Nintendo hosted their promised Animal Crossing Direct overnight, at a horrible time again, but I digress, the Direct detailed the upcoming free content and the paid DLC that players can look forward to, so lets break it down.

Both updates are coming on November 5th, meaning there is not long to wait for the updates, let’s start with some of the free updates coming then:

• Brewster will open the Roost: Something new is coming to a corner of the museum … The Roost, a café to take a relaxing break in and enjoy some hand-selected coffee, will be opened by the quiet proprietor Brewster after players fulfil a certain favour for museum director Blathers. You may run into some island residents here, too. If you use the amiibo phone inside the café, you can invite other characters to join you by using compatible amiibo cards. If you’d like, you can even invite friends to your island and bring them to the Roost to enjoy relaxing cups of coffee together.

• Take a boat tour with Kapp’n: Kapp’n hangs out at the pier and will take you to one of the remote islands on his boat. The sea shanties he serenades you with along the way is also part of the fun! You may arrive at islands with mysterious flora that’s never been seen before, or islands with different seasons and time of day. What kind of mysteries await?

• Unearth gyroids: So far, fossils could be dug up from the ground. And now you can also find gyroids. Each gyroid plays unique sounds. You can also customise them to match their surroundings when you place them.

• Shop at the open market on Harv’s Island: Harv’s Island is undergoing a renewal. With a little help from his friend Harriet, Harvey is inviting some shops to the island for an open market. Contribute Bells to the cause to help make it happen! Familiar visitors on your island like Redd, Saharah and Kicks will have shops here now, and Reese & Cyrus’s shop will offer furniture customisation that can’t be done through DIY workbenches. At Katrina’s shop, she’ll look at your fortune of the day. Harriet can even teach you some different hair styles!

• Get cooking: Cooking will be added to DIY Recipes. After growing vegetables on the island like tomatoes, wheat, sugarcane, potatoes and carrots, you can combine your harvest or other ingredients and fill up your dining table with delicious looking dishes. Bon appetit!

• Further support to your island life: Nook, Inc. will offer further support for players living the island life. From group stretching at the plaza and bigger home storage, to the Resident Representative being able to establish ordinances like reducing the rate at which weeds grow or make all residents get up early in the morning, there are more options to help players enjoy and adjust their island to fit their lifestyle.

In addition to the free DLC, there is a paid offering, Happy Home Paradise, which can be purchased on its own, at $37.50 for Australian gamers or for those in New Zealand it is $41.25. Though for options, the DLC is also included within the Expansion Pack that Nintendo priced overnight as well, details on that are here.

If the name sounds familiar, that is because it is more of an expansion of the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer game from the Nintendo 3DS, which let you just become a decorator, without a lot of the rest of the Animal Crossing content. Below are just some of the features coming, as part of the paid DLC:

• Work with Lottie as a member of the Paradise Planning team: Clients with different dream vacation requests will visit a new resort area located in an archipelago, made up of several different islands, where the Paradise Planning team is located. You can talk to a client and find out the details of their requests for a vacation home, and then make their dreams happen!

• Design dream vacation homes: After choosing a location for your clients’ dream vacation home, you can design the interior, where you’ll place designated furniture that was delivered ahead of time. As you continue designing vacation homes, you'll acquire various design techniques, from changing how the home is structured by adding partition walls and pillars to divide the space, to adding counters, ambient lighting and soundscapes to add depth to the room design, and more. The vacation home themes vary depending on the client, and many requests await your expertise. You can also decorate the exterior yard.

• Make remodelling and roommate recommendations: As you gain experience as a designer, more furniture will become available and you’ll also be able to make more suggestions. These include recommendations like suggesting to remodel the vacation homes of clients you’ve helped previously with different furniture, or even recommend that two clients share a vacation home together as roommates.

• Design Facilities: There are several vacant buildings on the island where Lottie’s Paradise Planning team is located. Lottie wants to make this island more robust and developed, so you’ll be able to help design facilities such as a school, restaurant and café.

• Get inspiration from the Happy Home Network: Capture photos of the vacation homes you design and save them to your catalogue, which you can check out through the in-game Happy Home Network app in your NookPhone. From this app, you can also access your Showroom to view the building examples of designers from all over the world who have posted their creations online. You can follow the designers you like and view their samples for inspiration.

• Use amiibo to invite more clients: Usually your job is to look for clients on the resort who may be considering having their own vacation home, but … if you use the current Animal Crossing series amiibo, you can invite a specific client to discuss their vacation home. With amiibo, you can even design the vacation homes of busy individuals like Isabelle and Timmy & Tommy!

• Bring your techniques back to the main island: Techniques you’ve obtained through your work on the Paradise Planning team can also be used on your home island. Perhaps this will be a great opportunity for you to overhaul the design of your own home. And if you give island residents souvenir chocolate from Paradise Planning as a gift, they may become interested in what the archipelagos and vacation homes have to offer. Then, one day when you become a veteran designer with lots of experience, you will eventually be able to remodel resident’s homes on your island by making suggestions to them too!

If you are interested in watching the Direct, you can do so below, it clocks in at 20 minutes or so, so is a little lengthy.