One of the most crucial aspects of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ gameplay is crafting. It would be genuinely impossible to play the game without it. However, that begs the question: of all the DIY items out there, which ones are the best? And by extension, how do you get them?
11. Simple Wooden Fence
This DIY recipe is for a wooden fence. There’s a variety of fences in New Horizons, and they have a few uses. While they can’t be used inside, they can be great as decor, part of a forced perspective illusion, or guide rails for a path. The limit is your own creativity. However, this fence,in particular, is the best of all the fences because of how easy it is to acquire, its simple style, and the minimal materials required.
Versatile
Fences can’t be used inside, but they can be used for a lot. Plenty of people will use fences to create boundaries, like for yards around their houses.
Others have created mazes out of them. Plus, they are one of the few fences that are color customizable, and their simple style makes them easy to use in all sorts of situations.
Materials
The only thing this fence requires is 6 pieces of softwood per set. Not only is this not a lot, but softwood is the most commonly found type of wood in New Horizons. It’s so common that many online forums joke about it when hunting down hardwood or normal wood pieces.
This means that players building this fence won’t have to worry about running low on a crucial material. In fact, you might even be grateful to finally find a use for it.
Easy to Get
The simple wooden fence DIY is one of the first few DIYs available to the player upon unlocking fences. This means you won’t have to spend days or weeks or even months hunting it down or scraping together valuable items to trade for this recipe online. It can be found in the Nook Stop for only 1,000 miles!
For more information on how to find this DIY:
10. Glow-in-the-Dark Stickers
This item was released during the 2.0 update. Glow-in-the-dark stickers can’t be used outside, but they’re still incredibly useful since they can be customized to take on different shapes.
This includes custom designs, which can be used to make illusions or even huge murals. This is really useful, especially for how easy it is to make.
Versatile
Glow-in-the-dark stickers can be used for all sorts of things, from just accentuating the interior of the home, to making an entirely different wall out of custom designs. Plenty of images of players using them to create fake wall-to-floor windows or French doors in their homes have gone viral since the 2.0 update dropped.
This makes it a great item for anyone, regardless of the theme of their house or island or even their art skills. Players can just download some designs from the custom design portal as long as they have Nintendo Online.
Simple Materials
These stickers only take 5 pieces of glowing moss. This is a very small amount, and also very easy to get, assuming you have the Paradise Planning DLC.
The Paradise Planning resort has glowing moss and vines near the hospital, which will respawn daily. However, for those who do not have this DLC, the only ways to access this material is to either arrive by happenstance at a Kapp’n island with glowing moss or to trade for it online with other players.
Cute
While some might argue that this shouldn’t count as a category, I beg to differ. I think it’s incredibly important for furniture to look good, especially for what is mostly a decorating game.
As a normal item, the glow-in-the-dark stickers have several forms that they can come in using the customization kits. Most of these, such as music notes or hearts, are very cute accents to any room.
For more information on glow-in-the-dark stickers, try these:
Glow-in-the-Dark Stickers Wiki
9. Organic Bread
This is another recipe that came in the 2.0 update. However, this is the first item on our list that’s actually food!
Organic bread is part of one of the first batches of cooking recipes players receive once they unlock cooking in New Horizons. It’s cute and has multiple uses!
Gain Strength
New Horizons implemented a new feature in the Animal Crossing franchise, which is for players to gain strength whenever they eat or drink things. This allows players to do things like shovel up trees to put in their pockets or destroy pesky rocks with a single shovel swing. Players can gain up to 10 strength points at a time before needing to expel them to gain more.
Eating organic bread gives you 5 strength points in one go, which is really useful compared to the free alternative of raw fruits and vegetables, which give only 1 per fruit or vegetable. So the next time you need to rearrange some trees, consider taking two servings of organic bread instead of ten coconuts!
A Nice Accent Piece
Food doesn’t just count as, well, food. It can be placed in-world as well, like a furniture item. Since they don’t spoil or become inedible, and they look much larger than hand-held drinks or fake food items, they make for great decoration.
Whether it’s for your bakery build or a picnic, or even to liven up a living room, food like organic bread is a great option. Especially if you’re sick of plucked flowers and potted plants!
A Housewarming Gift
Like plenty of items, cooked food can be given to villagers on your island as long as they’ve been there for at least a few days. The length of time is shorter if you speak to them regularly, but generally, three days is what it takes to be able to give gifts to villagers.
Gift-giving is a great way to become closer to your neighbors, which comes with benefits such as letters with gifts, having them drop by your house to spend time with you, and even getting their picture- the ultimate reward of friendship in New Horizons. Different personalities have different tastes, but usually, gifts like food do well across the board- and that’s especially true with cooked food.
Easy to Make
The recipe for organic bread calls for 3 whole-wheat flour portions, which isn’t much. Especially considering each batch of whole-wheat flour comes with 10.
And since whole-wheat flour is the only ingredient for organic bread, this makes it an incredibly easy recipe, both for gathering and making the ingredients. Whole-wheat in itself only takes 5 wheat portions, just like normal flour, so this is truly a simple recipe for such a useful item.
Easy to Get
As mentioned before, the organic bread recipe comes in one of the first batches of recipes you get when you first unlock cooking. After unlocking cooking, just go to Nook’s Cranny to the display case to the right and scroll to find “Basic Cooking Recipes”.
Purchasing this will give players a set of recipes right from the start, including both whole-wheat flour and organic bread. Happy cooking!
For more information on this DIY:
8. Lily Record Player
Next on this list is the lily record player. This allows players to play any of K.K. Slider’s music that they’ve gained either through listening to him play or buying them with Nook Shopping, at all hours of the day. This adorable music player isn’t the easiest to make, but it’s still easy and definitely the most useful.
Cute
This is easily the cutest music player a beginning New Horizons player could ever make. And as a decorating game, cuteness and overall aesthetic appeal is definitely a priority. While it might not be everyone’s favorite, it’s undeniably a good one.
Plays and Stores Songs
As a music player, any and all music you collect can be added to it and played whenever, wherever you want. Music- made exclusively by the only musician, K.K. Slider- can be either bought through the Nook Shopping catalog or received for free by K.K. himself after watching him play live on Saturday evenings.
And don’t worry- no matter how many new music players you buy, they all have access to the same set of music you have, as long as it’s been added to at least one music player. And who doesn’t like music?
Easy to Make
All it takes to make a lily record player is 3 pieces of wood, 3 iron nuggets, and 5 white lilies. This is a bit more than the shell speaker, but it’s definitely no sweat. Lilies can be bought either at Nook’s Cranny or from Leif, who will come to players’ islands once every few weeks with a new rotation of plants.
After three days, your lilies will be fully grown and ready to pluck, which can be sped up with time travel. Just collect, craft, and marvel at your new lily record player!
Versatile
As mentioned, the shell speaker is easier to make. However, the lily record player is definitely the best DIY record player, because to be honest, the shell speaker isn’t as cute. It’s much more of a niche style than the lily record player.
A giant shell, music player or not, isn’t as easy to blend into a room or cafe as a lily-shaped one. Giant shells are more associated with beaches or tropical-themed places, whereas flower-shaped or patterned things are more commonly used in all sorts of places, making the lily record player by far the more versatile item, and therefore more useful.
7. Fish Bait
Fish bait is one of the first DIY recipes a player usually gets when they start playing. In a way, this also makes it one of the easiest to get. This plus their extreme usefulness makes them one of the best DIY recipes, earning them their place on this list.
Easy to Get
The fish bait DIY recipe is super easy to get. All you need to do is go to any part of your beach with a shovel, then walk around until you see a tiny dark spot, and then a stream of water squirt out of the sand.
Take your shovel and dig at that exact spot. This will give you a manila clam, the ingredient for the fish bait. Digging up the clam will give your character the idea to use it to make fish bait, which unlocks the recipe.
Simple Materials
Fish bait only requires one manila clam per portion. This is great since manila clams are also both free and easy to find.
Just by wandering your beaches, you can collect pocketfuls of manila clams- just be sure to have either a strong shovel or a lot of them! After that, just get to crafting!
Helps You Catch (Rare) Fish
This fish bait is, as the name suggests, for baiting fish. If you’re ever having a hard time finding or successfully catching fish, this is a great option for you. Just go to any body of water you can fish in, open the bag to release the bait, and watch as a fish immediately appears!
Using bait doesn’t just attract fish, though. It has a decent likelihood of attracting rare fish, which is helpful for anyone from the bell collectors to the museum completionists.
Can’t Be Bought
While some DIY items can either also be bought in stores or have alternatives that can be bought in stores, fish bait is a DIY recipe exclusive. This makes the recipe itself that much more important. The only way to get fish bait is to make it yourself!
More about this DIY:
Fish Bait Wiki
6. Medicine
Bee or wasp stings are a long-running scourge for players in the Animal Crossing franchise. For as long as Animal Crossing has existed, so have the dreaded wasps.
Shaking trees without fruits in them runs the risk of earning several things: furniture, branches, seasonal materials, nothing, and the worst of them all, a wasp nest. There’s only one in-game remedy for the poor fellows who can’t outrun the wasps: medicine.
Easy to Make
Medicine only requires two things: a wasp nest, and 3 clumps of weeds. Considering the situation, wasp nests are usually immediately at your disposal. Weeds overrun the island when you first begin the game, and consistently pop up afterward, threatening to spread and run rampant (as weeds do) unless the player plucks them regularly.
This makes medicine super easy to make since as long as you haven’t sold all of your weeds, you should be able to make at least one of these. If not, going to a Nook Mile island could also work, since beginners are given a free ticket when they begin the game.
Easy to Get
All a player needs to do to get this recipe is to get stung by a bee, then go speak to any villager. The villager will provide the poor player with this DIY. However, they will only do this once per player- so be sure not to lose it, since it’s not confirmed if you will get another one if you don’t learn the recipe.
More Than Just Wasps
Medicine takes away the wasp sting of your unfortunate character. However, that’s actually not the only use it has. Occasionally, villagers will fall victim to a cold and will be trapped and miserable in their homes for at least a day.
When this happens, giving them medicine will cure them. On top of that, the grateful villager will give the player a gift out of thanks, and this will also bring them closer as friends, making this a more appealing alternative to just ignoring the poor villager and making them wait out the cold.
Free Alternative
While medicine can be bought at the store for just 400 bells, that’s still 400 more bells than 0. Which is what making medicine with this DIY would cost.
And considering how often players- especially beginner players- get stung by these wasps, those 400 bells could add up quickly, making this a good investment. Especially for those that don’t necessarily have spare bells just lying around.
For more information on medicine, try these:
5. Sugar
Sugar is another recipe that was introduced in the 2.0 update. As a cooking ingredient, it’s extremely useful because of how often it’s used in all the other food DIYs. It comes in the very first batch of cooking recipes you get after unlocking cooking.
Easy to Get
All you need to do to get this recipe is to unlock cooking. This can be done by going to the Nook Stop at Resident Services and claiming the “Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+” reward from the Nook Miles Redemption category. It costs 3,000 miles to unlock, which is easy to achieve, especially for beginning players who get rewarded sometimes just for playing the game.
Easy to Make
All it takes to make sugar is 5 pieces of sugarcane. As long as you have sugarcane, which can be received by either buying seeds from Leif or stumbling upon them on an island Kapp’n sends you to, you can make sugar.
The sugar also comes in 10 portions each time, which is a lot- especially since none of the recipes call for more than 2 portions. However, cooking food can only be done on stoves or sinks, not DIY benches- which isn’t a huge obstacle, since not only can cooking stations be made easily, but many of them are sold at very low prices.
A Crucial Ingredient
There are two types of sugar in New Horizons: this sugar (known as just sugar) and brown sugar. Between the two, “normal” sugar is used the most, being utilized in 34 of the 141 new cooking recipes.
Brown sugar, on the other hand, is only used for 2. This makes sugar the second-most used cooking ingredient besides flour, which makes it very important for anyone interested in cooking.
More about the sugar DIY:
4. Flour
Also released in the 2.0 update, flour is the most important cooking DIY ingredient. It’s simple, easy, and almost impossible to cook without. It comes with sugar in the first batch of DIY recipes you receive after unlocking cooking.
Easy to Get
All you need to do to get flour is the exact same steps as sugar. After saving up 3,000 miles, go to Resident Services and access the Nook Stop on the right.
Click on “Nook Miles Redemption”, then scroll until you find “Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+” and select it. It will immediately teach you several DIYs, one of which will be flour.
Easy to Make
All it takes is 5 pieces of wheat to make 10 portions of flour. This is beyond useful, especially for the amount of flour you’ll need to make all the recipes in New Horizons. Like all other special plants and vegetables, wheat can either be bought from Leif or found on Kapp’n islands.
Very Useful
Out of 141 cooking recipes available in New Horizons, 72 of them require flour. In total, 155 portions of flour are needed to make each item once. This makes flour the singular most important cooking ingredient in all of New Horizons, even more than whole-wheat flour, which is needed for organic bread.
In fact, the alternative for organic bread would be bread, which is made with flour instead of whole-wheat flour. However, since the bread recipe is much harder to get than the organic bread recipe , it is not on this list.
For more about the flour DIY, try these:
3. Wooden Full-Length Mirror
Breaching the top 3 is the wooden full-length mirror. This takes third place in a close call against the wooden tabletop mirror. Its biggest edge against such a similar item is its versatile nature.
Easy to Get
The wooden full-length mirror is one of two possible first-ever DIY recipes players can get from the beach. The other option is the wooden tabletop mirror.
This makes it very easy to get since all players need to do is walk along the shoreline until they find a bottle on the floor. Picking it up and opening it will give them the DIY.
Easy to Make
All it takes to make the wooden full-length mirror is 1 iron nugget and 5 pieces of wood. The wooden tabletop mirror takes less, but this is still a very simple and easy recipe for players who are starting out and short on materials. Depending on luck, you might be able to collect this amount after just axing 2 trees and hitting 1 rock.
Versatile
This is what ultimately makes the wooden full-length mirror the best mirror, even compared to the tabletop mirror. Most tables are very small, especially ones used for bedrooms, making surface space very limited.
This means players try to use as little of it as possible, making a full-length mirror a better option than the tabletop mirror, since it can be placed on the floor. Plus, the style of the full-length mirror is much more adaptable for different themes and aesthetics, ultimately making it the best choice.
Crucial to Gameplay
Mirrors are the only way players can change their hair, eyes, skin, nose, and mouth. This makes mirrors extremely important to gameplay, especially since the game doesn’t provide them with free alternatives, unlike other items.
For example, clothes can be changed without a dresser, making them less useful. Mirrors are the only items that serve this function. This and the simplicity of the materials is what puts the wooden full-length mirror on this list.
More on the wooden full-length mirror:
Wooden Full-Length Mirror Wiki
2. Wooden Storage Shed
Yet another DIY recipe introduced in the 2.0 update is the wooden storage shed. This one by far needs the most materials, but the cost is well worth the reward. This is especially useful for players that are still creating and designing their islands.
Incredibly Useful
The wooden storage shed allows players to access their storage outside of their homes. Previously, players could only access storage when they were inside the house. However, this storage shed is essentially a portable portal that allows them to get whatever items they want, whenever they want.
This is super useful since it means you no longer have to sprint back and forth across your island trying to get everything you need, only to forget what you needed and have to go back and forth all over again. Now you have all of your storage right in your pocket!
Simple and Versatile
While there’s an alternative to the wooden storage shed- an item simply known as the storage shed- it can only be redeemed from the Nook Stop as an item and not a recipe. Plus, the storage shed is bigger and has a much more industrial look to it, which doesn’t always fit the themes and styles of people’s islands.
The wooden storage shed, on the other hand, is half the size. It takes up only 1 square instead of 2, and is more versatile in style, allowing it to fit a wider range of aesthetics and themes.
Easy to Get
All you need for the DIY is 6,000 Nook Miles. While this is definitely much more than any other item on this list, this is not only a really useful item, but it’s also a recipe that you don’t need to hunt down. Most of the 630+ recipes can only be found by either speaking to a villager while they’re crafting or finding them in a bottle by the beach.
This makes collecting DIYs difficult since there’s only one bottle on the beach per day and only a few items a villager can give you, and both will repeat DIYs you already have, which is what often leads players to trade online instead of waiting. But since not everyone has Nintendo Online, this is a relatively easy way to get DIY recipes in comparison, especially for such a valuable item.
For more information on the wooden storage shed, try these:
1. Simple DIY Workbench
The number one ultimate, most important recipe is the simple DIY workbench! While this definitely comes as a surprise for some, it actually makes perfect, almost ridiculous sense. This is one of the first DIYs given to the player upon starting the game, and it wouldn’t be possible to play without it.
Easy to Get
As soon as players start the game, Tom Nook will give them a handful of DIY recipes to get them started. One of the first DIYs available to the player after they’ve gotten through the tutorial is the simple DIY workbench. It is genuinely impossible to go through this game without ever receiving this recipe, making it one of the easiest recipes to get in the game.
Easy to Make
All it takes to make such an important item is 5 pieces of hardwood and 1 iron nugget. You’d think it would take much more to make one of the biggest features in the game, but it’s not. And for those just starting out in New Horizons, this is definitely a lifesaver.
Super, Super, Unbelievably Useful
Of course, to craft the bench, you’d need another bench. Tom Nook provides the player with a free workbench to use during the tutorial phase that is still available to the player for the rest of the game. However, this bench can’t be moved and is inside of Resident Services for the entirety of the game.
While you technically don’t need to make another bench and can always use this one, you’ll run into the same problem as item storage: when you’re crafting literally anything, you’ll have to go running all the way to Resident Services just to make a single item. And when you’re in the building and decorating phase of your island, the last thing you’ll want to do is have to go back and forth a million times because your shovel keeps breaking, or you need to craft some furniture and then run back to put it down.
For more information about the simple DIY workbench, try these:
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