Wowing the HHA

After you’ve upgraded your home from a tent to an actual house, you’ll receive an introductory letter from the Happy Home Academy (HHA). Visit Nook’s Homes after receiving this letter to find a friendly HHA rep named Lyle ready to advise you in the fine art of interior design.

Lyle explains that every morning, before you wake up, HHA evaluators sneak into your home and score your sense of style. The higher you score, the more fabulous your home! Ask Lyle for your HHA score each day­—you’ll receive special HHA gifts as you reach score milestones (see the table at the end of this chapter).

Lyle also shares new design tips with you each day, hoping to help you blow away the HHA. Some of his tips are pretty obvious—your home should be free of cockroaches and clutter, with furniture placed in the proper direction to be used and enjoyed. Lyle also shares insightful hints about how to score big bonus points by assembling furniture series, themes, and sets.

Furniture Series

A series is a collection of furniture that combines to form a functional, stylish room. You’ll find practical pieces in these collections, like beds, sofas, and tables. All furniture series also include unique wallpaper and flooring to match the furniture. Deck out a room with a complete furniture series to dramatically boost your HHA rating!

Furniture Themes

Themes are similar to series—they feature lots of items and include matching wallpaper and flooring. Themes are really out there, though—instead of featuring normal pieces like dressers and chairs, themes consist of more imaginative pieces, like the western theme’s covered wagon and desert cactus. Though less functional than furniture series, themes can be more fun to interact with, and completing them causes your HHA score to skyrocket just the same.

Furniture Sets

Sets are smaller furniture collections that compliment each other, but can’t combine to fill an entire room. This means that the bonus points you get from sets aren’t quite as good, but with fewer pieces to collect, sets are easier to complete. Sets don’t feature matching wallpaper or flooring.

The Art of Feng Shui

Talk to Lyle often. He’ll eventually clue you in to the advantages of color-matching. By placing items of a particular color against certain sides of a room, you can use the mystical energy of feng shui to boost your luck in a variety of ways.

Good Bell Luck: Place yellow items against a room’s west wall, and you’ll have better luck finding Bells.

Good Item Luck: Place red items against a room’s east wall, and you’ll have better luck finding items.

Good Luck Luck: Place green items against a room’s south wall to increase your luck in general. The effect is similar to using the good-luck items foretold to you by the traveling fortune teller, Katrina.

What’s Up with Luck?

Increasing your luck has a variety of benefits. The better your luck, the greater your odds of catching rare bugs and fish, and of finding Bells or items when you shake trees and whack rocks with a shovel. Luck also makes it easier to grow money trees by planting Bells with a golden shovel. Increase your luck by using the tips in this Feng Shui section, and by having your fortune told by Katrina whenever her tent appears at the plaza.

Theme Challenges

Break the 150,000-point barrier with the HHA, and Lyle will pay you a personal house call. Now that you’ve proven how gifted you are at interior design, Lyle offers you the chance to step up your game and participate in Theme Challenges!

Simply choose which theme you’d like to go for, then do your best to fill your home with furniture that matches the theme. Your basement isn’t scored for Theme Challenges, but your home’s exterior is—see the tables at the start of this chapter to discover the theme(s) that each exterior item belongs to.

Now that your home’s exterior is also being scored, it’s possible to earn many more points with the HHA. One theme is as good as the next, so pick the one you like best and aim for the following HHA prizes:

HHA Prizes