Animal Crossing's First Summer Update Is Out Now

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has received the first part of its free summer content update on July 3, including the ability to swim and hunt for new marine life. You'll now be able to explore more of the world and see new creatures in this update. It isn't even the only summer update coming to the game, as the "Wave 2" update will arrive further down the road. But for now, you can start having fun in the sun. Go check out what it has to offer!

Wave 1 of the Summer Update lets you dive into the ocean from any edge of your island, swimming around in search of new marine life that you can donate to museum curator Blathers. This includes star fish (or sea stars), anemone, and garden eels, as seen in the trailer below. Blathers will have plenty of facts to tell you about your new finds, in addition to simply having new items to donate.

The updatealso introduces the mermaid crafting set, which can be obtained through interactions with Pascal. You'll be able to get new DIY recipes from Pascal--a red sea otter that would appear weekly in previous Animal Crossing entries--by trading scallops with him, but it's unclear if he'll be around as sparsely as Redd (who was introduced in an earlier update). There's also a new encounter with Gulliver, although exactly what that results in isn't made clear.