Befriending villagers in Stardew Valley can be hard, as you need to say the right things all the time, give them gifts twice a week, and also say hello every day.
Increasing your relationship with anyone in Pelican Town can be a very long effort, and even getting one heart can be a colossal task for some players.
Recommended Read: Can Farm Animals Die in Stardew Valley?
Now, the only problem that you might bump into along the way is maybe doing something wrong or ignoring someone for a really long time and thinking that this might affect your hearts with that NPC.
Yes, you can lose hearts with an NPC in Stardew Valley in various ways. Below we cover the different ways you can lose hearts and how to keep your relationship sky-high all the time.
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Can You Lose Hearts with an NPC in Stardew Valley?
Yes, you can lose hearts with an NPC in Stardew Valley quite easily if you don’t pay attention. There are many things that can annoy villagers, and you can quickly find yourself at 0 hearts once again.
Hearts are just a way for the game to easily show you how many friendship points you have with a villager in Stardew Valley.
So, even if you lose a heart with someone, it doesn’t actually mean you are back to the start, it just means that you went below a threshold.
Every 250 friendship points, you will get a heart with an NPC. If you did something wrong and lost a few points, getting to 249 friendship points, for example, you will lose a heart. But, as you can tell, you are really close to getting that heart back.
Below we will go through all the ways you can lose friendship points and hearts in Stardew Valley with the NPCs and explain how relationship decay works.
How You Can Lose Hearts with an NPC
There are a few ways you can lose hearts with any NPC in Stardew Valley:
- Friendship Decay.
- Give them disliked/hated gifts.
- Rummage through Garbage Cans close to them.
- Hit them with the Slingshot.
- Make the wrong choice in heart events.
Friendship Decay
Stardew Valley has a system implemented to lower your friendship points with all the villagers every day.
The only way you can stop your friendship points from decaying is to reach the maximum number of hearts with them.
For example, all non-romanceable villagers in Stardew Valley have a maximum of 10 hearts. This, however, does not mean that you can’t get more than 2.5k friendship points with them since the actual limit is 2,749.
Once you do get 10 hearts (2.5k friendship points) with a normal NPC, you will stop losing friendship points with them forever, and you will have an amazing friendship that nothing can ruin besides yourself.
Romanceable NPCs have a limit of 8 hearts until you give them a bouquet. After you give it to them and start dating, the limit will increase to 10 hearts.
You also have a 14 heart limit with your spouse, and you will always lose friendship points with them, even if you do get the 14 hearts.
Here is the natural decay you get with all the villagers in Stardew Valley to friendship points per day:
- Non-romanceable Villagers – -2 friendship points/day
- Romanceable Villagers before Bouquet – -2 friendship points/day
- Romanceable Villagers after Bouquet – -10 friendship points/day
- Spouse – -20 friendship points/day
As long as you try to talk to every villager every day, you should be able to easily combat friendship decay. An even better solution would just be to give them liked/loved gifts twice a week.
Bad Gifts
One of the other ways you can lose hearts in Stardew Valley is by giving the NPCs bad gifts. Bad gifts are the ones that the villagers dislike or hate.
Generally, you can use guides to find out what each villager likes and loves, and you should only give those items to them.
If you only give them liked or loved gifts, you shouldn’t lose any hearts from bad gifts.
Garbage Can Rummager
Rummaging through trash cans can be a rewarding endeavor in Stardew Valley. However, if any villager is 7 tiles from you while you look through a garbage can, you will lose friendship points with them, which could result in a heart loss.
You will lose exactly 25 points with the NPC that sees you, and players can easily realize that they lost points since that villager will also interact with them, reprimanding the player character.
Hitting Villagers with the Slingshot
This should go without saying but hitting villagers using a Slingshot will result in relationship loss.
Every hit will lose you 30 friendship points with any NPC in Stardew Valley.
You can avoid hitting NPCs with the Slingshot by just holding a different item in your hands. Otherwise, you won’t really find yourself in a situation where you might accidentally hit villagers with it.
Wrong Choice in Heart Events
Once you reach a certain amount of hearts with a villager, you will risk triggering an event with that NPC.
In these heart events, Stardew Valley players will likely have to make a choice between being nice to the villager or extremely rude.
If you make the obvious rude choice, you will lose friendship points with that person, which can result in a loss of a heart.
Luckily, you can make the hearts back quickly with gifts, and you can choose whatever you want, as the negative choices can sometimes be extremely entertaining.
That’s everything you need to know about how you can lose hearts with an NPC in Stardew Valley!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
