There’s somewhere in the neighborhood of a bajillion different DIY crafting recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You’ll find them in bottles washed up on shore, or dangling from balloons that are sailing overhead. Your villagers will even occasionally teach them to you if you visit them inside their homes.
All the previously mentioned ways of getting recipes are random — you have no control over which recipe you’ll get. However, there is a less-random way to earn DIY crafting recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons: you can get them by scanning villager amiibo cards.
The process isn’t exactly straightforward, though.
First, you’ll need to go inside the Resident Services building and use the Nook Stop machine. Select the “invite amiibo camper” option. This will allow you to scan a villager amiibo card, which will cause that villager to appear at your campsite.
Go to the campsite and speak to that villager. If you talk to them enough times, they will eventually ask you to craft a specific item and bring it back to them. If they ask for something you don’t have the recipe for, they will also give you that recipe.
You can only do this one time per day. A villager will only stick around your campsite for a single day, but you can invite them back the following day to repeat the process. They will do this a second time on the second day, and once again on the third day. After this point, you can invite them to come live on your island. If you do not invite them to stay, you can scan the amiibo to have them show up at the camp a fourth time, but they will not give you a fourth recipe. It seems every villager will only give you three tasks (and therefore a maximum of three DIY recipes).
However, there is a way to reset this process, though it requires at least two amiibo cards. If your island is at maximum capacity (ten villagers), and you invite an amiibo villager to live there, you must kick out one of your current residents. Unlike the other methods of booting villagers, scanning an amiibo card will allow you to kick out whomever you choose.
If you invite an amiibo card villager to live on your island, then you boot them with another amiibo card, that villager will reset. So when you scan the original card again, that character will start the DIY requests over again.
Now, the best part of all of this is that the DIY crafting recipes you’re given are somewhat limited. Every villager has a small pool of specific recipes they might ask for. For example, Roald’s recipes include a Mountain Standee, a Kettlebell, and an Iron Frame. Sterling’s recipes include a Doghouse, a Kettlebell, Firewood, and a Simple DIY Workbench. I haven’t yet figured how big each character’s potential pool of requests is, but after hours of experiments, my hunch is maybe around ten. This means that it’s not all that difficult to find a specific recipe you’re looking for.
(If you want to see a full list of recipes I’ve discovered using amiibo cards, I’ve got one.)
So yes, if you can figure out which items a villager might request, you can use their amiibo card to receive some of the specific recipes you’re looking for. If you don’t get the recipe you need on the first go-around you can reset that villager by booting them with a second amiibo villager. And that takes some of the randomness out of the equation, letting you get the recipes you need.
By the way, Lolly’s recipe pool includes the much coveted Cutting Board.
Of course, amiibo cards aren’t exactly easy to get right now, though allegedly more are on the way.
Note: After extensive experimenting, this article has been updated to reflect the results of those experiments.
There is a way to get amiibo camper ask you for more diy things.
You simply say you will do their request and then not do it.
On the next visit they will just ask you for the other thing.
Therefore you can do that as many times as you’d want.
Was this patched out? I didn’t know you could kick out campers with another amiibo because the scanner says I can only invite one camper to the campsite per day.