Stardew Valley - Villagers

The people of Pelican Town each keep a daily routine, a birthday and their own tastes in gifts. Talking and giving presents raises friendship, shown as hearts, and higher hearts open scenes that tell their stories. Twelve of them can be married.

Overview

The valley is populated rather than decorated. Every resident keeps a daily route, speaks a different line depending on the weather and the season, and carries a row of hearts in the social tab of the player menu. That row is the only relationship mechanic in the game, and it governs which greeting a person offers, which private scene plays out, which cooking recipe lands in the post box and whether a closed bedroom door opens. Each heart is two hundred and fifty points, and ten hearts is as high as anybody climbs while the farmhouse still has one occupant.

Points arrive from two habits and little else. A daily hello is worth twenty, or ten if the person is busy exercising or fiddling with a camera, and it has to be said in person, because a phone call does not register. A present is worth eighty when it is loved, forty-five when it is liked and twenty when it means nothing either way, and it takes twenty or forty points back off when the item is disliked or hated. Quality lifts a liked or loved gift by up to half again, so one gold-starred item beats two plain ones.

The meter also leaks, which is why this branch needs a routine rather than a burst of effort. Two points drain away each day from anyone who went ungreeted, and the drain stops only once a row is full. That is nothing beside a loved gift, and it is exactly why it catches farms out: a season spent underground quietly undoes a season spent in town.

Groups

Three groups sit inside the branch, separated by what the farmer is allowed to do rather than by where people live. Twelve residents can be courted. Twenty-two more take presents and climb to ten hearts as friends and nothing else, and that middle group holds almost every shopkeeper, parent and child in the valley. The last group registers no friendship at all: the pair who run the Adventurer's Guild, the museum curator, the Joja manager, the island's riddle-setter, the governor who judges the potluck, and a handful of characters met once each.

Gift tastes form their own grouping, and it is the one worth learning first. A handful of items are adored by practically everybody: a Prismatic Shard, a pearl, a rabbit's foot, a Golden Pumpkin and Magic Rock Candy. Whole categories are liked across the board: artisan goods, cooked dishes, flowers, gems, orchard fruit and ordinary vegetables. A kitchen and a few kegs therefore cover most of the town with no research at all.

The exceptions are where a careless present costs friendship. Haley refuses every fish and turns her nose up even at a Prismatic Shard. Sebastian, Jas and Vincent hate nearly all artisan goods, so the jar of pickles that delights the doctor insults those three, and Krobus, Leo and Willy hate almost everything out of a frying pan.

Order

The opening story errand introduces the farmer to twenty-eight people at once and pays a hundred points with each, which is the largest single friendship event of a whole save and the reason to close that errand in the first week.

The rest arrive on their own schedule. Kent is away with the army for the whole first year and walks back into town on the first morning of the second Spring, with his family talking about him in the meantime. Sandy waits on the bus, so the Vault's gold or the Joja equivalent gates her entirely, and Krobus waits on the museum's Rusty Key. The Dwarf sits behind a boulder that only steel or a bomb will break, and his speech stays unreadable until the mines' four scrolls have been donated and the translation guide comes back. Leo is the longest road: he stays silent until ten golden walnuts have been handed to the island's parrots, and moves to the mainland only once six hearts have been earned out there.

Heart levels then unlock things in a regular pattern. Two hearts opens most front bedrooms permanently, and the door stays unlocked even if the meter later slips. Three hearts and seven hearts each bring a cooking recipe in the post from most of the giftable residents, and Willy sends four, at three, five, seven and nine. Scenes are scattered across the range, and from any level above zero a villager may simply post a parcel to the farm.

Best

Rank the town by what friendship pays out rather than by who is pleasant, and Caroline is first by a distance. Her two-heart scene in the sunroom behind her kitchen ends with a letter teaching the Tea Sapling, a plant that survives the frost and yields for a week of every growing season. Two hearts is a fortnight of greetings and a Summer Spangle.

Willy is second, because four recipes from one person is twice what anybody else gives. Linus is third and the cheapest of the lot: he likes almost everything foraged, so the wild food already in the bag moves his meter, and his scenes teach Wild Bait, which can land two fish on one cast.

Marnie, Jodi, Evelyn and Gus are the honest middle: two dishes each, and each loves something a farm either grows or cooks. Clint earns a place for another reason, since every gem out of the mines pleases him, so a mining farm befriends the blacksmith by accident.

Locations

Schedules are the branch's hidden depth, and they are built from more variables than most farms realise: the day of the week first, then the season, then the weather, then the state of the valley's own projects. Rain keeps most of the town indoors on a wholly separate route. A repaired bus rewrites the day of everybody who uses it, and a restored Community Center sends several of them to read in the building they helped save.

A few routes are worth learning by heart, because they put somebody in a fixed place at a fixed hour. Penny tutors the two children at the museum on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, walks them home in the late afternoon, and takes them to the playground on Saturdays. Pam spends her afternoon at the Bus Stop once the bus runs and her evening in the saloon either way. The saloon between late afternoon and midnight is the densest spot on the map, which makes one evening walk the most efficient round of greetings available.

Festival days override all of it. The whole town stands in one place for hours, a greeting there is worth exactly what a greeting is worth on any other day, and that makes a festival morning the cheapest friendship of the season.

Uses

The payouts come in three kinds. Recipes are the steadiest, and between them they cover dishes that no television programme teaches. Parcels in the post are the laziest income in the game, since they cost nothing and arrive more often as meters fill.

Scenes are the reason to push past the middle hearts. They hold the writing, and a few hand over something concrete at the end, such as the sunroom's tea or the fisherman's bait.

Festivals pay in bulk. A dance partner at the Flower Dance needs four hearts and pays a whole heart back, and the Feast of the Winter Star multiplies the one secret present fivefold. The potluck soup swings every meter in town at once, up sharply for the right ingredient and down sharply for the wrong one, which makes the choice of what to tip in the most consequential gift of the year.

The largest single payout is not a gift at all. Closing every scroll on the Community Center's Bulletin Board warms every non-courtable resident the farmer has actually met by two full hearts in one night, which is a quiet argument for meeting the hermit, the shadow and the dwarf before that room is finished.

Strategy

Give on birthdays and almost nowhere else. A present handed over on the right day counts eight times over, so one loved item becomes most of three hearts, and a birthday gift is allowed on top of the two a week already permitted. Winter and Summer carry nine birthdays each, and a note of the next one is worth more than a chest full of presents.

Use the weekly allowance properly. One present a day and two a week is the limit, the week turns over on Sunday, and using both earns a small bonus the following Sunday morning. Two loved gifts a week plus a daily hello fills an ordinary meter in roughly two months.

Learn tastes from the town rather than by trial. Clicking a row in the social tab opens a gift log that remembers everything already handed over, and it fills in from two other directions as well: a secret note found in the valley, and a remark made by that person's family or friend. The pairs who gossip about each other are fixed, so a farmer who talks to the parents usually learns what the children want.

Notes

Two habits cost friendship without the farmer noticing. Rummaging through a bin while somebody stands within a few tiles takes twenty-five points off that person, and only Linus approves, gaining five instead. A slingshot shot that catches a resident costs thirty points.

Stardrop tea is the one present that ignores taste entirely. It is worth two hundred and fifty points to anybody, which is a full heart, and on a birthday or as the Winter Star gift it is worth three.

A book called Friendship 101 permanently raises every friendship gain by a tenth and leaves losses alone, which makes reading it early worth more than it looks.

All Villagers

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Birthday	Lives In
Abigail		13 Fall	Pelican Town
Alex		Summer 13	Pelican Town
Birdie		-	Ginger Island
Bouncer		-	The Desert
Caroline		Winter 7	Pelican Town
Children	-	-	-
Clara Mullner	-	-	-
Clint		Winter 26	Pelican Town
Demetrius		Summer 19	The Mountain
Dwarf		Summer 22	The Mines
Elliott		Fall 5	The Beach
Emily		Spring 27	Pelican Town
Evelyn		Winter 20	Pelican Town
Fizz		-	Ginger Island
George		Fall 24	Pelican Town
Gil		-	The Mountain
Governor		-	-
Grandpa		-	-
Gunther		-	Pelican Town
Gus		Summer 8	Pelican Town
Haley		Spring 14	Pelican Town
Harvey		Winter 14	Pelican Town
Henchman		-	Witch's Swamp
Jas		Summer 4	Cindersap Forest
Jodi		Fall 11	Pelican Town
Junimos		-	Community Center
Kent		Spring 4	Pelican Town
Krobus		Winter 1	The Sewers
Leah		Winter 23	Cindersap Forest
Leo		Summer 26	Ginger Island
Lewis		Spring 7	Pelican Town
Linus		Winter 3	The Mountain
Marlon		-	The Mountain
Marnie		Fall 18	Cindersap Forest
Maru		Summer 10	The Mountain
Morris		-	Pelican Town
Mr. Qi		-	The Calico Desert
Old Mariner		-	The Beach
Pam		Spring 18	Pelican Town
Penny		Fall 2	Pelican Town
Pierre		Spring 26	Pelican Town
Professor Snail		-	Ginger Island
Robin		Fall 21	The Mountain
Sam		Summer 17	Pelican Town
Sandy		Fall 15	The Desert
Sebastian		Winter 10	The Mountain
Shane		Spring 20	Cindersap Forest
The Merpeople	-	-	-
Vincent		Spring 10	Pelican Town
Willy		Summer 24	The Beach
Wizard		Winter 17	Cindersap Forest
Yoba	-	-	-