The Best Ways To Spend Nook Miles In Animal Crossing

Players receive tons of Nook Miles in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the countless options for spending them can make it difficult to know which make for the best purchases. Nook Miles is a currency introduced in New Horizons that players can earn by doing daily tasks such as catching a certain number of bugs or fish or speaking to different villagers. There are some required Nook Miles purchases players must make to progress in the earliest parts of the game, such as setting up their tent, but afterward, players are free to spend their Nook Miles as they please.

Nook Miles are frequently coveted thanks to the wide variety of things they can be used to purchase. Players can use miles to visit special islands with Nook Miles Tickets or through Kapp’n in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. These are usually great ways to spend Nook Miles once a player doesn’t have much else to spend their miles on or, in the case of Nook Miles Tickets, when a player wants to look for a new villager to move to their island.

Before players get to that point, however, they have no shortage of goods and services to spend their hard-earned Nook Miles on. Anyone who prioritizes character customization has five sets of hairstyles, some new eye colors, and even body paint options they can buy with miles. Players who like to interact with others in multiplayer may want to purchase the reaction sets as early as possible. And there are all sorts of furniture that can be used to spruce up almost any island. But there are some purchases that every player should make no matter how they prioritize their Animal Crossing: New Horizons island life. These items will always be relevant; even after hosting an island for multiple years, players will still make use of these items and upgrades. After the player gets settled in, they can spend their miles on things more specific to what they want, like paying Kapp’n to go to a special island or stocking up on Nook Miles Tickets to search for specific villagers.

Necessary Nook Miles Purchases In Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The “Tool Ring: It’s Essential!” item costs only 800 Nook Miles and is one of the first things players should spend their miles on. The tool ring is a new feature in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that allows players to assign up to eight different tools to a convenient shortcut menu. This menu, once unlocked, can be accessed by pressing up on the D-pad when outside. Being able to easily swap between up to eight different Animal Crossing tools on the fly is a major quality-of-life feature that makes playing incredibly convenient as well as individualized. Players who want to focus on catching critters can fill their tool ring with tools like axes, fishing rods, and nets, while players who are looking to redesign their island can assign axes, shovels, and the vaulting pole. Players hosting a get-together may want to put drinks, fireworks, and a balloon in the ring instead.

Another essential Nook Mile purchase is “Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+.” This 3,000-mile item unlocks cooking and comes with eight different starter recipes. Cooking was a heavily anticipated addition to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the 2.0 update, and the extensive catalog of recipes made it worth the wait. Players can use a combination of fruits, fish, and harvestable ingredients to make all sorts of tasty treats that can be eaten to restore energy, sold for Bells, or placed as decoration.

“Pretty Good Tools Recipes” is also necessary for island life on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This item also costs 3,000 Nook Miles and teaches players the DIY recipes for high-quality tools: the stone axe and regular axe, the fishing rod and net, and the shovel and watering can. It’s helpful to know how to make these regular tools because even their golden versions can break in New Horizons, meaning players may find themselves missing tools if they’re not careful. Having access to the DIY recipes for these tools is helpful for saving Bells – since they’re costly in Nook’s Cranny – and convenient for when players don’t have access to the store, such as when they’re visiting a Nook Miles island, on a Kapp’n island tour, or the store is simply closed.

Players can also expand their Island Designer app with Nook Mile purchases. Aside from the default grass and dirt paths, players can buy eight additional designs. Each path costs 2,000 Nook Miles each, with the exception of the custom design path that costs 2,300 miles. Paths are indispensable when customizing New Horizons islands, and they can affect more than just the way the ground looks: coconut trees can be planted on sand paths, allowing players to plant them anywhere they want, not just on their island’s beaches.

The final essential Nook Miles purchases players should make are the “Pocket Organization Guide” and “Ultimate Pocket Stuffing” items. Costing 5,000 and 8,000 miles respectively, these are some of the most expensive purchases players will make with their miles, but the convenience they offer more than makes up for it. Players start Animal Crossing: New Horizons with only 20 spaces to hold items in their pockets, but each of these Nook Mile items increases that capacity by 10. With both purchases under their belt, players can hold up to 40 items, which is helpful no matter the situation. Whether they’re going on a shopping spree, villager searching on New Horizons’ mystery islands, gathering materials from Kapp’n island tours, or redecorating their island on a mass scale, players will always benefit from having the maximum pocket space.

Prioritizing Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nook Miles Spending Later

A Storage Shed furniture item and the Wooden Storage Shed DIY recipe are great purchases for players looking to redecorate their island since it allows them to access their home storage from wherever the shed is placed. Both the item and the DIY recipe cost 6,000 miles, which can be pretty pricey. Players who want to save miles and don’t mind the Mario series aesthetic can instead opt to buy two Warp Pipe items with Bells instead, and place one Warp Pipe close to their home and keep another one in their pocket for fast travel. There aren’t as many replacements for fences, though; players can buy up to 22 different kinds of fences and even customize their Animal Crossing: New Horizons fencing through Nook Miles purchases. Fences are an indispensable part of island decoration, so it’s worth it to pay the 1,000 miles for each recipe, as well as the 2,500 miles for the ability to customize them.

Nook Miles can also be used to upgrade custom design slots and allow players to access the custom design kiosk directly from their Nook Phone, which is invaluable to any Animal Crossing: New Horizons player who likes wearing the highly creative custom clothes players have made over the years, or decorating their island with custom designs like paths, foliage, posters, and more. Even players who don’t fill their islands with a lot of custom designs will still find the convenience of these upgrades helpful, especially as players continue to flex their creative muscles and create and share more custom designs.

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