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One of the most frustrating things about Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that it's difficult to control which animals are residents on your island. When you reach the maximum of ten villagers, there are only two ways to kick an animal that you don't like off your island paradise: the animal asking you to move away (a randomly selected, difficult-to-control process) or by asking a visitor to your campsite if they want to move to the island.
Since the first method isn't very reliable, this guide provides all the knowledge you'll need to replace old villagers with new ones by taking advantage of the campsite mechanic. No need to reset your whole island and start over.
Updated on May 9, 2023: Whether you want to move out a specific villager because they just aren't one of your favorites or you want to freshen up your island's roster, moving out a villager can be difficult in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We've updated this guide for readability so you can easily use the campsite to get the villagers you want.
Step One: What Do You Need To Replace Your Villagers?
Willingness To Time Travel
You need to be ready and willing to time travel forward (possibly quite a long way in the future) in order to refill the campsite with new animals.
By extension, this also means that your island will be full of weeds, flowers, fresh mail, new posts on your bulletin board, and more — there will be some clean-up to do afterward.
If you have other players on the same island with you, it's a good idea to double-check with them and get their go-ahead.
Some Time To Spare
This process takes a chunk of time out of your day. Make sure you do it when you know you have time to sit down with the game for a while.
If you're a solo player, you can always return to the process later if you need to stop. But, if another person lives on your island, they may not be happy to pick up their Switch only to discover that it's actually December, instead of August.
Optional: No Villagers Of Your Desired Type
There are eight villager types in Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Peppy, Normal, Uchi (Big Sister), Snooty, Lazy, Cranky, Smug, and Jock.
If your current villagers are made up of every type but one, your campsite will get a villager of that missing type 60 percent of the time.
With this in mind, it's a lot easier to aim for a personality type in particular.
If you're hunting for a particular villager type, Smug, for example, and already have one Smug villager on your island, it may be worth following this process an extra time simply to move the existing Smug villager off your island.
Step Two: Time Travel To 4:57 am
This process involves checking each day to see whether a villager has arrived at your campsite. You can also speed up the process by checking two days at once.
The events of the day don't reset at midnight — the game actually resets at 5 am.
If you're logged on at 4:59 am, you'll hear the bell chime, and then you'll be booted into Isabelle's morning announcements while the game loads the events of the next day.
To change the time in your game, you will need to head to your Switch's System settings. Under Date and Time, turn off Synchronize Clock via Internet.
Below this, select Date and Time to input the desired time.
You are able to check two days at once by setting your Switch's time to 4:57 am.
Let's say it's May 1, and you know there is no camper on the island today. You would save your game, log out, and then change the time to 4:57 am on May 3. This will allow you to check May 2 and May 3 without having to reset the clock twice.
We suggest 4:57 am because 3 minutes is a reasonable amount of time for you to log in, listen to Isabelle's announcements, and then have a quick pause before the reset occurs. If you'd like to do it closer or further away from 5am, feel free.
Step Three: Wait To Hear Isabelle's Announcements
When you've changed your clock and logged in, you'll hear Isabelle do her announcements. She'll say the current date, but is actually announcing events from the day before (i.e. she'll say it's May 3 at 4:57, but her subsequent announcements will pertain to May 2).
Assuming she doesn't tell you that a camper is on the island, you'll then log into the game and wait until 5am.
The bells of Resident Services will chime, and Isabelle will make another announcement.
There are three possible conclusions:
- Isabelle doesn't announce that a camper is on the island. You can save and quit the game. Continue to step four.
- Isabelle tells you there is a camper on the island when you first log in, not after you've waited till 5am for the second batch of announcements. In this case, be sure to exit immediately, shut down the game, and set your clock back a few hours. This ensures you won't lose the camper when the game resets. Continue to step three.
- Isabelle tells you there is a camper on the island during the second set of announcements. You're safe to go meet this new animal: continue to step four.
Step Four: Recruit The Camper And Replace Any Villager You Choose
Next, you get to go meet your camper. If it's someone you don't want on your island, leave and continue to step five.
If it's someone you do want on your island, congratulations. You'll be able to invite them to live on the island after speaking to them enough.
Once you've invited them, they may accept automatically, decline automatically, or say that they want to leave it up to chance and challenge you to a card game.
If you're declined a few times (or lose a couple of rounds of cards), don't fret. You can keep doing this as many times as you need to until they accept your offer.
Once they finally accept your offer, they'll zip off to Resident Services to ask about moving to the island. When they return, if your island already has ten villagers, they'll say that the only way they could move here with you is if someone is willing to trade.
You'll need to approve of them trading with someone, then they'll say the name of one of your villagers and ask if it's okay for them to trade places with that villager. If they say the name of a villager you want to leave the island, then you're set!
However, if they say the name of a villager you want to keep, there's no need to sacrifice a villager you like for the camper.
As soon as the camper names a villager you don't want to lose, exit to the Switch home screen and close the game immediately.
If you finish the conversation and leave the tent, the game saves which villager the camper named and will never select another.
If the game doesn't get a chance to save, it will simply select another resident of your island at random to swap with next time.
Reload the game and invite the camper again. Continue this process until they select the villager you want to leave.
Step Five: Time Travel Forward Again And Repeat
If you didn't get a camper at all, you can time travel forward two days, set the clock to 4:57am again, and repeat the process.
For example, if last time you had set the clock to May 3, 4:57am, this time you would set the clock to May 5, 4:57am in order to check for a camper on May 4 and 5.
If you did get a camper on the island, you won't get another one for at least a few days. It is variable, but we recommend that you assume there won't be any campers for four days after you got one.
- If you got a camper on May 3 before 5am, it's actually a camper from May 2. You would assume that there wouldn't be a camper on May 3, 4, 5, or 6. Therefore, you would skip to May 8 at 4:57am (which allows you to check the 7 and the 8) to continue your villager hunt.
- If you got a camper on May 3 after 5am, the camper arrived on May 3. You can assume that there will not be a camper on May 4, 5, 6, or 7. You'd set the clock to May 9 at 4:57am (in order to check for a camper on the 8 and the 9) and carry on hunting.