It is the dream of any Animal Crossing player to be able to sell their turnips at good prices. After spending a small fortune and flooding our houses with little round white vegetables, we can only pray to find a decent price to sell them before Daisy Mae comes back for her weekly visit.
And every once in a while, we are lucky enough to be blessed by the landlords in training — Timmy and Tommy Nook — who are willing to buy our turnips at 400, 500, and even 600 bells per turnip.
If you are one of the lucky ones who have been fortunate enough to have been visited by the turnip gods, you may be considering opening your island to the general masses, such that they may also be blessed.
But before you embark on your turnip exchange, here are some things you should consider before opening your island up to strangers.
1. Prepare your island
One real concern about opening your island up for trade is that all these potential sellers are unknown to you, both online and offline. There is unfortunately a real chance that some of them might just be coming to your island to wreck it.
An easy way to prevent people from running loose from your island is to fence off the path from the airport to Nook’s Cranny. To date, there haven’t been any reports of players managing to clip through gates, so fences are the safest way to protect your island.
Just make sure not to miss any spots and you can rest assured no one is going to dig up your beloved flowers when your back is turned.
2. Consider your platform
Where will you be advertising your turnip prices? While some people might choose to post their turnip prices on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, others might post their prices on websites such as turnip.exchange.
Where you choose to advertise your island can greatly impact your hosting experience. Personally, I would choose to post on dedicated turnip exchange websites that are built specifically for such purposes, as they tend to have better support systems in place in case of wily players.
One such website would be the r/acturnips subreddit. If you are smart about your hosting methods, the subreddit offers the most control over how you can run online sessions.
You may have heard about the popular website turnip.exchange as a viable way to advertise your turnip places. While turnip.exchange does offer a built-in queue system for those eagerly trying to get into your island, the downside of this is that you are forced to use one Dodo Code throughout the whole session (We’ll go into the Dodo Code system in a little while). This means players can easily share your dodo code with friends, causing your island to flood with more people than you originally wanted.
And not just that, turnip.exchange also potentially violates Nintendo’s Terms of Service, which may cause those who are using it to face sanctions from Nintendo.
So choose your platform wisely!
3. Manage your queue
So you’ve chosen your platform and you’re starting to advertise your turnip prices. Vegetable hunters are eagerly lining up at your metaphorical front door. How are you going to manage the queue?
The easiest method is to use Google Forms. Create a form and ask those who want to enter your island to provide their in-game name, their island name as well as an immediate way to contact them. You can then break them up into groups of 3 to 5.
To be extra safe, ask respondents to answer an open-ended question, like who their favourite villager is, or what their favourite food is, so that you’re not plagued by legions of bots.
Google Forms has the added benefit of being able to export responses into a handy-dandy Excel sheet. This way, you can see everyone’s answers at a glance and verify their identity before giving them assess to your island. If you want to be extra transparent, you can make the link to the Excel sheet available — but make sure it’s “view only” — so that those who’ve signed up to come to your island can see where they are in the queue.
4. How many Dodo Codes are you using?
This is where we get back into the Dodo Code system. To allow strangers access to your island, you are going to need to give them a Dodo Code such that Wilson can fly them over.
You can choose to use one Dodo Code throughout your whole turnip exchange session, and release it to one group at a time to manage the flow of visitors, or you can give a different Dodo Code to each group as it reaches their turn.
I would recommend using multiple Dodo Codes over one singular one for multiple reasons. As we’ve seen with turnip.exchange, using one Dodo Code can allow players to pass it out among themselves, resulting in a traffic jam on your island.
On the other hand, if you use multiple Dodo Codes, you can be sure only people that you want are able to access your island. Nobody will be able to jump the queue, and you can reduce the risk of your Dodo Code being passed around.
Some players may also ask to make multiple trips, meaning they are going to go back to their island and bring over more turnips to sell. If you have many people in your queue, you might not be okay with players making multiple trips. Having multiple Dodo Codes will ensure players don’t try to sneak back on your island.
5. Starting the session
The bane of every turnip price hunter’s existence is sitting through the cutscenes. And if you have multiple people on your island, this can mean that you and your visitors have to sit through 5 minutes of watching somebody else land.
As boring as they are, the cutscenes do serve the purpose of saving the game for everyone on the island. You want to make sure everybody comes and leaves with your island with what they have rightfully earned. And for eager sellers, nothing is worse than trying to fly over to an island and meeting interference instead because somebody else is in the middle of a conversation. So make the process easier for everyone and ask your guests to wait until everyone in their group has arrived.
Once everyone has reached, they can then all go sell their turnips together and be sure that they won’t be dealing with the incessant “Looks like someone’s on their way here!” banner.
6. Ending the session
And just like you’ve started the session, ask your guests not to leave until everyone is done selling their turnips. No one wants to sit through a cutscene of someone leaving while they’re trying to sell their vegetables, and luckily for everyone, this is the one cutscene you can skip.
Ask your visitors to gather outside of the shop and wait for their fellow group mates to be done. This also gives them time to tip you for being a generous host (and for those wondering, a 10% tip is customary if you go by r/acturnips’ standards).
Once everyone is done and you’ve collected your well-deserved tips, you can end the session yourself by pressing the minus button on your Switch. This will automatically save the game for everyone and send them on their way home without the pain of sitting through 5 more minutes of cutscenes. This method also has the added benefit of closing the airport’s gate for you, giving you the peace of mind that no unwanted visitors will sneak back in,
Congratulations, you’ve officially hosted your first turnip exchange session! With any luck, you would have received your fair share of tips and can close your island for the night. Enjoy your break from the screen and happy playing, fellow mayors!
