Today we are breaking down five shops or building upgrades we could see in future updates.
We are now a couple of weeks into 2021, and are pretty up to date when it comes to new content in New Horizons. The most recent update was back in November which introduced the latest holidays such as Turkey Day and Toy Day, new seasonal ACNH items like the New Year’s items, , new features like the new reactions and dream suite randomizer, and things like that. Now the next big ACNH January update is scheduled for sometime in late January and so far all we really know is that Pave will return to the franchise and will most likely bring with him the festival event.
Of course as with every seasonal update scene since the launch of New Horizons, there’s a good chance this character and the holiday won’t be the only new additions to the game, we’ll most likely see a whole bunch of new content, new holidays, new characters, and new features. Just as a recap for some of the new players out there, some of the most notable features we’ve seen added to the game since last March include new holidays such as Museum Day, May Day and Wedding Season, new characters such as leaf and galivara, and new features like swimming and diving, reactions and the art gallery. Following this trend and the fact Nintendo has openly said on several occasions that New Horizons will be receiving updates for the next few years, it’s not unreasonable to assume some of these updates will extend to new buildings shops or upgrades especially seems ACNH currently has far less than previous games in the Animal Crossing series. Now currently the only building upgrade we’ve really seen is to the museum which added a whole new area for the artwork and even change the outside of the museum too, but there’s plenty of scope to bring back even more upgrades to the island. With this in mind, here are five shop and shop upgrades we could see in the future.
1. Garden Shop
Now one of the special characters who believe it or not wasn’t actually in the game at launch was Leaf who now randomly stops by the plaza to sell bush starts and flower seeds. He runs the pop-up garden shop and like other visiting characters randomly appears at least once every two weeks or so. In past games, Leaf actually has his very own garden shop that like Nooks Cranny, for example was a permanent shop that you could visit every day. So just like how Mabel was only a visiting character at the start of the game, it’s likely at some point Leif could get a building of his own and become a permanent resident of the Animal Crossing New Horizons island.
2. Cafe
There’s no surprise that a cafe or more specifically the roost is on this list. The roost is a coffee house run by the fan favorite Brewster and has been a huge part of many Animal Crossing mainland games as both part of the museum and as a standalone building over the years. Brewster hasn’t only made coffee for players and residents but has also hosted KK slider on stage offered up additional storage for gyroids, which has also yet to return to New Horizons and even given a job to players to earn Animal Crossing bells as a side quest of sore. Furthermore, Brewster and the roost was responsible for one of the largest mechanics in any Animal Crossing game and allowed you to make specific types of coffees for every single animal in the game. For example, Isabel would drink a mocha with lots of milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, it was a cool feature. Anyway given Brewster is such an iconic character. There’s also been rumors of the cafe returning based on past data mines and there’s a chance we could see this building return to New Horizons in the future.
3. Museum Shop
Over the years, the museum has offered a variety of different features with the roots being the most obvious, however another notable upgrade available to the museum was the museum shop and extra storage. In Animal Crossing New Leaf for example, the museum could be upgraded with a second floor and a shop run by Bladder’s younger sister Celeste, you could buy unique furniture and tall upgrades amongst other things. Furthermore, Celeste has run an observatory inside the museum in earlier games where you could create star constellations and things like that. So it’s actually quite weird Celeste isn’t already part of the museum. Anyway as you know like many other characters in New Horizons, Celeste isn’t a permanent character and currently visits randomly during meteor showers. Celeste is one of the more challenging characters to encounter, so we think it’s feasible that the museum could see yet another upgrade that brings Celeste back to the museum. Although never confirmed, references to a museum shop have been seen in datamines so it’s not completely unrealistic.
4. Kicks
Kicks who in the past runs a shop also called kicks is currently a travelling special character who sells socks, shoes, bags and other accessories. His role is very similar to past games except like Leif, he no longer has a permanent shop and we rely on him visiting the resident services plaza randomly in order to buy Animal Crossing Clothing and things. Now again like many characters and shops, we’re highlighting today we could see kicks become a permanent resident of the new horizons island and eventually open up his own store. We are not sure selling shoes and socks warrants his own building, but seems the Able Sisters is basically the only building without an upgrade, and they’re in the same line of work maybe kicks could eventually move in with the Able Sisters on a second floor or something like that. Either way it seems one direction the Animal Crossing team could take New Horizons is to eventually make all of the visiting characters move in permanently or at least the ones who have had their own shops in the past.
5. Emporium
The final upgrade we could see in a future update is of course to Nooks Cranny in the form of an emporium or much larger superstore type shop. Currently Nooks only has a couple of upgrades, but has traditionally seen up to five upgrades in previous games. Now typically Nook’s upgrades would see an expansion on the amount of things for sale or host other shops inside such as Leaf’s garden shop or Gracie Grace’s high-end fashion store. To give you an idea, the largest upgrade to Nooks in New Leaf was the T&T emporium which held a massive 33 different Animal Crossing items every day. That’s quite a difference compared to what’s available at the moment. So whether the likes of Leaf or Kicks move into Nooks or new characters like Gracie move into the island permanently, there’s a good chance Nooks Cranny could get more upgrades in the future. Again there is evidence to support this including the base size of the building.
Of course everything we’ve covered here today is speculative at best, but there has been a few rumors and bits and pieces of information pulled from datamines since the launch of the game that suggests some of these upgrades aren’t that unrealistic and could be being worked on.