A good daily routine takes about 20–30 minutes: collect the Wishing Fountain donation, check the Daily Specials at Fresh Kingdom and Where & Wear, clear every thought bubble, feed and pat your Miis, accept a minigame or two and peek at any dreams in the evening. Shops refresh at 6 AM, T&C Reno’s special changes every Monday and the Marketplace switches stock three times a day.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream runs on your console’s real clock, which means the island keeps living while you’re away. Miis get hungry, new problems pop up and the shops roll over to new stock every morning. You don’t need hours a day to keep up, but a short, regular routine makes a huge difference to how quickly your residents level up and how fast new buildings and Wishes arrive.
Below is a printable-style checklist you can tick off as you play, followed by an explanation of each task and the reset times worth remembering.
Tick tasks off as you go. Your progress is saved in this browser, and the Reset button clears the list for tomorrow.
Once per day, your residents toss coins into the Wishing Fountain in your name, and you can pick them up with a quick visit. The amount isn’t fixed: it grows with the number of Miis on your island and with how happy they are, so a busy, cheerful island pays noticeably more than a small or neglected one. It takes less than a minute, which makes it the easiest first stop of every session.
Fresh Kingdom Food Mart offers four Daily Specials, and Where & Wear rotates its own Daily Specials tab. Both refresh at 6 AM local time. The rest of each shop’s catalogue stays the same, so the specials page is the only part you need to scan. Anything you buy from a special is added to your collection, and you can buy it again later even after the special has rotated out.
New dishes are worth picking up whenever you can afford them. Every Mii has a favourite food and a list of dislikes, and the only way to discover them is to try different meals, so a bigger menu makes that much easier.
Press Y to open the resident menu. A number on the icon shows how many Miis need attention, and every resident with a squiggly bubble has a problem waiting. Yellow bubbles are requests for food, clothes, gifts or decor, orange bubbles are about friendships and social situations, and pink bubbles mean romance. Selecting a Mii in this menu also warps you straight to them, wherever they are on the island. Aim to bring that counter down to zero before you finish.
Hungry Miis will tell you they want a meal. Any dish you own completes the request, but foods a Mii loves give much better results, while foods they dislike can actually lower their happiness. A Mii’s favourite food is highlighted in their profile once you’ve found it. Head pats are free, take seconds and always give a small boost, so give every resident one per visit.
When a Mii invites you to play, accept. Winning earns a prize box with treasures or other items, and even a loss usually hands you something. Treasures are useful in three ways: as gifts that make Miis happy, as cash at the Rite Price Pawn Shop and as entries in your treasure collection.
Everything you do for your residents feeds into Warm Fuzzies. Pour them into the Wishing Fountain to raise its rank; each rank-up grants a Wish, which you spend on new goods, Little Quirks, decorations, Palette House categories and travel tickets. Spending Wishes as soon as you have them keeps new content flowing, though it’s worth saving a few when a new season is about to start so you can grab seasonal items straight away.
If your island still has space, adding a new resident is one of the best long-term investments. More Miis mean more conversations, more requests, more dreams and a bigger fountain donation, and many buildings only unlock at population milestones. The island can hold up to 70 Miis, so there’s plenty of room to grow gradually. You can see which buildings depend on population in our guide to all buildings and shops.
| What | How often | When |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh Kingdom Daily Specials | Daily | 6 AM local time |
| Where & Wear Daily Specials | Daily | 6 AM local time |
| T&C Reno Weekly Special | Weekly | Monday, 6 AM |
| Marketplace | Three shifts a day | Morning 5:00–11:30, afternoon 11:30–17:00, night 17:00–5:00 |
| Wishing Fountain donation | Daily | Collect once per day |
| MNN news | Daily | One new report per day |
The Marketplace is the one shop that changes during the day. Its morning and afternoon shifts usually feature a discounted item, while the night market sells a mystery bag of random goods. Dropping by at different times of day can turn up different deals.
Later in the evening, keep an eye out for purple bubbles with “Zzz” above sleeping residents. Tapping one lets you peek into that Mii’s dream, and dreams end with a small reward. The MNN news station also airs one new report per day, which is a quick way to catch events you missed while you were away.
It’s tempting to skip ahead to the next shop refresh by changing your console’s time, but the game punishes it. Shop refreshes, Mii hunger and fountain donations pause for roughly 24 hours, and changing the clock again restarts that wait.
Once or twice a day is plenty, and if you’re waiting for the next shop refresh, there are free life-sim games to play on our home page. Living the Dream is designed for short, regular check-ins rather than marathon sessions, and a steady routine is what keeps your island growing. New to the game? Start with our beginner’s guide, then come back to this checklist once your first few residents have moved in.
Fresh Kingdom and Where & Wear refresh their Daily Specials at 6 AM local time. T&C Reno changes its Weekly Special every Monday at 6 AM.
Once per day. The amount depends on how many Miis live on your island and how happy they are.
About 20–30 minutes once or twice a day is enough to clear bubbles, feed residents and keep shops and Wishes moving.
Nothing is lost permanently. Your Miis may be hungrier and have more problems waiting, but you can catch up during your next session.