There are a lot of different sorts of materials you can end up using for Animal Crossing: New Horizons crafting. Some are incredibly common, like tree branches, the three different kinds of wood, and stones. During seasonal events, you can’t go five minutes without finding something like a Bunny Day egg. However, some materials are a little more rare. For example, you could only get the Animal Crossing star fragments during a certain event at night. Or let’s say you wanted to craft a giant robot. Before you could get into that robot, you’d have to pick up some Animal Crossing rusted parts. While neither are common, they also aren’t too difficult to get.
The Animal Crossing star fragments appear after Animal Crossing: New Horizons meteor showers. Typically, Isabelle will alert you about one happening on your island when you log into the game for the day. This means you can stop by at night to see and wish on shooting stars and talk to Celeste, Blathers’ sister, to get one star fragment-related recipe.
Getting the actual star fragments does take a little bit of effort, though. You must be present during a meteor shower on your own or another person’s island. When the shower is ongoing, have the in-game camera angled upward, so you can see the sky behind your avatar, and make sure your hands (in-game) are empty. When you hear a sound and see a shooting star, press A. You will then make a wish.
Making wishes will cause shooting stars to appear on your beach the next day, even if you only saw the meteor shower on someone else’s island. In addition, you will also get zodiac fragments in this way for specific recipes. (Currently, Aries fragments can appear until April 19, 2020. Taurus fragments will begin appearing next.)
As for the Animal Crossing rusted parts, there’s one surefire way to get at least five at a time. However, it means ignoring an NPC. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Gulliver can wash up on your shore. To help him return to his crew and get an exclusive item or outfit part, you have to dig up his communicator parts on the beach with a shovel. (These look like Manila clams and spurt out water.) If you hold onto these parts and don’t give the five he needs to them, then the next day he will be gone and the five communicator parts in your inventory will have turned into rusted parts. These can also occasionally be found in your island’s recycling bin after Gulliver has visited as well, though usually there will only be one or two there at a time.
You can then use those Animal Crossing rusted parts to get to crafting your own mech. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons robot hero recipe costs 5,000 Nook Miles. Once you get it, you need to get one suit of golden armor, one rocket, 10 gold nuggets, 30 rusted parts, and 90 iron nuggets to create the character. (The gold armor requires its recipe and an additional 8 gold nuggets to forge, while the rocket recipe is given to you by Celeste and needs 10 star fragments and 20 iron nuggets.)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for the Nintendo Switch.
