

It’s a dent in the money I owe to Nook Enterprises, but I stockpiled the flight tickets for this reason precisely.Īs I caught the tarantula and stuffed it into my oversized pockets something new to Animal Crossing happens. There are 8000 bells in it if you can bag one and sell it before 10 PM, and adding that to my pot brings my total up to 23k from the visit. They stalk islands in the evenings of the Winter and Spring months, occasionally appearing - ready to dash at you and knock you out. Then there, in the distance, there’s an old friend, the Tarantula - a lifesaver. Then I beat the rocks to see if there’s anything more useful than a plain stone. I dig up all of the trees, then I pluck the flowers.

Stripping the island of resources begins, even down to the weeds, there are 57 in total, that’s 570 bells. It’s not one of the islands with bamboo on them either… it’s just a plain island with the same ecosystem as back home. Some islands have potential neighbours on them that you can invite back home, but the one that I’m standing on is clear… completely clear. I have done this because eating fruit super-charges you in New Horizons, it means that you can use your shovel to dig up a whole tree or you can smash a rock into tiny pieces. I’ve crammed 10 pears into my villager’s goofy mouth.

That means you’ll need to maximise your time on this random island to make it worth it - you need to earn more than 7000 bells of goods. It turns out that you lose a 20% cut for selling at night… mumble mumble capitalism. These islands do not exist once you leave.Ī Nook Miles Ticket can be traded in at the store for 7000 bells - 5,600 if the store is shut because it’s after 10 PM. A Nook Miles Ticket gets you a flight to a freshly generated island - a portion of the size of your home island, The Dodo pilot sees you off with faux military chatter and, well, that’s it, you’re off. You can trade in 2000 Nook Miles for a Nook Miles Ticket. But if the previous Animal Crossing games lined up wisecracks about capitalism, then New Horizons is ready for quips and marker-pen underlines about industrialism and colonisation. The other part of the humour comes from the absurdity that this all takes place in a town (or island, in New Horizons) where a human villager lives shoulder to shoulder with humanoid animals, selling fish to said animals all while digging up dinosaur bones. Part of the humour comes from it being a valid observation: that Tom Nook is an industrious little racoon who definitely seems to be trying to turn a profit at every given opportunity. People like to joke about the laces of capitalism in Animal Crossing, the ones which knot up frequently throughout the series. This adds a little bit of optional direction to a game which previously didn’t do much more than nudge you in the right way to expanding your house. These are smaller quests - if you will - like catching five fish or selling off some weeds. There are also daily challenges, which is a rolling selection of five tasks which you can complete while plodding around the island. Unlocking Nook Miles is pretty simple: You’ll unlock them from hitting milestones, like doing favours for residents, or plucking a certain amount of junk items from the water. They are best used so that you can maintain the sanctity of your home island. These plane tickets aren’t some meta experience about escaping from Animal Crossing’s world of escape. You can pay off your bills with them if you wish, or you can buy certain items with them - but most importantly you can buy plane tickets. These serve as an alternative to bells for certain features, or as gateways to others.
#DODO CODE ANIMAL CROSSING FREE#
Micro-achievements, the same kind that rustled through MMOs and now populates free to play mobile games, are present in in the form of ‘Nook Miles’. New Horizons, however, has picked up a few tricks where previous Animal Crossing titles didn’t. A softer world which moves through time in the same way as our own, but is ready for us to build a new routine and to exert our control as we wish over it. Much like other ‘slice of life’ games, it helps us to carve out the chaos of our daily life, to toss out any semblance of routine that we have and to replace it - instead - with a softer world.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a salve for the rush of modern life.
