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Animal Crossing: New Horizons does not have levels, but it does have an age. A day-one island is a tent, a river you cannot cross and a shopkeeper who wants iron. A two-week island has a town hall, a tailor and a campsite. A three-star island has heard K.K. Slider play and can move its own cliffs. A five-star island has a golden watering can, and an island with Update 2.0 installed has a cafe upstairs in the museum, a boatman at the dock and a shopping plaza across the water. Our wiki covers more than a hundred pages on the game, and the simplest way to find the right one is to ask how old your island is.
That is how this hub is arranged. Each stage below names what the island can and cannot do yet, and points to the guides that matter at that age. If you know exactly what you are after, the ten category guides are linked in the first section they become relevant, and the year's calendar sits under the three-star stage where the seasonal hosts start visiting.
Day one: a tent, a pole and 5,000 Nook Miles of debt
The first decision happens before you land. Our island layouts guide explains that the four maps offered at the start are drawn from more than fifty, that closing and reopening the game redraws them, and what to look for: Resident Services near the centre, rocks you can reach, a river that does not cut the airport off, and plenty of ponds. Once you have chosen, the tips and tricks page covers the first habits, paying off the tent with miles, learning every recipe you are handed, feeding the Nooks a crafted item a day for double price, and reading rare fish by their shadows.
Most of the first week is systems, and our mechanics guide ranks all thirty of them by how long each one makes you wait, so you can see at a glance which are instant (haircuts, crafting, vaulting a river), which are overnight (moving a villager in, breeding a flower) and which take weeks. The tools guide starts at the very bottom of that ladder with the shovel Blathers gives you on day three and works up to the golden tools by how many uses each survives. And the locations guide prices every building by what opens it, which for the first two, Nook's Cranny and the museum, is nothing but wood, iron and specimens.
Week two: a town hall, a tailor and the first neighbours
Day eight is when Resident Services reopens as a building, and our second week walkthrough takes it day by day: the 8,000-Bell pocket upgrade, the campsite from fifteen of each material, keeping Mabel in business until she opens Able Sisters, and buying housing plots at 10,000 Bells apiece until the island is ready for its concert. The characters guide covers who arrives with those buildings, Isabelle with the town hall and Label with the tailor, and what each of them unlocks that did not exist before.
This is also when the economy starts. The items guide sorts everything you collect by how the game rations it, unlimited materials at one end, one birthday a year at the other, with the five-a-day fossils of our fossils list and the once-a-week turnips in between. The recipes guide explains where the cards come from, and since new neighbours are the week's real project, the villagers list catalogues all 383 by species and personality while the rare villagers page ranks the ten hardest to find and gives the encounter rate for each species on mystery islands. Once fences and furniture start piling up, the courtyard ideas page offers ten layouts to spend them on.
Three stars: the concert, the calendar and the collections
Three stars from Isabelle brings K.K. Slider for a Saturday show, and the morning after, Tom Nook delivers the Island Designer app, Kapp'n starts running boat tours and Harv's shopping plaza can be funded. It is the single biggest unlock in the game and every one of the later stages depends on it. It is also roughly when the seasonal visitors start feeling like a schedule, so our events guide ranks each host by how long they stay, from Jack's seven Halloween hours to Zipper's twelve days of eggs, and the monthly pages fill in the gaps between them: January with the year's first Fishing Tourney and the Zodiac figurine, April with cherry blossom, Bunny Day and Nature Day, and August with the moray eel, ray and soft-shelled turtle arriving in the water.
The museum's three wings are a three-star project too, because filling them is what pays for the plaza. Our bugs guide groups all eighty bugs by the hours you have to be awake and shows why the night shift pays best; it draws on the complete bug list for hours and prices and the older bugs guide for where each one hides. The fish guide sorts the catch by the water you stand beside, using the rare fish list for place, price and season, and the sea creatures list covers the forty diving catches that need a wet suit. The flowers guide belongs here as well, since hybrids are Scenery points and the tulip odds it ranks, fifty, fifty, twenty-five and six percent, are the difference between a three-star island and the next stage.
Five stars: the last rating and the last tool
The gap between three stars and five is mostly furniture. The mechanics guide's weeks tier puts the numbers on it, 665 Development points and 450 Scenery, reached in our writers' case with sixty-odd DIY pieces and more than two hundred fences, and the reward is the golden watering can recipe from Isabelle plus a lily of the valley a week. The tools guide has that can at 150 tiles, second only to the golden axe and shovel, and the items guide's daily tier is where the star fragments for wands and the pearls for the mermaid set start to matter, because a five-star island is usually decorating rather than building. The ABD machine on the locations guide is the same stage's convenience: it only goes on sale once every house loan is paid.
Update 2.0: the cafe, the boat and the plaza
The free 2.0 update added a fifth age to the island. Brewster's Roost opens upstairs in the museum once the art wing exists and Blathers asks for help, which our characters guide walks through along with the 51-day coffee calendar that ends in the Brewstoid. It is worth reading beside the pre-launch datamine that found a hidden museum cafe and gyroid files in the game before release; both turned out to be exactly what 2.0 delivered. Kapp'n's 1,000-mile boat tours supply the gyroid fragments and the glowing moss and vines on the items guide, Harv's plaza on the locations guide costs 100,000 Bells a stall, and the mechanics guide picks up the update's smaller changes: ordinances at 20,000 Bells each, buildings that now move for 10,000, and the permanent ladders that the tools guide prefers to inclines.
Frequently asked questions
Where should a new player start?
With the island layouts guide before the first save, then the tips and tricks page and the second week walkthrough. The mechanics guide's ladder shows what is worth doing tonight and what will only pay off next week.
How do I unlock terraforming?
Reach a three-star rating so K.K. Slider performs; the Island Designer app arrives the next morning. The locations and characters guides list the buildings and residents you need before Isabelle will rate the island at all.
Which guides cover Update 2.0 content?
Brewster on the characters guide, gyroids, glowing moss, the plaza merry-go-round and the outdoor ABD on the items and locations guides, and ordinances, cheaper building moves and Kapp'n's tours on the mechanics guide.