Year 1 Flower Dance Challenge

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sleeping Fox, Mar 23, 2019.

  1. Sleeping Fox

    Sleeping Fox Void-Bound Voyager

    Has anyone here tried to get any of the bachelors to 4 hearts before the first Flower Dance so they will dance with you in Year 1 (or are you planning on doing this)? Which character(s) did you manage to dance with in the first year and what were your strategies to raise their heart levels? Did you manage it in your first attempt or did you have to start over?

    As someone who is not too interested in making max. profit, I enjoy befriending the villagers and getting married as early as possible. This means I am usually already married by the time of the second year Flower Dance, so if I want it to feel like a date with my future spouse and use it to increase their friendship level, I need to get a partner in year 1.

    I had managed to get Sebastian to 4 hearts in time for the first dance once and was curious if it's possible for every bachelor (and I wanted to try a new challenge), therefore I started a few new farms just for this purpose. Since I did not want to start 12 new farms and do basically the same thing 12 times in a row, I sometimes befriended 2 or 3 bachelors in the same game. I am happy to say that it is possible to get any bachelor to at least 4 hearts in time.

    These are my completed Flower Dance Challenge Farms:

    Here are some of my strategies and observations from doing this challenge:
    • It should be possible to get any partner you want if you complete 1 Help Wanted Request for them, talk to them every day, gift them 2 liked items of regular quality and 6 liked items of gold quality (maybe they require even less, but this was the lowest I tried).
    • If you don't get a Request or are unable to provide the requested item, you need to gift at least 5 loved items, 1 liked item of gold quality and 2 liked items of regular quality, and talk to your partner daily. You need to talk to them on at least one Festival Day (for some you have to skip the Egg Festival, others you need to meet before going to the Flower Dance).
    • Some characters are easy because they have a Birthday before the Dance (Haley and Shane), others are more difficult because they only love items that you cannot get at that point (Alex).
    • Some of the more challenging bachelors cannot be done without a Help Request, so if you are unable to complete the request or don't get one in the first week, you might need to delete your save and start a new one (it's better to restart early than to play until the Flower Dance only to realize then that you won't get 4 hearts and wasted so much time)
    • Remember that you need to talk to the bachelors when they are not busy, otherwise you will get less friendship points (e.g. "Haley is ignoring you", Shane working at Joja)
    Help Wanted Requests
    • A completed request gets you 150 friendship points, so this is very helpful if you want to get someone to 4 hearts (1000 points) for the dance.
    • As far as I can tell, you only get requests from people you have met, so don't talk to any of the other bachelors to avoid getting quests from them (you can always befriend them later). You can't avoid getting quests from non-marriageable characters, because you meet some by default, like Marnie, Lewis, Clint and Willy, but at least when you get a request from a bachelor, it will be from the "right" bachelor.
    • Check the "Help Wanted" board for requests every day. If you talk to a bachelor and also give them a liked/loved gift on the first day (and not talk to anyone else), it's very likely you get a request from them on day 2 (I almost always got a request from my intended partner when I gave them a gift on day 1 and didn't speak to anyone else, and often I didn't get a request from them when I didn't give them a gift on day 1 or when I also talked to other people). If you are lucky they ask for a fish, if you are unlucky they ask for something that is still inaccessible (like gems or crops).
    • Also, if you completed the first request (on the same day you got it) and are very lucky, you might get a second request from the same bachelor 2 days later.
    • It's even possible to get more than 2 requests before the Dance. I once got 5 requests from Sebastian, four of which I completed. I don't know if I was just lucky or if I did something right to trigger so many quests from the same person. Maybe it's random, depending on luck or depending on how many quests from non-marriageable characters you completed or failed to complete. Unfortunately, I only took notes on things that were directly related to my intended partner, so I can't retroactively find out if there is a pattern. If anyone knows more about this, please share it with us.
    • If you are trying to woo more than two bachelors at the same time, you can't rely on getting Help Wanted Quests (some bachelors get two requests, others none at all).
    Gifts and Talking
    • Check the Traveling Cart on Fridays and Sundays for loved items, because if you can get one, it will give you more room to relax or mess up with other gifts. (You can use the Stardew Valley Predictor to find out in advance which items will be sold.)
    • Check the rotating stock of the Saloon for loved food every day. Sometimes there are several in stock at the same day.
    • Check the garbage cans in town every day, sometimes they contain loved food (saloon), or items you can use for requests (I got an early gold bar this way). Just don't let your intended partner see you digging through the trash (yeah, this happened to me once with Alex and I had to restart the day, since I couldn't afford to loose any friendship points).
    • Don't gift the partner too early or too late within the week (except for week 1). You might get better items and regret giving them something less liked, but also keep in mind that some characters might not be accessible every day (e.g. if there's rain on the last day of the week and you have less than 2 hearts with Elliott, you can't give him a gift that day; also: not every character is accessible for gifts/talking on Egg Festival, which is also the last day of the week).
    • If you can't find a good gift early on, buy a Salad (220g) at the saloon. All bachelors like it, Leah even loves it. For Sam you can also use Joja Cola, which is cheaper.
    • Don't sell everything you find or harvest at once, always keep spare items (as gifts or for requests).
    • Most of the bachelors like crops or flowers, so try to fertilize and plant a few of them in case you can't find loved gifts (parsnips and tulips are the cheapest and fastest way). Don't gift low quality crops, gold quality crops will get you more friendship points.
    • Remember that crops and flowers can be destroyed by crows or thunderstorms, so always plant a few more just in case (especially if it is something that takes a long time to grow, like Cauliflower).
    • Get to farming level 1 as soon as possible in order to make basic fertilizer and scarecrows.
    • Know your partner's schedules so that you won't miss them when you want to gift or talk to them, try to adjust your own schedules to this.
    • Talking to a character at a Festival doesn't count as talking. You need to talk to them before or after the Festival if you want to get points for talking to them, otherwise you will lose 2 points for not talking to them.
    • If you need all the friendship points you can get, you might want to skip the Egg Festival, because then you can enter the town after 2pm and meet some of the villagers in their regular spots to talk to them (you cannot enter any of the houses, so your bachelor needs to be somewhere outside, e.g. you don't have access to Harvey who stays in the clinic all day). Unfortunately, this means you won't get any Strawberry Seeds in the first year.
    • You also don't have to go to the Flower Dance at the earliest time possible, you just have to arrive there sometime before 2pm. This means you can meet some of the bachelors in town when they leave their houses for their regular schedules, and talk to (or gift) them, so this is your last chance to get the 4th heart if you are only a few points short. (You don't have access to Leah though, since she lives in the area where preparations for the Flower Dance take place, also no access to Sebastian)
    • Keep in mind that for gifting the week starts on Sundays and ends on Saturdays. This also means, the first week has one day less for gifting, since it starts on a Monday.
    • If your partner requires expensive gifts, find a way to earn the money back (like fishing) because you still need to buy seeds for your normal farming. It's always good to have a bit more money than you need, in case you find a good gift at the Saloon or Traveling Cart.
    • If you need money immediately, remember you can sell crops/forageables/food to Pierre, fish to Willy, gems to Clint and weapons/boots to the Adventurer's Guild.
    • Plan ahead which gifts to give which week/day and what you need to do/achieve (like skills or mining levels) in order to get them in time, and also how much money you need for gifts and for yourself if you still want to make profit.
    • Keep in mind that in some cases you really need to focus on getting gifts to succeed in getting your partner, therefore other aspects of the game have to take a back seat until after the Flower Dance. This means you might make less profit than usual or have to go about things differently. If you need to make progress in the mines quickly to get to valuable gifts, you can't spend too much time and energy on crops.
    Friendship Points
    • Talking (daily): +20 (only +10 if they are "busy") (max. +480 for 24 days)
    • Not talking (daily): -2
    • Quest: +150
    • Regular quality liked gift: +45
    • Silver quality liked gift: +49
    • Gold quality liked gift: +56
    • Regular quality loved gift: +80
    • Silver quality loved gift: +88
    • Gold quality loved gift: +100
    • Birthday Gift: gift value multiplied by 8 (regular quality neutral gift: +160, regular qual. liked: +360, regular qual. loved: +640) (I don't know how quality affects birthday gifts)
    Extra Friendship Points
    • Sometimes you can gain extra points by giving the correct answer in a heart event (e.g. Elliott, Sam, Haley).
    • Sometimes in normal dialogue, characters ask you a question (e.g. Sebastian, Abigail, Alex, Leah, Sam). Giving the right answer, will gain you a few friendship points, a bad answer will make you lose points.
    • According to the wiki, you get 10 extra points on Sundays for giving someone two gifts during the previous week (should be +30 points for 3 completed weeks). However, I found this to be unrealiable, as I sometimes did not get the bonus every week even though I gave a character two gifts, therefore I didn't include it in my calculations and plannings. If you get the bonus every time, it should make befriending a bachelor easier.
    I made two tables with basic numbers for talking and gifts (one with and one without Help Wanted Requests), maybe this will be of help to anyone who wants to get a partner for the dance:
    Table01.jpg Table02.jpg

    That's it for my general strategies. I originally meant to go into detail about each bachelor, but this post turned out longer than I intended, so I'll stop here for now. However, if you are interested, I can also tell you a bit more about how I romanced each character in time for the Flower Dance.

    I am also curious if any one else cares about romancing characters early and if you have similar or different strategies to get a partner for the first dance.
     
      MouseyPounds and squigglyruth like this.
    • WilliamZ

      WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

      I always do this with Harley, I present her with Daffodil including on her birthday. If youre an early cave explorer it's easy to raise hearts with Abigail, Sebastian and Emily as well.
       
      • Elenna101

        Elenna101 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

        I haven't tried myself, but I remember seeing a post about this in the forum once. IIRC you don't actually need a Help Wanted quest, because for all the bachelors/bachelorettes you can either find them a loved gift, or get a few extra points from their 2-heart cut scene. I'll see if I can find the post.

        EDIT: Turns out that strategy relied partly on the 10 points from giving two gifts a week, so if you don't want to count on that then there are some characters you probably need a quest from.
        The thread discussing it is here: https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/dancing-at-the-first-flower-dance.140822/#post-3251196
        And here's a reddit post (also linked in that thread) going into some detail: https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewVal...iepowered_speed_dating_and_the_year_1_flower/

        Thanks @MouseyPounds for the info!
         
          Last edited: Mar 23, 2019
        • Sleeping Fox

          Sleeping Fox Void-Bound Voyager

          @Elenna101 Thank you for finding the thread. I had no idea that the introductions quest gets you 100 friendship points with every villager, and of course I missed out on these points by not talking to everyone. It would have made everything so much easier, especially with the bachelors that never requested an item and had to be won over with so many loved gifts. But it's good to know that there are several ways to get everyone to 4 hearts in time. I guess this means you can befriend them even faster if you get both the introductions bonus and a Help Wanted Quest.
           
            Last edited: Mar 23, 2019
          • Elenna101

            Elenna101 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

            I'm curious, what was the weather like in the file when you danced with Elliot? Seems like it would be pretty easy to just barely miss it if it rained a few times before you got him to 2 hearts... I know spring is usually pretty dry, but still.
             
            • Sleeping Fox

              Sleeping Fox Void-Bound Voyager

              Elliott was the most difficult of them all. I did not get a Help Wanted Quest from him, the Travelling Cart didn't sell anything useful, and I missed two days of talking because of rain. My strategy for him was placing lots of crab pots to get lobsters, which is a loved gift for him. I spent the first three days of Spring fishing (and using the exploit that pauses the game while fishing) to get to level 3 and placed the first crab pot on Spring 4. Then I completed the Crab Pot Bundle in the Community Center to get 3 more pots and I also bought a few from Willy. I think I had about 11 crab pots, which caught 5 lobsters in total (the other gifts were two regular parsnips and a gold quality parsnip), and I just barely got him to 4 hearts one day before the dance. The strategy worked well enough for me, but it also depends a bit on luck, since the crab pots might not catch any lobsters in another run.
               
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              • MouseyPounds

                MouseyPounds Cosmic Narwhal

                Very nice. I did this a while back with a strategy focused on gold quality veggies and agree that Elliott is probably the hardest because rain makes him completely inaccessible before you get to 2 hearts. The 10 point bonus for 2 gifts in a week was definitely consistent back when I did my runs (I was checking progress with Lookup Anything at least once per in game day), but I know the gift resetting mechanism had some bugginess in some of the more recent patches and the bonus is awarded when the gift counter resets.

                EDIT: I see my old topic was linked here in one of the replies, so you already know about the hidden 100 point bonus from Introductions I was going to mention.
                 
                  Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
                • One More Day

                  One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                  He loves lobster, which you can catch right outside his front door. I'd say this makes him pretty easy to befriend, even accounting for the lost chat opportunities on early rainy days

                  If you've reached the point where you're doing flower dance challenges then it's reasonable to assume that you are at least semi competent at various aspects of the game. So, even with time set aside for meeting and greeting, Fishing 5 should easily be reached by day 4, where you can choose trapper to reduce the crafting requirements for crab pots to 25x wood and 2x copper bars. Not only is buying them at 1500g a pop going to get very expensive very quickly, you also won't get them down as soon as you would if you craft them, because the cash won't be there to buy them in sufficient numbers. Going for the bundle is too dependent on the RNG, and therefore isn't a reliable strategy, and in any case it only provides 3 crab pots, which isn't nearly enough.

                  If you aim to craft just 20 crab pots, that's enough to give you >99% of getting at least 1 lobster per week. And that only needs 40 copper bars, which is 200 ore, plus another 40 ore for 2 furnaces to smelt it in a sensible amount of time. That 240 ore total, which can easily be mined by the end of day 7 without too much trouble if you make a start on day 5. You can then chop the wood during day 8 and place the crab pots that evening. Over the course of the next 14 days or so, the chances of not getting any lobsters at all is vanishingly small, and more likely you get more than enough to give him loved gifts twice a week, plus some other shellfish to sell for quick and easy cash. You're going to the beach anyway to chat to him, so it's not even like you're taking a diversion to check them each day.
                   
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                  • MouseyPounds

                    MouseyPounds Cosmic Narwhal

                    As weird as it may seem, I don't do much min-maxing, so the idea of getting 20 crab pots down in the first week is something that never even occurred to me. My flower dance runs were always done as part of my normal progression and I don't do a whole lot of early fishing when I play because I just don't enjoy it. I appreciate that such an approach does make Elliott a lot easier to woo.
                     
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                    • Elenna101

                      Elenna101 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                      Yeah, I like fishing but I've never really done much with crab pots so that never really occurred to me. But it's a pretty neat idea if you want to befriend Elliot early.
                       
                      • Sesq

                        Sesq Seal Broken

                        One More Day and WilliamZ like this.
                      • WilliamZ

                        WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

                        I never thought that Alex was so hard to dance, since he always there and you can chat with him everyday, but unfortunately for him, he is the most hated bachelor around here lol.

                        I like a lot of his development with the player, he apologise proper if you give him a chance.
                         
                        • Starain

                          Starain Orbital Explorer

                          I just started playing again and currently on the beginning of the first year's summer at this point.

                          I had no idea that any of these are actually possible... but I did have my regret of befriending/romancing bachelor/bachelorette too quickly, so I suppose all the rejection I got for the Flower Dance is suitable for my liking, haha.

                          But I will definitely try these strategies once I'm going down the path of trying to have family with all available singles!
                           
                          • Danica589

                            Danica589 Intergalactic Tourist

                            Big shoutout to @Elenna101 for pointing out the thread! I didn't realize that the introductions quest grants a whopping 100 friendship points with every villager. I totally missed out on this opportunity by not talking to everyone. It would've made things much smoother, especially with the bachelors who required numerous loved gifts. Good to know there are multiple ways to reach 4 hearts with everyone in time. Combining introductions bonus and Help Wanted Quest seems like a speedier friendship boost.
                             

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