Animal Crossing is a charming game about befriending the mismatched animals that happen to move to your town, or it was. Like most things Animal Crossing, players have industrialized and gamed the villager system. Many players operate with a list of 'most-wanted villagers'. Manipulating the game to the most aesthetically pleasing bunch! This has led to a strange situation where some 'rare' animal crossing villagers are big names. The rarest Animal Crossing villagers fetch an astronomical price in bells.
This articles is about how rarity actually works in the game. Then we cover which villagers have defied these odds to become the most popular.
How Does Villager Rarity Really Work?
Technically, all 397 Villagers in New Horizons in the game have fairly even odds of showing up. So why do some seem rarer than others? There are a few factors that push the odds in some villagers' favour.
The first of these factors is their species. There are 35 villager species in the game. Species are taken into account when searching Mystery Tour Islands for a new resident. First, a species is selected at random and then a villager in that species. So villagers who come from a large species like cats have a low chance of appearing. There's only a 1 in 35 chance of that species being selected then a 1 in 30 chance of each cat being picked. Whereas small species have higher odds. There is the same chance for that species to be picked, but there are only 3 octopuses in the game.
