Animal Crossing crafting, how to get DIY recipes and DIY workbenches in New Horizons explained
How to create your own furniture in New Horizons.
Crafting in Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows you to create your own tools and furniture.
Before you can craft a piece of furniture, however, you need to find its DIY recipe and gather the right materials.
Once you've gathered these necessary materials, it's time to find the nearest DIY workbench and start crafting.
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Crafting and DIY workbenches in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained
Crafting is by far the most important activity in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, even more important than paying off your house loan.
It's through crafting that you will create your tools and the majority of your furniture in New Horizons.
When you arrive on your island Tom Nook will be on hand to teach you the basics of crafting and one of the first things he'll teach you is that, if you want to craft, then you're going to need a DIY workbench.
You'll always be able to find a DIY workbench in Residential Services throughout the game, but it's more efficient to build one yourself. This way you can either carry it around for when you need it, place multiple DIY workbenches across your island or even have one in your house.
To get a Simple DIY Workbench, download the latest update from Nintendo, and you'll receive one in the post. To craft it, you need:
- 5x Hardwood
- 1x Iron Nugget
Later, you can also get a Mini DIY Workbench, which requires:
- 3x Wood
- 3x Hardwood
- 3x Softwood
- 2x Iron Nugget
Once you've built a DIY workbench you can start crafting as many tools and pieces of furniture as like - provided you have the DIY recipes of course.
How to get DIY Recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Before you even consider building a new piece of furniture, you need to track down its DIY recipe.
Though key recipes come from reliable sources and are staggered out to you as the island grows. For example, flimsy tools come from Nook when you begin donating fish or insects, Blathers will give you the Shovel as he needs help with Fossils, and the first message in a bottle you find will offer a mirror for character customisation.
However, for furniture and most other items, the list is randomised, so it's a case of continuing to play the game. There are a number of ways to find a DIY recipe in New Horizons, however, which include:
- In bottles that wash up on your island's beach
- In the presents you can shoot down from the sky
- From your villagers, whether as gifts or when approaching them as they are crafting indoors
- Redeeming Nook Miles
- Purchased from Nook's Cranny
Once you've found a DIY recipe, you'll be able to find it in your inventory.
The Animal Crossing 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise is here! We can help you with the new additions - including where to find Brewster, Gyroids, new villagers, ordinances, new fences, storage shed, new hairstyles, Froggy Chair, group stretching and Kapp'n boat tours. Cooking is now unlockable, so you need to know how to make both flour and sugar, as well as how to grow carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Meanwhile, if you're new to Animal Crossing, our New Horizons tips can help with the basics. From the off, there's fish and bugs to catch, flowers and fruit to grow with. One long term goal is building your Happy Home Academy score. Finally, you need tools such as the new ladder and vaulting pole to fully explore.
From there you can read the DIY recipe, which will add it to the DIY Recipe app on your Nook Phone. You only have to read a DIY recipe once and you'll know it forever.
You can also check your DIY recipe collection, along with the collection of materials each tool or piece of furniture required to craft the piece of furniture.
Now all you have to do is collect the materials required for your piece of furniture and use the nearest DIY workbench to create your latest masterpiece.
Hopefully this will help you build the island of your dreams!