Best Characters to Bring With You in Hello Kitty Island Adventure

Becoming friends with island residents is at the core of Hello Kitty Island Adventure’s core gameplay loop. It’s necessary to unlock new quests and upgrade the various crafting and cooking stations on the island. You can also hang out with island residents once your friendship with them is high enough. However, in addition to progress and camaraderie, friendships in Island Adventure can also unlock unique character abilities. You can harness these abilities when hanging out with the character possessing it. As such, certain characters in Hello Kitty Island Adventure can make your overall experience a lot smoother- if you know when to hang out with them. The following is a list of the best characters to bring with you in Hello Kitty Island Adventure, in no particular order, and when you should be hanging out with them.

Best Characters to Bring With You in Hello Kitty Island Adventure

As mentioned above, each character in Hello Kitty Island Adventure provides unique bonuses to the player once their friendship level is high enough. Abilities range from making yourself harder to detect by critters, to enhancing your jump height. The range of abilities is surprisingly wide. With so many to choose from, there’s bound to be some that are better than others. Even if they all serve a purpose, there are key abilities in Island Adventure that are simply too practical not to prioritize. For this reason, you might want to consider focusing on unlocking these first.

Add Seconds on the Clock with Pompompurin

Island challenges are simple enough until you reach their gold rank difficulty. Especially on land, these races are absolutely impossible under normal circumstances. While Pochacco’s speed boost ability can certainly come in handy, it still won’t help against the gold-rank timer. The secret to beating gold rank challenges isn’t so much about being faster as it is changing the rules. Pompompurin’s Slow & Steady ability makes the impossible possible. It adds five seconds to the timer of any island challenge! Slow & Steady is unlocked after reaching level 12 with Pompompurin, which may take some time to do. However, it’s essential to earn the gold trophies from all the challenges. Be aware, you’ll have to consume a Speedy Walking Potion in addition to bringing Pompompurin with you to have a decent shot at doing so.

Pompompurin’s other ability, Pudding Pants, isn’t as important, but still has convenient uses. Pudding Pants is unlocked at level 5, and increases the height of your jump. Further improving your relationship with Pompompurin will make it more effective. Don’t underestimate the extra height on your jumps. It’s easier to leap across gaps or over the slowing pools of water during your challenges with it! Pudding Pants is a great supplemental ability to Slow & Steady, and together make Pompompurin the unlikely champion of island challenges. Bring him along with you to wrap those up quickly.

Swim Like a Fish with Hangyodon

Let’s face it. Swimming underwater in Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a drag. It’s slow, it uses too much stamina, and you’re constantly pausing whatever you’re doing to swim back up for air. Even with the Mermaid Outfit equipped, swimming is a grueling effort exacerbated by the massive size of the Rainbow Reef. The pace of swimming makes us want to tear our hair out, but there is a solution! Getting your friendship with Hangyodon up to level five will unlock his Speed Swimmer ability. Speed Swimmer increases your swimming both on the surface and underwater by 25%. At level 9, this bonus is increased to 50%, and at level 13, it doubles to 100%! This effect doesn’t stack with the Mermaid Outfit, but it completely surpasses it at higher levels. Hanging out with Hangyodon with Speed Swimmer active completely trivializes the underwater exploration of Rainbow Reef. Underwater challenges become walks in the park. Collecting materials and items is painless!

Hangyodon’s other ability, Fish Friend, doesn’t synergize with Speed Swimmer, but is worth knowing about. It increases the likelihood of finding rare fish by 25%. If you’re trying to complete your collection of all the fish in every area, Hangyodon might be able to tweak the odds in your favor. Unfortunately, Fish Friend doesn’t get stronger at later friendship levels. A static 25% increase is all you’re going to get. Regardless, Speed Swimmer is the obvious powerhouse ability here. Rush your friendship with Hangyodon as soon as possible, so you can make your time in the Rainbow Reef a deep sea diving adventure instead of a doggy-paddling session.

Maximize Friendship Points With Hello Kitty

The titular character of Island Adventure is by far the most useful to hang out with. Hello Kitty’s Sous Chef ability is top tier, and an early godsend. At a friendship level of two, Hello Kitty will grant you a 25% chance to create an additional food item whenever you use a cooking station. This effect applies to every individual item you cook. For example, if you bulk craft eight Tofu Breads while hanging out with Hello Kitty, each of those Tofu Breads has a 1-in-4 chance of producing another one. Every Sous Chef upgrade on Hello Kitty’s friendship reward track increases the chance of this activating by an additional 25%, reaching 100% activation rate at friendship level 21. Especially early-on, Hello Kitty’s first ability makes gift giving much easier. Your daily limit of materials can sometimes cause a bottleneck in progressing friendships. Sous Chef overcomes this limitation by effectively giving you two days’ worth of cooking for the cost of one day’s worth of materials whenever it activates.

Hello Kitty’s second ability, Everyone’s Friend, elevates her usefulness even higher. Unlocked at friendship level 12, Everyone’s Friend increases the friendship value of gifts by 10%! Understandably, this doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things. Keep in mind, the amount of friendship points you need for level-ups varies from character to character. This ability has a cumulative effect if used often. If done correctly, each level-up to an NPC’s friendship can begin to need one or two fewer gifts. Again, this doesn’t sound like much, but in the case of Hello Kitty Island Adventure, one less gift can mean one less real-world day before unlocking a new quest, or useful ability. It also means fewer gifts to create, and therefore fewer materials you’ll have to spend. Less waiting, less spending, and more progress makes Hello Kitty’s combination of abilities difficult to be without.

Always Hang Out With Someone, Anyone

These are the best characters to bring with you in Hello Kitty Island Adventure, but everyone on the island has their use. If you want more items from NPCs, My Melody’s Big Smile can convince them to give you one extra! Tuxedosam’s Negotiator ability has a chance to give you a 2-for-1 bonus when purchasing items from any store! Keroppi’s Critter Friend and Critter Calmer abilities make it easier to catch the endemic life on the island! The best character to bring with you is the one that gives you the convenience or advantage you’re looking for. The ones mentioned above are simply more powerful and useful overall.

With a limit to how many gifts they receive in a day, it may be some time before you can unlock some of these abilities. Check out our guide on When the Day Resets in Hello Kitty Island Adventureto maximize your daily interactions. Island visitors might not have special abilities, but they do give you daily items! To ensure you have the space to keep them around, read about How to Expand Visitor Cabins in Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is available now on iOS, Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, and PC.