Great news, villagers! Animal Crossing is back! With Animal Crossing: New Horizons it’s time, once again, to gather materials, build your house, and learn the ins and outs of the game. One of the first challenges is figuring out how to gather all of the different materials needed. But some of said items aren’t super common on your own island and you’ll need to go elsewhere to obtain them. Thankfully, with New Horizons, the Animal Crossing team introduced a way to visit randomly generated islands where you can plunder their riches and gather all the materials you want. Just don’t think about the ethics of it.
How to Visit Deserted Islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
To visit one of those randomly generated deserted islands, you need to use the airport where you first arrived. You can’t just leave though. First you’ll need to obtain a Nook Miles Ticket from the Nook Stop in Resident Services. When you get far enough into the game, Nook will give you one of these for free so you can see what the experience is like.
After that, however, you’ll need to shell out 2,000 Nook Miles to get another. That’s not all that cheap, but the deserted islands do have some pretty big benefits.
What To Do On a Deserted Island Trip
We’re going to go ahead and assume you haven’t yet been on one of these trips. If you’re already there, then surely you can see what’s around! So here’s what we recommend doing on these islands:
Bring Home Foreign Fruit
Every island in the game is only home to a single kind of fruit. Whether you fall into the orange family, cherry-heads, or the peach patrol, surely you’d like some more variety on your own island. The good news is that it’s possible to grow any type of fruit on your island if you have the resources.
To start, gather all of the fruit on the island. Non-native fruit sells at a much better 500 Bells each instead of the 100 Bells Timmy offers for your own.
To grow it on your own island you can do one of two things. You can bring back a fruit and simply plant it in the ground. Or you can eat any fruit while on the island and dig up an entire tree. While it does consume more inventory space, this does let you plant the entire tree back at home so you don’t have to wait for the fruit to blossom.
Get New Villagers
Each mystery island has one villager on it. If you don’t yet have ten villagers on your island, you can invite them to come live on yours. Just talk to them and select, “Want to come to mine?” as an answer. If your island is already at maximum capacity, no one will be on the island except you.
Dig Up Fossils, Collect Ore, and More!
Since island isn’t actually home to anyone, you’re free to take whatever you’d like. Don’t feel the pressure to leave behind resources for anyone else. Ethics aside, it’s not like you need to leave some crafting materials for your spouse or anything.
Keep An Eye Out For Money Islands
Some players have been reporting deserted islands with islands inside them surrounded by river. These are frequently covered in rocks that happen to be full of money. In almost every case, there will only be one ground block which is actually close enough to use the vaulting pole. It’ll usually have a rock on it that you need to break with the shovel. Pole vault across and then start smacking those rocks with your shovel and enjoy your free Bells!
And that’s it! Hopefully this helps you get settled into your new Animal Crossing: New Horizons island! Much like the game itself, check back throughout the day to see what’s new here on Fanbyte. We already have guides for how to move your tent and how to get across rivers using either the Pole Vault or constructing bridges. Later today we’ll have more guides up including how to get Nook’s Cranny, how to visit mystery islands, and buy and sell turnips!
