Was reminded of the pet's friendship stat in chat, so I'll explain it here.
All creatures you have befriended have a stat called Friendship. This is usually a number between 0 and 10, with an immediately befriended pet having an 6. Friendship stats can be affected by these cases:
- After a fight where they had an affect (feeling ignored or feeling a sense of teamwork)
- After meeting new people (feeling ignored/disliked or feeling welcome)
- After 4 rounds with none of these (feeling ignored or feeling a sense of teamwork)
These cases are all positive or negative. In positive cases, the stats is unaffected 50% of the time and is raised by 1, and vice versa by negative cases. Meeting Jorg was negative due to his rough demeanor, while Meeting Amalie was positive because of her cheery one. I haven't randomized these yet.
However, you can raise these stats manually by 1 point through by feeding them food or healing them with a different item (they will not eat food from their opposite element and gain more from their own - gingerbread is neutral, for example)
When a pet's friendship level is 0, it will feel utterly depressed. At that point, it feels you're beyond helping it and the only humane option is to let it go, which your character does.
There are three exceptions to this system: creatures that aren't (for the purposes of, and by the definitions of the world of, this game) true matter. This category includes only Rays, Sparks, and Viruses.
Whereas the normal system is much like a grading scale from A+ to F-, these pets have more of a Pass/Fail system. After the cases above, the cases are randomized between gain/loss or no change, but these are tallied individually, and if the negative is 2 points higher than the positive, you let it go like you would a 0 with the normal system.
