Wild Animal Basics

screen shot

Besides the animals that you care for on your farm, there are a variety of animals that live outside of your farm and within the wildlife safari. These wild animals cannot be converted into pets. Different types of wild animals will appear as you interact with the vendors at the Trade Depot by raising your Customer Points as well as by raising your friendship with the existing wild animals.

When you first meet these wild critters they will run away from you. Feeding them will raise your relationship with the wild animals, and eventually they will move towards you as you travel past them.

The purposes for the wild animals is to receive a single gift when their friendship is high enough, show them to villagers to earn bonus friendship with the villagers, and unlock two trophies hidden within your bookshelf (although there's no reward for unlocking the trophies).

Unlocking Wild Animals

There are 27 different types of wild animals you can unlock. At the beginning of the game you'll find white rabbits in the Forest Road Area, brown weasels in Zephyr Hill, and brown sparrows in Piedmont. Once you unlock the Safari, you'll find some turtles and white ducks swimming in the pond there.

There are two ways to unlock additional wild animals. The first is by raising your Customer Points with the trade depot vendors. Once you have reached the appropriate CP level, the vendor will inform you that as an act of friendship you will be awarded with an animal from the vendor's home region. The next time the vendor appears at the Trade Depot, walk into the area to trigger an event where you are given the animal. As you're a good-natured fellow, you'd rather the animal be free than living on your own farm, so you will release it either in the wilds outside of town or in the Safari park.

screen shot

The trade depot vendors who have wild animals are:

Several of the Safari-bound animals require you to construct an appropriate environment for them to live in. At the Carpentry Shop you'll find Safari park upgrades that need to be built before you can receive the animal to be released there. These park upgrades unlock as you raise your CP with the vendors:

If you are playing in Seedling Mode, you'll get a 30% discount on the price of the Safari expansions. You will still be required to supply the necessary materials though.

The second way to unlock additional wild animals is to raise your friendship with the existing wild animals. Once you reach 500 Friendship Points with certain wild animal families, a new color of wild animal will start to appear in the same area. You won't be alerted that this occurs; you'll most likely just run by and notice a new animal has shown up. The wild animals that have a new color option are the white rabbits (black rabbits), brown sparrows (gray sparrows), brown weasel (white weasel), brown tanuki (gray tanuki), brown fox (white fox), brown boar (gray boar), brown monkey (orange monkey), brown bear (gray bear), and white parrot (yellow parrot and blue parrot).

You'll unlock a trophy in your farm house bookshelf once you have unlocked all of the available wild animals.

Raising Your Animal Friendships

Feeding the wild animals will raise your friendship with them. You may notice that you see the animals together in groups of two or three. You only need to feed one of the animals to raise your friendship with the entire group. The different colors of animals are separate groups. For example, feeding a white rabbit will raise your friendship with all the white rabbits but not with the black rabbits.

screen shot

You can determine your friendship level with the wild animal by how it responds when you pick it up off the ground (for small wild animals) or talk to it by using the A Button (for larger wild animals):

Interacting with the wild animal in this manner will earn you +5 FP, regardless of its emotional response to your interaction with it.

To feed an unfriendly animal, hold a piece of food in your hands and toss it so it lands close to the wild animal. The creature will move towards the food and eat it, then responds based on whether it liked the food or not. The food the wild animals like to eat is typically produced from your farm or caught while fishing, but Otmar does sell Carrots in his shop inventory.

Once the animal finds you tolerant, you can hand feed the animal instead of tossing food onto the ground.

The amount of Friendship Points you earn for feeding an animal will vary based on the wild animal's location. The animals that live in the Safari are easier to befriend than the animals who live near Oak Tree Town:

screen shot

Yes, you will earn Friendship Points even if the food was not to the animal's liking. This is important when trying to raise your friendship with the pond area animals in the Safari. Naturally, you do not want to toss food at the ducks and turtles who live in the pond. Littering into their pond will lower their friendship by -10 FP. To feed these animals, swim out to the island where the Feeder trough is located and place a piece of food there for the animals to eat. The food you add to the Feeder will be for all of the animals who live near the pond, whether they actually like that food or not.

For example, the turtles like fish but the ducks do not. Placing a fish in the Feeder will earn you +20 FP with the turtles as well as +6 FP with the ducks. You'll be raising your friendship faster with the turtle family than with the duck families. Likewise, feeding the ducks the vegetables they like will increase your friendship faster with the ducks and slowly with the other families.

The other feeders in the Safari will act in the same manner, affecting the wild animals that are located near the feeder. The wild animals around Oak Tree Town do not have Feeder troughs that you can use, so you must feed each animal family one at a time.

You can decrease your FP with a wild animal by -20 FP if you accidentally (or intentionally) hit the wild animal with one of your tools.

Advanced Friendship

There are additional ways to raise your friendship with the wild animals. The first is by wearing a specific combination of jewelry to affect the wild animals when you interact with them. You will earn +30% more friendship while you are wearing a Dark Green Ring (blueprint at Silk Country), a Pale Pink Clip-Ons (blueprint at Wheat Country), and a Snow White Necklace (blueprint at Mistel's shop, year 3 or later).

screen shot

The second way is by setting out specific objects to trigger an object combination. The two blueprints you'll need are the Rabbit and Fox Topiary and the Penguin Topiary:

You will need to place two of each topiary out somewhere on your farm to trigger the special object combo. Once it is activated, you'll earn a bonus +5 FP when you feed or interact with a wild animal family.

The last way to earn bonus FP with a wild animal is by eating an Animal Magnetism potion you can buy from the traveling salespersons, which will earn you +5 FP with all of the wild animals.

Wild Animal Rewards

screen shot

Once you have reached at least 800 FP with a wild animal family, there is a 20% chance that entering the area in which the family is located will trigger an event. The wild animals will want to thank you for being so kind to them, and as a reward they will give you a single gift. Each of the 27 families have their own reward for raising their friendship.

This event will only appear ONCE per wild animal family. The items the animals give will be a herb, downy tuft, or gem; all of these items you can obtain on your own without relying on the wild animals to give them to you.

One of the trophies in your farm house bookshelf will be awarded once you have received all of the 800 FP gifts from the wild animal families.