Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I dunno about Water and Air… they're everywhere for me. Got more of those than any of the others, because you only have limited resources (trees to smack, rocks to hit). Agreed on Leaf and Earth. Seems the key is doing mystery tours.

It's stopped me playing properly until the event's over. Massive, massive misstep for so early in the game's life.

Before, every little thing you did was progress towards something. Just wanted to wander and chop trees for a bit? That wood will come in handy down the line.

But now you're pelted with eggs that have no purpose beyond building awful furniture, and ticking off a mobile-game style checklist.

I can't believe how much I've turned on the game over a few eggs.

I can't believe how much I've turned on the game over a few eggs.

You're not the only one. I really hope the devs are paying attention and that this isn't a sign of the format to come.

I've not even got this game yet and it's one of the funniest games I've seen in a while, every shitpost/meme/screenshot on my twitter has been proper laugh out loud funny

I've got 37 (!) of the supposed 40 (!!) recipes in this event.

As of tonight, same here – I've just got the arch, wand and Zipper toy to go. I reckon I've probably got enough eggs in storage to make 'em when they show up, then I'll finally be done with this horrendous event.

I made the wand with Star bits from your beach. I gave it to my daughter and it is now her favourite thing.

I've got 37 (!) of the supposed 40 (!!) recipes in this event.

As of tonight, same here – I've just got the arch, wand and Zipper toy to go.

Those are the exact ones I'm missing. I know this because I didn't know those were in the list… thanks for filling in the blanks.

Boring logistical question. If I ignore the 'reserve a plot of land' feature, will I still get new residents?

I much prefer the idea of them picking their own plots.

If I ignore the 'reserve a plot of land' feature, will I still get new residents?

No.

I much prefer the idea of them picking their own plots.

If you want to maintain the same experience, just stick them in random places yourself – ideally, placing the plot to completely destroy some aspect of the village you've spent ages perfecting.

Sharing your island with an 8 year old has a similar effect.

This site claims to be able to predict your turnip price fluctuations (within a few degrees of accuracy) based on the buy price you had at the start of the week, your daily prices so far, and a formula that's been datamined out of the game.

Mine looks like I'll be waiting a few days, but so far I've been slightly above the average.

My price or the price I bought the turnips at, seeing as I went elsewhere to get them?

My house is a disaster. The main room is okay, apart from the four piles of overspill turnips in the corner, but the three extensions are each their own flavour of unpleasantness.

To the left, I've stashed all the Bunny Day items. It is an oversaturated pastel horror show. To the right are my turnips, strewn across the floor while they wait to be sold off for profit.

The back room currently contains a little over 800,000 bells' worth of spiders.

My only hope is that the "thematic consistency" of each room will somehow please the weirdos at the HHA.

Why do people store the spiders in rooms like that? Can't you just sell them?

Because it's funny?

Why do people store the spiders in rooms like that? Can't you just sell them?

I mean, of course you can sell them. But the Nooklings only pay 8,000 bells per tarantula, so I'd be looking at a mere half-million bells for that hoard. On the other hand, Flick – the red punk lizard who visits your island on a random schedule – pays 1.5x for bugs, meaning these hairy boys fetches 12,000 bells a piece for a total of 816,000.

And all it takes is a lot of patience clearing islands, hunting spiders, and giving up an entire room of my house for potentially weeks.

Because it's funny?

Also that.

Because it's funny?

Also that.

Our 4 year old certainly thinks so.

His favourite thing to do is to go to a mirror and change how you look. Paul has removed the mirrors in his house to try and stop him. I really enjoy logging in to see what terrible hairstyle he's picked for my character. One time he made Paul's character look exactly like mine, it was pretty funny.

Oh hey, I found a new reason to hate the eggs. They spawn during fishing tourneys too.

Yep

Yeah, that was a bit shit. Didn't need that at all.

As of tonight, same here – I've just got the arch, wand and Zipper toy to go.

After several days of getting increasingly annoyed that these recipes hadn't appeared, I finally had a Google to see what I was missing – turns out you need to speak to Zipper on Egg day (tomorrow) to get the Arch, you need to craft everything else including the Arch to get the Toy, and you need to craft everything including the Arch and Toy to get the Wand.

I've got the eggs I need for it all, so tomorrow will see me craft the last few things and then punt the lot into the ocean (or at least the Nooklings).

So did I get totally lucky getting the wand randomly, or is there two wands?

There are several wands – I have recipes for three others – but the Bunny Day wand should only be a reward for completing all the other items in the Bunny Day set.

Yep, this. I have the regular wand recipe that Celeste gives you, the Bamboo wand which I crafted and then the Fish wand from the tournament yesterday. This'll be number four.

Ok. What do they all do?

They all do the same thing – when you use a wardrobe, you can set 8 outfits as "wand outfits", and use the wand to switch between them when you're out and about.

It takes the clothes out of your inventory/storage, and you don't count as wearing them when you change – it's a "transformation".

The catches that come with this, as useful as it is:

• You have to be in your 'normal' clothes when trying to use the fitting room in the tailor's shop (just select the same transformation you're using to remove it)
• Since it removes items from your inventory for stored transformations, you can't double up. So, I had multiple outfits that all used the same one pair of trousers… doesn't work with the wand. You need to own one of an item for each transformation. Bit of a pain, but it makes sense I guess.

Just like real life - don’t always wear the same pair of pants.

My 11 year old, Sam, has picked this up.

SW-2611-3023-9829

Is that the number he needs to share? If you or your kids, or whatever, want to engage in…. whatever it is you do on Animal Crossing (never played it) can you give me your codes/approval/blessing?

Do you want an invite to our WhatsApp group where we share our turnip prices.

Maybe I should explain that?

Everyone can spend their money on turnips on a Sunday morning. Every town has a different sell price for turnips morning and afternoon, Monday to Saturday. It is the quickest way to make money on AC, as long as you have enough friends to find one with a good sell price throughout the week.

Don't WhatsApp I'm afraid.

Well we can let you know if there is a particularly good deal on someday.

I'm thinking more for the visiting of the gardens or whatever it is you do.

I'm not willing to start snapchatting dick pics to get access to your gardens though.

Well what are you willing to do then cav?

Mart, how do you get the bigger shop? Nook's Cranny is bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. Also I want more stuff.

Mart, how do you get the bigger shop?

Time, it seems. I thought it was linked to the amount of money you spent in it, but three of us who all started the game on the same day back in February all got the expansion at the same time. So, just wait it out.

Updates coming from April 23rd!

Bushes! Hedges! Red!

Can't wait until Thursday.

Redd's still an arsehole. Watch out for those fakes!

Also, this covers all events until the end of June. So, plenty of stuff to look forward to.

I think I'm going to have to take a break from Animal Crossing. My tranquil island getaway is now a fractured landscape of cliff faces, streams which go nowhere, dirt paths, waterfalls which spring from nowhere and go nowhere, carefully abandoned furniture… It's totally stressful. It reminds me of The Chaos Engine.

Who thought it would be a good idea to give an eight year old the ability to remake the whole island?

Hopefully, if I leave it a couple weeks, she'll have either tidied it up or gotten bored and won't mind if I tidy it up.

You obviously just need to buy another Switch.

That would be a difficult thing to do just now even if I wanted to.

I have over 100k Nook Miles and there's only so many mystery islands I can do in a day. I like completing the challenges to get them but they are pretty much pointless at the moment. I hope Nintendo add new items or something to make these useful again.

Also, being able to exchange miles for multiple tickets would be amazing. I don't want to spend 40 mins generating 7 tickets.

There are so many quality of life things that could be improved.

I wouldn't hold your breath.

Rock-herding is complete.

Now to get some cross-bred flowers.

…what?

Rocks spawn, one per day, until you have six on your island. But there are rules about where they're allowed to appear, so you can manipulate them into appearing at particular locations by placing furniture, flowers, trees or – in my case – plastering decals all over your island.

Rock-herding is complete.

Now to get some cross-bred flowers.

Fantastic, good work! I love the totally unnecessary detail of the rock inside the No symbol.

So I keep on fishing FUCKING MASSIVE great white sharks out of the sea, and now we are all supposed to want to go swimming!? Yeah, no.

It's okay, they only bite a little.

Happy Home Paradise (thanks for adopting me, Gar) is a funny one. This is a game that's spent the last 18 months torturing people with unwieldy, ungenerous, flat-out boring design mechanics. Want to redecorate a room? Good luck finding all the recipes you need. Want to reshape your island? Hope you've got a spare week.

But in Happy Home Paradise, design is suddenly a joy. It's uncharacteristically generous, throwing everything at you right away; all you need to do is get lost in the fun of creating. So the question is… if they knew all along how to make design so much fun, why on earth hasn't any of this trickled into the main game?