Animal Crossing: 10 Good Reasons To Give Gifts To Your Villagers
Wherever discussion of the Animal Crossing series pops up (everywhere on social media, for starters, thanks to the phenomenal success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons), you can bet that the V word is going to feature heavily. It’s always all about the villagers. Which are the rarest? Which are the best? Which are the worst? Which are the most valuable? The debates never end.
This is completely understandable, of course. After all, what’s a meticulously crafted island without the right residents? There’s only room for ten villagers, and you’ll want to make the best of that limited roster. To that end, you might not know how important it is to bring your anthropomorphic cats, dogs, hamsters, horses and octopi (plus the other species, naturally) gifts. Here are some reasons you should take the time to do so.
10 Gifts Increase Friendship Points
Whether you’ve carefully assembled your dream roster of residents or you’ve come to love the ones that randomly moved in, you’ll want to improve relations with them if you’re planning to play New Horizons for the long haul.
To that end, the simplest and most important reason for giving gifts to your villagers is that it makes them happier. Not just in a warm-fuzzy-feeling sort of way, but in a way that gives you palpable gameplay bonuses: friendship points unlock a surprising amount of things, as we’re about to see.
9 Friendship Points Lead To Higher Friendship ‘Tiers’ And Better Rewards
As with any new neighbour, a fresh arrival in Animal Crossing means that there’s some major groundwork to be done. That adorable anteater who moved in next door isn’t going to instantly love you right out of the gate, are they? As our extensive New Horizons friendship guide reports, each new villager begins with 25 friendship points.
Gifts increase these points with the villager in question, with 1 point for a non-preferred piece of clothing, 3 for a furniture item, bonuses for wrapping said item and so on. Tiers work in much the same way they do in Pokémon GO: good friends, best friends and so on can do more. Reaching Good Friends (60-99 points), for instance, will allow that villager to nickname you and give you some items for Bells.
8 You Can Also Earn Negative Points By Giving Trashy Gifts (Literally)
Now, some Animal Crossing players take a less than welcoming approach to their villagers. If an offending resident has incurred your net-swinging wrath, that’s fine too: even you have a reason to give them gifts!
Trash has the unique effect of actually lowering a villager’s friendship with you. A -3 isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things, but if it makes you feel better, more power to you. Interestingly, when given as a birthday gift, Spoiled Turnips, Weeds and garbage are worth -5 friendship instead. This doesn’t really impact anything and won’t encourage villagers to move away, but the option’s there we guess.
7 Gifts Can Eventually Get You A Coveted Villager Portrait
As experienced Animal Crossing players will know, some of the most coveted items in the game are individual villager portraits. Each resident has a chance to give you this adorable keepsake when you’re super, super close, and they’re always prized by players who have a fondness for particular villagers (we all have our favorites, after all).
How do you get your hands on one? Well, you’ll have to hit level 5 friendship, Best Friends (150-199). At this point, you’ll have a chance to be given a portrait, so make sure you’re schmoozing your favorites with wrapped gifts! They each have preferences, too, so keep those in mind.
6 You Can Dress Up Your Villagers
If you haven’t seen Sherb the Goat in a matching jester’s hat and jester’s outfit, have you really lived at all? That was a rhetorical question, friends, because we all know that you haven’t.
Fortunately, there’s a neat little added extra associated with gifting your villagers clothing items in particular: they’ll ‘try them on’ right there and then, sometimes wearing them thereafter. They can wear hats, accessories and various clothing items, but not shoes or helmets. Villagers can wear a much greater variety of clothing in New Horizons than they could before, allowing you to customize them. A chef Pig, perhaps? An explorer Penguin? If you have the items, you can do it. Just not all at once, because you can only give one gift per day (mail aside).
5 They Give You Gifts In Return
While some will tell you that it’s all about the giving, not the receiving, it would be downright rude if your animal buddies didn’t give you anything in return, wouldn’t it?
Here’s the good news: depending on the Bell re-sale value of the item you gave a villager, they’ll give you something of relatively equal value right back. You can never really be sure what, but that’s in keeping with the random nature of Animal Crossing’s rolling store stock and such. You might be given some Bells back, or it might be that items you’ve been hoping would appear in Nook’s Cranny. Giving gifts regularly does wonders for your catalog!
4 Gifting (And Regifting) Is A Perfect Way To Get Rid Of Unwanted Items
Playing Animal Crossing has always been a huge struggle with your feeble inventory size. Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield didn’t have this much of an issue in the Spencer Mansion (except they definitely did). New Horizons allows players to bump their pockets up to much more generous proportions, but it’s still easy to find yourself battling to hold everything you want to.
Similarly, the inventory storage in your home is a huge boon, but hoarders will quickly run out. Luckily, your villagers are on hand to eagerly accept anything you don’t really need in a pinch, and they’ll like you a little more for it! Win-win!
3 They Display Items You Give Them In Their Homes, Letting You Customize Them Somewhat
In New Horizons, villagers’ décor can be drastically different. They can be the same species and even the same personality, but their homes don’t remotely resemble each other. This is great for the sake of variety, but what if you don’t like the items they have on display? Well, add a couple of your own choosing to brighten up the place!
Much as villagers will wear clothing you give them, they will also put furniture you’ve given them in their homes where they can. Seen something you think would go well with their wall/floor/theme? Buy it for them!
2 Their Responses Can Be Priceless
Granted, this one isn’t exactly a tangible reason. Still, it’s not always about gameplay benefits, especially not in a chiller-than-Ice-T-and-Mr-Freeze-in-an-igloo series like Animal Crossing. One of the best reasons of all? The game’s dialogue, frankly.
Lazy villagers in particular are an absolute treat when it comes to their responses to gifts. When given a fish, for instance, they’ll mutter to themselves about how they’re absolutely NOT going to eat it. Like all of the game’s writing, the response will be heart-warming, hilarious, surreal or somewhere in between. Either way, you don’t want to miss out on it.
1 Gift-Giving Builds That Community Feel
Finally, we’ve got to consider the nature of Animal Crossing itself. It’s a slow-burner of a series that gradually opens up to the player, with regular events and other seasonal happenings to enjoy. In that same spirit, your animals will want to do more and more with you (as we’ve already seen) the more your friendships blossom.
It’s a series about building a little community, all in all, and the giving of gifts helps so much to facilitate that. This last point is at the core of all the others we’ve discussed so far: exchanging gifts heightens the sense that your islanders are all together, sharing in this adventure with you, which is what the experience is all about. How very Nintendo.
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