Pearls are an important item in Animal Crossing New Horizons not only because they’re pretty but also because they are considered a rare crafting material. To craft the entire DIY mermaid set, you will need a lot of Pearls, and to be precise, you will require a total of 21 of these shiny white spherical objects.
Moreover, each pearl that you find during your exploration also sells for quite a hefty amount of Bells, so make sure to be on the lookout for scavenging Pearls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. That being said, keep in mind that due to the high rarity of coming across Pearls in the game, there is no effective farming method, and the ratio of securing them is also unknown as it depends mostly on your luck.
How to get Pearls in Animal Crossing New Horizons
In order to get your hands on some pearls in ACNH, you will need to explore the water bodies, and for that, you will need a Wet suit. The Horizontal-Striped wet suit can be purchased from Nook’s Cranny for 3000 Bells.
Similarly, you can also purchase the wet suit from the Nook Shopping app, and there you will find a Leaf-print wet suit listed under special goods for the same price. Other than that, you can also use your Nook Miles (x800) by visiting the Nook Stop at Resident service to purchase the Nook Inc. Wet Suit in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
After putting on the wet suit, you can make your way to the ocean area and press A to swim into the ocean. You can swim around for a while, and once you notice bubbles forming on the water surface, these will be an indicator that a sea creature is nearby. You can press the Y button to dive underwater to capture them successfully.
While diving in the ocean, stay on the lookout for Scallops. These are important sea creatures that you can trade in for Pearls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Scallops are available all year, so you can slap on your wetsuit and search the water bodies for them.
Trade your Scallops with Pascal in ACNH
As soon as you find your first scallop of the day, an NPC called Pascal will appear near you. He will ask to trade you for your scallop, so make sure to accept his offer. If you select the option to say no to his offer, you won’t be able to find Pascal anymore for that specific day.
Sometimes, Pascal will trade you a mermaid set DIY or even a piece of Mermaid Clothing for your scallop, but more often than not, he will end up giving you a Peal instead, and that is what you need to be looking out for in ACNH.
So the Mermaid DIY recipes are a lot more rare compared to Pearls but in the end, what you get from Pascal upon trading is simple RNG.
Searching for Pearls in the ocean
Thankfully, you don’t need to rely on Pascal for Pearls. There is another way to farm pearls in Animal Crossing New Horizons and Pascal will give you a hint about where to find them during one of his dialogues.
Pearls are found on the ocean floor, so if you want to get a hold of pearls directly, then you will need to spend a lot of time swimming and diving. Sometimes, you will get lucky and find a pearl right away.
The trick to finding Pearls will be to check the pattern of the bubbles approaching the surface. It turns out that there will be a relatively low amount of bubbles compared to the usual ones when it is a sea creature, and the bubbles will float in a mostly straight pattern upwards, so after a few tries, you will get used to observing this pattern in ACNH.
Since Pascal appears once per day when you discover a scallop, you can use this info to your advantage. Keep time traveling in Animal Crossing New Horizons to trade Scallops with Pascal over and over again.
Uses of Pearls in ACNH
Once you have collected a large number of pearls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can use them for decoration, crafting DIY mermaid sets, and other purposes as well.
There are a total of 14 Mermaid DIY items in ACNH, and each of these will require a certain amount of pearls
| Mermaid DIY recipes | Pearls required |
| Mermaid Dresser | x2 |
| Mermaid Rug | x1 |
| Mermaid Shelf | x1 |
| Mermaid Sofa | x1 |
| Mermaid Vanity | x1 |
| Mermaid Wall Clock | x1 |
| Mermaid Flooring | x2 |
| Mermaid Screen | x2 |
| Mermaid Bed | x2 |
| Mermaid Lamp | x1 |
| Mermaid Chair | x1 |
| Mermaid Closet | x2 |
| Mermaid Table | x1 |
| Mermaid Wall | x2 |
