Flower Dance
| Flower Dance | |
|---|---|
| Type | Festival |
The Flower Dance is the valley's courtship ritual, and it is the one festival built around a single question: who will say yes. Each bachelor and bachelorette can be asked to dance, and each will refuse unless they are already a friend of four hearts, which turns the first three weeks of Spring into a quiet race to reach that mark with somebody. An accepted invitation is worth a whole heart of friendship on the spot, the largest single jump any one action gives. Pierre also brings a booth with the fifth Rarecrow and the recipe for Tub o' Flowers, and for a farmer not chasing romance those two items are reason enough to turn up.
Event
The dance falls on the twenty-fourth of every Spring and runs from nine in the morning to two in the afternoon. The way in is to walk into Cindersap Forest, which cannot be entered before nine.
The dance ground itself is in the far west of the forest, over the bridge south of the Wizard's Tower, and that stretch of map only exists on this one day of the year. Every home and shop across the valley is locked for the day, so nothing else can be done with the morning. The festival ends once Mayor Lewis is spoken to and the dance has run, and the farmer wakes up back on the farm at ten at night.
Asking somebody to dance means talking to them until the invitation option appears, which normally takes two conversations. A marriage candidate with fewer than four hearts of friendship will turn the offer down. Villagers who are not candidates have their own festival dialogue instead, and talking to all of them is a cheap round of friendship since everyone is standing in one field.
Dancing with a candidate adds a full heart, which is 250 friendship points, in one go. In a multiplayer game farmers can also dance with each other. A divorced ex will refuse and say something cutting about it.
If nobody is asked, or nobody will agree, the dance goes ahead with its own pairings: Leah with Elliott, Maru with Harvey, Emily with Shane, Haley with Alex, Penny with Sam and Abigail with Sebastian. Choosing a partner displaces one of those, and the villager who has been bumped goes and stands below the dance floor next to Pierre and Caroline.
Reaching four hearts with a candidate inside the first year is demanding but entirely possible, and a determined farmer can manage it with all twelve. The usual approach is daily conversation plus the gifts that character loves, with the Help Wanted board filling in whatever is left, since completed requests pay friendship as well as gold.
Shop
Pierre runs a booth at the edge of the field, and the flower theme runs through the whole of it.
Rarecrow number five costs 2,500g and is the only time of the year it appears. Collecting the full set of rarecrows is a long-term goal that unlocks a hat, and this one is sold here and nowhere else, so missing the festival costs a year.
Tub o' Flowers costs 250g ready-made, and the recipe for it costs 1,000g. The recipe is the better purchase for anyone who plans to line a path with them, since it turns the tubs into a crafting project rather than an annual shopping trip. The tubs bloom through Spring and Summer and sit flat, so they work as a border.
Daffodils and Dandelions are sold in batches of ten at 50g each. Both are gifts rather than crops, and Daffodils in particular save a good deal of foraging for a farmer who wants something cheap to hand out.
The decorations are indoors-only: a Wall Flower and an S. Wall Flower at 800g each, and Ceiling Leaves at 400g each. Seasonal Decor and Seasonal Plants round out the stall at 350g apiece, and both change their appearance with the season without needing care.
Notes
Marriage does not close the door on dancing with other people. A married farmer can still ask anyone, and the spouse may well go and dance with somebody else in return, which the game treats as entirely ordinary.
Haley has a small joke built into the day. Speaking to her before the dance begins gets her claiming to be practising her moves, while her sprite simply wanders about the field looking lost.
The festival is one of the best friendship days in the calendar even for a farmer with no candidate at four hearts. The whole village is outdoors in a single clearing, nobody is behind a shop counter, and a lap of the field is a dozen conversations in the time it would normally take to find two people.
All Festivals
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
