Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Shortly after Esther joins your party, you will be able to recruit Familiars that you defeat in battle. Sometimes when you defeat one, it will fall to the ground with hearts. Switch to Esther and choose the Serenade song (it will automatically be selected with the correct target, so you can just press a bunch), and you will recruit the Familiar. After the battle is over, you'll have the chance to confirm recruiting them and change their name if you wish.

However. getting to 250 recruited will be a HUGE grind, so be ready! Here are a few tips:

- Every unique Familiar you have ever had at one point counts towards this. If you evolve Mitey into Mighty Mite, you'll still have a heart mark for Mitey. Therefore, 1 first form Familiar can count for up to 3 towards your total.
- Be patient. Even with the Jack of Hearts merit award which helps your chances of recruiting, all Familiar have a naturally low chance of being recruited. Sometimes you'll get one the first time you see it, sometimes you won't get it once in 40 tries.
- Be careful of spamming the attack button or AoEs. If you or your teammate defeat a Familiar and it falls down with hearts, but someone activates an AoE immediately after, it will die. You can also accidentally hit it again after it has hearts, killing it and losing your chance. Yes, your teammates can ruin it for you. Chalk it up to bad luck and keep trying.
- Any time you come to a new area, be sure to fight a lot to at least see every type of Familiar available. Even if they're too strong to farm, you want to get them into your database so you can look them up later to see where specific Familiar spawn.
- Also when you come to a new area with new Familiars, check their drops in the database and find out who drops evolution items (drops and the shards for upgrading to super drops). Make sure you farm at least enough of each type to cover all Familiars you're currently working on, or else you may find yourself stuck with a bunch of Familiars ready to evolve and no items.
- If you evolve a Familiar into one you've never encountered in battle, check its stats in the database. You may find that it appears in an area you've never explored - there's a lot of different sections of the ocean that you may never have gone to, as well as little groups of side islands that have their own unique Familiars. If their spawn area is ???, then either they spawn in an unlisted area, an area you haven't gotten to yet, or just do not spawn in the wild.
- It goes without saying that you should recruit every Familiar you possibly can, but if possible, always try to get 2 of the second form (or first form if you can't find the second form). There's 2 reasons for this: 1. Not all Familiars are actually found on the field, and you need to evolve them yourself, and 2. 3rd form Familiars have a very low chance of being recruited at all. Keeping 2 of any Familiar ensures you'll have the option to manually evolve the 3rd forms yourself if you need to.
- You shouldn't actually need to use all 3 Familiars on any character to fight. If you find you are not, always fill the extra spaces with spare Familiars to level up and evolve for your database. This will save you a lot of time at the end when you're filling in holes towards 250. You have space to hold 3 other Familiars that do not gain exp (6 spaces later on), so use those slots for other Familiars you want to level too.
- There are a few extra Familiars that you get for free that count towards the 250 to make it a little easier on you. You receive them in the form of tickets, which you can redeem at the Temple of Trials once the Temple of Trials Tournament opens. You can get 1 from reaching S rank in the Tournament, 2 via casino rewards (25,000 tickets for Idler, and 99,999 tickets for Gold Tin-man), and all DLC Familiars (gold Hurly, Draggle, etc) count as well. These all evolve, so you can count each of them as 3 Familiars.
- Once you beat the game, new rare golden Familiars will appear in every dungeon (usually near the back). They all drop new super rare materials, and they can be recruited and evolved as normal.
- If you have finished everything else and still don't have the 250, you can use Guardian of the World for experience grinding to level up your Familiars for evolution. He gives something around 21,000 exp, and can be killed with minimal effort in under 5 minutes. See King of the World for more info.