Making friends is hard but with Stardew Valley it doesn’t have to be! Uh… mostly… It’s time to become like, so popular… and yes, that means socializing! My favorite… I got your complete guide to friendship right here There are 36 people to befriend in Stardew Valley, you can earn achievements and work towards completing your perfection rating, and there are a ton of different perks for becoming friends with people too, including romance. Hey hi howdy and hello friends, Wickedy here, and it’s time for my FAVORITE thing to do in stardew valley, maintaining relationships. Yeah, no, can I just stay on the farm forever and become a hermit please? So, what are the basics of friendship? It works on a point system. Every villager you meet has a heart meter to fill to the max, and each heart is 250 friendship points. You can fill those hearts up with socializing, giving gifts, completing cutscenes or quests and there are some bonus points you can get too. You can also lose friendship with villagers as well, and it will decay if you don’t talk to them unless you have your friendship maxed out. There is an indicator in the corner next to a character's portrait when you talk to them that will show what level you are at. What heart level you are, also determines a few different things, like receiving gifts or being able to have access to their rooms once you reach 2 hearts. Okay, so what all increases or decreases friendship, and how much? Let’s look! Completing the Introductions quest gives you 100 points for the 28 starting villagers. Talking with someone is worth 20 points, or only 10 if you are rudely interrupting what they are doing, like working out or painting or taking pictures, so be sure to pay attention that you aren’t interrupting if you want the max points. Not talking to someone who isn’t maxed out on friendship will give you a daily decay of 2, 10 if you are dating them, and 20 if you are married. Ouch. Completing an item request quest on the board, will grant you 150 friendship, which is more than half a heart. It can make some of those
quests super worth it. Some unique quests will grant you up to 250 friendship. Robin’s Lost Axe, Jodi’s Request for a cauliflower, the Mayor’s Shorts, Linus’s Berry Basket, a pale ale for Pam Is Thirsty, a void essence for the Wizard during a dark Reagent, Amaranth for Marnie’s Cow’s Delight, A Melon for Demetrius, a hot pepper for George, 10 Hardwood for Robin, a pumpkin for Caroline, and Apricot for Emily, a pufferfish for Demetrious, a starfruit for Kent, truffle oil for the mayor, a Lobster for Gus, battery pack for Pam, Squid for Willy, Albacore for Gus, Sashimi for Pierre, Amethyst for Emily from Clint, Iron Bar for Clint, Iridium Bar for the Wizard, Leek for Evelyn, Coconut for Gus, and Lingcod for Willy all will grant you 250 friendship. You get all of those quests as letters in the mail on specific days, but can complete them at any time. Marnie will also stop by your place and ask for a cave carrot, that gives you 100. The Special Order Board has some quests every week, Rock Rejuvenation, Community Cleanup,
The Strong Stuff, and Robins Project also give you 250 friendship. And there is a quest in the walnut room that has to do with friendship, it’s Qi’s Kindness. Now the quest itself doesn’t give you any friendship for finishing it, but giving out 50 loved gifts over a week can really help bump up your relationships. Giving gifts! Now I’m going to go into gift giving in more detail later, but factors like what you give, when you give it, and what quality the item is can REALLY boost your levels up, potentially giving you nearly a 4 heart boost all at once. It can also very negatively affect friendship
too if you choose poorly. Gifting is super powerful, which is why I will be breaking it down later. Gifting someone twice in one week gives you a bonus 10 points on the next Sunday Getting caught digging in a trash can within 7 tiles away from someone loses 25 points, unless that person is Linus. He digs it and you gain a little like-minded friendship boost of 5 points. Kissing your spouse, if you got one, is an extra 10 for them Making specific choices during heart events can have a big effect, either in a positive or negative way. It’s actually pretty important to pay attention to your answer with some of these events because of that. Festivals are great places to make friends! During the Flower Dance, you can gain a heart with whoever you dance with. The Luau can earn you up to 120 points with everyone that attends, or lose you 100 points with them depending on what you put in the pot. I prefer a gold-quality cauliflower on the first year, it’s usually easy to get, just save one from spring, or some gold quality Large milk or Cheese. And a gift given at the Feast of the Winter Star is worth 5x the normal amount, which can be a huge boost! The movie theater, when you get it unlocked, can help build friendship quite a bit! Depending on the movie being watched, and what treat you ordered for your guest, you can earn up to 250 points, so one entire heart by taking someone to the movies. I have a whole movie theater guide if you want to learn more about everyone’s preferences and whatnot. When you complete the Bulletin Board at the community center, you’ll gain 500 friendship with most of the villagers, which is so great! And the easiest way to lose a ton of friendship? A slingshot. Load it up with whatever you got and with every hit, you lose 30. You will lose hearts like they are going out of style. Of course, when dating or married to someone, there are ways to lose friendship too. There is a secret event you can get from dating all the bachelors or bachelorettes at the same time,
funnily enough, even if you trigger this and get a poor result, you won’t lose friendship with anyone. If you are married, your partner may get jealous after you gift any other marriage candidate. If they do get jealous, you lose 30 friendship and they will let you know that they are not happy about it. Breaking up with someone you are dating with a wilted bouquet you made in a furnace will drop that person down to 5 hearts, and divorcing someone
will drop you down to 0. Ouch.
There are dialog choices for eight of the marriageable candidates. They will sometimes ask you questions when you talk to them. If you answer in a way they enjoy you get a boost, or in a way they don’t, you lose friendship. Alex talks to you about playing catch on a Wednesday.
If you say “I want to play catch with you” you gain 15 points. On a Wednesday during the summer, he’ll ask if you think he’ll ever turn pro. Telling him he’s destined to be a sports legend will give you 30. And on a Fall Wednesday if you tell him his haircut looks fashionable, you’ll gain 30. Sam has one question about what his new song should be about on any given Wednesday, all of the options will give you 30 points except for the last option, which will lose you 30. Sebastian has two different Friday questions. When asking if you read, you’ll gain 30 points for answering Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and when he asks you what you do when you are not working, answering with comic books grants 30 points. Abigail asks a lot of questions. After reaching 2 hearts, on a Sunday she may ask what you think happens after we die. Answering with Spooky ghosts gives you
40 points, and answering with nothing gives you 30. On a Summer Sunday she asks about free vacations, both a dark cave and gnarled forest will give you 30 points. On a Fall Sunday she will ask for your opinion about her hair color. Black and blond both grant 10, bubble gum pink grants 20. And on a Winter Sunday she will show you a drawing and ask what you think. Saying you like the tiger gives you 20 points, the orc with a battle ax gives 30, and saying you don’t like either one will lose you 50 points. She also asks you on the second Egg festival if you think she is too old for the egg hunt, but your answer doesn’t affect friendship. Haley will ask you what you do all day as a Farmer during a Summer Saturday, all options give you ten points except telling her you snoop in her room, which loses you ten. On a Fall Saturday she is having trouble deciding what to do today, watercolor painting gives you ten points, reading a magazine gains 20, and telling her that she’s a selfish crybaby loses 30. Leah only has one question on any Monday, she will ask you why you became a farmer. All options give you 5 points, apart from answering with making tons of money, you will lose 5. Maru will be deep in thought someday and talk to you about a robot she wants to build. Telling her that it will be easy gives you 30 points, saying it’s challenging gives 40, and telling her to be more
realistic loses you 50 points. And Penny, you can find her musing over Pam going to the saloon too much. Telling her to be realistic gives you ten points, and telling her it’s best to be positive grants you 50 friendship. Okay, now that we’ve gone over how to gain and lose friendship, let's talk about the benefits of befriending. Now there are 36 giftable villagers, 12 of which you could date or marry, plus Krobus who can be your best roomie ever, but only 21 villagers actually give benefits when you befriend them. I have a handy sheet that shows all the villagers who teach you recipes or send you gifts in the mail, linked below. Caroline is my goto favorite on this list for unlocking something super beneficial to me, and that is tea saplings, unlocked at 2 hearts once you visit the tea room on a sunny day. That’s the room through this door in the kitchen, I have a whole guide all about that. Sashimi and Wild bait from Linus are a must for me, Blue chickens after Shanes’ 8 heart event are also fantastic. Reaching 4 hearts with the wizard is pretty great, you’ll be able to access the basement that lets you change your character a bit. I also just LOVE getting to 6 hearts with Willy, one of my favorite cutscenes is unlocked this way. You can stop by his shop and have a crabby little party, after which you can buy an unlimited amount of crab cakes from Gus for a few days. Crab cakes give you a speed boost that lasts nearly the entire day, so I like to have a lot of money stocked up and
ready before I see this scene. There are over 30 cooking recipes that get unlocked with friendship as well. Some villagers can give you fantastic gifts in the mail that can actually be used to help with your community center progression, like wool and cloth from Emily, a nautilus shell from Demetrius, and Pam gifting batteries can be super helpful too especially when you are having a hard time collecting enough. As for getting gifts in the mail, the wiki states that you can receive something from a villager at any heart level over zero. Now that may be how the code is intended to work in Stardew, but BlaDe has pointed out a few times in his streams that it’s not quite the case. You’ll need to get one full heart with someone in order to receive gifts, it works by giving you a 10% chance per heart level. Now, we can kind of force getting the gifts we want from specific people. If you get something and it’s just not what you are waiting for, something cool you can do it just exit out to the main menu, reload your day and check the mail again until you get the right item. Pretty cool. Each person you can marry may also unlock something unique
with their 14 heart events, I didn’t put those on this list. If you are working on a perfection run, you will need to reach max hearts with every person and learn all their recipes. Now, the max hearts for everyone is 10, except marriage candidates. You only need to reach 8 with them. After getting married, once you reach 12.5 hearts with your spouse you will be given a tasty treat, the spouse stardrop. Mmmm tasted like the magic of friendship. Alright, in order to really
up our friendship faster, let’s go over some strategies
and dig into gifting. So speedrunning marriage to any specific villager is a huge category in the speedrunning community and one of the strategies often used is being choosy with who you talk to. So I mentioned earlier that you can get 150 points for completing a delivery quest. One of the cool things about that is that the only people who will ask you for an item delivery quest will be the people you have actually met, be it through a cutscene or a time you talked to them. This can be used to help you get your friendship up faster with a specific villager like my favorite to gain friendship with first, Caroline. Or if you are trying to dance with someone at the flower dance the first year you can use this method too. When trying to date someone, once they reach 8 hearts, their friendship stops decaying, but you can actually keep building your friendship with them to JUST under 9 hearts. Speedrunners will commonly do this, then when they are ready to commit, gift a bouquet to open up the other two hearts, then give a gift and talk to them and that’ll give you the max amount of friendship that day. There is a lot that goes into gifting. Your gifting week is separate from your normal week, it starts over every Sunday. You can give two gifts a week unless it’s someone's birthday, then you can give a birthday gift as well. You can’t build up a friendship by gifting anything to the dwarf in the mines until you learn how to speak the language first. Gift preferences can be learned in a few different ways. If you pay attention, some people will tell you their own friends' preferences. During your first winter, you can find the magnifying glass and secret notes that can give you hints as well. And of course, there is the old trial-and-error method of just figuring it out by paying attention to their reactions. Or you can check the wiki or check out this handy dandy reference sheet I made with all the loved gift preferences in the game. As you start gifting people, you can check out their information and the gifts will start to fill out. You can even see if you have the item in your backpack at the time too. There are 5 gift taste preferences, and they are all affected
by different multipliers. The higher quality gift item you give, if it is liked or loved, the more friendship it is worth, up to 50% more for an iridium item. You can also get a multiplier for gifting an item on a birthday, which is worth 8 times the normal amount, or on the winter star which is worth 5 times the normal amount. Gifting an iridium-quality loved item on a birthday will gain you nearly 4 hearts at once, so it’s worth it to save something for that day. Now, every villager is super picky, and for the most part, there is no “one gift for all” except for a few universal gifts. There are 5 universally loved items in the game that everyone will love if you give them one, except for Haley who hates prismatic shards, and Penny who hates rabbits feet. This is why a lot of people love raising rabbits, for the feet to have a good supply of mostly universally loved gifts. You can get more pearls and golden pumpkins from breaking open artifact troves, and pearls can be gathered from a full blobfish fish pond. Some loved gifts are loved by quite a few people, so I like to keep a few with
me on my gifting rounds. Diamonds are loved by 8 villagers. Pink cake by these 4, Emerald by these 4, Iridium bars for these 4, Pumpkins are loved by three people, Cactus by these three, and chocolate cake by these three. While gathering and stocking up on loved gifts for people, it's good to note that there are certain loved gifts that you can actually just buy and stock up on too. Of course, a ton of various gifts can be bought at the traveling cart and it’s goods to see what Gus has for his dish of the day, but there are a few gifts you can just buy to give out more easily. At the saloon, we have salad for Leah, coffee for Harvey, spaghetti for Robin, pizza for Shane and Sam, and beer for Shane and Pam. The ice cream stand has ice cream for Demetrius. The Oasis has Ice cream on Sunday too, Coconuts on Monday for Haley and Linus, and Cactus on Tuesday for Linus, Pam and Sam, and Omni Geodes for Clint and the Dwarf on Wednesday.
The desert trader can trade for loved items, a ruby for a spicy eel for Abigail on any day, three aquamarines for cloth for Emily, though she loves Aquamarine so it’s not really that beneficial, and you can get magic rock candy here on Thursday for three prismatic shards. Again, not really worth trading for to give as a gift, but it’s an option! Krobus carries Void and Solar essences for the Wizard, Void Eggs for Sebastian and Krobus and also Omni geodes on Tuesday. They also have cooked dishes and fish on different days too. In the mines the Dwarf sells Miner’s Treat for Maru and in the volcano on the island, you can sometimes buy Roots platter for Penny or Super meal for Harvey If you don’t have something someone loves, one of the best universally liked gifts that has quality is fruit tree fruit, apart from mango and banana. It makes taking the bat cave a pretty good idea, especially if you have botanist and gather iridium-quality fruit. I also really like having either crocus or sweet peas on hand, they are liked by all but three people and you can have high quality often. Jelly is a good one, and so is coffee, sashimi and earth crystal too for easy gifts. Gifting even just a regular quality loved gift is still worth more than an iridium quality liked gift, but it’s good to have as a backup. There are a bunch of universally hated gifts, and a bunch of people have unique hated gifts that are interesting. Like Sebastion just hating complete breakfast, Pierre hating corn, or Sam despising mayonnaises and smelted bars. So, there are 12 people you can potentially marry, once you reach 8 hearts with one of them you will get a letter in the mail from Pierre saying he’s selling bouquets now. Gifting a bouquet to someone gives you 25 friendship points and opens up the option to reach 10 hearts with that person. Reaching a higher relationship with someone unlocks more cutscenes that are pretty cute. Now, you can absolutely date more than one person at a time, you can date the whole dang town if you want. Oh… if only… but if you get caught after seeing every bachelor or bachelorette's ten heart event you might find yourself in a sticky situation. There are two scenes you can see going this route. If you keep a rabbit's foot in your pocket before starting the scene, everything is just fine, but if you arrive without one, you won’t lose friendship with any of your boyfriends or girlfriends, but they will give you the cold shoulder for a week. You can break up with someone by putting a bouquet in a furnace to craft a wilted bouquet, and that will drop down that person to 5 hearts. It takes a little prep to get married. You will get a letter from Lewis once you reach 10 hearts with someone you can marry, and over at the tide pools during a rainy day you can find the Old Mariner who will sell you a Mermaid’s Pendant, but not until you are ready! You have to also have your house upgraded at least once, because who would want to marry you without a kitchen! Proposing to someone lets us get married, which is usually how that works, right? Once you propose, your fiance will set up the wedding ceremony three days later unless there is a town festival going on. You can check the date on the calendar too. If you want to dress up for your wedding, be sure to sleep in what you want to wear the night before, as the wedding starts the morning of. Now here is a somewhat frustrating thing about Weddings, you can’t reload the day and repeat it, so be sure to not exit the game during or right before the wedding if you want to watch the ceremony. Being married lets you reach a max of 14 hearts with your spouse. You can get gifts from them, they may water your crops and pet bowl, repair broken fences and feed your animals. When you reach 12.5 hearts you can get your spouse stardrop, which you can only get once. Every marriage candidate has their own special 14-heart event you can experience too, some with their own unique items. If you exhausted yourself at
some point during the day, giving your spouse a kiss will clear it, but it only works with the first kiss of the day. You can have children too, but that is a random chance and friendship has no effect on it. Marriage also brings a spouse room and the spouse spot on the farm will be tailored to that person's interests. Your spouse may get jealous of you gifting other dateable people that shares the same gender as them, and it depends on daily luck. You will lose 30 points and they will be grumpy. Now, you can still date other people while you are married if that’s your thing, the only real repercussion
is your spouses' jealousy. Divorce costs 50000 gold and can be done at the mayors' manor. Once you divorce someone, they take their stuff and their room with them and you are back at square one friendship wise, it gets completely wiped out. All that they leave behind may be a box of your stuff that you left in their room and any kids you may have had together. Ouch. Trying to befriend your ex isn’t possible without a little extra magic, they won’t accept gifts, won’t talk to you, and any quests that would normally build friendship have no effect. You can visit the Witch’s Hut after completing the Dark Talisman Quest to wipe your ex’s memory for the low price of 30,000g After that it’s like you met again, for the very first time. Krobus is an option for someone who doesn’t want to get married but still wants the spouse stardrop. Once you reach ten hearts with Krobus, you can trade for the void ghost pendant at the desert trader for 200 void essences, or you can get one as a drop from a monster in Skull Cavern. You won’t have a wedding, but Krobus will move in after a few days and there will be a chest in the sewers acting as a shop where they used to hang out. You can’t have kids with Krobus, but they will take care of any leftover from your previous marriage and having them as my roommate makes me very happy. So perfection is something that can be achieved if you are a completionist, and friendship is a part of that list. You will need to max your friendship with every person, 8 with all the marriage candidates, and will have to repair your failed marriage. While working on Friendship,
there are 6 achievements related to it, each with its own hat rewards. A New friend is reached at
5 hearts with one person, unlocking the Butterfly Bow. 5 hearts with 4 people unlocks the tiara. 5 hearts with 10 people is the Santa hat.
5 hearts with 20 people is the earmuffs. 10 hearts with someone gives you mouse hearts, and 10 hearts with 8 people give you the cat ears. And now we are friends with everyone in the entire Valley of the Stardew, good for you! Now me, I’m socially exhausted after all that gifting and now that I’m maxed with everyone, I never have to talk to them again, right? Alright friends, I really hope this friendship guide helped you out and helped you understand the friendship mechanic a bit more, and hopefully my friendship sheet helps make completing my least favorite Qi Quest easier. I’m Wickedy, thanks so much for hanging out in the valley with me and I’ll see you next time! Bye!
