Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a record-breaking, groundbreaking game; they've sold more than 13.5 million copies in just a few weeks, which is more copies than Nintendo thought they would sell of the game, period. Animal Crossing came at the perfect time for many of us, allowing us an island getaway and a chance to communicate with friends in a time when that's been a little harder to achieve. With so many players joing in on this island adventure, a lot of websites and institutions are trying to do their part to make the game experience a little easier. Here are just a few of the websites we're using to make playing Animal Crossing even more fun.
Turnips, turnips, watch them rise! Sow Joan's Stalk Market is one of the more thrilling and frustrating parts of the game, as getting a big profit on your root vegetable investment relies on chance, and who you know. There are ways, however, to make it easier to earn big bells. There are sites like The Turnip Exchange, which allow you to connect with other players with high prices. But buyer beware--it can be easy for other players to misrepresent their islands or their intentions. Prices to enter islands can also be very steep.
If you want to keep your turnip buying and selling between yourself and people you really know (we'd recommend this), you can use sites like Turnip Prophet and Turnip Calculator to get a more educated look at whether you'll get good turnip prices that week. Both of these sites use what's known about the Stalk Market and a lot of math to predict your prices over the course of the week, and they get more accurate as the week goes on. By keeping these updated, you can get a pretty good idea if you're headed for a big price hike, and when that might be.
Shopping
Getting the items you want in Animal Crossing can be a bit of a mixed experience--since what items and DIY recipes you can find are random, it can take forever to get what you want. (*cough* the cutting board DIY recipe *cough*) Some sites, however, are working to connect players so that you can more easily get what you want. One of the most popular is Nookazon. Nookazon has some of the widest variety of Animal Crossing items. According to the Washington Post, Nookazon has 270,000 daily users, and there's a huge variety of items, villagers, and DIY recipes on the site. You can either buy items from other players with bells or trade them for things you may have; Nookazon lists the average prices of items so you can make sure you're getting a fair trade. Nookazon also has a team of moderators helping to make sure listings are legitimate and that players follow the rules when they trade.
If you're not even sure where to start, you can consult sites like Nook Plaza, which offers browseable listings of in-game items. This way you can learn more about items, the different colors they come in, whether they're customizable, and their in-game price.
Nookazon and Nook Plaza will let you make wishlists of wanted items, but there's a lot more than just items to keep track of in Animal Crossing. VillagerDB is a site that will let you browse what's available in the game, from DIY recipes to villagers to flowers, and create wishlists with these items.
Customization
Custom designs are meant to be found online, but there's a few places that make it even easier than normal. NookNet is a resource for browsing and downloading user-made custom designs. I really like that they have a section for island tun
When it comes to the great outdoors, Happy Island Designer is a great resource, allowing you to create custom island maps and plan out the layout of your own island.
General Reference
If you're looking for more information about Animal Crossing, luckily, there are a lot of resources online. Nookipedia is the go-to wikipedia for Animal Crossing knowledge. On mobile devices, the Apple App ACNH Exchange has a lot of information, progress checklists, and offers some other bonus features, like a turnip exchange. In terms of online gameplay guides, our personal favorite is Polygon, but plenty of game websites are offering great advice and articles every day of the week.
If you have any Animal Crossing websites, tips, tricks, or stories to share with us, be sure to reach out on social media @alachualibrary.