How to recruit new villagers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can get new villagers to move into their islands (Image via TechCrunch)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can get new villagers to move into their islands (Image via TechCrunch)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has over 397 villagers for players to interact and explore with in the game. Each of these villagers possesses a unique appearance type, along with one of eight different personality types assigned to New Horizons villagers. Naturally, due to their various differences, New Horizons players have a number of villagers who they prefer over others. Subsequently, they prefer that these favored villagers reside on their island as well.

Currently, Animal Crossing allows players to host ten villagers on their island as residents. However, players will have to invite these villagers to achieve this. Here is how they can do so.


Ways to invite Animal Crossing villagers to live on players' New Horizons islands

Animal Crossing: New Horizons players have to invite villagers to live on their islands. As shown below, there are a number of ways to make this happen.

Talk to villagers at the campsite

Players will often find villagers visiting them at random times on their island campsite. Villagers who appear at their campsite are generally personality types that are not too frequent on their island.

If any of the villagers on the campsite appeal to the player, they can strike up a conversation with the villager and convince them to move in. If the villager agrees to move in, they will be ready with their boxes within a day or two to come live on the player's island.

Get villagers from friends' islands

Very often, New Horizons players can also get villagers from fellow Animal Crossing players' islands. This can be done by visiting the player's island once they announce that they have a certain villager waiting in boxes.

In that case, when players encounter that villager on their friend's island, they can speak with them to try and convince them to move to their island instead. More often than not, the villager will be more than ready to shift over to the player's island and will appear there the very next day.

Go on mystery island tours

This is also one of the most common ways in which players acquire new villagers for their island in New Horizons. Players simply have to go on mystery island tours via Dodo Airlines or boat rides with Kapp'n.

On these mystery island tours, they may chance upon a bunch of different villagers. If they come across a villager of their choice, they can start a conversation with them, by the end of which they must aim to convince them to move to their island.

Use Amiibo cards at the Nook Stop

This is one of the easiest ways to get a villager of your choice to reside on your New Horizons island. Players can scan their amiibo cards at the Nook Stop terminal to invite villagers to live on their island.

The next day itself, players will see the villager appear at their campsite with their boxes, ready to move in.


These are some of the most common ways through which players invite villagers to reside on their islands. However, before going on to invite villagers to live on their islands, players must ensure that they have enough space to host the villager. Obviously, if they already have ten resident villagers on their island, the game will not allow them to host any more.

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