I've played Animal Crossing games since the GameCube, so I'm going to start a thread of helpful tips/info the game doesn't tell you

May contain spoilers

If you want to know if a villager is home, you can obviously knock on their door

You can also look at their house and tilt the camera up. If there's smoke coming from the chimney, they're home

You can become better friends with resident animals by talking to them and giving them presents (especially on their birthdays, which get announced on the message board/by Isobel/animals talk about it)

Obviously you can just give them cheap generic presents like fruit, shells, or picked flowers

But if you tailor the present to their personality, you get faster friendship and they might give you gifts of stuff that's not in your catalog yet

The animals also have favorite colors, but tbh I never keep track of that my brain fog can't keep up

So like, an example is the jock animals really like sporting equipment, baseball jerseys, etc

If one of these falls out of a tree or whatever, I hang on to it and give it to an animal that likes it

(You can also mail them presents!)

When you know an animal well enough, you can give them a present every day with the dialogue option "this is for you" or something like that

If you can't do this yet, mail is the way to go

Beware, they might show off your letter to visitors, so don't write anything personal

Obviously if you want a particular animal to move out, do not give them presents

I'm going to assume people know about money trees?

When you dig up bells from the glowy spot, you can bury money and a tree will grow that (one time only) yields triple what you buried up to an initial investment of $10,000 bells

Sometimes it's a really inconvenient spot, though

You can dig up the sapling and replant it! (Mine live right by my house)

And also you don't need to eat fruit to dig up a bb tree

Let's talk balloons:

There are 3 ways to know balloons might be coming

- the wind picks up / tree leaves move
- that whooshing noise
- a weird shadow on the ground (the number of times I thought this was a special fish )

Balloons move east-west or west-east depending on which way the wind is blowing

So if you know they're coming from the East, you can hang out on the left side of your island and also look for balloons

If you look up (tap up on the right joycon), you can see where balloons are

Don't shoot them down over water or you'll lose them

You can position yourself in the balloon's path, hold down A, and release it when the balloon is overhead

AFAIK, The color of the balloon does not determine what's inside the package (other than like Easter balloons) despite some memes claiming otherwise

If you dig a hole and want to fill it in, you can always use the shovel

You can also press Y and your character will kick dirt into the hole (unless you are standing on flowers, in which case you will pick the flowers)

If you're growing flowers in a particular pattern and don't want them to spread, the easiest way to deal with this is to not water them

But sometimes the animals will, so you can also put a stone path/custom pattern around the border. If you can't dig it, flowers can't grow

Once you have terraforming unlocked, you can lay a dirt or sand square and plant flowers in that

Which can make for some nice garden beds

If you use a custom path pattern, stand on it and press Y when there's nothing to pick up, your character will kick the custom pattern off the ground

This doesn't happen with terraformer patterns except the custom ones

This may seem obvious but it wasn't to me:.

If you need to creep up on a bug, equip your net and hold down A, this will make you move slowly

If the insect starts fidgeting, pause until it stops before moving again

Release A to catch it

I have trouble gauging distance, so you might want to practice gauging how long your net is on sea shells or something

If you want hermit crabs to spawn, it helps to pick up the shells on your beach

If you're standing behind a building/trees and need to see the ground, tap down on the right joycon

If you can't find an animal and you've looked everywhere, they're probably in the museum

So previous Animal Crossing games used furniture placement to determine things like luck, how many bells you get from balloons, how many rare fish spawn, etc

It kinda sucked because it meant that certain very fun furniture designs would actually penalize you in game, so I think Nintendo has...relaxed some of the Feng Shui/lucky items stuff

But no one knows exactly how it works in ACNH

This is a very basic primer on Feng Shui in Animal Crossing https://segmentnext.com/2020/03/30/animal-crossing-new-horizons-feng-shui-guide/

So like in general, if you put a lot of plants within 2 spaces of the wall closest to your door, that will probably increase overall luck

If you have things like trophies and you put them within 2 spaces of your right wall, it should increase luck with bells

I think Wild World? Or City Folk idk, had a lot of lucky items so like if you put the green frog statue in a particular corner it would really affect game play

But then it made it so people never rearranged their furniture? And many people had the same items in the same places

New Leaf made a lot of lucky items seasonal, so like during cicada season having a pet cicada displayed would up your luck, etc

So if you feel like putting a seasonal fish/insect in your house, probably on the south wall (or a corner), it *might* increase luck

Again nobody knows what (if any) the lucky items are for ACNH

If you're wandering around outside and hear this trilling but don't see a bug... it's a mole cricket

AKA the inaccessible insect, because AFAIK there's no visual cues deaf/HoH gamers can use to find it

I hate them

Basic mole cricket strategy:

Drop all tools except shovel + net a little bit away

Find the spot where the trilling is loudest

Dig

When you see the bug, press right to immediately equip your net and catch the dang thing

So hopefully you know that if you talk to animals using a DIY bench, they'll give you a recipe (even on friend's islands)

If they don't, talk to them again

Often there's an obligatory dialogue option they have to do first, like say "omg you were stung by wasps!!"

Unless all your animals are asleep or celebrating an event, there's generally one at a DIY bench at a time

This changes throughout the day, so if you logged off for a bit or have just been playing for awhile

It's worth checking to see if there's a new animal doing DIY (recipe!)

If you really want a tree to go in a particular spot, sure you can just stand in front of the spot and hit plant but I have had errors doing this, and then I've got to waste fruit

So you can just dig a hole, and know exactly where the tree will go

Your island should spawn five fossils a day

If you can't find one, some places to look include:

- behind buildings/trees
- on the small grassy areas next to the beach
- a narrow clifftop, like along the sides of your island
- in an empty space surrounded by flowers

If you want moar fossils, then mystery islands sometimes have them (and also sometimes they have an extra DIY recipe in a bottle on the beach)

Spawns seem to be random

Ok so with fossils it might be 3-5 per day on your island? Idk! https://twitter.com/aroluna_/status/1250208386307616768?s=19

You probably know this, but if you're playing at night and your shops are all closed and you don't want to take the 20% penalty for using the drop box, you can just make a giant pile of items outside the store

If you can get Nook Miles for spending bells but there's nothing you want to buy, highly recommend just buying customization kits