How to Adopt a Fren Pet

The Base L2 is home to more than a few apps that you can’t find on any other chain. In the gaming world, one project that's been finding some traction is Fren Pet. 

Fren Pet is a heavily financialized virtual pet simulator that relies on the same Privy embedded wallet + progressive web app (PWA) stack that friend.tech popularized. As such, anyone can readily download the game to their phone and quickly create and sign in with a wallet that’s tied to their email, Google, or Apple accounts. 

Simple onboarding combined with a passive simulator style makes the project a great entry point for people who want to explore crypto gaming in a relaxed, non-intensive manner. If you haven’t tried it before, read on to learn the basics and get started. 

The Fren Pet 101

Pets are minted using the project’s native $FP tokens, which can be purchased in-app through the “Swap” interface under the “Rewards” tab. The game then involves feeding pets to prevent their Time of Death (TOD) 😬, with each food type affecting TOD and granting score points differently. 

Below the food options, the game offers an achievements hub for tracking "pet milestones," an arcade for playing mini-games for $FP bets, and a shop for items like shields and insurance. Players can also engage in a bonk attack feature, where they challenge higher-level pets in a bid to earn more score points. Simply search through the “Leaderboard” tab and press the “BONK” button next to your selected target to try. 

Earning in Fren Pet

You can earn ETH and $FP for playing Fren Pet. The main ways to earn in the game today are as follows:

• 👄 Referral rewards — Share your referral code to invite others to the game, and then earn 10% on any $FP tokens they spend (the other 90% are burned). You can find your code in the “Account” interface of the “Rewards” tab.
• 🔥 Burn pet score — In the “Rewards” interface of the tab, you can burn your pet’s current points score in exchange for the ETH associated with your score. Doing so will reset that pet’s score back to zero. 
• 🪙 pGOLD — This non-tradable onchain point system is currently awarded weekly to pets based on players' in-game actions and contributions. It gets burned when pets die. These points will eventually offer users a claim on distributions from the “players treasury,” which accrues 10 $FP every time a player joins Fren Pet. 
• 🥕 Carrots — At the moment, every living pet is earning 0.0002 Carrots per second or just over 17 Carrots per day. It’s not clear yet how these will be used, though there’s already a “Carrot Swap” interface available in the arcade. It appears poised to be a trading system of some sort. 

Getting Started

If you haven’t already, you can go to frenpet.xyz on your mobile device to download the app. Then, choose your preferred method to create an account and sign in, at which point you’ll need an invite code.

After this, it’ll be time to bridge in ETH to your new Fren Pet wallet on the Base L2. Copy your address from the “Account” interface to start the deposit process. If you have a Coinbase account, you can toggle the network to “Base” to bridge in straight from there, or there’s the official Base bridge or 3rd-party protocols like Hop. 

Wait for your ETH to arrive in your Fren Pet wallet, then you’ll be ready to mint your first pet in the “My pet” tab. This costs 10 $FP, or roughly 0.0022 ETH right now, so first head over to the “Rewards” button and then click on the “Swap” interface to trade into (or later out of) $FP as needed. 

Once your first pet is alive, keep a close eye on the TOD tracker in the upper-left corner of the “My pet” page. If this timer hits zero, your pet can die (if you don’t enter it into hibernation), and its accrued pGOLD will be burned, and then you’ll have to mint a new pet to get back in the game. 

Zooming Out

Fren Pet is an experimental indie game on Base. The devs are iterating fast and adding in new stuff all the time, so expect the project to keep evolving from here. 

The creators are currently working on a Fren Pet World expansion, which will involve players growing their land plots by battling pets and beyond. The expansion is slated for release next year; in the meantime, the main focus for players will be the title's Season 1 gameplay, which will see some 10 million pGOLD distributed. 

A basic strategy for now, then, for players who want to stay involved? Mint and keep a pet alive this season to stack score points, pGOLD, and Carrots in preparation for the launch of Fren Pet World. If you want to play long-term on a budget, teas, which only grant 1 score point but +3 days of TOD, will be your friend!