Making friends on PokemonGO is one of the game's best features. It allows you to trade Pokemon, send and receive gifts and get bonuses at raid battles. In this article we have summarized everything you need to know about making friends, leveling the friendship up, and all bonuses for each friendship level.
How to make friends on PokemonGo?
Easy! In your trainer screen, tap "Friends" on the top right corner then click the "Add Friend" button. You can add a friend by typing their trainer code, scanning their QR code or importing them from Facebook.
How to increase the friendship level?
Friendship level is gained by interacting with each of your PokemonGo friends. You can either trade gifts (easiest), trade pokemon or raid together with your friend to qualify as an "interaction". Note that only one such "interaction" is counted for each day. There are four friendship levels and here are the amout of days that you need to interact with a friend to reach them:
- Good Friends (♥) - 1 day of interaction.
- Great Friends (♥♥) - 7 days of interaction.
- Ultra Friends (♥♥♥) - 30 days of interaction.
- Best Friends (♥♥♥♥) - 90 days of interaction.
Pokemon Trading stardust cost discount
Arguably the most important bonus of the friendship level is the stardust discount when trading Pokemon with your friends. It's especially beneficial for Ultra Friends (♥♥♥) and Best Friends (♥♥♥♥) as the discounts are huge and allow you to get shiny and legendary Pokemon for a relatively low stardust cost. The discount percentages are listed below.
- Good Friends (♥) - no discount.
- Great Friends (♥♥) - 20% discount.
- Ultra Friends (♥♥♥) - 92% discount.
- Best Friends (♥♥♥♥) - 96% discount.
As you can see the discounts are very substantial for Ultra and Best friends therefore we recommend leveling up before trading shiny or legendary pokemon with your friends. The total stardust cost for each type of trade is listed in the table below.
Friendship Level | Regular and Regional | Shiny and Legendary | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Caught | New | Caught | New | |
Good Friends (♥) | 100 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 1,000,000 |
Great Friends (♥♥) | 100 | 16,000 | 16,000 | 800,000 |
Ultra Friends (♥♥♥) | 100 | 1,600 | 1,600 | 80,000 |
Best Friends (♥♥♥♥) | 100 | 800 | 800 | 40,000 |
Raid battles damage and bonuses
Raiding together with friends on PokemonGO gives you and your friend a damage buff as well as XP reward and extra Premier Balls. These bonuses are fairly straightforward and listed in the table below.
Friendship Level | Damage Buff | XP Reward | Extra Premier Balls |
---|---|---|---|
Good Friends (♥) | 3% | 3000 | 0 |
Great Friends (♥♥) | 5% | 10,000 | 1 |
Ultra Friends (♥♥♥) | 7% | 50,000 | 2 |
Best Friends (♥♥♥♥) | 10% | 100,000 | 4 |
As you can see the bonuses are quite modest except for the XP reward that gets quite substantial especially for Best Friends and can help you gain trainer levels much quicker.
Trading gifts
Gifts are pyramid shaped objects that are obtained by spinning Poke-stops or Gyms. They contain items such as Poke-balls, stardust, revives and more. Since the launch of Alola versions of some of the Kanto region Pokemon, yellow 7km eggs can be found in gifts as well. Each trainer can have up to 10 gifts in their bag however these gifts cannot be opened - they can only be sent to friends which then enjoy the goodies inside and hopefully send a gift back :)
Aside from the items the gifts contain and increasing the friendship level trading gifts has no further bonuses or effects.