Now that Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been out for several months and players have logged in hundreds of hours, fans are looking for new and creative ways to spruce up their island landscape.
One such way that fans have discovered is by exploiting the rock spawning mechanic embedded in the game. Basically, the goal is to make every other spot on the island besides the desired locations unsuitable for rock spawning.
There are several different methods for achieving this goal and they all involve covering your island in something to block rock spawns. For background, there are a total of six rocks for each island, and hitting a rock with a shovel or axe nets useful materials like stone or iron for crafting.
You can also eat a piece of fruit and then hit a rock with a tool to break the rock. If you break a rock it will respawn in a random suitable location on your island at a rate of one rock per day. This is the mechanic that is manipulated in order to place the rocks in your desired location.
So something important to know is what makes a square unable to host a rock spawn. A rock needs at least a 3×3 area of clear space. Furniture, trees, or basically any object a player is unable to walk through will prevent a rock spawning when it’s in close enough proximity.
Additionally, rocks cannot spawn on top of any custom designs, or on island designer paths like stone or wood. They can spawn on top of dirt and the dark brown dirt, however, so keep that in mind when planning out your rock garden.
The article below will discuss several methods to achieve perfect rock placement. Any of these methods will work, but there is one that makes cleanup significantly easier than the rest. The first is to place down custom paths on the entirety of your island besides the 6 squares the rocks will spawn in. This can also be achieved by using weeds or flowers as well.
This method is quite time consuming, however, and when the rocks have finally all spawned where they need to go, you will have to clean up your island. If you instead use a custom pro design, however, and display the design as a mannequin, it will save a lot of hassle in the future.
This is because the mannequins count as furniture, effectively blocking rock spawns in the immediate vicinity. Also, when a pro design is edited from the menu all of the mannequins on your island will disappear. This handy trick makes cleanup literally quicker than a flash.
Likely, there will be some spots that you miss when placing down your mannequins, weeds, or custom designs. That is completely fine however, just do some troubleshooting with these issues occur. You can simply break the rock, place something down in the offending space, and then rinse and repeat the next day until all six rocks have spawned in successfully.
Now you know the best method for creating a rock garden in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Get creative and make a beautiful area for material gathering every day, while you await the newly announced free content update coming out on July 3rd.
