Nintendo posted their Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct video today, and it started off with a big surprise: The update is available now! It turns your regular copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf into Animal Crossing: New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo. There’s a lot of new stuff, so let’s get to it.
Drive-in Campground
The most noticeable addition is the new campground. The entrance isn’t on Main Street, it’s found as a new ramp in your town, going off to the side. In Forest, the entrance was near town hall.
Inside, you’ll find some camping related public works projects, one or two RVs, and you can see a waterfall in the distance.
You’ll also find Harvey the hippie here: He’s the dog that runs the place.
He has some items for sale, but he doesn’t accept bells. Instead, you need Mutual Exchange Of Wealth (MEOW) coupons. More on those in a bit.
There was one RV parked at the campground today, and special characters can appear there. Today, I found Booker inside. It’s decorated like a small room, and you can order his items (but again, you pay in MEOW coupons).
Amiibo Compatibility & Wisp
If you scan an Animal Crossing Amiibo figure (or an Amiibo card of a special character), that character will appear in the back RV. The front RV will appear if you scan in a new Welcome Amiibo card.
But before you can scan an Amiibo, you have to acquire a magic lamp, which you can then rub to make Wisp appear. But at this point, I’m not sure how you get the magic lamp. Will it appear in town at night like in earlier games?
Anyway, once you scan one of the upcoming Welcome Amiibo cards, Wisp will allow you to summon that character to appear in an RV. Again, you’ll be able to enter his/her RV, order items, and even invite them to move into town. If you use regular Amiibo cards for villagers, they won’t have special RVs, but you can still invite them to move into town.
As for other Amiibo figures, some of them unlock new things as well. The Callie and Marie Amiibos will unlock Splatoon themed villagers Cece and Viché, while an inkling Amiibo will unlock Inkwell the octopus villager. There are also Zelda themed villagers, including Wolf Link, Medli, Ganon, and Epona.
CAT Machine
Next to town hall, there will be a new Coupon Allocating Terminal…or CAT machine. There will be town initiatives (achievements basically) that will let you earn MEOW coupons. My first task was to hang some items of clothing up on the wall of my house. Once I did that, I returned to the CAT machine and scored two MEOW coupons.
By the way, if you don’t want to spend your MEOW coupons at the campground, you can exchange them for bells at the ABD. Each coupon is worth 3,000 bells, so it will be tempting to trade them in.
Mini-Games
Animal Crossing Amiibo figures may give you items that let you play mini-games like Animal Crossing Puzzle League and Desert Island Escape. The latter is from Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival on Wii U. Even though Amiibo Festival isn’t very good overall, Desert Island Escape was quite enjoyable. I’m sure it’ll be just as good on 3DS.
Amiibo Camera
The Amiibo Camera feature lets you scan Amiibo cards and add Animal Crossing characters to the real-life photos you take with the 3DS camera. I talked about it before here, but I haven’t tried it out for myself just yet. Look for more on this soon.
Secret Storeroom
Needs more storage? YES! The secret storeroom can be added onto your house at Nook’s Homes for a price of 158,000 bells. It appears to add 36 pages of storage (that’s enough for 360 extra items) that you can apparently access anywhere! Wow! This is one of my favorite additions in the update! I ordered mine, and it should be available tomorrow!
After adding the storeroom and completing a design seminar, you can move furniture around your house using the touch screen. It works just like in Happy Home Designer! Very helpful!
Linking Happy Home Designer
If you have Happy Home Designer, you can link New Leaf to your HHD data and order giant furniture from your Nooklings’ store.
New Villagers
The new Welcome Amiibo cards include 50 new and returning villagers who weren’t previously in New Leaf. Here is the full list: Vivian, Hopkins, June, Piper, Paolo, Hornsby, Stella, Tybalt, Huck, Sylvana, Boris, Wade, Carrie, Ketchup, Rex, Stu, Ursala, Jacob, Maddie, Billy, Boyd, Bitty, Maggie, Murphy, Plucky, Sandy, Claude, Raddle, Julia, Louie, Bea, Admiral, Ellie, Boots, Weber, Candi, Leopold, Spike, Cashmere, Tad, Norma, Gonzo, Sprocket, Snooty, Olive, Dobie, Buzz, Cleo, Ike, and Tasha.
I was quite disappointed to see that neither Hank nor Emerald were among the returning villagers. But I do like Hornsby a lot, and Bea is cool too.
Dream Suite
One of the biggest changes in this addition is one that’s barely mentioned in the video. And that’s because it’s really bad news. You are forced to get a new dream address for your town. My new address is 5D00-000F-7611.
Your count of visitors who have dreamed of your town? GONE. But it gets worse. I tried to visit the old version of Forest, and I couldn’t. And it’s not just my town. All previous dream towns are GONE. Did you enjoy visiting a certain dream town? It’s gone. Sure, some people may update their dream towns again with a new address. But many great dream towns are now gone forever. Honestly, I’m a bit peeved about this. And Nintendo gave no warning that they would be doing this.
Other Changes
On Club Tortimer, you now have the ability to mute annoying players so you don’t see their text. And if you choose to restart your town, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can actually sell your town for a bunch of bells, which will be in your bank account when you start up again. Oh…and now you can sit on rocks.
My Thoughts
This update is really big, with a lot more changes and content than I imagined it would have. I’m sure lots of inactive New Leaf players should, and will, give New Leaf another chance. But with all of these additions, I wonder why they didn’t just save this all for the next Animal Crossing game (hopefully on Switch). They’re just raising the bar for themselves, so the next one will need that much more. Let’s just hope this New Leaf update isn’t keeping us from getting the next Animal Crossing game sometime soon.
If you’re starting up a new town, be sure to use the face guide to start your character off right. If you’re resuming your old town, use the hair guide to get rid of that bed-head!