How To Get Clay in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

You’re enjoying your day in Animal Crossing, blissfully crafting away your time when you find that you don’t have clay and actually need it to make something!

While clay isn’t really needed for tools early in the game, you’ll need it later for some important recipes. Let’s get you some clay, okay?

Steps in Getting Clay

Clay is one of those crafting materials that might not seem that important at first, but you’ll be running around looking for it when the time comes. Follow these steps to get that sweet, sweet clay.

Step 1: Find Your Rocks

Wander around and locate your rocks. You should find a total of six rocks on your island. Their locations can be quite random, so it’s best to remember where they are so you can easily go to it the next day.

Step 2: Get an Axe or Shovel

You get clay from rocks, but you can’t mine or hit rocks without tools. You will need an axe or a shovel to hit rocks.

If you’re new to the game and don’t have any of the tools yet, don’t fret, my newbie friend! After you give some bugs or fish to Tom Nook, he will give you the Flimsy Axe Recipe.

This is the starter axe of the game, and it will only need five tree branches and one stone.

To get tree branches, shake trees by pressing ‘a’ in front of it. IMPORTANT NOTE: Wasps are a thing in this game, and they will randomly fall out of trees and sting you! You’ll need medicine, which you can craft or buy, to heal you.

TIP: Hold your net, shake trees while in front of it, and simply press ‘a’ when wasps show up.

For stones, pick up the ones near your rocks by pressing ‘y’. Don’t sell them! I know beginners tend to make that mistake.

If you sold or lost all your stones, you can wait for a day and check your rocks again. Or, if your airport is open already, you can go to a Mystery Island and pick up stones lying around there.

You can get the Flimsy Shovel Recipe from Blathers. Once he sets up his tent on your island, he’ll gladly give it to you. You will need five hardwood for it, which you can get from chopping trees, so you still need to make an axe first.

Step 3: Hit Rocks

Now that you have your axe or shovel, you’re ready to hit rocks. Take your tool out by pressing ‘x’ to open your inventory, selecting your tool and pressing ‘a’ on it, and then choosing ‘hold.’

With your axe or shovel, face a rock and press ‘a’. See that thing that came flying out of the rock? That’s a material you can mine from rocks. Keep hitting to get more, and if you don’t see any more materials go back to your rocks the next day.

If you consecutively hit a rock eight times, each rock should give you eight materials. These materials can be stone, iron nugget, gold nugget, bells, or clay.

Clay isn’t a rare drop, unlike gold nuggets, so after hitting all your rocks, you should get enough clay for your DIY recipes.

Tips for Clay Farming

Want more clay? Clay stacks, not enough? Ready your axes and shovels, and let’s dig our way to clay paradise.

Do the Rock Trick

This is something every Animal Crossing player should know. Every time you hit a rock, you actually bounce back because of the force.

This puts enough distance between you and the rock, and you have to step to it again to keep hitting.

Remember how you have to repeatedly hit it? If you waste too much time repositioning yourself, you stop the hitting streak, and the rock stops giving you materials.

To stop this from happening, dig two holes behind you. Check the image below for a visual guide.

If you do it right, you should be able to get all eight materials.

Go to Mystery Islands

If you’ve hit all the rocks on your island for the day, fly to a Mystery Island and hit more rocks there. Go to Resident Services and exchange your miles for a Nook Miles Ticket at the Nook Stop there.

Once you have Kapp’n, you can give him 1,000 miles for a boat ride to special Mystery Islands.

Get Clay Without Rocks

You can actually get clay without hitting rocks. Balloons can drop clay when you pop them. You need to unlock the slingshot to do this, though.

Now that you know how to get clay, you can now craft pots, water pumps, and even an ocarina. Store enough clay stacks in your storage so you won’t have to worry about clay in the future!