How to swim in Animal Crossing
And how to swim really fast!
It is an exciting time to be a player of Animal Crossing New Horizons with not only the new Mario update on the way but the search for young spring bamboo is underway with all the new crafting details that it entails.
There are updates coming all the time to the game and one last summer gave you the ability to do something that you, strangely for a tropical island, were not able to do before - go for a swim.
If you are new to the game, or you haven't tried going for a dip yet, here is what you need to know about swimming, and swimming really quickly, in the Nintendo Switch hit.
How to swim in Animal Crossing
How to buy a wetsuit
Yep, before you can swim you need to make sure that you are dressed for the part! Make your way to Nook's Cranny if you do not own one yet and you will find it available for purchase in the cabinet that players will know as the place to buy things like tools from. You can also get a wetsuit from your Nook Stop terminal.
As for the cost, a wetsuit will set you back 3,000 bells - or you can get a Nook Inc. wetsuit for 800 miles. It is worth noting here that the design of the wetsuits changes all the time so do keep returning to see what new ones are on offer.
Now you own a wetsuit, you need to put it on. Simply go to your inventory, select the suit, and then choose to wear it - easy! While the wetsuit will go over whatever clothes you are wearing, you may want to manually remove your shoes and socks as - well nobody likes wet shoes and socks!
Start swimming
Wetsuit on? Then you're ready to splash! You will get a swimming lesson from Timmy and Tommy before you do it for the first time but if you need a refresher, here are the key details.
Head to a beach and choose how you want to get in the water. You can either casually wade into it from the sand, or jump from some rocks if there are any about, or your pier. Just press A when you are ready to enter and you will be swimming before you know it.
Once in, you can hold down A to paddle, or keep pressing A to swim. If you do nothing you will just tread water but as this is a fun family game, your character will keep doing it and will never drown - we can see why that creative choice was made.
How to swim fast in Animal Crossing
Just keep tapping that A button to speed up and navigate your way around your ocean. Swimming is really simple once you are in so just see how much speed you can pick up.
Even though you can leave your character in the water with no drowning risks, we imagine that you will want to get them out at some point. So to exit the water, all you need to do is swim back to the shoreline and your character will emerge and walk up the beach once the sea is shallow enough.
What can you do while swimming in Animal Crossing?
You can catch sea creatures! While swimming about, keep an eye out for bubbles in the water and if you spot one, hit Y to dive and when you emerge, you should have something like a sea anemone to show off!
Alternatively, look for shadows after you dive, the camera view will change when you are under, and if you see one, swim towards it and whatever it is will then be yours!
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That's not all, either. Keep an eye out for a washed-up Gullivarrr (basically Gulliver who's dressed as a pirate), who will ask you to dive for his lost phone. Once you've found it by checking out bubble spots, he'll be on his merry way - though not without sending you some pretty cool pirate swag for helping him out.
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