Wooing Animal Crossing amiibo Villagers Is Both Frustrating and Rewarding

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, getting the right characters to move (or out) can be a whole thing. One of the efforts implemented to make bringing certain specific animals from the over 380 available to your island involves Animal Crossing amiibo villagers who can be invited to a campsite and wooed. While this does eventually get you a characters and some other nice rewards, it also can be one of the game’s more irritating endeavors.

In general, the basics for Animal Crossing amiibo villagers are as follows. You get a card or cards. You upgrade Residential Services so it is an actual building and put a Campsite up on your island. You use the Nook Stop Terminal to invite an amiibo villager to come visit. After scanning these cards over the right Joy-Con’s analog stick when prompted, the amiibo cards’ villagers will appear and say they’re coming to visit. Talking to them eventually gets them to move in.

The key word here is “eventually.”

None of these Animal Crossing amiibo villagers will move into your Animal Crossing: New Horizons town on the first visit, tutorial guest aside. Everyone else will only agree to move in after visiting three times. Also, each character will ask you to craft three items for them. (They give you the new Animal Crossing DIY recipes for them, thankfully.) Heaven forbid the recipe requires something like gold, given its rarity.

It’s incredibly frustrating. Especially if you are running low on space and really just want someone to finally be there. Instead of an easy in, you have to prove your devotion to these creatures, constantly giving them furniture to buy their love. Should someone be going into it for the first time, they might not even realize it won’t be as easy as just asking, since the Nook Miles random island villagers and random campers don’t have such high standards.

Yet at the same time, the Animal Crossing amiibo villager can seem like some of the most rewarding visitors.

A big part of any entry, especially Animal Crossing: New Horizons, is collecting items. Since crafting is a major gameplay element, acquiring new Animal Crossing DIY recipes can be a godsend. Each of the three times one of these characters visits, they’ll ask for an item. As I mentioned earlier, they’ll give you details on it if you don’t have it. So even if you don’t like someone or want them to move in, it is to your benefit to go through with the song and dance to build up your catalog.

Not to mention, you have sweet satisfaction of using them to boot people out. As part of the moving process, an Animal Crossing amiibo villager can override normal procedures. If your town is full, you can use these cards to force one of the existing characters out. The person you are trying to move in will give you the option when the song and dance is done, even showing character pictures to help you ensure you are giving the right neighbor the boot. And, since the bug hampering the eviction process has been fixed, you can use Animal Crossing amiibo cards to engineer your perfect village.

It just… well, won’t happen overnight.

So yes, Animal Crossing amiibo villagers require quite an investment. You’re not going to get to move someone in overnight, as much as you would like to. You’ll have to go to a lot of trouble making them things over and over, before they’ll finally realize their place is with you. But at the same time, you’re building up your Animal Crossing DIY recipe catalog quickly by inviting people in with amiibo cards every day. Plus, you can use it to cherry pick who you want in or out of your village. It can be annoying, but it is well worth the effort.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for the Nintendo Switch.