Animal Crossing Appears To Have Nerfed Tarantula And Scorpion Spawn Rates

NintendoLife aka as Datamines News.

I only ever saw a single tarantula in my town.

Great, they not only nerfed the tarantula but they increased the water bugs and reduced the interest rate. It’s like they are asking people to time travel.

Peacock Butterflies are the reason I covered my island with Blue Flowers! 😩

I was right! Before the update I was farming Peacock Butterflies all day long while doing my other daily things. I was making really good money off of them cause I have lots of hybrid flowers now.

But I played for like 4 hours this morning and I think maybe I saw one.

It's a pretty heavy nerf.

This is going to mess with people who were using more legitimate methods like tarantula farming...

Or maybe it won't? That method just required removing all other spawnable areas for bugs so maybe it will still work, just slower? Hard to tell.

I saw more tarantulas in my first week of playing New Horizons than I did in the five-years I played New Leaf. It was a little ridiculous. I think my record was catching three in one night.

Brutal about the Peacock Butterflies. This game makes some absolutely confounding design choices.

Lol now you can spend even more time waiting on random spawns to collect or sell for fake currency. Fun.

So they nerfed the insects and the bank ? Why?

@Kalmaro I was making spider islands, and did one the other night, right after the update. Definitely felt slower. Now I know why.

Only thing I've seen are tarantulas...haven't seen any other rare bugs/valuable bugs aside from that paper kite butterfly thing.

@PhilKenSebben Shoot, I was afraid of that. Oh well, Nintendo apparently just wants us to either time travel or play the stalk market.

This is so stupid! What does it accomplish besides pushing legitimate means of bell making to the burner? How else am i supposed to pay Nook off? Why make it more tedious to make bell collecting easier? Geez.

@Luigi_Skywalker the interest rate actually is a countermeasure so people DONT time travel.

You don’t even make good money out of the interest the legit way. Turnips is where it’s at.

@Desa get into the stalk market, you can make 500,000 bells easily each week.

Also this was a way of exploiting a glitch or manipulating the code of the game to your favor. It’s not as “legit” as you would think.

Invest in turnips if you want to get into the real money-making game.

Non-cheating players like myself keep getting screwed.

I don't begrudge others of doing so, but we're the ones paying the price!

Nintendo, you are getting too control freak about every aspect...

@Luigi_Skywalker Yeah if you want to play 6 hours a day. You can catch everything and plant enough fruit trees to make good progress over a few months playing an hour or two a day. I have tons of bridges and inclines, still see the odd turantula, and have two extra rooms in my house. Playing it way faster than precious games too.

@mousieone People were abusing exploits to make easy amounts of huge cash. Well, I guess the interest rate must have been higher in this one than others? If it was significant enough to notice? And as for tarantula farming, idk, I don't have time for stuff like that.

Impatient players have been abusing the loopholes to make really quick and easy big amounts of money paying off all their mortgage along with slopes and bridges at an unintended fast rate, at the pace they are going they are going to run out of things to do way to early in the game's lifespan before Nintendo even gets the chance to release all the seasonal updates. The fact this game go pass the millions means it was meant to keep players playing for a far longer time to pay that up, so it makes sense they are trying to fix up some of the unintended exploitations so that new players are able to play they game as it was originally intended and not focus on cheating pass everything. Only a matter of time until they nerf the turnip prices next.

But did they buff Jigglypuff?

Now that I grinded out the bells for the bridges and slopes that I wanted I have really slowed down and started to take it easy. It got grating after a while doing chores for bells and now that I don't really care about collecting bells much anymore the game is getting to be a lot more fun.

I have not even come across tarantulas island.
All this Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping dictationship, might as well make this game in to another fornite.
Charging $60 $259 ( that is if one get the lite instead of the standard) to play. And want to control how people play.
Lucky I don't even care for all those, just need 1 to send to the museum. But when Flick comes, I need 3 for his "commission". Hope it won't affect fishes, cos I only get C+ and some "carp". And then C.J will ask for 3 of the same kind sometime.

I’m assuming this is the northern hemisphere... if it’s not too much trouble, could we have a copy adjusted for us down south?

@Heavyarms55 It really is. I got fortunate about a week ago and got the NMT Island that gives rare flowers and got tons of black tulips and used them for a graveyard and it became a weirdly good place to farm peacock butterflies, so I took advantage. Since the earth day update I’ve seen maybe two not only there, but on my entire island?

It feels a bit ridiculous. I don’t really look at guides, I definitely don’t time travel. I go with the flow and take advantage of whatever discoveries I make. But it feels like I’m being punished for just being fortunate and happening upon those. I feel like Nintendo’s taking this out on the wrong people. That became a decent source of income to help me buy stuff from my and my friends’ shops while keeping me stable on doing an in line or bridge, say, once a week

I feel like Nintendo’s being a bit ridiculous over it. Don’t change spawn rates, but maybe figure out a way to check if the Switch settings are accessed and rot turnips on time travelers or something. It’s not like making a tarantula island is exactly quick or easy. Figuring out how a game ticks and making it work for you is fun in and of itself.

You can still find the REAL Tarantula Island randomly when Dodo-travelling. There's this special Island you can get to with a circle of water around a larger land area with a few trees and weed and no rocks where five tarantulas are constantly running around, respawning when you catch one. Been there, done that. I wonder if there's a chance to get there again if I Dodo-travel enough... I am not using the glitch. Tried it once, too much work...

Gotta take advantage of the stalk market while it’s still fairly profitable. I don’t really want to run around making a few bells here and there. Tarantula farming was pretty fun before the water bugs came, and now it’s probably not even worth trying.

I think Nintendo wants to encourage my playstyle more. Login, do all the nook miles x2 tasks, hit the money rock, collect from the money tree and then just turn the game back off after checking who the special villager is. They want to make grinding as tedious as possible to encourage people to come back everyday it looks like instead of just buying everything and all the upgrades all at once. Or you can just time travel if you really have nothing better to do.

Great idea. Fill the sea with endless Sea Bass, the rivers with endless black bass and the flowers with endless stink bugs. They are the most interesting species in the game said no one. I had so many butterflies that I could sell and it was pretty. This will slow down late comers and everything in this game is so expensive. The hustle is real

Normally I’m glad when bugs get patched, but in this case...

(Actually, I’m not too sad to see Tarantula islands are harder to create because it was both an effective and utterly tedious way of making money. Some of the other bug nerfs are a little disappointing though).

Also, I’ve never seen a scorpion! How are you supposed to go about catching them? Are they available in the Northern Hemisphere at the moment?

Did they alter fish as well

@TravinoEXE Meh, it is a bummer, but I mean, there were days I was getting more Peacocks than the actual common butterfly. So I kinda see where they are coming from.

@Maxz No, they are not catchable in the norther hemisphere right now. As a lot of various fish and bugs aren't.

@Kalmaro,

I am not so sure Nintendo intend players to go to an island and chop everything down, just so they can spawn a load of Tarantula's , this is why there is a Tarantula island on the rotation.

If you do this you might as well find a mate online, check turnip prices every day, a few weeks back my sisters island price was 600 bells or so, so that was a nice easy 5 million worth bought and sold, lot of messing about first buying the turnips, them multiple trips back and fourth between our islands, no method is hassle free.

If their goal is to balance out the economy, this is a terrible way to do it. The damage from the item dupe glitch has been done, so making it harder for people to get money now only furthers the divide between people who abused the glitch before it was patched and those that didn't.

must admit would like a little more variety in bugs and fish, played for 25 hours now and haven't seen anything new in ages!

...And when you fail to catch a tarantula the first time, good luck finding one again until the next night. 😔

To be honest, I didn’t even know the bank paid interest

@HeroponRiki,

No it's not, you can just time travel and play the stalk market, which was always the best way of making money, the special islands are just too random, and the tarantula's too hard to spawn, even more so with the water bugs which are much harder to chase away.

Clearly their goal is to chip away at all the ways people are exploiting eg tarantula Islands, time travelling . It just seems a little too late now though. The economy is already broken meaning any future items they add will undoubtedly be priced according to the players who made millions way too quickly. Not to mention any hope of some kind of global auction house ever being added.

Ah well. Hopefully they've figured it out for New Horizons 2.

@Chibi_Manny
From a player perspective, I don’t care if someone chooses to cheapen the experience for themselves. That’s on them.

Instead of trying to control the way people play the game, they ought to be focusing on quality of life improvements to the game. Crafting is cumbersome. Some of the dialogue options could be improved. Having to claim the bonus nook miles stuff is just extra button presses that could be changed with notifications.

Most of the rare bugs were already pretty rare to begin with, so nerfing them is only going to negatively impact casual players. Time travelers will find a new way to exploit the game.

Cheaters always gotta ruin everything.

The butterfly nerfs sink if you ask me.
I could easily make 60-70.000 Bells in about half an hour catching peacock and Madagascan butterflies.
If making Bells becomes a tiresome grind, I’m getting into the international stalk exchange.

Unfortunate for those of us that put in the hours to plant/uproot to facilitate a desired critter as work should equal bells. However, as usual, I am sure those out there will some how work their way around it via ebay or some other social media website for real money and/or bells that I will later read as a headline on this website. For a game that supposedly gets branded "for kids" it sure is becoming an adult cheat-your-way market...

@Branovices i kept seeing them after clearing all the weeds. But for sure its appearance is far less now.

Indeed.. butterflies spawn rates is so low now

No fun allowed

I know this Animal Crossing makes it easier to get bells, but that wasn't a bad thing. This is the first time in the series that I paid off all morgages and I've barely had it a month! But that then lets me begin to customize the Island to my heart's desire, which I thought was the point. Sad to see my assumptions proven wrong.

Also I have been counting down the days til mole crickets go out of season. Curse you, increased spawn rate!!!!

Point of my original post is that basically the ONLY people this affects is nontimetravelers. Everyone else is already rolling in riches and basically completed up to all the invisible gates nintendo put in place in a game that kind of feels a step behind New Leaf already just because they want to control how far people progress for some reason beyond my knowledge. When my friends come to my Horizons island thats...about it. No more visiting Tortimer and playing fun little minigames. Its like being punished which takes away the fun only. And i really was enjoying this game and having so many peacock butterflies flying around.

Eh, not big of a deal -got no problem with that. Puts a challenge to it -hopefully the casual babies on twitter and other places don't cry about this change.

@Luigi_Skywalker I’m sure time travel nerfs are coming. They already nerfed how people time travel for turnip prices

This info is wrong. Walking leaf have more spawn rate than mosquito, for example. Scorpion dont are so little too.

I don't understand the logic behind this, if Nintendo wanted to fix anything, it should be aimed towards time travelling. Why mess with the spawn rates when it's a legitimate way of playing the game. This ain't even a competitive game, yes I do clear out the mystery island to farm tarantulas, but even then it still takes about an hour to finish catching a full inventory worth of it. This is just absurd...

Great, so far I've only encountered one Atlas moth and it was right when my net had broke so I couldn't catch it, and now its spawn rate has halved. Seriously, what are they thinking? Who benefits from making rare critters, who often already have a whole slew of conditions to spawn, even rarer?

@arekdougy New Leaf is still the easiest one to make money in, because you can travel to the island at any time to catch big bugs and sharks, and on top of that the interest rates are much lower compared to those in New Horizons. On the other hand, there are a lot more things you can buy in New Leaf.

How about they reduce and or nerf the crazy AMOUNTS they charge for town upgrades!!! It’s not like a quick walk in the park to collect them on the islands anyhow....grind grind grind....! I would hit the islands after seven each night clear it catch spiders, moths, go back to town, and sell it and then before I logged off or put it to sleep I would go back to another island and I do it the next day because the nighttime spawns will still be there the next day...

I’ve been playing Pocket Camp every day since launch and they offer to let people buy stuff in there to upgrade things or to get bells or whatever. I haven’t spent on red dime even at level 207, but I still grind it every day, (keeps me sane when waiting for people - wife . I think Nintendo is missing a huge opportunity to allow people to buy upgrades if they want to in this game because a lot of people won’t sit there and grind like a lot of us are doing to earn money. It’s no like call of duty when you’re buying an upgraded gun or perk that gives you an advantage....

I wish people would also stop calling an exploit a glitch or cheating. Those words ate not synonymous. The tarantula island exploit took a lot of luck and work and it didn't hurt anyone. I'm not sure why they felt a need to stealth nerf them.

If this was to punish time travelers it didn't work, now they have even more incentive to do it.

@johnvboy Okay so you agree with me then, Nintendo is pushing everyone to the stalk market.

@arekdoubgy it’s not just tarantulas it’s all insects like the butterflies. Which were more common.

@fafonio I know this might sound crazy but we shouldn’t need (in a single player game) to have contact with strangers to make bells.

There just isn't enough reward for catching bugs in fish in this game, you can turn the game on a tiny bit per day and check turnip prices and sell fruit and that's not nearly as fun as catching bugs and fish why isn't that the main source of income??

@Kalmaro,

It's all an exploit whichever way you look at it, you either play the game at your own pace, which will take a while, or you exploit a shortcut, which as I said in a previous post, still takes a lot of effort.

@johnvboy I know, and I'm fine with calling it an exploit, it's just not a glitch (as some are calling it), that implies something else entirely and will give people the wrong idea.

I thought it was fine before. But it's no biggie.

Although, I have yet to run into a scorpion in New Horizons.

@Kalmaro i believe the "glitch " might have to do with the beginning where you can duplicate stuff like some did for the Switch and tarantula to sell.

@UnknownReader Yes, that was a glitch. Manipulating the island spawn rates is an exploit.

New horizons is turning into destiny 2, nerfs nerfs and more nerfs to impede player progress.

Lol so they nerf the legitimate way of making bells by players that don't TT or play the stalk market while players TT are still playing the stalk market...

I dont even need to play the stalk market. I just sell my Nook Mile Tickets for 100k each sometimes 200k each. When you're TT you easily get 300 NMTs a day alone. But sure, nerf the peacock butterfly spawns lol I really feel for the broke players that play more intended way.

Tarantulas were too common as they are supposed to be rare but nerfing everything else was stupid. Better sell my NMTs while I still can I'm sure that nerf is coming once nintendo finds it's brain again.

@mousieone why would you need contact with strangers in anything I just said?

You mean about the stalk market? You can play it 100% by yourself.

@HauntedbyWater it was not a legitimate way.... you were using an exploit in the spawn rates.

You want to play a legitimate way? Play the stalk market or work for the bells.

Also... TT can’t play the stalk market ... if they go back a single day their turnips rot .... they actually used the INTEREST RATE trick.

That’s why Nintendo nerfed it. You barely made profit with the interest playing legitimately .

Also the peacock butterflies needed a nerf. I have around 30 each day in my island. You just need to breed blue flowers. If you’re looking for some I can host my island to you.

@fafonio I have a bunch of them WIndflower I got from mystery island. hardly any peacock butterflies. I still need 1 to save for next time Flick comes so I can give him to do a commission, lol!

I think they are just balancing out the spawning and not some nerfing because some unknown person on earth TT. If they post on public about "making this game fair for everbody" I call it BS excuse, I see nothing fair for those who don't have NSO to travel to other players island for trade and shop.

Only caught (and sold) one tarantula since I've been playing.

Nook's getting on my tits now! I say we land on him en masse and give him a solid beat down!

@UnknownReader then there’s another method for getting them.... to be honest they are a pest in my island. I didn’t even knew they were so rare.

Animal Crossing Wild World:
You can't just change the world. You have to roll with the punches. SAVE YOUR GAME

Animal Crossing New Horizons:
Nintendo changes the world in at least 3 updates.

I’m certain this is partly due to the high influx of you tubers making videos of things that people could take advantage of. They never played ac in their lives and just cash in on the success of the game until the next big thing comes along and they move on to where the revenue is.

@fafonio so the buy is 102

Mon 63/69
Tuesday 57/95
Wed 75/78
Thur 105/173
Fri 156/120
Sat 95/45

And this is what it looks like every week, I’d have to use someone else.

@fafonio how is playing the stalk market more legit than helping a certain bug flurish via flowers or chopping down trees? Personally I found all playstyles pretty legit. You can play casually and progress slow af or like me, time travel and experience the sandboxy element more freely and trade nook miles tickets for easy bells. Nintendo said they arent against time traveling so it made no sense to nerf players who dont and make things even slower than it already is for them. Caring about what a "legit" playstyles in AC makes no sense to me. I just find Nintendo last move to be kind of stupid.

@mousieone well, you could have sold at 173 and made almost double. It’s luck, just as you would have luck finding a tarantula the legit way.

And in my experience this week, I bought at 95 and Friday afternoon I had a selling price of 468.

You don’t need other people. It’s not designed for that.... but it increases your chances.

It’s not something obligatory as you said at first.

@HauntedbyWater you’re exploiting the numbers of appearance rates for a tarantula. It’s not like you’re using a checklist to make them appear ... you’re exploiting the world and rules so ONLY tarántulas appear. That’s what I’m telling that if we are talking about “legit” ways of making money that is not as pure as some people make it out to be. You’re exploiting something that a data miner discovered.

Now, I’m not against TT... Animal Crossing is for you to play at your own pace and it’s better if you build a community with friends.

But for us non-time-travelers the interests were something ridiculous that didn’t make you bells worth the time. So, why are people complaining?

The only people that would complain about interests are time travelers ... but good riddance, those people will find other ways to cheat in the game, so... what’s the problem?

@fafonio
I forgot interest was even in the game tbh. I have almost everything I want in game so no im not complaining about that. And my original comment mentions me sharing my opinion that tarantulas were too common in general as they have always been a rare creature to find.

It's nerfing all the other bugs which helped non time travellers that I was mainly complaining about. The complaint was for non time travelers as this will not affect my own playstyle one bit thanks to nmts being so valuable.

@fafonio I did but that hardly the stable profit that I got with flowers and butterflies.

Also, that was the best week out of 4. The other three weeks didn’t go over what I paid for the turnips. As you pointed out it’s luck compared to the stability of flowers and butterfly spawn rate.

I'm glad I got a physical copy of this game. I'm pretty sure I'm going to trade it in.

@Jaydubryry pretty terrible thing to wish on a stranger. Especially about a video game

@Branovices you might have too many flowers and trees. Tarantula spawns are mostly based inversely off other big spawns. If there’s lots of things that spawn bugs in an area (trees, flowers, rocks, heck even water), tarantulas were very rarely spawn. Try reducing the amount of flora in a concentrated area. You’ll likely see more tarantulas around there.

That being said, I welcome the nerf. Some parts of my town were getting way too many tarantulas for awhile (though it was worse in March). I was getting annoyed when they’d interrupt my tasks and attack me...

Animal Crossing: Nerfed Horizons

Catching only the cheap fishes and insects gets just as annoying as catching eggs. The game is just begging you to time travel now if making bells becomes a chore.

Well that sucks a fat one because I saw 2 Horned Hercules in the past few days and missed both of them, that last one will haunt me forever. Edit:-Aaand I just caught 2 within 10 minutes. FML.

@fafonio Dude I was making 4 mil a HOUR. Turnips get you chump change.

@Reddave85 let me guess, Time Traveler? Glitch exploiter?

@nintendoknife well idk I play pretty casually and caught an atlas moth yesterday and the day before. I just find everyone takes all this crap way too seriously. I never completed anything in my GameCube town and I played that for five years!

@meltendo rare fish have always been rare in Animal Crossing. In previous games I felt like it was insane luck to even catch one Arapiama over the course of years in other games. And I biffed catching rare bugs to never see another for a year. Idk people want it too easy.

Spawn rates should be similar as in New Leaf at least!

All they are doing is making me like animal crossing less and less. Eventually I am going to quit altogether. What are they proving? Hey, we want to make your game experience stressful

Won't stop me still getting a load of them, its one of the fastest legit way to get alot of money and get a bunch of things checked off quickly on the list. nintendo is crazy if they want me to play this all the way till the next ac game.

None of this matters to me as I play it "normally" - once a day for rarely more than an hour. If it's to stop time travel, surely there's a smarter way to prevent that, like locking you in your house for a week.

It also appears that they have reduced the rates of messages in a bottle, fossils and gold nuggets from the mystery islands. I've just done 10 islands on the trot and only got 2 fossils.

Nerfing your game for a fraction of a percentage of players is so very Nintendo.

I don't care about this game but this is so very Nintendo to do lol.

Probably less than 15% of the player base are cheating but that's enough to ruin it for the rest.

ah prenerf was better

Getting beyond pissed off, it's now July and I have yet to see a single effing scorpion on my island and I play daily every evening. I've even used at least 30 nmt and half those was the same island with the swirl and rest were a mix but all with split tiers and no scorpion/tarantula island.

This nerf was effing ridiculous! F U Nintendo and your stupid nerfs ruining it for the majority of players due to the small minority who cheat/time travel!

I like how every single thing that goes wrong with this game is somehow time travelers fault. Obviously this update had nothing to do with "trying to nerf time traveling" so people need to stop getting so butthurt over how other people play the game that they bought. No, it's not "cheating" (in a harmful sense) because this game isn't meant to be competitive.

Not to mention, some of us have valid reasons for time traveling. For example, I heavily time travel because:
1. Pure and simple, it's just my preference when it comes to playstyle. If I wanted to wait around on a game, I'd still be playing mobile games.
2: My schedule is too irregular to play on a 1-2 hours a day basis. I have quite a few days where I'm not able to play at all and then other days where I get to play all day.