It’s been almost three months now in our first winter on southern hemisphere islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and down under, and I know I’m ready for a change. Winter in New Horizons has certainly been more interesting than in New Leaf but change is good. Before August is even over we can start to see the transitions into spring happening with things like weeds changing form, and on August 25 all of the snow on the ground disappeared (including snowflakes, so stock up!) and the grass and trees will gradually return to green. I’m so happy to see more colours again – Spring made many Southern Hemisphere players jealous when Northerners experienced it earlier in the year and it’s finally our turn!
Moving into September we will finally get a change in fish, bug and sea creature life after absolutely no changes for over a month. New sea creatures include the Chambered Nautilus, Spider Crab and Firefly Squid. Tadpoles will be able to be caught for the first time this year in ponds and a few familiar fish faces return such as the Barred Knifejaw. Make sure you’ve caught the elusive Stringfish before September rolls around! It wouldn’t be spring if there weren’t butterflies and this will be the first chance for southern hemisphere-rs to catch the Peacock Butterfly (usually near blue, black and purple flowers) with Honeybees, Ladybugs, Stinkbugs and the Mantises also starting to show up.
Starting on August 26 until November 30 young spring bamboo is harvest-able from bamboo plants in addition to normal bamboo. This material is required to make about half of the bamboo furniture DIYs that start appearing this season including: the pan flute, green leaf pile, bamboo shoot lamp, bamboo grove wall, bamboo noodle slide, bamboo wand, bamboo doll, light bamboo rug, basket pack and steamer basket set DIYs. These DIYs are found in balloon presents, bottles and from villagers. If you haven’t already received it, you can receive the bamboo noodle slide DIY from Isabelle during her broadcast on or after August 25. I highly recommend not using a normal axe for harvesting unless you want to chop all your bamboo down, remember it doesn’t spread like it did in New Leaf, so use a flimsy or stone axe instead to get the most materials.
It’s still a ways off but on or around October 1 till about October 10 southern hemisphere islands will finally be clad in pretty pink blossoms for the Cherry Blossom Festival. During this time, like the autumn leaves, you can collect floating cherry blossom petals around your island, a crucial crafting ingredient for making all of the pretty cherry blossom themed DIYs. These DIYs were notoriously hard to get for northerners due to a clash with the Bunny Day event, so hopefully we will not have any overlap with a Halloween event (the exact nature of Halloween in New Horizons to be announced likely in September update). The easiest way to get all of the cherry blossom DIYs is to collect them through the balloon farming method, check out our autumn guide for a guide on this process. There are 14 cherry blossom DIYs in total: blossom viewing lantern, cherry blossom bonsai, cherry blossom branches, cherry blossom clock, cherry blossom flooring, cherry blossom pochette, cherry blossom pond stone, cherry blossom umbrella, cherry blossom wand, cherry blossom pile, cherry blossom trees wall, outdoor picnic set, sakura wood flooring and sakura wood wall DIYs.
Also in October is the third fishing tourney of the year, the Spring Fishing Tourney on the second Saturday of the month.
There could be even more things to happen this spring, but we will have to wait for the next update announcement to know more. Is there a particular aspect of Animal Crossing: New Horizons that you want a guide on? Let us know in the comments section below!
