I know not everyone enjoys this particular festival, or the "social" aspect of the game at all, but for my last few saves I have given myself the challenge of dancing with the NPC I intend to marry in spring year one. Having just achieved this goal for my YouTube farmer (phew! would have been really embarrassing to have messed that one up while recording it!) I was pondering whether my choice (for other reasons) of a marriage candidate for whom I had access to loved gifts early in year one made this challenge too easy... or whether it is even possible to dance on year one with an NPC who doesn't love anything you can easily get during your first spring. Four hearts = 1000 friendship points. Assuming no friendship decay except for the day of the egg hunt (because you'll be talking to them daily for the friendship points anyway) and no delivery quests (since that's a random game element that you have no control over), just how easy is it to get a dance partner in your first year? If you talk to your intended dance partner every day before the Flower dance, that's 440 friendship points, minus 2 for decay on the egg hunt day - so you need to get another 562 points through gifts by Spring 23. There are 8 gifting opportunities prior to the dance except for Shane and Haley, whose birthdays fall before the dance. Their early birthdays make it almost too easy to be considered a challenge, especially since you can get 640 friendship by just buying Shane a beer on the 20th of Spring. For a marriage candidate who does not have a pre-festival birthday, it's impossible to achieve 1000 friendship points before the dance with liked gifts and conversation - even if the liked gifts have the silver or gold star quality bonus. You can get away with giving liked gifts during the first week of the game, but will need to provide at least 6 loved gifts out of the 8 to get to 4 hearts in time, unless you happen to get the extra friendship points from a delivery quest. EDIT: Turns out I was quite wrong about this, as there are a few friendship point mechanics that I was unaware of which make it easier to reach 1000 points than I thought! See MouseyPounds' post below, and very detailed analysis on reddit, for how to woo any marriage candidate with gold-star parsnips. Loved gifts for Shane (beer as previously mentioned... or pizza if you don't want to buy him alcohol), Harvey, Sam and Leah (coffee, pizza, or salad purchased from Gus), Abigail and Emily (amethyst and topaz are fairly common on the early mine levels) are not too difficult to get early on, certainly obtainable by the second week of spring if not the first. Maru loves cauliflower but you wouldn't be able to use that for gifting during week one or more than once during week two (and then only if you plant cauliflower on day one and don't lose it to a crow) so Maru is out unless you are lucky enough to find something she loves in the trash cans or the traveling cart, or make crazy fast progress down the mines in order to be able to give her two loved gifts in week two. For Elliot, it's theoretically possible to rush crab pots and get lucky with the lobsters but I'm not sure how many pots you would need to place to get 2 lobsters each week from week 2 on. The earliest accessible loved gifts for Sebastian and Penny both require more mine progress than I have ever made in the first two weeks of spring. Unless you get really lucky with trash cans, Gus's rotating menu options, or the traveling cart, it's not possible to get any loved gifts for Alex or Haley in spring year one, but because of Haley's birthday bonus you can woo her all spring with regular-quality daffodils and still have a dance partner. So to sum up: extra-easy year one dance partners are Haley and Shane requires some effort, but still consistently achievable, year one dance partners are Harvey, Sam, Leah, Abigail, and Emily truly challenging year one dance partners, requiring extraordinary luck and/or super-human effort, are Maru, Sebastian, Penny, and Elliot and as far as I can tell it's impossible to dance with Alex in year one Edited to add: my kids remind me that you can also fish up loved gifts in treasure chests (my 12-year-old has had 4 diamonds during the first spring of his current play-through, as well as a Neptune's Glaive, elvish jewelry, and goodness knows what else. I wouldn't call fishing chests a viable strategy for early-game NPC-gifting, however, I should have mentioned it along with the traveling cart and the trash cans.)
You know, I actually wonder if putting the Flower Dance so early in the game, before a new player even has a grasp on the social interactions, was a deliberate decision to make you want to be part of the town more. The average new player (assuming the haven't read a guide like this one-- very detailed) isn't going to go into the thing trying to work on a single candidate with the goal of a first year dance in mind. (Assuming a new player even knows the event exists on their first play-through!) So there you are, barely having met anyone, finding no-one to dance with, and left standing alone in the corner during the cut scene. But why shouldn't you be? You're new here. If you don't know the townsfolk, they don't know you, and there's only one or two who even remember your grandfather. You're an uncertain quality, a stranger. And the fact that you get left out gives you that little wake up-- hey, if I want to fit in here, I need to be a part of these people's lives, too, I can't just wave to them in the street as I pass by. It's like this bit of social tweaking to get you motivated to make friends and learn more about the town. Next year, you think-- maybe that redhead, or that cute guy with the dark hair-- and that gives you the push to spend a little less time planting parsnips and a little more dropping by town and learning who you really like.
Oh, I certainly wasn't dancing with anyone in year one on my first time through the game or even my second. If I remember rightly I did do it on my third save but with Haley (this was before Shane was available.) Still wish our character could be dressed like everyone else for the dance!
I disagree with this assessment. You should never need more than 2 loved gifts for any possible dance partner if you don't miss any conversations and focus on higher-quality liked gifts. One major thing you are missing is the free 100 points with everyone in town for completing the Introductions quest. Additionally, several of your possible dance partners have opportunities for extra points from dialogue & cutscenes. A while back I successfully reached the 1000 pt threshold with every partner (2 at a time over 6 save files) by focusing mainly on high-quality vegetables as gifts and wrote up the details in a reddit post. Fair warning, it's a long read.
Very interesting! I was not aware of the 100 point bonus for the Introductions quest or the 10 point weekly bonus for two gifts - obviously those two things make a big difference to the friendship point math. I also didn't know the details of how many extra points were available from dialogue choices. I bow to your superior knowledge.
