Phony
Greenhorn
Do you ever think that villagers have weird tastes in gifts that often don't match what you'd assume they'd like, or even contradict things they say? Do you think it's weird that Penny has thirty-five loved gifts (if including each unique book), while George, Kent, and Pierre only love two gifts? Have you ever tried to marry Alex, but struggled early-game due to him lacking any unique loved gifts that could receive the bonus for being iridium quality, and forced yourself to raise rabbits for the sole purpose of having a quality loved gift in the form of (RNG-dependent) Rabbit's Feet 
?
All these questions and more are the reason I came up with this idea: to add more consistency and rationale behind gift tastes, while also aiming to make befriending each villager easier by giving them each at least two quality gifts (excluding crab pot fish which can only reach silver quality, or fruit trees since you have to either choose the fruit cave (ideally picking Botanist) or wait years for your trees to increase in quality).
As for why it's exactly eight gifts, I initially had six but realized it was extremely constricting for some villagers. Ten would be excessive since some villagers don't have enough suitable items. It also helps that several villagers (Abby, Jodi, Krobus, and Pam) already have exactly eight loved gifts in the base game, hence why I think it's ideal.
Also worth noting is that this project does not affect universally loved gifts. I'm only aiming to alter villager-specific gift preferences.
Now that my Shark Tank spiel is out of the way, here's what I picked for each villager. If requested, I can type up my reasoning for almost all of these choices below, or I can answer any questions people may have about them. I am VERY open to changing several of these choices if given a compelling argument, but I only ask that those critiques be constructive, since I poured a lot of time and energy into this project.
If my opinions are changed, I'll see if I can update these images, though I'm new to these forums, so I'm unsure if it's possible once posted.
Key:
Unique and Dynamic Gifts:
Alex
I tried to keep the All-American, healthy, protein-rich spirit of Alex.
Added:
Ostrich Egg - Alex has a lot of humorous dialogue about the eggs he slurps up, commenting on the size of each egg, and you can't get much bigger than an ostrich's egg.
SMOKED Salmon - Encourages using a new (and lucrative) artisan equipment in the form of the Fish Smoker. Smoked salmon in particular is one of the most popular smoked fish IRL, and is very protein-dense.
Field Snack - Very easily accessible as early as your first day. Granola bars are commonly eaten by athletes.
Green Bean - There's an absence of meat that isn't fish in the unmodded game, so Green Beans are probably the most protein-rich crop. Green Beans are one of the worst crops after you complete the CC, so this grants them a niche use. Quality gift available by Alex's first birthday.
Cookies - Alex loves his grandma, Evelyn. Evelyn loves baking cookies, as evidenced by numerous lines of dialogue. Cookies can be healthy.
Removed: N/A
?All these questions and more are the reason I came up with this idea: to add more consistency and rationale behind gift tastes, while also aiming to make befriending each villager easier by giving them each at least two quality gifts (excluding crab pot fish which can only reach silver quality, or fruit trees since you have to either choose the fruit cave (ideally picking Botanist) or wait years for your trees to increase in quality).
As for why it's exactly eight gifts, I initially had six but realized it was extremely constricting for some villagers. Ten would be excessive since some villagers don't have enough suitable items. It also helps that several villagers (Abby, Jodi, Krobus, and Pam) already have exactly eight loved gifts in the base game, hence why I think it's ideal.
Also worth noting is that this project does not affect universally loved gifts. I'm only aiming to alter villager-specific gift preferences.
Now that my Shark Tank spiel is out of the way, here's what I picked for each villager. If requested, I can type up my reasoning for almost all of these choices below, or I can answer any questions people may have about them. I am VERY open to changing several of these choices if given a compelling argument, but I only ask that those critiques be constructive, since I poured a lot of time and energy into this project.
If my opinions are changed, I'll see if I can update these images, though I'm new to these forums, so I'm unsure if it's possible once posted.
Key:
- An underlined villager has had none of their loved gifts removed. I tried to maintain as much of CA's vision as possible. Keep in mind that this is impossible for Emily, Maru, Penny, Clint, Dwarf, and Willy, since they exceed having 8 loved gifts in the base game. Excluding those 6, only 8 out of 34 (less than a quarter) of villagers had any loved gifts unnecessarily removed, for various reasons I can try to explain.
- Light Pink = Loved in the base game, and therefore unchanged
- Dark Pink = Liked in the base game
- Light Blue = Neutral in the base game
- Dark Blue = Disliked in the base game. Jodi loving Sugar is the sole exception, as she hates Sugar in the base game.
- I also included the season of their birthdays, since ideally I wanted to have at least one gift that was available by their first birthdays, though in a lot of cases (particularly Spring birthdays), there was no diegetic way to do that.
- Any gifts with a note (the black triangle in the corner) are more unique and may require further explanation
Unique and Dynamic Gifts:
- I removed all but one gemstone from Emily, Clint and Dwarf for the same reason: it's boring, unnecessary bloat. Why bother giving them a more valuable gift if you can gift them the cheaper, more common Topaz? Instead, I opted for a single gemstone for each character, whether it be because it matched their hair color or their personality.
- Alex loves SMOKED Salmon specifically.
- Shane loves SMOKED Oysters (the closest facsimile to fried oysters) specifically.
- Watching Shane's 6 heart event triggers him to go from loving Beer to loving Joja Cola.
- Haley will have different dialogue upon receiving Elvish Jewelry after witnessing her 6 heart event.
- Penny now exclusively loves the Queen of Sauce Cookbook, and all other books are now only liked. I didn't realize that the Queen of Sauce Cookbook has the highest sell price of any gift I listed until today lol.
- I swapped Penny loving Melons to loving Powdermelons, both to give a use to the only Winter crop, as well as the fact that both Poppies and Melons are Summer crops, but Melons are already a great crop even without being loved by Penny.
- Evelyn only loves any Honey that isn't Wild Honey.
- Leo will have different dialogue upon receiving Friendship 101 after witnessing his 6 heart event.
- Fixing the Desert bus triggers Pam to go from loving Pale Ale to loving any Juice.
- In my ideal fever dream world, there's an overnight scene where a slime egg you gift Pierre spontaneously hatches without an incubator and chases him around town the following day. I'd be unable to program that, but I needed to put that idea out there.
Alex
I tried to keep the All-American, healthy, protein-rich spirit of Alex.
Added:
Ostrich Egg - Alex has a lot of humorous dialogue about the eggs he slurps up, commenting on the size of each egg, and you can't get much bigger than an ostrich's egg.
SMOKED Salmon - Encourages using a new (and lucrative) artisan equipment in the form of the Fish Smoker. Smoked salmon in particular is one of the most popular smoked fish IRL, and is very protein-dense.
Field Snack - Very easily accessible as early as your first day. Granola bars are commonly eaten by athletes.
Green Bean - There's an absence of meat that isn't fish in the unmodded game, so Green Beans are probably the most protein-rich crop. Green Beans are one of the worst crops after you complete the CC, so this grants them a niche use. Quality gift available by Alex's first birthday.
Cookies - Alex loves his grandma, Evelyn. Evelyn loves baking cookies, as evidenced by numerous lines of dialogue. Cookies can be healthy.
Removed: N/A
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