Best marriage candidate mechanically speaking.

[TruePurple]

Of the 12 total, which provides you the most game benefit from marriage?

Which has the best story arc from dating in your opinion?

Which character do you personally like the best?

Please point me to any thread that's already covered this kind of thing too, I did a search but there was too many results.

 

[iridium quality]

This DF video is very helpful:

When You Marry People For The New Stuff in Stardew Valley

There are so many new things to see in the new 1.4 update that it's hard to find it all. Getting married seems to have some benefits currently as there are n...

youtu.be

 

[Lew Zealand]

It doesn't seem that any of the spouses confer enough of an advantage in game where it's worth picking one over the other as far as gameplay mechanics work. Yes, some give unique things (I think Emily gives you something you can't get anywhere else) but they do not alter any playthrough balance in the game.

I've only progressed far enough on 4 of my saves to get married and all the "lucky" victims have been worth it IMO, so it seems that should extrapolate to the rest of the 8. I hope to marry them all some time, but not all at the same time as DF does in one of his videos.

I simply don't want to make that many Omelettes on Saturday mornings and Elliot will get a skillet upside the haid if he gets too impatient.

 

[Elenna101]

It doesn't seem that any of the spouses confer enough of an advantage in game where it's worth picking one over the other as far as gameplay mechanics work. Yes, some give unique things (I think Emily gives you something you can't get anywhere else) but they do not alter any playthrough balance in the game

Any unique stuff from a spouse is purely decorative as far as I know (e.g. Emily gives you some unique clothes, Leah gives a unique portrait), I haven't seen all the 14-heart events but I'd be pretty surprised if any of them gave you an actual game advantage. I've seen people say that some spouses are more likely to do farm chores than others, but I doubt it's a very big effect if true, and anyways the farm chores they do are usually not very useful IMO.

 

[TruePurple]

They give you different stuff that can be consumed, sold or crafted with. So which give the best stuff in peoples opinions?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Hmmm, based on the things I'm always finding myself short of, Abigail or Maru giving you Bombs seems the best. Maru will also give you Warp Totem: Farm, and that's pretty nice.

The following marriage candidates give a number of different foods with different buffs, so these gifts are non-negligible if you want to use those buffs:

Alex, Elliot, Harvey, Abigail, Haley

A few will give 1 or 2 other foods with buffs but you won't be seeing those very often as there are many non-buff options.

But the real point is that by the time you usually get married in the game, unless you grinded Hearts with your intended to the exclusion of the rest of the game, you usually have enough resources or g that the gifts the spouses give you are negligible in relation to the success of your filthy moneymaking Farming endeavours.

Coincidentally, the alternate title of Stardew Valley is Filthy Moneymaking Farming Endeavour. Little known false fact.

 

[PoppyForPenny]

Before marriage, I recommend to consider the spouse room and 14 heart event, as well as the gifts, appearance, dialog and mannerisms of each spouse.
Leah gives coffee and a unique item, but her floor doesn't match anything from the catalog.
Penny gives unique items and has a lovely room, but some nights she does not come home.
Abigail and Alex make changes around town and Emily gives unique clothing.
Not sure if Shane or Emily continue gifts by mail, or if their spouse gifts replace those.

 

[TruePurple]

According to wiki Leah gives rainy day items where 3 are 3 of 4 ingredients needed for life elixer. But I wonder if the missing purple mushroom is more common than the rest that it would fill in the gap. Well these items also give good health individually too.

Leah gives wild stuff that can be turned into seeds if you like farming those, a full set for spring at least. But do those wild seeds eventually become obsolete?

How great is getting free coffee compared to the difficulty of making it yourself? I suppose she gives free coffee even during seasons you can't grow coffee but one could always stock up on extra for those seasons.

Comparing free coffee verses farm warp from Maru, warp seems more valuable in use (allows one to cut things super close, especially with dungeons) but the ingredients of warps don't seem expensive. Also I imagine I'd use at most one warp a day but I might keep sucking down coffee for the speed boost. Well either way I doubt I'd get more than one of either a day, less even.

Emily's clothing isn't only unique, it's boots give middling stats too, I wonder how difficult it is to get the boots with higher stats than what Emily's give.

I also asked people what they thought the best story of each character is and what characters they personally liked the best (as well as any links to other threads talking about this) and no ones replied to those issues yet, like everyone just read the title of the thread only before replying. I did not put many words in OP so you can't tell me "TLDR"

 

[TruePurple]

Before marriage, I recommend to consider the spouse room and 14 heart event, as well as the gifts, appearance, dialog and mannerisms of each spouse.
Leah gives coffee and a unique item, but her floor doesn't match anything from the catalog.
Penny gives unique items and has a lovely room, but some nights she does not come home.
Abigail and Alex make changes around town and Emily gives unique clothing.
Not sure if Shane or Emily continue gifts by mail, or if their spouse gifts replace those.

Spouse room is merely decorative, right? No function with any of them? Does any of the 14 heart events other than emily's have any game benefit differences? As far as the rest, that's what I'm asking about.
The "unique items" you mention, what are they? Can you name a few?
The issue with them not coming home is no free energy recharge from kissing/you got to track them down to get it?
Those changes around town, what are they? Is such merely decorative?

 

[TruePurple]

If you divorce someone, does their spouse room disappear? If not, if you remarry, does their spouse room get replaced?

Also one other thing to consider, how easy they are to gift for. Like Leah likes lots of stuff including the plentiful Salmon berry. Maru loves strawberries, one of the cheapest/easiest gets(aside from actually buying the bloody seeds only from festival and it being early game when you need their cash). I should probably save some of my strawberries just to up her friendship.

 

[ISSsloth]

If you divorce someone, does their spouse room disappear? If not, if you remarry, does their spouse room get replaced?

Also one other thing to consider, how easy they are to gift for. Like Leah likes lots of stuff including the plentiful Salmon berry. Maru loves strawberries, one of the cheapest/easiest gets. I should probably save some of my strawberries just to up her friendship.

Yes, the spouse room disappears. Any items you placed in the room are put in a chest when the room leaves.

 

[imnvs]

Any unique stuff from a spouse is purely decorative as far as I know (e.g. Emily gives you some unique clothes, Leah gives a unique portrait)

Incorrect. The clothes Emily gives you includes boots, and they boost stats.

Not sure if Shane or Emily continue gifts by mail, or if their spouse gifts replace those.

Spouses do continue to mail you stuff, which is kinda silly, but oh well.

According to wiki Leah gives rainy day items where 3 are 3 of 4 ingredients needed for life elixer. But I wonder if the missing purple mushroom is more common than the rest that it would fill in the gap.

Purple is the rarest of mushrooms until you get mushroom trees. Morels and Chantrelles then become the rarest and are about equally rare, but Morels have other uses too so have a higher demand.

Emily's clothing isn't only unique, it's boots give middling stats too, I wonder how difficult it is to get the boots with higher stats than what Emily's give.

Middling? Until 1.5 they were tied for the highest stat boots in the game. To get boots with higher stats you need to get to Ginger Island because anything else you can get before then that has a bigger number for one stat also has a smaller number for the other to compensate. As for difficulty to find the ones with higher stats? I have yet to find the Mermaid Boots which only come from the rare treasure chest in the volcano, so I'm going to say not easy. The Cinderclown shoes just take saving up Cindershards, so those are easy enough, and just take a bit of resource grinding.

 

[PoppyForPenny]

The unique items from Penny's 14 heart event include three sets of decor not available elsewhere in game, including choice of 3 different bedspreads. Prior to 1.5 it was the only way to change the appearance of your bed. Leah's 14 heart event gives you a bad painting of Marnie that you can't get otherwise. Emily's outfit, with boots, is the only of these that is not just visual.
Abigail's event makes a slight alteration to the backwoods with a small shrine. Alex redoes the back room of the saloon with a sports theme. Neither of these change game play.
When you divorce, the spouse room disappears, but the above described items/changes remain. To collect them all, you can marry and divorce each candidate.
Gifting is a smart consideration! Leah likes driftwood, for instance.

I hesitated to answer about favorite story/character because I don't want to be too negative. I do not like the spouses. They stare at things, like a chair, all day. They walk weird routes like they forgot where your house is. Their help is not helpful, like watering the sprinklers. Guess I just prefer the single life! The game advantage to marrying is the spousal stardrop. In 1.5 collecting all stardrops is a completion criteria.

 

[Elenna101]

Incorrect. The clothes Emily gives you includes boots, and they boost stats.

Oh, so they do! Did not realize, thanks. There's basically no chance I'll ever get 14 hearts with Emily before getting to floor 100 of the mines, but I can see it being a consideration for players who don't mine much.

 

[TruePurple]

I examined the various candidates in wiki, and I find Maru to be the best and easiest spouse.
She's easy to woe. She loves Strawberries which are cheap and easy to grow and can have higher quality to them making them even more valuable as gifts. Cauliflowers too if I run out of strawberries. And for likes if I were to run out/sell all my strawberries and cauliflower before I could grow more, liking quartz is a low bar. They are plentiful in lower mine, and don't sell for much, so giving to Maru instead, yeah.
The gifts she gives are good too. Farm warp might be easy to make, but it does take hardwood, I guess supplies of which is a bit challenging sometimes. Cherry bombs and bombs are useful for combat. Fried mushrooms and crab cakes are good boosts for a tough fight. (they don't last long though) Does duration mean real time or game time? If game time, how many seconds of real time does fried mushroom boost your attack for? It says 7 minutes.

 

[imnvs]

Does duration mean real time or game time? If game time, how many seconds of real time does fried mushroom boost your attack for? It says 7 minutes.

Duration is in real, played time.

 

[TruePurple]

So how long is 7 minutes in game time?
If you drink coffee, then crab cakes, both speed you up, does the crab cake speed up replace the coffee speed up? Do you lose the speed up from coffee after crab cakes wear off? Or do they work independent of each other, but just don't stack?

 

[imnvs]

So how long is 7 minutes in game time?
If you drink coffee, then crab cakes, both speed you up, does the crab cake speed up replace the coffee speed up? Do you lose the speed up from coffee after crab cakes wear off? Or do they work independent of each other, but just don't stack?

Drinks do not stack, and in fact you can only have buffs from one drink active at a time. Foods do not stack, and like drinks only buffs from one at a time. Most recently eaten drink/food replaces older buffs.

Buffs from a food and a drink can be active at the same time, and they do stack.

7.17 seconds real time equals 10 minutes game time.
43.2 seconds equals 1 hour game time.
7 minutes is about 9 hours 40 minutes game time.
About 12.9 minutes is the time you have from 6am until 2am when you must sleep again (provided there are no pauses, cut scenes, etc).

...except in the Skull Cavern. Time goes slower there. It takes about 54 seconds for 1 hour of game time. So there 7 minutes is closer to 7 hours and about 40 or 50 minutes.

 

[TruePurple]

Drinks do not stack, and in fact you can only have buffs from one drink active at a time. Foods do not stack, and like drinks only buffs from one at a time. Most recently eaten drink/food replaces older buffs.

Buffs from a food and a drink can be active at the same time, and they do stack.

Um, it seems like you are contradicting yourself, saying complete opposite things. In the first version, if a newer version has a shorter timer, does that mean consuming the item reduces the timer?

 

[Dr. eeL]

I will comment on the two sisters, having married them both in different games. For those into acquisition, pick Emily, as she gives the more significant gifts. Haley is more into giving breakfasts. Emotionally, however, I prefer Haley. I like breakfast, and she is far more invested in her farmer husband. Whereas Emily is often helping out Gus, Haley can not wait for her farmer to return home at night. Emily is more comfortable doing her own thing, and I do like her smile and when she counts squirrels. But Haley has a softness about her that I emotionally connect with, something that Emily does not match, and I really missed when I was married to Emily.