Snacks are items that can be used to level up primary spirits through artificially increasing their EXP and are almost always found in Adventure Mode: World of Light. It's way faster than using the spirits in battles and leaving them at the Gym, but Snacks aren't very common and can be slightly hard to get your hands on, especially if you don't play much Adventure Mode or don't have a good spirit team (which makes it considerably easier to beat opponents even if they yield less rewards). They are also less SP efficient than Cores.
To feed a spirit Snacks and level them up, you must either access the Level Up menu from either the Collection tab in the Spirits menu or in the Manage Spirits tab in the World of Light menu, or by pressing L when hovering above the primary spirit in the Team Setup or Party tabs. When inside the menu, you will be able to select a primary spirit that isn't already at level 99. Upon selecting it, a window with two options opens up: either levelling up the spirit through Snacks or Cores. Select Snacks to use them to upgrade your spirit.
Inside the Upgrade through Snacks menu, you can see all three different Snack types and how many of each you have. These three types are:
- Snack (S): Gives the spirit 250 EXP. They are green in color and are the smallest in size.
- Snack (M): Gives the spirit 1000 EXP. They are yellow in color.
- Snack (L): Gives the spirit 5000 EXP. They are red in color and are the largest in size.
To feed the spirit and upgrade it, you must hover over one Snack type. Above the spirit's current level, there will be a number, indicating how many levels the spirit will gain if the spirit is fed that Snack. When you're sure about feeding that Snack to your spirit, press A. The Snack will be consumed and the spirit will gain the corresponding EXP. Every Snack also costs a certain amount of SP to feed the spirit: Snacks (S) cost 8 SP, Snacks (M) cost 32 SP and Snacks (L) cost 260 SP. So, considering how in S and M snacks, 8 SP equal 250 EXP points, Snacks (L) have the worst EXP/SP ratio, where if the 8 SP for 250 EXP conversion rate were true, they would cost 160 SP and not 260 SP. This expensive price is compensated by the fact that they're not so much rarer than Snacks (M), yet are five times more effective, meaning you'd need a lot of M Snacks to achieve what a single L can do and thus are worth using on your spirits.
If you were to upgrade a spirit to level 99 with more EXP than is required to upgrade it to the final level, the remaining EXP will be lost. Thus, it's not recommendable to use Snacks (L) once your spirit is at level 98, as a large quantity of the utterly ridiculous amount of EXP they give will be lost.
Snacks can be gotten from many different sources, namely:
- As a reward for high placement or progress in Tourneys and Classic Mode runs, the latter mostly at high intensity
- As an occasional reward from chests found in Adventure Mode: World of Light
- As a reward from difficult battles in Adventure Mode: World of Light or in the Spirit Board
- Bought in Shops in Adventure Mode: World of Light, each type of Snack at a set price
- S: 30 SP
- M: 100 SP
- L: 500 SP
- We can calculate what Snack has the best EXP/SP ratio when bought from shops as well. It's slightly different to before as here, to feed a spirit a purchased Snack (in this case a Snack (S)), you need to pay 30 SP to buy it and 8 SP to feed the spirit, meaning you spend 38 SP for 250 EXP. Snacks (S) go at a value of 6.58 EXP/SP, Ms go at a value of 7.58 and Ls go at the exact same value as S Snacks.
- Gotten in very small quantities in the Caves Explore location in Adventure Mode: World of Light and in very large quantities from the Jungle Explore location
In all these sources but the ones found in chests, which have fixed rewards, the more effective the Snack, the harder it is to find.