If you don’t have access to Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s latest downloadable content, you’re probably wondering exactly how everything works. The idea for Happy Home Paradise is simple: villagers want vacation homes and you’re going to help design them. But there are 49 different plots and more than 400 villagers, so how does this whole thing work? In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Paradise Planning!
Unlocking Paradise Planning
Once you’ve purchased the DLC, log into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and spawn into your world. Before you can do anything, Tom Nook will give you a call and ask you to come down to the airport to meet Lottie. She’ll give you the rundown on Paradise Planning before inviting you to come to the island.
After Tom Nook leaves, take the airplane off to the new islands and you’ll be greeted by the friendliest monkey in the world. He’ll lead you to the office where you’ll get acquainted with everything. Once Lottie shares some details, Eloise will walk in as your first client!
You don’t have full access to everything yet; they’ll choose the island plot for you, for example. You also won’t be able to decorate the outside area or change the size of the room. Just do your best and include the items Eloise likes. You’d have to try to fail this challenge.
Finished decorating? Talk to Eloise and let her know you’re done to head back to the office.
There’s more to do than just decorating houses, however. The trailer talked about eventually unlocking facilities like restaurants, schools, and more! Once these are built and decorated, you can visit them at any time and see which villagers have stopped by. Some will even work as staff! In the Nintendo Direct, Sherb was dressed up as a waiter in the restaurant.
Paradise Planning Tips
Want to know what to expect? Read these quick tips!
- Pillars and counters are unlocked three days after you build the school.
- After four days you unlock an ATM on the island. You can use it to convert Bells to Poki for faster access to the items on sale. Limited to 15,000 Poki a day.
- If you want to focus on earning Poki (the island’s equivalent of Bells), just use the recommended items to complete designs faster.
- Poki is used to purchase items from the shop, so make sure to do some work each day to keep them affordable!
- For your second job, you’ll need to convince a villager on the beach to want a vacation house.
- Your second job has more features unlocked, including the ability to choose a plot and decorate the outside area.
- After finishing the second job, you unlock the Paradise Planning Network. This allows you to revisit any of the previous homes or facilities you’ve designed.
- Island slots may be space limited (we’re still trying to find out), but more than one villager can be on each.
- Whomever you didn’t choose for the second job remains behind, so don’t fret too much if you want more than one of them!
- These may refresh on the next day, however, so be careful.
- Want to invite a villager from your island? Purchase the souvenir chocolate and give it to them!
- This will not cause them to leave your island.
From what we can tell, the ultimate goal is to give every villager a vacation home. While you may not be able to have all of the best villagers on your island, you can give them a house that you can visit whenever you want!
Paradise Planning Unlocks
Getting your hands on the game’s new features is as simple as completing houses.
- Two Jobs: Paradise Planning Network.
- Five Jobs: Vine DIY, storage space unlocked on second floor.
- Six Jobs: Earn 9,000 Poki per job, new uniforms unlocked, workbench on second floor. The school facility is unlocked. Complete to gain access to room sizes.
- Seven Jobs: Can now summon vacationers with amiibo. Limited to regular villagers.
- Eight Jobs: Unlocks wall partitions DIY.
- 11 Jobs: Earn 12,000 Poki per job.
- 12 Jobs: Customize your polishing effect. Unlocks lighting and the café and restaurant facility.
- 13 Jobs: Can now visit other people’s creations on the Paradise Planning Network.
- 15 Jobs: Use DIY made furniture in your jobs.
- 16 Jobs: Unlock roommates for the vacation homes.
- 17 Jobs: Unlocks soundscapes.
- 18 Jobs: You can add a second floor to the vacation homes.
- 19 Jobs: Earn 15,000 Poki per job. Can now summon VIP villagers. (Those who don’t have houses like Isabelle)
- 22 Jobs: Unlocks the hospital facility.
- 23 Jobs: Even more soundscapes.
- 25 Jobs: Gain access to your furniture catalogue when decorating.
- 30 Jobs: Unlock the apparel shop facility. Talk to Tom Nook to unlock the ability to decorate your own villager’s houses (internal and external).
Have you made your own discoveries, like how long it takes to unlock new things? Have tips for your fellow Paradise Planners? Let us know in the comments below!
