Before going into the changes that have been made to special visitor spawn rates in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it may be worthwhile to briefly establish how things worked prior to the 1.3 update. To put things very simply, before the update Kicks, Leif, and Sahara were each guaranteed to visit on a random weekday every week, leaving just two unclaimed weekdays for other special visitors to appear. These visitors were selected from the pool of most of the other special NPCs, and priority was given to characters that did not spawn in the preceding week.

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This changes quite significantly with Summer Update - Wave 1, though, as Kicks, Leif, and Sahara are no longer guaranteed to spawn every week. As such, there are now three more weekdays per week on which any of New Horizons’ special visitors can appear, and this means that players will encounter all of them with more regularity. Of course it also means that fans will not have access to Kicks, Leif, and Sahara as often, but many players will still see the change a step in the right direction.

To note, this primarily affects weekday visitors, and K.K. Slider and Daisy Mae are still scheduled to fill out the Saturday and Sunday slots. Additionally, Celeste will still only visit on days when there is a meteor shower (including weekend days when there is no K.K. Slider concert), though the additional spaces left by the change to Kicks, Leif, and Sahara means that ACNH players will see her more frequently.

In summary, the changes that have been made to visitors in New Horizons’ 1.3 update should make it so that fans encounter every special NPC in the game at least once every two weeks. This does assume that a player has made the upgrades required to prompt all of the visitors to appear, such as building the Able Sisters’ shop, and it should make the experience more enjoyable for fans that have reached that point.

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

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