Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

Nook Miles Special Feature Rewards: Benefits, Prices, What To Buy First

With the Nook Miles rewards program in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there are a variety of great beneficial items and features you can unlock by spending your hard earned miles in exchange for goodies!

How to Spend Nook Miles & Purchase Items or Unlocks

Nook Miles can primarily be exchanged for items and feature unlocks at the Nook Stop terminal resembling an ATM inside of Resident Services. Interact with the Nook Stop terminal and select the Redeem Nook Miles menu option, which is enabled after paying off your first 5000 Miles loan to Tom Nook.

Inside of the Redeem Nook Miles menu, you’ll find a list of exciting items and features you can unlock by spending Nook Miles, with more to come later in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Some of the most exciting rewards near the beginning of the game are locked to having the Nook Miles+ feature, which is unlocked by starting your second house loan with Tom Nook.

Nook Miles Purchasable Rewards — Special Features

Below is a preliminary summary of available Nook Miles Rewards under the Special category purchasable from the Nook Stop terminal  after unlocking Nook Miles+. More will added to the Nook Stop later in the game, but this list currently reflects what is available near the start of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Nook Miles Ticket – 2000 Miles

Take this ticket to the airport to participate in a special tour. Enquire at the airport for details.

With the Nook Miles Ticket for 2000 Miles, you can travel to mystery deserted islands away from your personal island. These exciting mystery islands can have different fruit from your homeland, new villagers to invite home, bamboo to harvest, flowers to pick, and plenty of crafting materials to harvest.

Note that you will receive a free Nook Miles Ticket from Tom Nook when the airport opens, so make sure to use that one before wasting your Nook Miles too soon on another one. The Nook Miles Ticket can be purchased repeatedly, and you definitely should.

Custom Design Pro Editor – 800 Miles

Adds professional design features to the customer’s Custom Designs app.

With the Custom Design Pro Editor for 800 Miles, you can unlock new features for the pattern editor including the ability to custom edit the color palettes and use more types of designs.

Pretty Good Tools Recipes – 3000 Miles

A collection of 6 DIY recipes for tools with excellent durability.

With the Pretty Good Tools Recipes for 3000 Miles, you can learn the ability to craft the next level of tools recipes beyond the Flimsy type of tools. This includes the Fishing Rod, Net, Axe, Stone Axe, Watering Can, and Shovel.

With these upgraded tools, they have far greater durability and will have a longer lifespan than Flimsy versions. This will save you time with less wasted time spent at the crafting time and gathering materials.

Tool Ring: It’s Essential! – 800 Miles

Allows you to use the Tool Ring to easily swap between favorite tools.

With the Tool Ring: It’s Essential! unlock for 800 Miles, a brand new interface option is made available to more easily manage switching between tools. By pressing the Up button on the D-Pad, you can access a Tool Ring in the middle of your screen allowing you to easily move the analog stick in a direction to select a tool.

Using the Tool Ring is very important to avoid wasting time in the inventory menu or cycling through the D-Pad, especially when you have as many as eight or more tools to pick from.

Pocket Organization Guide – 5000 Miles

Information on pocket organization so you can carry more items.

With the Pocket Organization Guide for 5000 Miles, you can dramatically increase the size of your inventory space by adding an entire new third row to the bottom! That’s ten new spaces for storing more fish, bugs, crafting materials, furniture, and more.

This upgrade might cost a lot of miles, but that’s for good reason and accurately reflects how useful it is to have. We HIGHLY recommend the Pocket Organization Guide upgrade to be purchased ASAP.

Top 8 Pop Hairstyles – 2400 Miles

Change your look at a mirror or vanity with these pop hairstyles!

With the Top 8 Pop Hairstyles unlock for 2400 Miles, eight new hairstyles themed to Pop are unlocked for use in the character creator. You can customize your appearance at any time by using a Mirror or Vanity — read our full guide here on changing your appearance in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Top 8 Cool Hairstyles – 2400 Miles

Change your look at a mirror or vanity with these cool hairstyles!

With the Top 8 Cool Hairstyles unlock for 2400 Miles, eight new hairstyles themed to Cool are unlocked for use in the character creator. You can customize your appearance at any time by using a Mirror or Vanity — read our full guide here on changing your appearance in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Top 8 Stylish Hair Colors – 3000 Miles

Change your look at a mirror or vanity with these new hair colors!

With the Top 8 Stylish Hair Colors unlock for 3000 Miles, a whole new row of eight new hair colors are unlocked for use in the character creator. In particular, the extra row features a number of crazy, less natural colors missing in the default row.

You’ll find blue, grey, green, light blue, red, orange, purple, and pink colors added in the extra row.

You can customize your appearance at any time by using a Mirror or Vanity — read our full guide here on changing your appearance in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Which Nook Miles Special Features Should You Buy First?

When you first start in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and see the Nook Miles Redeem menu, it can be a little overwhelming as to what items you should purchase first.

Here’s our recommend order for purchasing the features under the Nook Miles Special category if your goal is progression through the game:

1. Pocket Organization Guide
2. Tool Ring: It’s Essential!
3. Pretty Good Tools Recipes
4. Nook Miles Ticket
5. Custom Design Pro Editor
6. Top 8 Pop Hairstyles / Top 8 Cool Hairstyles / Top 8 Stylish Hair Colors

We recommend the Pocket Organization Guide as the very first purchase because it increases the maximum size of your inventory space by an entire third row, which is incredibly useful for many reasons. Perhaps the most important reason is the ability to carry far more items back home from Mystery Island Tours.

That’s why we suggest buying the Pocket Organization Guide before even purchasing any Nook Miles Tickets — your tickets can be put to far greater use with more inventory space.

After that, the Tool Ring is incredibly useful to help make Animal Crossing: New Horizons feel a little less tedious. It won’t take long before opening your inventory or cycling through up to 8 tool items on the D-Pad gets very old and the Tool Ring helps with that problem.

Finally, the Pretty Good Tools Recipes are very helpful for reducing tediousness too as it can raise the number of times before your tools break requiring more annoying crafting just to perform basic tasks.

Of course, if customizing your character in great detail is a high priority, then you may prefer to purchase the Hairstyles and Hair Colors special features sooner. If you choose to do so, we’d still recommend the Pocket Organization Guide ASAP, but you could delay the Pretty Good Tools Recipes and Custom Design Pro Editor until later.

Keep in mind though that Nook Miles really aren’t that hard to come by once you start to get the hang of everything, especially with the Nook Miles+ challenges. So no matter the order that you choose, you can have all of the special purchases within your first few days easily.