With a variety of prizes from furniture to DIY recipes, players in Animal Crossing: New Horizons are heavily encouraged to shoot down balloons flying above islands with their trusty slingshot. However, like with most of the tools available in the title, the slingshot will eventually break and players will have to craft a brand new one. While the materials are easy to get, some players would rather not have to keep making new tools.
Returning from previous Animal Crossing titles are the Golden Tools. These late-game items are able to withstand 200 uses before being destroyed. There is one available for each tool that has the ability to break.
Now that the Bunny Day event has begun, there are more balloons than ever flying over players' islands. These include everything from the usual prizes to sky eggs and exclusive Bunny Day recipes. Players trying to gather materials for the new furniture will find their tools breaking pretty often.
The most mysterious DIY recipe for the golden tools is the recipe for the golden slingshot. Technically, players haven't figured out a concrete way to unlock it, but it does exist in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as players have posted screenshots and videos of what signals the unlocking.
Players will know that they've fulfilled the unlocking requirements when they see a golden balloon floating in the sky. By shooting it down, players will get the DIY recipe for the golden slingshot.
One theory for getting the balloon to appear is to simply shoot down enough balloons. Players testing out this method may want to be careful however, as players who shoot down 300 balloons will suffer from a glitch causing no more balloons to ever spawn for them ever again.
Another theory is that the balloon will appear after players break enough slingshots, similar to the process of getting the golden axe recipe. As slingshots can be used without shooting down balloons, this theory is a relatively safe one to try out.
The final theory is that the golden balloon will appear at random like any other balloon. If this theory was true, it would help explain how players haven't figured out the unlock method like the other golden tools.
In order to craft the golden slingshot after receiving the recipe, players need both a base slingshot and a gold nugget. Gold nuggets can be found by harvesting from rocks rarely like with iron nuggets.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.