Questions about familiars

[Madscientist]

I have played the game up to the point where you are able to catch monsters and learn to evolve them. Some questions:

- How do I increase the hearts of a creature (How much it likes me)?
When I give them food their stats go up. Somehow my first familiar (the little knight) has gotten a second heart full, but most of the time the hearts do not change, even if the stats go up and the pet really seems to like this food.
Does each creature have a favourite food?

- Can you catch the last monster in a fight?
I have the quest to catch 2 monsters, one of them is the banana thing. When fighting enemies, one enemy gets defeated and gets a heart while the other one is still alive. Then I switch to the girl to charm it and combat ends even though monsters are still alive.
Is it possible to catch the last living monster in a fight or do I have to kill the monster I want to catch first?

- What does the favourite familiar type do?
Each human party member has 3 types of familiars (s)he can handle well. In what way are familiars of the right type better than those of another type?

- Can you select which familiar is used by a party member I do not control myself?
Usualy I put the best familiar in the first slot.

- Can you see the abilities of other human party members in the menu?
The spell list shows only shows the spells of your main char. You can see and select the abilities of your pets. But can you see the special abilities of human party members outside of combat?

- Who had the idiot idea that all familiars start with lv1 and they get back to lv1 when they evolve?
The devs really want us to waste time with grinding, I guess. If you evolve your most powerful pet, it takes some time until it becomes useful again.
suggestion: If you are in an area with lv10 monsters, they should have lv10 when you catch them. If you evolve them they could lose a few levels, but not all. This would not change anything except reducing the need for grinding.

While I am a completeonist (at least for quests and loot) I will definitely NOT try to catch them all. (way too much grinding). I play the game normally, catch them if I can and keep only those in my active party that seem most useful. But it is hard to guess their future usefullness by looking at their lv1 stats and abilities when you catch them.
Sticking to a small selection of pets also reduces your equipment costs a lot.

[Drawable]

1. Every kind of familiar has a favourite treat. For example Mite likes chocolate and you can tell this due to hearts appearing when he eats it. Feeding the familiar their favourite treat will not only increase their stats but their familiarity level as well. (If you want to know different familiars favourite treats I would recommend searching it up online/in wizards companion so you don't waste treats trying to find out)

2. In order to tame a familiar you have to defeat them and then they will have a random chance to show hearts. It does not matter what order you defeat them in it's just random. So basically just keep defeating the familiar you want until hearts appear (this sucks if you are trying to tame them all)

3. Bit unsure of this myself I just always used familiars I liked the look of not paying attention to the favourite genus and got through the game just fine. Apparently though it provides a 10% bonus to the familiars abilities.

4. You can't really control this unless you take over the NPC. They usually send out the first one but it can change depending on how long a battle takes etc.

5. You can do this. Go to the friends & familiars page, select one of the friends and then press Y/triangle like you would to see a familiars abilities.

6. Although familiars go back to level 1 as they evolve again their stats will increase much more as you level them up again meaning even though they may be at a lower level than the rest of your team they will still be able to keep up in most cases. This also forces you to use more than one familiar at times as well as making sure you don't reach a max level way too early.

7. Personally just get 9 familiars you like the look of and use them. Most familiars don't have major differences to them in terms of usefulness apart from a few so you don't really have to worry about that. Also I agree if you are not completely dedicated you should not try to catch them all or do all of the alchemy recipes as they take hours of grinding to complete.

Hope you have a fun time with the game like I did :)