Animal Crossing New Horizons: How to Get a Perfect Island

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the long-awaited Nintendo Switch game that fans of the series have been so excited about. For those who take pride in their creative towns in the prior games, getting a five-star island in New Horizons will be a must! Turning a barren island into a paradise isn't easy, but we're here to help.

In this guide, we've explained how to get a perfect, five-star island in New Horizons.

Read More: Animal Crossing New Horizons: How to Get and Use Pitfall Seeds

How To Get A Perfect Island

Committed Animal Crossing fans already know what a perfect town looks like, but for players who do not know about it, they're more than what meets the eyes. Previously, to get a perfect town in Animal Crossing, players had to meet a specific set of conditions. This is also the case in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for players wanting to achieve a five-star island.

When checking the status of your island, Isabelle will often give you vague tips on how to improve. These are helpful, but during that tricky period between four and five stars, it is very difficult to get the balance correct across your island and have it become perfect. Below, we have described the specific conditions needed to get five stars and achieve the perfect island:

• The island must be clear of weeds, rubbish and random items littering the area. Specifically, there needs to be less than ten.
• Have 9-10 villagers living on your island.
• Place furniture and exterior decorations around your island. Specifically, this can be anywhere between 40-100 items depending on their size; there's no limit to how much furniture you should place.
• Your island needs 100+ trees. A mixture of hardwood, palm and fruit trees will look pleasing!
• You will also need 200+ flowers, so get those flower patches put together and decorate the outside of your buildings with some!
• The island will also need fencing; you can put this around buildings, flower patches, orchards or whatever you desire.

Bonus Tips and Tricks

It is no easy task trying to get a perfect island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons; it requires some dedication to your paradise-in-progress alongside a lot of multitasking and time! There are some little tips that will help you achieve your strive for perfection, but there is one main tip we can provide to you that we'd suggest is the most important.

Keep your island clean and tidy! Having a clean island and a consistent layout of where everything is will make your dreams of getting a perfect island a lot easier than if it was messy!

Here are some other general tips that can help you in getting a perfect island:

• Decorate your beaches too!
• Fences around flowers can prevent how much they breed.
• Be careful terraforming; too many rivers and cliffs will limit your space for outdoor furniture, fencing, and wildlife.

Having a perfect island is not the pinnacle of your experience in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. There is plenty of fun to be had along the way, and some players may never achieve a five-star island at all. Ultimately the game is still incredibly fun without having to meet the conditions required for a perfect island.

To see what additional fun you can have on your island while in your bid to achieve five-stars, we recommend trying out flower breeding or seeing how to catch a shark!

This article was updated on 2nd November 2021 by Kelsey Raynor. Contributions from Nick Farrell.