Animal Crossing: New Horizons Update 1.1.2 Patch Notes - What's Fixed And Changed

Shame it's not to make the online experience bearable, this is one of the worst online experiences I've ever had. When people are joining an island the whole game just stops for a long period of time, same when people leave, its absolutely ridiculous.

I'll clarify a little, if you're just playing with your friends it'll probably never bother you and when everyone has joined my experience has been great. I'm talking about if you're going to strangers islands for trading and have constant traffic in and out, then it can be a serious issue

@carlos82 I have actually found the online to be great and have little-to-no problem with it. Online multiplayer is not something I usually indulge in so I was pleasantly surprised.

@carlos82,

I am sure they will be looking into this.

@tanaka2687,

To be honest I have not locked the online as yet, so I will have to see.

@tanaka2687 if you're just playing with friends it's not so bad, I've been going to other people's for trading and its horrendous as people are always joining and leaving and you can literally be unable to play for 5 to 10 mins as it shows you some pointless animation. Then every so often it'll just reset everyone's progress on that island so you have to do it all again

@johnvboy I hope so but it looks like a deliberate design choice

Have to agree with @carlos82. Online works nicely with a friend or two, but once you try visiting someone with lots of people coming and going it’s awful. And let’s not forget it’s a paid service, and a first-party Nintendo game.

I absolutely adore the game, but online is very poorly implemented.

I deleted my island last night.

It's not much good if I can't play TOGETHER with my wife, having a leader progress the game and the second player ride shotgun sucks.

It's a design decision (amongst other minor ones) that completely ruins the game for me and my wife.

I'm guessing that situation won't be patched.

hopefully it will address the absurd over appearance of eggs. Like, it's not a fun novelty when one floats by every 30 seconds.

@status-204 @carlos82 : Local wireless functions in more or less the same manner. I was playing locally with my brother and found the experience to be tedious and very irritating. He's only sitting in the next room (his Switch is literally metres away) and it disconnects (resetting any progress made in the process).

@kepsux I can't even be bothered to go fishing at the moment because of the eggs, I wish the eggs were tied to other activities than those we basically do every day anyway

@kepsux : They keep rotating for me. Most of them are eggs, but the odd present floats by as well (albeit with greater frequency than before the Bunny Day event).

@Silly_G I just wish someone at Nintendo would play another console or PC, why do we have to jump through so many hoops to play with others? I had easier times playing online on the Dreamcast

Another multiplayer gripe: It uses some weird form of direct P2P connections, so a few friends of mine can't even play online due to their router setup. They can see status messages and receive mail just fine, but their NAT setups disagree with the way Switch does P2P. It works fine for them on a 4G hotspot however.

Now you could say they should change their router settings, but these people play games online on PS4 and xbox just fine, so... Yeah.

@carlos82 Play Super Mario Party. THIS is by far the worst online experience ever!

This has been a fantastic game experience as a single player, but there are many things that I find questionable nonetheless, and they're all deliberate design choices.

The biggest one (for me personally) is how certain fruits and possibly other items/characters are locked behind either online functionality and/or Amiibo. Starting with apples on my island, I was fortunate enough to be gifted cherries early on, and eventually discovered that some of my neighboring "Dodo Miles" islands had oranges. But countless trips have thus far yielded no other fruits, only bamboo and obviously coconuts, although I have encountered anomalies like an island where everything you pulled from the water was a form of trash (cans, tires, boots) or an island with a doughnut-shaped lake with a single island in the middle only accessible if you break a rock at a certain spot. Vaulting to the island...which had only rocks...yielded big bags of bells. in each one.

According to most sources I've read, unless you get a very lucky and random gift of rare fruit from a villager or your "Mom", the only way to access them is going online with trusted friends who A) own a Switch, B) own the game, C) have Switch Online, and D) happen to have different fruit(s) than you do. Frankly most of us aren't that fortunate. And considering the potential dangers that allowing strangers (and in some cases even those trusted "friends") onto your island can incur, the risk of having your own island either looted or destroyed, whether out of malice or for a prank, simply isn't worth it.

The big one for most of the gaming community has been Nintendo's choice to limit each copy of the game to a single island, no matter how many players may reside in the home. This results in multiplayer that, speaking kindly, feels tacked-on and just plain poor; all secondary/visiting players are essentially slaves tethered to Player 1, forced to stay within the same screen. It also only reinforces the fact that Animal Crossing is, at its core, a single-player experience specifically because you can create your own island/home from the ground up, something that's uniquely yours alone. You can't do that with even one more person in the mix, not without butting heads over decisions. As people are mentioning in the comments above, even the online multiplayer is woefully lacking, and for similar reasons.

I haven't been back to Harv's Island since my initial visit, and I don't know if I ever will. Unless you have Amiibo to scan or friends who want to dress up their characters to fit the theme for a "photo", there's honestly not much use for it at all where I'm concerned.

Why Nintendo chose those limitations is obvious: to limit players' ability to "cheat" or find exploits. But the result is a game that still has plenty of exploits yet feels overly restrictive in some of players' most basic needs. Few people can afford, let alone wish to buy, a second Switch and copy of the game to be able to enjoy their own island, and frankly they shouldn't have to.

And of course, I'd be remiss not to mention that initially Nintendo had no intention of even having AC: New Horizons compatible with cloud saves until the outcry from gamers.

In summary, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is great and doesn't deserve the review-bombing it's been getting from people who are angered over these deliberate design choices by Nintendo...but I understand where they're coming from nonetheless and think it would be wise for Nintendo to patch it (if possible) to A) allow multiple islands on the same console, B) make it so Friend/Dodo Codes aren't required to visit other players' islands (you'd simply find yourself on a random player's island), and C) make it so that any changes/looting anyone does online to each others' island doesn't carry over into that person's own single-player game.

@carlos82 with the fishing the eggs will only be caught through medium sized silhouettes, the small and large ones will give fish.

@AtlanteanMan You don't need all fruits. Also you do not need Switch online to get all fruit. You can different fruits on Mystery Island, and if you know IRL people with Switches and AC you can play local multiplayer with them and visit their islands.

@sanderev,

But I don't know anyone with Switches and AC; I made a point to mention that in my post. As for "needing" all fruits, it's more a case of wanting them all to deck out my island.

@OldMcGroin I know but I seem to have mainly medium size when walking around

I wish Nintendo would update Zelda Breath of the Wild with new stuff again. How about Yiga Clan gear where if you go to their base or deal with them they think your one of them and help you out!

I've been getting some lag when playing with friends, both local & online, but it's not too bad. Since the Bunny Day update though I've been getting stuttering in solo play, especially at night when there's a ton of balloons floating round, Wisp shows up & there's shooting stars. Hopefully they've ironed out the kinks.

@AtlanteanMan WOW! Sounds like Nintendo's version of Need For Speed the one set in Las Vegas with loot boxes before the fix.

@status-204 and that is why you happily pay for NSO. This is exactly what I meant, for at least AC we should not have to have NSO. Bought it, because I want some things done, but don't agree with it.

@AtlanteanMan there really are a lot of things they haven't thought through, playing locally why not have a dynamic split screen like Toejam and Earl managed nearly 30 years ago. I defended the one island thing initially but I was wrong on that one and at the very least each player should have full access to all content without being held back by the first player.

As for online you should be able to just pick a player on your friends list and join them and without them having to stare at some airport animation until you arrive. You should be able to just go to a random person's island who has their gates open. In the Able Sisters you should just be able to browse people's creations without finding the codes online.

Don't get me wrong I love the game and have had a lot of fun with it but it's and generally Nintendo's online is many years behind everyone else, it just feels like it always has a child lock on it

@MaxlRoseGNR I'll stick with my Gamecube games then 😆

Hope it nerfs the dang eggs. Caught like 20 eggs fishing. 3 fish. They seem fine with trees, rocks, etc. Though the balloons are also a bit much.

@carlos82

Well it's not pointless, it's basicly loading screen/time to connect. It's not there for funsies.

I am more annoyed with the superduperlong discussions that you have to go thru in the game. Like talking to Flick, need to listen rambles every time.

@carlos82 Oh please. The online has been wonderful. It's amazing what this game is pulling off. Swapping, trading, interacting with others of foreign islands. Me thinks you need better internet, bruh. smh

@Silly_G : I have this same issue since the 1.1.1 release, local multiplayer sessions disconnets regularly. However, before the 1.1.1 release I never had any problem in local multi !

@PhilKenSebben lol yea. The balloons are so stressful in this game! (in a good way!) I ignored for a while while focusing on my japanese garden.

Nintendo's Japanese site lists full patch notes, main bug fixed in this was that sometimes if you invited an animal off someone elses's island, they'd just disappear and Tom Nook wouldn't let you do anything with the plot they were supposed to go in, you'd end up stuck with a useless empty plot nobody would use.

@AtlanteanMan I agree completely about the shared island issue with multiple players on the same console, so I am not going to argue with you there.

I also think the online multiplayer could be improved by removing the lengthy animations mentioned elsewhere in this comment feed. As well as the stability of the connections! Like why do you need to get kicked out when it fails, cant it just reconnect? Whats the problem?

But I do think one of the things you are complaining about is kind of what makes Animal Crossing a unique and special experience.

Having to go to your friends islands to find different fruits, furninture, turnip prices etc... Is part of the excitement. If you had access to everything straight away on your own island it wouldnt feel anywhere near as special and unique, and this isnt something new to this version of AC.

I realise if you don't have anyone to play with that you are not really going to be happy about this. But I do think this is what makes the game unique, it encourages you to meet up with your friends and kind of makes the world of AC feel a little more real and less "gamey", I think if you took it all away it would lose a lot of charm.

@dreamssux it's the game design not my internet, what has my internet got to do with it stopping everyone from playing just to announce somebody is coming?

This patch did not fix the current bug where after you pop 300 balloons and get the nook miles achievement, all balloons cease to spawn, including the event balloons.

Got my hopes up this would fix it, but hoping it gets addressed soon given the 2 balloon-centered events at the moment.

@dreamssux I can have issues with games that I like, especially when there really isn't any need for such issues to exist.

When you're actually playing online and everyone is on the island, yes it works great, it's the constant interruptions if people are coming and going

@Finntendo why does it need to be designed this way? Why can't people already on the island continue to play whilst they are joining? I've played plenty of online games where people can just jump in and out. Go play Destiny you can watch 100's of people jump in and out whilst still playing the game. I have no issue with you watching a loading screen as you join someone but it shouldn't stop them

@AtlanteanMan Please with the fruit. Thats what traveling to other persons islands is all about. Friends. I got all fruit out there in 24 hours. U need to travel to other islands.

Re the one island thing, here we go again. If multiple islands were on one system, one player can create 8 accounts and horde tons of bells, free items, etc, them dump this to the original player. Thats the MAIN reason. The business reason is CHA-CHING: over 30% people with families are buying a seconds switch and second game. Honestly, one switch with two islands or more (sharing) SUCKS. In that this game was made for one player on one system. The hell with that crap of giving up my switch for my kid to play. He has his own Lite. His own AC. And he and papa play together in the same house on our own system, the true way the game to be played, FULL SCREEN for both of us. You know, just like the 3DS.

Now stop with the silly multiple island argument. It makes NO SENSE. (unless you want to horde resources!)

@carlos82 Everything. When your game is slowing down, it's crap net, bruh. smh

@carlos82 wut. U drinking while u write these bruh?

@dreamssux you clearly have no idea what you're talking about so I'll just move on

@carlos82 (when painted in a corner with facts, this is what happens people)

@dreamssux what facts? You didn't provide any just nonsense about slow internet and my game slowing down, which I never said. Theres a fact

@carlos82 said: "you clearly have no idea what you're talking about so I'll just move on"

But he doesn't move on! He comes back with a rhetorical question without facing and questing the facts presented to him people. wow.

Patch to allow multiple islands pls

@dreamssux what facts? Also Google the meaning of rhetorical question as you clearly have no idea what it means

@dreamssux FYI: You are allowed to criticize a game you love. Thank you!

@AtlanteanMan Nothing is locked behind multiplayer, it's just easier to get that way. Posters and animals for photoshoots can be locked behind amiibo potentially, but that's it. And that's fine.

@hakjie11 Why? I detailed above why this is bad to happen. Stop being cheap, buy a second system. Do you ask ELDER SCROLLS or Breath of the Wild for multiple LANDS? No, it's silly.

@carlos82 "Google the meaning of rhetorical question as you clearly have no idea what it means"

When someone is painted in a corner, their pacifier is google, because they have no idea what the question I posed meant to them. Like Trump Carlos is spinning. Bruh, please stop. smh

@dreamssux clown

I totally agree with @RickD , the follow the leader 2 player just doesn’t work.
As a single player game it is ok, but then only one person in the house can play it, because there is only 1 island,
I guess this was both very foolish and very clever by Nintendo

Please please please update it so that you can craft more than one item at once. Why am I having to stand there for 5 minutes just to make a dozen fish bait? And why craft a flimsy tool, to then have to craft again to make a normal tool? Just let me craft the normal tool the first time round with the extra resources!

Hope this balances the number of eggs coming out of the water when I’m trying to fish!

@dreamssux You don't need to ask TES or BOTW for a second island, because every profile on the system has its own progression and is not dependent on player A to progress to a certain point in order to unlock the same point for player B.

AC is a great game, but it's by no mean flawless. MP loading screen is a nice and cute, but it also gets old quite fast considering it stops the game for everyone. Imagine the same system in Call of Duty or Destiny like @carlos82 mentioned - people would riot.

Just buying an additional system is a stupid thing to suggest. Not everyone has as much disposable income as you apparently do. Not to mention that we shouldn't need to buy an additional system for player B to be able to play at their own pace.

I don't know if part of the patch or coincidence, but since updating I haven't been able to spawn tarantulas on islands.

I'm quite happy with the game, can't complain much. there's an abundance of eggs that is a bit annoying but hey, what are you gonna do. the thing I don't understand is why they haven't made it so that it's impossible to time travel? like the game compares the dates and time locally and on their servers or something, idk. we had to log in online for single player games to check for authenticity, why is this an issue?

@carlos82 same, I do not need to or care to know who is coming from where every time someone comes to my island, it should just have the "Looks like someone is visiting" scroll across and continue the game, it gets super annoying when you have multiple people visiting and you can't do anything, how did someone at Nintendo think this was a good design idea?

@carlos82 When they leave it just says "so and so is leaving" and shows them walking out the gate. It's like a 5 second animation. I agree it's too long when they first come though, at least if you're having more than one person come over at once.

@SonOfVon Time travelling is a popular way to play and a significant amount of their player base would be very annoyed by that. For those of us who don't, all we need to do is not do it so it shouldn't really be an issue.

@PorllM I think I'd seen 4 consecutive people arrive before one just left so even the short animation wound me up 😂

@Scottwood101 Doesn't quite fix your issue, but double tapping A speeds up the crafting animation considerably

@carlos82 Hahaha, understandable

@ShadowSmile I know, and after sitting through god knows how many joining and managingto buy what I wanted, the island reset its and everyone's progress and put us all at the airport so I had to do it all over again, whilst again watching people join. It took pretty much half an hour to just go buy some turnips

Seem to me that a lot of people are missing the point of this as a slow paced game. You aren’t meant to be blasting through everything at a crazy pace, personally I think the arrivals thing is pretty cute maybe I’m just not swimming in friends but I haven’t experienced any massive waits due to multiple visitors.

Most of the friends I now have are also strangers apart from online chat here or Facebook, I am yet to have anyone come to my island and wreck it, quite the opposite, we have exchanged goods, chatted about where we are from in real life etc, all pleasant and chilled.

@CairiB yeah it's more for those who are visiting randoms for trading and ther are so many coming in and out it can become borderline unplayable. I agree with just yourself and a few friends it's not a problem

@carlos82 This is one of the best online experiences I have. Surprised you don't feel the same. Traffic going in and out adds to the cuteness of the Animal Crossing environment.

I don't understand why we can't just visit those on our friends list. Why do we need to go through all the rigamarole.

@status-204
Yes, some things are locked, if you want the tea-cup variations for instance, you cannot get it without having other people buy them for you and trade them with you.

I don't mind having a main character and the other one following.
However, it would be good to be able to switch the main character. For example, if I'm not about to play for a while, I would like to be able to put my girlfriend in charge of the Island, so she can keep taking care of it.

@carlos82 I used 100 plat coins to get a 7 day NO trial just for this game which I got delivered on release day and I was never able to have anyone visit my island nor was I able to visit another player's island no matter how many of my friends were online playing this game and how many different things I tried in the airport. And my Switch is wired so Wi-Fi isn't an issue, we get 100 Mbps, 35 Mbps up which should be more than adequate. Nintendo has this game locked down Wii tight.

I have 3 other gamers in my house w/ accounts on the Switch but nobody has bothered w/ this game yet b/c of the stupid "1 island" issue and following the lead person around issue. And this in a family that spent a lot of time playing Go Vacation on the Wii. It's about as "multiplayer" as Super Mario Galaxy. Which is 1 of my favorite games but yes I am going to insult the so-called "multiplayer".

Also, tip from an old guy, I find that anybody who uses bruh and has sux as part of their name probably isn't going to be the best person to try and have a conversation with.

@dreamssux wow, what an idiot you are.

I feel like some of the things people are complaining about (fruit, item frequency, ect.) Is due to the way people are unfortunately playing it. It's supposed to be a long haul of a game. To hear someone say "I need the apples so I can finish completely decking out my island" TWO WEEKS POST LAUNCH shows that people really don't get this game... I won't speak on the internet issues much, but it sounds like people are travelling similar to the way people panic purchased toilet paper... this game is supposed to be played for years, not "completed" in a month... crafting should be fixed though... let people make 12 baits at a time...

I am already sick of the tool degradation rates. Mostly because you USED to be able to SEE the amount of wear on their icons.

SURPRISE! Your fun times stopped! Better fix it!

@AtlanteanMan You seriously don’t have any online friends? No friends in life you can trust Come to my island and I’ll give you all of the fruits if you want, it’ll be as simple as that.

So how about the bug where I go to the same island, identical to mine, on the so called Mystery Island Tour every single time

The problem isn't even fruit. The problem is that most items with color variations aren't customizable. Instead every game gets assigned one color and you have to trade for everything else. Or you're lucky enough to find them in trees or balloons, but with so many items and colors, good luck getting the ones you want, let alone as many options as you had in previous games.

@rjejr yeah I should have know better really, especially as another old guy 😂

Yeah I pretty much agree with this game, I didn't see many of the issues as the only person playing it with me is 3 but the further we get into it the more problems I see. I certainly won't be going online trading again unless there are some carefully managed groups out there.

Maybe when Mario Galaxy comes to Switch we can play multiplayer online, I'll come and wave a red star on your screen

@dreamssux I'm sorry your childhood is so rough, hopefully things improve soon and you'll be less insufferable towards people because it's really embarrassing.

@SonOfVon Why do you need it to be impossible to time travel? Just don't time travel if YOU don't want to.

@carlos82 This is precisely why I have a "one visitor at a time" rule.

Every is always complaining . I don't have any issues with online . And connecting is just fine without any bumps or lags. Also I enjoy the fly over so I like that part of going to someone's island and getting a over view of their island . Ppl need to stop complaining . With everything going on in the world and u still want to complain . How about be thankful we got this game when we did to help keep everyone insane. I love the game and all u guys review bombing it need a life. Funny thing is ur complaining yet ur time traveling...which is literally 1 of the main issues with having multiple islands . So thanks for that .

My game seems to be glitched, every where I turn... EGGS!!!

@Dotcomm Can you honestly not read just one of the several clarifying posts he wrote about his complaint? For people who trade with other players a lot it's definitely an issue worth complaining about, what good do you think could come from making everyone keep their opinions to themselves? Problems would never be fixed. Silly thing to defend.

@SpaceboyScreams that's a very good rule from what I've experienced

I was really hoping the patch notes would read: "Significantly decreased the spawn rate of eggs to make fishing and resource gathering less frustrating for the player". I swear that when I'm fishing, 9 times out of 10 it's one of those damn water eggs! Almost makes me not want to bother until Bunny Day is over (in two-weeks!).

@RickD nothing to patch when the game was created like this.

@carlos82 is not gonna happend sorry, is how it always been and not many are complaining about it since it's not really game breaking first I've heard about this complain honestly, I personally never mind and still don't. =:3

@Quix cool but plenty online are talking about it whether you want to believe it or not. NPUK (formerly streetpass) have even created guidelines to work around it. Not to mention so many comment sections surrounding trading end in pretty much the same manner.

I don't expect them to change it but it is a very poor design choice and is largely typical of Nintendo's rather shoddy approach to online play in general

@carlos82 never said it wasn't a complain just not a big one, I guess people really don't have much patience this days which is weird if you're playing Animal Crossing,lol.
The rest is just a matter of opinion 😉 =

As I said in my original post if playing with friends its perfectly fine and won't be an issue. This morning I was simply trying to buy some turnips from another island and with all the problems, it took me just under half an hour to do so, with about 20 minutes of that spent staring at a destination board with no way out of it

These updates are getting annoying. The game is just 4 days old and everyday since launch we get daily updates Sometimes very slow download.
Why dont the do this once a week, in one big download.

Next update should be, that your kid (second account) cant sell your stuff, where you can password protect some actions.

Thank you very much.

@RickD Same feeling. My husband is the island representative and we had no idea it was going to be so imbalanced for the secondary resident - it makes "sharing" an island much less fun.

@guiwald YES! even if there was like a week long cool down period on changing the island rep it would still be a better solution than the way it's set up now.

@carlos82 Multiplayer on SMG - when someone comes into your game you just shoot star bits at them to shoo them away. 😂

@Tyragonfal don't even trip dawg https://twitter.com/japaneseswitch/status/1245957968128028672

@dreamssux I m not cheap, I m just poor, 3 in my household wants to play and corona is reducing my income. If we could have each an island i would have bought 1 copy already. No, I cannot afford 3 systems and 3 copies at this moment.

@carlos82 so really then without sounding rude, the issue is your impatience by the sounds of it, I’ve never known the online aspect of this game to be nothing short of smooth and enjoyable

@popey1980 there is a difference between patience and a game being completely unplayable under certain circumstances. Tell you what, open your gates and put your dodo code online saying your turnip price is around 600 bells, then come back to me about how smooth and enjoyable the online aspect is

Did it fix the issue that if you only have one kidney you can't get a switch.

Have they fixed that dumb thing where isabelle just doesn't give out the picnic set if there is any other announcement?