Just started playing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and need some tips on setting up the best campsite and making more animal friends? We’ve put together a beginner’s guide to playing the first 20 levels including info on how to get new clothes, friend powder, rare items, use market boxes and more secret tricks, here.
With over 15 million downloads in the first week, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has taken mobile devices by storm, with everyone from my grandmother to supermodel Chrissy Teigen jumping on the bandwagon. Though Nintendo has produced a number of Animal Crossing games for the 3DS and Wii systems, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is the first mobile iteration of the series. If you happened to pick up Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp over the holidays but are having a little trouble figuring out where to find things or how everything works, we’ve put together a beginner’s guide to the game that will take you through setting up a campground, attracting new animal friends, finding rare items, getting more clothing and other things that may be getting you tripped up. This guide is geared towards players below level 20 and will hopefully put you on the right track if you are struggling to find materials, attract new friends or get animals to come to your campsite.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Beginner’s Guide Part 1: Setting Up Camp
What do KK Slider’s questions mean? At the start of the game, players are greeted by KK Slider, a guitar-strumming doggie who asks you what your ideal vacation would look like, and you are given a few ways of responding. While in other Animal Crossing games, the way you answered KK’s questions had meaning and often affected the appearance of your character. In Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp the question has less significance, in that it will simply determine which kind of campsite you are shown first. When you go to speak with Isabelle, however, you’ll be given the option to choose from four campsite themes: Sporty, Cool, Cute or Natural.
Which campsite theme is best? The honest answer here is whichever one you like best. All choosing a campsite theme does is sets you up with some free furniture of that theme in the beginning and determine which animal you will friend first. During the game you will be trying to friend various animals who prefer different campsite themes. In order to attract them, you place furniture and amenities in the theme they prefer. Even if you pick one theme to start with, you will be crafting items in every theme along the way so your starter campground theme has little bearing. Since there are more Cute and Sporty animals in the game than Cool or Natural, it may be a slight advantage to start with one of these campsites.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Beginner’s Guide Part 2: Secret Tips For Crafting, Gathering Rare Items, Leveling Up And More
Tip #1 - Understand You Goal
Once you’ve set up camp, you’ll meet Isabelle who will inform you that you are now the manager of the Animal Crossing campground. Your main goal is to attract as many animals as you can to your campground (there are currently 40 in the game). To get you on the right track Isabelle will send you out to one of four locations on the map: Sunburst Island, Saltwater Shores, Breezy Hollow or Lost Lure Creek. These four locations are all similar in that they are places to collect resources, find new friends and animals. You will meet your first animal friend there and be shown how to gathering items, fulfilling requests, build relationships and craftings items, all things you will continually do on your mission to host all 40 of the Animal Crossing characters.
Tip #2 - Constantly Loop Through Friendship Building, Resource Gathering And Crafting
Since your primary goal in the game is to host every animal in the game at your camp, you need to understand how you attract them in the first place. Before an animal will visit your camp you need to fulfill two specific requirements: minimum friendship level and furniture needs. You can find out an animal's requirements by going to the Contacts tab and tapping on an animal on your list.
During the tutorial you are taught the basics of gathering, crafting and relationship building and honestly, these are the meat of the game. The secret to advancing quickly in the game is to always be rotating through these skills you learned. Always have items being crafted in the background while you gather resources and chat with animals. More detailed tips for each of these tasks can be found below.
Secrets Tips For Increasing Animal Friendship Levels
In order to raise friendship levels with animals in the game you must interact with them in one of two ways: chat with them or fulfill their requests. If there is a specific animal you are focused on hosting at your camp, find where he or she is hanging out at on the map and go there. Tap on the animal to chat. If there are any conversations options that are RED, these are the ones you should choose first. These options mean you either have a resource the animal wants or the conversation topic is of interest. Tapping on these items will always add points to the relationship. When you’ve accumulated enough points, the relationship will level up. Leveling up friendships is good not only for hosting an animal at your campsite but also for getting you valuable resources you will need to craft new items and amenities. You will also increase your manager level by leveling up animal friendships.
What If An Animal Requests An Item I Don’t Have? Animal requests are always things you can forage for on the map. Below we’ve shown a listing of items you can find at each location. You start with 100 slots for items you gather so initially you need to look for every resource you can at each location you visit. If you feel like you’ve found too many of a specific item, you can check your inventory in the Items tab and avoid picking those up for a while. Having plenty of items in your storage is a good thing as you’ll be able to fill animal requests more quickly and more often.
How Do I Get Rare Items? Early on most animals won’t request a rare item from you but if you find yourself in need of one, these are usually best gotten by using honey or fishing nets. These items will cost you leaf tickets so use them only if you absolutely need to. You will sometimes capture a rare item without these tools but they are few and far between. Another option is to check out the Market Boxes of other players you encounter in the game.
What If I Want To Fulfill More Requests Than An Animal Has? If you are trying to level your friendship quite a bit with that animal you may want to fulfill a lot of requests. Unfortunately, after fulfilling three, you have to take a break before you can do more or use a request card. Using a request ticket will allow you to fulfill another set of three requests.
How To Get Request Tickets - Request tickets are usually gotten by completing certain stretch goals. You will get a set of six of them after chatting with your first animal.
How To Use Request Tickets - To use request tickets on animals, try to talk to them first, then select the option that asks what they want or if they need anything. The option to use a request ticket should come up.
Secret Tips For Crafting Items That Attract Animals Your Camp
Once you have built your relationship with an animal to the minimum level, you will see an option in the chat to invite them to your campground. At that time the animal will tell you its furniture requirements before he will visit. You can also access these in the Contacts tab by tapping on the animal. As soon as you meet a new animal you should immediately begin working on the furniture he or she likes. You will probably want to unlock 3 crafting areas with Leaf tickets so you can craft more items at once. More specific tips for crafting can be found below:
Focus On One Animal At A Time - After hosting your first animal, several more will be unlocked at once. While building relationships with all of them is a good idea, focus on crafting items for just one animal at a time. Crafting takes time, materials and bells and you want those items to be most effective so work on everything needed to host one animal at a time first.
How To Get Crafting Materials - The main crafting materials you will initially use are wood, paper, cotton, steel and friendship powder. There are several ways to get these materials.
Complete Timed And Stretch Goals - these are mini-objectives you can fulfill to get resources. You can find these by tapping on the Isabelle animal icon on the upper right-hand side of the main screen.
Increase Your Manager Level - when your manager level increases you get
Raise Relationship Levels With Animals - another way to get materials for crafting is to build your relationships with the animals you know. When your relationship levels up, you will receive different rewards depending on which animal it is. The reward will usually include crafting resources, amenity theme essences, and bells. If you are looking for a particular resource like cotton or steel, you can see which animal drops these by consulting our complete animal list, here.
How Do You Get Friendship Powder? Friendship powder is one resource you cannot get from increasing animal relationships. It can only be gotten by completing a set of Timed and Stretch Goals which are as follows
Give kudos to another player at his or her campsite (20x Friend Powder) 2)
Give kudos to a friend (10x Friend Powder)
What If An Animal I Want To Host Isn’t On The Map? Sometimes you’ll meet an animal along the way and the later when you want to build a relationship with him, he’s nowhere to be found. If this happens to you, you can summon that animal by using a calling card.
How To Get Calling Cards - Calling cards are mainly gotten by completing specific stretch goals. You get a set of three of them after fulfilling your first animal request
How To Use Calling Cards - To use a calling card, you need to visit a location where you gather resources that is away from your camp. Once there, go to the Contacts tab and tap on the animal you are trying to find. You will see an option to call that animal. Once you call the animal it will remain at the location for three hours so it’s a good idea to spend as much time as you can building the relationship with her and crafting her favorite items before the time runs out.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Tips Part 3: Secrets For Using Market Boxes, Building Amenities And Getting Clothing
Market Boxes
Along the way you will be introduced to market boxes but you might forget how they work. Market boxes are places where you can buy or sell resources. Here’s how to do each.
How To Sell Stuff In Market Boxes - To sell items in your market boxes, open the menu at the upper right-hand side of your main screen (three grey lines), and tap on the icon of a box with an apple in it. This will take you to your market boxes. Tap on an empty box to choose an item you want to sell. Market boxes are a great way to get rid of excess resources you’ve gathered. Just be careful to keep your prices low or the items will go unsold.
How To Buy Stuff From Market Boxes - other players have market boxes too. Anytime you encounter another player in the game there will always be an option to look at his or her market boxes. You can also check out friends’ market boxes by visiting them. You can access your friends from the main menu by tapping on the friends icon.
Amenities
Amenities aren’t super important to early gameplay but by the time you reach manager levels 5-8 you’ll want to start building some. Amenities are outdoor structures that are kind of like furniture in that they belong to particular themes. Amenities serve to raise the friendship levels of animals at your camp who favor an amenity’s particular theme. You can only have one of these on your campground at a given time until you reach level 10, when a second slot unlocks. You can craft amenities you’ve unlocked from the crafting tab under the icon with a tent on it.
Clothing
What Animal Crossing game would be complete without the ability to customize? In Animal Crossing, clothing is the primary means of customizing your character. In the beginning of the game you are given a basic set of clothing but if you want something different, there are a few ways you get new clothes.
How To Get More Clothes
Visit the Market Place - You can find the Market Place on the map. There, the Able Sisters will have three items for sale at a given time. If you don’t like what you see, come back a few hours later when the rotation changes.
Increase Friendship Levels - by increasing Friendship levels with different characters, you can unlock new clothing items. You can see the clothing items each friend unlocks, here.
How To Change Your Clothes - if you aren’t sure how to access your new clothes in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, this can be done by visiting the Items tab at the bottom of the main screen and tapping on the clothing icon. Tap on the item you like and then tap the “wear” button to put it on. To take off a clothing item, tap on it and choose “Take Off.”
