Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

How To Get Pearls & What To Do With Them

Pearls are a rare crafting material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) found when diving in the sea and used for crafting Mermaid Set items.

Finding Pearls in the Ocean

There’s no way to guarantee catching a Pearl, but there are a few simple tips you can follow to help spot one when you’re swimming and diving for Sea Creatures.

For starters, the shadow of a Pearl is relatively small and will never move, even when you approach it. But even better, you can learn to spot the Pearl’s specific bubble pattern!

We’ve found that the Pearl always has a relatively low amount of bubbles rising from the sea floor — think about 2 or 3 showing at a time — and in an almost straight pattern upwards.

The bubbles for Pearls tend to be on the larger side as well, and they don’t wildly sway from side to side, like some other Sea Creatures do. Look out for this type of bubble pattern and you’ll have a much easier time finding Pearls!

Get Pearls From Pascal

When you find Pascal and trade him a Scallop, he will always give you a Pearl, in addition to a possible Mermaid Set recipe or clothing item! If you’re lucky, you can even get 2 Pearls at once.

If you played before the Version 3.0 update, note that this is a recent change. Prior to Version 3.0, Pascal would only sometimes give a Pearl, and could potentially only give you an item or recipe instead.

If you’re willing to time travel, then repeatedly finding Pascal every day could be the fastest way to reliably get Pearls if you’re hungry for more.

Craft Mermaid Set Furniture Using Pearls

By using Pearls, you can craft Mermaid Set furniture items with DIY recipes given to you by Pascal. There’s 15 different Mermaid items to craft, but this is the only use for Pearls in the game, besides selling them.

If you want to craft every furniture item in the Mermaid Set, you’ll need to collect 21 Pearls in total.

Sell Pearls at Nook’s Cranny

If you don’t care about crafting the Mermaid Set furniture or have already crafted them all, you can sell these valuable materials for 10,000 Bells each at Nook’s Cranny — making them the second most expensive material in the game!

Can’t Donate to Museum

Although it can be found while diving in the ocean like Sea Creatures, the Pear item is not considered a Sea Creature, so you can’t donate it to the Museum or find it listed in your NookPhone’s Critterpedia.