Animal Crossing: New Horizonshas been keeping gamers occupied all summer with its new updates, but there’s one easily missed feature that has been there from Day 1. Veterans of the series know all too well that the real end game behind their adorable neighbors is a chance at a rare framed selfie of theirs.
New Horizonsis known for its vast customization options and casual-yet-committed player base, so the inclusion of rare, functionally useless treasure should come as no surprise. While the originalAnimal Crossingsimply featured an in-game furniture item called “Nook’s Portrait,“Animal Crossing: Wild Worldintroduced the concept of framed villager portraits. Ever since, players have been able to earn a framed portrait of any resident villager after successfully befriending them.
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As mentioned above, players can earn a framed portrait ofanyvillager inAC: New Horizons.The portraits all feature the same photo used for the posters available from Nook Shopping, but they’re instead framed and offer a fun-fact/quote when interacted with. If taken to a workbench, the frames on these photos can also be customized. While islanders' posters are simplyunlocked in the Nook Shopping catalogby inviting a villager to Harv’s Island, the framed photos require a bit more effort.
In order to earn a framed photo of an islander, players must first nearly max out their friendship with that particular resident. Given thatAC: New Horizonsdoesn’t offer a directguide to measuring friendship levels with villagers, this involves some degree of guess-work and luck, but nonetheless, it’s a fairly simple process.
Islanders' friendship levels rise when a player gives them a gift (literal bonus points for wrapped gifts), or generally assists them by completing tasks orhelping catch fleas, for example. In this case, players will want to spend time developing their friendship with an islander until that particular islander allows the player to change their greeting. This marks the fifth of six tiers of friendship inAC: New Horizons, and signifies that the player has a chance at obtaining their photo as a gift.
Once players have reached the appropriate level of friendship with their preferred islander, they should simply focus on generously showering them with gifts, whenever possible. A villager’s photo will be given to the player as a gift from an islander themselves. Although there’s no way to force an islander to gift their photo, there are ways to eliminate undesirable gifts from the reward pool.
The currently accepted method for “farming” islander photos involves triggering a reward bygifting something valuable to a villager, but forcing them to send it by mail by maintaining a full inventory. To do so, simply follow these steps:
The fruit counts as apresent valuable enough to trigger a gift-backfrom the islander, but because the player’s inventory remains full after the gift, the islander is forced to mail their gift. This is significant because islanders are unable to mail money, which is to say, this eliminates the chance of receiving bells as a gift entirely, thereby indirectly increasing a player’s odds at receiving a framed photo.
