Relationships in Stardew Valley

If you’re looking to bump up your friendship points with the residents of Pelican Town, you’ve come to the right place. This no-frills guide provides the fastest and easiest route to maximum friendship with all NPCs so you can sit back, relax, and watch as the gifts start to roll in.

Building Friendship

Friendship is represented by the 10-heart meter (for most villagers) on the social tab of the menus screen. Each heart fills once you accumulate 250 friendship points, unlocking new dialogue, cutscenes, and the occasional gift in the mail. You earn friendship points with villagers by:

• Talking to them (+20 per day)
• Completing a delivery quest for them (+150)
• Giving them a gift they like (points vary; see below)
• Making certain choices in scripted heart events

You lose friendship points with villagers by:

• Not talking to them (points decay over time)
• Giving them a gift they dislike
• Hitting them with the slingshot (you monster!)
• Looking through the trash when they are nearby (excluding Linus)

Giving Gifts

You can give villagers one gift a day, two times a week. You can give one extra gift on their birthday which doesn’t count towards this limit. The points gained or lost for each gift depends on how much the villager likes or dislikes the item. The distribution of points looks like this:

• Love: +80
• Like: +45
• Neutral: +20
• Dislike: -20
• Hate: -40

These values are multiplied by 5 for the secret santa event, and multiplied by 8 on birthdays, so make sure you choose a good gift! In addition, higher quality items give a set bonus, so if you’ve got some iridium-quality goods lying about, think about gifting them before you sell them.

Each NPC has an extensive list of specific preferences. However, given this is a Quick Guide (we’re busy people, after all) we’ll focus on universal items that can be obtained without much hassle.

Universal Loves:

• Prismatic shard
• Rabbit’s foot

Universal Likes:

• Artisan goods (except oil and void mayonnaise)
• Cooking (except fried egg, bread, and strange bun)
• Flowers (except poppy)
• Foraged minerals (except quartz)
• Fruit tree fruits
• Gems
• Vegetables (except wheat and hops)
• Life elixir
• Maple syrup

In general if you give any of these items you’ll get a good response. However, occasionally you may run into someone who has a very specific vendetta against flowers (I’m looking at you, Clint) or some other item. If you don’t want to run the risk of disappointing a villager, you can always rely on fruit tree fruits. Nobody dislikes or hates these items, so you’ll get a positive response every time. As a result you can quickly and easily bump up those friendship points without having to pause the game and do copious amounts of research.

Getting a Boyfriend or Girlfriend

Some of the NPCs in Stardew Valley are dateable. You can distinguish them by looking for the “(single)” tag on the social tab of the menu screen. If you’re interested in a villager, you can give them a bouquet (purchasable from Pierre’s store) to increase their maximum hearts from 8 to 10. You can do this with all available candidates at the same time without any negative effects.

Getting Married

If you’re ready to tie the knot with that special someone, there are a few conditions that need to be met:

• Upgrade your house at least once
• Achieve 10 hearts with an eligible villager
• Repair the bridge to the Tidal Pools next to Elliott’s cabin

If you’ve done all this, you can purchase a Mermaid’s Pendant from the Old Mariner for 5,000g. He will appear at the top of the Tidal Pools on rainy days (but not in winter unless a rain totem is used). After presenting your future spouse with the pendant, the marriage ceremony will take place in three days and your new spouse will move in with you.

Getting married has a bunch of benefits. Your spouse will:

• Occasionally make breakfast
• Feed farm animals
• Repair fences
• Water crops
• Give you a stardrop (at 13/12 hearts)

Kids

Maintain a high relationship level with your spouse and you may be given the option to have children. Same-sex couples will adopt while opposite-sex couples will have biological children. You can have up to two children, but the option for a second child will only appear after the first has grown to the toddler stage.

Divorce

Things not working out? It happens. A book at Mayor Lewis’s manor allows you to divorce your spouse for a fee of 50,000g. Your ex-partner will move out and their hearts will reset to zero. From then on they will have negative dialogue interactions unless you choose to erase their memory (for an extra 30,000g) by visiting the Witch’s Hut. Children will remain in the farmhouse unless you choose to turn them into doves at the Witch’s Hut in exchange for prismatic shards.