Remove unwanted villagers from your Animal Crossing island

In order to have the perfect island, you need to have the perfect villagers.

There are literally hundreds of potential villagers for you to meet while playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons — 402 of them, to be exact. However, you can only have up to 10 villagers living on your island at a time. To help you populate your island with your favorite characters, we've included tips for how to get a villager to move to your island and how to keep them happy while they're there. Of course, if you're just not having it, we also have tips for how to make a villager move out.

• How to recruit new villagers
• How to keep your favorite villagers happy
• How to make villagers move out

How to recruit new villagers

In order to invite new villagers to your island, you will need to have gotten far enough in the game to be able to travel to other islands using a Nook Miles Ticket. That means that at a minimum, you must have been playing for more than one day. If you haven't gotten here yet, don't expect to find new villagers just yet.

Visit other islands

In order to recruit the first three villagers, you'll need to have some Nook Miles Tickets. These can be bought for 2,000 Nook Miles each from the kiosk at Resident Services. Then run to the airport and tell Orville, the dodo behind the counter, that you want to explore another island.

While you're exploring, you might come across a random animal NPC. Talk to them and invite them to live on your island. Then you'll have to wait until Tom Nook asks you to scout out a plot of land for these newcomers (this happens after you've built Nook's Cranny). One of the new villagers you invited will appear on your island the day after you've completed setting up the new housing area.

The campsite

Things change once your island starts getting a bit more established. For instance, after you finally upgrade Resident Services from a tent to a proper building, you'll eventually be able to set up a campsite for traveling villagers. Talk to these guests while they're visiting and you might be able to convince them to stay on the island.

Dust off your amiibo

All of those adorable Animal Crossing amiibo that you either just collected or have had on your shelf for a few years can finally be put to good use.

Once the campsite has been built on your island, run to the Nook Stop kiosk and invite an animal to your campsite. You'll then need to scan your amiibo by hovering it over the joystick on your right Joy-Con. Shortly thereafter, you'll discover that a new camper has appeared on your island.

Preparing land for Resident Services

As your island develops, additional villagers won't be ok with roughing it and will want a nice place to live. As such, when Resident Services is in a proper building, you'll be able to influence your island a whole lot more. Tom Nook will enlist you to help him sell land for housing development. This of course means that you will need to ready the land for your new residents. It'll cost you 10,000 Bells to set up each new plot, but you'll earn 1,000 Nook Miles for your efforts.

How to keep your favorite villagers happy

Now that your villagers are here on the island, they're going to want to feel appreciated and liked. Keep them happy by talking to them every day, occaisionally writing them letters, and fulfilling errands for them. It also helps to remember their birthdays. Don't forget to give them presents they'll enjoy. If you turn your game off for several months or even days, your favorite villagers might pack up and leave, so you'll need to check in regularly.

If a villager starts walking around with a cloud around their head, that means something is troubling them. They might even be considering moving out. If that's the case, make sure you talk to them and convince them to stay.

How to make villagers move out

As you keep playing, you might decide that you really just don't care for one of your animal neighbors or that you're ready for someone new to join your village. If that's the case, there are three ways that you can boot someone off your island. Contrary to what it might seem, talking to Isabelle won't make villagers leave. Here are the ways that you make a villager leave your island.

Methods for getting a villager to move out

• 1. Shunning
• 2. Using the campsite and amiibo cards
• 3. Adopting villagers from other players' islands

1. The Shunning

It isn't the fastest option and it might seem cruel, but following these steps is a surefire way to get someone to leave your island.

• Step 1 - Zip your lips: Don't talk to this particular villager for several days. Just act as if they don't exist. But don't forget to talk to the other villagers on your island.
• Step 2 - Personal cloud: Eventually, you'll see this villager walking around with a cloud over its head. This means that they are considering leaving the island. Approach them and initiate a conversation.
• Step 3 - Tell them to get out of town: The villager will tell you that they've been thinking about leaving. When they ask you if you want them to stay, let them know it's time they moved along.

2. Using the campsite and amiibo cards

You can only have a total of 10 villagers on your island. That means that if you invite someone new to your island when there are already 10 residents, someone will get booted off the island to make way for the new person. If you've built the campsite and have Animal Crossing amiibo cards you can invite specific villagers to your island and hopefully convince them to move in.

Thing is, you don't get to choose who leaves. The camper will randomly choose someone from your current residents, so you might accidentally kick out one of your favorite characters in favor of someone new. If that happens, you might be able to turn the game off without saving and try to invite the camper again. They might choose someone else to kick off the island. However, if the game autosaves before you can turn the game off, you'll be stuck with the choices that were made.

3. Adopting villagers from other players' islands (Glitch Warning)

WARNING: We don't recommend this method as it's been causing games to glitch.

Once again, if you already have 10 villagers on your island then you can make someone move out by inviting a new character to move in. Whenever a villager is planning on leaving an island, it will take them a full day to pack up their things before they actually leave. If you happen to visit another person's island while a villager is in this packing state, you can invite said villager to live on your own island. However, this method has been causing really bad glitches.

PSA: there’s a pretty bad bug in ACNH that hasn’t been patched yet. If a friend has a villager “in boxes” because they’ve been forced out via campsite visitor, DO NOT adopt them. Could result in a glitched spot.

This reddit post explains it in detail: https://t.co/2CNK2jp5Cf pic.twitter.com/KGG5N1DjSz

— NintendoFanGirl ? (@NintendoFanGirl) March 28, 2020

As mentioned above, many players have discovered that there's currently a glitch with this method. The glitch can make it so that a plot of land on your own island won't get completed. This in turn makes it so the invited villager never moves in and worse, you cannot place any more houses on your island. Hopefully Nintendo will release a fix for this issue soon. Until then, don't talk to villagers who are moving out when visiting other islands.

Survivor

Now that you know how to invite new villagers, maintain relationships with current residents, and kick other villagers off the island you have better control of who your villagers are. I hope you're able to find all of your favorite villagers and that all of your residents are able to get along well together.