How Animal Crossing: New Horizons' DLC Vacation Home Planning Job Works
The upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons DLC, Happy Home Paradise, is set to add a lot more decoration to players’ regular routine by introducing a new vacation home designer job. The game's first paid DLC will add a lot of gameplay mechanics to the Animal Crossing experience and will release for $24.99 alongside New Horizons' 2.0 update on November 5. The DLC almost acts like a stand-alone experience in that players aren’t building on their islands but instead doing work on a separate archipelago designing vacation spots for islanders.
Now players finally get to be the HGTV interior decorator of their dreams, and with so much at their disposal, learning the ropes is going to be essential to successfully put every villager’s dream theme together. Players will be working with Lottie and her assistants, Niko and Wardell, to create immersive experiences with the wide variety of in-game items Animal Crossing is known for. Once done, players will get paid in the hotel currency, Poki, which can then be exchanged for furniture and other goodies to bring back to their island and surprise villagers with.
While similar in both title and gameplay to the Nintendo 3DS game, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, the trailer that Nintendo has released for the DLC gives a more concrete overview of what fans can expect Happy Home Paradise will add to New Horizons. It covers everything from how to drop down furniture to the use of Amiibo cards so even if players don’t have a copy of the original 3DS game, they can still jump in and learn the ropes. Here's a quicker rundown, though, of what players need to know about the workflow (and rewards) of being a home designer for Animal Crossing's new tourist destination.
After purchasing and installing the DLC, players may notice that nothing on their main island has changed, but that’s okay - Happy Home Paradise takes place on a different island chain from New Horizons, so naturally players will have to talk to Orville at Dodo Airlines to start the trip to Lottie’s resort. After Lottie introduces herself and the role of being a designer, players will then walk across the resort’s entrance to find potential applicants. They will interview islanders to see what kind of decorations they want, select an island from the island chain, and visit the house to begin decoration inside and outside.
After choosing which location from Happy Home Paradise to customize, players’ first job is to place furniture inside the home themed to the given islander’s desires. There are some specific themes shown off in the trailer, such as mushroom, arcade, bear, bell, and space, and each one has some required furniture that much be placed somewhere in the room. From there, wallpaper, soundscapes, lighting, and more furniture options will be available to add a personal touch. While there isn’t information in the trailer about what furniture will be available, there will be enough specific theming to make many unique houses even with the specific needs of the villagers. Fortunately, everything added in the free DLC will also be available for villagers’ designs, so putting up shelving and ceiling lamps is possible to help make each villager’s house unique.
The size of the house is alterable and there are a lot of new exteriors the DLC adds to Animal Crossing's villages. Happy Home Paradise also adds the ability to build wall partitions to separate rooms into smaller subareas. After decorating and placing furniture inside, the outdoor area will be customizable too. In addition to placing furniture outside, there are ways to build fences and plant trees. Houses are moveable and droppable so that they can either be front and center or hidden away in an alcove. Players don't need to worry if everything’s not perfect on the first try either, as there’s always the ability to remodel the house later down the line.
On top of being able to deck out villagers’ houses, there is also a myriad of facilities and public spaces that can be filled with items. These range from schools to hospitals to restaurants and each one has unique furniture and wallpaper. Just like houses, players have full control about where objects are placed and what themed objects to set down in New Horizons' customizable buildings. Once finished, multiple residents will show up and interact with the scenery on display, meaning that new dialogue boxes and animations will happen depending on the space players have designed.
Poki is a special currency that can only be used to buy items from the resort. After finishing a job, Lottie will compensate players for their work with this new form of money that can be used on furniture and chocolates in the lobby. When perusing the lobby, there will be small stands housing rare items that can be bought only with Poki.
Buying these items works a lot like it does in Nook’s Cranny with Bells – just go up to the item, press A, and then confirm the purchase. Players can also take chocolates home to get villagers from their island to get excited and buy a vacation home on the island chain, meaning even more content in Animal Crossing for players to get through.
If there’s a specific villager that never made it towards the main island, players can use a separately purchased Amiibo card or figure to design a vacation home for them. In Lottie’s office, there’s a phone with the Amiibo logo on the front. Interact with it and scan the villager to design a home without having to play the random villager roulette to find them. This feature also lets players design homes for characters that don’t show up as villagers, such as Isabelle and Tom Nook. The new Series 5 Animal Crossing Amiibo cards will be compatible with the game and figures that work with New Horizons will most likely get added content – so Rover, Cyrus, Reese, and K.K. might all have unique house layouts to design.
Happy Home Paradise is a great addition for fans who want to try their hand at new themes while not completely renewing their island. It also allows people to see new Animal Crossing villagers that weren't on their island before. After working for a while, players even get the option to apply the design skills they’ve learned to their main island, meaning they can remodel buildings from the base game. There is a serious amount of content and creative control the new DLC gives players so working at Lottie’s resort may be what fans need to put their next hundred hours into Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Source: Nintendo