We Wish These Hacked Star Fragment Trees in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Were Real

5 years ago Justin 29 Comments

There’s a surprising hot new item going around in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons trading community today sparking amazement and jealousy everywhere!

What’s that hot new item? It’s none other than trees! We’re not talking just any old regular trees though — these are special trees carrying unique items you’d never expect to see normally like Star Fragments, Hearts, Cupcakes, and more.

Even more impressive, the Star Fragments on trees will actually produce a glow at nighttime just like their normal counterparts on the ground creating an impressive and unique effect. It’s pretty cool honestly.

Photo Credit: @soguumm

As lovely as some of these trees look though, you should know that they’re not legitimately obtainable through normal gameplay in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and only exist because of save editor hacking.

You don’t even need to personally hack your own game to get them as they can be easily traded online by digging up the trees from another player’s island, or having them plant one in your own island using Best Friend permissions. (the eBay sellers are on the case too, no surprise)

However, you do this at your own risk as Nintendo does have telemetry built into Animal Crossing: New Horizons that could possibly report the use of these items back to the company and allow them to take action if they wished to do so.

Additionally, it’s unlikely that abnormal trees like these were properly tested by Nintendo’s QA teams during development, so it’s possible that issues could arise from using unexpected items on them! We don’t necessarily expect anything to happen, but you should be aware of the risks.

https://twitter.com/soguumm/status/1261886562498797569

As for exactly how they work, these special trees are essentially modified Bell Trees with the bell bag items replaced by different and more exciting items like Star Fragments instead. Because they’re actually Bell Trees in the code though, the items can only be shaken off once and won’t reappear a second time later, just like their money tree counterparts.

So they don’t really serve any gameplay purpose to help you get more fragments or anything — it’s just about aesthetics in having an interesting looking tree on your island. That said, we’re pretty big fans of this concept and would love to see something similar as a real tree in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Perhaps a special spot could appear for burying Star Fragments after a Meteor Shower, similarly to how the daily bell tree dig spot shows up every day, and producing a tree of that Star Fragment afterwards!

The Golden Shovel could even integrate into this feature as well giving it a solid purpose by requiring you to use one to bury the Star Fragments and grow a tree. It’d be a great way to beginning to add new potential uses for New Horizons’ Golden Tools!

What do you think? Would you love to see some of these trees on your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island, or do you not care for them at all? Let us know in the comments below! For more on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, check out our Guides page here.

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