When I first started playing, I found it frustrating to raise friendship levels with villagers, as I would often miss the season to grow their favourite gift, or waste a lot of time and money on a less efficient strategy to make friends. This guide is for those who wish to max out hearts with the entire town for the least effort and plan ahead to have the best gifts ready to go.

Edit: It is possible to find liked gifts much more easily for most villagers, which might get them to max hearts earlier in game time. However, using loved gifts will halve the amount of effort required, which is the purpose of this guide; to max out the entire town the most efficiently. The one exception I sometimes make is Kent, whose favourite recipes don't appear until after his birthday.

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This guide contains 3 sections:

1. A chronological guide to making friends
2. General tips for making friends
3. Characters and the gifts I prefer to collect for them.
4. Chronological guideNB. This is only if you want to rush the friendship levels. You might prefer to sell most things for early money instead.

1. A chronological guide to making friends

Spring Year 1

• Check Cooking Channel on the 28th.
• Grow 34 parsnips for Pam and as ingredients for Marnie's gifts. I recommend planting as many as you can manage to water each day. Save 5 gold and 1 base for the bundles, sell all the silver and any spare gold, and keep the rest of the base for gifts, or at least 2 for the birthdays if you're trying to maximise early profit.
• Collect 17 leeks for George. If you don't get enough, save some to turn into seed packets next spring.
• Save up for the Egg Hunt on the 13th to buy strawberries for Maru and Demetrius.
• Collect 17 horseradishes for Krobus. If you don't get enough, save some to turn into seed packets next spring.
• Save money for the end of the season (the 28th) ready to buy summer seeds.

Summer Year 1

• Check Cooking Channel on the 14th and 21st.
• Plant a pomegranate tree for Elliot (and for bundles). It will take a whole season to grow.
• Plant sunflowers for Haley. These are also a pretty good money maker, as they drop seeds to replant, so you can sell the gold and silver and make a decent profit while getting her gifts. They also continue growing in the fall, so you can use them to preserve the growing patches without having to redig. Save 14 of the base level.
• Grow hot peppers for Shane and Lewis.
• Collect grapes for Vincent.
• Collect sweet peas for Sandy
• Grow melons for Penny
• Grow a small number of summer spangle for Caroline (just enough to unlock

Fall Year 1

• Plant yams for Linus
• Plant pumpkins for Willy, Abigail and Krobus.
• Keep pomegranates for Elliot (and 2 for a bundle).
• Grow grapes for Vincent if you don’t have enough.
• Collect plums for Jas.

Winter Year 1

• Check Cooking Channel on the 7th, 14th
• Collect crocuses for Sandy
• Fish for squid in the ocean after 6pm, for Pierre.

Spring Year 2

• Collect daffodils for Kent
• Check Cooking Channel on the 21st and 28th.
• Plant orange and peach trees for Gus and Robin respectively.
• Plant potatoes or kale to cook for Alex
• Grow parsnips for Marnie and Pam if you didn't get enough in Year 1.

Summer Year 2

• Check TV on the 21st
• Harvest oranges for Gus and peaches for Robin.
• Grow melons for Penny.

Fall Year 2

• Catch salmon and grow amaranth for Alex’s salmon dinner.

Any time

• Collect topaz from the mines for Emily, Clint and the dwarf. If you can get your hands on a crystalarium, you can turn a single topaz into many at a rate of one new one per day.
• Collect solar essence and void essence from dead monsters in the lower levels of the mine for the Wizard
• Collect frozen tears or fish for Sebastian. A crystalarium can be used to multiply your frozen tears.
• Upgrade your house so you can cook for various gifts.
• Build a barn and a coop and collect some of the base quality eggs and milk for most cooking gifts.
• Tap a maple tree for maple bars for Sam, or try to get a cactus tree growing.
• Fully upgrade your barn and buy pigs to get truffles for Leah.
• Develop a continuous source of fruit* and get yourself some kegs to make wine for Harvey and possibly Leah. I usually use my spare salmonberries or blackberries to make enough wine for each of them, before moving on to more valuable wines (such as strawberries or ancient fruit).
• Make oil from low quality corn for cooking for Alex and Pierre.

2. General tips for making friends

Use birthdays!

Giving someone a loved gift on their birthday will give you 2 hearts with them. Even a liked gift will give an entire heart. It helps to have the calendar for the current season open in google, or buy a calendar from Pierre so you can see who is coming up and find them the best possible gift.

Use the bulletin board reward

Completing the bulletin board bundles at the community centre will give you bonus friendship points with the villagers other than the marriage candidates. You need to meet Kent (Spring 1 in year 2) before completing this bundle if you wish this reward to raise his friendship level.

Consider waiting for complete number of items for a person before giving first gift

If you start giving someone gifts and then run out of gifts, their friendship points will decay very gradually over time. I try to have enough loved gifts for the person before I start giving them gifts to avoid this. Once at full hearts, there is no more decay.

Speak when delivering

Every day you don’t speak to someone your friendship decays slightly. For achieving friendship in the least number of days, you would need to find them every single day to speak. More efficient use of your time is to just make sure you speak to them when you deliver their gifts.

Organising

I have two boxes for gifting. One box contains my collection of loved gifts, and the other is where I put the gifts for the people I am currently working on. Each Sunday I open up the second box and just take one of each gift and go searching.

If you have trouble finding someone, open up their wiki page and check under the current season for their schedule. NB. The Wiki is not always accurate for locations of characters, but the vast majority of it is, especially if you check the deviation options lower down.

3. Best Gifts (NB this is based on my play style, you may find other preferences)

Pam - parsnip (cheap spring crop)

Haley** - sunflowers (summer and fall crop that provides its own repeat seed)

Lewis - hot pepper (recurring summer crop)

Vincent - grape (summer foraging and recurring fall crop)

Shane - hot pepper (recurring summer crop)

Gus - oranges (summer fruit)

Sandy - sweet peas (summer foraging) or crocuses (winter foraging)

George - leeks (spring foraging)

Penny - melon (summer crop)

Linus - yam (fall crop)

Willy - pumpkin (fall crop)

Robin - peach (summer fruit) or goat's cheese

Wizard - solar or void essence (dropped by monsters in the deeper levels)

Clint - topaz or various other gemstones. Topaz is the least valuable option.

Dwarf - topaz (see Clint)

Emily** - topaz (see Clint) or wool if you have a sheep/rabbit.

Abigail** - pumpkin (fall crop)

Maru** - strawberries: recurring spring crop, seeds cannot be obtained until half way through spring and you have to remember to save enough money for the Egg Festival.

Demetrius - strawberries (see Maru)

Elliot** - pomegranate (fall fruit)

Sebastian** - frozen tear OR sashimi (once you have a kitchen)

Sandy - sweet pea (summer foraging), daffodil (spring foraging) or crocus (winter foraging)

Krobus - horseradish (if you find enough during spring foraging) OR pumpkin (fall crop)

Jas - Plum Pudding (cooking - recipe 7 winter year 1), Pink cake (cooking - recipe summer 21). or fairy roses*

Jodi - Pancakes or Chocolate cake (cooking - recipe winter 14)

Evelyn - Chocolate cake (cooking - recipe winter 14) or beets.

Sam - Maple bar (cooking - recipe summer 14) or cactus fruit.

Marnie - Farmer’s lunch (farming level 3) or Pink cake (cooking - recipe summer 21)

Harvey - Wine (requires keg and fruit) or coffee (kegs plus coffee beans, or buy from Gus)

Leah - Truffles (requires pig) or wine (requires keg and fruit)

Caroline - Summer spangle (summer crop)* or green tea (harvest from her room or make your own tea saplings).

Pierre - Loves ONLY fried calamari, which requires catching a squid which has a high challenge rating for fishing and can only be caught after 6pm in winter. To catch them you’ll need an iridium fishing rod and several trap bobbers. Start fishing in the ocean at 6pm and go as late as you can. Also you need oil and the recipe (received in the mail after you have 3 hearts with Jodi).

Alex - Salmon dinner: I found this the slightly easier option as it requires less ingredients, but those ingredients all come from 3 different sources and seasons. Plan ahead if you want to do this.

Complete Breakfast - this uses up a lot of resources, but might be easier especially if you have a lot of cows and chickens.

* Evelyn, Caroline and Jas all love specific flowers, however these are annoying gifts to store as flowers do not stack unless they share both colour and quality, so you can fill up half a box trying to store them.

** The marriage candidates can be difficult to access at first because they hide in their bedroom/house. Once you get to 2 hearts (4 loved gifts) with them, you can walk right into their room. Generally it's easier to get to them once you have 2 hearts, which you can get in one shot by giving them a loved birthday gift. However, this can backfire if it rains on their birthday and they don't leave their room all day (can easily happen with Elliot).