Pokémon GO’s Buddy Adventure: How To Get Hearts To Raise Your Buddy Level, And What You Get

Pokemon GO

Credit: Niantic

Pokémon GO fulfilled an essential piece of the Pokémon fantasy this week. Pokémon is a series not only about collecting and battling bizzare creatures, but also about a bond that forms between the trainer and their Pokémon: it’s an idea that really started with the anime, but the mainline games started incorporating those ideas as early as Pokémon Yellow. And now, Pokémon GO let’s us double down on it with a kind of Pokémon Tamagotchi, where we can choose a special creature to play with, feed andâ€"this is the most important partâ€"follow us around on the map. It’s magical. I’m currently rolling with a special little Mime Jr. I picked up overseas.

There’s a progression system baked in here, because even in Pokémon GO we need a little incentive to play with our new friends. Buddies can level up, just like friends, accruing new bonuses along the way.

You level up a buddy by getting hearts: up to 10 a day regularly, and double that if you use a special “poffin” for 100 Pokécoins.

You get these by walking up to 6km, feeding it treats three times, playing with it, battling with it, taking a picture and visiting a new place. Take note that “new place” means for that Pokémon as your special buddy, and not for you as a trainer.

You can see your heart progression on the buddy screen, both for the day and for all your time with the buddy.

Here are the levels, and what they get you:

Good Buddy: Comes along with you on your adventure.

Great Buddy (70 Hearts): Catch assist and brings you items.

Ultra Buddy (150 hearts): Helps you find locations and brings back collectible souvenirs. Unclear what sort of locations that means, but we’ll find out.

Best Buddy: Gets a CP boost in combat(needs to be equipped as buddy), and a special best buddy bow.

It leads to some interesting decisions if you’re trying to level your buddy: the CP boost clearly means that you should take along someone that’s meta-relevant and versatile, like a Tyranitar or a Mewtwo. And yet you might not need any candies for those, which means you’ll be missing out on all the extra candy from the traditional buddy system. And also I don’t exactly want to be walking around with my Tyranitars, it just doesn’t seem proper.

I’m building up a sort of baseline buddy that I plan to use for the souvenirs, catch boosts and items, and then I suppose I’ll swap him out every once in a while when I need candy for something new or when I want to look into maxing out something more useful in combat.

You could always fall into a trap where you try and max out several buddies at once, but that sounds exhausting.