Making Friends

In the original game, there are 111 monsters whom you can recruit to be your friends and take on your adventures with you. Blue Fox is special, but the other 110 are all recruited inside of dungeons. The monsters who can be recruited inside of a dungeon are all of numbers 1-111 in the Monster Book except for #102 (Watcher).

The sequel likewise allows you to recruit many monsters, but not all of them are in the game yet. As of this writing during early access, the sequel currently has 56 monsters who can be recruited to be your friends, as well as two others who will be recruitable in the future, but not yet.

In order to recruit a monster to be your friend, you must first find her. All monsters start with a like level rated from one to four hearts. When you are adjacent to a monster, if you Look Over at her, it will show you her like level. You can never recruit monsters with fewer than three hearts.

Monsters that show as having only a single red heart had her their initial like level rolled randomly and it came up as only one heart, but a different monster of the same family on the same floor might like you more. If the one heart is gray, then that type of monster categorically cannot be recruited on the current floor. Monsters in the Memory of the Hero and Labyrinth of Crystals dungeons start with one gray heart, as do Alpha Monsters. There are also a handful of monsters near the end of the Beginner Dungeon and Demon Kingdom that have only a gray heart.

If a monster has at least two hearts, then you can talk to her and give items to her. The gifts category is generally the most advantageous type of items to give, but you can give her anything. Giving her gifts will increase her like level. The game only shows the like level as a number of hearts, but there is a more precise number under the hood that gets rounded to display a number of hearts. You cannot give gifts to monsters with only one heart.

If you step on a Human Dislike Trap, it will reduce the like level of all hostile monsters on the floor to one heart. That basically ends any hope that you had of befriending any monsters on that floor. It does not affect friends who are already in your party.

Neutral monsters, such as those who are in Monster Homes or parties of other Adventurers, can never be recruited to be your friends. They display as two hearts, but you cannot give them gifts.

The precise details of how to recruit a particular monster varies wildly from one monster to another. If a monster starts with two hearts, you must at least give her enough gifts to raise her like level to three hearts. Some monsters require that you must max her like level, which means giving her gifts until you get a notification that her like level has reached the maximum. That does not just mean five hearts, but you could think of maximum like as meaning six hearts, though it only displays as five.

Many but not all monsters want you to give them some particular item before they will join you. If you talk to a monster and invite her to join you, she'll ask for an item, though what she says she wants is usually vague. It will open your main inventory and let you choose which item to give her. You can only choose items in your main inventory, and not inside of Magic Pouches, so be sure to take the required item out of a bag before talking to the monster you want to invite. If you give her the correct item, she'll keep it, but join your party. If you give her the incorrect item, she'll reject it. If she requests an item and you give her the wrong one, the Monster Book will generally tell you more precisely what she wants, though even that is sometimes a little vague.

Some monsters want you to satisfy other conditions before they will be your friend. If you try to invite her and she declines, you can consult the monster book for details. Or you can consult this wiki, which generally gives more precise details. Some monsters only require at least three hearts, but some that want other conditions have those conditions include maxing her like level. Once the conditions are met, the monster will get a yellow star over her head, and then if you talk to her, she'll offer to join your group.

If your party is full when you recruit another monster, then one of them will have to leave. If you choose the new monster as the one who leaves, then she is gone and you might as well have not invited her. If you send one of the old monsters away, she will be available for your future adventures so long as her love level was at least 40.

If you make new friends in a dungeon run of the original game, then the next time you return to First Village, be sure to talk to Mayor Tarte to register your new friends. If you register a monster as your friend, then she will remain available to you permanently. If you don't register her, she'll leave town the next time you go on a dungeon run. There is a cap on how many friends you can have registered at a time, which starts out at 30, but can be increased to 120 by talking to DIY Mana.

In the sequel, friends are registered at the bulletin board outside of Melt's house. As with the original game, you initially have a cap of 30, but can increase it. Each Demon's House that you build will increase your maximum number of registered friends by 30. It's not yet known what the maximum cap is, as not all friends are in the game yet.