Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nook's Cranny Building Unlock Guide — How To Build The General Store

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the first official building you can construct on your island is Nook’s Cranny, a small shop that provides more options than what is on sale inside the Resident Services tent. Here, Timmy and Tommy sell a number of different furniture, wallpaper, and flooring options that change every single day. Basic tools, DIY recipes, medicine, tree saplings, and flower seeds are also for sale.

Below we detail the step-by-step process of unlocking Nook’s Cranny on your island. If you’re curious about how to unlock other buildings, be sure to check out our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guide hub. Otherwise, be sure to read our review in progress.

How To Unlock Nook’s Cranny

On the second day you play the game, Tommy will ask you to help him and his brother build a general store on the island. To do so, you will need to collect a lot of natural resources: 30 wood, 30 softwood, 30 hardwood, and 30 iron. You can get all the wood types by hitting trees with a flimsy axe, which won’t cut down the trees, and you can hit rocks with either an axe or a shovel to get iron. We recommend using a shovel and digging two holes behind you before you start hitting the rock; you get more materials out of a rock if you hit it multiple times in quick succession, so bracing yourself beforehand will eliminate recoil and the need to readjust. You should be able to hit the rock eight times and get eight resources out of it if you do it right.

Before long, though, you’ll run out of resources to gather on your island. If you want to collect them all in one day and get Nook’s Cranny built quickly, you will need to travel to another island via the airport. The smaller islands neighboring your main island are full of resources that can be collected and brought back. Each Nook Miles Ticket costs 2,000 Nook Miles at the Nook Stop machine in the Resident Services tent and grants you passage to one island.

Once you’ve collected enough of each resource, hand them in to Tommy in the Resident Services tent and construction will begin. Nook’s Cranny will be built the next day, so if you fast-track this process, you should have the store by day 3.