Animal Crossing Summer shell: How to find summer shells, DIY recipes, and the summer shell price explained

Summer shell season dates in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

During the summer months in New Horizons, you might notice a new blue shell appear on your island's beaches.

This is the summer shell and it can only be obtained during the months of June, July and August in the northern hemisphere.

If you live in the southern hemisphere, then you'll be able to find it during December, January and February.

Throughout the summer you'll also be able to find a collection of DIY recipes, which all require summer shells to be constructed. Like the summer shells themselves, these DIY recipes will not be available during the other seasons.

How to find summer shells in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

Like all shells in New Horizons, summer shells will wash up onto the beach of your island throughout the day.

Wander along your beach and keep your eyes open for a bright blue shell - that's a summer shell.

There is no set time for when a summer shell will wash up on your beach, which means that, if you've got a desperate need for shells, it's a good idea to visit your beach every couple of hours. This should be enough time for a sizeable amount of shells to appear along the shoreline and, hopefully, some of these will be summer shells.

There's no need to rush finding summer shells though; you've got three months to collect these special shells and their associated DIY recipes, which means you'll easily be able to find and craft them all.

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Summer shell price in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

If you're in need of some extra bells or just don't like any of the summer shell DIY recipes, then you can sell summer shells Tommy and Timmy at Nook's Cranny.

Each summer shell sells for 600 bells in New Horizons.

This is far more than the other shells and coral that usually wash up on your beaches, which makes selling summer shells a great way to gain some quick bells.

How to find summer shell DIY recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The easiest way to find the summer shell DIY recipes in New Horizons is by shooting down the balloons that float across your island.

Unlike some rewards, summer shell DIY recipes are not confined to a specific balloon colour, such as materials only appearing in blue balloons. This means that you should shoot down every balloon that you see.

You might also find the occasional summer shell DIY recipes in the washed up battles that appear on your island every day or the Mystery Islands that you visit.

Animal Crossing summer shell DIY recipe list: How many are there and which crafting materials do you need?

In total there are eight summer shell DIY recipes for you to learn in New Horizons, which includes a variety of wallpaper, flooring and a bag.

Below you'll find all the summer shell DIY recipes and the materials required to create them:

Summer Shell Item	Materials Required
Shell wreath	x1 Summer shell x1 Sea snail x1 Sand dollar x1 Coral x1 Giant clam x1 Cowrie
Tropical vista	x5 Summer shell
Underwater wall	x3 Summer shell x5 Coral
Underwater flooring	x3 Summer shell x3 Coral
Starry-sand flooring	x3 Summer shell x1 Sandy-beach flooring
Water flooring	x6 Summer shell
Shellfish pochette	x2 Giant clam x6 Summer shell

The Animal Crossing 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise is here! We can help you with the new additions - including where to find Brewster, Gyroids, new villagers, ordinances, new fences, storage shed, new hairstyles, Froggy Chair, group stretching and Kapp'n boat tours. Cooking is now unlockable, so you need to know how to make both flour and sugar, as well as how to grow carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Meanwhile, if you're new to Animal Crossing, our New Horizons tips can help with the basics. From the off, there's fish and bugs to catch, flowers and fruit to grow with. One long term goal is building your Happy Home Academy score. Finally, you need tools such as the new ladder and vaulting pole to fully explore.

Tips for finding summer shell DIY recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons explained

The main way to find the summer shell DIY recipes in New Horizons is by popping the balloons that float across your island.

Below you'll find a number of tips that will help you find and pop balloons on your island:

• Bring multiple slingshots. The first rule of farming balloons in New Horizons is to bring at least two slingshots on your mission. This way you won't waste time running between the shore, Nook's Cranny or the nearest DIY bench. Better to splurge on that extra slingshot than miss a balloon after all.
• Depending on the time of day, balloons will appear on either the west or the east coast of your island. During the daytime, the wind that blows across your island will flow from the west, which means you should patrol the west shores for balloons. At 6pm, however, it will start blowing from the east, which means you should also switch shores.
• Balloons are more likely to spawn during a minute ending with a '4' or a '9.' For example, 4:04 am or 9:09pm. This also means that balloons spawn roughly every five minutes in New Horizons, so you can easily take a quick break from your Nintendo Switch if you need to.

• Set the camera to rolling mode or pointing at the sky. While you can still see the shadows of the balloons if the camera is in overhead mode, the other two camera settings give you a greater view of the sky, which allows you to see oncoming balloons far easier.
• Popping a balloon over rocks or water will destroy your present! For this reason always ensure that you're shooting down a balloon over solid earth. It's also a good idea to double check where the present might land - shadows can be deceiving.
• Listen to the wind. A whistling sound can be heard when a balloon is floating near you and, to find the balloon, investigate the area, keeping an ear to the noise, until you find the flying present.

Good luck on finding all the summer shell DIY recipes!