Star Fragment Trees Hack Removed In Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 1.4.1, Transformed Into Bell Trees

4 years ago Justin 47 Comments

The infamous Star Fragment Trees obtained through hacking in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have been removed in the latest update to the game with Version 1.4.1 released today.

According to Nintendo’s very own patch notes released following the update, an issue has been fixed “where you could spawn a tree with an item other than the original fruit, such as fruit”. Although the star fragments aren’t specifically called out, we can confirm that this bug fix does affect them. (Banner Screenshot Credit: @acbexy)

In addition to any future trees, any existing Star Fragment Trees on an Animal Crossing: New Horizons island will be transformed into regular money trees with bags of bells on them following the Version 1.4.1 update.

Given that the Star Fragment trees were technically just money trees to begin with modified inside of an external save editor through hacking, it makes sense that they will now return to their original form now.

Photo Credit: @soguumm

Note that you’ll lose any existing Star Fragments that were sitting on the trees once they’re replaced with bells, so consider shaking them before updating your game if you haven’t yet.

This change in Version 1.4.1 follows a pretty intense week of controversy in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons community online through Twitter, Reddit, and other social media following the release of the Dreaming with Luna feature.

Nearly as soon as the Dream Suite feature opened up in Summer Update Wave Two, players discovered that a reporting option was included when exploring Dream Islands with a particularly notable “Cheating” reason available as a selectable option.

Not long after, some players with Star Fragment Trees on their islands began to receive reports from others using this Cheating reason leading to Nintendo taking down these islands from the dream database and sending a violation email to the user.

Making matters even worse, some online personalities began specifically hunting down dream islands online with these special modified trees with the express intention of reporting and inciting their community to do the same. This led to many players feeling scared that their dream island would be removed, and further adding to the panic.

Overall, the entire situation was quite a mess over this past week and it looks like Nintendo’s solution is to simply remove the option to create these Star Fragment Trees entirely to avoid the entire issue.

Given that the Animal Crossing developers at Nintendo must surely be aware now of how popular these special trees were in the community, we do hope that they’ll consider adding them or something of a similar nature into the game organically in the future.

Me: Mom can we get star fragment trees ?

Mom: We have star fragment trees at home

The star fragment trees at home: pic.twitter.com/V72mDa6boh

— ash (@monokecenter) August 6, 2020

It’s worth noting as well that the concept of hacking non-fruit or bell items onto trees and therefore creating Star Fragment Trees had been around for a few months now going back as far as May, with Nintendo choosing not to fix them until now.

While the developers obviously have the right to make any changes as they see fit whenever they wish to do so, it’s hard to fault some fans for becoming attached to these special trees given how long they were available. And by ignoring them for so long, Nintendo may have accidentally sent the message that they didn’t mind too.

With all of the future updates we expect to see over the next year, including the upcoming Autumn Update later this year, it wouldn’t be out of question for Nintendo to find a clever way to add these beloved trees into Animal Crossing: New Horizons in some legitimate fashion.

Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on the Star Fragment trees and their removal — do you think this was the right move, or do you wish Nintendo left these items completely alone to everyone to enjoy?

Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including our extensive Guides section here. In particular, don’t miss out on our recent August Fireworks Show Event, Tripping & How To Craft King Tut Mask, and Dreaming With Luna guides.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons News Update