Guide: Pet care: Socialization

Every day, you can socialize with other people's pets, and other people can socialize with your pets. Socialization is an important source of essence (and is, in fact, the primary way to obtain Gleaming Essence). Socialization can also have a wide variety of other beneficial effects depending on the items that are placed in the pet's room.

By default, every player can socialize with three pets per day, and every pet can socialize once per day. However, there are many ways to increase this limit. Room items such as the Plush Friend, the Friendship Bracelet charm, or certain foods can give a pet an extra socialization. The Tea Set room item has a chance of giving a bonus socialization to the visitor, and certain random events can also give a player an extra socialization.

Social item drops

Every form of every species has a list of specific items that can be obtained during socialization. This always includes Prima Materia and Gleaming Essence (except for some pets that provide a Higher Essence instead of Gleaming), and will generally also include most of the same items that can be obtained from grooming the pet. However, items from socialization tend to be more evenly distributed than from grooming; the chance of obtaining a (non-essence) item overall is lower, but the chance of obtaining rarer materials (such as claws or fairy dust) is often higher. Socializing with a pet will inherently produce up to one item for the visitor and up to one item for the pet's owner; however, there are also several items that, when placed in a room, have the potential of granting bonus items to one or both players.

Each individual type of item that can give bonus drops works independently. However, stacking multiple items of the same type will only increase the probability of gaining a bonus drop; it will not result in a chance of obtaining two of the same bonus drop. (For example, the Sparkle Plush item gives a chance to obtain Prima Materia as a bonus drop, and the Virtuoso's Flute gives a chance to obtain elemental essence based on the pet's affinities. A pet with multiple Sparkle Plushes and one Virtuoso's Flute will have a high chance of producing bonus Prima Materia and a low chance of obtaining bonus elemental essence. Getting both bonus drops from socialing once with this pet is possible, but getting multiple Prima Materia is not, even though there are multiple copies of the Sparkle Plush.)

Social drops can be obtained by both the visitor and the pet's owner. Items obtained by the visitor will go directly into the inventory; items obtained by the owner will be placed in the room to be collected later. The items received by the visitor and the items received by the visitor are independent of each other. Most room items that give a chance of bonus drops will give the same chance for bonus drops for each user; however, some items can only give an item to one of the users, such as the Thief's Bag, which can only give items to the room owner.

During some special events, there is a chance for all socializations to give certain items as bonus drops.

Other effects of socialization

In addition to item drops, many room items can provide other effects to the pet such as gaining growth, power, and/or affinity to various aspects.

Some effects can trigger the effects of socialization without needing another player to visit. These include the Mirror of Solitude room item and the Smiley Salad food. Such effects require the pet to have an available socialization, and will trigger all appropriate room items, whether these are bonus-drop-producing items or other effects.