Pearls are a new resource in Animal Crossing: New Horizons you need to create the new mermaid-themed DIY recipes from the summer update. They are also extremely rare, and so far there are only two official ways to get them: dive in the ocean or trade with Pascal. If you want to get more pearls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this is what you should do.
How to get pearls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Dive into the ocean floor While swimming in the ocean, just dive in when you see columns of bubbles rising to the surface and chase the shadow from the deep sea until you catch something. Most of the time, you will find one of the 40 new sea creatures added in the new summer update, but if you are very lucky, you can find a pearl.
- Scallop trade with Pascal – Pascal is a newcomer visitor who will appear once a day when you dive in and find a scallop, though not always on the first scallop. He will offer to exchange it for that. Most of the time, you will get a DIY mermaid recipe or mermaid clothes, but sometimes she will give you a pearl. The rhythm with which she gives pearls over recipes and mermaid clothes is still unknown.
These are the only official and confirmed ways to get a pearl in Animal Crossing: New Horizons right now. Neither of these methods requires special tools, but you will need to purchase the wetsuit to start swimming and diving, as the only place you can find pearls is in the ocean.
Pearl cultivation or grinding
There is no official way to grow pearls or grind pearls in New Horizons that does not require “time travel” or adjusting the system clock on your Nintendo Switch to skip days. If you decide to travel back in time, the only possible way to get more pearls would be to search for sea creatures until you find your daily encounter with Pascal.
Nothing about the hour or the day seems to affect the probability that Pascal will give him a pearl, so this would be a way to exhaust Pascal’s numerous encounters in a single session in the hope of obtaining pearls. Again, it takes a long time, some players consider it cheating, and your turnips won’t survive the jump of time, so proceed at your own risk.
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