So… I have a confession to make.
I restarted my Animal Crossing New Horizons island again. Well, technically I did it back in November and never mentioned it, but yeah. I’m a terrible person.
The reason why I did it was actually simple. I wanted to have a nice fresh island for the 2.0 update that was coming out in November. So, I obviously restarted only two weeks before the big update, played for like three days and promptly forgot about it until literally New Year’s Day (though not soon enough to get the New Year’s Eve Nook Mile Achievement).
But on New Years Day, I made myself a promise for 2022: to complete the Nook Mile Achievements by New Years Eve 2022 to the best of my ability, because I absolutely have a good goal.
Let me explain.
Within ACNH, the player character has a phone that keeps track of a lot of information, from what creatures have been donated to the museum, to shopping, to “achievements”. They’re called Nook Mile Achievements, and completing them gives you Nook Miles, which are used to purchase things or take a ride with Kapp’n, among a lot of other things.
The achievements cover pretty much everything. You get them for upgrading your house, for taking part in different events, catching 5000 insects or fish, completing the museum, getting all the golden tools… If it’s in the game, there’s probably an achievement.
I think as of now (mid-April), I’ve gotten about half of them? Maybe less. The reason is, there’s a bunch that are “use X for the first time” achievements, but also long progression ones, including one to do 100 KK Slider concerts, and those are only available Saturday nights, after you complete the main game’s storyline to bring him to your island in the first place.
Did I mention that every Animal Crossing game takes place in real time? Which means that I will be playing this for another 90 weeks until I get that last achievement. Yes, you read that number right. The longest achievement takes 100 weeks total, on top of however long it takes to even get KK to your island. Which for me was exactly ten weeks ago… and that was actually pretty fast.
I’m trying to do it without any help, for the most part. I mean, I do have to have ten people visit my island so that I can get that achievement completely done. But I mean that I’m not going to someone else’s island and getting all of the things to complete the museum or what not. I’m also not using time travel, or when you change the time on the Nintendo Switch to skip ahead. I’m trying to do everything as it comes.
What that means is that I’ve caught every insect, fish, and sea creature legitimately. Same with every piece of music and art (except one, but that’s because I accidentally trashed it, and someone had it available like five minutes later). And every fossil.
The only thing that I’ve used someone else’s island for is selling Turnips (which are something you buy on Sundays and sell later in the week for a profit, it’s literally called the Stalk Market, no I’m not making that up) and to get some extra crafting materials that are already easy to obtain, because sometimes I don’t want to shake a tree for 100 tree branches.
It’s actually been quite a lot of fun since restarting! My island is still pretty basic, but that’s because I just don’t take the time to really terraform it. I spend about a half hour or so daily doing the few tasks I have to do (fossil hunting, trying to get Redd to sell me real art, quick shopping, and hunting for that month’s insects and fish). On weekends I’ll play a bit longer, as that’s when events usually happen.
Like tomorrow’s Bunny Day, ACNH’s version of Easter, where I have to collect a lot of eggs.
But all in all, it’s been fun since I restarted. It’s given me another year long goal that’s actually attainable (ignoring the few things that will have to roll into 2023, simply due to timing, and I’m fine with that). If I can get my island cleaned up a bit more, I’ll do a follow up post and show off some parts of it.
It’s a fun game, and I’m glad that I’m still enjoying it! 🙂
Until next time!
(Also, sorry that this is posting so late today. I was watching the Dodger game, and then got distracted by some writing, and just realized that I never hit Publish. Whoops!)
