Players were once told there would be nothing more, but the free Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update is here, alongside a technical overhaul for those playing on Switch 2. Though we’ve previously covered what to do before Animal Crossing 3.0 arrives, we figured it’ll also help a lot to know what to do first now that it’s here. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to best approach those early hours you spend on your island, whether it’s your first time back since 2020 or you’ve been playing regularly for the past six years. If you find yourself feeling rusty or out of sorts, don’t worry; we have 80+ guides to help you in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides hub.
Check the mail and head to the hotel
When you first leave your house, make sure to check your mailbox. You should have a letter from Luna informing you that Slumber Islands are now available. More on this later.
Assuming you’ve unlocked Kapp’n, the Seaside Hotel should be available already. That’s right, it’s that easy. You don’t need to give it a day before it gets built. Unfortunately, if you haven’t unlocked Kapp’n yet, you need to attend your first K.K. Slider concert and hit a 3-star island rating. Bummer.
Upon entering the hotel, Tom Nook will introduce you to Kapp’n’s family. Fun fact: If you head to the Resident Services building before visiting the hotel, you’ll notice that Tom Nook isn’t at his usual station.
After you’ve made it through the pleasantries, Leilani will give you your first job: Decorate a room. You can put as much or as little effort into this as you’d like. Once it’s done, a guest will show up immediately. Hugh was our very first guest, but yours may differ.
After you’ve welcomed your first guest, Tom Nook will explain Kapp’n’s new shipping service. Kapp’n will request specific craftable items, and by creating and shipping them, you’ll earn Hotel Tickets. Thankfully, you can now craft multiple of the same items at once to speed up the process.
Additionally, completing these requests will increase your hotel’s notoriety–at least this is what Kapp’n tells you. We don’t know yet if this is lip service or if there is an actual benefit to completing these requests outside of getting extra Hotel Tickets and new items from the souvenir shop.
After talking to Kapp’n and Nook, head back inside and speak with Leilani to decorate your second room. Upon completion, she’ll tell you to come back tomorrow for more work. Decorate both rooms if you want to maximize your time while you wait. If you want, you can use your tickets to purchase some souvenirs either directly from the shop or Gram’s catalogue. Keep in mind that ordering from her catalogue costs extra.
If you’d like, you can also customize the mannequins in the lobby so visitors and friends can quickly change into an island uniform.
Track down Resetti
That’s about all you can do in the hotel today, so let’s wander your island for a bit. You may stumble upon your visitor roaming your island, but the animal we’re looking for is Resetti. Once you find him, he’ll tell you all about his new Reset services that can clear out your entire island or specific parts of it.
It costs 60,000 bells per use and it can be used as many times as you’d like, but the first day of use is free! You can redeem this free day whenever you like, so don’t feel pressured to take advantage of it today. Just speak to Isabelle when you require his services.
We decided to use his services ASAP because I have a bunch of flowers we wanted to get rid of, or rather store, because, thanks to this update, you can store your flowers. While this feature does save time, there are some quirks you should watch out for.
If you clean up specific areas, he’ll pick up everything you’ve placed. You can’t specify for him to just pick up only flowers or furniture, for example. Even though he said he was picking up flowers, he also stored all of our furniture, so we had to re-place all of our furniture in those cleaned areas. It’s a bit annoying, but less annoying than digging up all these flowers on my own.
Head to Resident Services
After you’ve spoken to Resetti, head to Resident Services and talk to Tom Nook. He can expand your storage again, something I recommend you do today, since it will take a day before it goes into effect. You can also celebrate the Hotel’s grand opening if you’d like. Be sure to also check the Nook Terminal to pick up the new Lego furniture if anything strikes your fancy.
Finally, if you have a Zelda or Splatoon Amiibo, you can invite some of the new villagers to your Campsite.
Check out Slumber Islands
Now let’s get back to Luna. Head home, or to a nearby bed, and take a nap. You’ll notice a new option: It’s slumber time. Choose this and Luna will prepare a slumber island for you. Here you can construct and decorate to your heart’s content.
You can change your look, build bridges, and decorate your island with furniture and items you’ve collected over the years. Of course, none of these items come back with you. This is purely a creative mode. One thing to note, if you haven’t unlocked Dream Islands yet, you won’t be able to start a Slumber Island.
Before we wrap things up, there’s one more feature worth covering in this article. 3.0 adds new construction controls. By holding L and using the control stick you can move one square at a time. This should help you be more exact when building cliffs, rivers, and tiles.
That’s about everything you can do on day one. Don’t forget to find many more guides in our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides hub.