How to Time Travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Your Switch’s system clock sets Animal Crossing’s internal clock, so if you change the date and time on your Switch, your Animal Crossing world’s date and time will change too. It’s easy to change date and time settings on the Switch with just a few button presses.
The Pros and Cons of Time Traveling
While the Animal Crossing community might be split on time traveling, there are things you need to keep in mind if you do time travel.
What Time Traveling Will Get You
Time-traveling in Animal Crossing will enable you to skip waits for anything and everything; play whenever you want in real life while still being able to enjoy day and night in-game; experience specific events whenever you want or over and over; and get access to more things to buy as well as more efficient ways to earn money.
What You Should Watch Out for
Be careful when time traveling. Huge jumps can cause problems sometimes. At the Nook Stop, you get a streak bonus of extra Nook miles for checking in every day, but time traveling may well undo your streak. If you have turnips and time travel more than a few days, your turnips will go bad. Depending on how far into the past or future you time travel, cockroaches may appear in your house, which can be removed by stepping on them. Lastly, depending on your relationships with your island’s residents, time-traveling can make residents unhappy or even leave your island altogether.
The Takeaway
Ultimately, the possible inconveniences of time traveling scale with how far and how much you time travel, so if you’re feeling nervous, try testing it out by just jumping forward or backward a few days. But if you’ve sunk hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing and you’re tired of waiting to unlock more stuff, time-traveling is the answer!
