Best Universal Gift

[Wai]

Has anyone worked out which basic produce (fruit, veg, mushroom etc.) Can be given safely to every character while being liked or loved by more people than any other?

In other words, which single item would it be best to stack in your inventory to give every time you greet a character who you have not already gifted that week?

[xicewindex]

There simply isn't a gift suited for everyone early game.
A few guidelines are,
More adult people like a veggie, parsnip, potato, just as in real life, kids aren't to fun of it so don't give it to Vincent or Jas. On top of that Sam and Haley don't seem to have much adult taste when it comes to food so no veggies for them neither.
Foraged flowers are good for all girls except Jody dosn't like daffodil. Some guys like a flower aswell but since you want to keep it simple .....
Natureminded people like most foraged stuff, Leah, Linus, Harvey.....

Basically it comes down to get the know npc's personalities and take it from there.

Whats the fun in just reading everything from a list to get what you aim for without emerging in the game to learn it yourself?

[I Kinda Fail]

Flowers are liked or loved by everyone except the guy who works with metal, the grumpy old man, and the emo kid. Easy enough to remember. Sunflowers, tulips, blue jazz... I think almost everyone hates poppy flowers, though.

Just about everyone likes blueberries, except Haley and Abigail, for some reason. They're easy to get in bulk.

[Millipede]

apple!

[Ɲøƈ]

Messaggio originale di pokomons:

apple!

You necro'd this to say "apple!" ? Great. Nice input. Glad to have you aboard, when can you start full time?

[Mondai]

Coffee. But don't give coffee to kids. That'd just be weird...

[Eneicia]

Messaggio originale di Inoc:

Messaggio originale di pokomons:

apple!

You necro'd this to say "apple!" ? Great. Nice input. Glad to have you aboard, when can you start full time?

In a way they're not wrong, after all, fruit from the trees is a universally liked gift, and peaches, oranges, and pomegranates are loved. But really, those fruits are all I can find (aside from combos of prismatic shards and rabbits' feet) that every single person enjoys.

[stopthatengineer]

Sorry, I don't know why im doing this......

1. A flower - Tulips

• Spring
  
• 20g seeds
  
• 6 days to grow
  
• this is 20g per gift
  
• disliked by Clint, George, and Sebastian
  
• Loved by Evelyn

2. A veg - Parsnip/Green Beans

• Spring
  
• 20g/60g seeds
  
• 4/10r3 days to grow
  
• this is 20g/10g per gift
  
• disliked by Abigail, Haley, Jas, Sam, and Vincent

3. Save some G by gifting cheaper foragables to those that will take it. Leah/Linus

Pretty much every season, minus winter, has a version of the above so you don't need to go crazy and farm enough for the whole year though I believe tulips/green beans is the cheapest pair. This is the easiest and cheapest way to max out gifts on the first year.

After that save 20k to plant 10 Apricot trees before winter 1st, this way they will start producing in spring and give you enough fruits to cover all gift-able npcs for the year every year.

Overkill but yea....

[Pockets314]

If you were actually that OCD about it, you'd take the wiki information, make a chart, and determine which fruit or flower is the most popular amongst every person. Or just check the universal likes and accept those as an answer.

[megan31917]

Parsnips are easy to grow & pretty much liked by all but the kids. I've given them out in year 1 & it worked to grow the friendship. Also later, corn works too.

[abstractAPPLE]

Most of the older men like beer a lot. Not favorite gift but 2nd favorite.

Just pay a round for the ol' salty dogs at Stardew Saloon.

[Mekkie]

I know this is a massive necro, however since no one *actually* answered this question, and it still comes up among the top of search engine results for "best universal gifts" I thought I would actually answer it.

The best early game universals are: Tulips, Sunflowers, and Fairy Roses. Spring/Summer/Fall respectively.

These are liked (and some loves) by all villagers EXCEPT, what we shall call the 3 grumpy men: Clint, Sebastian and George.

Considering those three are the only exceptions, these seasonal flowers are by far the easiest way to get everyone in town to like you with minimal thought.

So for the 3 grumpy men, they are also easy.
-Clint likes most of the shiny gems. Ruby, Emerald, Topaz, Amethyst, Aquamarine etc. He's just a gem ♥♥♥♥♥.
-Sebastian's Frozen Emo Tears are littered all throughout the mines and not used for much else.
-George is a little harder to please, since his only easy love is Leeks, which are seasonal for spring. If you don't feel like hoarding those, just give him any of your harvested veggies as a substitute.

Hope this helps for others who (like me) still wanted an answer to this question in 2020.
Easy, efficient, and minimal bag space occupied.

[Stardustfire]

crystal, green tea, coffee, liked by nearly all villagers

[Starhawk Ranger]

Wilco did answer your question. There is no universal "liked" item either there are exceptions for everything. For the first spring you can grow tulips but 3 people dislike them, Clint, George and Sebastian. George is easy, he loves leeks that are forage. The other two can wait until later.

[Bob of Mage]

Jelly is another option that you can start using early on for cheap mass gifts. You can use all those salmonberries from late spring for example (they normally sell for a mere 5g so they aren't good for much else early on). Sashimi is a great option once you get your kitchen since you only need one "fish", and there are many easy to catch fish that are nearly worthless (I'm looking at you carp!).

[Lunacy]

It's not super simple, since even universal likes have a few people who are exceptions.
Bob's suggestion of turning salmonberries into jelly gifts works out, you just skip sebastion and give him sashimi,

Coffee is also very easy to mass-produce through many seasons if you found a bean early and propogated it. You can easily get a few thousand beans, which can turn into hundreds of coffee, which is easy to remember because "everyone likes it besides the children"
Beer is similar, made from 10g per wheat in kegs but is also disliked by Penny and Sebastion + the kids.

But if you really want to get friendship up fast, focus more on gold quality loves, than standard likes. 2 easy likes will give you 90 friendship a week, while gold loves will get you 200. You don't have to try to do everyone a week, just focus out some of them and you'll have less to worry about later, since they stop decaying at max hearts and you can start ignoring them completely. (Decay is -2 per day that you do not speak with them) Also find and talk to them each day for the +20 points.

And try not to give them generic easy stuff for their birthday if you can help it. Like a simple coffee will get you 360 points, while a gold love will get you 800 points.

(Each heart is 250 points, if you just give coffee/jam for 2 days and ignore them, you'll earn 120 points a week if you talk to them before/after gifting them, meaning you can max a bunch of people in 14-18 weeks

Also, while "apple!" doesn't seem very valuable, any fruits grown on trees don't have exceptions and are true universal likes, they just don't produce good quality until the years roll around. And the fact they produce 1 a day, which isn't enough to keep up with the 33 people you can give them to.
You'd need (1x28) say roughly 60 gifts a week (x2), 4 weeks a season (x4), 4 seasons a year (x4) 32-36 of a particular fruit to gift fruit to people through the year. (or 11.5 of each season tree for the month and extra for winter) Which will cost as low as 72,000g and up to 216000g if you intend to do it that way. Coffee is nearly free, just sayin (the 150g loss per gift) (which would be roughly 5000 coffee beans worth 150k of coffee in a year)
(Also apples, apricots, and cherries are the worst of the 6 because they don't have the one person who loves them, while Peaches and Pomegranates are the most profitable from fruit trees.)