Rune Factory 5 Friendship Guide

As is with any farming life-sim game, friendship is crucial in Rune Factory 5. There’s a number of reasons why having a high enough friendship level with characters is important, but maintaining friendships also has its perks. Here’s the breakdown on friendship levels in Rune Factory 5.

How to Check a Character’s Friendship Level

To check your friendship level with a character, go to the camp menu’s (+ button) sixth tab. Each character will have an icon next to their name. A bachelor or bachelorette is indicated by the heart icon, while non-romanceable NPCs are indicated with a smiley face. Right next to the icon is a number which indicates which level of friendship you’re on, alongside a meter which indicates what percent is left to reach the next level of friendship.

What to Expect at Each Level

• Friendship level 3: You can invite characters at this level to join your party when you go on an adventure
• Friendship level 5: Characters will give you a gift on your birthday
• Friendship level 7 (bachelors and bachelorettes only): You can confess your feelings and go on dates
• Friendship level 10 (bachelors and bachelorettes only): You can ask for their hand in marriage

How to Raise Your Friendship Level With Each Character

Raising friendship in Rune Factory 5 goes beyond the general gift-giving. There are a number of ways to increase your friendship level with a character, and each method has its own degree of effectiveness.

• Talking to them: Talking to a character once in a day is an easy way of increasing your friendship with them. This method gives you about a 1-5% increase in friendship level, with the increase in percentage dropping as you become better friends with them. On festival days you can talk with them more than once - once before or after the festival begins, and once during the festival.
• Giving gifts: Each character in Rune Factory 5 has a variety of items that they either hate, dislike, like, and love (check out our Rune Factory 5 Gift Guide). Depending on what you give them, your friendship level can not only go up, but it can also go down. Usually, you can only give one item per day, but if you have one liked item of a character as well as a loved item, you can give both of them in one day and get a further increase in friendship level. In addition, handmade gifts will raise your friendship level more than a store-bought gift. Of course, gifts given on birthdays will also give you more friendship points than on normal days.
• Greeting spells: The greeting spell makes a return in Rune Factory 5, and while it sounds like it would be an actual magic spell, the greeting spell is nothing more than just a little greeting you can give to NPCs. You can get the greeting spell from a request posted by Julian to raise your friendship level with every character by one, or you can purchase it at The Crystalabra. By using a greeting spell next to a character, you can expect them to greet you back as well as get a tiny increase of <1% in friendship.
• Winning in contests: If you manage to win during the festival contests, you’ll see a slight increase in your friendship with all the characters. The increase in percentage will vary from character to character.
• Raising your skill levels: Each NPC has a certain affinity for certain skills that you, the player character will have. When your skill level increases, there’s a chance that the next time you talk to a character with an affinity for that skill they will end up complimenting your efforts. Depending on how much your skill level has gone up, you’ll see an increase in friendship. Here’s a list of each NPC and the corresponding skill that they like!

Rune Factory 5 NPC Skills

• Bachelors
  • Cecil: Exploration skills
  • Lucas: Magic skills
  • Martin: Mining skills
  • Murakumo: Bathing skills
  • Reinhardt: Weapon skill, defense skills
  • Ryker: Logging skills, crafting skills
• Bachelorettes
  • Beatrice: Leadership skills
  • Fuka: Eating skills
  • Lucy: Farming skills, fishing skills
  • Ludmila: Defense skills
  • Scarlet: Holding skills
  • Priscilla: Farming skills
• Other NPCs
  • Elsje: Cooking skills
  • Darroch: Weapon skills, forging skills
  • Heinz: All magic skills
  • Hina: Sleeping skills
  • Julian: Leadership skill
  • Livia: Taming skills
  • Palmo: Throwing skills
  • Simone: Chemistry skills
  • Yuki: Walking skills

• Completing requests: Characters will post quests on the request board, and if you complete their request, you’ll see an increase in your friendship level with them
• Inviting characters to your party: Once you reach level 3 friendship with a character you’ll be able to invite them to your party when you go out on adventures. To do so, talk to them and press either the L or R button to open up the 'BTW menu.' You’ll see the “Let’s go on an adventure!” option. Each in-game hour that they’re in your party, their friendship level will go up by 1%.
• Going on dates: Once you’ve confessed your feelings to a character you’ll be able to ask them out on a date. Your date will give you a time and place to meet, so make sure you’re on time otherwise they’ll get upset. After your successful date, you’re bound to see a pretty big leap in your friendship level!

Once you’ve built a high enough level of friendship, you can ask for a character’s hand in marriage. For more on that, check out our Rune Factory 5 Relationships and Marriage guide, as well as more guides below: