While many players like to take their time and relax while building their cozy little island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there are those who challenge themselves to complete all there is to do in the game as quickly as possible. One of these tasks is to get a gold variant of every tool in the game, a historically tough task but one with wildly differing degrees of difficulty in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As such, the next Animal Crossing title should strive to streamline the process of acquiring all golden tools to ensure they are still somewhat of a challenge, but one that's realistic for casual players to complete.
Golden tools have been a rare upgrade to standard tools in the Animal Crossing series since the original GameCube title and the methods for obtaining some have been consistent throughout the series while others have varied from game to game. The benefits these tools offer over the standard versions have differed in each entry as well, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons only increasing their durability compared to the standard tool. What has remained a constant aspect of these tools is how wildly different the difficulty in obtaining them has been, signaling the need for a change in the next title.
Golden Tools Have Been Unbalanced for Too Long in Animal Crossing
The original Animal Crossing had some strange ways for obtaining golden tools, like burying a shovel in a shining spot after digging up the Bells buried there and waiting for it to grow into a tree, or receiving the Golden Axe from a bizarre little sprite named Farley after maintaining a perfect town for 15 days. Other tools like the Fishing Rod and Bug Net have kept the same requirements for obtaining their golden variants throughout the series, namely catching one of every fish or bug respectively. Obviously, some of the requirements for getting a Golden Shovel are much easier than others like the Golden Fishing Rod or Bug Net.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons' DIY crafting system changes how golden tools are obtained somewhat by requiring players to craft their own golden tools from a recipe using a gold nugget and a specific tool. However, unlocking these recipes requires tasks similar to past entries to be completed first, with varying degrees of difficulty. For example, one of the easiest golden tools to obtain is the Golden Axe, which only requires players to break 100 Axes and can easily be accomplished by crafting Flimsy Axes that will break quite easily.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are tools like the Golden Slingshot and Golden Shovel, which both have very tedious requirements to obtain. The Golden Shovel can only be obtained from a recipe mailed to the player after they have helped Gulliver 30 times, and even more ridiculous is the Golden Slingshot which requires the player to shoot down a whopping 300 balloons before they can obtain its recipe. Both of these requirements come from events with random elements that the player has no control over, making them even more frustrating than other time-consuming tasks like catching all the fish and bugs in the game.
Rather than locking specific golden tools behind associated tasks, the next Animal Crossing game should have a similar system to Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Nook Miles that players can earn just by going about their daily tasks in the game. These could then be used to unlock a golden tool of the player's choice once they reach a certain number of points, giving players an option to bypass the frustrating tasks needed to access some golden tools. Even if the number required to unlock a golden tool was quite high, it's likely many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players had a surplus of Nook Miles well before they had shot down 300 balloons.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for Nintendo Switch.
