Tips to Prepare for Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0

An important update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is scheduled for November 5, 2021, and if you haven’t returned to your island yet before launch, now is the time. With so much new content hitting our shores, there is probably some work you’ll want to do before it’s over.

Although New HorizonsThe popularity initially after launch was unprecedented, and it stayed that way for months. did eventually move on to other things. For some of us, it has been more than a year since we last checked in on our islands. The place is covered with weeds. Flowers spill down the hallways. Nobody thought of picking up the sticks. There are roaches in my house. But personally, it is more than that. I got a bit chaotic in my final months before saying goodbye. I packed up all my villagers’ houses in a small corner of the island and turned a quarter of the place into a field of giant yellow flowers. It is beautiful, yes. But do I have enough space to create a farm where I grow and cook my own food? Absolutely not.

You may not have an extremely large field of yellow flowers on your island, but you’ve likely used up a lot of your space. With the new update, I will have to renew, and you may have to consider it too.

Get familiar with your island again

Image: Nintendo EDP / Nintendo

The best place to start is to reacquaint yourself with your island. Look at your map, but also walk along its shores and enjoy the space you have created. Appreciate the hard work you’ve put into creating your island oasis before taking that shit down.

(It’s a prank?)

For me, I used this time to reflect on what I had to do. Although I remembered that my villager neighborhood was isolated, it is actually right across from the airport pier. That’s bad. It’s closed on a small piece of land with the Resident Services building, before the unruly flowers that sprout from the huge field begin to take over patches of land. The museum, which will soon be a social center for my villagers, is hidden in a high and remote part of my island. Although it is immaculately landscaped with its impressive yard, barring the weeds, it is a long way from all the action of the Resident Services plaza. Simply put, it is a headache to achieve.

But the main part of my island is this: without realizing it, I somehow managed to fit all my buildings in the middle of the island. And the other half is effectively empty, except for the huge field of yellow flowers and my own island at home. My initial thought was that I would have to flatten my island to the ground and work from there. But after my tour, I realized that I had a lot of open space that I could focus on and complete the rework of the island in steps, rather than in a nightmare frenzy.

But you may only have one parcel of land you want to clear for a new agricultural area or a new section of your island to show off all that delicious new food. Regardless of what your problem area is, write it down so you can make a plan.

Make a plan and put it into practice

Make a map of your island, either on paper or using a digital tool like Happy Island Designer. (I prefer the digital version, as it is very easy to modify). There, you can recreate your current island setup and your dream island setup, and use those two maps to plan exactly how to move forward.

Creating the steps from there will be easy (or difficult), depending on your needs. Although a large part of the community is renovating their entire islands, I think it is more likely that people are clearing space for farms. For some, that could mean moving out of a house or two. For others, that could be cutting down trees and pulling weeds and flowers.

Once an area is clear, could just go ahead and leave the parcel of land empty until the new update arrives in November. But, if you are a planner like me, you probably want to start making the right layout. You can use custom layouts on the ground to create garden rows, just like you would pumpkins, and maybe a fence and some signs to decorate the area. If that’s the case, you’ll just have to tweak a few things before jumping right into your farm on November 5. However, there are reasons to wait: the new log fence will be perfect for closing gardens.

This is what I mean:

The plots are configured and ready to go!

Another easy thing you could do is clean up any decorations that you might have put up for another holiday. Was it the last time you played on Bunny Day? Get that out of here! You can celebrate fall by placing pumpkins and other seasonal decorations.

If you are crushing your island to the ground, no problem. I suffer in the clumsiness of uprooting my field of yellow flowers.

Clean your dock

An easy way to fix your island is to clean your dock for Kapp’n. The guy will be making his way on November 5 and he might enjoy a cozy little place of his own.

Load into Nook Miles and other materials

Look: Most likely you are not short of Nook Miles. But if you do, you’ll want to start stocking up.

Nook Miles has always been useful, but there is a ton of cool furniture, like carnival stuff, added to the Nook Miles catalog. But more importantly, the Kapp’n boat tours will cost 1000 Nook miles each round. As a new feature, it’s something you’ll want to explore a lot. Don’t let your Nook Miles stop you.

You will also need to use Nook Miles to buy DIY recipes + things to cook. What I’m saying is that Nook’s miles usually flow, but you need to make sure you have a lot. There are many ways to earn Nook Miles, but the easiest is to hit the milestones on your rewards card, things like putting up fences, racking up fruit trees, and fishing all award Nook Miles.

As you do so, be sure to gather some additional supplies so that you can create the new DIY items in the game. Using your tools will also help you get the Golden Tools, which award a ton of Nook Miles.