Are you struggling in flattening or restarting your island Animal Crossing New Horizons? Here we do a sort of pros and cons for restarting versus flattening your island.

Pros To Restarting Your Island In Animal Crossing New Horizons

1. Fresh New Island Layout and Name

The first pros that came to mind for restarting is that you get a fresh new layout and can change the names both for your representative, and for your island that's super helpful. In Animal Crossing New Horizons, there are some layouts you can not change such as the beach rocks, the peninsula and the shape of it,  resident services etc., which can really affect how you're designing your island. So restarting your ACNH island, you will get a brand new layout. 

2. Get To Keep Your Old Island As Dream

Though you restart your island, you can still keep your previous island as a dream address. So deleting the save data of your old island did not get rid of its dream address, you can still visit your old island with the dream codes from your new island.  Another fun thing is that you can make a dream address on the new island and it won't overwrite the old one, you'll just have two dream addresses and you can visit both and other people can as well. You don't have to say goodbye to your island or to the villagers you can visit them again and we think that is so precious.

3. Start New Island With Better Understanding of The Game

Something else that we think is super helpful when you restart the game is that you go in with a much better understanding from the beginning about how you want to play the game. This comes in handy for instance with the first pro which is you get to pick a new layout - now you know what kind of layout you want, you can tell the difference between the maps, you know what is important. Another thing that people like to prioritize in new islands is keeping Blathers in his tent, that's something you wouldn't consider the first skill around because you just follow the tutorial. You'll also know that there is a limit on bridges and incline so you can better economize them, keep track of how many you're using and how many you have left and use that to help you plan your island.

4. An oppottunity To Meet Brand New Villagers

One thing that you didn't even consider the first time that you restarted one of your islands is that it's definitely an opportunity to meet new villagers without feeling like you're betraying your old ones. Aand if you have a dream address, they're still happy and vibing on that island. So this gives you an opportunity to meet villagers you might not have chosen if you only had one island.

Cons To Restarting Your Island

1. Lose Game Progress

Before you restarting your island, keep that in mind: you will lose meseum progress and almostly everything you have on your old island. You're also no longer going to have things like reactions and you're going to have to re-friend your villagers which can be a tedious process, and it can just be a hassle to not have any of that.

2. Redo The Tutorial

Another con is that you will have to redo the tutorial, this is a gray area because some people restart the game just to redo the tutorial to kind of relive the early game. It is time consuming so if you're more of an island designer, it can be a lot to get through in order to get back to making islands and figuring out your theme.

3. Find Your Dreamies All Over Again

Meeting new villagers might be a pro, but you do have to hunt for your dreamies all over again, and without the Nook Miles Tickets, you may be had on your old island, you are broke now you have to accept it. And we mean one big con to going on any villager hunt is that you have to talk to Orville for like 30 hours each time.

4. No Bells and No Cataloged Furniture

Another con is that you don't have any bells and lose all of your catalogued furniture. You might not even think about when you're excited about restarting and it can be so tedious to refine all of that furniture. There are thousands of Animal Crossing furniture items in the game, you don't have any of them anymore, even the DIYs, so it can involve a lot of hunting.

Those are all of the big pros and cons we can think of for restarting that are important for you to think about before you restart.

Pros To Flattening Your Island In Animal Crossing New Horizons

1. Keep Your Resources and Items

The first pro that comes to mind and perhaps the most obvious is that you get to keep all of your resources, it can also really be helpful for if you are redesigning your island because you'll have the ACNH bells to move houses and create bridges and inclines. You also get to keep all of your nook miles, reactions and all items.

2.  Have Your Beloved Villagers

Another thing you might not even think about is that when you restart, you lose all of your stamps and they do keep track of like the day that you achieved whatever accomplishment it is, so it's also admittedly nice to still have the villagers that you know and love especially. If you have formed close friendships with them it can be really hard to let them go even if you plan on having them on your new island after year you start, it can suck to say goodbye to them. If you flatten, you don't have to say goodbye to these precious little babies.

3. Don't Lose Your Layout or Your Builds

Something else that can be really helpful - if you flatten is that you don't lose your layout or your build, so if you can't stand decorating beaches, you don't have to pick up everything off the beach if you don't want to, you can just leave it there and boom your beaches are already done. So that's a big pro and if you have things you like, you don't have to get rid of that if you flatten

4. Terraforming Is Already Unlocked

Another thing is that as soon as you finish flattening, you don't have to worry about unlocking terraforming in order to start designing your island. You've already got it and don't have to worry about getting a certain star rating, you can just hop right back into designing with a fresh empty canvas.

Pros To Flattening Your Island

1. Flattening is Exhausting

All of that said there are of course also cons to flattening and the first one is that it can be exhausting, especially if you're already experiencing Animal Crossing burnout, tearing down everything and then staring at just a blank island, it can be a lot marty does not sympathize but it's exhausting. 

2.  Lose This Versions of Your Island Forever

It also kind of sucks because you lose that version of your island forever. So if you grow attached to your builds after you do them, but if you flatten your island as soon as you update your dream address with whatever new build you're doing that old version of your island is gone forever and you can't visit your dream address anyway from the same island. Once you flatten you don't get to see it anymore it's gone.

3. Flattening Is Costly

Last thing to consider is that flattening can be very costly especially if you have a very full and flushed out island, and you've used all eight of your bridges and all eight of your inclinee, think about that it takes 160 000 bells and 16 days just for destroying those. If you don't time travel, it's going take you over two weeks just to demolish everything. And to move all the buildings, it's fifty thousand bells for each one you move. 

That's all the pros and cons for restarting and flattening your island, if you are considering rebuilding your town, please think carefully about what you want most before you start.