How to get 3 stars in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Designing Animal Crossing islands is a lot of fun but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Before you can do anything else in the Animal Crossing world, the first major hurdle to get around is getting a 3 star island in order to unlock the terraforming tools so you can start properly decorating your island. But, let’s face it. It’s not the easiest thing to do. If you’re finding Isabelle unhelpful and have no idea what you need to do to get a 3 star island in New Horizons and you want to see KK Slider perform as soon as possible, here’s everything you need to know.
Why do you need 3 stars in Animal Crossing?
We should first clarify why you need a 3 star island rating in the first place. Having a three star island is what is needed to unlock KK concerts and whilst this isn’t necessarily the most important thing for island designers, what it does signal is the end of the tutorial for Animal Crossing so that you can then go straight into decorating without any barriers.
But outside of this, after you’ve seen KK Slider perform for the first time, you will get access to the waterscaping and terraforming tools so that you can craft your rivers and ponds and cliffs into basically any design you can think of which is what most island designers want to access from a 3 star rating but there are some other things which are unlocked which I would also consider important to the Animal Crossing experience.
When you achieve a 3 star rating, you will receive a phone call from Harv asking you to come to his island as he has some exciting business updates. When you go over to Harv’s Island after this call, you will see a section open up behind the photo studio. This is called Harv’s Collective and it’s the place where you will see some travelling vendors and exclusive NPC’s which you can visit at any time to get things sorted for your game.
Each caravan plot can be unlocked here for 100,000 bells and each marker unlocks a different NPC. The two which are really useful to have for decorating your island are Reese & Cyrus who look after item customisation and Leif who you can buy flowers, crops and bushes from. Whilst Leif also visits your island regularly, having him on Harv’s Collective means that when he isn’t visiting your island, you can hop over to Harv’s island to purchase last minute flowers, bushes or crops that you need to decorate your island.
What goes into a 3 star island rating?
So, now you know why you need a 3 star island rating, let’s talk about what the rating system actually is and how you can go about getting it. The island ratings are essentially a points based system which assigns a value for everything that is on your island. The more points you have, the higher your island is rated. The scoring system goes up to 5 stars, but today, I’m only going to show you how to get three stars, but if you use the strategies and information in here, you will eventually get a 5 star island too.
There are two categories where you receive points: Scenery or Nature and Development. Scenery is anything which is considered natural so flowers, bushes, crops and trees all fall into this category, but DIY furniture is also counted as natural, whilst Development is anything related to building a community on your island and includes your villager houses, bridges and inclines and non-DIY furniture.
In order to get a 3 star island, you need to score a minimum of 270 points in Scenery and 160 points in Development. If you think these scores seem really high don’t be worried, getting the scores is really simple when you know how to do it.
Let’s start with Scenery as this is going to be where you spend the majority of your time preparing to get 3 stars. Flowers and trees count as one point each, but only if they are fully grown so if you have gone around and stunted a load of trees thinking you can rack up some easy points that way this sadly doesn’t work. You do need them to be fully grown in for them to count towards your score. There’s also a cap on the maximum number of points you can get from trees. The maximum score you can get from trees is 190, so, if you have more than 190 fully grown trees on your island, sadly they aren’t going to count positively towards your score.
Crops and bushes also count, but only in their fully grown state but as these are smaller, they also only count for half a point each when they are fully grown which is a little frustrating, but at least you do get something for having them.
DIY furniture is more interesting in your Scenery scores as although it only counts for a small number of points for each piece, if your items are more than 3 tiles wide they actually qualify for a bonus so the trick to making the most out of your points within Scenery is to plant a load of trees and flowers and wait for them to grow in and also use DIY furniture which is over 3 tiles wide. Sooner rather than later, you will find that you get the points you need in this category.
Your Development score is treated separately about this. If Scenery is about anything which you can plant or craft, your Development score is basically everything else. All of the buildings on your island can contribute to your Development score as can bridges and inclines. Most people have no problems hitting this score because 160 points is really low and when you look at everything which goes into it, you realise just how easy it is to rack up the points in this category.
The biggest thing that will contribute positively to your score is having your museum, Able Sister’s and upgraded Nook’s cranny somewhere on the island. All of these buildings together count for 45 points so it’s a pretty important chunk which you can get for decorating your island a little bit.
Bridges and inclines also count towards the score, but you only get points for the second bridge, presumably because the first one is one you craft and the game has no idea if you’ve still got that one or not. All inclines count towards the points though. So, if you want to make sure you’re scoring reasonably well here, you will need to have two bridges and at least one incline to start scoring for both of these.
The other thing which is also important to note is that your star rating is locked to the number of villagers you have. If you have fewer than 8 villagers on your island, you cannot get a three star island. So, if you want to make sure you will be definitely getting a 3 star island with all of the planting and development work you are doing, you will need to have at least 8 villagers living on your island. It is important to note that the player houses don’t count so if you try to place a load of these down to give yourself additional points, sadly it won’t do what you need it to do. Instead, just focus on inviting people to come live on your island from Nook Miles islands or from other players and eventually you will get to the point where you have 3 stars.
It’s also important to note that you don’t get points for your first 8 villager houses. So, if you want to get points on your villager houses, you will need to put down nine or 10 villagers to get extra points.
How can you tell what your current island rating is?
That’s a lot of numbers to run through, and I can understand that it can be difficult to keep track of everything so, you may be asking, is there a simple way to find out what your current island rating is and what you need to do to improve your score? The answer is yes and no at the same time.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can view your current island rating from the Resident Services building. What you need to do is pop in after you have had the three villagers in the numbered plots you place down move into their homes completely. At that point, Tom Nook will tell you about his grand plan to get KK Slider to perform on your island, known as Project K. In order to get there, you will need to develop the island, but Isabelle, his colleague, will be keeping tabs on everything you are doing and will be able to tell you what you are doing.
When you speak to Isabelle, you will be able to ask her about island evals, during this process she will give you the current star rating of your island along with comments on how to improve your island. However, what you won’t see is the number of points you have in each category and this is where there is some contention amongst Animal Crossing players who are working towards three stars.
What do Isabelle’s comments mean?
The best thing you can do to improve your island rating is to pay attention to Isabelle’s comments about your island which she receives as feedback from others. At first, it appears that these comments are really specific. She will ask you to plant more flowers or decorate your island so naturally the inclination is to do exactly what she says but before you go do anything else, you need to know this. Her comments are actually more generic than you think.
Isabelle’s comments are split into two categories which reflects the part of your overall score which is lower and subsequently affecting you getting a three star island. If she says that you need more flowers or trees, it doesn’t actually mean that you need to plant more flowers and trees. What she’s saying is that your Scenery score is your lowest score. In order to improve this, all you need to do is place down more natural items like trees, flowers, bushes or crops or you can use DIY furniture to boost this score.
Alternatively, if Isabelle mentions something about needing to decorate your island from stream to sea, she means that your Development score is lacking and although you can place items to boost this score, you can also look into making sure you have the all of the buildings unlocked, that you have extra villager homes or that you have the bridges and inclines you need to navigate your island.
By focusing on what Isabelle is saying, you will quickly be able to identify which category you need to improve on and then you can take the relevant steps to build out your island and get that 3 star rating quicker.
What Isabelle doesn’t like on Animal Crossing islands
What is important to say about Isabelle’s comments is that although those initial comments are generic, there are some which are more specific and these comments do negatively impact your island so you will need to clear these up and prevent them from affecting your overall rating.
The first one which can be mentioned is having too many items dropped on the ground. If you’ve had a delivery bot turn up or you have dropped some items on the ground there is a chance that these will affect your island rating. If there are more than 15 items which are dropped on the ground, Isabelle will call you a litterbug for having too many items lying around. All you have to do here is pick up all of the items which could be negatively affecting you and put them away in your storage or place the items on your island so that they don’t have an impact on your island rating.
Now, we all know that Isabelle is obsessed with plants, if you’ve tried to go for a three star island in the past, you will know that she constantly talks about trees but did you know there is such a thing as having too many trees in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Although you do get scored on each fully grown tree up until you have 190 points, if you have more than 220 fully grown trees Isabelle will tell you that people are getting lost on your island and that you need to cut some of the trees down to allow people space to walk. So, if you see this message pop up, grab an axe and start chopping down some of those large trees you don’t need.
The other big penalty message that you can see is about cluttered islands. Although I and many other island designers follow the principle of “no tile left behind” when it comes to decorating, there is a point at which Isabelle will complain that you’ve used too many items in decorating.
Where points are awarded for your decorating, they are done on a grid based system. If you look at your map, you will see that your island is broken up into grids. Within these blocks, your island is broken up into 8x8 tile grids, of those 64 blocks if more than 45 of them are covered with items, Isabelle will call your island a traffic hazard and will ask you to clear out some of the items you have placed to make it more accessible.
There is also a secondary issue within this which may not have an impact on you but is something to keep in mind. There is such a thing as using too many of the same item. If you have more than 6 of the same item within the same space, you will also be deducted Development points for each duplicate item over this number. However, customising an item into a different colour counts as a new item. So, if you want to avoid this penalty, make sure that you colour a few of the items so that they look a bit different and then they won’t impact your score negatively.
One thing that is really different in terms of penalties in Animal Crossing which is different in New Horizons compared to previous games is the effect weeds have on your island rating. In previous Animal Crossing games, if you had too many weeds (sometimes any weeds) Isabelle would complain about it and tell you that you need to clean up your island. So, it was commonplace as part of your dailies to pick the weeds up on your island. However, in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, although too many weeds does affect your island rating, it’s less impactful than it used to be. You do get awarded points for having fewer than 100 weeds on your island, but you also get docked 1 point for every 30 weeds you go over.
In the long run, this actually doesn’t affect your island too badly because you can rack up loads of extra points from decorating. So, don’t be afraid to use weeds in your decorating as they can actually make your island look stunning and not affect your island rating too much.
Summary
Although getting 3 stars in Animal Crossing: New Horizons can be hard, it’s one of the biggest milestones you can achieve in the game. Not only does it give you access to KK concerts, but it’s also a really important step in terms of decorating your island as you will unlock terraforming tools which you can then use to improve the overall look and feel of your island.
As long as you have your Scenery and Development points in a good place and you’ve minimised the risk of invoking penalties from Isabelle you will get three stars easily as part of your quest to plan a stunning Animal Crossing island which will be the envy of all of your friends.
