Gifting
In order to level up your friendship level with the Island Residents, the player can give the Island Residents gifts! 
Gifts can be materials or craftable items. All items can have up to four tags that define their item type. Giftable items can also have one of four rarities, but the rarity has no influence on how well a gift performs with a character. Only tags matter for gifts.
For information on gifting items to other players, refer to the "Multiplayer" page.
See "Character Gift Guide" or individual character pages for lists of items that each Island Resident likes and which gifts are best for raising friendship!
How to Gift Island Friends
In order to gift an 
Friend, the player must walk up to them and select the gift icon. Once they do so, the gifting menu will pop up, and all items that can be gifted to that Friend will be shown.
Once a gift is selected, the player can choose to give the gift to the Friend. At low friendship levels, only one gift can be given at a time. However, players can unlock the ability to gift up to 3 of the same item at once, usually when they reach the level of being a "Close Friend" with the character.
After a gift is given, the Friend will give a number of their particular return gift in exchange. (Return gifts given are increased by 1 at "Good Friend" and again at "Close Friend" by 1.)
At "
Best Friends", the Friend gives their Character Box instead.
The player can also see which Island Residents they have not gifted yet by opening the 
"Friends" application via the 
Menu Tablet on the upper right corner of the screen.
Gift Rarities and Heart Levels
In the gifting menu, gifts are separated by 
heart levels, then by rarities. The background color indicates an item's rarity, and the number of hearts correlates with the Island Resident's liked tags (three liked tags maximum). Therefore, a common assumption by players is that more hearts and then higher rarity grant more friendship. However, this is not always true for hearts.
The rarity of the item does not actually matter at all.
| Rarities | Heart Levels | |
|---|---|---|
| Green - Common |
| |
| Blue- Uncommon |
| |
| Purple- Rare |
| |
| Yellow - Legendary |
Tags, Hearts, and Friendship XP
Tags are the icons used to indicate different types of items. For example, the 
"Bakery" tag appears on all food made in the 
Oven. As previously mentioned, each matched tag equals 1 heart for the character. An item must have at least 1 liked tag (with the exception of items used for quests) in order to be gifted to the character.
Both hearts and tags affect friendship increases.
Friendship increases are measured in Friendship Experience Points, or Friendship XP for short. The amounts of Friendship XP earned can be measured by return gifts received. (1 point of Friendship XP equals 1 return gift.) Each heart is worth 1 point. Each tag, even tags that are not liked, is worth a set amount that depends on what tag it is. A tag can be worth 0, 1, or 2 points. (For a list of tag values, see the "Tags" page.)
This does mean that the affect of high-value tags can be greater than the affect of an item having more hearts with a character. For example, 
Hello Kitty's 3-heart gift is 
Red Bow Apple Pie, but the tags of 
Candied Banana Coffee (one of her 2-heart gifts) mean that it gives more Friendship XP than the 3-heart gift.
Both individual character pages and the Character Gift Guide list recommendations for what to gift characters when raising friendship.
At Best Friends, the only factor that matters is the number of hearts. More hearts mean a larger character gift box.
Daily Gift Limits
There is a daily limit of 3 gifts that refreshes at reset. However, the player can gift a 
Friendship Blossom to reset a particular character's limits or a 
Friendship Bouquet to reset all characters' limits. These items are generally only distributed through the 
Daily Rewards from 
My Melody, and she will not give another if the player has 3 of the item.
Since gifts raise friendship and friendship is the strongest factor for unlocking quests, this does mean that sometimes a player must wait for reset to gift characters again to progress in the story.
Gallery
A player standing by My Melody with the Gift icon in the lower right side of the screen.
My Melody's gifting menu displaying all of the possible gifts for her.
The player can see which Island Residents they haven't gifted yet that day via the "Friends" application using the Menu Tablet.
