Everyone Makes These 10 Mistakes In Animal Crossing New Horizons - ACNH Guide 2023

There are seven mistakes in Animal Crossing New Horizons that every player seems to make. Whilst Animal Crossing is a pretty relaxing and forgiving game, we definitely think there are some mistakes you'll want to make sure you avoid. In our ACNH guide, we've decided to take a look at some of the most common mistakes that players are making, and let's check out 10 of them.

Don't Make These 10 Mistakes In Animal Crossing New Horizons

1. Kicking Out Villagers

A lot of players seem to assume that the best way of kicking villagers out is to be really mean to them, to hit them with nets and such and put them in pitfalls but this really doesn't work. In fact, it seems like the meaner you are to them, the more they want to stick around. It's more likely a villager will want to leave your Island, the higher friendship you have with them, so it's kind of the opposite of what you'd expect. You're definitely wasting your time, hitting your value villages with nets and putting them in pitfalls, and giving them bad gifts. It's definitely not making them want to leave your Island any faster. Realistically the quickest way would be to get an amiibo, invite them to the campsite and use them to force out any village you want. But aside from that, you might just have to be patient.

2. Comparing Islands

People feel very down about their own Islands as they tend to compare their islands to others very often. This is absolutely one of the biggest mistakes you can make in Animal Crossing New Horizons comparing your Island to other players. Whilst it can be good to do so in some ways to get ideas and inspiration and such. Looking at other players' islands and thinking yours looks terrible is just not the way to go. It's important to remember that everyone has a different experience with this game, some people are incredibly into decorating and might spend all of their time doing it, others might want to take it more slowly or some might not want to decorate at all. You might want to do things a different way than you've seen anyone else doing. Regardless your island is still unique. The most important thing is it's your Island and it looks how you wanted it.

3. Rushing Through

Rushing through Animal Crossing New Horizons is another very common mistake. Since Animal Crossing is a very differently paced game compared to a lot of other Nintendo entries but really Animal Crossing is designed to be played at a slow pace. It's supposed to be super relaxing and chill. However, some people can get caught up in rushing through all of the different goals, trying to unlock all the different buildings and maxing out their bells and Nook miles and such and whilst everyone is entitled to play the game. Sometimes, it can be a good idea to take a step back and maybe take things a little bit slower. Ultimately, you'll know which type of gameplay is best for you at the end of the day. The thing is Nintendo never intended for people to rush through Animal Crossing New Horizons.

4. Restarting

Restarting can be a big mistake that a lot of players make now. Restarting is not necessarily a bad idea but a lot of players have restarted and then ended up regretting it. Something that could be a good idea is maybe just flattening your Island instead. That could be a neat way of getting a fresh start on your Island without losing all of your progress. Then if that doesn't feel like enough, maybe restarting would feel more worth it. You can only consider doing if you’re absolutely certain that you can't make things more enjoyable on the existing Island. Instead flattening and creating a whole new theme and such could be a really great way to doing.

5. Breaking Tools

Another very easy mistake is letting your tools break. Now tools breaking is one of the major mechanics in Animal Crossing New Horizons but there's a really clever way to avoid them ever breaking at all. If you've got customization kits and a DIY bench, you can simply customize some of the tools so that their usage will reset. This means even if one of your tools was really close to breaking, this will completely reset it and it'll be brand new. Now sadly not every tool in the game can be customized but for the ones that can it's definitely worth resetting them. Whilst it's true that it's not too difficult to craft new tools or just buy them from Nook's Cranny.

6. DLC Unlocks

How about a mistake that people make with the DLC? One of the biggest misconceptions about the DLC is that a lot of people think it's just for design but it's actually not. If you're able to buy the DLC but you haven't because you think it's purely for designing villager homes and that's not really your thing that definitely could be a mistake. Because you get some of the best unlocks in the entire game for this DLC such as the ability to design your villager homes on your own Island, a shop from Wardell that gives you access to so many different types of ACNH items, shops to purchase unique items in, unique DIY recipes to collect and the list honestly goes on and on and on. So if you haven't got the Happy Paradise DLC yet and you've really been thinking about it, then we definitely think you should try and get it.

7. Sell Everything

Here's a mistake that a lot of new players make and that is selling absolutely everything. Now whilst it can be a good idea to try and get your mortgage paid off as soon as possible with Tom Nook, so you'll need a lot of Animal Crossing bells and such. Selling literally every item and material you come across could lead you to a lot of regret. Some things are much harder to obtain than others and certain items can only really be obtained once without trading. The best thing you can do is do some research before selling certain things and maybe try to keep a copy of one of everything, that's a safe way of making sure that you don't sell something you'd regret. The same could be said for selling every fossil right away or selling every bug and fish, you might regret that later on when you want to complete the museum and suddenly you can't find that critter at all anymore because it was actually quite rare and you didn't realize it. So definitely look up the things that you're selling before you're selling them or generally just try to keep a copy of one of everything that you find.

8. Time You Play

You can miss out on so many things by not playing at different times and seasons and such. During nighttime alone, you'll find certain critters that you can only catch at this time, special characters you can only meet at night and so much more. So if you have to maybe even consider changing your time around a little bit, so that you can make sure you play at different times, so you don't miss everything. Understandably a lot of people have to work or have to sleep early and such, so it'd be a shame if they missed out on certain things.

9. Recycling Box

If you head into resident services a mistake, you might be making is not regularly checking the recycling box in there. You might have thought that the recycling box is just full of absolute junk that no one really wants, but this isn't necessarily true. You can actually find some items in here that you can't really find anywhere else like the sloppy set of furniture. There can be some really cool finds in here that you absolutely would not have expected. Therefore it's a good idea to regularly check this out. After all, everything that you take from there is completely free, so at the end of the day, there's no harm in doing so.

10. Island Backup

Finally one of the biggest mistakes you can make in the entire game is if you have Nintendo Switch online and you have not made sure that your Island backup is enabled. By default this backup will not be enabled, so a lot of players haven't realized that they haven't actually gone and turned this on. Then something bad is having to switch and they've completely lost their island. So we would absolutely go and make sure that the island backup service is turned on and working properly.