We're taking a look at how to make your buddy excited in Pokemon Go. Improving your Pokemon's mood is useful because you can earn a whole lot more hearts which will upgrade their ranking a lot faster. Upgrading your buddy's rank will unlock additional perks and bonuses which can be quite useful to you!
Getting your buddy excited is important because it doubles the amount of hearts you can receive in a day. Normally, you can earn ten hearts by completing daily activities. These are walking, giving your buddy a treat, playing, battling, taking a snapshot, and visiting a new place with them. If your buddy is excited, they will be able to earn double the amount of hearts for each of those activities!

Buddy Levels and Rankings

Each buddy level requires a specific amount of hearts, here's how they breakdown:
  • Level 1 (Good): 1 Heart
  • Level 2 (Great): 70 Hearts
  • Level 3 (Ultra): 150 Hearts
  • Level 4 (Best): 300 Hearts
When your buddy is not excited, you can only earn 10 hearts per day. If you're buddy is excited, however, they can earn 20! This will half the time of you getting to the Best Buddy level, which makes it worth it if you are trying min-max this sort of thing. Each buddy level adds additional perks you can earn:
  • Good Buddy: You can walk around with your buddy on the map and check out their profile page and view how they are feeling.
  • Great Buddy: Your buddy will sometimes help you out with catching a Pokemon during an encounter! They will also occasionally bring you an item while you are walking around.
  • Ultra Buddy: Your buddy will let you know about interesting places nearby, and they will bring you Souvenirs!
  • Best Buddy: Your buddy Pokemon will wear a Best Buddy Ribbon, and your buddy Pokemon can get a CP boost in combat as long as they are assigned as your buddy.

How to Get Your Buddy Excited in Pokemon Go

There's one guaranteed way to make your buddy excited, and that's to purchase a Poffin from the store for 100 gold. You can then feed this to your buddy Pokemon and it will fill up their food meter, get them excited, and their meter will be full for a longer period of time (6 hours reportedly). This is the guaranteed method to get them excited, the other methods listed here are a bit more experimental.

If you want to get your Buddy excited without having to use Poffins, you will need to get them to 32 Emotion Points. To do this, you can do the following activities which will gain you points each time you do them. Some of these activities have a 30 minute cooldown, so you will need to wait to do them again for the points.

EP Decay

If you don't engage in an activity with your buddy for 30 minutes your buddy will lose 1 EP every half hour. You don't have to gain a point for it to count towards this, you'll just need to make sure to engage in some activity during that period of time.

30 Minute Cooldown Activities (1 EP Each)

  • Feed Your Buddy
  • Play With Your Buddy
  • Take a Snapshot With Your Buddy
  • Battle a Gym
  • Battle in a Raid
  • Any Team Rocket Battle
  • Battle a Team Leader
  • PvP Battle
  • Visit a New Location (Spin a PokeStop or Gym)

No Cooldown Activities (3 EP Each)

Here's a list you can do repeatedly to gain emotion points.
  • Walk 2km
  • Open a Present (Your Buddy needs to be at Great Buddy status)
  • Open a Souvenir (Your Buddy needs to be at Ultra Buddy status)
  • Visit a Location Your Buddy Found (Your Buddy needs to be at Great Buddy status)