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Animal Crossing: New Horizons

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How to Increase Friendships

By
Seren Morgan-Roberts

Description

This section of the guide will focus on how to increase friendships with your villagers. Building strong friendships with your villagers is a rewarding experience because it unlocks exclusive interactions and when you become best friends, you’ll be gifted a special photograph of the villager. Lots of players like to collect these photographs as they are difficult to obtain and require lots of effort and perserverance.

Friendship Levels

There are six levels of friendship in the game. When you first begin a relationship with a villager, you’ll be on Level 1.

  • Level 2 - Getting to level 2 will happen fairly quickly if you talk to them everyday. Once you reach level 2 you can start gifting them. At this stage you’re still only a friend, not a good friend.

  • Level 3 - When you reach level 3, you’ll become a good friend. At level 3, villagers will want to sell you items and give you nicknames! Keep an eye out for villagers running towards you wanting to speak to you.

  • Level 4 - At level 4, a villager might ask you to change their catchphrase! If you decide you don’t like their new catchphrase after you’ve set it, you can reset it with Isabelle by complaining about the villager in question.

  • Level 5 - Reaching level 5 means you’ve reached best friend status! At level 5, a villager will gift you a special collectable photo of themselves with a personalised note on the back.

  • Level 6 - Level 6 is the maximum friendship level, at this stage, your villager will ask to buy items from your inventory!

Increasing Friendship

  • Talk to them! - The minimum amount you should do everyday to increase friendship with your villagers is talk to them everyday. Talking to them everyday is rewarding because you’ll occasionally come across villagers crafting DIYs in their home. Often times, you’ll also be earning Nook Miles for talking to villagers during the day, either from the Nook Mileage Program or the Nook Miles+ errands.

You should talk to your villagers everyday!

  • Give them gifts - After a little while, you’ll be able to begin gifting them. If you want to start speeding up the friendship process with particular villagers, you should start giving them gifts everyday. For more information on the best way to gift villagers, see the Giving Gifts page.

  • Give them medicine when they’re sick - Sometimes you’ll find your villagers sick with flu-like symptoms in their home. You should give them medicine as soon as possible as they’ll be very grateful for your help! For more information on how to deal with your sick villagers, click here.

  • Attend their Birthday parties - Make sure you visit the homes of the villagers on their birthday. You’ll be given plenty of notice that the birthday is coming up as it’ll be advertised on the billboard in the plaza. During the island-wide broadcast, you’ll also be notified of the birthday by Isabelle. For a more indepth rundown of birthday parties, see the Villager Birthdays page.

Make sure you attend your villagers’ birthday parties!

How to Decrease Your Friendship

If, for some reason, you want to decrease your friendships with villagers, then this list provides the way in which to do so. Alternatively, you could read this list and acknowledge what not to do when trying to increase your friendship.

  • Ignoring your villager - Walking into their home and walking out without speaking to them is classed as ignoring them and will reduce your friendship.

  • Hitting them with a net and shoving them - If you annoy them by shoving and hitting them, then you’ll make them cry or get them mad. If you carry on doing this, you will decrease your friendship rating significantly.

  • Gift them trash - Gifting villagers garbage or rotten turnips will reduce your friendship rating as well, as this is just downright rude!

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Nintendo
  • Platforms,
    Switch
  • Genre
    Social simulation
  • Guide Release
    7 August 2020
  • Last Updated
    20 January 2022
    Version History
  • Guide Author
    Seren Morgan-Roberts

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The guide for Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers a walkthrough on how to make the most of your time on your deserted island. This guide will show you how to make tools, earn bells, achieve a five-star island, and more.

Inside this guide you will find:

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