Customization has been the defining characteristic of Animal Crossing: New Horizons since launch in March 2020. It marks the first time fans can set furniture outside as well as in their homes, patterns can be designed to create both custom items and clothing, and a player's entire island can be terraformed. As a result, people have done everything from recreate iconic pop culture locales to designing Animal Crossing outfits based on games like Genshin Impact. That sense of free expression has grown exponentially with Version 2.0.0 and the Happy Home Paradise DLC.

Between this month's free update and paid expansion there are tons of changes that affect how players can customize their island. Happy Home Paradise adds new mechanics for interior decorating like partitions and item polishing. However, even those who don't pay anything can get new hairstyles from Harriet, Gyroids, ordinences, the ability to move between smaller gaps, and lots of items — including some paid for with Nook Miles. Reese and Cyrus' shop on Harv's Island also opens item customization to an unprecedented level, but without them players get a huge quality-of-life improvement via new paint options for fences.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Fences - A Big, Incremental Improvement

customizable green japanese fencing version 2 update

The crafting element of Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduced a lot of potential with regards to resource management, and while some weren't happy about tools like nets having durability there is a lot of staying power for its DIY recipe catalog that players flesh out. In fact, DIYs have only become a bigger facet of the game thanks to limited-time holiday recipes and larger additions such as cooking in Version 2.0.0.

Fences are a sizable component of the DIY crafting system, with players able to buy recipes for stone walls, hedges, and various other fencing made from iron or wood. This particular subset of decor has special properties compared to regular furniture, as players are able to activate a special building mode that links fences together and allows for both distinct corners and a choice between flat or pointed end segments. As with real-life fences, every variant in Animal Crossing is meant to create a wall or enclosure, so they are crafted in batches of 10 pieces each.

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Nine new fences were introduced in Version 2.0.0 alongside other items like K.K. Slider songs, but more importantly players can now customize batches of fence types (at a rate of one Customization Kit per 10 pieces). This doesn't apply to every fence in the game, but it does affect a wide variety that people might expect based on real-life environments; wood and iron alike. Now the paneled fencing around a player's sporting arena can potentially match the colors of whatever team is meant to be housed there, for example.

customizable black iron fencing version 2 update

The one big drawback to newly customizable fences is that trying to be too creative may break the illusion. Fence colors cannot be alternated, so a black-painted and white-painted fence will not link together or form corners. Having the ability to establish even one unique color can still go a long way, whether a player is trying to more accurately capture a piece of decor from some source material or match that item to another piece of customized furniture.

Custom fence colors may not be the flashiest new addition to Animal Crossing: New Horizons' repertoire, but it's perhaps the most undersung given how versitile fences already were. Both large and incremental changes help advance New Horizons' goals, which also bodes well for wherever the Animal Crossing series goes next.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.

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