Animal Crossing: New Horizons Adds a Café, Cooking, & Huge Home Design DLC Next Month

Animal Crossing: New Horizons will change in big ways when its big free 2.0 update and paid Happy Home Paradise DLC launch for Nintendo Switch owners on November 5, and Froggy Chair made the cut. Information regarding both major content updates was unveiled during today’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct, where Nintendo debuted around 23 minutes of content that should keep players busy for a long, long time. The free update includes a laundry list of quality-of-life improvements and new features like cooking, while the Happy Home Paradise pack will cost $25 and brings on an entirely new mechanic that allows players to set up dream locations for many of the series’s characters. The 2.0 free update and Happy Home Paradise DLC will be the last of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ major updates.

The free Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update brings loads of improvements to existing mechanics, such as an increased storage limit to 5,000 items, new ways to customize your homes, more space for bridges and inclines, and even the ability to shimmy through narrow spaces. There are other, more substantial additions coming with the update too though. Brewster’s café and Kapp’n’s boat tour are two of the biggest additions, with the former giving players a calm place to relax with friends and other villagers, while the latter opens up a pier where Kapp’n can whisk players away to mysterious islands. The free Animal Crossing: New Horizons update also introduces Gyroids that can be unearthed to help decorate your home, an open market on Harv’s Island, and an entire cooking mechanic that allows you to grow your own ingredients and follow DIY recipes to create all sorts of meals.

Then there’s the Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise DLC, where players join the Paradise Planning Team and get paid to remodel small islands to suit the specific needs of Animal Crossing’s characters. It essentially adds a whole Happy Home Designer component to the game, as the content gives a suite of expanded customization options — like partition walls, pillars, and the ability to change room sizes — when designing each home. You’ll unlock more furniture and options as you progress through Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise, and you can even access a Happy Home Network, an app that showcases work from other players who wish to show off their designs.

While the Animal Crossing: New Horizon – Happy Home Paradise DLC will cost $25 to purchase outright, it will also come included for subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. Of course, that means you’ll have to pay either $50 for an individual membership or $80 for a family plan annually, but if the option to also play Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games sounds enticing, then it might be the deal for you.

Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack launches October 25, but you won’t be able to access any of the new Animal Crossing: New Horizons content until it all launches on November 5. Until then, be sure to watch today’s Animal Crossing Direct below.