Gameplay modification

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This page or section contains instructions which may result in unexpected in-game effects.

Please proceed with caution when following directions from this page, and be aware that saving the game can make undesired effects permanent. Nookipedia is not responsible for any damage that may occur to games as a result of this information.

Gameplay modification, otherwise known as hacking, in the Animal Crossing series refers to manipulation of a game in ways not permitted by its original programming. There are a variety of methods through which hackers can produce effects including, but not limited to:

• Adding any object to the inventory, including those not otherwise attainable.
• Gaining any amount of Bells in their inventory, and/or their savings account.
• Preventing grass from deteriorating (in City Folk and New Leaf).
• Changing the town layout.
• Creating hacked villagers or custom villagers.
• Creating custom objects and HDLC.
• Reaching normally inaccessible areas, such as the tops of cliffs.
• Duplicating items

Methods

Hacked distributed items

The TriPokeBall HDLC in City Folk, inspired by the Poké Ball.

Hacked distributed items, sometimes shortened to HDLC, are distributed items not created by Nintendo. They are usually created with the help of a cheating device, such as an Action Replay. The items will become available in the Able Sisters, if the player has visited a hacker's town or had a hacker visit their town.

Villager modifier

The villager modifier is a cheat code used with devices such as the Action Replay in Animal Crossing: Wild World. It is used to replace a villager in order to get rid of, bring back, or obtain new villagers. However, the code cannot alter a replaced villager's personality, which can result in some discrepancies, such as a female villager with a male personality.

This cheat code can change a villager's name, character model, house color, default catchphrase, and the picture they give to the player; but it will not change their personality, relationships with other villagers and the player, custom catchphrase, clothing, hobby, or house interior.

Save file hacking

Despite the vast quantity of cheat codes and other methods mentioned above, over time, hackers may notice that what they are capable to do in-game will still present many limitations to their final desired changes, and will prove frustrating, as most of them may require being applied to the game whenever it is booted up. This is where editing the game's save file itself may come in handy.

Such is achieved by using a guide on how-to extract the save files from the game to be modified, and by using an external program for modifying the extracted save game, like for example, this program called ACSE (Animal Crossing Save Editor), which is compatible with all main games and some spin-offs (excluding Animal Crossing: New Horizons to the date).

Save file editing

Editing programs like ACSE enable hackers to permanently change certain aspects of their town and villagers that are usually hard to change via cheat codes, and it all can be done in a more interactive way on a computer.

This program, that also allows fixing previous hacking attempts with unwanted results, has many other options that can:

• Change the player's whole appearance, and their birthday date, on any game.
• Fill all of the player's inventory slots with any objects.
• Complete or clear all collections at the museum, all encyclopedias, emotion slots, the store's catalog, and the song library.
• Change the amount of Bells in the player's wallet, in their saving's bank, and still in debt.
• Change the quantity of Nook Points, Island Medals, MEOW Coupons obtained.
• Disable Mr. Resetti's visit after a reset.
• Switch a type of acre for another.
• Place any kind of object possible in the town.
• Edit all player's houses, the private island, and the patterns they carry.
• Change the town name, its station type, gate type, grass type, the native fruit, town ordinances, and even the current weather.
• Modify villagers to more safely replace them with other villagers.
• Add new villagers to the town, including an extra option to add DLC villagers.

Custom villagers

Dom, a villager first appearing in New Horizons, recreated to appear in Doubutsu no Mori e+.

In the same vein as ACSE, another external program called Custom Villager Creator can be used to create or edit e-Reader+ villagers.

Currently only designed for Doubutsu no Mori e+, this program takes advantage of the mechanics that the game uses in order to make e-Reader+ villagers move in: the characters are not actually present in the game's code, but rather are written into a reserved blank space in the player's save file using information present in their corresponding cards' dot code strips. Consequently, it is possible to import custom villagers, even on unmodified original hardware, simply by scanning a dot code containing the appropriate data.

Because of the method by which it operates, Custom Villager Creator comes with some reduced options focused on the creation of villagers. It has a texture editor and an editor for other villager characteristics like; their name, their initial catchphrase, their initial clothing, initial umbrella, initial house furniture, initial wallpaper and flooring, initial music, their personality, and their Zodiac sign (affecting the GBA minigames). All of this is then converted to a 2112-byte dot code, which can be printed out and swiped in the e-Reader+.

It only stores and opens villagers contained inside of ".yaz0" files, the default file type for villagers and a format used on many different Nintendo games.

Hacking per game

In Animal Crossing

They can give themselves any item in the game, as well as jump, which allows them to reach normally inaccessible places, including the island without a Game Boy Advance.

In Wild World

Seeds were a major threat to other player's towns in Wild World before online play was discontinued. Also, hackers in that game had access to a larger variety of tools and map editors to give themselves large sums of money and items, and a town layout of their choice. Action Replay codes are commonly used in Wild World.

In City Folk

Although the seed threat is diminished in City Folk, there are still hackers who play the game. Most use ACToolkit to customize the town layout, inventory, etc., and on the whole this works similarly to hacking in Wild World. Hackers may give even non-hackers DLC, which can appear in shops like the Able Sisters. The tool used to hack villagers in this game is known as Animal Villager Customization (NPC Tool).

In New Leaf

The Nintendo 3DS is commonly hacked with homebrew and custom firmware, typically used to edit the town's map layout. New Leaf can also be "hacked" with an Action Replay, being a more simple option with no known consequences compared to the possibility of the 3DS "bricking" using the homebrew method. Injecting and extracting saves is extremely common in the AC community. The online Club Tortimer island was also a popular target for hacking, but since the Nintendo Network has now shut down, this is no longer possible.

In New Horizons

Star fragment trees in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Since certain models of the Nintendo Switch have unpatchable security vulnerabilities, homebrew apps and game mods can be used on games such as New Horizons.

PC tools such as NHSE can be used to modify an island's details, such as the villagers living on it, the number of Bells and Nook Miles players have, the items catalogued by players, and the placement of buildings such as the Resident Services building, which cannot be moved in normal gameplay.

Mods can be used to alter the gameplay in various ways, such as allowing only certain species of fish to appear, or replacing the human player with a different animal character.

Popular uses of hacking in New Horizons have included "treasure islands," which have many rare items placed on them for visiting players to catalogue, and "star fragment trees," which are money trees that have been modified to replace the Bell bags with star fragments.

Some popular YouTubers make their own villagers in New Horizons for the viewers' enjoyment.

Gallery

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  A hacked duck made to resemble Psyduck in Animal Crossing: City Folk

• 

  The FalconHelm HDLC in Animal Crossing: City Folk

• 

  Inkwell, a villager who only appears in Welcome amiibo, recreated in New Horizons

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This article may require cleanup to meet Nookipedia's quality standards.

Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions.The specific problems are:

• Insufficient details on Methods
• Insufficient details per game