The addition of boat tours through Kapp'n in Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers new ways to explore the areas outside of player islands, but the new 2.0 addition is lacking in content. Struggling with the same issues present in Dodo Airlines' mystery tours, players can quickly burn through each available travel location, making the daily trip across the sea a chore. This may be disappointing for those hoping to spend more time having adventures off of their main islands.
The New Horizons 2.0 update added a wealth of new things for players to do daily. This includes farming, cooking, raising Gyroids, and visiting Brewster's new addition to the museum, The Roost. To find Gyroids and crops, however, players will have to speak to Kapp'n for a once-a-day island excursion costing 1,000 Nook Miles. The islands come with a few variations including standard islands with minimal new items, farmland islands with one variety of new crop per location, and seasonal Animal Crossing islands that produce maple leaves and cherry blossom petals. There are also star fragments, vine, and money islands, with the vine islands producing the new glowing moss needed for special DIY crafting.
While each of these areas can be useful when the boat tours become available, the journey can quickly run dry for those who sign in every day, or players who don't mind time traveling to speed up the exploration. Once all the Gyroid fragments, crop types, and glowing moss DIY recipes are collected, there are very few reasons to waste 1,000 Bells a day for a trip. To add to this, seasonal islands may offer rare access to special DIY ingredients, but they only become available after the player has experienced the season in standard gameplay. For those who have restarted games to play the Animal Crossing 2.0 update with a fresh island, a whole year's wait will be required to access them. Players who have had the same island, however, may struggle with already having crafted every available recipe requiring these items, making the rare seasonal island spawn a useless trip.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Won't Be Adding More Islands To Visit
Sadly, it isn't likely Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be expanding on boat or mystery tour locations in the future. Before the launch of the 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise DLC was released, Nintendo confirmed that version 2.0 would be the last large-scale free Animal Crossing update for the game and that no further paid DLC was in the works. Because there won't be any further expansions, players may choose to avoid time traveling, taking each boat tour one day at a time to help elongate the experience before repetition sets in.
While the end of big updates is sad news for many New Horizons fans, it could also be a hint of future plans to come for the series. While nothing has been confirmed by Nintendo, it is possible a new installment for Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Switch could be announced in the coming year. A fresh game and new adventure could be good news for those who have done all that is possible in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and potentially improve areas that need more diversity in current gameplay.