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Different from furniture, tools are useful objects Animal Crossing: New Horizons. They can only be used outside your home, and they are essential for the creation/modification of your island.
Without them, you won't be able to craft furniture for your home, capture fish, insects and fossils to fill your museum and much more.
In this guide, we will explain what all the tools are used for and their crafting recipes.
Complete list of available tools
Note that all these tools are craftable via Tom Nook's workbench at the Residents' Services. At first, only "rudimentary" recipes are available and the tools will break after a few uses.
You can then unlock stone recipes to get stronger tools, and finally recipes (construction plans) that'll allow the tools about 20 uses.
Shovel
Use: allows to dig up fossils and treasures. By eating a fruit, you can increase your strength and dig up whole trees. The shovel can also be used to tap stones to obtain materials (iron, gold, clay, stone) or insects (pill bugs).
How to unlock it: Blathers, the Museum's curator, will give you the craft plan so you can dig up fossils.
Rudimentary Craft: x5 hardwoods
Axe
Use: allows to knock pieces of wood out of trees. With the non flimsy axe, you can cut the trees down.
Rudimentary craft: x5 tree branches + x1 stone
Fishing rod
Use: allows you to catch fish in any body of water.
Rudimentary Craft: x5 tree branches
Bug net
Use: allows to capture insects. Keep pressing A to gently approach an insect and keep the net in the air.
Rudimentary craft: x5 tree branches
Jumping pole
Use: allows you to jump from one side of the river to the other.
How to unlock it: once Blathers (museum) is installed on the island, he will tell you about the fossils to dig up and give you the map of the pole so that you can access other parts of the island.
How to craft it: x5 softwood
Watering can
Use: allows to water the flowers.
How to craft it: x5 softwood
Slingshot
Use: allows to recover flying objects in the sky by bursting balloons.
How to craft it: x5 hardwood
Ladder
Use: allows you to go up cliffs (upper floor of your island).
How to unlock it: Once the Nook Shop is installed on your island, Tom Nook will ask you to build three houses for three new inhabitants. He will provide you with the ladder blueprint so that you can access the other parts of the island.
How to craft it: x4 wood + x4 softwood + x4 hardwood.
Other small tools are craftable in Animal Crossing: New Horizons but they aren't as useful. For example, you can build an Ocarina or a Pan Flute to play music whenever you want.
You can also make a Mirror to change your hairstyle or a Workbench that you can carry around to craft tools at any time.
Thanks to an official tweet, we now know that there will be a minimum of 383 villagers available in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
