Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp can net you 180 Platinum Points a week for little effort

And most importantly: no microtransaction trappings

Nintendo’s mobile support has been rather disappointing so far. After Super Mario Run didn’t seemingly hit insane internal metrics, their mobile partners turned to gacha and microtransactions. Oh, and subscription services on top of microtransactions and gacha. A few of their games are out of hand with energy systems upon energy systems.

But if you just want Platinum Points for some of the new physical rewards, there’s an easy way around all that muck. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for instance can grant you nearly 200 platinum per week for almost no effort.

Here’s how.

First, download the app, link your My Nintendo/Nintendo account, and finish the tutorial. You’re now entering the core game loop.

In short, the idea is that you need to fulfill “requests” for NPCs to raise their friendship levels and earn materials to craft new items (like tents, which in turn raise the threshold of those friendship levels, and allow you to “increase the cap”). Throughout the game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will tempt you with various energy systems, microtransactions, and two subscription services. Ignore all that.

What we’re going to do to farm 180 Platinum Points per week is merely engage with the base level request system. That’s gathering items from four locations (Lost Lure Creek, Sunburst Island, Saltwater Shores, and Breezy Hollow, all marked on the map above) and turning them in. That’s it. If you do 100 requests per week you can net the full reward amount: then turn the app off until reset (Sundays around 10AM ET) and repeat the process.

I’ve gotten it down to the point where only logging in a few times a day on Sunday can net me about 70 completed requests out of 100. I’m practically done at reset. That’s because requests are super simple deliveries, which are completed at the press of a button. Once you have Pete’s Parcel Service available from the main map you can complete requests in around two seconds each.

Here’s how you finish one loop.

Log in. Head to one of the four areas listed above. Pick it clean of items by shaking the trees and grabbing everything on the ground. Then, go to the map and click Pete’s Parcel Service. As quickly as you can, fulfill all of the requests listed (if you can’t do one, just skip it or ignore it, it’ll reset over time) with a few taps. If Pete’s Parcel Service is cleaned out, tap each of the locations manually and see if the NPC has items near their head. If they do, you need to meet them first before they send their requests to Pete. Simply zone in, talk to them once, then ignore them and go back to Pete’s menu. They’ll be listed now.

If you’ve acted fast, the reset timer for fruit and other consumables will line up, and you can loop around again. Come back three hours later and repeat the process, as NPCs will be refreshed too. Do that a few times and you should already have around 50 requests completed. If you haven’t’ played the game already, you can net 300 Platinum Points each for linking your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

• Once you hit your item space/carrying cap, sell a few basic items (fruit) that are easily reacquired: don’t be tempted by the predator microtransaction space booster. All you need is the capacity to carry request items, which can be gathered in the world.

• Skip the requests you can’t complete right away (read: any that would take effort like catching a specific fish). You don’t need to do them unless you want to.

• Spam the friend list matchmaking feature (yes, this game actually has invite request functionality). There is no downside to having more friends on your list, and you can easily buy items from their shops (using the social menu). Those items can help you instantly grab requested items that you don’t have, like bugs or fish. With enough friends you can basically buy any item in the game.

• If you really want to be efficient, look at when the NPCs will “move” by clicking on an area and looking at their timer. At that point the entire island will refresh, granting you 12 new requests. Set a timer on your phone for that point, then pick the island clean and use Pete to rapid-fire those requests.

Also check out our other My Nintendo tips:

• Sign into the eShop on Wii U or 3DS once a week
• Find the Pikmin on Nintendo’s site quickly
• 300 easy Platinum a month from Super Mario Run
• Earn up to 5,400 Platinum Points with Fire Emblem Heroes
• Go grab 100 easy My Nintendo Platinum Points with the new Zelda missions