[Game Tip] A good friends list

I always have to shake my head when I see things like a guildmate asking in world chat for someone to revive their crops or when I help a guildmate in a multiplayer dungeon and they are not getting an XP bonus because they are on my strangers list. I think too many people see the friends list merely as a place to go to steal seeds and energize trees for bounty quests. Your friends list can be soooo much more than that.

First, let me explain something about your friends list. The maximum number of friends you can have is 200. If you have reached a certain level of VIP, that number goes up to 250. As you can see, the spots on your friends list are limited...this means those spots are a precious commodity! You want to make sure that each of those spots is either helping you or helping the guild. How does a friend help you? The most obvious answer is that you get gold and seeds from their farm. The other (and more important) way a friend helps you is by giving you stat and XP boosts (up to +10% XP!) in multiplayer dungeons. Everyone has a farm in which you can steal seeds and energize trees, but not everyone is useful in a multiplayer dungeon. If you have friends on your list who are too low level to run in the same dungeons you can run, they are taking up a friend spot that could be used by someone who CAN run the same dungeons with you. Then you'll get an XP boost at the very least and some nice stat boosts if you have a higher friend level. Even if the low level player has been on your friends list forever and has reached a friend level of double digits, they are useless to you. (By the way, when you are looking at your friends list or are in your farm, if you hover over the heart, it will tell you how many more friend points you need to reach the next level of friendship.)

The only exception to this rule is when the low level player is in your guild. Then you want to have them on your friends list no matter what. First of all it is (or at least should be) far easier to get someone in guild chat to revive your crops and vice versa. Second, most people in the guild are friendly and helpful enough to do even low level MP dungeons for guild mates. If guildmates are all on your friends list, then you get more XP from that run, which helps you level faster, which in turn creates a stronger guild.

My personal rule of thumb is to go through my friends list and remove any non-guildmates that are 3 or more levels below me. The only people level 55 or less on my friends list are either real life friends or guild mates. I have no desire to run in low level multiplayer dungeons from which I will get no experience just so another guild can grow faster. If I personally am not going to gain anything from the MP run, I at least want the guild to benefit from it.