Animal Crossing data-mine reveals a major upgrade for Nook's Cranny

Most Animal Crossing: New Horizons players are probably already looking forward to the Earth Day event coming on April 22, but another surprising upgrade before then should hit most players' islands before that in the form of a potential upgrade to Nook's Cranny. A data-mine earlier this week revealed that a major upgrade for Timmy and Tommy's shop should arrive sometime very soon, and it may have been confirmed by time travel antics already.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons data-miner Ninji shared the specific requirements for the Nook's Cranny over Twitter on Sunday, and they seemingly indicate that most players will reach this milestone very soon.

For anyone hoping to expand their island's primary shop, be sure to meet the following three requirements within the next week:

30 days since the shop was built — Players will have to spend about a month on their Animal Crossing: New Horizons island before they can upgrade Nook's Cranny. No player will have met this requirement yet without using time-travel, but we are coming up on Animal Crossing: New Horizons' one month anniversary on April 20. Exactly 30 days, however, will fall on Sunday, April 19. After that point, this upgrade should become prevalent with most players who haven't used time travel at all, but it's dependent upon precisely when players first established Nook's Cranny.

For most players, reaching that milestone probably took several days, so they won't complete this requirement until several days later.

At least 200,000 Bells in buy+sell transactions combined — If you want Nook's Cranny to be upgraded, you'll have to spend a lot of money at the store as well or sell a lot of things there. Spending this many Bells may be a tall task for casual players but there are some easy ways to grind for money, like farming tarantulas or taking advantage of the Stalk Market. It's unclear whether or not other players' purchases or sales count towards this total, but it might be a good time to start making the high-value hot items of the day to increase the overall value of your transactions.

Mabel must have visited — While the Able Sisters store doesn't have to be open for this Nook's Cranny upgrade to take place, Mabel must have visited your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. She should appear in Nook's Cranny sometime after the shop is built, so you should meet her if you progress through the game regularly. On most islands, Mabel probably already opened up her own shop on the island.

Players who stick with Animal Crossing: New Horizons are bound to complete all three of these prerequisites in a month anyway, so it's understandable while the developers would place an upgrade behind tasks like these. The requirements are also reportedly similar to previous games in the franchise.

Nook's Cranny is unlocked fairly early on after Tommy tasks the playing with gathering wood and other supplies. so they can build the shop. Once it's open, Nook's Cranny provides a wide variety of items to the player, and its size and selection will only grow with this upgrade.

The Inverse Analysis: While this Nook's Cranny upgrade was going to be a surprise for players who stuck with the game for a month, this data-mine gives us an idea of what exactly we need to in order to ensure that we get the upgrade. The one month anniversary of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is coming up next Monday, so you should start seeing this upgrade pop up around then. You still have some time to meet the other requirements if you haven't yet, so get shopping!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for Nintendo Switch.