Oh Snap, Animal Crossing Rocks Can Give You Star Fragments Now

Well, this is a nice surprise. Folks have been exploring the big new Animal Crossing update since last night, as the patch went up early. Already, the community has struck gold. As it turns out, you can now visit a type of island that contains a special, never-before-seen type of rock.

Normally, you obtain star fragments only after viewing a meteor shower, a rare occurrence in the New Horizons night sky. Sometimes, you’ll get lucky and catch some errant shooting stars that will then wash up as star fragments along your beachside the next morning. But it’s not exactly an everyday thing, and sitting there farming stars can be kind of boring.

In November’s massive 2.0 patch, New Horizons introduces all-new types of islands that you can visit, should you journey to Dodo Airlines and take Kapp’n’s boat. Vine Island, for example, lets you climb the new green plants and enjoy some glowing moss. It’s cool.

But if you’re extra lucky, you might get an island where the rock gives you something way better than bells or nuggets. It’s possible to acquire colored star fragments just from hitting the island rock, as you can see in this viral tweet by @bloomsacnh

https://twitter.com/embed/status/1456111366276726784

Fans allege that your first Kapp’n island is scripted, so it’s possible that it’ll take a while before you can find a star fragment island. But this is a pretty big deal. Usually, fans journey to other islands, if not hack their games to get and display star fragments. At one point, it was possible to hack trees and bushes to make them contain star fragments—until Nintendo patched that out.

So for Nintendo to do this, not only is it providing a nice surprise for dedicated players, it’s also actually listening to what fans say they want. You know, what they want when they’re not looking for Brewster and Gyroids.