Animal Crossing: New Horizons Deserted Island Guide — Rare Island Types, Tips, And More

Unlock the incredible potential of Mystery Tours in Animal Crossing: New Horizons by mastering the art of island exploration. These temporary destinations offer exclusive resources and opportunities unavailable on your home island.

Compared to Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s static tropical island, New Horizons introduces dynamic Mystery Tours with seasonal alignment to your hemisphere. This revolutionary improvement means you’ll encounter different islands throughout the year, keeping the experience fresh and rewarding.

Once your airport becomes operational (typically on your second gameplay day), you can purchase Nook Miles Tickets for 2,000 Nook Miles each from the Nook Stop terminal in Resident Services. Pro tip: Always stockpile tickets during Nook Miles+ challenges to ensure you never miss a valuable island opportunity.

With ticket in hand, approach Orville at the airport counter and select “I wanna fly!” followed by “Use Nook Miles Ticket.” You’ll embark on a randomly assigned Mystery Tour that could range from basic to exceptionally lucrative.

Critical reminder: Each Nook Miles Ticket generates a unique island instance upon purchase. You cannot reset your game to reroll the same ticket for different results—each journey is permanently locked to its generated destination.

Many players speculate about using specific Reactions or performing particular actions at the airport to influence their Mystery Tour destination. Through extensive testing, we’ve confirmed these methods provide no statistical advantage in island selection.

The randomization algorithm for Mystery Tours operates independently of player actions at the airport. Your chances of landing on rare islands depend entirely on the game’s internal probability system.

Common misconception: Wearing certain clothing or bringing specific tools affects your destination. This is false—island assignment occurs when you purchase the ticket, not when you use it.

Advanced strategy: While you can’t manipulate individual outcomes, you can increase your overall chances by accumulating multiple Nook Miles Tickets and traveling frequently. The law of averages eventually rewards persistent explorers with premium island encounters.

Your approach to Mystery Tour islands should adapt based on the specific type you encounter. However, one universal preparation step remains critical: empty your pockets completely before departure, retaining only essential tools.

Unlike your main island, Mystery Tours offer no storage options or resource transfer mechanisms. Everything you collect must fit within your pocket capacity.

Stock Up On Resources

Deserted islands present perfect opportunities for resource harvesting without consequences. Each location is single-use only—you’ll never revisit the same generated island.

Available resources mirror your home island but with crucial advantages: weeds, branches, wood, fruit, clay, stone, iron nuggets, plus fish and insect specimens. Bonus discoveries include buried fossils and beach-stranded DIY recipe bottles.

Game-changing technique: Consume fruit to gain temporary super strength, enabling you to dig up entire trees for transplantation. This includes coconut palms that thrive when planted along your home beachfront.

Mystery Tours become particularly valuable for gathering the 30 iron nuggets and 90 wood pieces (30 each of softwood, hardwood, and wood) required to construct Nook’s Cranny. When your daily home island resources deplete, these tours provide essential supplementary materials.

Tool management: If your equipment breaks, either craft replacements using island materials or purchase basic flimsy tools from Wilbur for 100 Nook Miles each. These purchased tools remain upgradeable using iron nuggets.

Meet New Villagers

Take control of your island’s population by personally inviting desirable residents. Mystery Tour islands frequently host potential villagers who will enthusiastically accept relocation invitations.

Important limitation: Villagers only appear on deserted islands when two conditions are met: available housing plots on your main island and fewer than ten current residents.

Pro recruitment strategy: If you encounter an undesirable villager, simply decline their request and continue using Nook Miles Tickets until discovering your ideal candidate.

Seek Out Better Weather

Mystery Tour islands operate with independent weather systems that may differ from your home conditions. This atmospheric variation enables access to weather-specific fish and insects unavailable during your island’s current climate.

Strategic weather exploitation: If rainfall dominates your home island, seek drier Mystery Tours to capture weather-sensitive bugs. Conversely, if sunny conditions prevail at home, rainy islands offer exclusive aquatic specimens.

Make Money

Premium Mystery Tour islands present extraordinary bell-making potential. The most lucrative destinations feature exclusive spawns and resources that dramatically outpace standard income methods.

The Mystery Tour system encompasses diverse island archetypes with varying rarity and profitability. Regardless of destination, prioritize mining all rocks for scarce iron and gold nuggets, plus thoroughly scanning beaches for valuable DIY recipes.

Standard Islands

Approximately 60% of Mystery Tours yield standard islands featuring your native fruit, local flowers, conventional tree distributions, and standard river layouts without unusual spawn patterns.

Standard characteristics: Multiple resource-containing rocks (no money rocks), one furniture-bearing tree, and typically one fossil—unlike rarer islands that often lack fossils entirely.

Spiral Island

This standard variant features a spiraling river formation with a central rock formation. While resource availability remains consistent with other standard islands, the unique layout provides inspiration for future terraforming projects.

Cliff Island

Characterized by elevated terrain dominating the landscape, with rivers primarily flowing across cliff tops. This geography significantly simplifies catching clifftop-exclusive fish species.

Rock Island

This configuration concentrates multiple rocks atop a central cliff formation. All rocks yield standard crafting materials without monetary rewards.

Foreign Fruit Island

This moderately rare destination replaces standard trees with foreign fruit varieties different from your native species. The specific fruit encountered represents your island’s “sister” fruit—for instance, apple islands consistently discover oranges, never peaches, cherries, or pears.

Economic advantage: Non-native fruits sell for 500 bells each versus 100 bells for native varieties. For maximum long-term profit, prioritize planting foreign fruits to establish permanent orchards before focusing on sales.

Transplantation technique: To relocate entire foreign fruit trees, consume coconuts for strength enhancement rather than wasting valuable foreign fruits.

Bamboo Island

Frequently encountered bamboo islands feature exclusive bamboo groves without rivers or ponds. These islands contain rocks, coconut trees, and occasional fossils.

Bamboo serves as crucial crafting material, making stone or flimsy axes essential for harvesting. The absence of freshwater, while limiting fishing opportunities, creates perfect conditions for establishing tarantula farms.

Hybrid Flower Island

This scarce destination blooms with hybrid flowers—pink, black, orange, purple, or blue varieties unavailable through standard seed purchases.

These floral arrangements attract exclusive butterfly species that command premium prices. Beyond insect capture, transplant several hybrid specimens to cultivate ongoing rare butterfly spawns at home.

Floral limitation: Mystery Tour islands only display two flower species: your native type and your predetermined “sister” flower. Consequently, hybrid flower islands exclusively feature combinations of these two species.

Money Rock Island

Discovering this jackpot island reveals multiple money rocks clustered centrally, surrounded by protective river barriers.

Access strategy: Consume fruit to gain super strength, then shatter the blocking rock using your shovel. Deploy your vaulting pole to reach the central area.

Optimization technique: Before striking money rocks, excavate holes directly behind your character. This positioning trick ensures consecutive strikes without recoil, maximizing your yield to 16,100 bells per rock.

Tarantula Island

This nightmare-inducing paradise swarms with endless tarantulas valued at 8,000 bells each. Capture capacity limits your earnings potential, making expanded pocket storage upgrades particularly valuable.

Scorpion Island

Similar to its arachnid counterpart, this island teems with scorpions commanding identical 8,000 bell values (or 12,000 bells when sold to Flick).

Seasonal awareness: Scorpions appear from May to October in the Northern Hemisphere and November to April in the Southern Hemisphere. This seasonal alternation with tarantulas ensures year-round availability of premium bug islands.

Trash Island

Deceptively normal in appearance, this island’s waterways overflow with discarded items. Fishing exclusively produces trash (cans, tires, boots), but this misfortune unlocks exclusive DIY recipes through trash collection milestones.

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