Spouses, Decay, and Multiplayer Question (Solved)

[Phantasmai]

So I have a file with two other friends, and we are all married now. If one of us has to go to bed early sometimes two of us will continue to play (and we stop if something important like a spouse birthday, festival, etc comes up so no one misses it).

As we know, relationships with your spouses can decay if you don't talk to them everyday, and this is where my question lies. If that third party is asleep and not in game for a few in-game days, does this cause decay on their relationship even with them not being online? We can go into their house and see their spouse walking around it, doing things in town, etc as normal, so we are worried that us continuing to play will cause relationship decay for the absent player since the days are technically passing for that NPC without interaction from that player.

We've wanted to do something like fast forward x amount of days without saving to see if we can then have that friend join and check their relationship to see if they have lost hearts during the absence, but since the game's only saving feature is an unavoidable autosave overnight it makes this difficult. We don't want to intentionally and permanently make the relationship suffer if the decay does happen. Anyone have an idea for this? Is the game smart enough to realize when that specific player is not online so it hinders the decay?

[Phantasmai]

Update! We figured out how to copy our save file and I made my other awake friend not connect while I slept for two months straight. After my slumber I had lost 2 hearts with my husband and prompted my friend to connect and check his relationship level. Turns out, the game IS smart enough to not cause decay when the player isn't present! At current on the phoney file I have 10/12 hearts while my recently connected friend still has 12/12. This is wonderful, and now we don't have to feel guilty about squeezing in a few more days when one party has to go to bed. Hopefully this reaches others who have the same question.

[Soul]

omg thank you i was searching for this everywhere

[Feral]

thank you so much and take this award, was also looking for the answer to this and your response is perfect!