Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Guide – Managing Your Campsite Visitors

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is still an adorable, open-ended hoarding and courier simulation like its predecessors. If you wanted to pinpoint its overall goal, however, it would be getting each animal in the game to join your Campsite. Inviting an …

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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is still an adorable, open-ended hoarding and courier simulation like its predecessors. If you wanted to pinpoint its overall goal, however, it would be getting each animal in the game to join your Campsite. Inviting an animal to your Campsite begins with befriending them to a certain level and crafting their five favorite pieces of furniture.

Step 1: Become Friends

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When you meet an animal at one of the four camping islands stationed around the map, you’ll be able to fulfill requests—for fish, bugs, etc.—and chat with them. Both of these increase their friendship score (as long as the dialogue option is red), leveling their friendship up when they earn enough points. If you tap on an animal’s name in your Contacts list, you’ll be able to see their current friendship level, as well as what they need in order to be invited to your Campsite.

Most of the animals you meet early in the game will need to reach a friendship level of three, while later animals will require level five, and the last set will need to hit level seven, to be invited. Below the level requirement, there will also be a list of five pieces of furniture they request before they’ll accept an invitation. If you already own a piece, it will have a green checkmark next to it. If you do not, there will be a direct button link to craft it.

Step 2: Craft Furniture

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While you’re working on building your friendships or after they’ve reached a high enough level, you’ll need to make the animal’s furniture requests. You only need one of each requested item, and you do not need to place it in your Campsite. Furniture often takes multiple hours to craft, so we recommend purchasing the permanent extra crafting slots with Leaf Tickets (tap the plus sign at the top of the crafting menu) so you can craft multiple pieces of furniture at the same time.

Animals often share requested furniture—for instance, both Carrie and Roald ask for a Kiddie Rug before they will visit, but you only need one rug for both—so you can usually make progress with multiple animals at the same time. Once you have crafted all of an animal’s requested pieces of furniture—and their friendship level is high enough—you can invite them to your Campsite.

Step 3: Invite Them

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When you craft the last required piece of furniture for a specific animal, you’ll usually get a pop-up notifying you that they can be invited and asking if you wish to do so immediately. If you dismiss this, you can also invite them by heading into your Contacts list, tapping the animal (they’ll have an “Invite me!” banner on their icon), and then choosing “Set up Manually” or “Set up Automatically” below “Special Requests.”

We always choose “Set up Automatically,” which simply clears your camp and fills it with their five requested pieces of furniture. After the invitation is complete, you can undo this and your camp will go back to the way it was.

Step 4: Managing Visitors

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If you invite an animal to your Campsite and there is space available, they will stay and hang out indefinitely. You can visit with them at the Campsite anytime you like, and they will only leave if you manually send them home.

Once an animal has successfully been invited to your Campsite—you see the cut scene where they’re enjoying the furniture—you can then invite them to return any time. This is one of the biggest benefits to recruiting an animal to your Camp: you’ll always be able to call them there, whenever you like, for free.

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To send an animal home or invite an animal back, go to your Campsite and tap the cat face icon on the right side of the screen. You’ll see a list of who’s currently hanging out at your Camp. If you tap on an animal’s icon, their details page will appear along with the “Send home” option. If you want to invite an animal to your Campsite, tap an empty slot with a plus sign and then choose your invitee from the list of available contacts. You can only host eight animals at a time, so if all slots are full, you’ll need to send someone home before you can invite someone new.

If an animal you invite to the Campsite was currently on one of the external camping islands, that island will be empty for the remainder of the three-hour rotation. They aren’t replaced by another animal immediately, so be sure you’ve completed any requests before asking them to come over.

Step 5: Choosing Guests

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Animals at the Campsite are always available, so it’s easier to level up their friendships through regular visits. You can also have a friendship-boosting chat with animals at your Campsite fairly regularly—about once every 40 minutes—which is much more frequent than animals camping on the external islands.

Because of this, we typically fill our Campsite slots with animals we want to level up. Once animals reach level 10, they give larger rewards for completed requests. A good strategy is to invite animals to your Campsite, keep them there until they reach level 10, and then send them home so you can fulfill their requests when they show up on the other islands (and fill their Campsite slots with new animals below level 10).

Key Points to Remember

The key takeaways are:

    • Every animal has a set of requirements that must be met before they’ll visit your Campsite
    • Once you fulfill those requirements and successfully invite them, they are permanently available to bring to your Campsite whenever you want
    • When an animal is first invite-able, there will be a banner over their icon in the Contacts page. Animals you’ve already successfully invited will have a colorful background instead of the plain white
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  • You don’t need to keep an animal’s requested furniture in your Campsite after their first visit: you could have a totally empty Camp, and any animal you’ve invited will happily stay put
  • It’s easier to level up an animal’s friendship at your Campsite, so invite animals you want to level
  • There are two main areas in your Campsite: Furniture and Amenities. Furniture makes up the central area that you fill with tables, chairs, etc. Amenities are the large structures in the back of the Camp, and we discuss these in a separate guide.
Jillian will play any game with cute characters or an isometric perspective, but her favorites are Fallout 3, Secret of Mana, and Harvest Moon. Her PC suffers from permanent cat-on-keyboard syndrome, which she blames for most deaths in Don’t Starve. She occasionally stops gaming long enough to eat waffles and rewatch Battlestar Galactica.