Stardew Valley gift guide: the best gifts for every villager

The residents of Pelican Town are friendly enough when you begin a new farming adventure in Stardew Valley, but you need to do some work to really earn their affection.

You have an individual affection level with each that can be raised primarily in two ways: doing quests for them and giving them gifts. The latter option is far faster and more efficient, but also riskier. Unlike some other games, each character in Stardew Valley has gifts they like and love but also feel nothing for as well as dislike or hate. Giving a bad gift to a character you’re hoping to romance will only set you back. Let’s open our journals and make sure we know the best gifts for each villager in town.

How gift-giving works

Gift-giving is all about increasing your affection level with a character as represented by a number of hearts you see when highlighting them. By increasing your relationships with them, you can learn new recipes, and they may even send you gifts in the mail. If that character is a bachelor or bachelorette, after you reach eight hearts, you can use a bouquet to marry them to complete the relationship. If not, the meter will max out at 10 hearts.

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You can only give a character one gift per day or two per week, unless it is their birthday, which you can always give a gift on. The more they like the gift, the more your relationship will grow, but it can also degrade if you give them something they don’t like or hate.

Universally disliked and hated gifts

There are some gifts that are objectively bad in Stardew Valley that no one will appreciate. Unless you want to get on someone’s bad side, don’t give any of the following gifts to anyone.