How important is it to be friends with everyone

[Willow Rivers]

First play through and was wondering how important it is to be freidnly with everyone and gift everyone twice a week.

Are there are events that would require you to be friedns with everyone that is important or can I just concentrate on the one I want to marry, birthdays and bulletin board quests?

Been trying to friend everyone and it is taking a lot of time to gifitng and talking to everyone daily/weekly.

[Pixel Peeper]

Not important.

Being friends with someone mostly just means you get recipes, and the vast majority of recipes are useless. If you want a specific recipe you could just target the particular villager who gives it to you.

Some villagers do send you gifts, but again the gifts generally aren't valuable. Again, if you want a particular villager to send you gifts, you could just target them. In my experience it's even better this way because the villager will send you gifts much more often. Befriending more villagers just dilutes the quality of gifts that you receive.

Getting married also isn't important. The benefits are insignificant.

[Lynn]

I don't want to be rude or anything, ...but, if you are asking, I think you have missed the heart and soul of this game. You do what moves / inspires you. That is the joy (among others) of the game.

Friends? Yes, there are great cutscenes with friendships. I am in year 5 and, for the most part, only starting to explore friendships, but some did occur along the way. I talk to everyone, do some of the quests. I've been mostly focused on my farming and other skills/activities. It is very time-consuming. All activities have rewards that are worthwhile. You choose what to focus on. That is the creaive beauty of it!!

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Lynn:

All activities have rewards that are worthwhile.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

In this game, rewards are all over the place. Many things that require fairly large efforts/expenses are extremely unrewarding.

A game should reward players with adequate amounts of fluff and practical usefulness for reaching goals, and here Stardew Valley fails most spectacularly.

[Lynn]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Originally posted by Lynn:

All activities have rewards that are worthwhile.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

In this game, rewards are all over the place. Many things that require fairly large efforts/expenses are extremely unrewarding.

A game should reward players with adequate amounts of fluff and practical usefulness for reaching goals, and here Stardew Valley fails most spectacularly.

There are variations, in a quantifiable sense I guess you could say, but mostly it is all based on personal tastes, in my experience anyway. The OP is asking about friendships. That is very much a personal choice-related aspect of the game.

[Lynn]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

A game should reward players with adequate amounts of fluff and practical usefulness for reaching goals, and here Stardew Valley fails most spectacularly.

Idealistically speaking, this could be likely true. I love the idea of improving the overall reward system in practical ways. Even as I was writing that--which I think is still mostly true, and subjective based on what is fun/ satisfying to the player--I was thinking that may not be 100% accurate. The vast amount of creative choice, and beauty of the game, makes up for it though.

[mmx30714]

From a purely functionality point of view, friendship by itself isn't very rewarding. There's a Spicy Eel recipe you'd get from George (7 hearts) that might be useful for skull cavern diving. And good networking (8 hearts with 10 villagers) get you 2 points for your evaluation. Other than that it's just for achievements.

FYI: There are cutscenes with almost every NPC in this game but storywise it's competant but not Oscar winning script. Go for it if you're interested in a little story interaction.

[Nakos]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Originally posted by Lynn:

All activities have rewards that are worthwhile.

I strongly disagree with this statement.

In this game, rewards are all over the place. Many things that require fairly large efforts/expenses are extremely unrewarding.

A game should reward players with adequate amounts of fluff and practical usefulness for reaching goals, and here Stardew Valley fails most spectacularly.

Yeah, I have to agree with Tripoteur Ventripotent here, the effort vs relative reward for some things in Stardew Valley really could use a balancing pass.

But ... that's the problem with it being a single Dev working on the game. Setting up an Alpha test group, running it, collating the data and then figuring out exactly how to balance things is a whole lot of work that usually requires a dedicated team.

I don't see CA being likely to do that.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by red255:

what are you pontificating about and why do you think its related to this topic?

You get someone to be your friend it requires giving them 20 loved gifts -some for rembering their birthday.

Huge expense? not really.

That's exactly why you have to target specific villagers.

One villager to ten hearts?
Around 18 Loved gifts... not costly, bit of a hassle but easy enough.

Three villagers to ten hearts?
Around 54 Loved gifts... still not too costly, significant hassle, but manageable enough, and you get the recipes that you wanted. Reasonable investment.

Twenty-nine villagers?
Around 522 Loved gifts and who-freaking-knows how much running around, and the vast majority of them will not give you anything useful.

At some point, you've got to realize when you're being trolled.

[I Kinda Fail]

I'd say it's best to focus on groups.

Say you're romancing Abigail. You could also give gifts to Pierre, Caroline, Sebastian, Sam and Robin while you're looking for her.

Or if you're going to Clint's to pick up your pickaxe, grab 2 gems, and give one to Emily and one to Clint.

If you're going to buy more fishing bait, bring a gift for Willy and Elliot.

It's really harder to raise everyone's friendship every week, but it's pretty easy to get a group of people to 10 hearts, then focus on another group of people.

Like you could do Shane, Leah, Marnie and Jas. Jas, Vincent and Penny. Robin, Demetrius, Maru and Seb.

If you want to befriend someone but don't have a gift, still talk to them every time you see them. It raises friendship a tiny bit but more importantly makes you not lose friendship points for ignoring them. :P

I usually ignore Pierre, Caroline, Vincent, Jas, Gus, Willy, and Demetrius. Robin and Lewis are cool. Pam and Clint are just in convenient spots and have simple gifts. Linus gives the best recipe in my opinion, and he's on the way to the mines.

[Abalister]

Honestly though, the best and quickest way to achieve 10 hearts with everyone is to plan birthdays ahead. You don't need to gift them every day, you don't need to talk to them either. Just start a new month, look at birthdays, target each of them with their most beloved gift, and just spam them with these gifts all month long. At the end of the year, pretty much everyone should be at 10 hearts.

[Lynn]

Not that it matters, but....I had to just scan most of the replies, because the game really shouldn't be looked at too much through other people's eyes, and their version of things. Maybe that is just me. Seriously, the idea is to play "the whole game", and see it ALL....at your own pace and liking.

On the nuts and bolts of the game: you do need to make friends, if you want to have all of the recipies. Also, I've seen a few nice cutscenes. I assume there's more to see there as well.