Will I lose much of the game if I dont care about making friends and just care about the farm?

[Andresteves]

I really have no patience to check the birthdays all the time.

[lizardmang]

Giving birthday gifts isn't required to make friends and can be completely ignored.

Many cooking recipes are unlocked by befriending villagers. There are a lot of cutscenes that are triggered by reaching certain friendship levels with each villager as well. They generally have no effect on gameplay, but much of the game's charm would be missed by not seeing them, imo. Several achievements are also unlocked by making friends.

[Kyozen]

You don't need to be friend with everyone, but it sure is a plus. Otherwise, you can completely ignore birthdays, but it makes the process quicker. By completing stuff in the Community Center you can raise your relations too.

[S3NTI3NT]

You wont be able to start a relationship with any of the villagers and start a family. there is also some cut scenes and commentary for each charterer. I married Leah and already have two kids. Thinking of getting divorced and getting with Abigail.

[esturias]

No need to do anything in this game, you decide.
You also don't need to care about birthdays, they just give an extra bonus on presents.
I just randomly hand out gifts, if I happend to see someone. If know that I go to person X and if I happen to have enough time, I grab some random or fitting gifts for the people I might meet on my way. But it's all optional.

Things that you will "miss":
- Presents that you get from your friends, which are mostly just materials, food and recipes.
- The stories of those people, either from conversations, cutscenes or minigames.
- The marriage part and everything that follows. (I'm not that far yet.)
- The fun of giving people bad presents when they annoy you.
- Finding out that Abigail is actually a demon that devours everything.

[Ryvaken Tadrya]

There are rewards for having high friendship ratings with individuals and groups. Some of those rewards are helpful on the farm and cannot be obtained any other way. You WILL miss content if you ignore friendships. Will you lose MUCH? No.

You don't NEED to do much of anything to make friends. There are a lot of items that many villagers like -- grab a couple of them and hand them out at random to whoever crosses your path. It's a great way to use the hours you've got after burning your energy into the red, or while waiting to do some night fishing, etc.

[mini]

the first game i started in Stardew i played 2 years in-game without befriending anyone (never got to 2 hearts). I'm more hours into it now and putting effort into making some friendships and just as said above: u get some short cut scenes with people u befriend, that can help u get to know them, and is pretty interesting usually. They will send u recipes and gifts (pretty useful things sometimes). It's definitely charming. But it doenst really affect the game itself. Not like completing quests could. So no, u dont need to, but i recommend u try to befriend a few people to see what happens :)

[Giblets]

You many as well, there's no much else to do after awhile, just talking to them, doing their requests help, and spending a few minutes gifting on their birthday is no effort at all, after all what else you gonna do? Fishing gets boring after awhile, as does the mines, and once you've reached the bottom you'll only need to go back to collect certain objects, you'll complete the community centre as you go with only a few things needed to search for.

Removing the friendships part of the game you're left with a very basic, reparative farm simulator..

[Ailes]

Not really, you will not get some cooking and crafting recipes, but none of it is too fancy or something that would drastically change your perspective and life, just a convenience. The items that some mail to you if you are friends with them are hardly worth mentioning either and can be obtained by other means too. The heart event cutscenes you might as well look up on YouTube.

What you may miss out and which I doubt you can find on YouTube (on the StarDew wiki perhaps however) are the dialogues that change. You may have noticed some villagers telling you to get lost and that they don't know you. These dialogues will obviously be replaced with others once you befriend them.

I made full heart friends with many without paying much attention to birthdays for a long time. And as far as I know that Luau event aside there is no way you lose friendship points with anyone ever. So unless you are in a rush you can just talk to them every once in a while and gift them universally liked items too whenever you bump into them. No need to run the schedule hardcore-like and have hundreds of different items with you.

Personally I just gifted either a sunflower or sashimi to most. Just grab some items that most, maybe even everyone likes, and that are easily obtainable. Gift them that when they cross your path and be done with it for the moment. And talk twice to them while you're at it so that dialogue tick appears too in the social window.

[lizardmang]

Originally posted by Ailes:

And as far as I know that Luau event aside there is no way you lose friendship points with anyone ever.

Friendship points can also be lost by giving someone disliked/hated gifts, shooting them with a slingshot, rummaging through garbage cans when they're nearby, and selecting certain dialogue choices during heart events (many 'bad' choices are obvious, but some are more ambiguous).

Friendship also decays each day unless a villager is at 10 hearts - or 8 hearts with bachelor(ette)s whom the player isn't dating. Decay never stops with your spouse and happens at a much higher rate than with other villagers. That said, decay with normal villagers happens slowly enough that it shouldn't have much of an impact unless someone is spoken to or given gifts very rarely, and decay with a spouse can be counteracted by simply talking to them daily.

[Haydenmonke]

unfortunately, yes.

[Ailes]

Originally posted by silentprotagonistsays:

Originally posted by Ailes:

And as far as I know that Luau event aside there is no way you lose friendship points with anyone ever.

Friendship points can also be lost by giving someone disliked/hated gifts, shooting them with a slingshot, rummaging through garbage cans when they're nearby, and selecting certain dialogue choices during heart events (many 'bad' choices are obvious, but some are more ambiguous).

Friendship also decays each day unless a villager is at 10 hearts - or 8 hearts with bachelor(ette)s whom the player isn't dating. Decay never stops with your spouse and happens at a much higher rate than with other villagers. That said, decay with normal villagers happens slowly enough that it shouldn't have much of an impact unless someone is spoken to or given gifts very rarely, and decay with a spouse can be counteracted by simply talking to them daily.

Oh, okay. I guess I still talked often enough with everyone to never notice the decay.

Now I actually want to try and shoot people with my slingshot. I can finally put it to some use!

[Giblets]

So once someone is at 8 or 10 hearts it never drops? That's good to know, i means i can pretty much ignore half of the people. Still can do anything with the dwarf.

[Ryvaken Tadrya]

Originally posted by Ailes:

Oh, okay. I guess I still talked often enough with everyone to never notice the decay.

Now I actually want to try and shoot people with my slingshot. I can finally put it to some use!

Friendship is a point scale where every heart is 250 points.
Decay only occurs if you DON'T talk to someone. The rate is -2 per day for most people, -8 per day day when dating, -20 (or was it -40?) per day when married. Except for marriage, the decay stops when the hearts reach the current maximum.
Talking to someone the first time in a day gives +20. Talking to them in the middle of a special action, like the Tuesday exercise meetup, is only +10.
If you talk to someone once a week you'll still get a positive return. And if you catch them in an activity, that'll still negate five days of decay.
Obviously ignoring someone you're actively pursuing a relationship with is BAD.

[Avilyn]

In addition to what everyone else has already noted, if you're going for achievements or a 100% completion game, you will need to make friends with the villagers - things like cooking every recipe & crafting every item can only be unlocked when you've got a certain level of friendship with the villagers, because they won't send you recipes or teach you crafting blueprints otherwise.

To be honest, the *easiest* way I've found of making friends in this game is paying attention to the birthdays - gifts on birthdays count more than gifts on other days, and you can get heart levels up pretty high by just giving the villagers gifts on their birthdays. I buy a calendar from Robin's shop as early as possible & put it on the wall next to the TV. First thing in the morning, I check the TV for weather/recipes, then check the calendar to see if it's anyone's birthday.

In spring, you can grow tulips, and they're cheap & universally liked by everyone except Sebastian, Clint, & George, so I usually just keep tulips around in a chest and hand them out on birthdays for the first year. Some of the villagers also like daffodils, which is even better because you don't have to pay for seeds for those, but it's not universal so I tend to stick with the tulips.

[Giblets]

Yeah Tulips are ideal, don't do poppies, everyone seems to hate them other than Penny.