How to Farm Balloons in Animal Crossing New Horizons

Balloons can contain many cool items such as recipes, clothing, and furniture in Animal Crossing New Horizons. During special events, they also can contain exclusive items such as the cherry blossom recipes. Balloons can be difficult to find sometimes, though. This guide will teach you some tips and tricks for how to farm balloons in Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Where Do Balloons Spawn?

If you know where balloons originally spawn from, you can track them down a lot more easily and efficiently. Their location actually changes depending on the time of day. Look at which direction the balloons are flying. A balloon flying from right to left means they are spawning at the right side of your island.

Now, the time of day matters a lot. At sundown, your balloons will start spawning on the opposite side of your island. This means roughly every twelve hours you will need to switch to the other side of your island to catch the balloons right when they appear.

When Do Balloons Spawn?

We learned that balloons typically spawn every 5 minutes starting on the 4th minute. For example, you can expect balloons to spawn at 1:04, 1:09, 1:14, 1:19, and so on…

Heading to the side of your island with the balloons a minute or two before they appear will ensure you don’t miss them.

You can force balloons to spawn by going to Nook’s Cranny, inquiring about the price of something, and canceling the dialogue. Exit the building and head towards the spot where balloons appear and you should start seeing them.

A good idea is patroling your coastline. Running up and down your beach is a good way to make sure you don’t miss any balloons. They take some time to float over to your island, so you may not see them at the exact times posted above.

How to Farm Balloons in Animal Crossing New Horizons

After you shoot down your balloon, you can head back to Nook’s Cranny and do the price check strategy to force a new balloon to appear. You would then run back to the beach and shoot down your next balloon. Keep repeating this as many times as necessary.

Make sure you remember that you will need to switch to the opposite side of your island at sundown. After farming many balloons, we found out some balloons seem to have a higher chance to drop specific items.

What Do Balloons Drop?

You can find a variety of things inside Balloons, including Bells, Clothing, Furniture, and Recipes. You can also find event-specific items inside balloons depending on the time of year.

We popped a lot of balloons and compared our findings to a Reddit user with similar results. Here are our findings in regards to which color balloons drop what:

• Yellow Balloons – Higher chance to drop bells.
• Blue Balloons – A higher chance of crafting materials.
• Green Balloons – Fairly distributed loot.
• Red Balloons – A higher chance to drop furniture.