I've risen Pokemon Amie Affection to 5 hearts on my Riolo in the hopes that it will evolve as soon as it levels up, but I'm not certain that this is the same thing as friendship, and I'd like to not waste a level. My question is this: What is the difference between Pokemon Amie Affection and the Friendship stat?
46 Answers
You can only gain affection in Pokémon-Amie by playing with your pokémon and feeding it. When you get enough hearts, the benefits are:
- Increased Exp (1.2x, to be exact)
- Increased chances of dodging a move
- Chance of enduring a move with 1 HP
- Chance of getting rid of a status at the end of a turn
- Increased chance of getting a critical hit
However, happiness (friendship) is earned by leveling it up, giving it certain berries, going to the massage person, and walking around with it. From what I know, the effects are:
- Return does more with more friendship
- Frustration does more with less friendship
- Your pokémon evolves with enough friendship
But however, from my experience, Pokémon-Amie affects happiness as well. My little brother always played with his Kangaskhan and Return was one of its strongest moves. Whenever he got too many Poké Puffs, he would go to his Pidgeot and throw all of the Poké Puffs away because he thought it was funny. When he taught it Return, it didn’t kill a Caterpie. I’m not lying! The Pidgeot’s Frustration was like the Kangaskhan’s Return. What I concluded from this is that Pokémon-Amie slightly affects happiness as wel.
So the link that qwertyk31 supplied is also a good reference and might make this a duplicate question? But regardless here is a link to Friendship or what is also known as Happiness
And here in the other question I explain what Affection affects:What bonuses are related to friendship?
Happiness it an older game mechanic that affects evolving some Pokemon as well as moves like Return and Frustration.
As I mention in the other question, Affection affects a few other things:
- Resistant to having stats lowered
- Evasiveness increases
- Similar effect to Endure where stays at 1 hp
- Pokemon levels faster
- More critical hits( says something like ‘Pokemon Meowth is in sync with Trainer Name’)
These effects are permanent when the Pokemon's affection is full.
5Friendship makes some pokemon evolve and increases the power of Return. Affection gives pokemon bonuses in battle.
I've just tried this very moment, 5 hearts in Amie with my Buneary, gave it a Rare Candy and didn't evolve. I can conclude that Pokemons that evolve with happiness, you still need to raise their happiness to do so. Sylveon is a special case where you cannot maximize its happiness. To evolve to a Sylveon you need to raise its Affection instead of Happiness, otherwise it's going to evolve to Espeon/Umbreon.
Friendship is a stat that is raised through means in and outside of battle, while affection is only obtained in Poke-Amie.
You can raise Friendship by Leveling up Pokemon, giving them certain berries, going to the massage person, and many other ways. Affection is obtained by playing/feeding a Pokemon in Poke-Amie.
Friendship makes many Pokemon evolve, like Buneary, Riolu, Eevee into Umbreon and Espeon, and some others once it is high enough. It also effects the moves Frustration (lower friendship is more power) and Return (more friendship is more power).
Affection makes Sylveon evolve, and gives some in battle advantages. This includes more critical hits, change to endure a fatal attack, more exp, and some other buffs.
They are both independent and do not effect each other, despite sounding so similar.
Affection will not make your Riolu evolve, but it will still give it useful combat buffs.
Having 5 hearts IS NOT THE SAME THING as maximum friendship. A pokemon might be at 5 hearts but only have say 200/255 friendship, and not evolve because there's actually a hidden sixth or seventh heart that the game doesn't bother showing you since it doesn't help you in pokemon-amie.
But pokemon-amie CAN be used exclusively to evolve friendship-evolution pokemon. I've done it myself several times with eevees - hatch them from an egg, do absolutely nothing with them other than play with them in pokemon-amie for quite a while after they've reached 5 hearts, then give them a rare candy. Poof, espeon.
I'm actually surprised there isn't more information about this so long after the game was released.
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