The "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" Daily Tasks Guide!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a fantastic game that lets the player do basically whatever they want: be it making friends with the cute villagers that live on their island, terraforming the land as they please, decorating indoors or outdoors, or fishing and hunting for bugs to complete the museum.

That being said, there are some things you should attempt to do on a daily basis to really maximise your Animal Crossing experience and earn Nook Miles, bells, or collect that hard-to-find furniture item you’ve been in search of for ages (I’m talking about you, White Box Sofa).

Here are 15 daily tasks I recommend doing to get the most of your Animal Crossing: New Horizons gameplay!

Check Nook’s Cranny

The first thing I do every day in the game is check my shops for new goodies, because I’m admittedly a huge shopaholic both in real life and in the game, and love buying and collecting new things. It’s a good idea to visit Nook’s Cranny when it opens each morning at 8am to see what they’re selling. You never know if Nook’s has the item you’ve been looking for!

Further, when checking Nook’s, speak with Timmy and Tommy about turnip prices and the hot item of the day.

For the turnips, the prices change throughout the day (you’ll have once price before 12pm and another price after), so if you’re looking to sell turnips, check twice a day for the best price. You can use a turnip wizard like the one at stalks.io to input your prices throughout each day, and the site will tell you when to sell.

The hot item changes each day (you get two hot items per day once you’ve upgraded Nook’s Cranny), and Timmy and Tommy will buy whatever craftable object you make for double the price. If you have enough materials, why not craft a few hot items and make some extra bells?

Check in at the Able Sisters

Once you’ve unlocked the Able Sisters’ shop (by spending 5,000 bells at Mable’s stand, after upgrading Resident Services), don’t forget to check in there, too! The store restocks new clothing and accessories each day for you to try and buy.

Also, don’t forget to talk to Sable each day once the shop is unlocked. Once you’ve spoken to her for roughly 10 days, she’ll start to gift you custom design patterns, which you can use to customise a variety of the items at your DIY workbench. She’ll give out 20 patterns in total, so don’t forget to keep talking to her each day until you’ve collected them all (and even after, since she’s a sweet little hedgehog).

Look for the Message Bottle

Along the shores of your island, you’ll find a message bottle that’s washed up each day that contains a DIY recipe. You’ll start to get duplicates after a while, but it’s still good to check for and open the message bottle every day.

There also seems to be a chance to find multiple message bottles per day. I haven’t figured out the exact science to it, but if I pick up a message bottle early in the morning (usually between 5am-8am), if I check back later in the evening (anywhere from 4pm onwards) I’ll find another bottle washed ashore.

Check the Bulletin Board

A lot of players forget about the Bulletin Board, but it’s something you want to keep an eye on at least a few times a week, as special events are posted there, such as upcoming town events (like the Fishing Tourney, for example) and even villager’s birthdays!

Speaking of birthdays, don’t forget to stop by your villager’s house on their special day to hang out during their party and give them a birthday present.

Talk to Your Villagers

Besides it just being a nice thing to do, there’s a lot of good that comes with talking to your villagers each day. If you consistently talk to them, they’ll start to become better friends with you, which can lead to them occasionally giving you furniture or clothing.

It’s also worth barging in—I mean, checking in—at their homes throughout the day, as during the morning, noon, and night, one of your villagers will randomly be at home crafting a DIY recipe.

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Check in at the Nook Stop

Inside your Resident Services building, you’ll find the Nook Stop- an ATM machine of sorts, which allows you to deposit money in your savings account (and collect interest every month), pay off your home loan, buy Nook Miles rewards, and access/buy things from your catalogue (which includes every object you’ve ever picked up in the game).

The Nook Shopping section rotates daily with new selections of furniture, clothing and music to buy, while the Nook Miles Redemption section maintains the same selection of DIYs, objects, and Nook App upgrades, but rotates two different fence DIYs per day.

Besides looking for new things to buy, you also earn bonus Nook Miles for each consecutive day that you log in, starting at 50 Nook Miles, and capping at 300 per day, once you’ve logged in for seven consecutive days and on.

Look in the Recycling Bin

The Recycling Bin is located to the left in the Resident Services office. It doesn’t always have items in it, but it’s worth checking it while you’re already there checking in at the Nook Stop.

The day after a new villager moves in or out you’ll always find a cardboard box inside the Recycling Bin. You can also find a rusted part the day after helping Gulliver (hold onto these for crafting!). You may occasionally find other things like furniture, wallpaper and floors, crafting materials, flower seeds, or clothing.

It’s also worth checking after a villager moves out, too, as often they’ll leave behind the wallpaper, flooring, or a furniture object they had in their home. Sometimes, they’ll even leave behind the clothing you gifted them while they were on your island (which is a little sad to think about, but I digress…)

Complete Your Nook Miles + Tasks

One thing you want to try to do each day is complete the Nook Miles + tasks. Each day you’ll have five randomly selected tasks (anything from fishing up five fish, to spending 5,000 bells), which will give you a bonus multiplier of Nook Miles once completed. Most of the bonuses are 2x the regular amount of Miles, but you also have a chance of getting a 5x multiplier on one of the tasks. This only applies to the first five tasks of the day, but once you’ve completed those five, you can continue to cycle through tasks infinitely and earn more Nook Miles.

Most of Nook Miles + tasks are pretty easy, and things you’d naturally do during gameplay (like talking to three of your villagers), so doing these is a fast and easy way to save up Nook Miles.

Shake Trees

Shaking trees has always been a mainstay in the Animal Crossing game series. In New Horizons it’s as important as ever before. Obviously, you can shake your fruit trees to drop fruit, but don’t forget to shake your hardwood and cedar trees, too!

Each day by shaking hardwood and cedar trees (provided you have enough trees on your island and enough room around the trees for items to drop), you can receive five wasps and nests, 2 random pieces of furniture, and 15 bell drops (equalling 1500 bells).

You can also shake trees for branches, acorns and pine cones (if you’re playing during the autumn season).

Hit Rocks

You’ll notice some rocks scattered around your island, so grab a shovel and strike them to get resources and bells! Each day, you’ll have six rocks to hit, and they stay in the same place unless you’ve broken them (which you can do by eating fruit and then hitting the rock with a shovel or axe; not recommended unless you’re trying to get the rock to spawn in a new area).

Five of the rocks will release crafting materials, like stone, clay, iron nuggets, and very rarely, gold nuggets. The last rock is a money rock, which will produce bells and money bags.

You can hit each rock eight times if you do it correctly; check out the video below for a great visual on the perfect way to hit rocks:

Look for the Glowing Spot

Each day, there will be a glowing spot somewhere on your island. If you dig up the spot, you’ll receive 1,000 bells, but even better than that, if you deposit money into the spot, you’ll grow a money tree.

I highly recommend depositing 10k bells into the glowing spot each day, as you are guaranteed a 30k harvest once the tree fully matures in a few days. You can also dig up the tree sprout you’ve made without eating fruit and move it somewhere more convenient. I have a money tree orchard on my island where I keep all my trees together for easy harvesting each day.

Look for Fossils

Every day, four fossils will randomly spawn throughout your island. They look like a little star on the ground, and if you dig them up, you’ll find a fossil. Take the fossil to Blathers in the Museum to have it assessed, and if it’s a new fossil the museum doesn’t have, you can donate it. If the Museum already has the fossil, you can keep it and either decorate your home or island with it, or sell it for a pretty penny at Nook’s Cranny.

Find and Interact With the Visiting NPC

Every day you’ll have a NPC visit your island. Make sure you find them (if they’re not one who sets up in front of Resident Services) and help them with their task (i.e. Gulliver or Wisp), speak to them for special items (Celeste), sell them things (CJ and Flick) or buy special goods from them (Redd, Leif, Kicks, etc.).

K.K. Slider will always perform a free concert on Saturday, and you can request specific songs for him to give you to play in your music players if you know the name of the tune you want!

Water Flowers to Make Hybrids

If you’re trying to create rare hybrid flowers, you must water your flowers that you’re trying to breed each day. Keep in mind that if it’s rained that day, you don’t need to water the flowers. You can tell if they’ve already been watered or rained on if the flowers are sparkling. Make sure you check back the following day to see if the hybrid you’ve wanted has spawned.

You don’t need to water flowers unless you’re trying to produce hybrids. Flowers will still grow without you watering them!

There’s a great guide about hybrids here. There’s also been evidence in a recent datamine that you have an increased chance of spawning hybrids the next day if a visitor waters your flowers, so start handing out the watering cans at your airport entrance!

Visit a Mystery Island

Now, because I really do try and complete at least my first five (and usually several more) of my Nook Miles tasks each day, I have a lot of Nook Miles (a lot, meaning at the time of writing this, upwards of 200k). That being said, I do still tend to buy a Nook Miles ticket a few times a week (and at one time, I bought them daily!) to visit a Mystery Island.

Mystery Islands are great for gathering materials like iron, wood, flowers, and fruit, but there’s also a tree on each island (no matter how many you visit per day) that has a wasp and wasp nest in it, as well as a tree that’ll drop a random furniture item. Make sure you shake all the trees until you find the wasp and furniture.

You can also occasionally find message bottles or a fossil spot on a Mystery Island, too. And let’s not forget that you might luck out and land on a rare Mystery Island, like bamboo island, hybrid flower island, money rock island, shark island, or scorpion/tarantula island.

Of course, if you have an empty plot of land, you can visit Mystery Islands in search of your dream villager and ask them to come back and stay!

© 2020 Brittany Brown