So if you’ve been grinding Grow a Garden for a bit, you’ve probably noticed the whole “friendship” thing can feel slow and kinda confusing at first. I had no clue what I was doing and was just handing NPCs random food like, “Here, take this potato, love me.” Spoiler: that doesn’t work very well. After messing around, here’s what I figured out.
How To Level Up Friendship Fast in Grow a Garden
Seriously, nothing happens without it. NPCs don’t want raw stuff, they want actual meals. The Cooking Kit is hidden in the Achievement Rewards, which I didn’t even realize at first. Once you have it, that’s when the game opens up. Suddenly you can make burgers, porridge, corn dogs, all the good stuff that NPCs are obsessed with.
Don’t just throw food randomly
This was my biggest mistake. I kept giving food to whoever asked for it, and my friendship bar would barely move. Turns out, each NPC cares about different things:
- Sam is all about mutations. If your dish looks weird, he loves it.
- Alo only cares if it’s big. Like, giant food = big friendship points.
- The Giant (of course) likes rare stuff. Makes sense, he’s picky.
So yeah, don’t waste your rare food on Alo because he’ll basically shrug at it.
My little strategy
What I do now is kinda simple: I keep a stash of the “default” foods (burgers, porridge, corn dogs), and when I get something rare or mutated, I just save it until the right NPC asks. It feels way better because suddenly you’re watching those friendship bars shoot up instead of crawling.
Honestly, it almost feels like cheating once you figure out who wants what.
Friendship leveling looked like a grind at first, but now it’s actually one of my favorite parts of the game. There’s a weird satisfaction in matching the right food to the right character, like you’re cracking some secret code. If you’re still stuck on low friendship, trust me: just get your Cooking Kit, pay attention to who values what, and stop wasting your good food on the wrong NPC.
