Animal Crossing: New Horizons perfect Snowboy guide and DIY recipe list (2024)

Just like in previous games, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players can make snowmen (called Snowboys in-game) during the winter. Snowboys reward special ice DIY recipes and Large Snowflakes. Our Animal Crossing: New Horizons guide explains where to find snowballs and how to make perfect Snowboys.

Where to find snowballs to make Snowboys

You’ll only see snowballs to roll into Snowboys once the ground is completely covered in snow. This takes place about halfway through December for Northern Hemisphere players and around halfway through June for Southern Hemisphere players.

You can find snowballs in open areas on your island. To make a Snowboy, you’ll have to push the snowballs around, making them grow. They only grow when rolled on top of grass. Rolling the snowball on top of patterns or paths will make it shrink.

After growing above a certain size, you can roll the snowballs into each other to create a Snowboy. If you accidentally break the snowball, you can respawn one by saving and reloading your island. (We were previously able to respawn snowballs by entering and exiting buildings, but this seems to have changed based on our testing.)

Note that no snowballs will spawn on your island if your airport gate is open.

You can make Snowboys of various sizes, but only a perfectly-made Snowboy will give you a seasonal DIY recipe. Perfect Snowboys will also give you a Large Snowflake every day until the Snowboy melts. You’ll need these to make the DIY recipes he rewards you with. A Snowboy will stick around for four days before he melts into oblivion.

How to make a perfect Snowboy

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

1. Take your two snowballs to an open area of your island.
2. Roll one snowball back and forth until it’s at the same height as the top of your character’s eyes.
3. Roll this large snowball to where you want your Snowboy to end up. It needs space around it, since you’ll need to be able to talk to him.
4. Roll the second snowball nearby until it’s the same height as the top of your character’s ears. (Use the image above as a reference. You can tilt your camera to ensure the snowballs are approximately the same size.)
5. Roll the smaller snowball into the larger snowball to complete your Snowboy.
6. If the Snowboy does not immediately congratulate you on making a perfect version, you may have gotten the sizes wrong. You can hard quit the game immediately to try again by pressing the Switch’s Home button and closing the game, but make sure the game isn’t auto-saving when you do.

If this doesn’t work for you, you may want to try laying out a specific number of patterns to help you roll the right size.

Snowboy DIY recipes

A new DIY recipe was added with the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update: the Frozen Mini Snowperson. Despite their names, the Frozen Floor Tiles DIY and Frozen Fence DIY drop from balloons, not as a reward from Snowboys.

Frozen Arc

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 10 Snowflakes

Frozen Bed

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 10 Snowflakes

Frozen Chair

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 3 Snowflakes

Frozen Counter

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 5 Snowflakes

Frozen Mini Snowperson

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 2 Snowflake

Frozen Partition

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 6 Snowflakes

Frozen Pillar

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 3 Snowflakes

Frozen Sculpture

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 4 Snowflakes

Frozen Table

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 8 Snowflakes

Frozen-treat Set

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 1 Snowflake

Frozen Tree

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 8 Snowflakes

Ice Flooring

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 8 Snowflakes

Ice Wall

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 8 Snowflakes

Ice Wand

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 3 Star Fragments

Snowperson Head

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 5 Snowflakes

Three-tiered Snowperson

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

• 1 Large Snowflake
• 6 Snowflakes
• 2 Tree Branches

There are many other seasonal recipes to unlock, depending on the season:

• Cherry-blossom DIY (Spring)
• Young Spring Bamboo DIY
• Summer Shell DIY
• Pine Cone and Acorn DIY (Fall)
• Mushroom DIY (Fall)
• Maple Leaves DIY (Fall)
• Snowflake DIY (Winter)
• Festive season DIY (Summer/Winter)

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Prices taken at time of publishing.

“If you’re positive that you’ll be spending a majority of your time playing the Switch at home, connected to a television, then you should seriously consider investing in the Switch’s Pro Controller.” —Polygon’s Nintendo Switch review

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