Nintendo
One of the most major changes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the revelation that players could use a vaulting pole to get across a river, without the use of a bridge.
This would obviously be a major quality of life upgrade as it’d cut down on a lot of idle times as players traverse through various parts of the island.
While it was shown off in some of the promotional material leading up to the release, river vaulting is not actually available from the beginning in Animal Crossing.
Instead, players will have to complete a variety of objectives to complete first before they can experience this wonderful new feature.
How to Get the Vaulting Pole to Cross Rivers
Nintendo
Once everything is all set with your tent in Animal Crossing, players are pretty much given free rein to do anything and everything on the peaceful resort.
In true Animal Crossing fashion, the first thing many players will do is catch fish or bugs, since the island is absolutely covered with these types of critters.
At first, the island doesn’t have a museum to display the creatures you catch, so you’ll have to instead take them to Tom Nook. Once you give him five fish or bugs, he’ll contact Blathers and give you the option to place a spot for his museum down on the island.
Once you do this, you’ll have to wait a day for Blathers to actually show up, but when he does, you’re in business.
All you’ll have to do is head over to his tent, talk to him, and he’ll talk a bit about how he thinks fossils are found on the other side of the river. Of course, you can’t actually get over there just yet, but he has a remedy for that.
He will give you the vaulting pole, which is then used to reach areas that were unreachable in the past.
Once you get your hands on this pole, things really start to open up in the world of Animal Crossing and you really start to see what the game can offer.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.