How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing New Horizons

While most Animal Crossing fans enjoy playing the game at a leisurely pace and experiencing the changing seasons in real time, time traveling allows players to experience more of what New Horizons has to offer more quickly. In this guide, we'll explain how to time travel within your Nintendo Switch and see the effects of doing so in New Horizons.

What is Time Traveling?

Time traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons refers to manually changing the date and time settings on the Nintendo Switch console in order to progress time within the game at an accelerated pace. By skipping forward days, weeks or even months using the Switch system settings, players are able to experience new events, seasons, shop/museum upgrades and more without having to actually wait those time periods in real life.

Some common reasons players chose to time travel include: experiencing a new season or holiday event quicker; progressing infrastructure and villager home construction projects; collecting fish/bugs/deep sea creatures for the museum that are only available during certain months; breeding rare flowers or fruit trees faster; and advancing storylines/unlockables at a quicker pace.

How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

To time travel in New Horizons, you'll need to access the system settings on your Nintendo Switch while the game is closed. Here are the basic steps:

1. Exit out of Animal Crossing: New Horizons from the Switch home menu.
2. Go to System Settings > System > Date and Time.
3. Toggle the "Synchronize Clock via Internet" option to "Off." This prevents the Switch clock from resetting to the current date/time.
4. Manually change the date and time by selecting the options on screen and adjusting forwards or backwards as desired.
5. Once the new date/time is set, exit System Settings and reopen New Horizons.

The game will now be set to the modified date and allow you to experience the corresponding events, collection availability, shop/museum upgrades and more. You can continue time traveling further into the future simply by repeating steps 3-5 above as needed.

Effects of Time Traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Some key things to note about how time traveling affects your New Horizons game include:

• The new date/time will be reflected for Nook's Cranny shop hours, museum exhibits, fish/bug availability, and any scheduled events like festivals.
• Infrastructure projects like villager homes and the Resident Services building may be complete sooner than waiting in real time.
• Weeds and cockroaches/tarantulas may spawn more frequently if jumping multiple days at once without playing normally in between.
• Grass and flower breeding spreads more quickly when time traveling day by day.
• Rocks, money trees and fruit trees may need more than one day to fully regrow if harvested multiple days in a row.
• Villagers may comment that you look tired if traveling too far ahead without breaks.
• Turnips will spoil and lose all value if traveling backwards or forwards more than one week.
• Some dialogue/cutscenes intended for certain days may not trigger properly if requirements aren't met by traveling too far ahead.

In general, gradual time traveling day by day or week by week tends to cause fewer issues than very large jumps forward or backwards in the calendar. Playing at least a little bit normally each in-game day can also help maintain a natural island progression.

Is Time Traveling Bad in Animal Crossing?

There is some debate amongst Animal Crossing fans about whether time traveling negatively impacts the intended game experience. While it allows unlocking more content faster, others argue it removes some of the slower, relaxing pace of the real-time gameplay.

The developers at Nintendo have implied time traveling goes against their vision for players to experience events and progression at the same gradual cadence. However, they have not implemented any penalties either. It's ultimately a personal choice based on individual playstyles - some see it as cheating while others enjoy the flexibility.

To minimize potential issues, it's best to time travel gradually and mix in normal gameplay between jumps. Avoid very large calender skips which can cause bugs. Overall the game is designed to be played however is most enjoyable, so time traveling remains a valid option if that fits someone's priorities and schedule better than real-time play.

Earning Extra Bells from Time Traveling

One way players can earn more Bells (the in-game currency) through time traveling involves planting money trees each day and harvesting the rewards multiple days later.

To do this, bury 10,000 Bells in a glowing spot where you've dug up a regular tree. The next day, a money tree will grow with 3 bags containing 10,000 Bells each - a 30,000 Bell profit! You can continue time traveling and collecting from multiple money trees each day for larger earnings.

Other tips include shaking non-fruit trees each day for occasional wasp nests worth 3,000 Bells. Selling high-value fish, bugs, and sea creatures to the Nooklings when their shop is fully upgraded can also earn big money through time traveling.

With patience, traveling day-by-day allows collecting stacks of premium materials like cherry blossom petals, acorns, pine cones, and mushrooms over multiple seasons to craft seasonal DIY recipes for high resell value. Large amounts of ACNH bells accumulated through time traveling can then be used to buy turnips, pay off infrastructure, or decorate your island at a much faster pace.

Final Thoughts on Time Traveling

In the end, there's no right or wrong way to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons. While real-time gameplay at a natural pace is how the developers intended the experience, time traveling remains a perfectly valid option for many players.

By understanding its effects and skipping days gradually rather than huge calendar jumps, you can still enjoy the core New Horizons experience while progressing your island and unlocking new content at an accelerated schedule to fit your needs and play style better. The choice is personal based on how you most enjoy interacting with the game.

So whether roleplaying the seasons changing or wanting to quickly unlock all the museum exhibits, both approaches can be fun. The beauty of Animal Crossing is there's no failure state - you get to define success yourself however makes you happiest interacting with the island and villagers each day.