What are the best presents to give when wooing someone?

Question

I am all about efficiency. What are the best presents to give to make people want to be with me? I figure each person has preferences, but is there a way to know what those are?

Answer 1

Each character has one favourite gift (+1000 points), a single horror gift (-800) and a number of loved (+500), liked (+300), disliked (-300), and hated (-500) gifts. Anything else is a neutral gift that apparently only gives 50 points. The easiest way to find out what gifts are in each category would be consult a list online. Currently Ushi No Tane's Story of Seasons guide only lists gifts for the marriage candiates. There's a partially translated and abbreviated list of the other characters's preferred gifts available on someone's blog.

If you're like me though you'll consider simply looking up the gifts cheating, and prefer to figure out what people want just by playing the game. In that case I can offer the following suggestions:

• First try to find cheap and easy to obtain items characters at least like. Just like in previous Harvest Moon games, most characters have something they like that you can either pick up off the ground, grow on your farm, or easily make from either of the previous two types of things. It'll take a bit of experimentation, but with a bit a common sense it shouldn't take too long to find easy gifts for most everyone.
• Play close attention to what the characters say when you give a gift. There can be subtle differences between a person's reaction to a liked, neutral and disliked gift. Often the responses at these levels will be polite and noncommittal, so you'll have compare carefully them to figure out which indicates the more liked gift.
• Villagers will sometimes give you clues as what they like or dislike so talk to them every chance you can. For example I talked to one character who commented on all the fish another character was catching, but made it pretty clear that they weren't a big fan of them.
• You can't go too wrong relying on stereotypes. Unfortunately they're Japanese stereotypes, so they may not be very obvious, but for example, there's a good chance that younger characters like sweet things, and older characters will like more traditional foods.

If it's like previous Harvest Moon games, the most favourite gift someone likes can be very hard to figure out unless someone comes out and says what it is. It usually not to necessary to actually know what it is though. It's often expensive and difficult to make, so you can be better off by giving easier to come by loved gifts instead.

Finally there are other things you can do improve your relationship will marriage candidates (and probably other characters as well). Just taking to a candidate will gain you 100 points, plus another 100 points each if you're wearing that character's liked clothing and/or accessory. Showing them a liked or loved animal gives 150 and 250 points respectively. Wrapping gifts in their favourite colour will give 50 bonus points. Don't miss festivals, they give a boost (+1000 to +3000) to all participating characters, and especially don't miss giving a gift on character's birthday.