Friendship
Friendship is how close the player character is to the game characters (or to a Multiplayer friend). As a game mechanic, friendship is measured in Friendship Levels.
Island Resident Friends
These are the characters that you see in the Friends menu of the
Menu Tablet.
Clicking on a Friend in the menu will take you to their information page. The information page for a Friend gives a wide variety of information, including their current level, how close they are to you, their return gift, how many gifts you have given them, what the next levels unlock, and their Companion Abilities.
Friendship with Friends is increased by earning Friendship XP (Friendship Experience Points). Friendship XP can only be earned two ways:
Gifting items to your Friends.
- Completing specific
Quests (usually
Daily Quests and
Friendship Quests) centered around the Friend.
Increasing Friendship Levels with Friends can unlock benefits such as
Quests,
Avatar Palette,
Companion Abilities,
Crafting Plans,
Recipes, and more.
Earning Friendship XP is limited because of the limited number of gifts that can be given daily and because quests are also limited in number. To increase Friendship XP from Gifting, choose gifts that have a high value, which depends on the value of tags in addition to the value of the
hearts. (Refer to "Gifting" and the "Character Gift Guide" for more information.)
Friendship Bouquets and
Friendship Blossoms are also helpful here because they can reset gift limits for all characters or a single character respectively. Additionally,
Hello Kitty unlocks the
"Everyone's Friend" companion ability at level 12, which increases the Friendship XP earned from gifts given while she is your companion.
Island Visitors
These are the characters that you see in the Visitors menu of the
Menu Tablet.
Visitors do not have the same sort of Friendship Levels as
Friends. Instead, they have a
Star Rating that increases by 1 every time the player does their
Request, which appears as a
Daily Quest. On their information page, accessible through the
Visitors menu, their current star rating shows in the top right corner.
There is a daily limit of 3 Daily Quests from
Visitors, with an additional limit of 1 per visitor. If a request is fulfilled, the visitor leaves at the next reset. If a request is not fulfilled or offered, the visitor may stay another day (depending how many days they have already been on the island) to try to offer their request again the next day. (Another reason that a
Visitor may not offer a quest is if the player cannot fulfill the quest's task or does not meet the quest's minimum requirements.)
Once a visitor has a 5-star Rating, the player can ask them to move into their cabin permanently. They do not offer
Daily Quests after their 5th star, but a visitor being a resident may unlock a related quest of some kind. This is most noticeable with visitors from Cafe Cinnamon but does also apply to many other visitors.
Multiplayer Friends
Multiplayer Friendship Levels operate separately. (Refer to the "Multiplayer Friendship" section of the "Multiplayer" page for full details.)
Multiplayer Friendship Levels are earned by completing Multiplayer Friendship Tasks together. The menu for the Multiplayer Friendship Levels can be accessed from the Multiplayer menu in the
Menu Tablet or by clicking the multiplayer icon that appears near the mini-map while playing together. The Friendship Levels only show the progress for the pair currently playing together; there is no way to access the information for a different multiplayer friend.
The amount of tasks that can be done are limited to 3 per level per week for each pair of friends. This allows players to level up with many friends while also limiting how quickly they can level with a single friend.
Leveling friendship earns Friendship Beads at many levels, with more for higher levels.
Friendship Beads can be traded to
Keroppi for some furniture from past events.
Leveling friendship also unlocks special abilities that can only be used when the pair of friends are playing together. Multiplayer Friendship Levels are independent for every pair of friends. That means one pair unlocking higher-level abilities together will transfer the same abilities if one of the pair plays with a different player at a lower Multiplayer Friendship Level.
Gallery
When close enough to interacting with a friend, the
Gifting button shows.