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- Screenshot from Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Courtesy of Nintendo

How to Carve Spooky Pumpkins in Animal Crossing 2024

Originally posted on Total Apex Gaming | By Chase Martin | Last updated Oct 2, 2024 2:22 PM ET

Are you looking to carve some pumpkins this Halloween? Your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the perfect place to start. Halloween is an exciting time of year both in our world and on the sandy shores of New Horizons. While the game provides seasonal series mainstays like the mischievous Jack and new candy, new mechanics and items have cropped up, including pumpkins. Here is what you need to know about pumpkins.

What are Pumpkins in Animal Crossing?

Pumpkins are a type of crop that made their debut in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. While not initially available in the game, they were eventually introduced in the Fall Update on September 30, 2020. This coincided with the return of Halloween and its ghoulish host, Jack. Pumpkins were the first type of produce to be included in the game; other types including carrots and tomatoes later joined them. In their debut, the crops were heavily intertwined with the Halloween event. However, their use cases expanded with the cooking mechanic added to the game in the 2.0 major update. To use them, though, they need to be grown.

How to Get Pumpkins in Animal Crossing

To reap the benefits of the round crops, you will first need to plant some starts. Pumpkin starts can be purchased in Nook’s Cranny throughout the month of October. Incidentally, the shop will begin selling Halloween-themed furniture during this time too. The starts can also be bought from the friendly gardening sloth Leif. Our leisurely plant-peddler may be a weekly visitor to your island. Even if he is not, Leif can be found on Harv’s Island should you have his section unlocked. Unlike the Nooklings, Leif sells the starts year-round. He also offers them for a cheaper price at 140 Bells compared to the shop’s 280.

Pumpkins will come in four different colors: orange, white, yellow, and green. The color a start will produce is random, with orange having a 70% chance of appearing and 10% for the other colors. Despite being a crop, they have a similar growth pattern to flowers. It will take four days for the starts to fully grow. Ensure that you water them daily, as this will determine the amount they will ultimately generate. Letting them grow naturally produces a single pumpkin while watering them at least once nets two. Watering them every day till their full growth allows a whopping three pumpkins to be picked. Once the pumpkins are ripe, it’s time to harvest and carve them up.

How to Carve/Craft with Pumpkins

Despite Isabelle’s rather misleading statement, the player does not directly carve pumpkins. Rather, pumpkins are used in crafting recipes to produce an assortment of Halloween DIY items. The recipes for these items can be garnered from numerous sources, including your villagers and shooting down balloons. Many of these recipes can be gained in advance but a few require patience until Halloween arrives. When the holiday hits your island, these special recipes can be obtained from the spooktacular czar himself, Jack. Here is an exhaustive list of the different Halloween DIY items that require pumpkins:

Spooky Chair: Requires 3 orange pumpkins and 3 softwood
Spooky table: Requires 14 orange pumpkins and 10 softwood
Spooky standing lamp: Requires 3 orange pumpkins, 5 hardwood, and 1 clay
Spooky lantern: Requires 4 orange pumpkins
Spooky lantern set: Requires 4 orange pumpkins and 4 clumps of weed
Spooky candy set: Requires 1 orange pumpkin and 3 candies
Spooky table setting: Requires 1 orange pumpkin, 1 iron nugget, and 1 clay
Spooky scarecrow: Requires 3 orange pumpkins and 4 wood
Spooky tower: Requires 7 orange pumpkins
Spooky arch: Requires 10 orange pumpkins, 10 hardwood, and 3 clay
Spooky carriage: Requires 30 orange pumpkins, 20 hardwood, 20 wood, 20 softwood, and 10 iron nuggets
Spooky trick lamp: Requires 4 orange pumpkins and 4 iron nuggets
Spooky tree: Requires 5 orange pumpkins and 10 hardwood
Spooky garland: Requires 1 orange pumpkin, 1 iron nugget, and 1 clay
Spooky fence: Requires 3 orange pumpkins and 5 iron nuggets
Spooky treats basket: Requires 1 orange pumpkin and 2 candies
Spooky wand: Requires a spooky lantern and 3 star fragments

You may have noticed that the above items listed all require orange pumpkins to craft them. However, they can be further customized into different variations using the other colors you have obtained. In addition to the DIY recipes, gifting villagers candy on Halloween can reward you with other noncraftable items in the Spooky set, including wallpaper, flooring, and a rug. The recipes for the Spooky Carriage and Wand can only be obtained from Jack by trading him lollipops. You needn’t worry about replanting your pumpkin patches as once they have finished their growth cycle, they can be harvested and used in crafting indefinitely.

Halloween is Creeping Near

Halloween is a festive time of year, and celebrating it in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is more immersive than any previous title. Pumpkins alongside other crops have added mechanical depth to the franchise. While you can’t directly carve them as in the real world, they can be used in recipes to make items like jack-o’-lanterns. Beyond this, pumpkins can also be used in cooking recipes to make food products, such as pumpkin pies. The variety of uses and colors they come in make them a unique and necessary resource. The spooky season is fast approaching and now is a great time to start setting up your pumpkin patches to usher it in.

This article first appeared on Total Apex Gaming and was syndicated with permission.

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