Skip to Content

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Strategy Guide: 11 Advanced Tips & Tricks for Keeping Your Campsite in Good Shape

Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is one of the hottest new games on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. As a refresher on what this game is about, this is a “relaxed” game where you can make new animal friends and enjoy the “splendor of nature” as the manager of a campsite. Your job is to choose the right furniture, tents, and amenities, arrange these items, and invite animals once you’ve set things up to their own liking. A lot of this game centers on completing requests for animals as you visit the map’s various recreational spots. Then there’s the crafting mechanic, and the materials you need to gather in order to craft certain furniture or amenities that could make those animals happy and convince them to go to, and stay at your campsite.

Previously, we shared with you a list of tips and tricks for first-timers, for Pocket Camp rookies who have just downloaded the game and aren’t sure how to get the ball rolling. For this new Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp strategy guide, we’ll be moving on to tips designed for intermediate, and even advanced players. If you’ve been playing the game for a couple days and have mastered the basics, be sure to check out the tips we have for you below, as we’re here to help simplify things and make running a campsite and inviting animals to the site a breeze.

1. A Detailed Look At Improving Friendship Levels

Leveling up in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp can be done in two separate ways, starting with friendship levels. These are specific to the different animals in the game, and you can earn more friendship points by completing red item or dialogue requests — that would mean the dialogue in the red font you see whenever you’re talking to an animal. Most of the time, the animals’ requests will earn you two or three friendship points, so if you’re able to complete all animals’ requests in one go, you can earn at least eight or nine friendship points all in all. Take note that being friends with one animal does not mean you will lose or gain friendship points with another animal. Friendship level is always visible in the form of the hearts that appear after completing a red dialogue item, or whenever you view an animal’s info page from the Contacts screen; here you’ll see that completing one animal’s friendship requests is only specific to that animal, and has no bearing on the others.

2. How To Level Up Personal Experience

As for the second way to level up, that would be in terms of your personal experience level, which is visible in the upper left corner of the game screen. Now this metric ties in with your friendships with animals, as gaining a friendship level with one animal will allow your personal experience level to go up by one point. That means if you’re dealing with an animal such as Apollo and improve your friendship level from level 2 to 3, you will get one EXP point toward your progress to making the next level. But what’s in it for you if you get to level up?

Simply put, a higher EXP level would allow you to unlock new animals that you can add to the random rotations at your camper, with these animals also helping you unlock new pieces of furniture to add to your list of items you can craft Depending on the level milestone, you can get a variety of different items, such as Bells, Request Tickets, Leaf Tickets, new Market Box slots, and more space for your inventory. You’ll likely have all 40 animals unlocked once you’re at level 36, so without any more animals to unlock, the game will make up for that by allowing you to keep receiving items as a reward.

3. At First, There’s No Need To Befriend High-Tier Animals

Each animal in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will come with a corresponding set of requirements, and if you’re trying to improve your friendship level, you’ll want to start out slow and work on those lower-level animals; that’s because you will start out with a point or two, with that figure adding up. But for each time your relationship with your animals improve, you’ll have to deal with escalating sets of requirements that get progressively harder with each animal you unlock.

4. How Does The Furniture Mechanic Work?

You’ve probably wondered when we will be talking about furniture, and how it all plays a role in how you deal with animals in the game. For starters, furniture requests come into play when you’re trying to improve your friendship with a given animal, or if they’re at the right level. You will only need to craft one of each item that’s being requested, and that item doesn’t need to be placed in your Campsite. You’ll also need to be patient when crafting furniture, as this would usually take several hours to complete. That makes it important to have some xtra crafting slots, which you can purchase by means of your Leaf Tickets, which are the premium currency of the game.

One way to save time with furniture is to create items, if the situation calls for it, that are shared by multiple animals. For example, both Carrie and Roald will request a Kiddie Rug before they head to your campsite, but you don’t need to make one rug for each; one for both will be fine. After you’ve crafted a piece of furniture for an animal, that’s when you can invite them to your campsite. This can be done by responding to the in-game pop-up that lets you know that an animal can be invited, or by going to your Contacts list, and tapping on the animal, provided they have the “Invite me!” Message on their icon. You can choose from manual or automatic invites right below Special Requests. The latter option is better, as it quickly cleans up your camp and adds the five requested furniture items. You can always undo the setup once you’ve completed the invitation, thereby allowing you to continue where you had last left off.

5. Animals Can Return To Your Camp Anytime

Although animals can leave your campsite for one reason or another, you can always invite them for free, allowing them to return anytime you wish.

Sending an animal home or sending them an invite to return is easy. Just go to your campsite, tap on the icon that resembles a cat’s face (you’ll find it on the right side of your screen), and view the list of animals at your campsite at any given time. Tap on any animal’s icon to pull up their details page, which also includes a Send Home option. As for bringing them back, you can tap on an empty slot that has a plus sign on it, and choose the animal you wish to invite from your list of contacts. To jog your memory on what we had told you in the first guide, you can only have a maximum of eight animals at your campsite at any time. In other words, you need to send one of your animals home before you make another invitation to another creature.

Interestingly, there is a bit of a twist if you invited an animal to your camp, but said animal was one on the camping islands away from your home base. Their island will show up as empty for a three-hour time span, and they won’t be immediately replaced by another animal. With that in mind, do not invite those animals over unless you have already completed at least some requests.

6. Make Your Guest Lineup Versatile And Functional

It is important to have a purpose-built lineup of animals at your campsite for the reason of increasing your Friendship Point total. While it is true that you can talk to the animals at camp and improve your Friendship Rating with them, it’s also important that you’re talking to the right animals.

In order to have an optimum guest lineup, you’ll need to be sure your camp sight isn’t lacking for animals that you actually want. Calling back to what we had told you recently, animals give out better rewards if you complete requests once you reach level 10. But to elaborate on this, you might want to invite animals to your Campsite, and stash them until they reach level 10. Once that happens, you can send them home, as that allows you to fulfill their requests and have them ready the next time you show up early.

Furniture that has been kept is best staying where it is — the inventory. The good thing is that your inventory at the schedule is unlimited for further items. Selling these surplus items for Bells is fine, but it won’t be worth it in the end, if you take into account the time and money you spent when crafting that piece of furniture. As we said last time, there’s also the possibility of future animals requesting an item you already have n you

Also keep in mind that if you’re trying to improve your friendship with an animal or two, you cannot rely on items to expedite the process. It’s all about furniture when it comes to this tip and the one above, and it’s furniture that gets people interested in your campsite, and convinces other animals to get there.

7. Animals Have Specific Crafting Materials And Essence

Each time you complete a request from an animal, level up your friendship, or even have a campsite discussion with them, you will receive different kinds of rewards, including Bells, Essence, and crafting materials. Each animal will give you a specific type of crafting reward and Essence, with the latter based on an animal’s personality. That means Apollo, Tex, and other “Cool” animals will get you Cool Essence, to cite a basic example. Likewise, animals that are considered “Cute” will give you Cute Essence. It’s as simple as that, but when it comes to crafting materials, that’s when things get a little complicated.

We say “complicated” because the deal with crafting materials is that they are given out at random, albeit with certain animal species always giving the same crafting material. For example, Punchy, Rosie, and other cats will always give you wood, while Roald and Tex, the two penguins, will always give you cotton. After you complete a request for an animal, the first material they give, as well as the material they give the most of, will be considered the “primary” material.

8. Leverage Your Knowledge Of Animals And Materials

Given what we had told you above about animals and the crafting materials they reward you with, you should use this advice to help you leverage things in a number of ways, namely improving your friendship levels with animals that give you a resource you’re currently lacking, and working on completing animal requests. How does this work?

Taking the above example, Roald and Tex are penguins, and they give you cotton as the primary material. Let’s also say you’re in need of some cotton. Assuming Roald is included in the three-hour rotation at the present, you’ll want to fulfill his requests before the others, so you can get all the cotton you need and then some. You can then invite Roald to your campsite, where you can then work on your friendship with him, considering what we told you about animals and the rewards that they give out — they are more generous once you reach the milestone levels of 10, 15, and 20.

9. Use Requested Items To Properly Manage Your Inventory

You can only hold so much inventory in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Always be mindful of the items you have in your inventory, and take note at all times of what animals are requesting. It’s possible to find out this information beforehand, before you even speak to the animals, by pulling up the Map screen and launching the island details. For example, if there’s an animal that requests a certain type of fish, you can go to the beach or other parts of the map where you can catch fish; don’t waste your time gathering other types of items and stocking them in your inventory if it’s fish that one of the animals are looking for. Of course, you’ll also want to focus on requests and combine multiple requests where more than one animal is asking for the same item. You want to make the most out of your limited inventory, and get rid of anything you may have in surplus.

10. Connect Your Game To Facebook And My Nintendo

There are some social elements in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, and we’ll tell you in a little bit about how you can properly utilize the social features of the game. But first, we recommend that you connect your game to Facebook, then connect it to a My Nintendo account. Connecting your game to Facebook, naturally, will allow you to add friends the game, where you can then help each other out as you run your respective campsites. If you don’t have any friends who play Pocket Camp, there’s always the option of creating a dummy Facebook account and adding friends from the comments sections of gaming blog sites, or Pocket Camp’s App Store or Google Play Store reviews sections.

As for actually saving your game, you can do this by connecting a My Nintendo account to the game, either by going to the menu screen after you first start playing the game, or by going to the More tab, then selecting My Nintendo. This allows you to save and backup your game, should you need to switch to a new device, but apart from that, you’ll get a good 100 Leaf Tickets as a reward for connecting your game. And as a bonus tip, there are My Nintendo missions on your account that tie in with your Pocket Camp game, such as completing a certain number of camper requests. Completing missions will earn you coins, which you can then use to buy goodies in the in-game store and further make your life easier as you run your campsite.

11. Here’s One Good Way You Can Make Use Of Kudos

Want to leverage the social elements of Pocket Camp to your benefit? And want another reason for you to connect your game to Facebook and add friends who may also be playing the game? It all boils down to Shovelstrike Quarry, and if you’re unable to get in there, you can send Quarry requests to the friends on top of your list, meaning the ones who have just logged on. After that, you’ll then want to head to their campsites and give them Kudos. This is important, as Quarry requests won’t show up as a red dot on the upper right menu like other notifications, such as new messages on your mailbox or friend requests; there’s a chance your friends will not see the requests right away. Kudos, on the other hand, send such alerts, and increase the chances of friends actually seeing and accepting your requests and helping you get into Shovelstrike Quarry.

While it’s always a good idea to ask for help from your friends, you should also check your friends list from time to time and look for the orange shovel icons. That’s a sign that your friends are needing your help, and once you see those icons, simply tap on their name and choose Lend a Hand. Again, you’ll want to work your way from the friends who have just logged in to the ones who haven’t logged in for some time since they made the request.

Suz

Saturday 1st of September 2018

catching those special bugs from plants is really unfair, its hard enough to gather without not even getting any when you use catch many. work on that please