How to raise affinity with a friend fast

Affinity grows from doing things together, and six actions carry a number. Treat the figures below as what players report rather than as official: the publisher has not stated them, so they are the best estimate anyone has and not a schedule to plan a week around.

The six actions and what each is reported to be worth

Two things fall straight out of that table. Fighting together is worth more than everything else combined on a quiet day, so if you get one session together, spend it on an Alpha or a boss rather than on emotes. And gifts are the odd one out: they are capped weekly, so a daily gifting habit runs dry by Friday.

Trading is often listed as raising affinity too. It does not appear in the reported set, so do not plan a route to level 2 around it.

Notes on the individual actions:

• Chat. Messages in game count. Short and frequent beats one long paragraph.
• Interaction gestures. The emotes you aim at each other, not just standing nearby. These unlock as your affinity rises, so the pool grows as you go.
• Gifts and Home visits both count while the other player is offline, which is what makes them the backbone for partners in different time zones. Caressing an incubating egg in their Hatchinator also cuts its timer.
• Omega appears alongside Alpha wherever these are reported. It is a boss class our creature pages do not cover, because the dex holds creatures you can catch and an Omega is not one of them.

A routine that gets to level 2 fast

Every day, in under five minutes: visit their Home and send a message. Both are reported to count while the other player is offline, and neither costs anything. Add a gift, but only about five times a week, because that is the cap. Spending them all by Wednesday wastes the rest of the week.

When you are both on: this is where the points are reported to be. Clear an Alpha or an Omega as a team, explore and fight bosses, and trade a few interaction gestures while you are together. One good session together is reckoned to be worth more than several days of the solo routine.

Players in the last beta reported level 2 inside two sessions on this pattern and level 4 over several days. Nobody has published the level thresholds, so treat all of this as the shape of it rather than a schedule.

Different time zones

Most of the offline-friendly actions are the daily ones: gifts, Home visits, messages. If your partner plays when you sleep, do those every day and save the meet-up for the one overlap you can find. On a trade here, the ticket shows the hours you both play, so pick partners with an overlap when you can.

Where to find a partner

Your server's Friends tab lists players who have said they want to grind affinity with someone, online ones first. Pair up, and the chat carries one-tap replies for your in-game ID and "visiting your Home now".

When affinity is not the reason

Raising the level widens which forms can move, but some Aniimo are outside the system entirely. Sparkling, Prismana and Alpha Aniimo cannot be traded at any affinity level, and Aniimo hatched from Bond Pact sealed eggs are bound to the account. If one of those is not showing up as tradeable, no amount of grinding will change it. See which rare Aniimo can be traded.

What you do together, and what it unlocks

Most of this happens in co-op. You can track down Aniimo in multiplayer, assist each other when capturing wild ones, run egg hunts together and complete quests as a group. None of that needs a plan beyond both of you being online.

Visiting is the other half. You can drop into another player's homestead, till their soil or help with the harvest, and you take a portion of that farm's crop for the trouble, so the visit pays you as well as them. While you are in a friend's Homeland you can also Caress an egg in their Hatchinator, which cuts 10 minutes off the remaining incubation time. There is a maximum limit on that, so it does not scale forever.

Gifts can contain hatchable eggs, and you can trade Aniimo outright, subject to costs and limitations. Friendship level is the gate that matters here: the higher it goes, the wider the variety of Aniimo types you are allowed to trade. If a specific creature is not showing up as tradeable, the friendship level between you is usually the reason.