Want to upgrade your home, build new shops, and design your perfect island paradise in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Well my friend, you‘re going to need bells, and lots of them!
Bells are the primary currency used in the game, and they‘re essential for just about everything you‘ll want to accomplish on your island. But have no fear – I‘ve put together this complete guide to walk you through all the best tips and strategies for getting bells quickly in New Horizons. Just follow along below and you‘ll learn how to earn millions of free bells fast!
What are Bells and Why Do You Need Them?
For those new to the Animal Crossing series, bells are the main form of currency used on your island. They‘re represented by cute little coin purses in your inventory. You obtain them through selling items, participating in island activities, and completing tasks for Tom Nook.
But what do you actually need bells for? Well, pretty much everything in New Horizons requires bells, including:
- Paying off home loans – Each upgrade is 198,000 to 5,298,000 bells
- Constructing and moving buildings – 228,000 bells for a bridge for example
- Purchasing furniture and clothing – Individual pieces range from 100 to over 1,000,000 bells
- Buying tools, materials, and crafting recipes
- Unlocking island upgrades like terrain editing and ordinances
As you progress through the game, the costs continue to rise for unlocking new features, plots of land, buildings, and upgrades. Without a steady influx of bells, you‘ll quickly find yourself unable to proceed or really customize your island.
That‘s why learning how to efficiently earn bells is so important early on. Having those millions of bells on hand will make paying off loans, constructing ramps, and decking out your home with amazing furniture a breeze!
The Fastest Ways to Earn Bells in New Horizons
Alright, let‘s dive right into the best methods for scoring bells quickly in New Horizons:
Take Full Advantage of the Stalk Market
Hands down, fully utilizing the stalk market and turnip trading is the single most lucrative way to earn millions of bells fast. Here‘s a quick overview of how it works:
- Every Sunday morning, Daisy Mae visits your island selling turnips from 5 AM to noon.
- Prices range from 90 to 110 bells per turnip. Buy as many as you can afford!
- Check turnip prices with Timmy twice a day – prices fluctuate wildly throughout the week.
- Sell turnips when prices spike over 500 bells for huge profits!
For example, buying turnips for 100 bells and selling for 600 nets you 500 bells profit per turnip. With some luck and monitoring of prices, you can easily earn millions from a single week‘s turnip investment.
Be sure to check turnip price tracking sites to better understand price patterns and ideal buy/sell times. Storage hacks like filling your home with turnips can let you buy tens of thousands each week!
Visit Other Islands to Sell Turnips
In addition to monitoring prices on your own island, visiting friends or online strangers with premium prices is a fantastic turnip strategy.
Sites like turnip.exchange provide a way to find islands buying turnips for 500+ bells easily. Their queue system makes it simple to sell your turnips on islands with crazy high prices.
This provides a reliable way to take advantage of price spikes without having to wait for them on your own island. Just be sure to tip 10% of your profits when visiting other islands!
Craft as Many Hot Items as Possible
Checking the daily hot items at Nook‘s Cranny provides another opportunity to earn serious bells through crafting.
Hot item recipes will sell for double their normal price that day. Keep an eye out for any hot items you already know and craft as many as you can for huge profits! Furniture like the Shell Lamp and Garden Bench are regularly hot items.
You can earn over 100,000 bells on days where you know multiple hot item recipes. Craft them en masse and do continuous selling runs to maximize income!
Plant 10,000 Bell Trees
You can actually grow trees that sprout bells by burying bags of bells in the daily glowing spots on your island.
These glowing holes change location each day. Burying 10,000 bells in them grows a tree that sprouts 10,000 bell bags – so 30,000 profit!
Plant 10,000 bell trees along frequently used paths to easily collect your 30k each day. This provides a totally passive way to earn bells over time.
Farm Both Foreign Fruit and Perfect Fruit Varieties
Growing and selling non-native fruits is an easy way to earn extra bells each day:
- Your native fruit sells for 100 bells each
- Foreign fruit sells for 500 bells each
- Perfect fruit sells for 600 bells each!
Be sure to plant various fruit types and aim to crossbreed hybrid perfect fruits. You can quickly earn 20,000+ bells per day harvesting and selling your bountiful orchards.
Fish, Catch Bugs, and Dive for the Most Valuable Critters
Fishing, bug catching, and diving provide a reliable daily source of bells by targeting the most lucrative species.
A few of the top earners include:
- Bugs: Tarantula (8,000 bells), Horned Hercules (8,000 bells), Golden Stag (12,000 bells)
- Fish: Blue Marlin (10,000 bells), Tuna (7,000 bells), Coelacanth (15,000 bells)
- Sea Creatures: Gigas Giant Clam (15,000 bells), Chambered Nautilus (4,500 bells)
You can easily earn 20,000 to 30,000+ bells per day by selectively catching and selling the most expensive creatures during peak spawn times.
Unlock and Maximize the Use of Nook Miles
After upgrading Resident Services, you can begin redeeming your earned Nook Miles for super handy Bell Vouchers.
These vouchers can be sold to the Nooklings for 3,000 bells each – not bad for just completing some milestone goals!
Prioritize completing high-value Nook Miles+ goals first each day to quickly accrue Miles. Then cash those suckers in for easy bells. This adds a nice passive supplement to your income.
Check the Beach for Profitable Finds
Be sure to comb your entire beachfront at least once a day to uncover valuable finds:
- Message bottles containing DIY recipes that may be hot items
- Furniture bottles with items worth 1,000 to 10,000+ bells
- Star fragments used for crafting special celeste recipes
- Random shells and corals worth up to 1,000 bells each
This only takes a few minutes and can easily net you 10,000 to 30,000 extra bells per day!
Other Reliable Bell Earning Methods
Beyond the prime money making methods already covered, here are some other great ways to bring in the bells:
- Sell any extra materials – Crafting materials, wood, minerals, shells, etc all sell for good money!
- Complete requests and tasks for animal villagers – They‘ll often reward you with bells and rare items.
- Pop every balloon you see – You‘ll get crafting materials, furniture, and bell bags!
- Check behind every rock – Rocks spawn bells and other hidden goodies daily.
- Harvest and sell all fruit – Even common fruit adds up quickly in bulk.
- Sell unwanted furniture, clothes, etc – Tap into the twins and Able Sisters as often as possible.
- Wait for occasional bell-earning events – These pop up randomly and provide big payouts!
- Check the cabinet at Nook‘s Cranny – New high-value recipes appear daily.
How Many Bells Can You Earn from Each Method?
To give you a better idea of the income potential with each of these strategies, here‘s a quick overview of approximate bell amounts:
Method | Avg. Bells Earned |
---|---|
Stalk market | 200,000 – 2 million |
10,000 bell tree | 30,000 |
Hot item crafting | 15,000 – 150,000 |
Nook Miles vouchers | 3,000 – 10,000 |
Rare beetle | 6,000 – 12,000 |
Non-native fruit | 1,000 – 10,000 |
Money rock | 16,000 |
Daily creature catching | 10,000 – 30,000 |
Message bottles | 1,000 – 15,000 |
Furniture bottle | 2,000 – 10,000 |
As you can see, fully utilizing the stalk market provides the highest returns by far. But by combining all these methods each day, you can easily earn 500,000+ bells daily.
And don‘t forget, this is all profit coming totally free of charge on your island! Now let‘s look at what you can do with all those millions of bells.
How to Spend Your Bells Wisely
Once you‘ve built up your savings using these tips, here are some of the best ways to invest your riches:
- Paying off home loan upgrades
- Moving and building new facilities
- Terraforming and changing the landscape
- Purchasing hot item DIY recipes
- Decorating your home with new furniture
- Filling your catalog by buying items
- Unlocking stores like the Able Sisters shop
- Constructing bridges, inclines, and infrastructure
I recommend initially focusing on upgrading your home fully before anything else. This expands your storage and decorating capabilities early on.
From there, shift your bells towards fleshing out your island with new buildings, features, and scenery. Slowly develop your island layout and add new shops, amenities, yards, gardens, and more!
How to Earn 1 Million Bells in Under 7 Days
Let‘s walk through an example week-long routine to take you from 0 to 1 million bells:
Day 1
- Farm your island for fruit, shells, fish, etc and sell everything! (100,000 bells)
Day 2
- Craft and sell as much hot item furniture as possible. (150,000 bells)
Day 3
- Buy as many turnips from Daisy as your wallet allows. (invest ~300,000 bells)
Day 4
- Check turnip prices twice and sell if there‘s a high afternoon spike. (500,000 profit)
Day 5
- Populate your beaches with sea creatures and rare fish to sell. (200,000 bells)
Day 6
- Harvest perfect fruit to sell and redeem Nook Miles for vouchers. (100,000 bells)
Day 7
- Cash in any remaining turnips and crafted hot items. Craft additional if needed.
Sticking to this schedule of maximizing every lucrative activity and you can easily amass over 1 million bells in just one week! Now just repeat the process each week to build your fortune.
Final Bell Making Tips and Strategies
Here are some final pro tips to help maximize your profits:
- Always look for premium buy prices over 150 bells for fish/bugs.
- Check turnip sites for 600+ buy prices and partner with friends to find good prices.
- Plant 99k trees along frequently used paths to easily collect bags.
- Harvest entire orchards in one go and mass sell to reduce trips.
- Convert Nook Miles to bells routinely to supplement income.
- Only sell rare fish/bugs to Flick and CJ for huge bonus payments.
- Store turnips everywhere early on – house, beaches, etc to buy thousands.
- Check turnip price history charts to learn ideal buy/sell windows.
- Craft the maximum your inventory allows of hot items to reduce crafting cycles.
- Check the beach throughout the day as new shells and bottles wash ashore.
Well, that about covers all my tips for mastering the many bell earning methods in Animal Crossing: New Horizons! Follow this advice and you‘ll have no problem funding all your island projects and desires.
I hope you found this guide helpful. Good luck, have fun, and happy bell hunting! See you on the islands 🙂