How to Make the Most of the Island in Animal Crossing: New Leaf

A big part of Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the Island you can go to for 1,000 bells and getting aboard Kapp’n’s charming boat. Once there you can catch bugs, play games, fish and dive.

The Island is made mainly for the pleasure of you and your friends, and is well-worth your time.

The Island inhabitants

I’ll tell you a little about the people who own the Island. There is Kapp’n’s wife, Leilani, who mans the counter where you can ask to play a tour game. Gram, Kapp’ns mother, works the gift shop where you can use the medals you win in the tour games to buy things and Leila, Kapp’ns daughter, will play “shop” with you and you can sell some items you found on the Island, her pay is cheap so I would recommend selling the items at the Re-Tail shop.

Tours

There 64 tour games you can choose from but you will not be able to play a certain one all the time because they change daily. Now they will have different levels of each tour and they will vary in difficulty. When I am playing a new tour for the first time I always play the easy tour first, that way you get a feel for the game before you throw yourself into the harder version.

Each tour has a time limit and you must meet your goal before the time ends. Tortimer, the recently retired mayor, is the Islands game manager and he will watch give you the directions for each tour game and will watch you during your game.

Now as you are playing your game you will notice different fruits that you don’t have on the main land. Bananas, durians, lemons, lychees and mangos. I recommend you to pick the fruits when you are either close to getting your goal for the game or once you have gotten your goal. Be careful because some tours will end as soon as you reach your goal, so you will regret not picking the fruit. You can get a lot of bells for these fruits!

Hammer Tour

Now while playing the tours you needs to be quick and calm. You should try not to worry about the time limit because you will always have enough time to complete your goal. Be sure to know how to properly use the tools before entering a game. For example, if you have trouble fishing then you should practice more before doing the Fishing Tour. A tip that helped me for the Balloon popping tour is to go for the rabbit shaped balloons first because they give you more points!

Diving

Now if you want to just relax around the island then you can just catch the bugs running around or fish.Through a really good use of your time on the island is to dive, dive, dive!

If you do not have a wetsuit of your own yet you can borrow one from Lloid. You can dive for all sorts of sea creatures, but beware the jelly fish! Those suckers will sneak up and sting you but they are not hard to avoid as long as you are paying attention.

Diving was hard for me at first because you need to dive as close as possible to the black dot under the water and then you need to dive down. Now if it’s a plant like seaweed then as a long as you dive on top of it you will be fine. If it’s a sea creature like a lobster, it will move away from you and you must give chase under water until you catch it or you run out of air. Try to sneak up in the moving ones and only dive once you are sure you are as close as you can get to it.

The Item Box

Always, Always remember to put the items you collect on the Island in the item box! This is not an option!

If you want to keep the items you picked up you must put them into the item box and then when you leave the island they will be sent to the item box at the docks on the main land.