I'd like to change the system clock on my Switch to affect another game I’m playing, but my SO and I are playing Animal Crossing New Horizons together. We've just bought large amounts of turnips, and we don't want these to spoil. As such, I’d like to avoid time traveling in Animal Crossing.
Our Switch is currently set to Synchronize Clock via Internet. I'm not sure how or when Animal Crossing determines the time has changed. I'm thinking it might work out if I do things in this order:
- Change the time
- Play the other game, save, quit to home screen.
- Set the Switch back to Synchronize Clock via Internet. Ensure the time is correct.
- Load up Animal Crossing, which hopefully believes nothing happened.
I'm not really in a position to test this myself right now. When I tried researching on my own, I only saw the negative impacts of time traveling in Animal Crossing by itself, but I'm not trying to time travel in Animal Crossing.
Best Answer
All Animal Crossings games check the time difference when the game is loaded up.
When you start the game, it checks the difference between the last time it was started and now and acts upon this difference (like, adding fossiles in the ground, creating a bunch of weed, populating your mailboxes etc.).
That's why, when the first time starting the game each day, the loading time is a bit longer.
Your procedure should be OK as long as AC is not running and nobody starts it while the clock is set back.
It's even something my SO regularly do to "not miss" an AC day (go back in time, play the day you missed then put the clock back on synchronize).