Animal Crossing: New Horizons has brought over a feature from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp to make island life unique from settings in other series titles: crafting projects. Unlike in the mobile game, these projects are obtained immediately after bringing all the correct crafting materials. However, some players are struggling to find a material required for many early crafting recipes: iron nuggets.
These iron nuggets are needed for various furniture items and upgrading tools from their standard flimsy state. 30 of them are also required to build Nook's Cranny alongside the 30 pieces of softwood, hardwood, and wood. Finding these materials isn't as easy as shaking a tree however. To obtain these crafting materials, a shovel or axe is required, but a shovel makes the gathering process a lot easier.
On every player's island, there are large rocks on the ground that usually spawn a stone at the beginning of a new day. Some of these require a vaulting pole or a ladder to reach, but all of them have a circle of 8 spaces around them. Players should clear all weeds or items that are in these 8 spaces, as this is where iron nuggets and other mineral materials will be appearing.
To mine mineral materials out of these rocks, the player will need to rapidly hit the rock with a hard object such as an axe or a shovel 8 times. The problem lies in that players will find that their villager will be pushed slightly backward with each hit. If the villager is too far back, they won't hit the rock and if too much time passes, the rock won't give any more materials for the rest of the day. The solution to this is why the Animal Crossing shovel is recommended.
By digging at least 3 holes behind themselves before hitting the rock the first time, as seen in the above picture, they will have created a wall that prevents them from moving backward, thus allowing them to hit the rock the maximum amount of times without worry. These rocks produce materials such as stones, clay, iron nuggets, and rarely- gold nuggets. Sometimes these rocks don't provide materials at all and award players with a large amount of bells instead.
If players don't have the shovel yet and still want to get as much as possible only using their axes, there still is a way to do so. By using the new feature allowing players to decorate the outdoors with furniture, players can also put furniture behind them to buffer their hits. The only real drawback with that is that players are currently unable to use the fan-favorite froggy chair to do so.
Due to Animal Crossing: New Horizons running in real time, it really would take until the next day for all the rocks on players' islands to refresh after mining them. However, there is also a solution to this as well.
By spending Nook Miles, players can buy tickets to other deserted islands and completely take advantage of the resources that lie there. These islands also have rocks that can be mined using the usual method, allowing players to stock up on iron nuggets and other materials for whatever DIY project they're needed for.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.