List of All Gifts
| List of All Gifts | |
|---|---|
| Type | Mechanic |
Gift tastes decide how fast friendship grows, and the system behind them is simpler than the sheer length of the lists suggests. Every item falls into one of five bands for every villager, from loved down to hated, and most items are sorted by a set of universal rules that apply to the whole town. On top of that, each villager carries a short personal list that overrides the universal one, which is why a Prismatic Shard delights almost everybody and offends Haley. A handful of items are loved by everyone without exception, and one of them is worth several ordinary gifts on its own. Knowing the universal bands and a dozen personal quirks is enough to befriend the entire valley without ever looking anything up again.
Overview
The bands are worth learning as amounts rather than as words, because the gap between them is large. A loved gift is worth roughly four times a neutral one, a liked gift a bit over twice as much, and a disliked or hated gift takes friendship away instead of adding it. The arithmetic means a single loved item does more for a relationship than a week of neutral offerings, and one hated item undoes several good ones.
Six items are loved by nearly the whole town. The Golden Pumpkin from Spirit's Eve, a Pearl, Magic Rock Candy, a Prismatic Shard, a Rabbit's Foot and Stardrop Tea all land in the top band. Stardrop Tea is the odd one out and the most valuable gift in the game, worth three times an ordinary loved item, triple again on a birthday, and it sits outside the weekly gift limit entirely so any number can be handed over. It comes from the Prize Machine in the Mayor's Manor and from golden fishing chests, which makes it the reason to keep cashing in Prize Tickets. Two of the six have exceptions: Haley hates a Prismatic Shard, and Penny hates a Rabbit's Foot.
The universal likes are where the everyday gifting happens. Artisan goods, cooked dishes, flowers, foraged minerals, gems, vegetables and fruit from fruit trees are all liked by default, along with Maple Syrup, Life Elixir, a Piña Colada, a Rainbow Shell and a Treasure Chest. The exceptions inside those groups matter: Oil is disliked and Void Mayonnaise is hated despite both being artisan goods, Bread and a Fried Egg are merely neutral while a Strange Bun and Seafoam Pudding are hated, the Poppy is the one hated flower, Quartz is the one neutral foraged mineral, and Hops, Tea Leaves, Wheat and Unmilled Rice are the vegetables nobody wants. Individual villagers carve out more holes still. Pam loves a Piña Colada while Leo, Jas, Penny, Sebastian and Vincent all hate it, Harvey hates a Rainbow Shell, Linus dislikes a Treasure Chest and Maru dislikes Maple Syrup.
The neutral band covers most books, Coral, a Duck Feather, a Nautilus Shell, Roe, Squid Ink, a Sweet Gem Berry, Truffle and Wool, and it is the band least worth spending time on, since the friendship gained barely registers. Below it, universal dislikes cover ore and most raw materials, and universal hates cover trash, Sap, slimes, monster parts, Carp, Snail and the rest of the valley's genuinely unpleasant items.
The lists use shorthand that needs reading carefully. All Mushrooms means the Common Mushroom, Chanterelle, Magma Cap, Morel, Red Mushroom and Purple Mushroom, and nearly every villager is neutral about mushrooms in general while disliking the Red one. All Eggs covers the plain, brown, large, duck, golden, ostrich and void varieties, and the Void Egg is almost always excluded from whatever the rest of the group gets, except by Sebastian and Krobus, who both love it. Fruit Tree Fruit means the Apple, Apricot, Cherry, Orange, Peach and Pomegranate, and it is treated separately from other fruit; the Banana and the Mango are the exception, since they follow a villager's preference for ordinary fruit instead.
Practical gifting comes down to a few cheap items that cover most of the town. Beer from the Stardrop Saloon is the classic answer, liked or loved by a long list of villagers and available every day over the counter. Eggs and Mayonnaise do the same job for anyone with a coop, and Milk and Cheese for anyone with a barn, which turns a daily animal round into a daily friendship round. Spring is cheaper still, since Daffodils, Dandelions and Leeks picked off the ground are liked by a surprising number of people, with George loving a Leek outright and Sandy loving a Daffodil.
The personal lists are where the big gains hide, and they are rarely expensive. Abigail loves an Amethyst and a Pumpkin, Clint loves nearly every gem and bar, Emily loves all the coloured gems plus Cloth and Wool, Maru loves a Diamond, a Battery Pack and most refined metal, Willy loves a handful of uncommon fish and a Diamond, Evelyn loves a Tulip and a Fairy Rose, and Linus loves a Coconut and a Cactus Fruit from the desert. Several villagers love an item they can be given from a crop: Shane with a Hot Pepper, Pam with a Parsnip, Jodi with an Eggplant Parmesan, Penny with a Melon, Lewis with a Hot Pepper. Jas and Vincent both love a Pink Cake and both hate most artisan goods, which makes the children unusually awkward to please with farm produce.
Notes
A birthday multiplies whatever is given many times over, which makes a loved gift on the right day worth more than most of a season's ordinary gifting. The calendar outside Pierre's General Store lists them, and a cheap loved item saved for the day beats an expensive one given at random.
The friendship penalty for a hated gift is the reason to check before experimenting. Handing over the wrong thing costs twice what a neutral gift gains, and a few villagers hate items that look harmless, such as Holly, which is universally hated and sits on the ground all Winter waiting to be picked up and misused.
Quartz is the most common trap in the lists. It is the one foraged mineral the universal rules leave at neutral, and a long list of villagers dislike or outright hate it, Alex, Elliott, George, Gus, Lewis, Shane and Caroline among them. Maru, Emily, Sebastian, Harvey, the Dwarf and the Wizard are all happy to receive it. Since Quartz accumulates by the dozen in the Mines, it is the item most likely to be handed over thoughtlessly.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
