Buildings And Characters

Your Home

Thanks to Tom Nook, you're going to have a home of your very own as soon as you move into town. As the saying goes, though, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and you'll have to pay Nook back for your loan. After you've paid off the initial debt on your house, though, you can keep on paying Nook and earn bigger and more expensive houses to fit all of your stuff in. You initially owe Nook 19,800 bells; the costs of the bigger houses are listed below. Each house upgrade after the second will add around 35 spaces to your house.

Note that you don't pay these funds directly to Nook; instead, you have to go to the Town Hall and place the funds into his account there, via the post office window.

• First House: 19,800 Bells
• Second House: 120,000 Bells
• Third House: 298,000 Bells
• Fourth House: 598,000 Bells
• Fifth House: 728,000 Bells
• Sixth House: 848,000 Bells
• Seventh House: 948,000 Bells

Decorating: It's important to note that, given the availability of funds and furniture, that you should try to decorate your house as best you can. As you proceed through the game, you'll find that home auditors will periodically drop by and rank your house based on its attractiveness. Getting high scores from the Happy Room Academy will eventually unlock new items. Also, the prettier your house is, the better your feng shui will be, which translates into more luck when fishing, hitting money rocks, and in many other activities. To increase your feng shui, try to complete furniture sets, and carefully place items in your home; don't just throw them all over the place. Anything that doesn't fit in should be picked up and placed in storage.

Nook's Shop

You're going to be visiting Tom Nook's shop quite often throughout your life in Animal Crossing. Although he's a skinflint curmudgeon at times, Nook is going to be one of your primary sources for common items, such as tools, stationary, decorations, and so on. Note that he changes his selection of items once every day, so be sure to check back often to see what he has for sale! He's also going to be one of your main sources of cash, since he'll buy pretty much anything you dig up or fish out of the sea or find in a tree or steal from an old lady's house in the middle of the night.

Don't be surprised to see special buildings pop up from time to time.

One of the first things you should be worrying about in Animal Crossing is getting Nook to expand his store. When his store gets bigger, so will his selection of goods. How you go about doing this is simple: buy stuff. Lots of stuff. The more money you spend at Nook's store, the bigger the store will get. Here's a list of the different store names, and how much money you have to spend to obtain them.

• Nook's Cranny: Available Initially
• Nook 'N Go: 25,000 Bells
• Nookway: 65,000 Bells
• Nookingtons: Spend 240,000 Bells, and another WW player must have connected to your town and bought at least one item from Nook.

In addition to the upgrades to the shop itself, there's also a new points system that Nook uses to reward loyal shoppers. When you buy items from Nook, you'll earn points; the more expensive an item is, the more points it'll be worth. You can check on your point status by using the cash register inside Nook's shop.

• Rank 1: Earn 300 Points. You obtain a Nook's Cranny model.
• Rank 2: Earn 5,000 Points. Obtain a Nook 'N Go model, and earn a 5% discount on all items in the shop.
• Rank 3: Earn 10,000 Points. Obtain a Nookway model, and get a 10% discount on all items in the store.
• Rank 4: Earn 20,000 Points. Obtain a Nookingtons model, and get a 20% discount on all items in the store.

Able Sisters

The Able Sisters shop is much like Nook's shop, save that it exclusively deals in fashionable clothes and accessories. If you're looking for a new hat, shirt, umbrella, halo, clown nose, or what have you, it'll be on sale at the Able Sisters. Like Nook's shop, their selection does periodically rotate, so be sure to check back in often to see what new designs they have available.

In addition to buying premade clothes, Mable and Sable can also help you design your own patterns, for a price.

Town Gate

If you head as far north as you can go in your town, you should find the Town Gate somewhere in the middle of the wall there. This is the dwelling place of Copper and Booker, the two guards that watch over your town's entrance.

Speaking to Booker will open up a few different options for you. In addition to the standard social options, he'll also offer you a chance to chance your town's flag design, if you wish, or claim items from the lost and found. Feel free to grab any loot you see there.

Copper is your man if you want to go visit a friend or invite a friend to visit you, or if you wish to obtain a friend code; perfect for spamming messageboards across the internet!