Animal Crossing: New Horizons saw its big October update release a week ago, but Nintendo has just now released a video highlighting the new features. With new bugs, fish, and a deep pumpkin mechanic, New Horizons players have plenty to do this month.
The video updates with highlighting the new Autumn landscape for players in the Northern Hemisphere, which sees trees get darker as the weeks progress. From there, the appropriately upbeat video narrator highlights the new creatures to catch, from a red dragonfly to ants being available to capture once again. Blathers can also be given a new sea creature, a spiny lobster that can be acquired using the swimming mechanic added to New Horizons back in July.
Next up, the video highlights October’s biggest addition: pumpkins. The vegetables can be grown for the entirety of October and come in four colors: white, orange, yellow, and green. The main use of pumpkins is to build New Horizons' spooky Halloween DIYs, many of which can be acquired by visiting villagers in their houses. Watering pumpkins daily makes them grow faster and produce rarer colors, and players would likely be happy to see the new vegetable mechanics expanded upon in the future to include new veggies.
The pumpkin starts can be purchased at Nook’s Cranny or from Leif and are, thankfully, cheap. Aside from setting up pumpkin patches, however, players can also purchase candy from Timmy and Tommy’s adorable shop. While the sweets are best saved for the special events on Halloween night, they can be eaten by players like fruit, leaving many AC fans looking for ways to get more candy before it is too late. With a one candy limit per day unless a villager shares their candy with a player, having enough for trick-or-treating with villagers or the Halloween NPC Jack will require daily purchases.
New clothes and accessories join the Able Sisters’ shop as well, with Halloween dresses and costumes coming to the store for players eager to get into the holiday spirit. Ghoulish costumes can be made when combining the outfits with the new skin and eye colors, though the absolute best designs come from clever player creations. Thankfully, many creators were kind enough to share the creator codes for their New Horizons Halloween costumes, allowing anyone to celebrate the festivities in an excellent outfit.
With one such player-made outfit being an adorable (and slightly scary) Little Sister cosplay within New Horizons, players are sure to keep coming up with great ideas. As long as AC fans keep an eye on watering their pumpkins and building a candy stockpile, October should be a great month to spend on any island.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now exclusively on Nintendo Switch.