Acnh town layout

Before you can spend all of your time in Animal Crossing: New Horizonsfishing and getting stung by wasps, you need to decide what your island will look like. Where should you put your tent? How do you want your rivers to flow? And why wait when you can start planning now? With Happy Island Designer, created by GitHub user eugeneration, players can get a jump-start on just how they want to set up their budding community.

The in-game browser allows you to toy with tents, shops, town buildings, trees, and much more on a grid mimicking that of New Horizons. Where you drop your tent will also determine where you build your first home, making it a crucial decision. It’s a pretty simple map builder that can act as a blueprint for those who love to meticulously plan — especially since New Horizon’s island will be even emptier to start than past games. When you’re done, you can save your map or start again.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons launches on March 20th on the Nintendo Switch. Now if we could just get a browser game for furniture planning.

To reroll your island (village) in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH), simply quit the game and restart.

If you are starting out Animal Crossing and want to know about things to look for when rolling and restarting for the best island, read on!

Upon starting the game, chose your name, birthday, appearance, and hemisphere and then proceed to the island selection screen.

Note that you cannot change your name, birthday, and hemisphere, so make sure to get them right the first time!

If you want to start over, press the Home button on the Switch. The small circle below the B-button is the Home button.

Press the X-button and select Close to close the game.

Opening the game takes you back from the beginning, making it easy to reroll until you'll find an island that you like.

Once you've landed on the deserted island, you can check the starting villagers and the airport color.

Much like deciding on the island layout, you can press the Home button and close the game to start over.

The lake found on the island has a randomized pattern, allowing for islands with a lake in the shape of a heart, islands with a ribbon pattern, and more.

How to Use the Island Designer App

By unlocking the Island Designer app, you can create your own diagonal heart-shaped ponds easily.

These recommendations prioritize having Resident Services at the center of the map, with a lake available for fishing from the first day. This is because the river can't be crossed until the second day of play. If you want to fish in a lake, you'll have to wait until the second day.

The river can only be crossed after getting the vaulting pole, which in turn requires Blather's tent to be built.

How to Unlock and Upgrade the Museum

If you find any Island which is not shown in the above list, be sure to make a comment on this page with a picture of the island you found!
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When deciding on which island shape to go with, we highly recommend picking the one where Resident Services is located toward the center.

Resident Services is where you will go to repay loans, sell items, as well as build DIY items, and more. Your overall experience will be better if it's located as near to the center as possible.

You cannot change this facility's location, so make sure to consider this when choosing an island.

What You Can Do at Resident Services and How to Upgrade

Since you cannot change the airport's location after the beginning, this is another important factor in deciding the best island. Be sure and check the initial map and pick an island with a location you like.

How to Unlock the Airport

Much like the airport's location, you also cannot choose its color. If you want a particular color for your airport, you can check it once you've landed on the deserted island.

You should check the placement of the estuaries when deciding on an island. We recommend choosing an island that has two estuaries as it makes it easier to make a round trip when fishing for river fish.

List of All River Fish Times and Appearances

To get from the upper part of your village to the lower part (and vice versa), you will have to make use of inclines in the island's cliffs. Therefore, it is vital that the inclines are in an easy to access area.

Eventually you will be able to use a ladder and even build new inclines, but in the beginning, you might want to choose an island that has incline placements that work well for you.

How to Build Slopes, Stairs and Inclines

You should also check out the river's path when deciding on an island. Much like inclines, this can present an inconvenience to you in the very beginning of the game.

Upon obtaining a Vaulting Pole, you can jump over rivers in areas separated by just one space.

Once you've unlocked Island Designer, you will become able to freely change the island's features, such as rivers, etc.

Island Designer and Terraforming Unlock Walkthrough

There are a few types of fish and bugs that you can only get from ponds, so having more of them makes them all easier to obtain.

Note that you can add or remove ponds later in the game by using the Island Designer app.

You may also want to use your starting fruit as a deciding factor for choosing an island. You can make a lot of Bells by selling non-native fruit.

Therefore, if you will be playing together with a friend a lot, you should both choose an island with different fruits.

How to Get All Fruits

Deciding by flower types is not recommended as you can eventually get more flower types through a variety of means.

List of Flowers

If there is a particular villager who you just have to have on your island, you can reroll to try and get them.

However, with the huge roster of villagers in this game, it is pretty tough to reroll until getting the one you want.

If you feel that it is just too tedious of a task, you can use an amiibo card to get the villager you want.

List of Starting Villagers

Checking to make sure the island's rocks are not positioned too close to a cliff or alongside a river is also important.

If the rocks do not have all of their surrounding spaces available, you will be able to make less money through this method, so it is something to look into in the beginning.

However, you can break the rocks with a shovel or an axe after eating a fruit, causing the rock to respawn in a random spot somewhere on your island the next day.

How to Break and Move Rocks

Only one island can exist per Nintendo Switch system. Therefore, if you are going to be playing together with your family or friends on the same Switch, you may want to discuss which island to choose together.

How to Delete Save Data and Start Over

You get to pick the island's name whenever you decide on the shape. Like villages in past games, you won't get a chance to change it later on, so be sure and pick something you like!

See All Unchangeable Features

You can freely change the shape of the island once you have unlocked the Island Designer App. Despite this, it may be difficult to create ponds of different shapes depending on the island's layout.

We recommend selecting a spacious island if you wish to create custom shaped ponds.

How to Use the Island Designer App

For the most part, you do not need to reroll in hopes of finding a “perfect” island. For the most part, you can just stick with your gut feeling when choosing.

Alot of island elements that can't be altered in previous titles can actually be changed mid-game in New Horizons, so don't worry too much about rerolling for the ''best island''!

Things like the positions of Resident Services, locations of inclines, direction of rivers, and several other features can rerolled at the very start, so if it is a cause of concern to you, why not roll until you get an island you are happy with?

We recommend rerolling to people who want their island to have a particular fruit, or people who really want to have a specific villager living on their island. If you are unable to make compromises when it comes to your island, you don't have to.

All Tips & Tricks

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If you are new to Animal Crossing: New Horizons and starting to build your own town. The first problem you meet would be the map layout options. In this Animal Crossing New Horizons Map Layout guide, we are going to cover the tips to choosing and planning a map on ACNH Island Planner, also list the Best ACNH Layout Ideas for your reference.

How to Choose the Best Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Layout?

When we start Animal Crossing New Horizons on Switch, we will get to choose the layout of our

island. Timmy and Tommy offer up four unique and randomized island maps to choose from. Which map you should choose to start building my Island in Animal Crossing New Horizons? Actually to choose your ideal island maps, the below elements you should take into consideration from primary to secondary:

• Resident Services Location

• Rocks Location

• Airport Location

• Cliff Slopes Location

• Rivers Location

• Number of Ponds

• Starting Fruit

• Starting Villagers

Related Read: 

Top 10 Best ACNH Island Layouts - The Most Used Layouts In Animal Crossing New Horizons

Although we can say there is no ‘best’ island layout, among the many ACNH island layout options, the following 10 are the most popular for some reasons:

Top 10 Best ACNH Layout - Resident Services in the center of the map, easy to live

Top 9 Best ACNH Layout - Simple tributary of the river, wide space in the east

Top 8 Best ACNH Layout - Wide space in the west side, easy to live

Top 7 Best ACNH Layout - Three areas divided by the river are very wide

Top 6 Best ACNH Layout - The wide northwest area occupies half of the map

Top 5 Best ACNH Layout - With heart shape lack, equal areas divided by rivers

Top 4 Best ACNH Layout - River occupies the least land, wide space in the east

Top 3 Best ACNH Layout - Wide & spacious area around Resident Services

Top 2 Best ACNH Layout - Resident Services in the center of the map with wide space around

Top 1 Best ACNH Layout - With star shape lack, wide & spacious space around Resident Services

Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Map Choosing Guide: Which Layout To Choose?

It doesn't really matter which map we choose at the beginning of the game, even if you pick out an island and later down the line decide you no longer like it, because now we have the option and ability to terraform our island and completely redesign the lad whenever we like. However, there are a few things you should know before choosing a map despite being able to terraform most of your buildings later. 

1. River Exits

It turns out that the mouths of rivers, or where the rivers exit the land and enter the sea cannot be moved or terraformed. These are typically surrounded by a few rocks as the beach widens and the river water exits, unfortunately, these are in fact permanent fixtures and is worth remembering this when choosing your island map because you'll have to live with the locations of these exits unless of course you delay your Island and start over. The good news is there are a few options surrounding these features. The map will always have two River exits and one of those exits will always be to the south which also happens to be on the opposite side of the map to the airport. The second exit will then be on either the east south or west sides of the map. So although the position of these exits some will be high towards the back, others will be lower towards the front, it's important to remember you'll need to decide whether you want a map with East and South River mouth. 

Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Map - East River Layouts

Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Map - West River Layouts

Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Map - South River Layouts

2. Resident Services & Airport

As soon as we land on a new island, we will have an introduction at the Residence Services Center and Airport, which will become an important part of our island life. These areas will eventually become the Town Hall to where Tom Nook and Isabel reside, and somewhere events like bug offs and fishing Tony's are held. We can choose where to place buildings (any home or shop) such as the Museum or Able Sisters anywhere we like, and even relocate them later down the line if we want to. Unfortunately, Resident Services and Airport cannot be moved in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. At the beginning of ACNH you can choose where to place Resident Services and Airport, but, after that, it can’t be moved again. Neither its starting nor upgraded iterations can be relocated, so here’s hoping that your initial placement isn’t too terrible.

So when it comes to selecting your island map you need to think a little about where you want things to go such as your house future, villager houses, other buildings, and even roughly where you're going to want paths. Because when you start developing your island and linking things up with paths or designing the outside features like rivers and cliffs, the residence services area could be in the way. 

3. Land Outlets

Based on the maps, we know the majority of maps have a little outlet of land or land extension that extends the grass from the ground level out across the beach and right out to sea. Now although probably a very tiny detail is something to remember when selecting our maps because it will always look like that no matter how we change our part layers over time. Of course, the upside is there are a few options surrounding this piece of land. It will appear on either the east or west side of the islands, and it's positioned along the coastline can vary, on some maps, it can be towards the rocks at the back of the island, and on others, it can be more central or towards the bottom beach. 

4. Forth Cliffs 

As you know multi-layered towns are returning to new horizons, which is a huge fan favorite. We can now have up to four layers which consist of the ground level - the first cliff, second cliff,

third cliff, and forth cliff. In fact, at the beginning of the game’s release, the fourth cliff was forbidden to enter which says is too dangerous to climb up there. However, the methods of glitching to the 4th cliff tier were discovered by players, so you can explore the forbidden lands of that highest 4th level peak on your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island, even decorate there with furniture items, trees, bushes, and flowers. So if you choose your map based on the position of rocks or even a pond and waterfall you like, it could be useful to know if you want to add this additional layer you'll need space to do so. What’s more, it is vital that the slopes are in an easy to access area.

5. The Dock

Just like a few other features on the new horizons island map, there are a few more including the dock, some large rocks, and a private beach. Although these three features are somewhat unrelated,  they are all permanent fixtures and cannot be terraformed or move later. The dock will either be located on the east or west side of the island, and always position towards the south. The location of this could have an impact on the development of your island, if you were planning on having a lot of villagers living by the beach for example. Furthermore, the private beach cannot be moved, but its location will vary, sometimes it's more sensual, other times it appears closer to the shores on the edges of the island map. So if you have some grand ideas for terraforming cliffs or if you're planning on having lots of pathways at the back of the island the location of the private beach could be important when choosing your map.

Know more about island layout in Animal Crossing New Horizons Switch (ACNH) - best island, best island layout, island layout ideas, map size, map designer and layout options list!!

Choose Your Island Layout

There Will Be Several Island Layouts

At the start of a new game, you will be given a choice of 4 possible layouts to choose from. If none of these appeal to you, you still have the option of restarting the game to generate 4 new layouts!

Island Size Is The Same

No matter which layout you choose, the size of the island will always be the same. Just be sure to pick the right layout.

How To Select Best Island Layout

Can You Have More than One Island?

Players Only Have One Base Island

Players will only have one base island where they can build their home & access the different facilities, including the Resident Services & the Airport.

Free To Visit Other Islands

Even if you cannot build on other islands, you can still have access to them. You're free to visit your friends' islands or go to a random one using the Nook Miles Ticket to travel.

How To Reset Island Layout

Do You Need To Reset For Layouts?

If you have a particular preference for an island layout, or even a native fruit, we recommend that you reset to get your desired, ideal start!

Terrain Can Be Changed Later On

In New Horizons, you'll be able to modify the terrain on your island later on in the game when you unlock the Island Designer tool. This will allow you to fill in rivers and remove cliffs. If you don't mind waiting/doing the extra work, you don't need to go through the resetting process.

How To Reset For Best Island Starting Layout

Name, Birthday, & Hemisphere Cannot Be Changed

Be careful, as you will not be able to change your name, birthday, or hemisphere once you've completed this process. Take your time in deciding these!

Appearance (Gender) Can Be Changed

You will be able to change your character's appearance later on as you progress in the game. Once you get access to a dresser/mirror in your room, you'll be able to alter your appearance, so there's no reason to focus too much on it at the start!

Best Island - How To Choose Layout

Tips On How To Choose Best Island

Because you can jump across the river with Vaulting Pole or fill out river with Island Designer, the shape of the river is less important. Look for a layout which has Resident Services in the center of the island since you will be using that facility quite often.

Check Location Of Resident Services

The Resident Services houses a lot of features that will help you on the island, including the DIY Workshop & the ATMs. Since you'll need to visit it often, consider its location before selecting a layout.

You Can't Choose Villagers & Fruit

The fruit and villagers are randomly determined. If you want to have specific fruit or villager, reset the data until you get your favorite one.

Varieties of Fruit

• Apples
• Peaches
• Cherries
• Oranges

↑ These are the types of fruit we've been able to confirm so far - there may be more!!

There Will Be 2 Starting Villagers

There will be 2 villagers in your island to start with. You can reset your data to change your starting villagers if you want to. Read the guide below to learn more.

Fewer Ponds Are Recommended

Ponds often get in the way when you want to build new facilities. Although you can fill out the water with Island Designer, it is recommended to choose the island with less ponds.

Use Map Designer Or Island Layout Tools

There are many online map designer & layout tools such as Happy Island Designer that you can use to plot and check the best island layout for your preference. Go online and find the best one that works for you!

Best Island Layout & List

Best Island Name

Choose Your Own Island Name

Your island name is something other players will see when they visit you. Share us your island name & we will feature some funny island name on our article!

Other Island Layouts List

The following layouts have all been confirmed by players on our team!!

Animal Crossing New Horizons Switch - Recommended Articles

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