Lag In Animal Crossing

What causes it and how to manage it

Firstly, what is lag? There are two kinds. Frame lag, and network lag. You may have experienced network lag during online play, when instead of using your shovel, you twirled it around like a lunatic. Or perhaps you got stuck in a loading screen for a while when exiting a building. Network lag is caused by one or more people in a multiplayer situation having a weak connection, which causes everybody else's game to pause while theirs catches up. There are things you can do to make that better (such as move your router/Switch, eliminate interference, and mess with your DNS settings), but that is not the focus of this guide.

This guide aims to focus on frame lag, which is when you are moving around on an island, and notice that things seem a little choppy, or that your character is moving slower than usual.

Animal Crossing is designed to run at 30 frames per second, which many people will agree is the lowest minimum FPS you can have without it breaking immersion. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch hardware is not incredibly powerful, and Animal Crossing can be a taxing game, due to the fact that you can place as many items as you want on your Island.

So now that we know what lag is, what causes it?

Causes of Lag

Simply put, lag happens when the system gets overloaded. This overload can be caused by various things, such as the system overheating, or having too many things to render on screen. There is a fair amount of mystery surrounding what exactly causes lag in Animal Crossing, but it's likely similar to lag in any other game. To disclaim - I am not a dataminer nor an expert, but I am a programmer, modder, and general gamer with over 2 decades of experience in both console and PC gaming, so I have a decent knowledge of how things work.

I have read a lot of old wives tales about waterfalls, flowers, custom patterns, and more being lag-inducing. I've heard that you can reduce lag by putting up cliffs or making a huge lake. And these rumors all got started because there's grains of truth in them.

So let me set this straight: frame lag is caused by the graphics processor trying to render more than it can currently handle. Giving it more things to render (flowers, furniture, etc) will increase the load on the GPU. Giving it less things to render (by, say, making a huge lake that doesn't have any flowers or furniture on it, or building cliffs which obscure things from needing to be rendered), will reduce the load on the GPU. Lakes don't reduce lag any further than an empty field of the same size. It's all about poly count & complexity, and general system load vs capacity.

That means that the most lag-inducing items are the ones which have small, intricate models, especially ones which have animations. An example would be the Garden Wagon, which has a bunch of sculpted flower blossoms which move with the wind. In fact, most of the small plant items, such as the Terrarium, and the Succulent Plant, are offenders when it comes to lagging an area. So making, say, a garden shop area, and filling it with flowers & anthurium & garden wagons etc is likely to create slowdown when you're nearby it.

Another major factor is weather. For me this is actually the worst offender. Windy days, especially during autumn or cherry blossom season, cause all of the movable objects to animate, increasing load on the system. Times of day with heavy lighting effects, particularly sunsets with lots of volumetric light (such as during the winter), will also increase GPU load. It is possible for areas which are normally fine to lag during these times, so be aware of that when uploading a dream address etc.

The other two factors deal with your physical Switch system. If you have any background tasks running (such as downloads), those can take up system resources. This is only a minor consideration, as the Switch usually closes any background tasks once you open the game. However, if you have been playing the game for a long time, even if the switch was turned off, your game can have significant stutters when you return to it.

The other physical issue which can potentially cause lag is overheating, which can sometimes occur to a greater degree due to clogged fans. How to Reduce Lag So now that we know why lag happens and what are the big contributors, how do we fix it?

If your lag is caused by: Furniture etc: Use less of it, or space it out. Use less: I’ve found that using more than 2 of a particularly high-poly item in an area can cause lag, assuming you have other items there as well. This is sad and ridiculous, but that seems to be how it goes. Removing the Terrarium and Garden Wagon from my florist shop cleared up 99% of the lag, and the area is fine, now. This unfortunately often means you need to compromise your vision for an area, so it ultimately boils down to how much stuttering you’re willing to tolerate. Space it out: To space things properly, think about what the system needs to load for you to experience an area on your island properly. If you’re standing still, the game needs to show you all the items which are within a radius of where you’re standing, up to the edges of the screen. This means that areas at sea level, or which end in a cliff, will lag less than a grand vista on the third level, overlooking your marketplace. The game also needs to load your immediate surroundings off screen, so that when you move, you don’t experience the dreaded Pop-In (items not appearing right away, this is another symptom of system overload). So how can you plan your latest redesign to avoid lag? You can space out your “attraction” areas (yards, shops, train stations, dig sites) about 1-2 “screens” apart. This can ensure that the game isn’t trying to load parts of your boho marketplace and your cottagecore pet shop at the same time. This can mean making “transition areas” like wooded paths, rivers/lakes, or fields. These areas should ideally have only minimal furniture. Vertically, you can space things out by building cliffs between them (I like to do at least 3 thick so I can build a bit of a wall on top desired, or plant trees). I have yet to do significant testing on this, but it seems that a cliff wall of any thickness between areas will help alleviate lag at least a little.

Weather/Light Effects: There’s little to be done here except to minimize lag using the other methods. Or beg that Nintendo release the leaked 4k Switch system, or better optimize ACNH.

System Overload: This is caused by background tasks, or improperly cleared/refreshed system memory. When this happens, it’s not a bad idea to save and exit your game, or even fully restart your Switch system. Speaking of which, putting your Switch into sleep mode is not turning it off/restarting it. If you want to fully reboot the system (to clear up memory or resolve any other technological issues), you need to hold down the power button on the top until it brings you to the Power Options menu, at which point you can choose to Restart or Shut Down the system. My preference is to fully shut down, and then let the system sit for 10-30 seconds before turning it back on.

Overheating: This is often caused by clogged fans having difficulty withdrawing the heat from the system. You should periodically use compressed air to dislodge dust, hair, and general debris from all the vents on your Switch. Especially if you have pets or store your Switch near to the floor, things can get gunked up and potentially interfere with performance. Of all the above reasons, this is likely lowest on the list of things to target, but keeping your system clean is a good idea regardless. A side note: Where you store your Switch can also affect whether it overheats easily. Obviously you should never store your systems near heat vents, but also keep it away from your TV or Monitor’s exhaust fans, from soft surfaces such as pillows or carpets, and if you can, allow for several inches of space on all sides so that it can disburse heat easily.

FAQ: Do waterfalls cause lag? Unlikely, because they are low-poly and the animation is in the texture (color), not the model (shape). Do flowers cause lag? Yes, but not as much as you'd think. Despite having pretty intricate models with model-based animations, they seem well-optimized, and are likely only a secondary contributor to island lag. Do custom patterns cause lag? This is a hard one to pin down, but my belief is that it does contribute in a significant way when combined with other lag causing items. I believe that stalls and simple panels in particular are more likely to cause lag than simply putting a custom pattern on the ground. And anecdotally, it seems that patterns with transparency might be slightly worse than a fully opaque pattern. However, I again stress that this is just a hunch and should be taken with a pinch of salt. Do dropped items on the ground cause lag? Unlikely. They are fairly low poly, and I personally have not experienced any lag at all when my ground is covered with items. Do lakes fix lag? Yes, but also no. But also yes. The lake itself has little to no effect in and of itself, but placing a lake means you cannot place items, and not placing items will “fix” lag in that area. The larger the lake, the fewer items your island needs to keep in its memory, and the better your island (particularly those areas) will run. So by all means, build that giant lake you saw on YouTube! Do cliffs fix lag? This is a very similar answer to the one for the lakes. It’s not something magical about an unnaturally vertical pile of dirt, but the cliff obscures the view of the objects behind it, and also forces you to space things out - unless you cover the cliffs in items, which means it’s unlikely to help as much as if you only put flowers or bushes there. What about things like Climbing Walls? Those hide the objects behind them, do they prevent lag? Honestly, I don’t know. Anecdotally, I have not seen them have the same effect as cliffs do. I have two theories. One is that the cliff extends the mesh of the ground itself, rather than being treated as an object on top of it. This would remove a little bit of the ground’s model and texture, whereas the climbing wall is rendered fully in addition to the ground. I’m really not sure that this is possible or how things work, but that’s my idea. The second theory is that the cliff is considered a full-tile solid object, behind which things cannot ever be seen. Compared to the climbing wall, which is only a half-tile object, meaning that things can potentially be seen past it (for example, when it’s turned sideways). This is a theory based on Minecraft modding, where a full tile object is treated differently than a partial-tile block - and the game might know that it doesn’t have to render things directly behind a cliff, whereas the climbing wall may not produce that same reaction from the rendering system. Phew, I know I got weird there for a second, but to wrap up: from a real world perspective, Climbing Walls etc should totally help in the same way that cliffs do. But I have not personally noticed that to be the case.

Anyway, thank you all for coming to my TED talk on lag in Animal Crossing. If you have any questions or corrections, I can be reached on reddit at u/katubug, or on twitter at @patternsACNH.