Friendship

Overview

You can become friends with Pelican Town’s villagers. As your friendships deepen, the villagers’ dialogue lines become more friendly, cut-scenes called heart events occur, and the villagers send you gifts in the mail.

Friendship mechanics

Point system
Each villager has a friendship score represented by a ten-heart meter (for a normal villager) or fourteen-heart meter (for your spouse).

Each heart is 250 friendship points. You can view all heart meters on the social tab of the game menu.
When talking to villagers, a circle will appear next to their portrait. Its color will depend on the number of hearts you have with the villager. Blue denotes 0 hearts, green for 2, yellow for 4, red for 6, purple for 8, and at 10-14 hearts a purple star will appear. Hovering the mouse over the circle will display the number of hearts out of 10, if not married.
0-1❤ •

2-3❤ •

4-5❤ •

6-7❤ •

8-9❤ •

10+❤.

You can increase friendship points with each villager by:

• alking to them once per day (normally +20; otherwise +10 if the villager is in the middle of a special animation, like exercising or using a camera)
• completing an item delivery quest (+150)
• giving a gift they love, like, or are neutral towards (see Gifts)
• inviting them to the Movie Theater (+200 if loved, +100 if liked)
• purchasing a snack for them at the Movie Theater (+50 if loved, +25 if liked) (see Movie Theater)
• making certain choices in heart events
• kissing your spouse (+10, only for the first kiss of the day); does not apply if Krobus is your roommate

You can lose friendship points by:

• not giving a daily greeting (see Decay)
• giving a gift they dislike or hate (see Gifts)
• hitting them with a slingshot (-30, can only score once per day)
• rummaging through a Garbage Can when they’re within 7 tiles of you (-25, except Linus who increases: +5). They will speak to indicate that they have seen you. If more than one is within 7 tiles of you when you rummage, only one will speak and lose friendship.

You may enter a villager’s bedroom when the relevant heart meter reads at least 2 hearts. This level improves access to the villager for talking and gifting.

Friendship points can increase up to a maximum of 2749 (one point less than 11 hearts) for villagers whose heart meters show as 10 hearts on the Social tab.

With marriage candidates, the meter pauses at 8 hearts. It will not increase unless you give the candidate a bouquet to indicate your romantic interest. If you do so, that meter is unlocked and operates as before until ten hearts is reached. (Note that after reaching 8 hearts but pre-bouquet, friendship points can continue to rise to just below 9 hearts (2249 points) and will not decay until the candidate is given a bouquet.) It is possible to give a bouquet to any and all marriage candidates, and raise all their friendship levels to 10 hearts, without damage to your relationships with other romantic partners, so long as you have not yet proposed. (If you have proposed, are married, or have a roommate, there is a chance your fiancé/spouse/roommate may become jealous.) Breaking up with them will instantly lower the relationship meter to 5 hearts, but you’ll still be able to increase it back to 8 hearts eventually.

Dating all bachelors or bachelorettes may result in a Group Ten Heart event, which does not affect friendship, but may prevent you from giving gifts for one week afterwards.

When you propose marriage, the heart meters of all other marriage candidates convert to the behavior of all other villagers, since none are marriage candidates any longer. However, their entries in the social tab still show whether you have previously given them a bouquet. (Also, after marriage you can still activate romantic heart events with these other marriage candidates if you have previously given them a bouquet.) After the marriage ceremony, your spouse’s meter unlocks once again and can rise as far as 14 hearts.

Decay

Each day, not talking to a villager will slightly decrease their friendship unless their heart meter is full. Marriage doesn’t stop decay with your spouse. Calling a villager using the Telephone does not count as talking to the villager.

Gifts

You can give each villager one gift per day, up to two gifts per week, as indicated by the checkboxes in the social tab. You can review the villager’s gift preferences by clicking on their row in the Social Tab to open the “Gift Log”. This log keeps track of gifts given, and gift preferences learned via Secret Notes and dialogues with their family and friends.

For the purpose of gift-giving, the week begins on Sunday. If you give a villager two gifts in a week, their heart meter will rise an additional ten friendship points on Sunday morning when you wake up.

You can always give a birthday gift to a villager, even if you’ve already given that character two other gifts that week.

You can give your spouse one gift every day of the week.

Each villager has individual likes and dislikes, which affects how many friendship points are gained or lost when you give them a gift. The friendship points are multiplied on their birthday (×8) and Feast of the Winter Star secret gifting event (×5):

If a gift is liked or loved, the points gained will be further affected by quality of the item:

Note that a no-star loved item always gives more points than an iridium-star liked item. The equation is Event Multiplier × Preference × Quality Multiplier, where Event Multiplier is 1 (any day), 5 (your Winter Star recipient), or 8 (their birthday), Preference is 80 or 45, and Quality Multiplier is 1, 1.1, 1.25, or 1.5. (For neutral, disliked, or hated gifts, the equation is simply Event Multiplier × Preference.) With this format, the highest possible amount of points would be to gift someone an iridium-quality loved gift, on their birthday. Doing this, you would get 960 points, or just short of 4-hearts for one gift.

Heart Events

Gaining friendship with each villager will unlock unique events (see each villager’s article for the requirements). It’s possible to permanently miss some events, though most events can be viewed at your leisure or out of order

Romance

Some villagers can be romanced by the player (see marriage candidates). Once you’ve reached eight hearts with an eligible villager, you can give them a bouquet to unlock the ninth and tenth hearts. Once you’ve reached ten hearts with an eligible villager, you can give them a Mermaid’s Pendant to propose. Alternatively, at 10 hearts, you can give Krobus a Void Ghost Pendant to indicate you’d like to move in together as roommates.

After you’ve moved in with or married a villager, they get an expanded fourteen-heart friendship meter. At 12.5 hearts (3125 points), they will randomly give you a stardrop.

Quests

The game-opening Introductions quest, when completed, increases by 100 the player’s friendship points with each of the 28 starting townspeople. (The Wizard is not included among these villagers.)

Completing an Item Delivery Quest awards 150 Friendship points with the requesting villager.

Festivals

You earn friendship points for speaking to villagers at Festivals, the same as any non-festival day. Three festivals can have special effects on friendship points with villagers:

• The Flower Dance increases friendship 250 points (one heart) with your dance partner, unless the partner is locked at eight hearts beforehand.
• The Luau can increase or decrease friendship points with most villagers (all except Sandy, the Wizard, Krobus, and the Dwarf).
• Your gift to your secret friend at the Feast of the Winter Star is worth 5x the normal amount of friendship points.

In addition, giving gifts to villagers at the Night Market will increase friendship with them, in the same way as it does outside of festivals.

Bulletin Board Bundles

Completing all Bulletin Board bundles improves the player’s friendship rating with non-datable villagers by two hearts (500 points). Note that this applies only to non-datable villagers whom you have met in person. Villagers who do not show on the “Social” tab of the player menu and villagers whose names appear as “???” will not receive 500 points.

Note that you do not have to understand Dwarvish for the Dwarf to receive 500 points. In contrast, you do have to understand Dwarvish for gifts to affect friendship with the Dwarf.

Universal Gifts

Achievements

There are 6 Achievements related to Friendship:

• A New Friend (Reach a 5-heart friend level with someone)
• Best Friends (Reach a 10-heart friend level with someone)
• The Beloved Farmer (Reach a 10-heart friend level with 8 people)
• Cliques (Reach a 5-heart friend level with 4 people)
• Networking (Reach a 5-heart friend level with 10 people)
• Popular (Reach a 5-heart friend level with 20 people)