I learned today something about friendship levels that I find enormously helpful for having some control over the process, and it’s something I believe could be helpful to include in the Hub’s friendship guide (at https://pokemongohub.net/post/guide/friendship-level-bonuses-in-pokemon-go/).
Since friendship level can increase only once a day, it turns out to waste the things that increase levels if your level has already increased the current day. Learning to space out the friendship-increasing activities helps to streamline the path to best friend status (and helps to live within the limits placed on gifts opened per-day). That much is common knowledge. But how to know when to open the next gift or send the next gift to facilitate that kept frustrating me, kind of like trying to drive a stick-shift car without knowing how to use a clutch.
Today I learned that by looking at my friend list I can SEE which friendships have increased that day already and which haven’t. So if I limit my activities to those which haven’t, then I am getting value for what I do. The friend’s face shows against a circle background (the color of which corresponds to that friend’s team). AROUND that circle will show a light blue halo if that friend’s level has increased that day.
If I open a gift from a friend whose avatar has a halo, I strip that gift of its value for increasing friendship level; so both of us benefit if I hold off opening that gift until tomorrow.
I’m sure y’all knew that already – I just thought it would be helpful to add to your friendship guide, which was where I first learned the basics of using the friendship feature and which is called ‘comprehensive’ but still could be more informative to players trying to learn the best habits for competent play…
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The order you open/send gifts is important too.
If you open/send starting with best friends and work down the list from here, you will only ever open/send gifts with the same players leaving others only getting ahead when you raid or battle.
If on the other hand you open/send from lowest friend to highest friend, you will be working on people who need to catch up and those who are well up the list will be cycled through. Eventually just about everyone will be at similar or same friendship level meaning that when you open/send from lowest friend (read highest priority), that friend shifts position to become a lower priority, while others you opened/sent gifts with in the days prior will progress up the list until they eventually become high enough priority that their gift is opened or you are able to send them one. The other benefit to this order of opening/sending gifts is that people who aren’t opening your gifts or sending you any will become obvious to you and you know who to remove to allow you to add new friends.
I highly recommend opening/sending from lowest friend and up in that order.
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Good point in general. Another thing that deserves attention is prioritizing those who have gone longer without any gifting.
To that end, where does Niantic declare definitively what the hell the “Today” “Yesterday” and “2+ Days Ago” are measuring? Time since last gift? Time since that user played the game? Time since they caught something? None of the theories I’ve been given seems to square with the manner in which those strings change from day to day in the context of my friend activities; but I can’t infer rules for those strings a posteriori.
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