Help my hearts aren't working!

[Madiiez]

Just what the title says. I give NPCs gifts that they love and the heart goes up once. I give it again, and they stay at one heart. Then I give them gifts they like, and their hearts still stays at one. In other forms I've read, their hearts are supposed to go up by 1/2 with a gift they like.

I've also talked to them multiple times yet their hearts never go up.

Is this normal? I'm new and still in my first year, but I really don't want to get rejected again for the spring dance because of a glitch :(.

[Bobywan]

https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Friendship
extract: each heart is 250 points, a loved gift is +80, birthday loved gifts are +640 so don't miss those.
you can also get +120 with everybody for giving a good item to the Luau for instance.
Once you have reached 8 or 10 heart, it won't decrease anymore so you can concentrate on the missing ones.

[max]

The forums that you read were wrong! The hearts are based on a friendship points system. Each heart is worth 250 points. Talking to them each day will give you +10, completing a quest for them is +150, a loved gift is +80, a liked gift is +45, etc. The amount of friendship points a gift gives you is boosted on their birthdays. Without mods, you can't see the exact progress each heart is filled. Here's[stardewvalleywiki.com] the wiki page on it!
That being said, it's impossible to invite anyone other than Shane and I think Haley the first year, because their birthdays are before the dance. If you're going for someone other than the two of them, you're out of luck!

[Madiiez]

Originally posted by max:

The forums that you read were wrong! The hearts are based on a friendship points system. Each heart is worth 250 points. Talking to them each day will give you +10, completing a quest for them is +150, a loved gift is +80, a liked gift is +45, etc. The amount of friendship points a gift gives you is boosted on their birthdays. Without mods, you can't see the exact progress each heart is filled. Here's[stardewvalleywiki.com] the wiki page on it!
That being said, it's impossible to invite anyone other than Shane and I think Haley the first year, because their birthdays are before the dance. If you're going for someone other than the two of them, you're out of luck!

Thank you!! The friendship points are confusing but at least I know my game isn't glitched. Now I won't feel so bad about Sam rejecting me lol

[Jigain]

Originally posted by max:

That being said, it's impossible to invite anyone other than Shane and I think Haley the first year, because their birthdays are before the dance. If you're going for someone other than the two of them, you're out of luck!

No, anyone can be danced with in the first year, if you present them with loved gifts twice a week. It's not easy, but possible. You'll need 1000 points with them, and you have four weeks before the dance (the dance happens midway through the fourth week), giving you 80 x 2 x 4 = 160 x 4 = 640 points through gifts alone. Additionally, by talking to the NPC you get +20 points each day, which you'll have 24 opportunities to do before dancing (talking to them at the festival counts), so 24 x 20 = 480 points more, for a total of 1120 points. And that's before we take into consideration bulletin board quests (+150 points, but due to RNG you might not see any quests from the NPC you're trying to woo), choices made during their respective heart events (which can both increase and decrease friendship), or the quality of the product you're giving (which increases friendship for the gift by 10% (silver), 25% (gold), and 50% (iridium) respectively). Just as a theoretical example, if you were to be able to give them all-iridium loved gifts, from gifts alone you'd get 80 x 1.5 x 2 x 4 = 960 points, which is just 40 points off from being able to dance with them. You'd just need to talk to them twice.

TL;DR: While it's a lot of work, so long as you have steady access to any gift the NPC loves, and talk to them daily, it is possible to dance with any bachelor / bachelorette year one.