I said I would follow up my review yesterday with a look into the new update and here I am making good on my word. I want to preface this post by pointing out two things; number one, this article will focus on the beginning of the Nature Day event and the addition of the Art Gallery and, number two, I time travelled to take a look at these new features.
So beginning with a look into Nature Day. The Nature Day event is Animal Crossing’s version of Earth Day, which was yesterday (22nd April). In game this event takes place from the 23rd April to 4th May. Now as I said, I only looked into the beginning of the event, there could well be more as the days go on and more in game rewards. The event begins with Isabelle letting you know that Nature Day is upon us in her daily announcement. Upon heading to Tom Nook, you’ll find he is hoping your island will take the time to be extra eco-friendly in the week come, with a note, that he hopes the island stays that way when the event is over. You’ll learn you get bonus NookMiles with NookMiles+ for completing nature themed tasks; including planting shrubs, trees and more.
This new update see the return of Lief the sloth. Lief will appear in your plaza, having set up his garden stall. He’ll sell you shrubs and flower seeds that the Nooklings don’t typically stock on your island (roses and cosmos for me). I’m not sure yet how often he visits, but I expect it’s once a week just like Kicks and Label. He’ll also buy weeds from you for 20 bells per clump rather than 10 in the Nook shop. Unsurprisingly, the UI is the same as the other merchants. Some new in game achievement stamps are now obtainable with the new features, as shown in my screenshots. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more that I haven’t unlocked yet either. Finally, on the Nature Day event, if you speak to Tom Nook having completed one of the special NookMiles+ tasks, he will give the DIY recipe for ‘bushes’ which is a fence DIY that looks like a hedgerow. Not sure if there’s more rewards, I wanted to leave some bits and pieces for myself to discover as I played normally. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if you do the task everyday that there’s another reward in store for you.
Onto the museum and the return of Redd the fox. The following day (24th April), if you go ahead and speak to Blathers he’ll mention he intends to upgrade the museum. Now I will admit, I’m not sure if this is automatically available will the update or you must have donated a certain number of items. I’ve already finished my fossil section and donated quite a lot of bugs and fish so if there was a donation requirement then I probably surpassed it. Back to Blathers though, he tells you to bring him any art you find so he can open a gallery. You might have already seen Redd’s ship at your smaller beach and Isabelle should have mentioned a ‘suspicious art dealer’ in her daily announcement. Redd will be wandering around your island, introduce yourself and you can purchase a piece of art, again I’m not sure if this is automatically a real art piece or if you can buy a fake one at this stage, the one he gave me was real. Take that back to Blathers and he’ll let you know he’s going to go ahead and open a gallery in the museum.
The following day Isabelle’s announcement will inform you the museum is closed for renovations, as the art gallery is being added. This is a normal day from what I can tell other than the museum being closed. With that, the next day will bring the opening of the art gallery, you can hold another ceremony with your islanders at the museum. I took a little look around the gallery itself, it’s one quite large room which is pretty nicely decorated. The same grand feeling as the entranceway I think, you can see some screenshots below. Redd will be back today too, he was in the plaza for me, I didn’t see him moving around so I think he might be fixed there this time but I’m not 100% about that. You can talk to him to get him to open up shop at which point he’ll start visiting your island to sell you art and furniture. Just like with Lief, I’m not sure how often he visits since I didn’t want to time travel any further to check but again it’s likely to be once a week as with the other visiting characters.
We’ll just take a quick look at his shop. So you can board his boat from the smaller or ‘private’ beach. Every time he visits he’ll have two furniture items for sale and four art pieces. You can only buy one piece of art which Redd will post to you the following day but you can buy both furniture pieces. Again, I can’t be certain without more information so keep an eye out for more people talking about it. But I suspect, the four art pieces will work in the same way they did in New Leaf. Which if you’re unfamiliar or simply don’t remember, had four art pieces in Redd’s tent. You were allowed to purchase one piece and with that, only one of the four items available was a real art piece. The other three were forgeries.
Now, New Horizons has made inspecting the art to check if it’s real easier with it’s improvements to camera control. When you interact with one of the art piece you can tell Redd you want to take a closer look which will put your camera into the photo mode so you can look at the art more closely. As with the previous games, these art pieces are real famous art pieces, so if you’re already familiar with their real world counterparts you might be able to tell which is real straight away. Otherwise, you’ll need to look up the real art piece to compare it to what you’re seeing on screen. I imagine it won’t take long for the community to build a guide which lets you check pretty much instantly which piece is worth your money but for now, you’ll have to do a little research. Which by the way is something I failed to do, I bought a fake piece on my first visit. Although, for the purpose of writing this post, that’s not such a bad thing because it means I can show you what happens if you buy a fake piece. First of all, Blathers will reveal to you that it’s a forgery when you try to donate it and return it to you since he can no longer accept it. Second, you cannot sell forgeries to Timmy and Tommy, which leaves you with just two options; bin it to delete it from your game or use it as a decoration. In hindsight, I should have checked if you can gift it to a resident but I’m only just thinking of that now.
So that about sums up my look into the new update. Now there’s more to uncover but I honestly, didn’t want to spoil the whole experience for myself. As revealed in the trailer, a May Day event follows the Nature Day event, which lets you go on a special island tour and keen-eyed fans have spotted Rover in the background on that mystery island, which is a nice treat for longtime fans of the series. After that we’ve got International Museum Day to look forward to, which looks like it nets you in-game rewards and Wedding Season where you’ll help the cute alpaca couple returning from New Leaf take Anniversary photos to earn even more in-game rewards, apparently in the form of Wedding themed decorations.
I might do a follow up, taking a look into more of the update once I’ve had to experience a bit more of it. But that’s not a guarantee as tomorrow I’m expecting my copy of the Final Fanatasy VII Remake, which I need to play… and review, but mostly play. I cannot express to you my love for Tifa and Aerith and I really need to see more of them.
Anyway, thank you kindly for reading. Hope you’ll stick around for more content. Have fun with the new update!
Overworld Gaming 