How Luna’s Slumber Island works in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

As part of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update, you can sleep in your bed to visit Luna and go to Slumber Islands, which are blank canvas islands that you can redecorate to your liking. This mode has some caveats and isn’t just a complete free-for-all, but we’re here to explain how it all works.

Note that Slumber Islands require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to use, even if you only plan on playing on your own. While on your own personal Slumber Island, you’ll need to be connected to internet the whole time (even if you’re by yourself), or else you’ll get punted back to your regular island.

This feature is also not to be confused with Luna’s Dream Suite, which allows you to upload your island for other people to visit freely.

Below we explain how to unlock Luna’s Slumber Islands in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 update, along with what you can use the islands for.

How to unlock Luna’s Slumber Islands

If you were an extensive New Horizons player in the past, it’s likely that you’ll open the game and immediately have a letter from Luna talking about a region of dream space she wants to show you. If you don’t have that letter, you’ll need to make sure you’ve done what we’ve outlined below.

Based on our testing, it seems like you can unlock Slumber Islands as long as you have Luna and her Dream Islands unlocked to begin with — which just requires you to have a house (upgraded from your original tent). Here’s a breakdown on how to unlock Slumber Islands:

1. Upgrade your house from a tent. You should get mail from Luna the next day.
2. Lay on a bed, and choose to sleep (rather than just lie down).
3. Talk to Luna and choose whether you’d like to upload your island as a Dream Island. We uploaded our island, but it’s possible that you may not have to actually upload your island to get the invite.
4. Wait one day and another letter should show up in your inbox that looks like the one below. This will unlock Slumber Islands.

What are Slumber Islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

This is a full sandbox mode, allowing you to decorate the island as much as you want. Once you lay on your bed, select “It’s slumber time,” to get whisked off to this snoozy dimension with Luna. From here, you can opt to load one of your islands or visit one of your friend’s islands. (Your friend has to be online and at their Slumber Island in order to visit. It’s not an offline visit like their Dream Addresses.) If you’re making your own Slumber Island for the first time, you’ll be prompted to pick a size and then a layout of that size.

Once you’re on your desired Slumber Island, you can freely decorate as you see fit. You can place any item down, as long as you have it registered in your catalog. You can also add residents to your island, dropping them in the same way you would furniture. Based on our testing, you can invite current and past residents of your island to interact with, but they won’t have much to say.

On these islands, you can also catch fish and bugs, but nothing you get will actually be added to your inventory. This includes snowflakes you may catch floating around in the sky or fruit you shake off of trees.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

When it comes to customizing your Slumber Island, you can also do the following:

• Interact with the wardrobe and vanity in the corner of the dock, allowing you to change your appearance while you’re on the Slumber Island.
• Talk with Lloyd, allowing you to move or redesign your house, add bridges and stairs, or get Pitfall Seeds to plant around.
• Place any furniture, greenery, or other decor that is already part of your catalog.
• Terraform the island freely.
• Change the time and weather by pressing Left on the D-pad.

All in all, this mode is great for people who like to host silly mini-games for friends online, folks who may want to decorate an island with friends, or maybe even parents that don’t want their little kiddos to ruin their islands’ aesthetics.