Animal Crossing: New Horizons How to Get to Tarantula Island

If you're looking to go to a spooky area that is filled with creepy crawlies then let's take a look at how to get to Tarantula Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons! Why would you want to visit such a place? Well, these hairy spiders sell for a boatload of bells, so collecting an inventory full of them will have you paying off your debts and enabling you to buy whatever you want for days to come!

How to Get to Tarantula Island

Getting to the island requires that you take a flight! If you haven't flown to a mystery island yet, then your first flight will be free. If you have, however, you'll need to purchase a Nook Miles Ticket from the Nook Stop at Resident Services. Once you've got your ticket or are ready to go, make sure to empty your inventory of anything you might not need. You'll want at the very least to take most of your tools. You can get rid of the watering can and most likely the slingshot. If, for whatever reason, you end up needing a tool, you can craft one on the island or purchase one from the pilot!

To get to Tarantula Island, you will need to fly during a specific date and time range. Tarantulas can only be found in the Northern Hemisphere from November to April, and in the Southern Hemisphere from May to October. You will need to make sure to go at night between the hours of 7pm to 4am. Unfortunately, getting to the island via a flight is random. You can't end up there specifically, you'll just have to get lucky. You will know the island when you come across it because there's a moat in the center with six sides. In the middle here is where all of the spiders will spawn.

If you are out of season and don't want to wait, you can check out our Animal Crossing: New Horizons Cheats guide to learn how to skip time.

Guaranteed Tarantula Island

This method is a lot more difficult now that the Giant Water Bugs spawn in the Northern Hemisphere.

This is kind of a pain to do, but if you desperately want bells you can actually guarantee Tarantula spawns on a mystery island. Take a flight with a Nook Miles Ticket (make sure it's after 7pm and Tarantulas are in season) and if it isn't the specific Tarantula island, you can pretty much strip the island bare to get the spiders to show up! You need to go through and remove every single tree, flower, and rock on the island. Once you've done that, you need to go over to the beach area and plant all the flowers. Remove all the flower tops (bugs can spawn on these) and drop all of the stuff from your inventory on the ground. The island is now primed to spawn some bugs. Catch any bug you see! It appears there's a limit to how many bugs can be on an island, so ditch the ones you don't want. The Tarantulas have a chance to show up as you run around the island. Continue this process until you've got a bag full of spiders.

How to Catch Tarantulas

Tarantulas can be a bit of a pain to catch! They will lunge and bite you if you aren't careful, so you need to be ready to catch them as quickly as possible. If you do get bitten, however, it's not that big of a deal! You will faint and spawn back near the plane.

To catch them, you need to sneak up to it very slowly. When you get close, you will notice they tense up and look like they're going to pounce. You need to STOP and wait for them to go back to normal. Once they do, take another step closer and repeat. Wait until you're close enough to catch it and then drop the net on top of them!

If you want to be safe, you can dig up holes in front of the spider to prevent it from leaping at you.

Other Islands

Don't just immediately leave because you didn't come across the tarantulas! There's plenty of good rare islands that you can possibly end up on. One island can have Emperor Butterflies, which also sell for quite a bit of money, but not as much as the spiders. There's also rare flowers to find, and sometimes you can find boulders that will drop bells each time they are smacked! There's even an island where sharks will spawn in sea very commonly.

And with that, you should be able to find your way to Tarantula Island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons!