Friendship Levels

Your friendship with the people in the game can affect activation of events and requests. The higher your friendship level, the better the results. You will need a high level of friendship with a marriage candidate if you expect to marry him or her.

When you talk to a person in the game, you will see a string of six flowers running along the side of the conversation dialog box. These friendship flowers indicate what your friendship point level (FP) is with that particular person. The flowers will start out as buds and will bloom as you increase your friendship.

1 Flower
0
to
9,999

2 Flowers
10,000
to
19,999

3 Flowers
20,000
to
29,999

4 Flowers
30,000
to
39,999

5 Flowers
40,000
to
49,999

6 Flowers
50,000
to
59,999

Full Bloom
60,000
to
65,535

Normal townsfolk will have white-colored flowers and marriage candidates will have colored flowers. The colored flowers represent the different "heart" colors that the person has. In this game, the colors are white, purple, blue, green, orange, pink, and red. The secret marriage candidates (Dirk, the Oracle, Mikhail, and Alisa) have white-colored flowers like the non-marriageable residents but it is only to make it harder to tell that you can marry him or her if you weren't already aware that they could be married. Before you can marry, you need to reach 60,000 friendship points (full bloom level) with a bachelor or bachelorette.

Raising your friendship with the people can be done by:

Talking: You can earn +100 FP each day when you talk to a person. Talking to the person more than once won't give you additional friendship.
Giving Gifts: Each individual has different types of gifts that they like. A gift can affect the friendship points +800, +300, or +50 FP. You can give one gift per day to a person. Birthdays are very important because the points you earn from the gift will be multiplied by 5; an +800 point gift will become a +4000 FP gift on a birthday. Keep track of their birthdays!
Completing Requests: On the message board in each town you'll find requests that the people would like someone to complete. If the request only involved one person then you'll receive +50 FP when you complete that person's request. If the request involved two people, you will get +25 FP for each person.
Random Events: When you become friends with the townspeople you can trigger random events. These events will let you see some story between the villager(s) involved in the event. You can get between +100 FP and +300 FP. Some of the random events don't reward you with any friendship points.
Date and Flower Events: Only the marriage candidates can participate in dates. These can activate when the bachelor or bachelorette has more than 5000 FP. Talk to the person a second time per day to see if they suggest going out on a date. If you pick a good spot, you'll earn +100 FP. During a date, you may trigger Heart Events that can earn you between +2000 FP and +3000 FP if you give a positive response during the event.
Showing Animals: Each person have specific animals that they like. You can show an individual a wild animal if you see the person on the mountain areas. You can earn +100 FP per day.
Festivals: Participating in the towns' festivals can earn you friendship points. Some are just small amounts (+100) while others can be up to +1000 FP.

Besides raising friendship points, you can actually lower friendship! There is no advantage to lowering friendship points in the game. Be careful of doing the following things:

Ignoring a Person: If you don't talk to a villager for at least a week, there is a 30% chance that the person will lose -100 FP.
Giving BAD Gifts: The townsfolk also have gifts that they do not like. These types of gifts can result in a -300 FP or a -1000 FP hit. If you give a bad gift on a birthday, it also adds a multiple of 5, turning a -1000 FP gift into a -5000 FP gift! Be careful!
Showing a Disliked Animal: Villagers also have animals that they don't want to be shown; Nathan does not like mice at all!
LITTERING: Just like in past Harvest Moon games, you can lower your friendship by carelessly discarding items. Do not throw items into the fishing rivers on the mountain, the stream that runs through Konohana, or the rice paddy on your Konohana farm. If you throw an item and it bounces, then it is not littering. Only if the item is destroyed does it count negatively.