With Animal Crossing: New Horizons players quickly discovering the fastest ways to make large sums of cash, it seems a number of players are currently enjoying making vast riches in the game at relative ease. These have come through several major outlets, with some players seeking excessive amounts of turnips, others trying to alter the spawn rates of tarantulas to make islands full of the lucrative critters, and some using the interest from in-game bank accounts to make heaps of cash. However, it seems Nintendo is taking measures to prevent players from becoming too rich too quickly.
According to Ninji, a popular dataminer who has looked into the files of New Horizon's newest update, it seems Nintendo has nerfed the spawn rate of a number of expensive bugs and buffed those of common critters. This appears to be in conjecture with the recent decision for stored bells to garner less interest, with Nintendo seemingly looking to balance the in-game economy and stop players from bringing in large quantities of bells with little effort.
Alongside Ninji's report, it appears a chart has been released that documents exactly which bugs have seen a reduced spawn rate. According to the chart, the main victims of the change have been tarantulas and scorpions, which have had their already fairly rare spawn rate slashed in half. As players will no doubt know, tarantulas fetch a crazy 8,000 bells when traded into Nook's Cranny, so players will definitely feel their absence. Alongside the two critters, peacock and emperor butterflies will also spawn less frequently, with Atlas Moths seemingly suffering the same fate.
Alongside this claim, it appears Ninji has also revealed that spawn rates have been unified for all insects. Essentially, this means that while bugs used to spawn in different frequencies depending on the month, now, they'll spawn at the same frequency every month they're coded to appear in. The dataminer also gives an example of what this means, stating that the "agrias butterfly used to be less common in April than in its other available months. wharf roach had a higher rate in March. That's all gone now."
Evidently, this is an interesting move from Nintendo which, while potentially unpopular with players, shows that the company is trying its best to keep the game fair and balanced. After all, Animal Crossings: New Horizons will allegedly have content for years to come, and while fans may be enjoying their newfound wealth from these exploits, keeping the game challenging and rewarding to players means some aspects of the title need to be nerfed.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now exclusively on Nintendo Switch.
