holdenagincourt
Greenhorn
I have been trying to gift duplicate copies of books to NPCs who like them. It is always a struggle, one induced by the game's lack of separated key bindings intersecting with its save system.
The game uses the same key to give a gift to an NPC and "consume" the item yourself. Because these functions overlap, either input can be recognized by the game when the player attempts to gift an item.
In many cases an item cannot be consumed by the player, which means a gift interaction will always succeed. In other cases the item can be consumed, but there is a confirmation dialogue that allows you to clarify which key input you intend. Being asked whether you want to eat the Pizza you intend to gift to Sam allows you to click no and attempt to gift it to him again. The player can continue this process until the gift successfully goes through.
Books are the big exception to this. They can be consumed by the player, but there is no confirmation dialogue allowing the clarification of player intent. Furthermore, books are exceedingly rare random drops, so unintended consumption is a much bigger deal than eating that parsnip you meant to gift to Pam.
On 3 separate occasions in the past few days, I've consumed a book (one I'd already read) when I wanted to gift it to Elliott, Willy, and Sebastian respectively. The only "workaround" is to hold the book in your inventory until the start of a new day and show up at the NPC's house as soon as it opens to retry gifting in hopes that the game recognizes your key input as a gift. Having to redo the first 3-4 hours of a day--when you're typically doing the most boring parts of the gameplay loop like watering crops and petting animals--just to retry gifting is not an acceptable workaround. This is where the game's save system exacerbates the problem; if I could just quicksave before attempting the gift, I wouldn't care about the one button to rule them all.
I've searched online for this issue and there's no solution. All the threads have unhelpful advice such as "move closer to the NPC" and "use left click instead of right click". None of that fixes the problem. I've also searched for a mod to fix it and haven't found one. If anyone knows of something I could try please let me know.
Please add a confirmation dialogue for book reading. To me it seems like the best solution to this problem.
The game uses the same key to give a gift to an NPC and "consume" the item yourself. Because these functions overlap, either input can be recognized by the game when the player attempts to gift an item.
In many cases an item cannot be consumed by the player, which means a gift interaction will always succeed. In other cases the item can be consumed, but there is a confirmation dialogue that allows you to clarify which key input you intend. Being asked whether you want to eat the Pizza you intend to gift to Sam allows you to click no and attempt to gift it to him again. The player can continue this process until the gift successfully goes through.
Books are the big exception to this. They can be consumed by the player, but there is no confirmation dialogue allowing the clarification of player intent. Furthermore, books are exceedingly rare random drops, so unintended consumption is a much bigger deal than eating that parsnip you meant to gift to Pam.
On 3 separate occasions in the past few days, I've consumed a book (one I'd already read) when I wanted to gift it to Elliott, Willy, and Sebastian respectively. The only "workaround" is to hold the book in your inventory until the start of a new day and show up at the NPC's house as soon as it opens to retry gifting in hopes that the game recognizes your key input as a gift. Having to redo the first 3-4 hours of a day--when you're typically doing the most boring parts of the gameplay loop like watering crops and petting animals--just to retry gifting is not an acceptable workaround. This is where the game's save system exacerbates the problem; if I could just quicksave before attempting the gift, I wouldn't care about the one button to rule them all.
I've searched online for this issue and there's no solution. All the threads have unhelpful advice such as "move closer to the NPC" and "use left click instead of right click". None of that fixes the problem. I've also searched for a mod to fix it and haven't found one. If anyone knows of something I could try please let me know.
Please add a confirmation dialogue for book reading. To me it seems like the best solution to this problem.
