Nintendo is charging an arm and a leg for storage space in Animal Crossing New Horizons 3.0, which means you'll find me and many others back in the turnip mines

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Nintendo is charging an arm and a leg for storage space in Animal Crossing New Horizons 3.0, which means you'll find me and many others back in the turnip mines News By Jordan Gerblick published 15 January 2026

Tom Crook back at it again

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons' big 3.0 update is finally here, bringing the new hotel feature to everyone's islands as well as Zelda and Lego collabs and plenty of clutch updates to make island life that much more inviting.

One of those smaller, but nonetheless greatly appreciated, quality of life updates is the ability to increase your home's storage all the way up to 9,000, a pretty huge jump from the previous limit of 5,000 items. Sounds great, right? And, you can also now store trees, shrubs, and living flowers in your home storage. Pump the brakes, though, because the combined cost of the two storage expansions is an eye-watering 3.3 million bells - 1.5 for the first and 1.8 for the second - and that's only if you're going into the situation having already settled all possible home expansion loans with Tom Nook, itself an incredibly pricey affair.

I never got heavy into the whole turnip market thing, mostly because I much prefer the slow pace of catching and selling fish to Animal Crossing's version of a stock market, but I may have to temporarily change that. I still haven't paid off the final 2.5 million loan I have from Tom Nook, so if I want the full 9,000 storage slots, I would need, in total, 5.8 million bells. As far as I know, the quickest - although not very reliably - way to get that is to buy a bunch of turnips and hope the bells are in my favor, and then do that over and over and over again. Thankfully, I'm not the only one looking at my current storage situation a lot more favorably after learning how much the upgrades cost.

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• I'm deleting my 1000-hour island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to play the Switch 2 update from scratch, and I never thought I'd be so excited to owe Tom Nook bells again
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Switch 2 update trailer didn't bother to mention one of the biggest quality-of-life changes coming to the game, despite fans begging for it since launch
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update is here, and cozy game fans are going feral over one quality-of-life change

I think I might pass on expanding my storage lol from r/AnimalCrossing

"Time to turnip prophet," quipped a punny Redditor in the thread's top response with more than 450 upvotes at the time of writing.

It's also worth pointing out that Tom Nook wants his money up front for this, so adding on to your existing loan or opening another isn't an option. And, just for some extra salt in the wound, you can't pull the money straight from your bank, you have to actually go to the ABD machine, or whatever, and withdraw the full amount into your pockets and then hand over that 50-pound sack straight into Tom Nook's ridiculously deep pockets.

Of course, I'm not surprised to find plenty of Animal Crossing players in the above thread with more than enough bells to cover their own storage expansions and everyone else in the comments. Some are even offering to donate, which is very cool, but judging from upvotes heavily favoring the less fortunate, they're the outliers. The rest of us are going back to the turnip mines and staying thankful we don't have to sell feet pics.

Deleting my Animal Crossing: New Horizons island has changed the way I play, and it feels like returning to 2005's Wild World

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After earning an English degree from ASU, I worked as a corporate copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. I got my big break here in 2019 with a freelance news gig, and I was hired on as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer in 2021. That means I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my home office, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.

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Logout Read more I'm deleting my 1000-hour island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to play the Switch 2 update from scratch, and I never thought I'd be so excited to owe Tom Nook bells again    Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Switch 2 update trailer didn't bother to mention one of the biggest quality-of-life changes coming to the game, despite fans begging for it since launch    Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update is here, and cozy game fans are going feral over one quality-of-life change    "In Breath of the Wild, they give you a little golden turd": Animal Crossing: New Horizons fan spends 2 years designing every DLC vacation home, gets nothing    Animal Crossing: New Horizons gets a $5 Switch 2 upgrade and a big free update with co-op islands and an NPC resort – 4 years after we thought Nintendo abandoned it    Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 has bad news for anyone who became mortal enemies with their "ugly" villagers    Latest in Animal Crossing Full Animal Crossing New Horizons Zelda item list and how to unlock them    How to get and use the megaphone in Animal Crossing New Horizons on Switch 2    Animal Crossing: New Horizons 'Adult Only' island closes its doors after 5 years, creator says sorry to Nintendo    Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 has bad news for anyone who became mortal enemies with their "ugly" villagers    Animal Crossing: New Horizons' pitiful selection of retro games can only be accessed with a Switch Online subscription    How to update Animal Crossing New Horizons for the new 3.0 update    Latest in News Resident Evil Requiem's "classic" difficulty forces Grace to scrounge for ink ribbons to save    George Lucas padawan Dave Filoni takes over as co-president of Lucasfilm as Kathleen Kennedy steps down after 14 years    Resident Evil Requiem's "classic" difficulty forces Grace to scrounge for ink ribbons to save    Timothée Chalamet praises his own work over the "last seven, eight years" as "really top-of-the-line performances"    The Dreadful trailer reunites Game of Thrones stars Kit Harington and Sophie Turner for a medieval horror thriller    Arc Raiders dev teases 2026 roadmap, and maybe some new maps "even grander than what we've got now"    GAME REVIEWSMOVIE REVIEWSTV REVIEWS

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