Stardew Valley - Marriage Candidates

Twelve villagers can be courted. A bouquet at eight hearts starts the dating, and a mermaid's pendant at ten hearts proposes.

Overview

Twelve residents of the valley can be courted, six bachelors and six bachelorettes, and the social tab marks each of them as single until something changes. They are the only people in Stardew Valley whose friendship meter has a ceiling that can be lifted, and lifting it is a deliberate sequence rather than a matter of being pleasant for long enough. Everyone else in town tops out as a friend. These twelve can end up living in the farmhouse, watering the crops and leaving breakfast on the table.

The branch has one rule that confuses more new farms than anything else in the game. Friendship with a candidate rises normally until the eighth heart and then stops dead, however many presents arrive afterwards. The meter is waiting for a bouquet, a cheap bunch of flowers from Pierre's shelf, and Pierre writes to say so the morning after the eighth heart is reached. Until that bouquet changes hands the relationship is frozen in place, and a farmer who keeps gifting without noticing simply wastes the week.

After the bouquet the sequence is short and expensive. The tenth heart brings a letter from Mayor Lewis explaining what a Mermaid's Pendant means, and the pendant itself has to be bought from an Old Mariner who appears among the tide pools at the eastern end of the beach on wet days. He will only part with it once the farmhouse has been upgraded at least once, so the branch quietly requires a working kitchen before it will allow a wedding. The ceremony then happens three mornings after the pendant is accepted, and the calendar marks the day with its own icon.

Groups

The division into bachelors and bachelorettes matters less in practice than the division by what a candidate loves, because gifts are where the work actually happens. One group is fed straight off the farm and out of the kitchen: a sculptor who loves Goat Cheese, a salad and a Stir Fry, a doctor who loves coffee and pickles, a daughter of the ranch who loves hot peppers and the poppers made from them, and a photographer who loves a Fruit Salad and a Pink Cake.

A second group is fed out of the mine. The glassblower on Willow Lane loves almost every gem that comes out of the rock, the carpenter's daughter loves bars, batteries and dwarvish gadgets, her brother loves obsidian and a Frozen Tear, and the shopkeeper's daughter loves an amethyst alongside her puddings and pies. For a farm that spends its winters underground these four are the cheapest friendships in the valley.

Two candidates sit outside both groups. The novelist on the beach loves Crab Cakes, a lobster and a pomegranate, which makes him the one person in town who rewards a fishing habit over a farming one. And the young woman in the trailer loves books of every kind without exception, which makes her the simplest of the twelve to please once the bookseller starts visiting.

Order

Courtship starts with conversation rather than presents. Talking to somebody each day adds a little goodwill, two gifts a week are allowed on top of that with no more than one in a day, and a few hundred points make up each heart. Two hearts opens a candidate's bedroom for good, which is worth having early because several of them spend their afternoons indoors.

The middle stretch is the long one. Each candidate has a scene waiting at particular heart levels, and those scenes are the reason to court rather than simply to befriend: they are where the writing is. Reaching eight hearts unlocks the bouquet, and the bouquet changes the status in the social tab as well as unfreezing the meter.

The last stretch depends on the beach. The eastern tide pools can only be reached once the small bridge has been repaired with three hundred wood or the second town upgrade has been bought, and the mariner only stands there on rainy days, which in Winter means manufacturing the rain with a totem. A farm that leaves the bridge unrepaired can reach ten hearts and then find itself stuck with nowhere to buy a pendant.

After the wedding the meter reopens and climbs to fourteen hearts, so the relationship continues to develop long after the ceremony. It also decays a little each day without contact, which is the only friendship in the game that has to be maintained rather than simply earned.

Best

Every spouse does identical work around the farm, so a ranking by usefulness is a ranking of nothing. What differs is how cheap the courtship is and what the farmhouse looks like afterwards.

By convenience the woman in the trailer is first, because any book at all counts as a loved gift and books arrive from the bookseller, from fishing chests and from artifact spots without being hunted. The glassblower is second for a mining farm, since a pocket of gems from an ordinary trip to the mine will move her several hearts in a fortnight. The carpenter's daughter is third for the same reason, with bars and batteries rather than gems.

By what arrives in the house, the pick is more personal. Each spouse builds a room to the right of the bedroom in their own style and claims a strip of ground outside it, and those strips are small scenes rather than decorations: weightlifting, flute playing, a half-pipe, a sculpture in progress, a motorbike, a crystal garden, a chicken held in two arms. The gardens belonging to the reader, the doctor and the novelist are the quietest of them, and the chicken is the one most farms remember.

The reward at the top of the branch is the same for all twelve, and it is the best thing in it. Reaching roughly twelve and a half hearts with a spouse produces a stardrop, and a stardrop lifts the energy ceiling permanently. One per save, whoever it comes from.

Locations

The twelve are scattered deliberately across the map, which makes a courtship a reason to walk a particular route. Three live above shops or in family homes in town: the shopkeeper's daughter above the general store, the grandson at the house by the river, and the musician on Willow Lane. Two sisters share the house next door, and the doctor lives above his clinic in the square.

The rest are further out. The novelist keeps a cabin on the beach, the sculptor a cottage in Cindersap Forest, and the ranch south of the forest houses the man who looks after its chickens. The carpenter's two children live up the mountain road, one in the bedroom beside the shop and one in the basement beneath it. And the trailer beside the river is home to the reader and her mother.

Uses

A spouse is the most practical companion in the game. A happy one waters every crop in the growing seasons, feeds the animals, fills the Pet Bowl, mends broken fences, hands over cooked food and occasionally redecorates a room without asking. None of it can be relied upon every day, but across a season it is several hours of work the farmer never does.

Marriage also loosens the rules. The limit of two gifts a week disappears once the wedding is over, leaving only the one-a-day limit, which makes a spouse the easiest friendship in the valley to keep climbing. The first kiss each morning clears exhaustion outright, which is worth more than it sounds on a day that started badly. And the second farmhouse upgrade adds a nursery, after which a spouse may ask about a child.

Strategy

Court on birthdays. A gift given on somebody's birthday is worth several times its usual value, so a single loved item handed over on the right day can be worth a fortnight of ordinary presents. Each of the twelve has a birthday in a different part of the year, which spreads the opportunity evenly.

Give one bouquet, not six. Flowers can be handed to several candidates at once with no direct penalty, but a farmer dating every bachelor or every bachelorette triggers a scene in which all of them find out, after which the whole group gives the farmer the cold shoulder for a week.

Mind jealousy after the wedding. Handing any gift except a birthday present to another candidate of the same gender as the spouse, once that candidate has accepted a bouquet, risks a scolding and a loss of goodwill, and the chance of it depends on the day's luck.

Keep the house walkable. A spouse who cannot get through the farmhouse to the kitchen complains, skips making dinner and turns away from a kiss, which is an easy thing to cause by leaving chests in a corridor.

Notes

The branch can be unwound, at a price. A small book in the Mayor's Manor files for divorce for a very large sum, and the filing can be cancelled until the house closes that night. After a divorce the spouse moves out, their room and their garden vanish, the meter resets to nothing, and the ex refuses presents thereafter. Children stay on the farm.

A shrine in the witch's hut erases the memory of every ex for another large sum, which allows the same person to be courted again from the beginning. The heart scenes themselves only ever play once in a save, so a second courtship is quicker and quieter than the first.

A wedding takes precedence over everything else in the town square. The ceremony is postponed if a festival or a green rain falls on the day, and a Community Center room finished the night before a wedding has its own celebration skipped. The weather is always fair on the day, whatever the forecast promised.

All Marriage Candidates

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Birthday	Lives In
Abigail		13 Fall	Pelican Town
Alex		Summer 13	Pelican Town
Elliott		Fall 5	The Beach
Emily		Spring 27	Pelican Town
Haley		Spring 14	Pelican Town
Harvey		Winter 14	Pelican Town
Leah		Winter 23	Cindersap Forest
Maru		Summer 10	The Mountain
Penny		Fall 2	Pelican Town
Sam		Summer 17	Pelican Town
Sebastian		Winter 10	The Mountain
Shane		Spring 20	Cindersap Forest