Villager Tier List for Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Updated: 5/19)

[Zura]

Slightly confused why Tabby is so low. She is an absolute queen and I'd pay big bucks for her if I didn't already have her

 

[Pfoe]

Just to throw in my 2 cents here- I hardly ever see anyone talk about Kiki outside of her small, apparently devoted fanbase. I wouldn't rank her in even the top 5 of the cat villagers alone.

To everyone trending the Octopi down based solely on their slightly increased appearance rate on the NMT islands- accessibility does NOT necessarily equal "value".
If this were true, then all 8 of the new NH villagers would be the 8 most "valuable" villagers in the game, and on the forums, seeing as they are the only ones with no amiibos.
Just because something is slightly more accessible, that doesn't mean it's less popular. Marina and Zucker especially are widely beloved and their tier should reflect that.

We're trending the octopi down because people aren't paying a lot for them. Villager trading value is a function of both supply and demand. So, the question is whether you want the tier list to be based on popularity or value - IMO value is more useful because many people look to these lists as a way to help determine how much they should buy/sell a villager for.

 

[IndoX]

Latest Updates:

- No tier changes today. Tier changes will happen every couple of days to give the selling/trade market some chance to stabilize. Villager popularity has remained stable throughout the last week or so.

Trending Changes:

S Tier
Trending up: Coco, Marshal, Sherb
Trending down: Audie, Diana, Julian

A Tier
Trending up: Apollo, Lolly, Molly, Pietro, Roald
Trending down: Ketchup, Kyle, Wolfgang

B Tier
Trending up: Flora, Genji, Reneigh
Trending down: Mira, Pashmina

Rest of the tiers remain fairly stable in terms of market value.

 

[GEEBRASS]

Great work on this stuff, team!!!

So far, I've:

Booted D Tier Purrl to make room for D Tier Hans.
Booted D Tier Rex to make room for S Tier Coco.
Booted A Tier Kyle to make room for B Tier Octavian.

It's so fascinating to see who is most collectively valued and sift through the forums to glean why.

 

[IndoX]

No updates today! Watching market trends to see potential tier changes tomorrow.

 

[IndoX]

New updates:

New formatting.

Introducing market values. Villagers from certain tiers now have market value tags indicating approximate trade value. Trade values are averaged across all platforms, including but not limited to: twitter, TBT, facebook, discord and reddit.

New weighing system will go into place next tier update. With the introduction of market value tags, I'll be revisiting tiers and weighing popularity in slightly heavy than market value. Popularity and market value are not mutually exclusive and you can have immensely popular villagers not being traded/sold for much.

I've gotten S+, S and A tier done. Expect B tier to be done throughout the day. I'd appreciate any feedback, if any.

 

[Dewasa]

LMAO, my village so far is a bunch of D and C tiers. My favorite starting villager (Lyman) is leading the pack. He's been pretty MVP for me with the gifts and recipe tho.

On a hypebeast note, Julian was my first random campsite villager to move in after I unlock said feature in game. I also have Beau in the campsite now, hopefully he decides to stay around for a bit.

 

[Believe]

Absolutely! Research for the list took a few days while the construction of it took over 12 hours. First and foremost I constructed a list of prices (in NMTs) comparatively across all platforms for each villager. Once I got all of that I averaged it out. This may seem like a lot of work but most of the tier D and untiered villagers were either less than 5 NMTs or free. I then sorted them accordingly in a list that is just based on prices.

Once I had that information I started looking up individual amiibo prices for each villager across ebay and amazon. Those prices were also inserted into my list next to the NMTs average price.

After that I started going into each individual community and started researching general consensus, individual hits and overall psychological value. Reddit, discord, TBT, facebook - you name it.

Once I gathered all the information I started placing villagers accordingly. I decided early on that ranking in quantifiable numbers isn't really feasible and it was just better to rank them into Tiers in no specific order. I did this because when I did all my research the #2 villager behind Marshal is Bob and some people wouldn't even consider him S tier in TBT. Since I didn't have to worry about ranking them individually I just had to worry about what standard each tier needed to be.

It gets harder as you go down the list because many villagers don't have a lot of information on them. That's why I created untiered. It doesn't necessarily mean they're bad or ugly or unpopular - it could just mean there isn't enough data on them at this moment.

Some things I noticed while I was creating the list:

- Cats are by far the most popular species. Some cats in A tier are as popular as some villagers in S tier. I had to start comparing cats between themselves rather than other villagers because they are weighted very differently amongst the communities compared to other species.
- @ctar17 will appreciate this one the octupuses in general are very popular but have the lowest average sale price (in NMTs) compared to other popular villagers. Marina is one of the most popular villagers in the game but doesn't sell for as much as Julian, for example. They seem to be very common and their price point reflects that.
- Popularity and sell value aren't mutually exclusive. As is the case with Marina, there are villagers who's popularity isn't directly reflected in sell prices. Such villagers include Judy being more expensive than Audie but not being as popular overall. Marina as mentioned before. Merengue is also one of the villagers as well given her popularity.
- Apollo is VERY popular outside of TBT. Like, it's insane how popular he is.

I just recently got into a marketing research analysis position and seeing what kinds of data you pieced together is really fascinating. Kudos to the due diligence and work put into this! I absolutely agree multiple forms of media should be considered and I like that you still considered TBT as an isolated bubble as well when drafting this.

 

[IndoX]

I just recently got into a marketing research analysis position and seeing what kinds of data you pieced together is really fascinating. Kudos to the due diligence and work put into this! I absolutely agree multiple forms of media should be considered and I like that you still considered TBT as an isolated bubble as well when drafting this.

Thanks so much

 

[Jared:3]

Surprised about Roald, he's gotta get a bump because he's becoming very popular

 

[petaI]

roald is so cute i'm happy he's rising up the ranks!

 

[trashpedia]

Time to see where my villagers rank!
Apollo - A
Buck - D
Carmen - C
Chevre - C
Egbert - Untiered
Freya - B
Jacob - D
Lily - A
Raymond - S+
Wolfgang - A

Previous villagers:
Mira - B
Stitches - S-
Lionel - D
Pekoe - C
Bubbles - D
(Jacob is moving out tomorrow)

 

[Hay]

I love how you put whos trending up and down! This is a super nice list! Thank you! c:

 

[aetherene]

I didn't know that Apollo ranked as an A-tier villager lol. He popped up as someone moving in when I set down open plots, but I'm definitely keeping him around.

 

[IndoX]

Minor update:

Julian continues to trend down. Average sale price has dropped from 50-100 tickets to 10-50 tickets.

 

[IndoX]

A lot of changes today. Actually, too much to write it.

Overall, the average price for every villager has come down.

Most villagers that were in the 50-100 NMT range have dropped to 10-50 NMTs: Beau, Diana, Fauna, Tangy, Julian and more.

Ankha has dropped down from 100+ NMTs to 50-100 NMTs.

Since the market has been trending down overall, most of the trending down tags have been removed.

A few villagers remained popular and in demand:
- Most cat villagers
- Apollo & Roald continue to trend up

Raymond, Judy, Dom and Sherb prices are also going down - although they're still expensive by comparison to most villagers.

Because the average price of S tier villagers has gone down, there's been some tier changes.

Marina & Zucker have been promoted to S tier. These villagers are actually some of the most popular in the game. Now with the new market trends they're really competitive in this tier.

Julian has been demoted to A tier.

Ketchup has been demoted to B tier.


Off topic tip: For the love of god please don't sell turnips on Sunday/Monday some of these "fees" are ridiculous. Sell them mid/end week for normal pricing.

 

[Stacyfaith]

Rip Julian
Seriously, this tier list is great! I think it's the most accurate I've seen. Good work.

 

[Hoosker]

This is fascinating to watch evolve! Awesome job!

I'm glad to see the overall downward trend in prices for all villagers has been noted. Any theories as to why?
I feel like the discovery and growing popularity of the campsite TT method may have something to do with it? I started using it 2 days ago and ended up with Raymond last night. No NMTs, bells, or anything but TTing and patience required. I personally plan to keep going until I find Judy, and forego adopting villagers altogether.
In general, the game just seems to provide much more rewarding ways of "earning" villagers than just buying them, if that makes sense?

I wonder if we'll continue to see prices decrease as time goes on?

 

[Dewasa]

Best tier list ever, it's active too! Thanks for this.

Aww, my poor Julian. He's definitely a keeper for me tho. Moved in as my first campsite visitor and hoping for him to stay.

 

[Cory]

I'm rooting for you roald