price Timmy and Tommy will buy changes every morning and afternoon for each day of the week, so it’s up to you to decide when to sell for the most profit.
Unfortunately,waiting to make the highest profit can mean holding out to the end of the week, which can result in forgetting to sell them entirely. It’s an easy thing to forget and, unfortunately, comes with consequences, as the turnips will rot if not sold by the time Daisy Mae returns the following Sunday. So, if you buy Turnips, don’t hold out all week on selling. In the worst case,sell a small portion early on, so you don’t lose out as much if you forget to sell the rest while waiting for a better price.
6Hoarding Crafting Materials, But Never Crafting
You Never Know When You Might Need Something, But Resources Are Plentiful
Yet another bad habit many of us are guilty of inAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsiscollecting island materials without bothering to use them. Every day, you probably run around your island gathering sticks, rocks, weeds, and more before adding them to your stock. Which, while great to a degree, isn’t always necessary.Your island spawns resources every single day, so there’s no reason to hold on to more than you could ever possibly need.
Rather than keeping everything you pick up, you should focus more on making the most of the materials you have.Go through your craft recipes and see what’s in there.You’ve likely collected a ton of craft recipes you’ve never even bothered to look at. That being said, if there’s nothing you want to craft, at leastsell your excess materials so you don’t clog up your inventory.
5Ignoring Your Villagers
Your Villagers Miss You, So Go Talk To Them
Welcomingyour favorite villagers inACNHis one of the most exciting parts of starting a new island. You never know who you’re going to get, and you have some flexibility in who you invite to live there, soyour island can be customized entirely with villagers that fit your style. However, once you’ve done that, the novelty of chatting with them starts to wear off, especially if they’re all pretty similar.
If you’re bored, try getting some strange or sassy villagers to shake things up in your island community.
Most villagers' lines are the same old things over and over, and before long, there’s nothing new to be gained from the conversation, which often results in ignoring them altogether. Not only will they outright acknowledge that you haven’t spoken to them in a while, but it often triggers them to consider moving off the island. you may stop this, so it’s not too detrimental, but still,getting to know your island community and engaging with them is part of whatAnimal Crossingis all about.
4Enduring Wasp Stings For No Reason
Stop Walking Around Covered In Stings & Go Heal Yourself
Sooner or later, everyAnimal Crossingplayer goes through the unavoidable process of being stung by wasps while chopping down trees. Even if you manage to make it to safety most of the time and avoid the stings, they’re bound to get you at least once, resulting in a swollen face. This injured appearance doesn’t hinder you in any way, but it’s also not something you should ignore.
First and foremost,there’s no reason not to take some medicine. The medicine is made from widespread materials, one of which is the wasp nest itself, so all it requires of you is maybe a minute of heading to a crafting table. Additionally,if you ignore it and are stung a second time, you will faint, wasting more time than you would’ve by just taking the medicine.
Is Convenience Worth A 20% Fee?
When it comes to unloading items, the easiest way to do so is the drop box outside of Nook’s Cranny. It’s right outside, helping you avoid loading screens and dialogue, and letting you be immediately on your way. However, what some people choose to forget or completely ignore is thatthe drop box comes with a convenience fee of 20%.
Every time you sell something through the drop box, you’re losing out on 20% of what you could’ve made off the sale simply because you didn’t want to spend an extra minute or two heading inside to sell directly to Timmy and Tommy. While this isn’t as significant for players with upwards of a million Bells, 20% is pretty steep and not worth it if you’re still trying topay off any of yourACNHdebts.
2Selling Fossils Without Appraising Them
You May Not Need It, But It’s Still Worth More After Appraisal
As charming as Blathers can be when you go see him, going through his dialogue process every time you need appraisals can be a bit exhausting. The process is streamlined a bit as you progress, allowing him to take and appraise more than one item at a time. However, it still requires several minutes of what feels like unnecessary interaction, especially for fossils you already have.
If you have a completed collection, you’re probably still digging up fossils to get rid of them and then just dumping them in the drop box without bothering to have them appraised first, which is a complete waste. Even if you don’t need them,fossils are worth much more when appraised, so dig up all the ones you find and make one trip to Blathers before heading to Nook’s Cranny tosell your fossils to Timmy and Tommy.
1Letting The Weeds Take Over
You Hit 5-Stars, But Don’t Give Up Now
As you begin taking care of your island, picking up weeds is just a part of the routine you have to accept.Too many weeds can bring down your island’s rating, so it’s important to take care of everything by maintaining the cleanliness of the island. That being said, once players hit that goal of a 5-star island, or just a 3-star island to unlock K.K. Slider, making sure every weed is picked up starts to become less important to you.
However, you worked so hard to achieve the star rating your island has, so don’t let it be a waste of time. Be proud of what you achieved and maintain the island you’ve built. Even if you feel it’s too monotonous to do it yourself,Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 2.0 updatemade it even easier.Leif now offers a weeding service where he will pick them all up for you. So just pay him to do it, and then turn around and sell the weeds to him to make up for some of the cost.
