Animal Crossing: New Horizons: How to get your Farming Fields ready in advance

Earlier this month, Nintendo dropped a massive Animal Crossing Direct. During it, they revealed the final l free update to the game, which will include everything from the return to many fan-favorite NPCs, like coffee house owner Brewster, as well as new additions to the game, like new hairstyles and tools. We also got to see a glimpse of the game’s first paid DLC, Happy Home Paradise, which I can not wait for. But one of the other things, which was datamined MONTHS ago, that will finally arrive is farming! And while it’s not going to be out for a bit, that makes NOW the perfect time to set up for your crop.

See, last Halloween they already showed up how farming was going to work when they introduced pumpkins. And let me tell you, I kinda nailed it, you guys.

But Animal Crossing: New Horizons is going to have us growing a lot of things; wheat, tomatoes, carrots and more. It’s going to take up some room — room we could probably set up early so we don’t have to fuss with it when the time comes because we’re probably want to dive directly into farming and cooking because…that’s what the pandemic has done to us.

So to make it look good, you’re going to want to throw down some dirt patterns. You won’t NEED to but look at the pumpkins in the video. A small patch of soil underneath each one makes it look a lot more realistic.

As you lay down textures, maybe make a path as well to make it more appealing for the town and for guests. One of my biggest pieces of advice is to always lay down a default flooring before applying a custom pattern over it. The reasons are twofold which I cover here.

If you don’t have time to watch it though, there are two big reasons for using default grounds and then putting patterns over them. One, if you give the default path corners, any pattern you put on it will have that corner cut off allowing you to use any pattern smoothly without it turning into a full-on corner. Two, depending on what default ground you use, it changes the sound your character makes as they run over it. You can make any pattern sound like you’re running over dirt, wood or stone by putting down a default layer first and then painting over it.

Personally, I made a bunch of 3 by 3 dirt plots for different plants (might change it to 4 x 4) that are walled off by stone walls and a slew of Kerokerokeroppi Lanterns from the Hello Kitty card line.

Another thing you can do is use signposts with custom drawings to label each area. Throw up some scarecrows. But the biggest thing to remember is that you more than likely have a full island by now and it wouldn’t kill you to clear out some space.

Hope this helped. When you’re done, take some screenshots and share them here, I’d love to see what people come up with.