Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a lot of new features that make it even more delightful than its predecessors. From decorating your own island, making bells (check out our bellionaire article) and crafting. There’s a lot of things you can do if you want to do them. Today though we’re going to talk about one of the more annoying aspects of New Horizons. Crafting your tools. Tools are one of the most essential components in the Animal Crossing series. You need your fishing rod to fish, your bug net, your axe and all that. And in New Horizons you’re going to find yourself using and of course crafting tools more than you’d like.
When you first begin Animal Crossing: New Horizons you start off with a bunch of flimsy tools that break after a couple of uses. After progressing through the game you get access to some hardier weapons. But the final upgrade that we’re working towards is for those Golden Tools. The DIY Recipe for each tool is unlocked after meeting specific requirements and then can be crafted if the crafting materials required are on hand. As you can expect Golden Tools will require a standard version of the tool plus one gold nugget.
Now Golden Tools are still breakable in New Horizons, but they’ll last significantly longer than standard and flimsy tools. Now here’s the list of requirements you’ll need to meet to get your hands on those Golden Tools.
Golden Axe
This is probably the easiest of the Golden Tools to get if a bit time-consuming. To get a Golden Axe you’re going to need to break a hundred axes. To do this is easy just keep crafting and breaking Flimsy Axes.
Golden Slingshot
Like the Golden Axe, you’ll need to complete a large series of tasks to get this tool. I bet you can guess it. Yes, it’s shooting down those Balloons, to be more exact 300 Balloons. This also unlocks the “It’s Raining Treasure” Nook Miles Card. That’s a whole lot of balloons and even if you shoot down 2 every day (if you can even find them) you’ll still need 150 days of playing to get the Golden Slingshot. Good news though seasonal balloon events count towards this balloon count. So I guess all those presents I shot down during Bunny Day were worth something after all.
Golden Watering Can
It’s been a little more than a month since Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released but already people have made some fantastic islands. In order to unlock the Golden Watering Can recipe, you’ll need to get your island to a 5-Star Rating. Once you’ve upgraded your Resident Services Area go ahead and talk to Isabelle to find out your current island rating. To get a 5-Star Rating you need to have a good number of evenly placed decorations around your island. Plenty of flowers, trees and fences. As well as have all the upgraded shops available. Once you do you should get the Golden Watering Can DIY recipe. Which in turn can be used to grow Golden Roses.
Golden Shovel
Remember that drunk bird Gulliver who keeps almost getting murdered by his crew? Well he washes up on your beach every so often and if you help him 30 times he’ll send you the recipe for the Golden Shovel. When you see him passed out on the beach you’ll need to talk to him a number of times to get him to wake up. After that he’ll ask you to help him find some communicator parts, which you can see as small spurting water animations on the beach. Help him and he’ll reward you with a special piece of furniture. Help him 30 times and he’ll reward you with the recipe for the Golden Shovel.
Golden Net
This is one of the harder more end game tools. The Golden Net is acquired when you catch every single bug in your Critterpedia. Check out our full bug-catching guide here. Now, unless you’re one of those time-hopping doctors you’ll need at least a year to get all the bugs that appear in the different seasons. And even then if you’re not playing regularly or are just unlucky you might miss out on one or two bugs in the season. Then you’ll need to wait an entire year for them to appear again.
Golden Fishing Rod
I bet you can guess what the requirements for the Golden Fishing Rod are. Like the Golden Net above you’ll need to complete the fish section of your Critterpedia by catching every single fish available. Check out our full fish-catching guide here. As usual, this includes all the different fish in the different seasons.
So that’s our little tutorial on how to get Golden Tools! If you’d like to see more of our guides check out:
• How To Upgrade Nook’s Cranny
• How To Be A Bellionaire
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Upcoming Features
