Stardew Valley: Villager Gift Guide

It's very easy to get caught up in the addictive gameplay mechanics of Stardew Valley. One minute, you'll be planting your first Parsnip Seedsand sauntering around the town at your leisure.

Then, the next thing you know, you'll have multiple spreadsheets open and will be documenting every town resident's daily routines, what day your crops are ready to harvest, and putting together formulas to work out the optimum means of making a profit. It's inevitable and even bleeds into how you make friends within the game.

To improve your relationship with NPCs in the game, you need to give them gifts, and as you might expect, there are some gifts they love, and others they hate. So the key is to work out something that they adore, and then work out how easy it would be to generate tonnes of these items and stockpile them as gifts for the future. Gift-giving is stressful at the best of times, so we want to take the burden off your shoulders and list the best gift to give every character in Stardew Valley.

Just to be clear, this list will list the gifts that are the most easily attainable and the easiest to produce in bulk. All items will be loved items for the character in question, and we may take universal loved items into consideration if all other options are ridiculously unrealistic, but we will try to avoid this where possible.

1 Alex

Alexis a bit of an awkward one, but if you plan ahead, you can have all the necessary ingredients to cook up enough Salmon Dinnerportions to win their heart. You'll want to grow Kale in the spring, then grow Amaranth in the fall, which is also the period of the year when you can ocean fish for Salmon.

You can unlock this recipe by reaching a friendship status of three hearts with Gus, so be sure to check out his section below.

2 Haley

Haley is a very easy one that you can get started on as soon as Summer rolls around. You can buy Sunflower Seeds from Pierre for 200G, and these can be grown in Summer or Fall. These will take 8 days to grow, so plan accordingly and horde some of these to win Haley's heart.

3 Sam

Sam is someone who loves a big ol' Pizza pie, and this means if you have the cash, you can get started on building your relationship as soon as the game begins. You'll be able to buy Pizza from the Stardrop Saloon at 600G a pop, which is steep initially but a lot faster than building a kitchen and waiting to learn the recipe. If you prefer, Cactus Fruit is a more financially responsible alternative, but you will need access to the Calico Desert to make this work.

4 Maru

There are a lot of options in terms of loved gifts for Maru, but Cauliflower is the fastest and easiest to obtain in bulk. Cauliflower Seeds can be bought from Pierre for 80G a pop, and these take 12-days to grow.

5 Abigail

As veteran Stardew fans will know, Abigailloves Amethysts. She thinks they are absolutely delicious. These can be found within the mines pretty regularly. Then, if you want to farm Amethysts, you can do so with a Crystalarium when you donate 25,000G to the Vault Bundle in the Community Center. These take approximately 22 real-world minutes to process in a Crystalarium.

6 Sebastian

If you get really lucky with a witch event, you may see one of your chickens turned into a Void Chicken overnight. However, generally speaking, the best way to obtain Void Eggs regularly is to unlock the Sewers by donating to the Museum. Then, buying a Void Egg from Krobus for 5,000G. Then you can incubate this in your Coop to get yourself a Void Chicken and, in turn, an endless supply of Void Eggs, which is a loved gift by Sebastian.

7 Shane

While it's a little (or a lot) morally reprehensible to give an alcoholic Beer as a regular gift, you can't deny that it's the easiest way to win Shaneover. This can be bought from Gus at the Stardrop Saloon for 400G, or you can put some Wheatin a Keg and brew it yourself, which takes about 2 days.

However, if this doesn't sit right with you, then the next best option for Shane is Hot Pepperwhich can be grown in the summer.

8 Leah

By far, Leahis the easiest spouse to win over in the game due to the fact that you can buy Salad from Gus in the Stardrop Saloon right from the start of the game, and it is super inexpensive at 220G a pop. This can also be cooked, but due to the low price, I don't see why you would bother going to that effort.

9 Emily

While there are a number of gems like Ruby, Jade and Amethystthat you can use to win the heart of this spiritual queen, I would urge you to wait until you have a Sheep before you try to win her heart. When you do, you'll be able to shear wool from them regularly and keep Emilysupplied with as much yarn as they need to create new fashionable garments for the whole town.

10 Harvey

Harveyis one of the more awkward spouses to win over in the game, because a lot of his loved items require mid-game resources to make. However, of those loved items, Coffee is the easiest one to farm in bulk.

You simply need to get Coffee Bean from a Dust Sprite in the mines, and then plant this in Spring or Summer. This will give you 4x Coffee Beans every two days, and you can produce one cup of coffee for every 5x Coffee Beans you produce.