Poll of the Day > I want to go to Stardew Valley

(+) Yeah! (+)

I need some farm healing. Touch some grass, make some wine or something.

Seduce your neighbors by giving them random crap twice a week...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Seduce your neighbors by giving them random crap twice a week...

I've gotta say, of all the tweaks Stardew made to the established Harvest Moon formula, capping the number of gifts you could give per week and balancing relationship gains around that is probably my favourite. It made it so much easier to diversify my activities instead of focusing on whatever gift worked best for the most eligible waifu, and meant I could advance everyone's friendship at a decent pace without having to find all of them every single day.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/804b71f0.jpg
There's nothing better for your soul than spending some time with animals.

adjl posted...

I've gotta say, of all the tweaks Stardew made to the established Harvest Moon formula, capping the number of gifts you could give per week and balancing relationship gains around that is probably my favourite. It made it so much easier to diversify my activities instead of focusing on whatever gift worked best for the most eligible waifu, and meant I could advance everyone's friendship at a decent pace without having to find all of them every single day.

I almost always just ignore everyone and focus on my own stuff for the first year or so. I'll chat in passing if I see someone while doing something else because it takes almost no time, but I almost never go out of my way to deliberately raise anyone.

Between doing odd jobs from the job board, maxing out the Luau (which is easy if you plan ahead - gold Cauliflower or Cheese will get you max gains), and completing the Community Center bundle most of them will wind up fairly high even with no effort. Usually by the end-game it's only Krobus, the Dwarf, the two kids, and the potential spouses who stay low heartwise.

At that point you just need to give a few favored gifts (especially on birthdays) to really power up whoever you're trying to date. If you have someone in mind and generally try to talk to them, it doesn't really take much effort at all.

I think the only case where I really focus on gifting is with Haley if I'm trying to go with the Year 1 Flower Dance, where you have to pretty much give her two Daffodils a week (and one on her birthday). Otherwise most of the gains happen pretty organically for me.

I still made a definite effort to raise people's friendship levels right out of the gate (once I had access to the appropriate items, at least), if only because I've had such an established history of min/maxing from other farming sims where you kinda have to metagame it to get anywhere in a non-painful amount of time. Really, I don't have a problem with that, because I like min/maxing games like that (I taught myself how to use VLOOKUP to create an Excel tool that would help me get the best bonuses out of RF4's crafting system, and I also used Excel to map out my Stardew farm so I could optimize sprinkler and Junimo Hut placements for maximum coverage), but I still appreciated having a bit more flexibility. Even approaching it with a metagaming mentality, being forced to pace my gift-giving (without making my progress unsatisfyingly slow, which is always a risk with forced pacing) made it feel more organic, which was really nice.

I wish there was more intimacy in games... hand holding and other pda

Lokchan posted...

hand holding

That's disgusting. This is a family website!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I almost always just ignore everyone and focus on my own stuff for the first year or so. I'll chat in passing if I see someone while doing something else because it takes almost no time, but I almost never go out of my way to deliberately raise anyone.

I did this before I installed a mod that displays favorite shit in your inventory over their heads. I LOVE me some Stardew qol mods

agesboy posted...

I did this before I installed a mod that displays favorite shit in your inventory over their heads. I LOVE me some Stardew qol mods

After doing multiple runs and Qi's "Loved Gift" quest multiple times (and having Statues of Endless Fortune on people's birthdays), I don't need that mod.

I can pretty much tell you from memory what everyone's easiest-to-acquire favorite gift is. Or extremely easy to acquire ones (like Sandy having Coconut/Cactus/Honey/Ice Cream as liked gifts, so you can literally buy one from her and then give it right back to her every time you visit the desert). A bunch of them become really easy once you get Crystalariums to dupe minerals (especially diamonds), Gus sells food that covers a few different people, rabbit's feet are great for everyone other than Penny, and so on.

I also have mods that increase the number of villagers to like, 100+. There's one single mod that adds over 50 by itself. Viva la mods!

same bro fuckin me too

I tried to play this game and gave up because it was too boring.