In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players are notorious for using time-traveling to advance time in the game; however, it does come with some risks. Like other Animal Crossing games, New Horizons is synced with real-time (per the player's Nintendo Switch), so time passes just like it does in real life. While this can make the game more relatable to players, it also can become tedious when trying to get certain things done. Time-traveling in Animal Crossing is a great way to speed up processes or go back to any holidays players have missed.
Now that it has been out for more than two years, many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players have restarted - or are thinking of restarting - their island. Players will be spending quite a bit of time grinding through tutorials, unlocking terraforming again, building bridges and inclines, and moving buildings around. Tom Nook only allows the player to build one infrastructure item per day and move only one building per day. If players are redesigning their whole island, this can take up a lot of time. This is where time-traveling in ACNH comes in.
When it comes to time-traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players do take a bit of a risk. It can, however, be worth the reward of saving time and getting things done - or traveling to experience different seasons and holidays. Players can easily time-travel in ACNH by saving and closing their game, changing the date on their Nintendo Switch in the settings, and reopening the game. Some players refuse to time-travel whereas others wouldn't play the game any other way.
Problems With Time-Travel In Animal Crossing: New Horizons
When time-traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players need to have a strategy or they will end up with more work, and fewer Bells, than they started with. One of the biggest risks of time-traveling is weeds. Each day at 6 am, three new weeds appear on the player's island and they will continue to grow each day. A few days or longer of time-traveling in ACNH without keeping up with daily weeding can lead to an abundance of weeds that will need to be picked since the game believes the Animal Crossing island is being ignored. This can take a bit of time but is worth it in the end, especially since the player can sell the weeds to Leif for 20 Bells per weed.
Every Sunday, Daisy Mae comes and sells turnips to the player in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. These turnips are bought and sold at varying prices, similar to the real-life stock market. If players have not invested in any turnips, time-travelers will not have to worry about this issue. However, if a player invests thousands of Bells on turnips on a Sunday and then time travels either backward or forward to the following Sunday, all of their turnips in ACNH will be spoiled, and spoiled turnips are worth absolutely nothing. Many players, even without time travel, have forgotten to sell their turnips and ended up with a major loss of Bells. This can hit the player hard depending on the state of their bank account.
If players are planning on time-traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, they need to be willing to take a few risks. It can definitely be worth it with the chance at speeding up some of the more tedious tasks in the game or being able to experience missed holidays and seasons. Hopefully, in the future, the Animal Crossing games will make it a little easier to either time travel or get more done in a single day - without having to worry about such risks.