Animal Crossing leaks reveal cooking, farming may come to New Horizons
An extensive new data-mine has seemingly confirmed that several exciting new mechanics will be added to the game sometime soon.
The steps to unlock a Nook's Cranny upgrade in Animal Crossing: New Horizons were uncovered in a data mine last week, but an even bigger leak from the same data-miner on Sunday hints at a series of delicious updates to the game that could overhaul how food works very soon. If true, then upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons updates and events could reshape and overhaul all sorts of things from the size and scope of Blathers' museum to how players can interact with water.
This massive data-mine comes from Ninji, a leaker who has focused on data-mining the code of Animal Crossing: New Horizons since it was released on March 20. They revealed several features embedded within the game's code in a massive Twitter thread on Sunday, April 19. Some of the most interesting items he discovered reference seafood, farming for vegetables, and a new "dish" item type.
"Vegetables that you can grow and pick: tomato, wheat, sugar cane, potato, carrot, pumpkin," Ninji wrote in one tweet. He also notes that the 1.0.0 version of the game "has a file for a 'Seafood' Critterpedia page that’s supposed to contain 33 items." This may or may not be connected to a returning diving mechanic: "Diving will allow you to obtain fish (a different set from fishing ofc) and seaweed." Between edible crops, a "seafood" section, and the introduction of "dishes" as a new type of item, cooking seems like a safe bet.
Plenty of 'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' players already have fully stocked kitchens ready to go.
Yet another massive part of the update involves major upgrades to Blathers' museum. Data for separate museum shop and museum cafe can are also in Animal Crossing: New Horizons' code, giving previous in-game teases about Brewster's return more weight. The cafe will even incorporate Gyroids, an Animal Crossing staple that was absent from New Horizons at launch. There's also "art" item type that will presumably be incorporated into two new museum upgrades.
The Inverse Analysis — While leaks should usually be taken with a grain of salt, data-mines like this come straight from the code of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Even though Ninji made it clear that a lot of this can be added or taken out in future updates, it's safe to expect a majority of this to be added in the near future. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was missing some key series staples at release, and it's now clear that Nintendo plans to add those things to the game over time.
Still, this data-mine also contains new interesting elements. Mechanics like farming have never been explored thoroughly in the Animal Crossing series. The earliest possible point in time that we might see some of these things added to the game would be in the upcoming 1.1.5 update and/or the Earth Day event that will take place on April 22.
This data mine proves Animal Crossing fans shouldn't give up on New Horizons just yet because there are a whole lot of updates left to look forward to in 2020.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for Nintendo Switch.
