How-To Guide: Catching Tarantulas in Animal Crossing

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Tarantulas are a valuable item to have when it comes to making money in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. They are a rare bug, which means that their value is pretty high when it comes to selling them. At the current moment, Tarantulas are worth 8,000 bells, which is the currency in the game, and they are worth double that amount if you wait to sell them to Flick, who is a special visitor that appears every now and then on your island to buy bugs from you.

But catching these hairy creatures is no easy task. If you are not careful around them, tarantulas are known for attacking and biting you, which leads to you fainting in the game. You will wake up at a checkpoint location, but you lose the chance to catch the tarantula, as well as valuable time when this happens. There are also specific requirements to have them spawn around you. This page will show you everything you need to know on how to catch these valuable critters.

Before showing you the step-by-step tutorial, there are a few things you need to know about tarantulas that will be helpful in your hunt for them. You can only hunt tarantulas between the hours of 7pm-4am in the game, and they are only available between the months of November and April. After April, scorpions will take their place as the high value bug. With this information in mind, the first thing that you will have to do is pay a visit to the ATM Machine inside your town hall.

1. Buy a Nook Miles Ticket

The first thing that you will need to go visit any new island is a Nook Miles Ticket at the ATM Machine inside your town Hall. A Nook Miles Ticket will allow you to go and visit other islands outside your friend group, and it costs exactly 2,000 miles per ticket. Using a random island instead of your own for tarantula hunting is a lot easier than using your own island, as you will have to remove a ton of items from your island to get even one to spawn. The ATM Machine will print your ticket on-site, so that you do not have to wait for it to come into your mailbox to use it. You are now able to travel to a random island for hunting!

Before you leave, I recommend making sure that you remove all unnecessary items from your inventory, so that you have the maximum amount of space to capture as many tarantulas as you can. I also recommend buying the inventory expansion packs at the ATM Machine as well, which will give you even more space in your inventory for holding bugs. You will also need to make sure that you have all the tools that you will need on the island, so that you don’t have to craft them when you get there. The basics that you will need are a shovel, a net, an axe, and a vaulting pole.

Once you are ready to go, head on over to your airport dock, and talk to Orville, who will ask you if you want to use your Nook Miles Ticket to fly. He will then confirm that you are ready to go, and then get everything ready for you.

2. Remove all the items from the island

Once you arrive at the island, the first thing that you are going to need to do is check your surroundings. Tarantulas will spawn on flat islands that don’t have a ton of inclines or waterfalls, so if you flew to an island that has a ton of inclines, there is a good chance that you are out of luck with catching any tarantulas. It is a hit or miss when it comes to the islands, but if not, you can always just collect as many resources as you can from the current one you are on, and then fly home and try again. Normally, it takes a couple tries before you get an island that will work.
If the island that you landed at happens to be flat, then the next thing that you will need to do is to remove all items from the island. That means breaking all rocks that you see, cutting down all the trees, and picking up all the flowers, weeds, and resources that you can. You can leave the stems from the flowers though, as they do not effect how the tarantulas spawn. After you have done that, you are going to dump all the items that you have collected on to the beach.
Once you have completed that, your island should look like this:

After that, you are going to need to run around and make sure that you scare off any other bugs that are flying around in the area. Its not really a requirement, but I recommend cutting down the palm trees as well, as some butterfly species tend to land there without you knowing sometimes. Once you remove all the other bugs from your island, then tarantulas should start to spawn across the plains! Starting in April though in the Northern Hemisphere, the water bug, which you will see swimming around in the rivers, has started to appear on islands in replacement of tarantulas. You will also have to remove them to get the critters to spawn, which can become quite tedious if there are a ton of them!

3. Happy Hunting!

While hunting tarantulas, keep in mind that it will take sometime for the critters to spawn on the island. Once you capture one, it takes a minute or two for another one to respawn. I recommend just running around the island some until another one appears. Sometimes two will appear at once, but that only happens on occasion, or if you are on one of the rare tarantula islands.

When you approach a tarantula, keep your net hidden in your inventory until you are relatively close to them, then bring your net out. Tarantulas will not feel threatened by you until they see the net in your hands. Once they see the net, they will start hissing at you and rear up on their front legs in defense. The key is to move slowly towards them until you are at a fair distance to capture them. There are two ways you can do this. The first thing you can do is hold down the “A” button while approaching them, which will make your character crouch down and scooch towards them at a slow pace so that you do not startle them. Another way you can capture them is to slowly wait until they put their front legs down before moving forward towards them, you will have to keep moving and stopping, as the closer you get, the more they will start to put their legs up. You will eventually be right on top of them, which will be the perfect time to swing and capture them. Be careful not to move too fast, otherwise they will jump and start running after you, which you will then have to run away in hopes that they don’t bite you. Capturing tarantulas is so easy task, but its worth the money in the long run!