How to Increase Friendship in Animal Crossing New Horizons

Friendship points are a hidden metric in Animal Crossing New Horizons that determine the friendship level between you and your villagers. There are actions you can take to increase (or decrease) your Villager friendship levels. If you’re trying to get a villager to move out, you might like our other guide. In this post, we’ll take a look at how to increase Friendship in Animal Crossing New Horizons.

What is Friendship in ACNH?

Friendship levels unlock new ways your villagers can interact with you. In ACNH, Friendship is based on points, which many people like to call “Friendship Points”. There are tasks you can do within the game to increase or decrease your friendship points with specific villagers.

Friendship Levels in Animal Crossing New Horizons

The chart above outlines how many points are needed for each friendship level. Each friendship level unlocks additional things you can do with your villager.

Level 1

You and your villagers all start with 25 friendship points. If you talk to them a couple times, you should easily get to the next level.

Level 2

At level 2, you will unlock the ability to receive gifts from the villager. You can also give gifts to the villager every single day. They might give you one in return which will boost your friendship even further.

Level 3

Villagers at this level unlock the ability to sell items to you. You still maintain all of the previously unlocked actions like sending and receiving gifts.

Level 4

At level 4 you can change your villager’s catch phrase. Again, everything else unlocked up to this point also stays unlocked.

Level 5

This is what’s considered to be best friends in ACNH. At this point, there’s a random chance the villager gives you their framed photo as a gift. You can also change the villager’s greeting at this stage.

Level 6

Villagers can trade furniture with you at level 6, which is the maximum friendship level in the game.

To track what level you’re at with your villagers, you can simply think about which tasks you can do with them. Another way is to use the Nook Miles True Friends achievements to see which level you’re on.

How to Increase Friendship Points in ACNH

There are many different actions you can take. Check out this list of different ways for how to increase friendship points in Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Task Breakdown for Friendship Points in ACNH

• Talking to the Villager every day: +1 points
• Selling an item to the villager based on a conversation: +1 points
• Catching the Villager’s flea: +5 points
• Pushing a Villager or hitting them with a net: -3 points
• Sending letters: +0 points

Gifting

Giving villagers wrapped gifts is a good idea in general. However, on the Villagers’ birthdays is when you can net the maximum amount of friendship points. To get the maximum amount of points, you can gift wrap any piece of fruit and give it to them.

• Garbage: -2 points
• Flowers, fish, tools, music, umbrellas, clothing: +2 points
• Furniture: +3 points
• Non-preferred clothing, other items: +1 point
• Wrapping gifts: +1 bonus

Questing

Completing quests from villagers is another good way to earn friendship points. The amount of points you can earn here is based on your friendship level. You can earn a maximum amount of 3 points for completing a quest. This is based on how well you perform on each quest.

What is the Reward for Best Friends in ACNH?

When you and a villager become best friends, they have a random chance to give you a framed photo of themselves. They will also unlock additional dialogue like stories and quests.

The framed photo can actually be customized, so you can choose how you want the frame to look.

You can customize the frame of the photos your villagers give you! from r/ac_newhorizons

Strategies for Increasing Friendship in ACNH

If you’re looking for a simple strategy for increasing your villager friendship levels in New Horizons, we got you covered. First, talk with your villager every day at level 1, and after 5 days you’ll be on level 2.

At level 2, you can earn a maximum amount of 6 friendship points per day. Here’s the breakdown:

• Greet them every day: +1
• Give them gift wrapped furniture: +4
• Gift exchange of item bought for 10,000+ Bells: +1

After 5 more days, you’ll reach level 3, at which point you can earn a maximum of 7 points per day. You can do the following breakdown of activites for level 3 and level 4, to get to level 5.

• Greet them every day: +1
• Give them gift wrapped furniture: +4
• Gift exchange of item bought for 10,000+ Bells: +2

At level 5 and 6, you can earn a maximum of 8 points per day. The grind from level 5 to level 6, you can do the same tasks listed above. Since you’re best friends now, you’ll get an extra point in the gift exchange step.