What Is Terraforming in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Is It a Difficult Process for Nintendo Fans?

Nintendo designed Animal Crossing: New Horizons in such a way that players can relate to it. Furthermore, features like terraforming and cooking made them fall in love with ACNH even more. With the help of the terraforming feature, users are able to let their imagination work easily. Not to mention, fans have seen many bizarre creations in the community thanks to this feature.

Unfortunately, creators have to delete their entire island in order to work on the next project. After the launch of the 2.0 update, many new players joined New Horizons. Naturally, it’s not an effortless task to get the hang of the terraforming feature on the first day or week.

Regardless, terraforming is the most popular feature that helped New Horizons to gain more attention in the community. Here’s everything you need to know about the feature if you recently joined the ACNH universe.

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Animal Crossing Terraforming: How to unlock and use the feature?

Nintendo lets players get their hands on the terraforming feature by using the in-game Island Designer app. With the help of this feature, they can tear down or put up cliffs, create paths, and even change rivers, lakes, and waterfalls. In order to use the terraforming feature, they first have to gain access to the Island Designer app.

Tom Nook gifts you the Island Designer app, after K.K. Slider puts up a show on your island. To invite K.K. Slider to your island, you first have to complete the in-game story, which requires a bunch of tasks. These include building the museum, helping Timmy and Tommy set up Nook’s Cranny, getting more residents on your island, and earning a three-star ranking.

Once K.K Slider performs a show on your island, Tom Nook will gift you the Island Designing app.

What else will you need apart from Terraforming?

Although you can gain access to terraforming by unlocking the Island Designer app, you still won’t be able to shape water or cliffs. Interestingly, you will need to unlock them separately later.

Waterscaping and Cliffscaping

Unlike terraforming, it’s very easy to unlock Waterscaping and Cliffscaping in New Horizons. You can purchase them at the Nook Stop terminal in Resident Services at a cost of 6,000 Nook Miles each. However, you have to meet certain criteria to purchase these features.

You have to unlock both Nook Miles+ and the daily bonus task to get 5x the miles. Indeed, it might take you long enough to unlock these features depending on how much you play on a daily basis. You can also add up to 10 inclines and bridges after the 2.0 update, which motivates more users to perform Waterscaping and Cliffscaping on their islands.

1. Waterscaping

Waterscaping works similarly to laying paths; however, by pressing A, it will automatically either dig a hole and create a tile of water or fill in an existing body of water with one tile of dirt.

Interestingly, you can also create rivers and ponds thanks to this feature. However, you should know the major difference between rivers and ponds. Furthermore, some fishes can only be found in rivers or ponds specifically. Basically, in order to find the difference between rivers and ponds, you have to pay close attention to the bobber you send out when fishing.

If the bobber moves with the flow of the water, you’re in a river. If it stays in place and doesn’t move, it’s a pond. Moreover, you can create waterfalls by waterscaping on the edges of cliffs. Remember, you can’t use waterscaping on curved cliffs as it can only work on straight cliffs.

2. Cliffscaping

Unlike Waterscaping, Cliffscaping is a bit tricky to get used to. By pressing A, you will be able to create or destroy one title of a cliff in front of you. It means if you are on the first tier, you can create a second level to it. If you are standing on the second level, you can build a third one; however, the third level is just for show and you can’t climb it.

Points to remember while performing cliffscaping:

• Always start on the base level of the cliff.
• Can’t destroy a cliff while standing on top of it.
• Cannot build cliffs on top of furniture, trees, flowers, or other obstacles on the ground. Have to move them first.
• Cannot build cliffs on the beaches.

How to create paths using Terraforming in Animal Crossing?

With the help of Terraforming, you can give your island a more classy look of your liking. There are different types of paths that you can build in ACNH; however, after completing the main story, you can get access to more path options. Each path costs 2,000 Nook Miles (Custom Design- 2,300 Nook Miles) and these are the options you get:

• Arched tile
• Brick
• Dark dirt
• Dirt
• Grass
• Sand
• Stone
• Terra-cotta
• Wooden
• Custom design

Steps to build paths in New Horizons

• You first have to simply select the path of your choice.
• Then by pressing A, your avatar will paint one tile of the space in front of you.
• In case you accidentally paint the path, you can remove it by simply pressing A again. Surprisingly, Nintendo also lets you place paths at corners.
• If your path has corners, then pressing A for the second time will not erase the path, but will instead round the edge to make it more appealing.

Players who created the best islands using Terraforming

After K.K Slider puts on a show on your island, it’s time to trust your creativity and imagination to build your dream island. These are some of the best Terraforming islands in New Horizons.

• Valley

• Neighborhood

• Park – By Gaynondorf

• Island Entrance – By SailorKelsey_

• Lighthouse – By screelord

Do you also have some creative terraforming ideas in your mind? Let us know in the comments down below.

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