What determines friendship between two villagers?

[Elov]

I've always been curious about this. Are friendship between villagers completely random? Does personalities play a part in villager friendship? Do villager conversations between one another raise their friendship? Do villagers request you to deliver presents only to their closest friends or is it completely random?

An example of close friendship:
Zucker always mentions how Muffy and Hamlet are such good friends.
Hamlet has requested me to go fetch Muffy and bring her to his house multiple times.
They visit one another when it's their birthday.

How did these two become such good friends?

Another example that confuses me...
If I talk to Zell a bunch of times he'll request time by himself so he can think.
When I spy on what he's thinking about he always talks about what flowers he should get for Fauna.
And he specifically said: My first choice is Fauna, my second choice is Opal.

edit screenshots:

^ Taken after Diana test

What caused this list? Fauna just moved into my town, and I've never seen her talk to Zell before. I've only seen them request a favor to deliver something to one another once. So there hasn't been much interaction between the two and yet he talks about her a lot. Is all this completely random? I got him in and out of the thought process and the list of girls he likes hasn't changed.

 

[Elov]

So I did a quick test between Zell and Diana. I trapped them together and waited so they would have to talk to one another. After 5 or so times of them speaking I checked to see if she appeared on Zell's little list. Fauna and Opal were still number one and two. So maybe villagers talking doesn't play a role on friendship levels.

Might do another test with delivering items to villagers and see if that has an impact.

Edit: So Zell asked me to deliver something to Opal. Delivered it, no impact on his list. Fauna's friendship with him must be pretty high. I might try a few more deliveries involving Opal and see if it changes.

^After Opal test

Looks like Zell's list is the only way for me to determine the status of friendships. Makes me wish I had more smug villagers in town. :/

 

[Dewy]

I'm pretty sure there is (technically) no such thing as "friendship between villagers."

It's just dependent on their personality types, for example: smug villagers like the ladies and get along especially well with normal villagers and pretty well with snooties too. So if Fauna moved out and a new normal moved in, that new normal would likely be mentioned in that bit of Zell's dialogue (even if he has never spent any time with said new normal). They don't need to spend more time with each other or talk more or anything, it is just already programmed into the game that certain personalities naturally get along.

When it comes to asking you to deliver presents or bring a certain villager over, I'm pretty sure that's more or less just random. And probably a coincidence when the same villager is asked for several times. Although this may be partially or wholly based on their personalities as well. (i.e.: normals get along well with other normals, uchis get along well with lazies, peppies and snooties/crankies don't get along super well, etc.)

Also, when two villagers live near each other they always seem to be spending time together. It just seems this way because of close proximity though ~


This is what I've always thought anyways! Don't know how true it is ^^
animalcrossing.wikia mentions things like this on its pages about personalities (example on lazy page: "They sometimes get cranky or sad when talking to jock villagers. Sometimes they will make peppy, snooty, or jock villagers angry."), so I always assumed this is sort of how it works

 

[visibleghost]

I think it depends on their personality..? I'm not 100% sure but I've kind of noticed that in my town and read it online somewhere lol

 

[Elov]

I'm pretty sure there is (technically) no such thing as "friendship between villagers."

It's just dependent on their personality types, for example: smug villagers like the ladies and get along especially well with normal villagers and pretty well with snooties too. So if Fauna moved out and a new normal moved in, that new normal would likely be mentioned in that bit of Zell's dialogue (even if he has never spent any time with said new normal). They don't need to spend more time with each other or talk more or anything, it is just already programmed into the game that certain personalities naturally get along.

When it comes to asking you to deliver presents or bring a certain villager over, I'm pretty sure that's more or less just random. And probably a coincidence when the same villager is asked for several times. Although this may be partially or wholly based on their personalities as well. (i.e.: normals get along well with other normals, uchis get along well with lazies, peppies and snooties/crankies don't get along super well, etc.)

Also, when two villagers live near each other they always seem to be spending time together. It just seems this way because of close proximity though ~


This is what I've always thought anyways! Don't know how true it is ^^
animalcrossing.wikia mentions things like this on its pages about personalities (example on lazy page: "They sometimes get cranky or sad when talking to jock villagers. Sometimes they will make peppy, snooty, or jock villagers angry."), so I always assumed this is sort of how it works

That was really informative. ^^ I knew personality played some roles but I always thought there was other variables in play as well. But maybe it is all just random. Regardless I'm going to still attempt to try out a few things and see if there's an impact.