What To Prepare For Version 3.0 Update In Animal Crossing: New Horizons Next Week
4 weeks ago
We’re just a week away from the first major update dropping for Animal Crossing: New Horizons in over 4 years, but is your island prepared for everything that’s coming?
In this article, we’ll explore what you can do to prepare your Animal Crossing island, character, and yourself for the incoming Version 3.0 Update launching on January 15th!
Stockpile Crafting Materials To Get New Hotel Tickets
Perhaps the most important and rewarding task you can work on prior to the update’s release is simply farming and stockpiling the basic crafting materials in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. That’s because these traditionally unimportant items for long-time players are expected to have new uses for acquiring Hotel Tickets!
If you’re unfamiliar, Hotel Tickets are a brand new currency that’s coming in the Version 3.0 Update as part of the new Resort Hotel location run by Kapp’n. It’s likely that many or even most of the new furniture items coming in Version 3.0 will be locked behind spending Hotel Tickets at the souvenir shop.
These basic crafting materials will come into play for getting your hands on Hotel Tickets through a new box found on the dock outside the Resort Hotel. Making use of this box setup by Tom Nook, you can craft and submit specified items each day to earn Hotel Tickets.
As an example seen in the official trailer, contributing three Wooden Wardrobes could earn you 100 Hotel Tickets. Crafting a Wooden Wardrobe requires 12 Wood materials, or 36 Wood in total for all three wardrobes. You can easily see how having stockpiled materials could save plenty of time to get a head start on the update’s new content!
With all of that in mind, you may want to stick with keeping those crafting materials in your storage and hold off on pre-crafting, as we do expect bulk crafting multiple items at once to arrive in the Version 3.0 Update too!
Save Up Bells For Major Storage Upgrades
Speaking of saving and stockpiling, don’t forget about Bells too if you haven’t been keeping your Bank of Nook account balance healthy.
While we expect many of the update’s new items to be purchased through Hotel Tickets, there’s huge new Bell sinks that are confirmed to drop shortly with Version 3.0 — house storage expansions!
The prices of these storage upgrades aren’t yet known, but the previous two expansions introduced in Version 2.0 cost a pretty penny at 900,000 Bells and 1,200,000 Bells respectively. It’s safe to say the prices will continue to rise, so it won’t be shocking at all if a new upgrade hits the 1,500,000 Bells mark, or higher!
Get Nintendo Switch Online for Slumber Islands
An initially underreported aspect of the Version 3.0 Update that we covered in What’s Free, Paid, Subscription, Or Switch 2 Exclusive In Animal Crossing’s Big Version 3.0 Update is that it appears a Nintendo Switch Online subscription will be required to use the Slumber Island feature.
Slumber Islands are a fantastic new ‘creative mode’ style feature in Version 3.0 that lets you landscape and decorate on up to three entirely separate islands with free placement of furniture and nature items. Even better, you can decorate together with friends online at the same time on a single island collaborating.
But even if you wish to simply play on your own Slumber Island by yourself in single player without any friends, all indications so far suggest a Nintendo Switch Online membership still being required to use the feature!
This little catch could point to more of the motivations behind Nintendo’s release of the Version 3.0 Update. We’ve observed like many that the exclusive features in the paid Upgrade Pack for Nintendo Switch 2 are mostly subtle changes, meanwhile the real meat is in the completely free Version 3.0 Update.
But the situation starts to make more sense if we look at the new Slumber Islands feature as a major incentive for the most dedicated decorating fans to maintain a Nintendo Switch Online subscription for the foreseeable future. Those same players might otherwise move on and unsubscribe from the membership program until a new Animal Crossing game releases at some point.
Find The Right Zelda & Splatoon Amiibo
While most of the new additions in Version 3.0 remain entirely free, you will want to have a few select amiibo figures available at the ready for easy access to new collaboration content!
New decorative items, clothing, and villagers inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon series are coming in the update, all of which require scanning compatible amiibo to unlock.
As we covered previously in Which Splatoon & Zelda Amiibo Unlock What in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 3.0, you only need a single amiibo from each matching series to unlock all the collaboration items — it doesn’t matter which ones.
But when it comes to new villagers, it’s a little more complicated as different amiibo will unlock different characters. Notably though, the Big Man amiibo from Splatoon can unlock both inspired villagers!
Thankfully, it should be entirely possible to obtain these Splatoon & The Legend of Zelda items from trading with other players online if you don’t have the amiibo yourself. However, it’s unlikely that trading the new villagers Tulin, Mineru, Cece, and Viché will be possible.
Race To 3-Star Island Rating If You Recently Restarted
Players on an established island can safely ignore this section, but watch out if you just restarted your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island in recent days!
The highlight feature of Version 3.0 is clearly the Resort Hotel as it acts as the gateway towards obtaining Hotel Tickets, and thereby purchasing the many new items available inside.
But this new Resort Hotel also happens to be run by the family of Kapp’n and located on the same pier that you can find Kapp’n on… only after reaching at least a 3-star rating with Isabelle at Resident Services!
We’re quite confident in saying that as a result, it’s almost certain that the Resort Hotel won’t be accessible until after hitting the 3-star rating. Furthermore, we suspect there will be some kind of additional process to actually ‘build’ the hotel on the pier. All that is to say, if your current island hasn’t reached 3 stars yet, you better get moving!
Additionally, the official Japanese website for Version 3.0 carries this warning: “Each of the additional features added after the update will become available to enjoy when certain conditions are met in the game.” (machine translation)
Postpone Island Cleanups Until After Version 3.0
Finally, here’s something you might not want to prepare: cleaning up your island!
While it’s certainly very tempting to spend these remaining days before the update drops tidying up random items and decorations on your island that you’re ready to redesign, there’s a good incentive to wait.
Easily forgotten under the radar compared to the more notable additions, Resetti’s Reset Service coming in Version 3.0 brings new abilities to clear out furniture, flowers, custom designs, and more in bulk.
When removing these items in bulk, you can choose between picking out a select area on your island, clearing out the beach, or even cleaning your entire island.
So if you were planning on embarking on a time-consuming journey of island cleanup in these final moments prior to the update’s release, it may just be worth holding off for one more week!
That’s everything we’ve got for you to prepare for Nintendo’s long awaited update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons with Version 3.0! For more details on exactly when you can expect to download the update, check out Expected Release Time & Date For Version 3.0 Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update.
Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on the upcoming Version 3.0 Update of Animal Crossing: New Horizons! Follow us on X, Facebook, Bluesky, and our mailing list below for updates. Or check out our most popular guides like Redd Art, Bush Types & Colors, Villager Houses, Sea Creatures, and K.K. Slider Songs.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons News Update Version 3.0 Update