New Animal Crossing: New Horizons update fixes Bunny Day's biggest problem

Even though Animal Crossing: New Horizons was just patched on Thursday with version 1.1.2, another update was quickly released by Nintendo in the early hours of Friday, April 3. Such a quick turnaround on game updates is pretty surprising for Nintendo, but this was necessary as April's Bunny Day event had a major issue that needed to be fixed ASAP. Here's what Nintendo did to fix Bunny Day's biggest issue.

What was broken? - Patch 1.1.3 fixes an issue where Sky Eggs were not spawning for some players due to a glitch. "Fixed a bug where balloons would not fly under certain conditions," the patch notes read. It's unclear what these "conditions" were, but they had an impact on the collection of Sky Eggs.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Bunny Day event tasks players will finding a variety of eggs so they can craft lots of new furniture and clothing. Players can get eggs by doing everything from fishing to hitting the trees around their island with an ax. Sky Eggs are claimed by shooting down balloons that typically carry presents.

While it doesn't seem like an egg type such as this would cause issues, something has been going very wrong for some Animal Crossing: New Horizons players with balloons ever since the game launched on March 20. One of the game's achievements is called "It's Raining Treasure." Once players pop 300 ballons, they can claim some Nook Miles as a reward. Once a player claims the ticket, however, balloons would no longer spawn due to a bug.

Even players who didn't accept the achievements initially would still encounter the glitch after popping 300 ballons. When your game's event has an egg type that only appears with a balloon spawn and there's a progression-blocking glitch surrounding it, that's a major issue that needs to be patched out quickly.

Nintendo has thankfully been very quick in fixing this issue after it was spotted by players on Tuesday, even if it had to be done in the 1.1.3 patch instead of Thursday's 1.1.2 patch. This maintenance seemingly explains some issues players had on Thursday afternoon connecting to the server.

Bunny Day is poised to last through April 12, 2020, and you can now feel to pop balloons to your heart's content as you will no longer be encountering this frustrating bug. If you want to not encounter this glitch prepare for future events, or like playing online with friends, make sure this patch is installed before you hop on Animal Crossing: New Horizons again.

The Inverse Analysis — "Hotfixes," or quick updates to fix major game-related bugs or issues, are fairly common with online games, though we don't see them too often from Nintendo. Still, because players use Animal Crossing: New Horizons' online functionality quite often and an event with Sky Eggs directly tied to balloons is currently running, Nintendo was forced to produce a quick turnaround. This also shows just how dedicated Nintendo is to supporting Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is essential if the game continues to be so popular.