Chrono Ark, a deckbuilding roguelike by developer Al Fine, is one of my favorite games released in the last year. The combination of party-based dungeon crawling aspects and card game mechanics may be unorthodox, but they blend together nicely in practice. Different combinations of the game’s twenty characters and the cards available to them can create some interesting strategies, and their personalities are as varied as their gameplay.

If you want to engage with characters more, there’s a simple friendship mechanic in the game. The tangible benefits are small, but each character’s story is interesting. Plus, if you’re invested in the plot of the game, maxing out everybody’s friendship rating is the key to seeing the final piece of the game’s story. Increasing their friendship can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing, however, and result in a lot of wasted time and resources. Here’s how friendship works, and how to max it out with each character.

Spoiler Warning: By necessity, this guide contains some spoilers for the storyline of Chrono Ark. If you haven’t been to The Archive yet, I highly recommend continuing the story until you reach that point. With that said, let’s get into things.

First, it’s worth noting that friendship progress with every character is permanent: Every new step is preserved through to subsequent loops, and you don’t have to repeat old steps of the process on new runs. Friendship levels are gained by giving presents to characters. This can be done once between each level in a run, but friendship will only go up if you give them a gift that they like. Characters generally have three to four items that they prefer, and repeating the same gift has no penalty associated with it. Although, they do have unique dialogue for each gift associated with them.

Here’s the rundown of each character and what items they like.

Attack Roles

• Azar: Shonen Manga, Coffee, Décor Pistol
• Charon: Art Supplies, Black Tea, Cheesecake, Violin
• Hein: Beer, Shonen Manga, Coffee, Butterfly Knife
• Helia: Fashion Magazine, Mystery Novel, Violin, Whisky (21 Years)
• Ilya: Camera, Fishing Rod, Sake, Vodka
• Johan: Frying Pan, Milk, Romance DVD
• Silverstein: Vocal Microphone, Décor Pistol, Mugwort, Whiskey
• Trisha: Guitar, Butterfly Knife, Vodka

Defense Roles

• Ironheart: Beer, Décor Pistol, Toolbox
• Lian: Camera, Frying Pan, Milk
• Miss Chain: Beer, Fashion Magazine, Vocal Microphone, Toolbox
• Momori: Leash, Fashion Magazine, Frying Pan, Vocal Microphone, Milk
• Narhan: Leash, Fishing Rod, Milk, Mystery Novel
• Phoenix: Cheesecake, SF Novel, Vodka

Healing Roles

• Selena: Fashion Magazine, Mystery Novel, Violin, Whisky (21 Years)
• Huz: Black Tea, Vocal Microphone, Stuffed Animal, Sake
• Joey: Any Drinkable Item, Guitar
• Leryn: Mugwort, Romance DVD, Sake, SF Novel
• Pressel: Art Supplies, Black Tea, Leash
• Sizz: Coffee, Frying Pan, Stuffed Animal

Special Note: Helia and Selena are treated as a single character for the purposes of their friendship. They have the same preferred items, their friendship levels increase at the same time, and the special conversations for each level are identical and involve both characters.

Characters each have three base levels of friendship, and three special conversations you can have with them in the course of a “normal” playthrough. Everything beyond that is where things begin to twist. Again, this is a spoiler warning: I’m trying to avoid specifics as much as possible, so if you want to experience things for yourself, I suggest continuing the game and coming back if you get stuck.

Alright, now we can talk about red friendship tokens. Red tokens can be acquired at any point in your friendship with a character, but must be acquired if you want to progress further. Each character has one, and in order to get it, you must go to The Archive with them in the party, and talk to them. This can be done through the difficult method of unlocking and traversing the Crimson Wilderness, or by asking the hedgehog to take you there directly for a couple credits. Either method is equally as effective, but it’s much easier and safer to go there directly, and there’s no story difference.

When a character’s friendship has been maxed out and their red token acquired, you can upgrade it to a golden token of friendship. This is done by bringing them to the secondary final area and talking to them. If you haven’t fulfilled the above criteria, you’ll only get a message that “they don’t understand,” and you’ll have to bring them to the archive or raise their friendship to get it in another run.

There are a few characters that are special cases. First of all, there’s Phoenix. Phoenix gets their red and gold friendship tokens by story progression, as long as you speak to them at the campfire in the final adventure. Next is Azar, who for story reasons, is unavailable for anything beyond their initial three levels of friendship.

Lastly, there’s Helia and Selena. After properly finishing the game for the first time, you unlock Free Play mode. Every other eligible character can get their golden token of friendship in freeplay mode, but you can only achieve the final level of friendship with Helia and Selena by speaking to them in story mode. I emphasize this because the final piece of story content needs you to achieve golden friendship with everyone you possibly can, and then complete the story mode. I didn’t realize this at first, and ended up wasting a lot of time. Don’t suffer like I did.

Hopefully, this guide helps you out when trying to strengthen your bonds with the characters in Chrono Ark.

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Featured Image: Al Fine (via Steam)

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