With players having to struggle with tools breaking in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the elusive golden tools prove to be far stronger and efficient than the normal ones. The problem lies with receiving these valuable items. As with other titles in the series, the golden tools are some of the hardest items for players to get due to the conditions required to receive them. Even though these tools can be simply crafted in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the recipes are a challenge of themselves.
Crafting these items simply require a baseline tool, such as an axe or bug net, and a gold nugget. Gold nuggets can be received on rare occasions by hitting rocks with a shovel while collecting materials. Of course, having the materials isn't simply enough, as having the recipe is the most important part.
Note: Players have discovered that while the golden tools are very durable, they will break after about 200 uses.
Getting the Golden Axe
To unlock the DIY recipe for the golden axe, players will need to break 100 axes. All axes count toward this total, so to avoid total island deforestation and to save on resources, players wanting to quickly get this recipe are recommended to use flimsy axes for this task.
Getting the Golden Bug Net
The task of getting this recipe is far more difficult than getting the axe, as players will need to obtain every single bug available in Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Critterpedia. These creatures don't all have to be donated to Blathers, but they still need to have been caught. The day after doing so, the player will receive the recipe in the mail.
There are 80 bugs in total that need to be collected and not all the bugs can be caught on any single time of year. With that in mind, it's impossible for players to receive this recipe yet unless they have been using the time travel cheat method.
Getting the Golden Fishing Rod
Similar to the method to receive the golden bug net recipe, the golden fishing rod recipe is available after players have caught every single fish in the game. Like before, donating to Blathers is not required, but still recommended for another completion goal.
Also, like with above, there are 80 varieties of fish in the Critterpedia to be recorded, and some are only seasonably available.
Getting the Golden Watering Can
Getting this tool doesn't require players to collect flowers like bugs and fish, but it instead offers another difficult challenge. To get the recipe for the golden watering can, players must maintain a five-star rating for their island for 15 days straight.
After keeping the streak up for 15 days, talking to Isabelle will net players the recipe for the golden watering can.
Getting the Golden Shovel
Unfortunately for players who love to dig, there is an amount of random chance that comes with getting the golden shovel, as players need to help Gulliver 30 times to get this recipe in the mail. It appears that Gulliver's appearances are random, so there isn't a consistent way to get this unless players time travel and search for him every single day.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
Source: IGN