PSA: There Are Requirements To Access Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ New Content

The big Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update is here, but even if you’ve installed the update itself, it’s possible you aren’t seeing some of its major additions, such as Kapp’n. This is apparently due to your island not meeting certain unlisted requirements, but there are steps you can take to begin working toward unlocking them. Here’s what we know.

First, a word of advice from the “have you restarted your computer?” department: Make sure you’ve closed the game and reopened it since the update was released. If you’ve had the game running, it’s possible it never was able to update, meaning you’re still running an old version. If that’s the case, you won’t see Kapp’n or any of the other new features even if you’ve fulfilled the necessary requirements.

Provided you have the update installed and are still missing some of the new elements, the most likely explanation is that your island hasn’t been improved enough. Nintendo doesn’t explicitly lay this out in-game, but the consensus from many players on Reddit and elsewhere suggests you need to fulfill certain requirements in order for these things to pop up, including having a three-star island and a sufficiently expanded museum.

Expand your museum

If you haven’t spent much time expanding your museum with donations, you may not be able to immediately begin looking for Brewster to open the Roost cafe. It’s unclear the exact number of donations required to open this up to you, but continue catching and donating bugs, fish, and sea creatures, as well as any legitimate art you buy from Redd to help things along.

Three-star island

As for achieving a three-star island, you can check on the status of your island by talking to Isabelle at Resident Services and asking about island evaluations. She’ll both tell you the number of stars your island currently has and offer some pointers on how you can improve that rating. Picking weeds, planting flowers and trees, and decorating the island with a variety of furniture are all strategies for increasing your island’s rating. Additionally, be sure to pick up any non-furniture items you have scattered around; a handful are okay, but a bunch sitting out in the open will get you penalized, so be sure anything that’s laying around the island is an actual piece of furniture (and not junk, tools, clothing, and so on). Getting to three stars isn’t a monumental task, but it may take some time.