Adding amiibo functionality to New Leaf was only the beginning of the Animal Crossing DLC to come.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a top-tier life simulation game. All of your series favorites are back, from fishing to designing, along with the grand addition of terraforming.
Still, there’s potential to improve upon the main game in the Switch title. The core gameplay is solid, as the Nook Miles incentives keep you coming back for more, as well as the usual fossil, fruit, and fish spawns.
Almost every day, there’s a new visitor randomly generated for your town. They all bring something new to the table, with Flick the bug collector standing out as one of the best.
But once you’ve sold, bought, and paid off everything, shouldn’t there be events that offer you a little… more?
As great as the standalone main game is, here are some optional Animal Crossing DLC options to add a little more spice to New Horizons.
‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ DLC wishlist
Opt out of holidays
If we’ve learned anything from Bunny Day, it’s that there are some drawbacks to the occasional holiday events. Finding only eggs in the balloon presents and fishing up countless water eggs makes for an incredibly frustrating experience.
With seasonal holiday collectibles remaining important to some players, it’s vital there remains an option to both opt-in or out of these seasonal shakeups. I can only imagine the frustration of a player who started playing during a seasonal event. Good luck farming rock ore when all you’re digging up are eggs!
Tool durability meter/golden earlier
A series first in New Horizons is tool crafting. It’s simple enough to make a fishing pole out of some sticks you shake out of a tree, but not knowing when it will break is super stressful. Like, who wants to be hitting their money rock, only to have their shovel snap in half during the drop? Durability meters would relieve this stress immediately.
The golden tools have never been less accessible. They can still break, which makes all your hard work feel senseless. The golden shovel, for instance, requires you to save Gulliver 30 times. That means you could end up playing the game well over a YEAR before getting the golden shovel, at which point your interest in the game has likely waned.
Nintendo, please make the golden tool requirements easier to accomplish, and let us know when even those super durable tools will break so we don’t have PTSD every time we dig something up or catch a critter.
Adding new museum collectibles
Word on the street says artwork could be a new Animal Crossing DLC add-on. Whether or not this is true, the concept of adding another museum collectible opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.
Imagine collecting other forms of art, such as statues or famous structures. C’mon, don’t act like you wouldn’t recreate The Louvre if you could collect the famous pyramid windows and Mona Lisa painting.
While collecting pieces of the statue of David would translate naturally from fossil collection, the artwork would need to take a different approach. If the art was found in smaller pieces, or even if it needed to be unscrambled in the form of a sliding puzzle, the museum collectible game would be changed forever.
Bringing back series favorites
For the first time in Animal Crossing series history, Tortimer is nowhere to be seen. He is the glue of the AC world, and his absence is sorely felt. While we (thankfully) still have K.K. Slider, his café comrade Brewster is also absent from New Horizons. Where am I supposed to learn valuable life lessons if not from the friendly pigeon barkeep?
As New Horizons has autosaves always on, there will never be a day when you have to hear from the angry mole we all love to hate: Resetti. His antics were fun to read, as they were written in such a unique way. No other Crossing character would dare yell at you in 45-point all caps font. I miss that level of abuse, Resetti. Come yell at me again.
Grander house customizations
The formula for house upgrades has been the same for quite some time, and honestly, it’s getting a bit stale. It’s surprising Nintendo stuck with the basement/upstairs/four main floor rooms structure from New Leaf, as there is so much potential for more in players’ house building experiences.
Related: What to do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons after you’ve paid off your house
We can finally move buildings, but what’s inside them has to remain the same. Allowing players to reconstruct their homes to make a room bigger, have one room stem off of another, or simply move a room to a different floor is a must-have in the inevitable Animal Crossing DLC.