[ARCHIVED] Friendship Levels & Roles

[sand nacelle]

Friendship Levels & Rewards
There are currently 17 Characters available at this time.
Each Character is unlocked either through Story Line Quests, traveling to Realms in the Dream Castle, or doing Friendship Quests with other characters (like Mickey with Minnie).

Favorite Things of the Day
Each character has their own Favorite Thing and this will change daily! Find out what their favorite items are by either finding your villagers and talking to them, or simply going to your Collection Tab and then Characters. You will only be able to gift their favorite items once a day for the bonus XP but you can gift characters anything for some extra XP.

Character Roles
Character Roles can be selected for your villagers at Friendship Level 2 (except for Ariel and Ursula). Roles cannot be changed at the current time so make sure to choose wisely. Keep in mind that roles you select for characters is merely a preference and there is no specific advantage of giving say Mickey, Gardening and Goofy, Fishing. Do not worry though, as there are 15 characters and only 5 roles, your villagers will have the same role as others.

[sand nacelle]

Friendship Levels & Roles

[south citrus]

Does anyone know where I can find minnie's level 6 balloon? Just reached level 6. Internet says its a design motif?

[wheat haven]

O fun! That means you can use it as a stamp for custom clothing designs. In your wardrobe on the top left of the categories you will see the option - when you enter it will be a bunch of plain clothes that you can completely customize with a touch of magic 🙂 check out the #archived-my-dreamlight-style channel for some inspiration/design tips

[south citrus]

Thanks for your answer. But what if it's not there ? 😫

[wheat haven]

Hmmm, I haven’t unlocked Minnie yet, so I’m not able to check each category for you. Hopefully someone else can, but for now slowly scroll through each individual category / could have just missed it. I’ll check back here later today or tomorrow once I have unlocked Minnie and got to lvl 6 friendship with her. The #archived-my-dreamlight-style crowd may know right away as well if you ask there which category the motif is in.

[south citrus]

Aaaaaaah I found it, wow this opens op a whole new feature. Thought clothes could only change colour 🤣 thanks !!!

[wheat haven]

Do we know if character role bonus stacks? The wording almost makes it sound like if for example we had all of our characters at a friendship level 10 gardening, we would get a bigger boost than just one. I’m tempted to test this if it is currently unknown.

[wooden egret]

It's only whilst they're following you. You can only have I at a time

[gleaming rain]

I could have sworn I've read quite a few posts saying the bonuses stack. That the drop rate increases the more characters with friendship levels that have that role. Yeah you can only have one companion, but based on your tooltip and what people are saying, it seems they stack

[steady hamlet]

That indeed reads as stacking bonuses

[wheat haven]

The way you replied implied that you know this as fact - can you please link your source to clear this up?

I think I need to go back to my initial plan and test this theory for myself. I will record the data I recover and share it here.

[wooden egret]

I've tried to have more than one follow me before and it would stop the initial one from following me..sorry if I'm missinderstanding

[wheat haven]

O we are talking about if the bonus stacks, not if more than one character can follow us at a time. Thanks for trying to help though 💜

[south pewter]

I want to say it stacks I have 4 characters in forage (no other 4 characters in a single role) and the icon has switched to having a +

So I would guess it's like # in the role times the total friendship level

[potent abyss]

So Bearitt made me curious so I checked my companions. I have the same icons as they do. I have 4 Foraging 3 Digging, Gardening, & Fishing. With only 2 on Mining.

[south pewter]

Haha once I get eric i'll see if one of my 3's icons switches once he's assigned (assuming he can be assigned)

[sour elk]

I'm having an issue where I ask my character to hang out but they sometimes won't follow me, does this have a fix? 🤔

[normal crescent]

I have many (not sure exact count, as i'm not on my game atm) companions slotted for mining, and i'll get +2 gems from them instead of just +1 when they drop the extra item

[jagged storm]

Regretting having so many foraging. Guess this means I’ll make Eric mining, as with 3 mining I don’t have the + but with four foraging I do.

Next two residents will be harvesting, then fishing. I want those bonus items.

[normal crescent]

same. i have probably 9 mining at least. 1 harvest/gather/fishing I need to spread the love around with new released companions

[south pewter]

Oo nice! Does it show a + on your icons, or more than one?

[normal crescent]

I'll have to check when I get home (at work atm)

[south pewter]

No worries, I'm just curious so whenever you get the chance

[normal crescent]

had my wife check, and the mining symbol is still just the pickaxe, no plus. my harvesting also has a + on it, but I only have 1 companion assigned to that role

[jagged storm]

Well that’s confusing. I wonder what the + means then.

[south pewter]

Thanks for checking! But yeah thats so odd 🤔

[normal crescent]

I'm going to look more into it when I get home. See if anything sticks out

[south pewter]

Haha I really thought I was onto something 😆

[frosty jacinth]

Who was following you at the time you checked? Maybe only the current bonus has a plus while others don't until they're active?

[normal crescent]

It looks like that is just the symbol for gathering.. weird that it's the only one with a +

No change with my companion with me (mining)

[south pewter]

How odd, guess I just didnt notice it before

[wheat haven]

Hey guys! So I have started testing this but need help to get a large data set. If anyone is willing to start a new save file to participate in the test please DM me for more info. I’m only on Day 1 of testing, so this current data is very limited - it’s going to take thousands of harvests to get a solid picture of the the mechanic. Here is the doc if you would like to track progress, also if you are great at spreadsheets and have a better of idea on how to display and record the data, please DM me for that too! Thank you in advance ❤️ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jW0wOGbrSgXnCz34n0tgOrv_UTXQ3A7qKmtHPpJDYM/edit

[south pewter]

If xbox uses separate accounts I dont mind spending some time on my hubs profile to start a fresh save. I will let you know later on if I do 🙂

[elfin widget]

I just reached level 10 Friendship with Wall-E but I can’t find the level 10 reward in my wardrobe. Is this a known issue?

[wheat haven]

Ah, probably haven’t finished Wall-E’s quest line, here is a link to the pinned post about that in the help section: #dreamlight-help message

[elfin widget]

Thanks. I didn’t realize that Wall-E was one of the ones that the level 10 rewards wasn’t out for yet

[turbid estuary]

Have you found anything on this yet? I am highly interested. I had just asked this question and I want to know myself.

[wheat haven]

It’s a big job, no results yet. But here is the post I made about starting to test, you can check back on this link to see data I’ve collected and feel free to DM with any questions or ideas for it. #1020422541732483133 message
So far have I’ve harvested 4,200 crops with only one gardening buddy at level 10 (goofy). Merlin and Scrooge are both at friendship level one so they shouldn’t have an impact on gardening bonus yet. These first hundred tests (going to be 10,000 crops harvested at that point) are determining if player level has an impact on the buddy bonus and setting a baseline for the rest of the tests to follow.

[turbid estuary]

I wish I could participate. Unfortunately I only give maybe 1.5-2 hours a day to this game at the moment. I'm a full time student and also work full time. If I spend my game time all on farming I wouldn't get anything done haha. I thank you for your research! It will not be forgotten, especially if you make a landslide discovery. I'll be following 👍

[wheat haven]

I get that, I probably won’t be testing every day to keep it fun, but I should have at least a good estimate of what is going on within the next few weeks…. Watch them patch buddy system/farming mechanics right after that 😭

[turbid estuary]

Well, if that happens, you'd be the first I'd nominate for a new mod. Because research can go a long way especially when it comes to finding bugs.

[wheat haven]

Haha, that is flattering but I think I’m too awkward to mod - lot of social interactions. The current buddy system in place seems pretty good so far. It doesn’t feel over powered or under powered in my normal gameplay… now maybe we learn that if you have 100% of all characters fully maxed and all on the same focus…. It becomes super over powered, or maybe we learn that there is very little impact in stacking and it is better to diversify - either way, it will be helpful to know.

[zenith oasis]

I'd love to see comparisons of what companions contribute at various levels

I have my garden set out as 12 plots of 12 and harvested with Wall-E at my side, level 10 gardening.

Planted 36 wheat, harvested 96
12 potatoes, got me 20 at harvest
12 lettuce, harvested 18
12 bell peppers, harvested 19
12 tomatoes, harvested 46
12 leeks, harvested 20
12 onions, harvested 22
12 sugar, harvested 21
still waiting on 24 pumpkins.

[zenith oasis]

I got Wall-e back and we harvested the pumpkins we got 37 and I planted 24. My other gardening helper is also level 10 and I'm not sure how much that matters either.

[frosty jacinth]

Bonuses are calculated not just by what Friend is with you, but the total number of levels in the same skill across all Friends

So if you have 3 level 10 gardeners, you're getting a +30 bonus (whatever that means) to gardening so long as you're hanging out with one of those three characters.

[south pewter]

This is something we're trying to gather data to say for sure, unless you have a post by a dev that confirms it which would be great XD

[wise skiff]

Any tips on getting Ariel and Ursula to level 10 after giving them their favorite items for the day. I have about 3/4 left till they each hit 10

[south pewter]

I believe a lot of people use flowers! I don't remember where I saw a pinned message on the number of flowers to give to reach each level though

[south pewter]

#dreamlight-help message

found it!

[wise skiff]

Looks like I have to try this now lol

[south pewter]

Hope it goes well 🙂

[wise skiff]

Once I get them to 10, I can finish each of their last quests. Then I just need them to patch Moana's quest with the glitched memory so I can finish up her last couple of quests and I'll be done story wise for everyone

[south pewter]

Just a reminder Minnie's level 10 is not in game and I believe Wall-E's level 10 reward is not in yet either, though I think his quest is.

[wise skiff]

Interesting, so future update should add them

[south pewter]

Yup!

[wise skiff]

After 80+ hours since release day, I can wait a bit for them lol

[frosty jacinth]

Says it right in the game. "Chances increase with the Friendship Level of every Character in the Village who has this bonus."

[south pewter]

Yes I also took similar pictures 🙂

[frosty jacinth]

So what are we trying to uncover?

[south pewter]

The amount of bonus, like the equation the game uses for certain. I assume it's also # of characters in a role times the levels of characters; but we're trying to also know if it matters if you're budding with a level 5 vs a level 10. If the bonus is just applied overall so it doesn't matter what level is with you or if it does matter

hopefully that explains it okay

[frosty jacinth]

ah, then to build a better statistical model, might I suggest cutting down the number of variables per test. Looking at the above-linked google sheet, there is no control group to compare results against

trying to determine how eight different factors all play into the calculation at once is going to be nearly impossible

Because there won't be any indication which variable caused any variance in results

[south pewter]

@wheat haven

thanks for the input 🙂

[wheat haven]

Hey! Just catching up on the convo, I love this topic

[wheat haven]

That would be amazing! Okay, yes! Are you available for a call in an hour or two and we can go over your ideas to improve the test in depth? I’m actually only testing characters while they are at level 10. While a character is leveling from level 2 to level 10 the test is on hold.

[frosty jacinth]

From an empirical standpoint, you want as little subjective data as possible, and as many data points with similar conditions.

I can't really do a call, but I can see about throwing together a shared spreadsheet that anyone can enter data into

Basically, we should control for as many factors as possible, or at least have all the data entered in such a way that we can account for variance

[wheat haven]

Okay, here is the latest link, i give a description at the top, you can make a copy of it and make as many changes as you like - I really appreciate the view of someone with experience in this, it’s my first time testing this kind of thing. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jW0wOGbrSgXnCz34n0tgOrv_UTXQ3A7qKmtHPpJDYM/edit

[frosty jacinth]

I made the start of a leveling tracker, which I don't really use anymore because everyone is level 10.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cMavk2c0hfEW17Z6_AY8fOfhz7Vam3LJvxie1Y1FZn8/edit?usp=sharing

This was meant to allow me to put all favorite gifts in one place by checking the Collections screen instead of needing to hunt for things for each character. I tracked who wanted what, whether I owned it, and whether I had already gotten the bonus XP from them for that gift that day

What it also does is tally up the total bonus each character is giving to which task, and then totals those up on the right-hand side.

So what we'll want to do to break down the statistical significance of Friendship Levels in this test, is ensure we've got the following variables tracked for each run: character level, current buddy friendship level, total friendship level, seeds farmed, total pumpkins (or whatever, though it should always be something with an expected yield of 1) farmed, number of golden harvests, and number of exploding harvests

[wheat haven]

This is a fantastic tool! I’m sure there will be a lot of new players coming in soon that would love to have this…. Frankly, I’ll probably use it - i am very early in my story line and have not unlocked many characters. Thank you for posting this!

[south pewter]

❤️

[wheat haven]

I am about to run to dinner, but I’ll be back on late tonight and tomorrow to talk more - DM me any time, i dont have notifications on when I sleep

[zenith oasis]

I assigned Eric to Gardening since I needed a body on that and now my gardening is glitching too much to really try anything. Mickey and Wall-E are both level 10. I'll get him again once the veg are ready to harvest and see how he does in comparison

[frosty jacinth]

If he's glitching, you should be able to bench him in put one of your other gardeners in and receive the same bonus. It won't earn him XP, but it should net the same number of bonus veggies for you

[zenith oasis]

I think it's a weird confluence of lag combining with gardening so my avatar goes to plant a seed and it takes 2-5 tries before a plant appears. I ended up exiting to title and reentering to fix it.

[zenith oasis]

I'm gonna expand my garden and do a test with Mickey and Wall-E the early friendship levels have Eric leveling by looking in his direction

[grim isle]

So does anyone know what happens if you level up a friend by just keeping her around and doing her quests one by one without focusing on others and there's no level 9 or 10 reward? Is there a way to buy their reward at Scrooge's place?

[frosty jacinth]

So far Scrooge's store doesn't feature items that are exclusive to friend leveling bonuses

[grim isle]

Oh no

[frosty jacinth]

I suggested elsewhere that the catalog offer items in our Collections, not just in our inventory, since it will allow for items we may have encountered but not kept to be available as well

[south citrus]

One question: does Wall•e have a level 10 quest ? I already reach that friendship level with him but I can't have the bag

[elfin widget]

No. WallE and Minnie are both still missing their level 10 quests and rewards

[south citrus]

thx !

[grim isle]

Is there a way to reset a characters friendship?

[cosmic ginkgo]

I don't think so.

[zenith oasis]

I've started testing the effect of having a helper with you at harvest. If you have gardening helpers at level 10 and would like to participate, please let me know? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YBRznIEsNqWfVLiT1P9Df2A-iHB1PcmeVbUm7nm3exw/edit?usp=sharing

[frosty jacinth]

I've also started tracking this, but looking at yield in relation to overall bonus instead of just with the character I'm hanging out with. I'm also tracking how many golden and bursting harvests I have, as the frequency of those may also be tied to friendship levels. (These are just pumpkin harvests, as they're about all I do these days). The data I'm collecting is all on the second tab, labeled Farming Efficiency
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cMavk2c0hfEW17Z6_AY8fOfhz7Vam3LJvxie1Y1FZn8/edit?usp=sharing

[zenith oasis]

This is also interesting. Some crops yield 2 or 3 items at harvest, so I would like to know how effective it is to have a helper when harvesting those. Also it feels like some helpers are more helpful than others, but I'm wondering if that is role related

Fishing helpers in general seem to pick and choose what extra they throw out.

[frosty jacinth]

Mathematically, there's likely just a percentage chance that any single harvest will net a benefit, and it's random what item actually gets boosted. When fishing for example, say there's a 50% chance you get a bonus fish. There doesn't seem to be any correlation between what fish you got and whether the bonus procs, just that half the times you catch a fish (or seaweed) your buddy will toss out another one.

Same for mining, digging, and foraging.

The reason it appears that gardening functions differently is that the hangout buddy seems to "bank" procs and releases them all at once at random intervals.

A more thorough analysis would look at each individual harvest and whether or not it was golden, bursting, or yielded a friendship bonus (and of how many units), but when harvesting hundreds of units at a time, this is really tedious. The current model I'm using takes into account all the variables but should provide a trend line over time without the extra granularity

Discounting outliers from getting 4 golden harvests in one run, it looks like having 40 total gardening levels gets you about an 80% yield bonus. When we get more characters and I can test it out with more total levels, it'll be interesting to see if it's a straight 2% bonus per level, which is what the admittedly limited dataset I'm working with currently would suggest

[north pagoda]

i have got walle to level 10, but don't have a quest for him available to get his level 10 gift? is there supposed to be a quest? if not how do i get it? 😦

[frosty jacinth]

It hasn't been released yet. I expect it's going to have Scar or Buzz or whatever as a prerequisite that means they can't release it until that content is live.

[north pagoda]

ahhhhh makes sense thankyou!

[wheat haven]

@frosty jacinth @zenith oasis we should combine our efforts! I currently still on phase one of testing:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jW0wOGbrSgXnCz34n0tgOrv_UTXQ3A7qKmtHPpJDYM/edit

[frosty jacinth]

Combining them only works if we're all testing the same way. I'm collecting golden and bursting crops as well, for example

[zenith oasis]

We've got very different angles but I think our tests support each other.

[wheat haven]

Yes! Quite true. The RNG from the golden crops throws off the numbers a lot for what I am doing. Since I’m always just harvesting 100 crops. If I harvested the golden as well, it would change the number of my harvest and make it difficult to hone in on whether or not the friendship bonus stacks - and if so, by how much.

[zenith oasis]

I'm interested in how much a helper helps over the base harvest. Helpers' help is diminished when harvesting crops that yield 3x what is planted for instance.

[wheat haven]

Yes, I’m only testing with single yield crops (carrots)

[zenith oasis]

Preliminary results indicate that harvest help for vegetables like okra and tomatoes goes down to only 14-18% over base

[wheat haven]

Right, they don’t drop double drop in the same way as they are harvested for crops like wheat and okra. To keep the math easy, 100 crops per harvest, always single yield crops and no rng (glowing crops) as that totally throws off the number of crops harvested as seen here: https://twitter.com/mintyplush/status/1573077242917560320?s=46&t=xuW5iMphgDeztDFiqTfDtg

minty plush (@MintyPlush)

#NintendoSwitch

▶ Play video

Twitter · Sep 22, 2022, 10:30 PM

[zenith oasis]

(compared with single yield crops which net 42-55% yield with help)

I wonder how much platform has to do with the speed of crop multipliers for those glowy events.

When there's a golden harvest, I typically get 3-5 extra

[wheat haven]

That lines up with my tests so far as well. I am using a fresh save file with only one character engagements so far. The gardening buddy is level 10 (has been since the start of the test)
I’m maxing myself to level 40 before continuing on to the second test which would be bringing in either Mickey, Scrooge, or Merlin in as my second level 10 gardening buddy (test will be paused during the time I level up characters from 1 to 10)

[wheat haven]

I have not tested for golden multiplier at all yet - want to focus on one test at a time

[zenith oasis]

that makes sense.

I'm trying not to level Eric (level 6) at this time so I can compare his numbers to Wall-E and Mickey. It's not as comprehensive as your test, but should yield some results.

Maybe I'll go back and do a new file once I've done all the quests to do a better test.

[wheat haven]

We certainly will be unlocking some trends if we continue

[zenith oasis]

I swear I look at him and he levels. It's very frustrating.

[frosty jacinth]

This is likely because the expected yield on these is 2+, meaning when you get a friend bonus, it's only adding 1 instead of an equal number to the yield. In terms of how often they're giving you bonus crops, though, I expect it'd be about the same rate

[frosty jacinth]

the game says that the bonuses stack, so make sure you're tracking not just the level of your active friend, but the total number of gardening levels at the time of harvest

[wheat haven]

Yah, easiest to just test on single yield crops to make the results more clear

[zenith oasis]

I'm interested to see if the effect does stack.

[frosty jacinth]

right, and to test that you need to track total stacks as well as active

then level Eric a little bit and see if your avg goes up

[wheat haven]

Are you two available to pop on to a livestream to see my test in action? I would love some feedback before I go much deeper. Would be easiest if I can show you in real time? @zenith oasis @frosty jacinth

[frosty jacinth]

I'm technically working now, but since that's clearly not what I'm doing, sure

[wheat haven]

Haha, okay great! I’ll go set it up now, 15 minutes or less 🙂

[frosty jacinth]

I'm going to try it out with 100 carrots as well, 40 gardening levels/10 active and see how my numbers differ from yours. I am much more willing to ignore exploding and golden crops when they cost 10g per seed instead of 220g lol

[wheat haven]

Okay, I’m going live now, I’ll post the link in share your channel in just a sec

Flash warning; there is a thunderstorm, if that is an issue, we can do this another time

Thunderstorm is clear actually

[frosty jacinth]

is there a link to this stream?

[zenith oasis]

Bedtime crunch over here with the kiddos, I'll catch you next time

[wheat haven]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI59OwLQa8U i finished the stream already, i'm sorry i missed you. it is short and sweet this time, so pretty easy for a re-watch. a viewer suggested include the results of the harvests as i level up new characters to get data on that as well. I will not be doing it for my main testing because the characters level up so quickly it seems like it wouldn't be able to provide a large enough data set to account for RNG. But, I'm still thinking about their idea, and additional data can't hurt, so I will record that data of the harvest of characters while they are in between (noting total valley gardening level) in a separate spreadsheet. While one playthrough wouldn't be enough data to make use of it, it would be good for it to be banked and as other players go through the same testing down the road, they will be able to pull it as a resource.

[frosty jacinth]

I was the one commenting in the stream

statistically, the more gradations in the total level variable, the smoother trend curve you'll get, but I and others will likely account for that in our tests

[wheat haven]

Gotcha, I will record that data in a secondary sheet for you to use. I imagine at the earlier friendship levels they won't even be able to get through a full harvest let alone 100 harvests of 100 crops, so it just doesn't really work for the level of RNG I'm trying to take into account. I think if someone compiled the results of multiple playthroughs looking at those bits from the in between levels, they would be able to make sense of it. For example, in my tests, let's just say I chose a random set of 5, they could all happen to be very high or very low yields, it's just RNG. But, by doing thousands of tests, it shows the RNG range more clearly.

[frosty jacinth]

Analyzing your data, you're getting an average of ~16% bonus for 10 total levels, while I have ~78% with 40. So the more we can look at how individual level increments increase the average, the smoother our total curve will be. It may well be that levels grant a different size bonus based on what level it is (smaller at lower levels, larger at higher levels, or vice versa)

[wheat haven]

This definitely would be interesting to learn, would you like me to make a copy of your spreadsheet and record it on that while I'm leveling new gardening buddies from level 2->9?

[frosty jacinth]

I transferred your data in

I am not currently analyzing the golden and burst counts, which appear (in this small sample size at least) to not be based on either character or friendship level

[wheat haven]

Good, those golden bursts always felt like totally unrelated to characters and player level, as I recall them happening at the start of the game without even having a gardening buddy yet... it's nice to know that you have data proving that though (far more effective than my cloudy memory lol)

[frosty jacinth]

I am counting them in the sheet because they might influence total harvest counts in ways that aren't obvious, even if I try to avoid collecting their bonus veggies

[wheat haven]

It will be interesting to learn either way. It's so fun being at the start of the game, so much is unknown.

[frosty jacinth]

It would also be helpful to do some similarly sized harvests without a buddy or without a gardening buddy, because some of the variation from expected yield might come from other factors, like you finding you collected 100 while a few carrots remain unharvested

[wheat haven]

O those were from the glowing crops

I pull one from the location of the growing crop, but because I don’t complete the potential pulls from them, they are left behind.

[frosty jacinth]

I think you should still collect all planted crops, even if you end up with a few more than 100. Since friends give bonuses based on total number of holes you picked instead of total yield, the number of plants you harvest should be consistent, even if sometimes the yield is doubled or tripled by non-friend factors

[wheat haven]

If I pulled all the carrots from the glowing crop, it would no longer be a 100 crop harvest

[frosty jacinth]

in the long run, those small variances are going to be subsumed by the volume of data and not make a statistical difference

[wheat haven]

To keep mine simple, I will just be testing 100 crops harvested. But, I would like to test glowing crop yields after this one to learn more about them as well.

[frosty jacinth]

Between the two of us, it looks like the average bonus per friendship level is somewhere between .59 and .94. It will be very interesting to get more variance in total hangout bonus other than just levels 10 and 40 to see how other levels trend

statistically speaking, by only getting values every 10 levels, you're making the curve calculation harder, not simpler, by eliminating more specific datapoints for the levels in between, but once I unlock Scar, Buzz, and Woody, we should get at least a few more variables in there

[wheat haven]

Absolutely, I will eventually have all characters in the game at max gardening, I’m excited to see what that looks like

[frosty jacinth]

I don't want all three to be Gardeners, so when I start a game with my daughter (who is 3 and won't really be interested in testing this sort of thing) I'll try to get some anecdotal rather than empyrical data

[wheat haven]

I will be recording the additional data for you in a separate spreadsheet, I hope it makes it easier for you

[frosty jacinth]

data is infinitely malleable, so however you record it, I can find a way to use it

[zenith oasis]

I hope that mine will be useful as well even if I'm interested in slightly different questions. This kind of makes me miss the days of game guides, lol

[sturdy hornet]

are you testing all roles or just gardening in this?

[frosty jacinth]

So far just gardening, but I intend to check others as well. They will just be a bit more tedious, as mining gathers ores and both shiny and regular gems, and the bonus drops from Friends work differently. I'll need to set up a different sort of tracking sheet

[zenith oasis]

Gardening is the easiest to test since there's less chance involved. Fishing could probably be tested by fishing outside of bubbles in the beach and meadow but would be tedious as anything.

@frosty jacinth What method would you use for testing fishing? Since we know that fishing outside of bubbles gets either bass/cod and seaweed maybe compare the outcome for 100 casts alone vs 100 casts with a budy?

[frosty jacinth]

I don't think the rarity of the bubbles or whether you get a fish or seaweed outside the bubbles has any impact on how often your hangout buddy tosses you an extra fish. So I'd simply count the number of times I successfully get a thing (fish or seaweed) and then count how many times I got tossed another copy by my buddy

Honestly, a true test of gardening would check each and every plant, so that there were data on how often picking a plant netted a hangout bonus and how large that bonus was (always just one extra unit, or sometimes more). The way we're doing it now, by looking at an entire field of crops and the net gain from buddies, doesn't get down as granularly as I expect the system works, but it's far less tedious

[frosty jacinth]

So, I just did a test very slowly, observing how my buddy responded to individual harvests instead, and made the following realization: each time you harvest a plant, including the extra times you can harvest golden harvests, has a chance for your buddy to provide 1 extra unit. This means that we can harvest golden plants when testing without throwing off our final results. Collecting bonus units from bursting harvests does not proc a friendship bonus drop, so those will always throw off our statistical results.

So long as we count total harvested crops from all single-pull and golden crops before collecting any of the bonus drops and ignore bursting crops, we'll be able to run consistent analysis on proc rates for hangout bonuses

[zenith oasis]

I think I finally get what you're saying. So instead of measuring the product you are measuring the action the buddy takes. I'm so glad I asked about fishing. I may pick 3 units of peppers from one pepper plant, but the buddy throws out 1 unit per planting spot or every other spot which has less of an effect for a crop that yields more per harvest than 1 unit per planting spot.

[frosty jacinth]

Correct. It is pretty clear from observing hangout bonuses across harvest types (gardening, mining, fishing, foraging, and digging) that bonuses are always just 1 extra unit per harvest action. With that in mind, what we're really testing in all of these is what chance a given hangout bonus level (either of active companion or of stacked companions with the same specialization) provides for a given action (ie. based on my data, 10 total gardening levels appears to have about a 15% chance to proc; 40 total gardning levels appears to have about a 79% chance to proc). Should we get bonuses with higher than 100% proc rate, then we may see buddies dropping more than 1 unit when their bonus does proc.

It may be that the bonuses per level are logarithmic rather than linear, which would mean there is a limit to the bonus that can be granted below 100%. Knowing where the point of diminishing returns is on stacking bonuses across the various skills will help people optimize their rosters.

But currently, the bonus per level appears to be exponential rather than linear, with the average bonus per friendship level at 1.5% for 10 total levels and 1.9% for 40 levels. Once we run more tests with bonuses in between those two (either in multiples of 10 or gradations between), we may get a clearer view of how the bonuses increase based on total levels already in effect.

You'll also note that Dreamlight Duties that call for you to Harvest, Catch, Mine, etc. a specific number of items count your actions, not the yield, which supports an action-based bonus standard rather than quantity-based one. When tasked to "Catch 3 fish" you need to complete 3 independent fishing actions, not 2 with a bonus fish tossed in by Goofy.

[zenith oasis]

I'd have to do a much bigger test, but right now the value of a gardening helper is about 30% bigger harvest than going alone

(Level 40 player and two level 10 helpers, 1 level 6 untested)

[frosty jacinth]

So your total bonus is 26 levels across 3 characters?

[zenith oasis]

yes, Wall-E and Mickey are level 10. Eric is level 6

[zenith oasis]

@frosty jacinth @wheat haven I've completed my initial test and I feel like I need to do about 3-5 rounds with my helpers before I feel confident about trends. Overall Eric (who leveled to 7 while harvesting) provided a 27.33% increase compared to Mickey's 30.46% and Wall-E's 29.22%.

[frosty jacinth]

That looks like active level has some impact, which I hadn't been able to test with all lvl 10 chars

[zenith oasis]

I wonder if Wall-E is effected by his lack of a level 10 quest?

[frosty jacinth]

Please keep farming with Eric as he goes to 8 and 9 and see if that improves it. But a variance of just a few ercentqge points likely falls within the margin of error, so it might not be statistically significant

[zenith oasis]

I wish there was a way to freeze Eric at his current level for a little while, lol

[wheat haven]

That is the tricky part, they level so quickly

[zenith oasis]

I gave him one of his favorite gifts when we were at level 1 and it got him to level 4! I was so mad

[frosty jacinth]

As Eric levels up and you approach 30 total levels, I wonder if WALL•E and Mickey will increase their rate as well

If you test with someone at max while Eric is leveling, you can get more tests on at each level along the way

[zenith oasis]

I want more of this data set with Mickey and Wall-E plus it feeds my need for variety and money making.

[wheat haven]

I think I should be able to start the mid progression testing tomorrow. I’m almost at 10,000 crops harvested (my hundredth hundred harvest test) and will be leveling the next test subject from level 2 to 10.
Despite the limited data I’ll be able to provide during the progression, it should be helpful for both your test logs ^+^

[frosty jacinth]

If you leave the second person at, say, lvl 5 and then just harvest with your level 10 that will give a lot of data of what 5 levels add to the total efficiency

[zenith oasis]

On the one hand I miss the old game guides companies used to sell, on the other hand I wouldn't have connected with other data nerds.

[frosty jacinth]

You could have worked for one of those companies and gotten paid to run these tests

I know a bunch of people who used to make those for Brady and they said the testers were nuts at methodically trying everything

[zenith oasis]

coool

[zenith oasis]

There might be wide variance between fishing helpers. Over 50 tries, Merlin gave me 3 items. I've gone about 12 casts with Donald and he's produced 4 items

I'll try again tomorrow and do a running tally

[frosty jacinth]

only count when you actually haul in a fish/seaweed, not total casts

[zenith oasis]

This was 50 times I got something, Merlin gave me 3

[zenith oasis]

Either Maui is throwing extras sometimes or I've miscounted. 28 catches, he's given 18 gifts and I have 47 fish and seaweed in my inventory.

[thin wolf]

After looking at all of the test data here, as well as doing some myself, I believe I have figured it out for the gardening companions.

From what I can see, the active companion gives a ~+5% bonus per level, and all inactive companions with the gardening skill gives ~+1% per level. So this means that a single level 10 companion will give a ~50% bonus by themselves. If you use a level 10 companion and have another 5 level 10 gardening companions, then you'll get a 100% bonus so you'll double your harvest.

There are several things that I noted during this all.

1. When a companion gains its hearts from the action, it triggers a chance to active its bonus. For gardeners this is every time you harvest a crop.
2. During a gold harvest, each pull is counted as a separate harvest, so each one has a separate chance to proc the bonus. (You can tell each has a chance since it shows the hearts on the companion for each pull)
3. During a burst harvest, the extras that are released don't have a chance to proc the bonus.
4. If you are doing the fence trick, the companions level will only be evaluated when it releases all of the crops. This means that if you started your harvest with a level 2 companion, and you finish off with a level 5 companion, when they release all of the crops at the end, it will calculate all of the bonuses based on the companion being level 5.
5. The companion only procs its bonus per harvest, not per crop collected. This means that for crops like wheat which produce multiple crops per harvest, it will still only count as a single harvest.
6. Your companion bonus can go over 100%. This just means that sometimes your companion will find 2 crops per harvest instead of 1.

Here is the methodology of the testing I did as well as my results:
I had a plot of 198 crops which I would harvest with my companion blocked off. I would harvest all gold harvest, since each is a valid harvest, and I wouldn't go after any burst harvests. At the end of the harvest, my inventory would show how many harvest actions I had completed (Usually somewhere around 240 due to having roughly 4 gold burst per harvest). I would then release my companion and find out how many bonus crops I get.

• I first started with a level 10 companion as well as having 39 levels of inactive garden companions. So my expected bonus would be (5%*10 + 1%*39) so 89%. After having 240 harvests, I got 215 bonus crops, so a bonus of 89.58%.
• The second test I wanted to do was with a low level active companion. So I started out with a level 2 companion and 50 levels of inactive companions. During the course of the harvest my companion went from level 2 to level 5. So I would expect the bonus to be somewhere between 60% and 75%. However, after harvesting 229, I got 173 bonus crops, so a bonus of 75.55%. This is what makes me believe that the companion doesn't calculate it bonus chance until it actives. It seems to keep a track of how many crops were harvested, but not what level it was at when the harvest took place. (It should be noted, that the companion was at each level for roughly the same amount of time during the harvest. Specifically (Level 2: 15%, Level 3: 23%, Level 4: 35%, Level 5: 27%).
  -The last test was to see if I could get double my harvest by getting the bonus to 100% so I got a level 10 companion with 50 levels inactive. I ended up using okra which has 3 crops per harvest, but I only counted that as 1 crop harvest when comparing to the number of bonus crops I got. So after getting 753 crops (251 harvests), I got 251 bonus crops, so exactly 100% bonus!!

-During the writing of this I wondered if it was possible to get more than 100% bonus so I decided to do one final test. I had a level 10 companion with 54 inactive levels, so would expect 104% bonus. From a plot of 198 I ended up having 273 harvests!. Got great rng and had 8 gold harvests! From those 273 harvest, i got 281 bonus crops, so a bonus of 102.93%.

From all of this I am quite confident in saying that the active companion gets 5% per level, and all inactive companions get 1% per level.

As a side note for @frosty jacinth , the percentages you were saying in chat go against what your data shows. You say that 10 levels gets you 16% but your sheet shows that it is 52%. In your sheet, the efficiency shows the bonus already, but then you are multiplying it by the number of levels for some reason?? So your average delta is the running average bonus, so 10 levels is 1.524, which means that it is a bonus of 52.4%. Same goes for your 40 levels, you have 1.974, which would be a bonus of 97.4%, not 78%. However, I don't think some of your data is valid because I believe that you thought the bonus was done per hole and there is no indication in your data as to how many harvests you did, (for example, if you harvested a gold harvest, how many harvests did you get from the hole??). As such, I looked at only the level 40 harvests you did that had no gold harvests, and I got an average of 78.45%.
So my expected result for 10 level active is 50%, @wheat haven's data showed 52.4%. At 10 level active, 30 level inactive, I would expect 80%, and your data showed 78.45%. I would say that given that these are only a few % away from expected, that they correlate quite well with what I propose is the way the bonus is calculated.

[wheat haven]

I’m about to fall asleep, but I am very interested in your testing. I just am casually farming on my main valley (not the controlled test save file) and was randomly slowly pulling the crops one by one to see if any could produce more than one. I haven’t been able to witness any single harvest pulls produce more than one crop. (Often the buddy will give multiple, but for me it has only been when it is catching up). My main only has 3 gardening buddies though and as you know the controlled test profile only has one. To be fair, I haven’t been testing for the multi crop drop since I’m using the trap for tests.
If there is potential for double crop drops at 5 max gardening companions, I’m very excited to continue testing all the way up to 10 max gardening companions and beyond.
It makes me wonder if we could eventually get significantly over double per harvest. Currently, there are only 10 characters in the game, but considering there are over || 20 realms in the castle || there is a lot of room for ‘growing’ that even higher ^+^

Unless there is cap, which, is entirely possible. In animal crossing new horizons, the visitor watering bonus benefit capped at 5 guests. So, we will continue to test to learn if there is one.

[thin wolf]

Yeah I've just been doing some testing on my main save as well. I think once I get a few more levels into my companions, and maybe 1 more, then I might run it crop by crop to see if I actually see it dropping 2 crops for a single pull. I thought there were 15 characters in the game which could become companions currently. If they were all gardeners then my math would say that you could get the bonus to 190%. So almost triple your harvest! With 17 gardeners, you theoretically would start to see some harvests with 3 bonuses!

But yes, it will definitely be interesting to see if there is a cap. And if there isn't a cap, then there would definitely be a lot of fun in the future when you have a whole heap of gardening companions.

[wheat haven]

I’m still very early in my play through, so there could be more that just don’t show on the collection page in the characters section. (I know it may seem a bit silly to be deep in RNG mechanics testing and still enjoying the magic of mystery in the rest of the game, but no spoilers on other characters please)

[wheat haven]

Yes! I think so too!

[thin wolf]

Oh I see, that's weird. Yeah I thought that the collection page always showed that there were 17 characters in the game. Actually, just checked your old stream, and in the collection there it showed 17....

[wheat haven]

You are totally right

Gosh- yah time for bed for me lol… just looked at it now, definitely 17 and not 10 characters

It’s 6:30 am east coast right now, and I’m just still awake from last night, this is all very exciting though, so I had to chime in ✨

Feel free to DM me anytime, I keep my notifications off while I’m sleeping so no worries of ever waking me. I’m so pleased to meet you.

[thin wolf]

Haha, too easy, thought so. Oh wow, definitely time for bed! Ok will do. Good to meet you too!

Forgot to say that you're welcome to DM anytime as well. I too have notifications off whilst I sleep.

[thin wolf]

Here is my data if anyone wanted to check it out. I plan to add to it as I do more tests later. Hoping to also test the other roles later when I start to grind for some resources. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P6cBLTHKh4l8ogqOBz3HbLX54rzmAyuHxB2Q25745CI/edit?usp=sharing

[frosty jacinth]

Wow, good work.

And you're right about the math errors in there. I was inconsistent with how I was tracking it early on, putting golden yield in with hangout bonus.

[frosty jacinth]

I expect there not to be a cap, but for inflation to start hitting hard on both cost of new features/upgrades as well as quest requirements based on non-farming resources.

It looks like farming will remain the most lucrative and efficient job, but we may have only seen the beginning of quests requiring insane amounts of clay. Players will still need to diversify as the roster grows or have lots of coin and nothing to spend it on.

[cosmic ginkgo]

THIS! 🙂

[zenith oasis]

I've started tracking foraging and mining. I'm also getting started on fishing, but having some difficulty in remembering to tally catches vs gifts. I'm thinking about doing some timed tests instead and going with the aggregate differences of fishing alone vs with a buddy.

The most consistent fishing outcome I've found is fishing outside of bubbles. Doing a timed test would help with the executive dysfunction.

Here's my data. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YBRznIEsNqWfVLiT1P9Df2A-iHB1PcmeVbUm7nm3exw/edit?usp=sharing

[thin wolf]

I ended up walking through my crops slowly to see if I could ever see a double proc for the bonus. Since I now have a bonus over 100%, every time I harvested I would see my companion spit out a single crop, but I never saw them drop 2. However, when I went to pick them up, I did notice that some of the crops that were dropped were actually double crops. They showed a +2 when I picked them up instead of +1 like usual. So that is how the double procs are handled it seems. Still a single drop, but it's just double sometimes. I suspect that if you get your bonus above 200% then every drop would be +2 with a chance to see some +3. If my theory is right, we could get to that point with 17 companions.

I also ended up doing some mining and fishing this morning and have added that to my data. I just record the amount of times I did an action and then recorded how many times my companion proced their bonus. Currently not fussed about what bonus they gave, as that only affects mining, and I'm more interested in how many times you get a bonus.
They do seem to follow the same trends as the gardening companions, though it is a bit harder to tell since they are much smaller sample sizes compared to gardening, and as such are much more susceptible to the randomness. I'm hoping that in the long run they will line up much better with my expected bonus %.

[zenith oasis]

I've been recording the breakdowns of what I find while foraging and mining to see what a normal range is and the best I've come up with for mining is to combine the gems into a single category as the over all number of gems dropped is more consistent than what gems are dropped.

[thin wolf]

Ahh I see, that's fair enough. So for the mining stuff, did you just do a loop around by yourself and see what was in your inventory at the end, and then did the same thing but with a companion?

[zenith oasis]

yeah I think I messed up the percentages, but the data is correct.

[thin wolf]

Ok, that's cool. Yeah I think if you want to show the % change then it should be (companion qty / alone qty) - 1. What level are your miners?

[zenith oasis]

10

Google Docs actually suggested a formula I like (helper qty-alone qty)/alone qty.

[thin wolf]

Nice. It's the same formula, just written a different way. That's cool that it makes suggestions like that though.

[zenith oasis]

It's also one that makes sense to my sleep deprived brain lol

[thin wolf]

Haha, well that is good then.

What you've done so far is great, but the only issue I see with it currently is that there is a bit of double chance going on. That is to say that you have the randomness in the number of times you'll get a bonus from your companions, as well as the randomness of how many resources you'll get from the mining nodes. A better way to record it may be to note down which resources came from the companion in a single run. That way, you can have a direct comparison to what you got that run + the bonuses you got from your companion that run. So you get both an alone and companion result each run. It's a little more tedious to do it this way, but you could then use that data to see larger trends of what resources your likely to get from the nodes, as well as the bonuses you would expect to receive from companions. I think it might also be good to split out gems into shiny and regular, because I'm pretty sure I was lucky one time and my companion gave me a shiny gem, even though I only got a regular gem from the node. It would also be nice to see what are the changes of getting a shiny gem compared to a regular one. Once I unlocked all of the areas and start to do proper mining runs, I think I will try this method myself.

Just confirming, for your runs, are you mining all of the nodes on the entire map?

[zenith oasis]

I'm using a modified version of Somer's route hitting every node. It's also the route I take during foraging runs

[thin wolf]

Ok, nice. Well that's good to know that you're hitting every node.

[zenith oasis]

Oh fork. I forgot that I had Gothel set to foraging and now I'll have to add her to the sheet.

[frosty jacinth]

I'm updating my tracking sheet to calculate efficiency for all five types of harvesting, and am having some difficulty with the VLOOKUP function if anyone is good at spreadsheets and wants to help me out. Here's the link for reference (feel free to DM me with help or for clarification on what I'm trying to do.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cMavk2c0hfEW17Z6_AY8fOfhz7Vam3LJvxie1Y1FZn8/edit?usp=sharing

[zenith oasis]

I wish this game were modding friendly. I'd love to see the conditions under which bursting and golden harvests occur.

[frosty jacinth]

That's what I'm going to try to figure out next. Also rates of the various fishing rarity circles and of visible/shiny gems in rock piles

[frosty jacinth]

Anyone figured out a good way to test digging? Unlike the other four tasks, taking a "dig" action doesn't guarantee an item, and thus it won't always have a reward to double with a buddy. I almost feel like we need to track holes dug, number of holes that netted an item for us, and the number of times our buddy doubled it for us

Super tedious!

[zenith oasis]

I'm keeping it simple. 10 tests of 25 holes dug in each biome recording results by myself. Put the mean outcomes in as my base run, then test again with the buddies to see the difference. I've found out some interesting things like you can get clams by digging on the beach. The soil makeup might be different in different part of the same biome...

There's so much we don't know about digging I'm feeling kind of bad for not doing it much if I could avoid it

[cosmic ginkgo]

Kind of unusual question about Ursula. My 3rd paper in Merlin's house won't populate for Lair Sweet Lair. I went ahead and spammed her w flowers and gems to get to level 10 to unlock the next person. Do I have to finish Lair Sweet Lair first? There is no fix for my bug yet so I can't unlock the last character who I desperately need to assign to farming >_<

[frosty jacinth]

the fact that you end up with a ton of ugly holes you have to go back and fill in makes digging the worst. I'm going to see what I can gather (no pun intended) about it next, as I've now run tests on the other jobs and feel confident about those methodologies

[zenith oasis]

I decided on test plots of 25 so that I could put the wishing well on top of it to erase easily.

[frosty jacinth]

I'm not sure that comparing solo digging to hangout digging actually gets us the info to compare it with the other types of farming

I need to run some numbers

[zenith oasis]

I'm beginning to have some theories about characters effecting bonuses. Mainly, Merlin is very stingy with the fishing bonuses (0-5%) despite being at level 10 like Maui and Donald. I've also noticed while mining that Kristoff tends to preference coal and Scrooge preferences gems.

[frosty jacinth]

I would be very surprised if the characters weren't interchangeable from a mathematical perspective.

I am revising my sheet to start tracking who I was partnered with for each run, and will be able to look at whose bonuses proc at higher or lower rates than expected

[zenith oasis]

I've started noting when there's a notable amount of golden harvests or bursts.

[frosty jacinth]

I'm fairly certain that only digging that nets you something counts toward the hangout bonus chance. As evidence, I just dug a 5x5 plot, and had 12 instances where I got sand, pebbles, mollusks, or gold. When I released my buddy from her pen, she dropped 8 items, which is just under the 70% I'd expect for a lvl 10 buddy and 20 inactive levels

So when testing digging, we need to count not the total plot we dig, but the number of times we proc our own reward, and then apply the friendship bonus to that number

[zenith oasis]

I mean I include the plot size so that I know the rate the game drops something in a given biome. Then I have itemized the drops and I'm averaging them over 10 trips. This way I know what the outcome of a typical trip is.

Then I can measure the outcome of the same trip with a buddy and see how it differs from a typical trip

[frosty jacinth]

you've got two variables there, though: deviation from the normal drop rate of items, and deviation from the expected buddy bonus. In the end, the math bay net similar results, but it does leave a larger margin of error

[zenith oasis]

I'm cool with that. I want to know the average range and then how much outside it buddy bonuses get it

[frosty jacinth]

It appears from my limited testing that you have around a 50% chance of getting a drop from any hole you dig (other than the glowing ones, that are guaranteed a drop and don't seem to trigger hangout bonuses), and the normal hangout bonus (5% per active level, 1% per inactive level) on that original 50%

[zenith oasis]

What do you have Merlin assigned to and is he pulling his weight? I have him at level 10 and he's assigned to fishing and literallly never gives a bonus.

[violet wharf]

I can’t see there fav of the day it’s not been working

[thin wolf]

I have Merlin as a miner and he seems to be performing just as well as he should. Out of all of the roles though, I have found fishing to be the least consistent so far. Though I think that's partly because it just takes so long to get a single fish compared to the other roles that it will take some time for the averages to settle. I have seen long periods of both getting fish bonuses and getting no fish bonuses, just due to the randomness of chance.

[zenith oasis]

My tests with my other level ten fishers indicate that he should be giving a bonus ~50% of the time. Donald and Maui both give bonuses 65-70%

@thin wolf

[wheat haven]

I haven’t noticed this, but from a lore perspective I love this idea! Just seems fun for the characters to really play up their story strengths. I have no evidence for it at all, but I put merlin on foraging because I like to think of a medieval alchemist gathering herbs for potions.

Btw, I haven’t been able to test the last couple days, we have been dealing with hurricane stuff in Florida. (My family and I are all okay, but haven’t had much time for fun stuff)

[frosty jacinth]

Okay, here's everything I have been able to gather from my own tests and those of others in this and other communities:

The buddy with you gives you a 5% proc chance per level, so anywhere between 10-50% even if they're the only character you have specialized in that skill.

Each inactive friend with the same specialization gives a 1% bonus per level, so anywhere between 2-10% each.

Regardless of how many items you get from an action (like 3 apples per harvest), your Hangout Buddy always drops a single bonus item, with one caveat. If your proc chance gets above 100% (such as with 6 level-10 Friends), you then get the remainder as a chance of getting a second item instead of just a single one, but you get a 100% chance of the bonus item every time you trigger it.

Triggers for Friendship bonus items are as follows:

Digging: Digging a new hole that isn't glowing and getting an item from doing so. The chances of getting something (coins, earth, clay, etc.) seem to be about 50%, so about half the holes you dig with a Digging friend will have a chance to grant you a bonus item. By far the most RNG-dependent of the five skills. Digging the sparkling patches of earth that drop Dreamlight Shards and Night Shards do not appear to proc bonuses. Filling in an existing hole or redigging a hole that you've filled in manually also does nothing.

Fishing: Completing the last real-time cue for a given catch (be it a fish or seaweed). The bonus doesn't trigger upon picking up red burst bonus fish, but whether you're fishing a bubble or open water, any time you reel something in, your buddy can toss you an extra.

Foraging: Any time you take the "Harvest" action to gather fruit or herbs/spices/mushrooms your buddy can double it. This includes however many triggers you can spam into the duration of a golden crop. It does not trigger when you pick up red burst crops. It also doesn't trigger when you use the "Pick Up" action to forage flowers or wood.

Gardening: Your buddy has a chance of giving you a bonus item (or more above 100% chance) per "Harvest" action of seeds you planted (not the ones in WALL•E's garden), including bonus harvests of glowing crops. Picking up red burst crops does not trigger this potential bonus.

Mining: A Mining Friend can toss you an extra unit of the rarest material dropped from a given rock pile on your final swing of the pickaxe (when the pile crumbles and can't be interacted with again until respawn). If you got a gem during mining that node, you will always get a bonus gem; if you only got other minerals, you'll get the one worth the most in resale value. Picking up red burst loot drops does not have a chance to trigger this bonus.

Other actions that do not trigger a Friendship Bonus item are:

• Removing night thorns
• Breaking rock obstacles
• Dissolving mushroom obstacles
• Digging up stump obstacles
• Picking up a memory
• Approaching or feeding a Critter
• Crafting an item at a workbench
• Cooking a meal at a stove or campfire

[wheat haven]

Still plan to test towards max number of characters on gardening to see if there is a cap on bonuses. But this all lines up nicely and it is great to be able to read it all in one place. Our we certain the non gem rock works as shown? (I am pretty sure when I get rocks that drop iron and coal the buddy varies between the two, they may have the same sell price though?)

O one other note to add to this: cooking does not increase friendship points, from what I’m reading here a few of the items that don’t trigger friendship bonuses, also don’t seem to level up friendship, but I’m only 100% certain of cooking. (As of version 1.0.5.81) It didn’t appear to give me player exp either while I was still leveling up, but I was paying more attention to Goofy’s friendship level than my own player level at those very early stages of tests. (One way to be sure is if you see the pink stars over your companion for an action, that action is giving friendship points)

[wheat haven]

@frosty jacinth some more testing does need to be done on how the mining rock mechanics work. I double checked and coal sells for 5, while iron ore sells for 10. The mining companion dropped the coal here:

https://twitter.com/mintyplush/status/1575793661400735744?s=46&t=OMiREjhBHiyPJU5HRJzZ8w

minty plush (@MintyPlush)

#NintendoSwitch

▶ Play video

Twitter · Sep 30, 2022, 10:24 AM

I think all of us testers need to be weary of wording things in a factual manner without 100% certainty. We don’t want to cause a misinformation debacle.

[wheat haven]

I think it would be helpful if you point to the users whose data you used per section (members of this community and others is too vague and makes it difficult to reference back to) For example, referencing base line established by Minty - a user could find my YouTube videos of the testing plus the actual test log for further verification/understanding and follow along for future tests/contribute.

[zenith oasis]

I've got family there, i get it. I hope you made it through unscathed

In mining, my buddies seem to have preferences. If there is a gem, they will dupe that. If there isn't a gem things get interesting.

If it's a simple drop of one item type, they drop an extra. If it's stone and coal, they drop a coal. If it's a mix of stone, coal, and metal it gets interesting. Scrooge will give you gold if gold is present. If not, he will give coal. Minnie tends to value coal and building materials over metal. Kristoff prefers coal and iron, but prefers coal over iron. I noticed these trends before I started tracking, to the point where when I needed coal for cooking or crafting, I would get Kristoff and do a few loops around the Plaza, Meadow, and Beach where the RNG has a smaller chance of gems.

The best sources of iron are the Forest of Valor and the Glade of Trust. It also shows up in scarcer qties in Frosty Heights, Dazzle Beach, and the Sunlit Plateau.

The best sources of gold are Frosty and the Plateau. Forgotten will also net gold, but not as much as the Plateau.

[south pewter]

Recently Mickey (gardener) gets me about double my crops but Wall-E gets me about 75% they're both the same level 10, so I cant tell if Mickey has just been luckier for me or what XD

[zenith oasis]

What are you growing and how many gardeners do you have at what levels?

[south pewter]

100 pumpkins, the two at level 10 mickey gets me 200-230 and wall-e averages 160-180

[zenith oasis]

Has it always been like this or has it changed?

[south pewter]

Changed, this past week

[zenith oasis]

@wheat haven Take a look at this.

[zenith oasis]

My gardeners are pretty steady at 66-75% for pumpkins and other single harvest crops

[south pewter]

Basically I just wanted to see if I'm just having better rng with him versus wall-e. I tried the fence in companion "trick" with wall-e once last week but it didn't seem worth it and then I started to notice the decrease. So I have no idea if it was related but wanted to see what others thought haha

[wheat haven]

Wow wow wow! @south pewter that is incredible! And @zenith oasis since you mentioned different characters having different impacts I have been looking for it in my own gameplay and I’m start to see them too. Still not sure if it is just RNG - but it is “feeling” like there is something to your theory.

[south pewter]

Yeah it's been weird lol

[zenith oasis]

On the one hand I really like the idea that certain characters are better suited for certain roles, but I wish they would include some kind of hint when we first meet them-- like how Mickey tells us he really loves gardening. Merlin has literally netted me 3 bonus fish over 4 tests of 50 catches this past week or so and spends the whole time hinting that he would rather be elsewhere, "Ah yes, fascinating, we should do this again soon"

[cosmic ginkgo]

I'm having trouble triggering the + bonus on my roles. I recently re-started for several reasons so I made sure to plan out my roles for mining, gardening, and then fishing.

I have 5 villagers at level 10 for fishing, but I'm not getting the extra bonus. Last game I swore I had the foraging bonus with 4 villagers around 7-8 each?! 😦

[cosmic veldt]

Anyone able to tell me if there is a max to how many companions would be useful in one role? Like if i do alot of farming, would it be beneficial to have like 15 companions in that role, or is there a max where it stops giving more bonus?

[zenith oasis]

@wheat haven is investigating if there is a max bonus by maxing each character's friendship one at a time and setting them all to gardening. We can say definitively that we've found that having up to 5 helpers on a given task does impart stacked benefits, but there might be more nuance to this than there appears at a glance.

[frosty jacinth]

While there are rules in place about discussing mined information, I am happy to point anyone interested to other discords where such things are discussed more openly via DM. Most of the information being sought is already available there.

[zenith oasis]

📂

[frosty jacinth]

See DM

[south pewter]

May I request to see the discussion?

Side note I think Mickey was just lucky that last week, it's gone back to average 180-200

[zenith oasis]

So I think I've finished my current investigation about how effective buddies are and what forage is found where in what quantities.

Here are my findings: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YBRznIEsNqWfVLiT1P9Df2A-iHB1PcmeVbUm7nm3exw/edit#gid=2034088657

[jagged scarab]

Can anyone tell me how many gardeners I need for the plus sign to show up. I am fully aware I can only have one companion at a time. I'm aware if you have 3 miners then you will get the plus which is a visual indicator that you are receiving the stackable bonus to mining. I currently have 5 gardeners but no plus sign yet. I wasn't sure if anyone knew? Thanks in advance 🙂

[frosty jacinth]

The plus is just part of the foraging icon. None of the others have them. They don't change, regardless of how many friends you have in a given role. I hope they fix the icons to either all have plusses or remove it from the lone one that has it now.

[jagged scarab]

Thank you so much! It's been doing my head in! Lol Cheers 🙂

[rancid hatch]

Does anyone know if there’s a certain gift I can give Ariel and Ursula that will make the friendship level go up more? Other than whatever their favorite things are that day? I’m tired of waiting and I have nothing to do until they’re each at level 10. Seems like gifts and conversations each day aren’t doing too much.

[south pewter]

some people use gems (goes faster) or flowers (must easier to get and cheaper) the link message should go to the number of flowers for each friendship level

#dreamlight-help message

[shut solar]

I reached level 10 with Minnie, but I never got the dress, and I have no more quest listed for Minnie

[frosty jacinth]

Her level 10 quest, which will grant the dress when completed, is not in the game currently. Maybe tomorrow?

[shut solar]

Thank you. Shame the game does not keep it listed as "locked" then as currently a bit confusing XD

[brave spire]

i have the same problem and with wall-e too

do u know how to fix it? because the two quest never appear

[shut solar]

See comment after mine
the quests are not in the game yet, and as far as I can see also not in todays update, we will just have to wait I guess

[brave spire]

but i see some girl in twitch completing the wall-e quest and getting the bag

[shut solar]

uhm then I have no idea sorry
someone else maybe?

[brave spire]

https://tenor.com/view/sad-pikachu-gif-24869932

[zenith oasis]

@wheat haven @frosty jacinth I think they've adjusted spawn and drop rates for loot. Keeping in mind that the file I am in rn doesn't have all biomes or fully maxed buddies, I brought home 51 stone, 20 iron, 28 coal, 9 gold, and about 20 gems.

This is with the plateau and forgotten lands locked and only being able to access half of Frosty and the Glade.

[wheat haven]

Hmm I’ll check to see if the drops for wood (15 in plaza/meadow, 20 in all other biomes) and native flowers (20) still stop in each biome at the previous numbers.

[zenith oasis]

Once I get all the biomes unlocked I'll have to start a new tracking sheet.

[frosty jacinth]

I'm no longer doing empyrical testing of drop rates and bonuses, as there are more efficient ways of gathering that info. But since we can't talk about those methods or where to find that info, running tests is still probably a good idea for the community at large

[wheat haven]

Flower spawns no longer stop at 20, waiting to see if there is a new cap now.

[covert merlin]

Is anyone else missing “favorite items of the day” for everyone except for scar?

[cold wasp]

Nope, they're all showing up for me!

For the + bonus, do you need to have at least 4 characters at level 10 in that role?

No nevermind, that can't be because I have a foraging bonus with 10, 10, 6, 6

[void aspen]

Any chance of a DM on where to find the drop rate info?

[lusty granite]

For me, everyone has the favorite items of the day except Scar

[latent sluice]

I can't remember which character I gave roles, lol!
Is there a way to see that in an overview or something?

[cold wasp]

If you go to Collection > Characters you can see what everyone has when you hover over them!

[latent sluice]

Thank you!

[ripe adder]

Probably like half my characters don’t have favorite items today

[cunning crag]

Does doing the task you set with a character level them up quicker then doing other tasks?

[frosty jacinth]

Yes, characters earn more XP from tasks associated with their specialization while hanging out with you than from other tasks.

[jagged storm]

Can you post a link where the person got the Wall-e backpack?

I know some people have gotten Minnie’s dress from Scrooge’s store or a chest, even though it’s supposed to be the level 10 gift (and the level 10 quest isn’t in the game yet). But this is the first I’ve heard anyone got the wall-e backpack (as the level 10 quest isn’t in the game yet).

[brave spire]

I saw in the stream of Ethieen

Wall-E gave it to her after the quest

[south pewter]

[frosty jacinth]

I love that Ariel can't be a fishing buddy

[latent sluice]

Not sure if asked in the right section, but with this Starpath/Christmas event, we can unlock a companion. What does a companion do in this game? Is it the same as when you level up a character and give them a role?

[south pewter]

No they're more like pets, they follow you around and you get to love them and give them lil paps of love

[latent sluice]

Ah, okay 😄 Thank you!

[pale owl]

Is anyone's game freezing when having a conversation and it levels the friend up?

[frank ruin]

Yes! Me too. It's not quite freezing, but like, the game gets stuck on a dialogue screen but the sound effects and background/idle animations are still playing, you just can't EXIT the dialogue screen, right? Is that what's happening to you too? It's happened twice to me so far, both times with Merlin (just started the game). Not sure what's going on.

[south pewter]

[spiral zodiac]

I don't know if this is still relevant to anyone, but someone asked me if it's better to have more gardening buddies, so I thought I'd post my test here as well.

I have 3 pumpkin patches, a 200 pumpkins totaling to 600 pumpkins.
I have 11 villagers as level 10 gardening buddies.

(Disclaimer: While harvesting, I didn't collect the golden pumpkins, but they still spawned one extra pumpkin whenever they happened, so I counted them with the harvest and not the buddie bonus)

The results were as follows:

            Harvest   -   Buddie Bonus

Patch 1 208 - 314
Patch 2 202 - 307
Patch 3 204 - 294

Total: 614 - 915 --- 1529

Conclusion: I harvested 614 pumpkins and got 915 from my buddie, which gave me a total of 1529 pumpkins.
Those pumpkins sold for 1,015,256 coins.

11 level 10 gardening buddies gave me a Bonus of 149٪

[distant mantle]

What is the best “role” to level up the quickest? I think fishing role

[karmic mantle]

I find gardening to be a good one too!

[south citrus]

@sand nacelle could you change this from 17 villagers to the correct number? Otherwise I and other people can get confused

[pastel iris]

[ARCHIVED] Friendship Levels & Roles