How Do You Get an Animal Crossing 5 Star Island?

There are many different sorts of goals to shoot for in any Animal Crossing game. For example, someone in Animal Crossing: New Horizons might want to start by unlocking everything currently available in the game. After that, they might want to move on to getting a Nook’s Cranny upgrade. But one of the tasks involves getting your island looking its best by getting that coveted Animal Crossing 5 star island.

Which, as you might imagine, takes more work than you could expect.

How do you find out your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island rating?

This part is pretty easy, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons walks you through it. Once you have upgraded Residential Services and Isabelle has come to your island, Tom Nook will tell you the next goal. It is to get K.K. Slider to perform a concert at the town. This means you need a 3 star island. If you sit in the chair in front of Isabelle at Residential Services, you can ask her what the current rating is and she’ll offer some insight and advice.

Getting the 3 star island is fairly easy. For the most part, it involves getting 10 villagers to move to your island. This can be done by recruiting people from the campground, talking to characters you meet on random islands you’ve visited with Nook Miles Tickets, or using amiibo cards to move in new neighbors.

What are some tips for getting an Animal Crossing 5 star island?

From what I’ve seen when going through Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there were three major factors that influenced my island’s rating.

The first involved infrastructure. I didn’t get a solid and immovable 4 star island until I had three bridges and three inclines placed. The quality of them didn’t matter. Once the three of them were there, it seemed like I was rather set.

Second, you want to have some vegetation. Getting flower beds established around your island in various spots is a big help. (You don’t need to start cross-breeding them. They just need to be there.) You also want to have some trees, but you don’t have to have huge forests established.

Next, you want to clean up any stray items lying around. I’m not talking about furniture or DIY recipes you have placed. I’m referring to items you might have dropped for villagers or because you needed to temporarily make room. Pick up weeds, grab smaller rocks next to big rocks, and pick up branches. This will conflict with people who have “free” or “trade” areas set up, so keep that in mind. Have a weed pulling party. Temporarily place all of the items you were going to give away in your pockets. Then, ask Isabelle to rate your home.

Finally, the last critical item involves furniture. To guarantee your Animal Crossing 5 star ranking, you need to have a mix of crafted and purchased furniture placed around your island. You want to have these items everywhere, even on the little hidden beach at the very back of your island. Isabelle might even give you little hints about things that can help by suggesting more fencing or specific sorts of scenery items.

What are the Animal Crossing 5 star island rewards in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

The first Animal Crossing: New Horizons 5 star island reward is a tangible and immediate one. You’ll be given the Golden Watering Can recipe from Isabelle immediately after you hit that milestone. To make it, you need a standard watering can and a gold nugget. (Gold nuggets occasionally spawn from rocks you hit with a shovel.)

The other two involve flowers and are a bit more work. Once you hit the five-star hallmark, you’ll occasionally see Lily of the Valley flowers. These are returning plants from past games, and you could have one pop up per day each day that you have a 5 star island.

The other flower is the gold rose. To get this one, you first need to have red roses placed near each other and tend to them daily by watering them to get black roses. Then, once you have a few black roses, plant them all close together. You now want to only water them with the gold watering can to try and get gold roses.

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