ACNH Rare Island Trick: Easiest Way To Find Specific Rare Island in Animal Crossing New Horizons

In this guide, we're taking a deep dive into the Kapp'n boat tours mechanic and looking at a small exploit or trick to find the specific rare island in Animal Crossing New Horizons. It's pretty interesting and may save you a bunch of game time.

Take Kapp'n Boat Tour To Go Rare Islands In Animal Crossing New Horizons

For the newer players out there, Kapp'n who you can find down at the dock is responsible for taking you to random mystery islands on his very own boat tour, these are of course different to the nook mile islands, but unfortunately do cost 1,000 nook miles to visit and are limited to one visit per day for some reason. 

There are two types of islands you can visit with Kapp'n:

• Normal Islands such as gyroid, produce and glowing moss islands

• Rare Islands such as star fragments, cherry blossoms, spring bamboo, summer shell mushroom, maple leaf, and snowflake islands that all offer up limited time DIYs and seasonal crafting materials out of season

ACNH Rare Island Finding Rating

Typically, we have a 78% chance of landing on a normal island and only a 22% chance of landing on a rare, although there are ways to increase this. Now if you're hoping for a specific island for example you really want to land on the star fragment island,  there's a small trick that will help. 

List of Mystery Island Templates

There are a variety of island templates that can be randomly generated during Mystery Island tours in Animal Crossing. Some of the most common starting island templates include basic islands with or without ponds, as well as islands with spiral rivers or large ponds.

Other notable island types include Bamboo Islands containing fully grown bamboo, Mountain Islands requiring ladders, and islands with large rivers or waterfalls. Alternate Fruit Islands can contain non-native fruit trees.

Rarer island templates include trash-filled islands, islands containing rare flowers, dense forest islands abundant with bugs, and islands exclusively stocked with large fish species.

Very rare island types include islands solely populated with sharks or tarantulas/scorpions for farming, as well as lucrative treasure islands surrounded by water containing multiple money rocks or golden nuggets.

ACNH Rare Island Finding Trick - How To Increase Kapp'n Boat Tour Rare Island Rate in Animal Crossing?

Now we know the normal chance of finding a rare island by taking the Kapp'n Boat Tour, if we want to go to a specific rare island, we should increase this rare island finding rating. Luckily, the trick makes our dream come true and you just need to follow the below tips:

1. Keep Resetting As Soon As You Land

Unlike visiting Nook Mile islands through dodo airlines, the game doesn't save when you depart from the ACNH island, and this opens up a small exploit that allows you to reset the island, meaning if you land on an island you don't want or you're looking for a specific rare island like the star fragment island, you can keep resetting as soon as you land to get a different island. 

2. Close The Game Before Kapp'n Finishes His Dialogue Upon Arrival To Reset

It's good practice to close the game before Kapp'n finishes his dialogue upon arrival to make sure the game doesn't autosave, you can do this as many times as you like until you find the island you're looking for, which is super helpful if you're looking for specific seasonal recipes or materials.

3. Increase Rare Island Find Rating With Good Luck

Now as we mentioned, there are several rare islands to encounter, each with around a 3% chance of appearing. However, it's worth knowing these odds increase with luck if you happen to have the good belongings fortune. This is because, with the good belongings fortune, Kapp'n skips over all the normal islands and guarantees you to encounter a rare island. So if you're soft resetting in hopes of finding a rare island which is probably the main reason for resetting, do it on days you have good luck and it will save you a bunch of time and essentially avoid all normal islands which are basically 80% of the islands during resetting, that way you'll have a 1 in 7 chance of finding the island you're looking for, instead of a 1 in 32 chance. 

4. Check Your Luck from Katrina

Of course, if you need to check whether you're having good luck or not and what type of luck you're having, you can visit Katrina at Harv's archipelago, assuming you've unlocked her and have your fortune read.

5. More Important Details about The Rare Island Trick to Remember:

• The most important is that rare seasonal islands require unlocking before they can be encountered, for example, you can only find the summer shell island if you played through August 31st in the northern hemisphere or February 28th in the southern hemisphere, which is the last days of summer shells spawn on the main island.

• The other thing is rare islands you've visited more than others are temporarily removed from Kapp'n's encounters, so if you've seen bamboo islands a bunch but the star fragment islands much less, you should encounter the star fragment island again before the bamboo, which can be helpful depending on which island you're looking for.

ACNH Rare Island Tier List

S Tier:

• Starry Starry Night - Island is in perpetual night filled with rare star fragments.

A Tier:

• Coveted Vines and Moss Paradise - Contains rare vines and glowing moss.
  

• Fall Is In The Air - Filled with autumn items like maple leaves.
  

• Hot Shell Summer - Features summer items like sharks and palm trees.
  

• Pretty Petal Palace - Full of cherry blossom petals in spring.
  

• Winter Wonderland - Snow-covered island with winter items.

B Tier:
Mushrooms Galore - Contains various mushroom types in autumn.
Springing Bamboo Bonanza - Abundant with young spring bamboo.
Rare Rainy Retreat - Rains constantly and has fully grown gyroids.

C Tier:

• Crops Galore - Patches of vegetables and crops to harvest.

D Tier

• Basic Broken Gyroid Island - Plain island with broken gyroid fragments.
  

So there we have it a pretty cool little trick that may help you find rare islands along with some cool secrets and small details surrounding the boat or mechanic.