Animal Crossing: New Horizons — How to Play Hard Mode

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been around for a while now, and some island veterans want to up the difficulty level by playing Hard Mode. Hard Mode is a fan-made concept, invented by YouTuber NintenTalk. It’s sure to give you the biggest challenge yet for the cozy game, and we’ve got all the steps to get started here in our guide.

How to Play Hard Mode

There are five categories of rules for Hard Mode: Restarting, Villager, Daily, Design, and Economy Rules. You’ll need to follow all of the rules, and complete a daily checklist to play Hard Mode.

Restarting Rules

• Only 1 re-roll on island layouts.
• The island name must come from an AC island name generator, and you can use an unlimited amount of re-rolls.
• Starting villagers get to pick their house location.

Villager Rules

• You have to keep at least one starting villager until you get their photo. If you re-roll, you have to take photos of both villagers before they can leave.
• You must talk to all villagers with thought bubbles.
• You can only gift 1 villager per day.
• If someone asks to leave, you have to let them go (Starting villager rules still apply here).
• If you get a campsite villager, you must invite them to your island (Starting villager rules still apply here).
• The maximum number of tickets you can use for hunts is 10. If you get to the 10th ticket, you have to take that villager or select autofill.
• You can only go to 1 Mystery Island per day (Except on hunts).
• No amiibo scans are allowed, and Sanrio items can’t be sold.

Daily Rules

• You can time-travel within a 7-day period. (You can also choose not to use time-travel for an extra challenge.)
• Purchase at least 1 item from Nook’s Cranny and the Able Sisters once per day.
• Get your daily fortune read from Katrina.
• Complete all 2x Nook Miles (This overrides the economy rules).
• Participate in Daily Stretching (1 per day).
• Complete all daily NPC quests (Gulliver, Lavel, etc).
• All new bugs/fish/sea creatures/fossils/art have to be donated before they’re eligible to sell.

Design Rules

• Only wear custom clothes that you design, or from another player’s Ables shop. You have to change your outfit every week (You can buy hats, glasses, and accessories).
• You have to post your designs in the Able Sisters shop.
• Only use custom codes that you design.
• Design your own flag.
• You can’t move villager houses until you can gift.

Economy Rules

• You can only have four 3×3 plots for selling crops (Crops must be in bunches of 3 for harvest).
• Only harvest and sell fruit from 9 fruit trees and 4 coconut trees.
• Turnips are allowed, but you can only sell them on your own island. You can buy from other players on Sundays.
• For Sunday Flea Markets you are allowed to visit other Hardcore Mode players to buy and sell goods.
• Each Flea Market seller can have a max of 10 items for sale. You have to pay 2,000 bells in their donation box when you arrive on their island.
• Only a maximum of 5 Flea Market customers per Sunday (Including turnip buyers).
• No Treasure Islands, or Nookazon allowed.
• Only sell bugs to Flick, Fish to CJ, and Weeds to Leif. All materials and crafted items are sold at Nooks, and all other items can only be sold at Sunday Markets.
• Crops, fruit, sea creatures, and foragables can only be sold in a Nook Deposit Box. 
• When planting Money Trees, you can only use the Bell bag that you dig up.
• No trading flowers or selling of fossils allowed.

Daily Checklist

• 2x Nook Miles and goals
• Complete Daily stretching
• Water all crops
• Available NPC Quests
• Nook’s Cranny / Able’s purchase
• Get daily fortune from Katrina

If you follow all of the rules you’ll successfully be playing Hard Mode. We think following the daily checklist will help keep track of things, but it might take some getting used to overall. NintenTalk has a discord server for sharing your progress, and you can join it here.

Well, that’s it for our guide on how to play Hard Mode in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you found this guide helpful, check out our other Animal Crossing guides.

Feature photo via Nintendo