• Time traveling in Animal Crossing lets you quickly progress the story, unlock new bugs and fish, and more.
  • To time travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you need to change your Switch's date and time settings.
  • If you time travel too far ahead, your villagers might move out and weeds will grow throughout the town.
  • Visit Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

In a lot of ways, Animal Crossing is a game of patience. You need to wait for buildings to be constructed, for special NPCs to arrive in town, and for new fish and bugs to appear. In other words: Few things happen quickly. And when you consider that the game moves in real time, you might be waiting for days, if not weeks.

But what Nintendo won't tell you is that there's a way to skip waiting: Time travel. And you don't need to craft any special items in-game to do it — you just need to open your Switch's Settings menu.

Here's a primer on how to time travel in Animal Crossing, how it works, and what the risks of skipping around too much are.

How to time travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Make sure to fully close Animal Crossing before you do this — don't forget to save and quit first!

1. Select the System Settings option on your Switch's home screen.

2. Scroll down to the very bottom of the Settings page and select System.

3. Scroll down again to select Date and Time.

Open the Date and Time settings. Foto: William Antonelli/Insider

4. At the top of the Date and Time page, you'll see an option called Synchronize Clock via Internet. Select this to turn it Off.

5. Once it's turned off, select the Date and Time option. Use the options to pick whatever date and time you want to travel to, past or future, then click OK.

You have a range of 60 years to time travel in. Foto: William Antonelli/Insider

Once you boot Animal Crossing back up, it'll be whatever date and time you chose.

How time travel works in Animal Crossing

As mentioned, Animal Crossing works in real time. When it's midnight in real life, it'll be midnight on your island, too. The game is able to tell what time it is by syncing with your Switch's internal clock — so if you change the time and date on your Switch, it'll change in-game too.

You can use time travel to skip days, weeks, even months ahead. Do you need a winter-exclusive fish for the museum, but it's August? Just skip forward six months and snag what you need. You can even then head right back to the present day and keep playing like normal.

Here are some other cool things you can do with time travel:

  • When you ask Tom Nook to upgrade your house, skip forward a day to have him build it instantly
  • Keep jumping forward day-by-day until a special NPC (Redd, Flick, etc.) appears in your town
  • Switch days to refresh what the Able Sisters and Nook's Cranny are selling
  • Experience both day and night on your island, no matter when you're actually playing
  • Put some money in the bank and then skip forward a decade to collect the interest

You'll get to keep any of the interest that you earn, even after you return to the present day. Foto: Nintendo

Additionally, if you meet any NPC that gives you a single item on the day they appear, like Celeste or Gulliver, you can use time travel to quickly unlock everything they offer. Just get the special item from them, time travel one day forward, then time travel back to the day that they showed up. They'll appear again to give you another item.

Even though Nintendo doesn't support time traveling, you won't be punished for doing it. You can still play online with any other Animal Crossing player, even if your game is twenty years ahead of theirs.

The only thing you can't do is play through special holiday events before they happen, since your clock needs to be connected to the internet to trigger them.

The risks of time traveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Large patches of weeds will spring up around your island if you're away for too long. Foto: Nintendo

Compared to past games in the series, there are less drawbacks to time traveling in New Horizons. But there are still some disadvantages that you should consider before skipping too far or too often. 

  • Villagers might move out if too much time passes without speaking to them.
  • If you time travel backwards at all, or ahead past the next Sunday, all your turnips will rot.
  • The flowers in your town may wilt, and weeds will grow everywhere.
  • Cockroaches will infest your home.
  • You'll lose your Nook Stop bonus streak, which awards you with free Nook Miles for every day you use the machine in a row. 

If these cons seem worth the pros, go ahead and change your Switch's clock.

Read the original article on Business Insider