An Animal Crossing interest rate change has come to the game as part of the 1.2.0 Nature Day update. The reason for this change to Animal Crossing: New Horizons is pretty clear, but it will ultimately only affect honest players.
If you weren’t aware, the Bank of Nook pays out interest on any savings you may have in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The interest is calculated based on your balance for the last day of the month and paid out on the first of the month.
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Now, an Animal Crossing interest rate change has arrived, presumably to reduce potential profits for people who cheat by setting their system clock forward to time travel. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will have much of an effect.
How will the Animal Crossing interest rate change affect the game?
As this Reddit comment notes, the Bank of Nook previously paid out a 0.5% interest rate up to a maximum of 99,999 Bells. To get the maximum, you would have to have 20 million Bells in the bank.
Now, the rate has been slashed to 0.05% and a maximum of 9,999 Bells. Once again, the only way to get the maximum is by having 20 million Bells saved on the last day of the month.
Time travel prophets
The change was presumably to make it more difficult for “time travelers,” people who set their Nintendo Switch system clock forward to skip ahead in the game. Basically, people could skip ahead several months and get 99,999 Bells for every month that passes as long as they have the maximum.
Slashing the potential profits of this method by 90% will end this particular strategy, but it won’t halt time-traveling.
Cheaters actually do prosper
Time travelers can still make a boatload of money in numerous other ways, including selling tons of turnips or simply waiting for fruit trees to grow.
Yes, this is a little more inconvenient for people who use time-traveling… but does anyone honestly believe this change will stop them from figuring out how to make money quickly?
It hurts the little guy
The other side of the coin is the honest folks. I don’t time travel and I certainly don’t have 20 million Bells in the bank. I don’t even think I’ve earned even a quarter of that in the month that I’ve been playing the game thus far.
However, the little savings I would have could give me a nice bonus. Suppose that I had 1 million Bells in the Bank of Nook (a much more attainable number) — I would get 500 Bells in interest on the first of the month. That’s maybe enough for one piece of clothing.
Now? The Animal Crossing interest rate change means I’d get 50 Bells instead. Hooray.
There’s a better way
This Animal Crossing interest rate change is a band-aid on a problem that could have been fixed in other ways. I get it. The idea is to make time traveling less profitable. There’s an easier solution for that, though: a daily login bonus.
If you largely calculate the interest based on the number of days people play the game, time travelers would only be able to move forward one day at a time. It would slow things down tremendously.
It’s fine if Nintendo keeps the 0.05% monthly interest for less active players. However, it should also add some kind of daily login bonus for your savings so honest players can still profit while also keeping time travelers from making easy money.
