One of the new features in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a fruit meter. Upon eating any piece of fruit (or some other food items), you’ll build up a meter that then gives your shovel/ax swing a supercharge. With this charge, you’ll be able to break rocks and completely shape the design of your island.
If you’re constantly on the lookout for crafting materials, though, you’ll already see the problem here. Smash all of the rocks on your island and you’ll be without a resource for gathering stone, clay, and iron nuggets. You’ll also lock out your ability to find the money rock, which dolls out quite a few bells.
So, is breaking rocks mostly a choice? Do these bulging boulders actually respawn? The short answer is yes. You can safely break everything on your island and eventually, nature will repopulate with some new rocks to smash. The longer answer is that your island can only populate itself with six rocks at one time. Rocks will also respawn at a rate of one per day, so you can’t even smash them all and immediately get them back.
One method you can use to speed up the respawn process is time travel. Most people are opposed to this, but changing your system clock and relaunching New Horizons will repopulate the rocks as if a whole day has passed. That will let you smash everything and collect the maximum amount of materials possible.
You can also venture out to different islands using “Nook Miles Tickets” and smash those rocks. Islands spawn a maximum of three rocks and there are no repercussions for breaking those. It’s not like if you break rocks on one island, the next has to wait to spawn them. You’ll be able to travel around and do your best Gallagher impersonation as much as you want…provided you have the miles to accommodate it.
Still, the main question of “Can rocks respawn?” is a resounding yes. Nintendo obviously couldn’t have players missing out on gathering materials, which is the entire crux of this latest entry. So go forth and smash rocks to your heart’s content! They will return en mass once you’re done.
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