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How to Get Softwood in Animal Crossing: Create Cool Pieces of Furniture

Ever been tasked to make an imperial fence or furniture in your New Horizons campaign? You’d inevitably come across softwood as one of the DIY recipes. Softwood is an integral material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons; thus, you’ll need some pieces of it to bring many items to life.

Thankfully, getting softwood is just as easy to get as hardwood and wood. You’ll be up and running in no time with a couple of tools, so keep reading to find out how to get softwood in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

How to Get Softwood in Animal Crossing with a Flimsy Axe

You don’t pick softwood from the ground in ACNH; you’ll actually need to do some bits of work by chopping some pieces off trees on your island. Speaking of chopping trees, you’ll need an axe to do so.

A flimsy axe, which is the first axe you craft in the game, should do the trick. Any axe stronger than that would completely cut down the tree. To get the flimsy axe, you’ll need to receive the DIY recipe from the king capitalist Tom Nook.

Head over to the Resident Services building and speak to him, after which he’ll request that you donate some fish or bugs. The good news is it doesn’t matter how many or which of them you donate. Just get anything substantial and turn it in.

Once you’ve done that, Tom Nook will give you the DIY recipe for a flimsy axe in exchange, which are five tree branches and a stone. You can get the required stone by hitting rocks on your island with a shovel and the tree branches by repeatedly shaking trees on your island.

With the materials all set, hit a workbench to craft your flimsy axe. However, to save time, you can purchase a flimsy axe from the Resident Services building if you’ve crafted one before. 

ACNH-how-to-get-softwood

How to Chop Softwood off Trees in Animal Crossing

Now it’s time to get ’em softwoods. You can hit just about any tree on your island for pieces of softwood to fall out except bamboo trees. You might also want to note that this aspect of the game is random, with no guarantee on which wood type will fall out.

You may need to hit more than two trees to get softwood eventually. So, with that cleared out, here’s how to get softwood in Animal Crossing: New Horizons:

ACNH-how-to-get-softwood

  • Equip your flimsy axe
  • Approach a tree on your island and stand in front of it
  • Press the A button on your Switch to hit the tree with your flimsy axe. You can press it again to do so repeatedly
  • Finally, press Y to pick up the pieces of softwood chopped off the tree

Final Notes

And that’s how to get softwood in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, relatively easy if you have a flimsy axe. With that tool in your hand, there’s no stopping you from crafting the essential items to make your ever-precious island stand out. You can also learn how to get an axe in Animal Crossing without having to craft one.