Guide to Friends

A semi-detailed explanation of each Friend you can call in the game. Spoilers contained within if you care about the deepest lore.

Mechanics and Ability Types

Abilities

Most friends have two abilities listed underneath their portrait. The top one is typically a combat-oriented ability and the bottom one is typically a passive ability that is typically applied to your entire party unless specifically noted otherwise.

Every friend has a "deployment cost" associated. This is the number of Japari Buns that must be in your inventory (and thus consumed) to call this Friend to the field. Japari Buns can be found or bought from Lucky Beast at the Library and you can fit up to five of them in one inventory space at a time. If a Friend is defeated in combat or released, you can revive them or call them back to the field (respectively) if you pay the deployment cost again.

Friends already deployed will be carried over into the next floor of a level automatically and do not require any additional buns to keep out when simply moving between floors. All friends will be released whenever you enter an entirely new area (like a new level from the world map). Friends who are fainted and not yet revived won't be carried over to the next floor, but otherwise all friends still up will receive a full healing. Friends don't cost anything to call in the Library, so feel free to experiment there.

Releasing Friends does not refund any Japari Buns, so be careful about pre-emptively releasing Friends from your command. Serval cannot call in friends over the current cap on deployment cost unless you have the Perfect Amulet.

If you have the Perfect Amulet (later in the game), you can call as many friends as you want, so as long as you have Japari Buns to cover the costs. Calling Friends over your limit of 12 deployment points begins to negatively impact your abilities and begins to buff the abilities of the enemy, depending on how far over the limit of 12 you are:

• Effectiveness of healing items reduced
  
• Duration of buff items reduced
  
• Except for Serval, the impact power of attacks and dodging rate of all Friends are reduced
  
• Sandstar gained from you or Friends damaging enemies is reduced
  
• Cellins recover from debuffs faster
  
• Cellins movement speed and attack rate increase
  
• Cellins will more often Wild Release, making their attacks uninterruptable and increasing their damage and defense
  
• Boss Cellins that expose their weak points are vulnerable for less time

Ability Types

Combat - This ability is typically used whenever the Friend is nearby an active fight. The Friend does not have to participate in the fight directly, but combat must be going on somewhere close by to them for this ability to trigger. Some combat abilities are a direct method of attack while others are support abilities. Generally speaking, all combat abilities need Stamina to be used, so make sure your allies aren't too winded.
Ranged - This ability can be used some distance away from its intended location, typically keeping the user out of immediate danger.
Active - This ability is a passive, but something else has to be done first to make it active. An example is Painted Wolf's "Sneeze" increases the damage of your party by +12% but only after Serval does a successful "Just Dodge".
Passive - This ability is active all of the time and is usually a stat-oriented buff that requires no input from the player.

Roles

I made some loosely defined roles for most friends to categorize them.

Direct Combat - This Friend's job is primarily dealing direct damage in melee combat or otherwise directly damaging the enemy.
Bruiser - A type of combat with high health and good damage output. Bruisers are best at being directly in the fight and can take a few hits while giving them back.
Area Attacker - A type of combat that affects more than a single target. Area attackers can help control larger numbers of foes at once whereas regular attackers can be overwhelmed.
Ranged Combat - This Friend's job is like Direct combat, but they do so with a ranged attack when not directly threatened and are usually at less risk of being attacked compared to Direct Combat Friends.

Support - This Friend's job is providing passive abilities, navigation assistance, buffs to you and your party, or debuffs to the enemy, and typically offers little or no ability to damage the enemy themselves.
Healer - A type of support that can heal other Friends with their own abilities.
Diversionary - A type of support that can redirect the focus of the enemy off of other units.

Stats

There's various stats floating around so i'll try to explain the important ones.
Base HP - Maximum hitpoints. At 0, the Friend faints. Higher HP usually means the Friend can take more hits before being killed. As a note, the HP values I used are those once Serval reaches level 100 and purchases all health upgrades (40 upgrades, 400 HP).
Maximum Stamina/Stamina Regeneration - The maximum amount of stamina that can be held and how fast it regenerates. Stamina regenerates faster when standing still or under the effects of certain buffs. Friends without stamina cannot attack or use special abilities. Most actions, including moving, drain some stamina.

Impact Power/Impact Resistance - All attacks (both Cellin and Friend) have an amount of impact associated with them. Impact or Knock builds up as a unit takes hits over a short period of time and eventually stuns the unit or knocks it down (for cellins, this may expose a weakpoint). Attacks with high impact power are good at stunning or knocking over cellins, while units with high impact resistance are harder to topple.

Attack - The amount of damage this unit deals at its base. Its not clear how exactly this scales or how it plays into damage calculation. Certain attacks from Cellins may temporarily multiply their attack power by an amount for particularly dangerous attacks.
Defense - Overall resistance to damage. Its not clear exactly how this factors in to a damage calculation, but higher defense reduces the actual received damage of any attack.

Dodge Rate - Certain Friends will more often dodge attacks then other friends, increasing their combat effectiveness. Fast and combat-oriented Friends like the Owls, Moose, Lion, or the Cellin Hunter Trio are good at dodging most attacks and typically last longer. Dodge rate gets reduced for all Friends deployed if you go over 12 deployment points and is reduced more the further you are over the limit. Unfortunately this stat is not readily visible anywhere in the game.

Just Dodge

You will see "Just Dodge!" appear near Serval when skillfully evading an attack that would have landed with a dodge move. Dodging in this manner restores stamina and awards a small amount of extra invincibility frames, encouraging the skilled and timed dodging between your own attacks to keep up your stamina without stopping to rest. Just Dodge's benefits reduce in effectiveness if you do not deliver enough damage between dodges, eventually awarding reduced (red text) or no bonus (grey text).

Guts

Guts is a system that protects you and your units from being one-shot by highly damaging enemy attacks. Any Friend that is over 30% health that takes damage which would be fatal instead triggers Guts and is left alive with one health instead of taking the full damage. An audio cue plays and your remaining health numeric turns red when you fall under 30% health indicating that Guts will no longer protect you.

Guts has an upper limit to the amount of damage it will protect you from. When Guts activates and protects you from fatal damage, the fatal portion of the damage is deducted from a total which is represented by your health bar's white outline. When this outline becomes completely black, Guts will no longer activate to save you from a fatal blow. Heavier attacks that do much more damage then you have health will deplete Guts faster.

Row One

Kaban

Deployment Cost: 1
Primary Role: Support, Diversionary
Base HP: 1000

Paper Plane (Combat) - Kaban throws a paper airplane wherever she is facing. The plane causes most cellins nearby it to chase and attack it, breaking their focus on their current target.
Sweating (Passive) - Maximum stamina of all Friends +10%

It should be HEAVILY noted that having Kaban on the field enables you to deploy anti-cellin bombs from your inventory without Serval inadvertantly killing herself and her other party members. Anti-cellin bombs will damage/poison allies and have reduced damage if Kaban is not deployed. When an anti-cellin bomb is deployed properly with Kaban on the field, it spawns at Kaban's location instead of Serval's. Anti-cellin bombs used without Kaban can't kill your units, but will most often bring you and them both to 1 HP.

Kaban offers no direct combat ability and will try to evade any time she is directly engaged. Otherwise she will sit on the edge of the fight and chuck paper planes in the middle of it. The planes are great for breaking the focus of groups of cellins from your team members, if even momentarily, though their effectiveness on different bosses varies widely. Her passive is fairly useful as well.

Hippopotamus

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Anti-Melee
Base HP: 1500

Big Mouth (Combat) - Hippo uses stamina to nullify damage from a melee attack that would have landed and deals a melee attack back to the attacker in turn. Counter-attacks have high impact power and often expose weakpoints of enemes.
Heavyweight (Passive) - Impact power of all Friends' attacks +8%.

Hippo is decently cheap to deploy and offers a specialization against melee which makes her useful early on, but she tends to get sauced by ranged attacks or area-of-effect which becomes more prevalent later on. If she's used against melee-oriented enemies, though, she's extremely effective at flipping over pill bugs and interrupting wider-area melee attacks. Her counter-attack ability does consume some stamina, so in a mosh pit she can quickly be overwhelmed, even against only melee opponents.

The impact power boost is nice, but won't usually make or break your ability to knock enemies over on it alone.

Small-clawed Otter

Deployment cost: 1
Primary role: Ranged Combat
Base HP: 900

Stone Play (Combat, Ranged) - Otter uses stamina to throw stones from a distance away and attack cellins.
Day for Sliding (Passive) - All friends are immune to debuffs from mud traps.

This devious little gremlin unfortunately offers little combat ability and should usually only be deployed if you find yourself in mud traps too frequently for your liking. She tries to stay out of trouble by bothering enemies from a distance with stones and can usually stay out of the way, but if she gets focused she is finished.

Mud traps will slow your movement speed and prevent you from dodging while in them, so having Otter out (especially versus Cecky Beast who makes mud traps when attacking) can be very beneficial since she is very cheap.

Jaguar

Deployment Cost: 3
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Generalist
Base HP: 1200

True Beast (Combat) - Occasionally jump-attacks enemies from above.
Roly-Poly (Passive) - Increases the impact resistance of all Friends.

Jaguar is useful early on as a direct-combat Friend and helpfully tends to target the weak points of enemies which are exposed above or to the sides, owing to the True Beast ability. She is fairly strong on her own for most combat but runs a middling cost of your deployment points and has a lackluster passive with no exact amount listed on it. She can work in areas fraught with enemies that have exposed weakpoints on the head, or exposes them to the top.

Crested Ibis

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Support, Healer, Diversionary
Base HP: 850

Ibis Song (Combat, Support) - Toki uses stamina to make an awful horrendous racket (but don't tell her that) which somehow heals any nearby Friends for a small percentage of health and causes nearby cellins to shift focus to attacking her instead. This will aggravate dormant cellins in addition to shifting their target focus to Toki.
Pink Feathers (Passive) - Serval gains additional jump height.

She's a pretty decent support Friend and one of the first healers you get. Her healing is not particularly strong but can offset some of the damage your party may experience and in general try to boost longevity. She also boosts that longevity a great deal by making attackers focus on her instead of your combat-oriented Friends. While she is good at evasion, if focused she is quite fragile and can easily be knocked out. She is still relatively cheap to redeploy if needed, so this makes her somewhat flexible as a healing/distraction Friend similar to Kaban.

It should be noted that Toki has no direct combat capability and is purely for evasion and healing.

Alpaca Suri

Deployment Cost: 1
Primary Role: Support, Ranged
Base HP: 1150

Spit! (Combat, Ranged, Support) - Alpaca uses stamina and spits at the enemy in a wide spray. This spray causes little direct damage but carries an acid debuff, which reduces the defense of enemies hit by it and makes attacks against weakpoints do greater damage.
Smooth Hair (Passive) - All Friends' defense +10%

A cheap and decent support Friend that not only effectively gives everyone a 10% HP increase, but also tends to increase everyone's damage output with an acid debuff. This makes her pretty valuable as a 1-cost-support Friend, but her major limiting factor is general fragility and inability to do almost any direct damage with her attacks. Should be supported by other attack-oriented Friends.

Sand Cat

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Support
Base HP: 850

Dig a Hole (Combat) - During combat, if not directly threatened, Sand Cat will use stamina to begin digging in place. Once finished digging there is a high probability of her finding a random item which will be spawned at her location. If directly threatened, Sand Cat will abandon digging and engage with her claws instead.
Thick Fur on Paws (Passive) - All Friends are immune to the effects of fire traps.

She's cheap, she can do some combat, but most importantly she is a slot machine that turns up anything from a plaster to a yellow crystal. If you can keep her from the actual fight and focused on digging (with a distraction-oriented Friend like Toki or Kaban), she can turn up all kinds of useful things that can tilt fights in your favor. She can provide some direct combat support if directly engaged but is not very strong on her own. If you move around a lot, she might try to keep up with you instead of digging, which can be detrimental against enemies that require a lot of mobility to stay on top of.

Fire trap immunity is very nice as they can cause pretty solid damage if you wander on them too much or when health needs to be conserved by all means.

She is also a certified qt 3.14.

Row Two

Tsuchinoko

Deployment cost: 3
Primary Role: Ranged Combat
Base HP: 750

Riddle Eyes Beam (Combat, Ranged) - Tsuchinoko uses stamina to generate a beam attack with medium range and the capability of hitting multiple targets. In addition, the beam can hit the same target multiple times at once further increasing damage.
Pit Organ (Passive) - Serval can see cellins through walls.

Medium cost but fairly effective ranged attacker if you can keep the pressure off of her. If directly engaged she is quite fragile and will get stomped easily, but otherwise she can deal a ton of hits (and damage) pretty easily if left at a distance and free to shoot. Unfortunately, she comes to mostly a standstill when using her ranged attack, so this can work against her in larger fights or if she happens to be focused.

Pit Organ comes in handy on most maps with high walls and lets you indirectly detect rooms and pathways via the presence of enemies.

American Beaver

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Ranged Combat, Support
Base HP: 1050

Dam Making (Combat, Ranged, Support) - Beaver will throw various shapes and sizes of wood during combat. The objects she throws persist after impacting and can physically block the movement of most enemy types and yourself for a short time.
Hair that Repels Water (Passive) - Friends are protected from the stamina and health damage incurred when falling off of the stage.

Her combat ability can sometimes leave you in a bad spot (with doorways blocked unless you jump over the barrier), but she can pretty easily and inadvertantly block cellins from walking up to you while throwing huge chunks of wood and benches at them. Most cellins are not smart enough to walk around or jump over barriers.

As for the drowning passive, her passive protects you and any other deployed Friends from the stamina damage or health damage when falling off open stages. Water normally only deals stamina, but later stage hazards like lava or atmospheric re-entry (yes, really) will sap almost all of your health too before you respawn.

Black-tailed Prairie Dog

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Support
Base HP: 800

Bury Alive (Combat) - During combat, Prairie Dog obsessively digs as many holes as possible. Any cellin making contact with one of these holes is stunned for a short time and unable to move or attack, in addition to taking some damage.
Greeting (Passive) - When consuming Japari Buns, all Friends also heal for the same amount.

Her combat ability is somewhat strong for stopping most enemies dead in their tracks and she is usually capable of digging enough holes in a short time to saturate the area, but she lacks direct combat capability to capitalize on the stun generated and digs holes at complete random (true to the source material, I love it) which can make you have to focus your strategy on where she digs instead. This requires other Friends to follow up on a vulnerable cellin, but this ability is useful to temporarily immobilize tough enemies and bosses and create an opening for your team.

Her passive is useful, but generally you want to save your Japari Buns to deploy or redeploy Friends instead of using them as a healing item, as other healing items already heal everyone on your team anyways.

Moose

Deployment Cost: 5
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Bruiser
Base HP: 2000

King of the Forest (Passive, Solo) - Moose has extremely high impact resistance and is virtually impossible to knock over.
Charge! (Passive) - Serval will break walls while running in Wild Release.

Your first heavyweight fighter, Moose has strong direct combat capability and a strong cost to deploy. She can go toe-to-toe with most cellins, jump-attacks occasionally for smacks on weak points, smashes the ground with area-of-effect attacks, and overall has high health and damage output, but can still be overwhelmed if pressured too hard. Her passive is very useful to crush through walls to adjacent rooms or make a quick escape to the exit point if things are going south.

Lion

Deployment Cost: 5
Primary Role: Ranged Combat
Base HP: 1300

Pride (Active) - When Serval or another Friend takes damage, or when Serval Just Dodges an attack, Lion's combat effectiveness increases for a short time.
Lounging (Passive) - Increases all Friends' stamina recovery speed while not moving.

Your second heavyweight fighter, Lion also has good combat capability. Her passive makes it easier for winded friends to recover a large amount of stamina quickly, but won't be as useful if everyone is constantly moving around. Uniquely she uses ranged attacks (similar to Serval's Wave Attack which travels along the ground) to damage the enemy.

Lion is not as straightforward or in-the-face as Moose is, but she will engage in melee attacks if focused at closer range and is still capable of direct combat. Her "Pride" ability can give a solid increase to her stats whenever you dodge an attack or whenever someone nearby takes damage. You can tell if her Pride ability is active by the presence of yellow flames from her eyes.

The Currybirds (Northern White-faced Owl & Eurasian Eagle Owl)

Deployment Cost: 4/4
Primary Role: Direct Combat, High Mobility
Base HP: 750/900

270 Degrees [Both] (Active) - The effectiveness of Just Dodge recovers faster when attacking.
Camouflage [Northern White-faced Owl] (Passive) - Duration of Invincibility Frames for all Friends +20%
Silent Flying [Eurasian Eagle Owl] (Passive) - Friends are approximately +5% more likely to attempt to dodge an attack.

I put both of these curry devils in their own header because they are very similar and not worth two different sections. The Curry Birds are both pretty effective in combat owing to their mobility and speed. Both of them will fly towards the enemy and attack from different directions, circling the enemy during attacks and incidentally can usually hit exposed weakpoints. Their passives both increase their own and everyone else's survivability by making dodging more of an attractive option. They are somewhat expensive to deploy though, especially both of them.

As a note on Just Dodge, the ability reduces in effectiveness as you dodge subsequent attacks without dealing damage or waiting some time, eventually providing no bonus invincibility frames. The 270 Degrees ability makes Just Dodge recover faster than it normally does when attacking.

Margay

Deployment Cost: 1
Primary Role: Support, Diversionary
Base HP: 950

Voice Mimicry (Combat) - Margay uses stamina to imitate the cry of nearby cellins. Cellins within the area of effect are confused and stop attacking and moving momentarily until attacked again or the effect ends.
Arboreal (Passive) - When Serval uses the Climb Tree ability, the floor map is automatically displayed as long as she remains in the tree (does not activate if the tree is not climbed using the climb tree action).

Cheap to deploy and a distraction character at best. Her passive is useful when lost in an area with climbable objects, but she lacks any direct combat capability and her distraction ability is usually serviced better by Kaban or Toki where possible. She does tend to make enemies distracted for a short moment which can allow you the time needed for a decisive strike, but otherwise she does not provide much support on the field.

Row Three

Flightless Birds (The PPP, Royal, Rockhopper, Gentoo, Humboldt, and Emperor Penguins)

Deployment Cost: 1/1/1/3/2
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Support
Base HP: 950/950/950/950/1150

Bone Density, Symmetric Feather, Preen Oil Coating, Shake Off Saltwater, Counter-current Heat Exchange (Passive, Solo) - All of these abilities have the same effect - Ranged attacks against the penguins deal 50% less damage. This affects only the holder of the ability.

Creche [Royal] (Passive) - All Friends +10% maximum HP.
Lets Rock! [Rockhopper] (Passive) - All Friends +3% damage dealt.
Fly in the Sea [Gentoo] (Passive) - All Friends +10% movement speed.
Japari Bun Hunt [Humboldt] (Passive) - Defeated cellins have a +15% chance to drop a Japari Bun.
Huddling [Emperor] (Passive - All Friends are immune to the effects of ice traps.

To get this out of the way i'm just going to refer to each of these nerds by their nicknames because I cannot spell or pronounce Humboldt without looking it up every time. They're referred to as Princess, Rocker/Iwabee, Gean, Hululu, and Koutei.

Each of these idols are not great to deploy individually as they lack any good direct combat ability and won't last very long when pressured. Most of them are pretty cheap to deploy and offer very solid passives, however, so they can be good to pad out the rest of your team's ability if you find yourself with some extra points.

Princess, Iwabee, and Gean all have good passives that are solid all of the time and don't require you to do anything. Setting these three to "Evade" can help keep them out of danger and keep their passives in-play. Hululu's passive is debatably useful at best, only if you are short on Japari Buns and need more and can also risk deploying her for three of them and risk getting her knocked out. Overall it is not a gambit really worth three deployment points. Emperor's passive is useful as ice traps are nasty and instantly suck the stamina of any Friend that steps on them. She can instantly be a huge increase to survivability when fighting enemies who deploy ice traps, but otherwise her passive falters in usefulness.

All of these girls take half damage from ranged attacks which helps them survive a little bit longer then they would normally, but they also lack any ranged options of attack so they like to run up and slap enemies with their flippers a lot. As previously said, deploy them for their passives if you need them but try to keep them away from the front line. If pressured they can at least overwhelm isolated targets by themselves.

Ezo Red Fox

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Direct Combat
Base HP: 950

Fox Jump (Combat) - Attacks with a jumping headbutt which can multi-hit along her trajectory. Ezo is temporarily immobile upon ending her attack.
Sense Magnetic Field (Passive) - A HUD element of an arrow indicating the direction to the exit of the current floor is displayed.

Gaming fox.
Ezo's passive is very useful if you find yourself pressed for time or unable to locate the exit to a floor as it will point you in the general direction of the exit without needing to climb a tree and see it or use another Friends' ability (like Margay). Her attack is fairly useful as it can hit multiple enemies multiple times each and may hit exposed weakpoints due to the jump, but I find it tends to immobilize her a bit at the end of her jump which can leave her exposed to attack. Besides the jumping attack though, she falters in usefulness during direct combat.

Silver Fox

Deployment Cost: 3
Primary Role: Ranged Combat, Area Effect, Debuffer
Base HP: 950

Homemade Explosive (Combat) - Silver fox uses stamina to throw a bomb which explodes on impact with a cellin or after a set time. Silver's bombs will apply a random debuff to cellins hit by the explosion (Acid, Poison, Slow, or Burn).
Dispensing (Passive) - All items that recover HP recover +10% more HP when used.

Fox gaming.
Silver is a surprisingly effective ranged combat Friend helped largely by her ability to debuff enemies with her explosives. Her Passive is solidly useful to bolster the effectiveness of any healing items you may have to use. The general debuffs she can apply are as follows:
Acid - Yellow/green cloud effect. Enemy has reduced defense and takes more damage from attacks.
Poison - Purple cloud effect. Enemy takes a set amount of damage spread out over time.
Burn - Fire effect. Enemy takes a set amount of damage spread out over time (less damage but more quickly applied then Poison).
Slow - Blue bars with a downwards gradient. Enemy moves and attacks much more slowly.

Her explosives also have an easier time hitting nearby weakpoints or multiple enemies at once, further enhancing her multi-role ability. The only shortcomings she has is she can't defend herself up close and is somewhat fragile. All of this tied into only a medium-cost deployment of 3.

Campo Flicker

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Support, Healer
Base HP: 700

Nice Room (Combat) - During combat, Campo creates a circle at her current location with a random buff that affects all Friends except herself within its area. These buffs persist for a few seconds before fading away.
Renovation (Passive) - All Friends are immune to the damage and effects of spike/needle traps.

Despite having zero combat ability, Campo is relatively cheap and insanely useful during combat as her buff circles provide substantial benefit to those within them. If you can adapt your play around the circles when they appear, it can be very useful to supplement your damage output. The circles have the following effects:

Yellow Circle - Heals all Friends except Campo herself for a small percentage each second.
Red Circle - Greatly increases the damage output of all friends within.
Green Circle - Greatly increases the stamina recovery rate of all friends within.

Green circles especially can near-instantly recover stamina faster then you can use it, and red circles provide a substantial damage increase which makes lingering around these two in particular very useful. Campo herself tends to try to stay nearby you and is very fragile, so she can often get slapped by an errant attack and knocked out entirely. Keep an eye on her if you can.

Protip, use dodge+special to gather all of your deployed friends on top of a buff circle placed in an advantageous location to make full use of it.

Row Four

Gray Wolf

Deployment Cost: 3
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Support
Base HP: 1100

Howling (Combat) - During combat, Gray Wolf occasionally howls which decreases the damage dealt by all cellins nearby by 20% for a short time.
Keen Nose (Passive) - The contents of a container are displayed overtop of them prior to being broken open. This also reveals if cellins are hiding in a container.

Gray Wolf has decent combat capability and extends the longevity of your team by reducing attack power of nearby enemies, though this usually isn't enough to meaningfully turn the tide by itself. Her passive is quite useful to check and see if opening a container is a waste of time or not, but overall her medium deployment cost with only average combat ability tends to get her overlooked in favor of other Friends with passives that are more useful outside of normal floors, especially during boss fights.

Reticulated Giraffe

Deployment Cost: 3
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Area Attacker
Base HP: 1400

Necking (Combat) - During combat, Giraffe frequently attacks by swinging her muffler in a wide circle around herself.
Wonder Net (Passive) - Increases the impact resistance of all friends

Giraffe is a solid choice against a large number of relatively weaker opponents as her muffler swings in a big area, but overall she has a tough time dealing a lot of damage to singular targets on her own which makes her difficult to use effectively. If heavily outnumbered or using Giraffe's Medicine for an even bigger range increase, she can control and smack large numbers of targets at once.

Golden Snub-nosed Monkey

Deployment Cost: 4
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Heavy Hitter, Sniper
Base HP: 1000

Magic Staff (Combat) - Monkey attacks by quickly propelling her staff forward, automatically striking exposed weakpoints for high damage.
Allonursing (Passive) - All Friends recover from debuffs faster.

I'm just going to call her Goku. Goku is your third heavy-hitter and excels at sniping hard-to-reach weakpoints easily and has strong combat capability owing to medium-ranged melee attacks using her staff. This makes her very useful at reliably dealing with enemies that have hard to hit weakpoints, but she finds herself not as effective against enemies without them and will have a tough time if there's no weakpoint to snipe.

Still, her weakpoint-snipe move has a decent bit of range to it as well, and deals very high damage, plus the bonus weakpoint damage, often instantly detonating a single enemy. Despite all this, her passive is not extremely useful and she is liable to easily become overwhelmed if enemies come in large number, so that leaves a little to be desired.

Brown Bear

Deployment cost: 6
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Bruiser
Base HP: 1350

Strongest Bear Stamp (Combat) - Brown Bear consumes all of her remaining stamina to deliver an unbelievably heavy attack with high impact force and damage that typically knocks the enemy down and has an area-of-effect at its landing zone.
Hibernation (Passive) - All Friends take reduced damage from status effects and traps.

Your fourth heavy hitter with a high deployment cost. An all around solid fighter that can slap up most enemies, but she has high demands on her own stamina. She tends to consume her whole stamina bar for a 20,000 damage attack every once in a while requiring her to step back for a second to recover. Medicine or buffs that increase stamina regeneration can help bridge this gap and keep her in the fight.

While she is one of the strongest direct fighters, she has the second-highest deployment cost which leaves little room for other Friends to help alongside her.

Painted Wolf

Deployment Cost: 4
Primary Role: Direct Combat
Base HP: 1050

Tenacious Hunting (Combat) - Occasionally, Painted Wolf attacks with a rapid barrage of punches and a strong finisher.
Sneeze (Active) - For 10 seconds after Serval performs a Just Dodge, all deployed Friends deal +12% damage.

Painted Wolf is a decent fighter with a strong passive that can capitalize on your ability to dodge incoming attacks and benefit the whole team afterwards. Her only shortfall is a medium-high deployment cost and her direct combat ability lacking any stuns or other methods of interrupting enemy attack outside of direct melee. This makes her more vulnerable to attack then the other two hunters, Brown Bear and Monkey, since she also lacks ranged options.

Racoon

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Support
Base HP: 1250

Feel by Hands (Combat) - While attacking an enemy in melee, Racoon has a chance to steal a random item and drop it at her location.
Fighting Spirit (Passive) - While in Wild Release, increase the rate of health recovery by +20%. Also affects other Friends besides Serval in Wild Release if you have the Perfect Amulet.

Arai-san (literally, "wash-san" in japanese). Washbear. Trash Panda. Garbage Gremlin.
Now that that's out of the way, she's an extremely risky version of Sand Cat and they are both marvelous slot machines. Arai has to be engaged in direct melee combat in order to liberate random items like Sand Cat does, but Arai can do it a lot more often if allowed to attack.

Items stolen from cellins are taken directly from their drop table. Arai can only steal an item from a cellin if that cellin normally drops that item when defeated (most notably, items like Lion's Medicine can be liberated from the T-Rex cellin pretty frequently if Arai is allowed to engage). There is an upper limit to the number of items she can steal from a single enemy though, so if she continues attacking after hitting that limit she will only steal healing orbs that can be picked up to immediately heal the party.

Arai's downfall is true to the source material in that she deals very little damage and tends to charge headfirst at enemies hoping to steal something. If enemies take notice of her, she tends to get smacked around and is quickly knocked out if left unattended and allowed to run about unchecked. Keep a careful watch on her and use the gather move (special+dodge) to yoink her back if she charges too far from you. If paired with other damage-dealing or distration Friends, Arai can usually steal things uninterrupted.

Fennec

Deployment Cost: 2
Primary Role: Ranged Combat
Base HP: 800

Ball Play (Combat, Ranged) - During combat, Fennec spawns and kicks a ball at nearby cellins. Balls will bounce off of nearby enemies, floors, and walls, and damage enemies anytime they hit.
Dry Tolerance (Passive) - The duration of any buff medicines lasts +10% longer.

Fennec's passive is very useful during boss fights to squeeze some more time out of very useful medicines like Vampire Bat or Armadillo. Her combat ability is lacking, but with Giraffe's medicine the balls have a wide hitbox and persist for quite a bit. She tends to stay at the edge of the fight so unlike Arai-san she doesn't usually become the focus of a cellin's ire. She can usually stay out of trouble and deal some supporting damage, though most of the time you will want her on the field for her passive.

I needed another section because steam has dumb character limits per section

Another Serval

Deployment Cost: 10
Primary Role: Direct Combat, Bruiser, Area Attacker
Base HP: 1000

Sacrifice (Passive) - When Another Serval is defeated in combat, she sacrifices herself and fully heals all other deployed Friends, including Serval. If Serval is defeated, Another Serval is deployed, and Serval would not be revived by other means, Another Serval will sacrifice herself to revive Serval instead. The latter method does not heal all other Friends on the field.

I am just going to call her "Punished Serval" because she is from the timeline where everyone she knew died and cellins overran everything and killed everyone except her.

Punished Serval is a near-duplicate of Serval in combat capability and general abilities. Punished Serval can use all of the special abilities and equipment that Serval can, including the Pile Attack, Spin Attack, Screw Attack, Wave Attack, and Bolt Attack, although her versions of the attacks are slightly different compared to Serval's. Overall she is extremely strong in combat and comes with built-in revives for you and the rest of your team depending on who dies first. Her downside is the astronomical deployment cost which leaves very few friends able to be deployed alongside her without penalty. She is also quickly removed from play if you mess up and die, requiring another 10 Japari Buns to deploy again, so be careful.

It is important to note that Another Serval will not sacrifice herself if you have Yellow Crystals in your inventory that would revive you. This can make her an unattractive option if you have a surplus of Japari Buns you would rather use and yellow crystals you are trying to preserve.

Roles Grouped for Easy Reference

Defense/Survivability

Suri Alpaca (1): +10% Defense
Grey Wolf (3): -20% Enemy Attack
Royal Penguin (1): +10% HP
Silver Fox (3): +10% HP Recovery from Items/Debuffer
Raccoon (2): +20% HP Recovery during Wild release/Item Slot Machine

All of the above have some ability to increase your teams survivability against tough groups of enemies or bosses. Alpaca and Princess combined are effective a 20% HP increase on their own for only 2 deployment points. Silver Fox and Raccoon are somewhat optional depending on if you plan on using items heavily or not. Grey Wolf is somewhat expensive to deploy and her debuff doesn't last long, but she uses it pretty frequently so it is a decent 20% reduction most of the time, combined with your 20% increase to effective health from Alpaca and Princess.

Offense/Attack Power

Rockhopper Penguin (1): +3% Attack
Painted Wolf (4): +12% Attack for 10s after Just Dodge
Hippopotamus (2): +8% Impact Power

All of the above are good for buffing damage output, though Painted Wolf's passive needs a little extra push in the form of a dodge to get the most out of her. 3% from Iwabee isn't much but she at least only costs 1 point to deploy and can be told to stay back to keep her passive in play. Hippo's passive won't be very useful against most bosses, but during regular floors it can come in handy.

Healing

Crested Ibis (2): Primary attack heals nearby allies for about 2% of their maximum HP
Prairie Dog (2): Consuming Japari Buns directly also heals all other deployed allies
Silver Fox (3): +10% HP Recovery from Items
Campo Flicker (2): Primary attack can create a yellow circle which slowly heals allies inside it
Raccoon (2): +20% HP Recovery rate during Wild Release, Can steal healing orbs from enemies
Another Serval (10): Heals all allies fully when defeated, revives Serval if Serval is defeated

All of the above have some ability to heal or some effect on healing to some degree. Toki and Campo can't heal a lot quickly, but having their healing there combined with other sources of healing or damage reduction can help increase the amount of damage your team can soak. Prairie Dog is situational if you have a huge surplus of Japari Buns or happen to have her out for her attacks. Silver Fox is all-around useful in combat with a good passive. Raccoon's passive is more useful with the Perfect Amulet as it causes all deployed Friends to heal faster as well, but overall its not a landslide increase. Another Serval is actually rarely defeated in combat due to her insane combat ability, so you shouldn't rely on her dying to save everyone.

Direct Combat/Frontline

Hippopotamus (2): Anti-Melee specialist, strong versus melee only enemies, moderate combat ability
Jaguar (3): Jump-attacker, tends to target top exposed weakpoints, moderate combat ability
Moose (5): Bruiser, extremely high health, hard to knock over, high combat ability
Lion (5): Primarily ranged attacker, buffs when nearby Friends are hurt/when you Just Dodge, high combat ability
Northern White-Faced Owl (4): Highly Mobile, hard for enemies to follow, good dodge capability, moderate combat ability
Eurasian Eagle Owl (4): Same as Northern White-Faced Owl
Grey Wolf (3): Debuffs enemy attack power, low-to-moderate combat ability
Reticulated Giraffe (3): Wide area attack, low-to-moderate combat ability
Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey (4): Sniper, Weakpoint Specialist, strong versus enemies with weakpoints anywhere on the body, weak versus no weakpoint enemies, high combat ability
Brown Bear (6): Bruiser, Heavy Hitter, very high combat ability
Painted Wolf (4): Fast attacker, good on individual targets, good passive for damage output, high combat ability
Another Serval (10): Heavy Hitter, highly mobile, very difficult to kill, area attacks, extremely high combat ability

All of the above, in short, are useful in a role for directly combatting the enemy. If you want a team of friends that can kick in heads, pick from this list. I won't go into further detail here as that would be worthy of its own section.

Logistical/Item Support

Sand Cat (2): Periodically digs up free items if left unthreatened
Prairie Dog (2): Consuming Japari Buns directly also heals all other deployed allies
Humboldt Penguin (3): Defeated enemies have +15% chance to drop a Japari Bun
Silver Fox (3): All HP recovery items heal +10% more HP on use
Grey Wolf (3): Contents of a Container are shown overhead before opening
Raccoon (2): Periodically steals items from the drop table of the enemy she attacks
Fennec (2): All buff medicines last +10% longer

All of the above have something to do with stretching your items longer or getting more of them during combat. Items are a central part of the game, so having them on hand and making them last longer when needed is a good play.

Short Note on Traps and Counters

I thought it might be good to just list the trap types here and who counters them for quick reference.

Mud Trap

Effects: Friends standing within cannot sprint, jump, or dodge, and have greatly reduced movement speed.
Counters: Small-Clawed Otter (1 DP)

Fire Trap

Effects: Friends standing within take constant damage over time to a minimum of 1 HP until removed from the trap.
Counters: Sand Cat (2 DP)

Ice Trap

Efffects: Friends standing within will rapidly drain stamina.
Counters: Emperor Penguin (2 DP)

Needle/Spike Trap

Effects: Friends making contact with the trap take a large amount of damage (approximately 20-25% of their maximum HP) to a minimum of 1 HP.
Counters: Campo Flicker (2 DP)

Cellin Trap

Effects: Friends making contact with the trap causes 10 cellins to be spawned nearby, after which the trap is removed.
Counters: Lithograph of Clearance will remove cellin traps in addition to all other traps

Poison Trap

Effects: Friends making contact with the trap are given a poison debuff which deals a sizable amount of damage over a long time to a minimum of 1 HP. If immune to poison when contacted, the trap is removed.
Counters: Antidote, Lithograph of Clearance

Whirlwind Trap

Effects: Friends making contact with the trap are teleported to a random location within the floor. While friends are separated from you, their passives have no effect and a [?] appears over their portrait. Friends will automatically try to path their way back to you and will resume following you once they come within a short distance. Whirlwind traps are removed a short time after a friend contacts them, but this timer will reset if another friend falls into it before it disappears.
Counters: Megaton Coin

[Skeleton Man]

tanks u for reading it

[Goti Sánchez [ESP]]

thank you for the guide! is very useful!!

[Alatreon]

so, from what i understand, Punished Serval is just a damn mimic tear from elden ring lmfao

[I know where you are probably]

Thanks for the guide. Very useful for getting a clearer idea of what each friend does. While everyone is more or less clear ingame, being immune to water did not make senses to me since I tried using her and jumping into the water but still 'drown' and made no difference lol

[Okami Amaterasu]

Very useful guide, I never knew what Campo Flickers circles did lol

[ratio]

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