If Animal Crossing: New Horizons is your first taste of Nintendo's silent life simulations series, you might have a hard time finding the materials you need to make the basic tools. Hitting rocks is a way to collect valuable resources such as iron, clay, stones, some bugs, and even bells. If you get your timing right, it's possible to maximize the number of things that pop (or leave) of the rock, although every strike with an ax or spade will send you backward, which means you're more likely to miss the rock entirely - and therefore miss the material!

However, there is a way to 100% guarantee that all the last resources will be retrieved from the rock.No doubt the veterans of the Animal Crossing series will try to use this time-tested technique to enable you to get the maximum amount of resources from hitting rocks. It involves something behind you to prevent each strike from pushing you away from the rock.

Here, we'll show you the fastest way to collect resources from animals crossing the rocks around the island.

Iron and gold nugget mining in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

This is the key to growing iron in Animal Crossing. Follow these steps and you will have more iron ore than you know, plus plenty of gold nuggets ready to make Golden Tools.

Get as much iron as you can from the rocks on "Animal Crossing": New Horizons Island

There are many ways to make sure you maximize the rocks you already have on your island - naturally, this is the first place to start. 

First, notice that the entire island is laid out in a grid system, with each rock surrounded by eight squares. The blocks must be empty so that things coming out of the rock have a place to land. Therefore, follow these steps:

• Remove weeds or other items from the space around the rock

• Head to a corner space around the rock - We have gone to the northeast space shown below. From here, use a shovel to make a hole in the top and right side of the current position. Feel free to dig for other bugs and really "stop yourself," but once you've done it a few times, it only takes two.

• Now face the rock and start hitting the "A" button. You will hit the rock multiple times and it will continue to issue a prompt for up to 8 candies

• Now, press "Y" to clear all resources and then refills the holes. Or, leave them there and magically refill them overnight.

That's it! This technique is especially valuable for extracting the maximum number of ACNH bells from "Money Rock," which appears in a different rock every day. Using this technique, you can guarantee a total of 13,000 bells a day just by beating an old rock. Charming!

Of course, wisely planting trees and placing objects around rocks means that you can avoid the time-consuming method of full excavation and instead extract resources directly from the rock.

After plowing all the rocks, go ahead and taste some of the fruit - because it's time to mash it up! Only One - Only one rock will regenerate per day. However, even a single piece of gravel will give you more ore, rock, or clay blocks.

Nuggets of gold are much less than pieces of iron - if you get one from any rock every day, you'll be lucky, but keep hitting it, and eventually, you'll get a lovely nugget. As much as you'd like to sell it to Bells, resist! You need them to be able to make Golden Tools post-game.

Join a mystical journey to gather iron blocks on other islands

Once you've used up all the minerals on your island, the next best thing is to use some of those hard-won Nook Miles tickets and tour the other islands through Mystery Tours. Fortunately, if you're willing to keep busy for Nook Miles, then you can keep a good supply of iron almost indefinitely -- but it will cost you money (2000 Nook Miles per trip, to be exact).

When you're on an island, be sure to use all the same tricks provided above on the rocks of your island without going wrong - the only difference is: you can smash all the rocks here!

Look up at the sky

We also realized that it was possible to get iron blocks from floating gifts - sometimes up to five in one! Who knows? So, keep using the slingshot (the recipe is available in stores) to eject all those balloons! The longer you hang out, the more gifts you'll end up seeing.

Visit the islands of other friends and family

when all else methods fail, consider visiting someone else's island that you know. Perhaps they are willing to trade, perhaps they have rocks in some parts of the island but are not yet accessible over cliffs or Bridges. For those with younger siblings and families who haven't made much progress in the game yet, it turns out to be a quick and easy way to acquire more items. Just be sure to practice good guest manners when visiting people!