the new guide to getting free sapphires/memberships on animal jam in 2023!
i love playing animal jam. some say i love playing animal jam too much! but what i don't love is spending money to do something in a game when i can do the exact same thing for free.
in fact, i've made it my personal goal to enjoy both versions of animal jam (classic and play wild) as much as i possibly can without spending a single penny.
some people are unaware of the fact that animal jam play wild memberships apply to both ajpw and aj classic, so i'm gonna walk you through how to get and maintain a free ajpw membership using some easy peasy methods!
click the "read more" thingie if you're interested :)
background information
in ajpw, you can buy a month-long membership for 600 sapphires in the sapphire shop located in jamaa township.
you can also buy a den item called a "my shop" there for 100 sapphires.
a shop lets you sell items for sapphires or gems. keep in mind, however, that if you're a nonmember, there's a fee taken out of any sales you make.
a shop is ideally going to be the first thing you purchase once you get 100 sapphires!
getting the initial 100 sapphires
getting your first 100 sapphires can take some time, but there are a lot of ways to speed that process up!
logging into ajpw every day
on most days, you have 3 possibilities when spinning the wheel: gems, 5 sapphires, or an item.
on wednesdays, the possibilities change to 5 sapphires, 10 sapphires, or 20 sapphires. getting a 20 sapphire spin on a wednesday can really help you out!
the possibilities also change on mondays: gems, 5 sapphires, or a clothing/den item with a rare tag.
in the beginning, it's really important to log in as many days as you can, especially because you can get 10 sapphires every month just by logging in for 15 total days (depending on the number of days in the month).
one more thing to mention about daily logins: a "new day" in ajpw might turn over at a weird time for you, depending on your timezone. i'm honestly not really sure what timezone ajpw is in, but i know that a new day in ajpw turns over at 8:00 PM EST for me.
it can be really helpful to know what time a new ajpw day turns over for you, especially if you're busy throughout the day and need to plan out when you can log in to get your daily reward.
if you don't want to manually figure it out by guessing what time a new ajpw day turns over for you, there's another easy way! you can join the unofficial animal jam community discord server (this isn't an ad i swear LMAO), and once you're verified in that server, you can check the #game-updates channel. that discord server is really good at posting about ingame updates right when they go out, so you can scroll through the #game-updates channel and look at the time stamps of messages to determine when a new day turns over for you. here's a link to the discord server if that's how you want to do it:
A community for Animal Jam Classic and Animal Jam (Play Wild). Chat, trade, share art, and jam! | 8312 members
(let me know if there's any problems with that invite link, i'm pretty sure i got it to work tho!)
playing minigames
if you open the minigames screen, you'll notice that there's a sapphire icon on the right side of the popup.
clicking that will show you your progress in every minigame.
there are 3 gift boxes of rewards for playing each minigame. the first gift box gives you 5 sapphires, the second gives you 10, and the third gives you 15.
touch tank is definitely the easiest minigame to beat first. after that, it kind of depends upon your own preferences? i personally love overflow, fast foodies, and jamaa derby!
leveling up, gem tree, & dig sites
these three ways of getting sapphires only give you small amounts, so i'm grouping them together!
once you join a pack in ajpw, you have access to the alpha hideout and pack hideout.
every day, going to your pack hideout gives you exp towards leveling up (i don't think going to your alpha hideout gives you exp though, so make sure it's the pack hideout). leveling up can give you rewards, including small amounts of sapphires! it's a good passive way to earn a couple sapphires here and there and, in case you were curious, here's a link to all the level-up rewards!
at your pack hideout, you can also find a gem tree, which looks like this:
gem trees are in different locations based on which hideout your pack has. the image above was taken in the greely pack hideout, but every hideout has a gem tree!
if you click on the gem tree, you can either earn gems or, more uncommonly, small amounts of sapphires. the gem tree replenishes every hour, so try to click it as often as you can!
another way to earn a few sapphires is to click on golden shovel dig sites:
fun fact, there's always at least one golden shovel dig site on the ajpw map at all times. and you can tell if the land you entered has a dig site in it by listening for a sound effect that'll play right when you enter it. i can't really describe the sound effect, but it's like, magical? idk. you'll know it when you hear it! you might want to turn down the music volume in your ingame settings though if you want to hear it better.
the sound effect makes it really easy to find dig sites- you can just go to random areas of the map and listen for it! this is what it'll look like once you find a dig site and click on it:
sapphires are going to show up as a 2 by 2 square on the grid.
sapphire drops
the final way to earn sapphires in ajpw that i'm going to talk about is sapphire drops. sometimes when you're roaming around, you might get a popup like this at the top of your screen:
that means that someone used a super sapphire potion (which can be bought in the phantom dimension for 3500 phantom tokens), and if you walk around a bit, you'll find a big sapphire on the ground like this:
click on it!! you'll get 3 free sapphires!!
(super sapphire potion images are from the ajpw fandom wiki!)
getting the next 600 sapphires
now that you have a shop, you're going to want to sell as much as you can to get the next 600 sapphires. you can sell pretty much anything, but here's some of my favorite things to sell!
before i go into this though, i want to talk about a REALLY important part of selling your items: the shop explorer!
when selling items, even as a nonmember, you have the ability to list your item in the shop explorer.
clicking that toggle will put your item in the shop explorer located in coral canyons.
this means that anybody who wants your item can search for it and see a list of everybody selling that item.
once you list something in the shop explorer, it's there for 3 days. once the 3 days runs out, your item is no longer in the shop explorer, but it's still in your shop in your den. you can relist an item in the shop explorer by relisting it in your shop and clicking the toggle again.
now here's my favorite things to sell!
rare plushies
i sell my rare plushies really cheap so they sell faster, but honestly, they're super easy to get, so selling them for 5 sapphires each really isn't a waste at all!
to get rare plushies, you're going to need "the superclaw" which can be bought in the sapphire shop for 100 sapphires...BUT DON'T BUY IT.
the great thing about the superclaw is that, if you know someone who has one in their den, you can go to their den and use theirs! my den is always open with a superclaw for anyone to use :) my username is jambusaur and the superclaw is directly left of where you spawn in.
the superclaw is very simple to play, but it can get boring pretty quickly. that's why i made an autoclicker script that i can run overnight using autohotkey! if you're interested in using something like that for yourself, dm me and i'll walk you through making one :) fair warning though, you're going to need to download two things (autohotkey and a specific mouse coordinates finder), but i've been using those two things for years and they haven't given me any trouble or viruses or whatever!
after you've played the superclaw for a while, you might've gotten lucky and found a rare phantom plushie!
these guys sell for a bit more than a normal rare plushie! i usually sell them for 22 sapphires, but you're probably going to want to check the shop explorer in coral canyons before you list them, just to make sure that you're selling them for a reasonable price.
treasure chest items
after doing some golden shovel dig sites, you've probably gotten a couple treasure chests. placing them in your den and clicking on them will give you an item.
these items are usually not really worth much, but some of them can be sold for decent amounts of sapphires. the best way to check if you should sell a treasure chest item is by checking the shop explorer in coral canyons!
after doing these things for a while, you should eventually get 600 sapphires to buy a membership! WOOOO! with that membership, you'll now get daily rewards of 5 sapphires, you'll be able to open pack chest rewards, you'll be able to send pets on expeditions, and much more.
pet expeditions are a big topic on their own, so i'm not going to explain them here, but i'll update this post if i ever end up making a pet expedition guide!
now that you have a membership, you might be wondering, how can you earn enough sapphires monthly to keep that membership?
it's pretty much the same process as getting the first 600 sapphires! selling items in your shop will be easier though because you won't get the "nonmember tax" taken out.
that's all that i have for now! if you have any other questions or if you think i missed something important, feel free to dm me or send an ask in. thank you so much for reading through this post, and thank you even more for waiting for this post to come out!
