Palia Friendship Guide: How To Make Friends & Learn Skills

The world of Palia has plenty of friendly and charming NPCs or Villagers for players to be acquainted with and bond with in-game. These Villagers not only add richness to Kilima Village with their unique personalities and backstories but can be immensely valuable when exploring the world and, in the process, being taught various skills.

Palia features a friendship option where players can befriend any Villager through engaging conversations and connected stories to explore. We've detailed everything we know about the friendship option, including how to make friends with them in Palia.

19th July 2023 Update: We've updated this guide to reflect new information detailed in the recent Palia Gameplay First Look livestream regarding the friendship option in Palia. The original reporting continues below.

Can You Make Friends With NPCs In Palia?

Yes, players can befriend all the NPCs or Villagers that populate the world of Palia through its friendship option. Making friends in Palia is as vital as establishing relationships with the residents in-game.

When befriending the characters in-game, each character you'll meet has its questline for you to embark on. This will help you in one of two ways:

• Learn more about the history or lore of the game
• Explore each character's backstory, learn what they do daily, and assist them with their tasks or getting out of harm's way.

The best way to get to know each character is through their storyline, and progressing this advances your Friendship Level with them. There are several ways for players to boost their Friendship Level with all Villagers, including chatting to them every Palian day, which resets hourly, and gift-giving every real-world day.

Additionally, they have a special type of gift they love called Weekly Wants, and details on these special gifts are uncovered through talking with them or their friends, which gives you bonus points. In doing so, you will get to progress each character's story arc by completing their questline, and for specific characters, learn about a specific skill you can master.

This will also advance your friendship level with each character but keep in mind their schedule, which you can learn and help progress specific skills associated with them. Every villager in Palia can be befriended, but only a few are romanceable after reaching a certain Friendship Level, and this can be found within your character’s UI, where you can view which character has the romance option available.

It's worth pointing out that choosing not to romance certain characters won't lock you out of gameplay content and rewards nor counts towards gameplay progression. Instead, these run concurrently with the main questline as they add more options to your in-game adventures and won't give you any advantages if you wish to romance them.

What Skills Can You Learn From NPCs In Palia?

Certain characters have introductory quests for specific skills you can learn in Palia, and should you wish to learn more, it would be wise to befriend these characters in your journey. Below we have listed the characters players should meet who are linked with introduction quests for the following skills to learn in Palia:

• Ashura: The resident innkeeper can help you settle in and lead you to the foraging skill as your foraging mentor.
• Auni: This NPC, who serves to deliver the mail, is also the bug expert and can be of service when learning the insect-catching skill.
• Badruu: Palia's local farmer may enjoy a good pun and can guide you into learning the gardening skill.
• Einar: meeting this ancient being will link players with the introduction quest for fishing, as they can be your fishing partner.
• Hassian: A mysterious character seen with his canine companion, Tau, can significantly help players in mastering hunting.
• Hodari: The mining skill can be pretty valuable for players wishing to explore it and will have Hodari as their mentor.
• Reth: If you want to become a master chef in Palia and learn the unique ways food can be valuable in-game, you can discover the wonders of cooking from Reth in its introduction quest.
• Tish: This "extraordinary" carpenter can assist players in crafting exquisite furnishings for your home through the Furniture introduction quest.

These skill questlines not only can be extremely valuable in mastering a specific skill, from cooking, foraging, and mining but helps advance your friendship with its associated NPC. This does mean that will be ample content to explore with these NPCs when progressing each skill and leveling up your friendship through questlines to attain specific goals.

The skills and friendship quests will be separate, but using the knowledge and expertise learned from these characters can benefit your overall gameplay progression. This also gives you multiple ways to complete quests and tasks using the available in-game mechanics and the skills you have learned from these characters.

It's unclear if they are rewards for the friendship option in Palia, as we have established that players can earn rewards when romancing them. We will update this guide to reflect this once more information becomes readily available; in the meantime, you can unlock rewards for referring friends to join you in Palia through the Refer-A-Friend program.