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Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nook Miles Tickets and islands guide

Visit smaller deserted islands

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A villager stands with a shovel surrounded by rocks, with money near them Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
Julia Lee (she/her) is a guides producer, writing guides for games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Genshin Impact. She helped launch the Rift Herald in 2016.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Switch has a new currency called Nook Miles, which you earn from completing achievements.

With 2,000 Nook Miles, you can buy a Nook Miles Ticket from the Nook Stop at Resident Services. Take the ticket to the airport, and you can fly off to a deserted island to harvest resources like wood, stone, or Iron Nuggets. You can also recruit villagers from these islands to come and live on yours.

The islands that you find may look similar in layout, but the fruit and the villager you can find on your island are always random.

What should you look for on Nook Miles islands? With the help of a guide made by Ash Wolf, we’ve put together a list of what you should look out for when going on Mystery Island Tours. Note that if you’re not getting any of the profitable islands, like the Money Rock or tarantula island, it’s because they have a low chance of appearing.

A Note on Villagers

Beau, an orange deer, gets invited to live with your island Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

If you have any open housing lots on your island, you can invite any of the villagers you find on Nook Miles island to come stay with you. Each island will have one villager, unless your town is full. If you’re unable to host any new villagers, there won’t be an animal on the island.

Non-native Fruit Island

This island will be filled with fruit that isn’t native to your island. This is your “sister fruit” and it will be the only other fruit you’ll be able to find through Mystery Island Tours, aside from Coconuts.

You can sell this foreign fruit for 500 Bells (as opposed to 100 Bells), and it’s also worth bringing some back to plant and become trees on your own island.

Eating any fruit will also let you dig up entire trees to bring back with you. This is a good way to re-plant foreign fruit trees on your island without having to wait for them to grow.

Money Rock island

There’s a chance you may run into an island with a large river surrounding a small piece of land covered in rocks. All of the rocks on this piece of land will be Money Rocks. That means you can make up to 16,000 Bells from hitting each with a shovel. To get to the rock-covered land, you’ll have to eat a fruit, break a rock on the outside of the river, and use the newly opened spot to pole vault on to the center island.

An Animal Crossing character breaks a rock on a tiny peninsula Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
An Animal Crossing character pole vaults over a river Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

There is another Money Rock island that has the rocks scattered among flowers. You’ll be able to tell you’re on this island as it has four triangular cliffs in each corner.

Bamboo Island

As the name says, it’s an island filled with bamboo. Eat fruit and dig up the bamboo thickets to bring it home. You can also find Bamboo Shoots here, which are useful for some DIY crafting. Bamboo thickets provide bamboo when you hit them with a Stone Axe, and the bamboo is a requirement for craft, well, bamboo furniture.

Finned Fish Island

This island has layered cliffs in the center, resembling a fish fin. Here you can catch sharks and ocean sunfish from the water. This island can bring in a ton of money if you farm the sharks. As of right now, we’re unsure if this island only pops up during the months these fish spawn, or if these islands can pop up at any time.

Hybrid Flower/Butterfly Island

This island will be filled with hybrid flower colors. Rare butterflies will spawn around these flowers. You can catch the butterflies for a profit, or use your pocket space to bring these rare hybrid flowers back to your island. Just use a shovel on the flower to dig it up and bring it home.

Tarantula and Scorpion Islands

Depending on the season, tarantulas or scorpions will spawn on this island. This island will start showing up at 7 p.m., when the two critters start spawning normally. Being bitten will just make you wake up on the island, so you can keep trying over and over. Both of these bugs sell for 8,000 Bells each, making this one of the most lucrative islands.

Trash Island

Trash items like boots, cans, and tires are the only things you catch from the water surrounding this type of island. It can be useful for finishing the “Trash Fishin’” Nook Mileage achievement and farm the items you need for DIY recipes.

Big Fish Island

This island has a large, fish-shaped pond in the center and hybrid flowers. Only large-sized fish will spawn on this island.

There’s also another Big Fish island layout where there’s a circular river with a smaller island in the center.

Gold Island

This island has a huge lake surrounding a tiny island in the center (similar to the Money Rock island). The rock in the center will give eight Gold Nuggets upon hitting it.

Update (April 3): We’ve added information about more islands that players have found.


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