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Local Wildlife

While you're exploring the outer areas of Echo Village, you may notice animals running about. These wild animals live in the Forest area, River area, and Mountain area. The animals won't attack you, but they will run away when they see you. They are scared of humans, but with a little bit of work you can earn their trust. Sometimes when you enter an area you won't see the wild animals if you've arrived too early for them to appear. Just exit the area and come back in to find them.

The areas outside of town aren't the only place that you'll find wild animals. When you use the Travel Agency to visit far away locations, you'll discover new types of skittish wild animals. There are 10 types of wild animals (+1 secret one) that live around Echo Village and 6 types that are unique to the vacation locations.

Friendship Basics

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To raise your friendship with the wild animals you'll need to give them food. In this version of Harvest Moon you give the food just like a normal present; you don't throw it on the ground like in Tales of Two Towns. Different animals have different gift preferences, but none of them like cooked foods or non-edible items. Crops, fish, and animal products are all you need. Giving a Big or Giant sized crop will not earn you bonus animal Friendship Points.

The wild animal groups have a maximum friendship level of 1000 points. This friendship level is invisible, but you can get a general idea on how well you are progressing by watching how the animals react to you. If the animal runs away, it has less than 300 FP. If it tolerates you, then you have between 300 and 700 Friendship Points. When it walks towards you with music notes spewing out of its head, then you know you have more than 700 FP.

Once per day you can feed an animal and talk or lift it to increase your friendship. You only need to do this to one of the animals from a family of animals. For example, you only need to feed one of the brown sparrows to affect all of the brown sparrows' friendship for that day. Also, the different colors of animals are not linked together; feeding the orange boars will not impact your friendship with the brown boars. This means that the different colored animals might have different gift preferences than the basic versions.

There are ways you can decrease your friendship as well. If you hit an animal with a tool, you will lose 20 FP with that animal family. Hit it five times and that is -100 FP! Also, do not litter by throwing items into the River. Each item you toss into the water will result in a -10 FP hit for all of the wild animals. The villagers don't like litterbugs and neither do the wild animals.

The ducks and turtles are special because gifts to them are worth double; +20 FP for gifts and +10 for talk/lift. The ducks are hard to gift since they're always swimming around the River water (not easily accessible), and the turtles are necessary to befriend to reach the little island in the Southern Island.

Village Wild Animals

The wildlife around the village will appear when you walk into an area. The animals will appear on the hour-mark, so if you don't see an animal, then leave the area until X:00 am/pm and then walk back into the area.

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After you have unlocked the alternative colors of bears, boars, ducks, foxes, rabbits, and tanukies, the panda will become unlocked. This bear will appear near the Honey Tree in the Forest area on sunny Spring, Summer, or Fall evenings between 9:00 pm and 12:00 am.

Village Animal Gift Preferences

Foreign Wild Animals

When you are traveling to the Southern Island, Snowland, the Land of the East, or the Ancient Ruins, you'll find these areas have wild animals as well:

Foreign Wild Animal Gift Preferences

What's the point of the wild animals?!

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The only important one is the turtle family; raising its friendship allows you to travel to the offshore island and collect Mango and Seaweed. The other animals are completely optional.

Once you reach at least 800 Friendship, there is a 5% chance that you'll trigger a gift giving event when you enter a specific area where the event takes place. The members of the animal family will gather together and hand you 10 of a specific item (except the peacock, who only hands over one). The items aren't terribly exciting; they are just animals, after all. The giving event can trigger when you are walking into the area. If you are riding your horse or using one of the ridable vehicles, the event won't occur. For most of the village wild animals, walking from the Village to the Forest can potentially trigger a gifting event, but the ducks' event triggers when you walk from the Village to the River (since that's where they live). The foreign animal gifting events can trigger after Charles' speech about the area when you arrive.

Village Animal Gifts

Foreign Animal Gifts

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