Animal Crossing New Horizons: Guide to Bells

Making Bells in Animal Crossing New Horizons is an instrumental part of island life, as without enough of it to line your pockets, pretty much everything you live for ceases to exist or operate. Fortunately, making Bells in Animal Crossing isn't all that tough, as you'll come to learn as you pick the final weeds and erect your very first tent before calling it for what it is: home, and a highly profitable one at that. But how exactly do you make money? Or better yet, how do you make money easily? Here's everything you need to know about scoring the highest pay days in New Horizons.

What Are Bells?

In short, Bells is the in-game currency that New Horizons uses. Much like other life simulation games that employ various sandbox elements, Nintendo's quirky island sim asks that you collect said Bells to not only upgrade your accomodation, but purchase items, cosmetics, and tools. To put it simply, Bells are required to progress the game, and they can either be acquired by completing tasks, pastime activities, or scavenging one of the many natural resources around the island itself.

As you begin your journey as an up-and-coming islander, you will need to collect five essential tools, all of which will help you mine, shoot, or catch items that can be sold at a later time. These items are the fishing pole, net, slingshot, shovel, and axe. Once you have successfully gathered these items in the opening chapters of the story, you will be able to begin harvesting Bells to boost your community.

Fishing for Sharks

Without doubt, the best way to make Bells in New Horizons is by fishing. That's right, fishing, one of life simulation's most profitable pastime activities. It's profitable simply because, well, sharks are worth a lot of cash, and if New Horizons has anything at all—it's sharks. That said, it's knowing where to find them and when to go fishing that's the problem. But, once you've established a routine, though, there really is no stopping the steady flux of Bells that gradually pivot your way.

The good news is, sharks aren't all that difficult to find—so long as you know which zones they gravitate towards. To make this clearer, sharks are made up of larger shadows, and can typically be found at night, and in the sea, either by the northern rocky areas, or by the southern docks. Do yourself a favor here and circle the island, avoiding the lakes and small ponds along the way. If you happen to see a large shadow in the water, be sure to walk up to it; if you run, it will flee.

If you can bag yourself a wide selection of sharks and discard all the old dirty boots, you'll make anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 Bells per fishing session. Worth venturing out at night? Absolutely.

Island Hopping

Once you've picked your entire island clean of all its natural resources, you're going to want to invest your accumulated Nook Miles (2,000, to be exact) on a Nook Mile Ticket, which will allow you to travel to other islands via the dockside airport. You can earn Nook Miles by completing tasks in your Nook Miles app, which vary from gardening duties, fishing, and conversing with fellow islanders. Once you have purchased a Nook Mile Ticket, you can set off to another randomly generated island for a short period of time.

Once you've emptied your inventory (while making sure to keep a hold of your tools), you can journey to the new location and gather all of its local resources, including rocks, flowers, and other minerals. After you have plucked the island clean, head back to Nook's Cranny to offload all of your gathered loot. If you have any insects, consider donating them to the museum for a few extra Nook Miles.

The Turnip Exchange

It's only natural that Nintendo would want to import its own watered-down version of the stock market for the sake of giving New Horizons players a few more opportunities to bag a few Bells. The good news here is, well, you don't need to know a great deal about being an actual stockbroker—only how to buy turnips on select days of the week. If you can do that, then you're already on your way to claiming a few thousand Bells on the side of your daily activities.

Anyway, after you've successfully built Nook's Cranny, you will have a turnip trader who goes by the name of Daisy Mae show up on the first Sunday thereafter. At this point, you will want to buy up any turnips the roaming trader has in store, after which you will need to check in at Nook's Cranny later on in the day for a major return. Note that leaving the turnips for more than seven days will render them unusable and therefore unsellable.

Spider Isle

It sounds strange, but there is in fact a way to collect an unusual amount of Bells for simply taking a trip with a good old fashioned Nook Mile Ticket. Unlike your bog-standard scavenger trips, though, you will want to follow a few additional steps, for which you will be rewarded with a significant amount of Bells and, oddly enough, an island swarming with creepy crawlies. Here's how you can do it:

• After 7PM, visit Dodo Airlines and purchase a ticket to visit another island.
• Once there, pick every flower but leave the stems.
• Cut down all the trees and fully remove the stumps.
• Cut up any rocks and remove the resources.
• Chase away any bugs.
• Unload any collected resources onto the beach.

If you have completed all of the above steps, the island will suddenly become overrun with a rare species of spider. The aim here, really, is to catch as many tarantulas as possible, and then sell them back at Nook's Cranny for 8,000 Bells a piece. Simple.

So, what's your take? Do you have any useful tips on making Bells in Animal Crossing New Horizons? Let us know over on our socials here or down in the comments below.