Animal Crossing fans are using Mario’s warp pipe in brilliant ways

The Super Mario 35th anniversary items are live in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and while many of the additions are swell, one item is a total game changer. The iconic green warp pipes allow fans to travel instantly between locations, and clever fans are already finding novel ways to push that functionality even further.

There are limits, of course. You can’t, for instance, put a pipe directly in the home of a favored villager — it’ll just pop you out in the same place. And you can’t reach the “fourth level” height with a warp pipe, either. But even within those confines, there’s plenty you can do.

Perhaps the most brilliant usage of the warp pipe that I’ve heard about so far comes from game developer Andrew Goldfarb, who says he has one installed inside his house. The second warp pipe, meanwhile, gets carried around in his inventory at all times, so no matter where he is, he can simply teleport back to home base. Nice! Similarly, many users tell Polygon that they’re using the pipes as a beeline to hotspots, like the museum, or out-of-the-way places like Redd’s beach. Apparently, you can also use the pipes to escape attackers like bees.

The most popular way Animal Crossing fans use pipes is as shortcuts to secret places that are sometimes only reachable by warp, or only known by the player who placed it.

But you can also use warp pipes to fit a certain aesthetic or theme, as you’ll see below.