How important is it to give gifts?

[jamesc70]

I'm only about to enter the first year fall, and have been only giving gifts on birthdays, but I read you can give up to two a week. Usually I'm so busy, I don't have time to go running around giving everyone gifts all the time, so I was wondering how important this is?

Will I be missing out on something important by not giving everyone two gifts a week? I know I have to get Marnie up to get the purple shorts, and apparently some people send you gifts if they like you, but is that really needed?

[LuckySara]

You will miss a heart event with Sam if you don't get him up to Heart level 3 before Winter

[billyeatssocks]

I would say just pick the NPC's that are easiest to gift on the way to doing things first. Usually grabbing people at the saloon at night is easy enough. The really important reasons to gift would be to get to marriage and also if you want certain things in the mail. Most npcs will send you recipes and some gifts, some are better than others but you can find out on the wiki what they'll send if you want to narrow it down to just gifting a few. It really depends on how you want to play though. You don't HAVE to gift anyone if you don't want to but you might not get recipes as a result. I generally gift npcs on bad luck days since I don't like to go mining then and you can look up their schedules on the wiki also so you're not running around trying to find them.

[Easy Frag]

Originally posted by jamesc70:

Will I be missing out on something important by not giving everyone two gifts a week? I know I have to get Marnie up to get the purple shorts, and apparently some people send you gifts if they like you, but is that really needed?

Will you miss out on something? Yes. Will you miss out something crucial. Definetly no!

The NPCs give little goodies once you are friends with them. But considering the time you spent to make them friends it's actually a bad trade. My advice would be high quality animal products and artisan. They are good for most NPCs and are abundant. Year 2 is usually a great time to start making friends. Your farm will be watered automatically, if you did good first year also your animals will be handled automatically. Money won't be a a big deal either.

In the end it's your preference on how to deal with the NPCs. It can be fun to scout all town for some of them as they have large patterns of movement over the year. But it can be tedious aswell, if you only need one or two more and you are wasting much time to find them.

The more games of stardew you've played the easier it will get.

[DaBa]

You won't miss out on anything. It will simply take you longer to max out the relationships if that's what you're after. There is no time pressure to do anything. You can just focus the first year completely on farming and building up, and then do the gifts the second year, or even the third. But do birthdays at least, they give a HUGE boost that shouldn't be ignored.

[ehyder]

The key really is need vs want. Trying to write this reply so that it is not totally spoilery. Apologies if it goes both too vague or too detailed. My default is to suggest reading wiki if I think there is a spoiler ahead.

Why you don't want to work on relationships:

• Can be time consuming. This is especially problematic in the first year if you are working on building your farm and/or skills. So if you want relationships figure out when to start.
  
• Can be expensive. Whatever you gift is not going into income or farm/gear development.
  
• Can be painful. The "where are you now" question pops up a lot when you first start "stalking" npcs.

Why you do want to work on relationships:

• Quality, quantity, and type of npc relationships (check wiki for details) count towards grandpa's verdict at the end of the two year period.
  
• Most npcs (non marriage candidates+2 marriage candidates) give recipes. Some of these are useful for buffs, all are needed to get the cooking achievement.
  
• Most npcs give gifts in return. Not usually a great cost to benefit but the timing sometimes works our very well.
  
• Relationship levels trigger cut scenes of interactions with the NPCs. Some of these are quite entertaining. Some raise soooo very many questions.
  
• Some events/quests only happen at certain levels, i.e., that shorts one op mentioned, and opportunity to marry.

The advice you have been given is good. Depending on how much you want to discover yourself (read those books you find), the wiki is a trove of information about what the NPCs like, and where you can find them. Other things to keep in mind.

• You do NOT have to gift items to build a relationship. Talking to NPCs also counts. Take advantage of this by saying "hey" to anyone in your path, if you have the time. Gifts do give more bang, especially on birthdays, as mentioned by@DaBa.
  
• Try to have a high quality item (gold star) to contribute to the luau in the summer in the first year (and subsequent years). This gives you an instant boost to your friendship levels for all non marriage candidates (and two marriage candidates). Check the wiki if you want to know which items will count.
  
• Successful completion of job board requests (and quests I think) also count towards friendship levels.
  
• Friendship levels will decay, until they reach max, so if you are going to work on a friendship, or set of them, stick with it until you max them out.
  

[Dimensional Traveler]

Originally posted by red255:

your wife is easy.

EXCUUUUUUUSE me?!!!