Top Tips For Starting Your Island Getaway Package

With Halloween around the corner, and the NSE x Animal Crossing community launched - what better time to dust off your switch, water your flowers and say hello to your villagers from a time that lockdown forgot than now?

You may be in a similar position as many other Island Dwellers, with the concept of picking up where you left off too daunting to even think about - so why not welcome Halloween and the festive updates with a new island!

Here are some top tips for starting your Island Getaway Package, and how to handle the first week or so of island living:

It starts off slow, and that’s okay.

Animal Crossing has always been a marathon, not a sprint, and that’s alright! Knowing that the first couple days are slow, with your hand held as you get to grips with the basics of island life, fully encapsulates the Animal Crossing series as a whole. It does pick up pace quite quickly though, so don’t worry about the first couple days!

Online Play unlocks on Day 2

If, like me, you were raring to go to have all of your friends visit with moving-in gifts and fossils alike, to only find out that so far, there’s no way for people to visit, then worry not! The island airport unlocks from your 2nd day of playtime, just after the official tutorial finishes!

Picking items up adds them to your catalogue

Seeing your friends beautifully terraformed islands with just the right amount of cliff-to-plant-to-item ratio can give you serious island-envy. Most items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are purchasable through the catalogue in Resident Services - picking things up and dropping them adds them to your list of items! Not everything is purchasable, be it event-locked or seasonal, but completing a list sure is nice too.

Villager friendship matters!

After a couple days of interaction with your favourite villager (looking at you, Penguin folk), you can give them gifts. Each personality type of villager has a preferred type of item (Jock villagers like sporty things, Snooty villagers like expensive things, for example), but any type of clothing as long as it fits their theme is normally a safe bet!

When you max out your friendship with villagers, they give you a signed picture of them in a frame with a quote on the back - better get your mantle ready!



Eating fruit lets you break rocks and move trees!

Have any pesky rocks in your way from your dream layout? Some money trees ruining your island ambience? Eating fruit from trees can solve it all!

Having fruit in your ‘energy bar’ means you can do more heavy lifting, with one rock/tree taking one piece of fruit. Be careful to not have any fruit stored in your energy bar if you just want to hit a rock for it’s resources, instead of breaking it though!

Have any more top tips, stalk stonks or island recommendations to share with us? Join us on Discord and join in the fun as the Animal Crossing event kicks off!

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