Staxel: Friendship & Gifts Guide

In place of a traditional “main path” story, Staxel offers up most of its lore and quests in the form of mini-storylines as your Friendship with various villagers develops. Although it can sometimes feel like there’s not enough hours in the day after tending the crops, feeding your animals, and foraging for that elusive Rhinoceros Beetle, setting aside a little time to chat and deliver gifts for villagers each day can add a colorful new dimension your Staxel experience!

Importantly, both the town and its villagers’ personalities will also grow as your Friendships progress. Over time you’ll gain new residents, new shops, broader dialogue and interactions with villagers, and unlock additional gameplay to keep you entertained in the downtime between farming seasons.

This guide is intended to act as a roadmap to give you an idea of where and how to find all the key unlocks and story quests, without spoiling any of the major details for your playthrough. If you prefer to jump into new games completely blind, you should consider returning to this guide once you’ve had some time to explore things for yourself.

Some of the content in this section, such as quest titles or favorite gifts, may be considered light spoilers. To avoid giving away anything major, we’ve broken it into two visual guides:

• Main Residents covers all the villagers you have a chance of starting with in your initial town. The mayor, Maximilian, will contact you about inviting the others after you’ve settled into your farm.

• Surprise Arrivals [Spoilers] have special conditions for when they’ll appear, although you can eventually have all of them on your island. It’s recommended to wait until each one shows up before you read about them in the second visual guide.

While some residents (like Maximilian) will always be available in your town, the starting selection of other residents and the layout of all the buildings will change with every new playthrough.

In addition to the Friendship progress from chatting and sharing gifts with villagers, there are a few other ways you can influence their opinion of you. This section will provide a quick summary of where to find (or avoid) each one during your playthroughs.

When running your errands in town, you’ll sometimes stumble across a lost item or hear a special request from a villager. While these quests tend to be very simple, they provide a substantial (and often totally free) boost to Friendship if you complete them before nightfall of that same day.

If you’re looking for more information on them, you can always visit Rowan in the Tavern and ask about “Any rumors?” in conversation. If any of these quests are active for the day, he’ll point you toward exactly the right villager(s) to find for them.

Rumor quests come in three flavors:

• ‘Return to Owner’ ones require you to find a missing item on the ground, such as a lost Sock or Bunnyphone. Returning it will give a small boost to Friendship with that villager.

• ‘Parcel Delivery’ tasks ask you to shuttle a small delivery from one villager to another and give a moderate Friendship boost with both. Simple, right?

• ‘Interested Item’ requests ask you to procure a specific item, which is usually chosen from their favorite gifts list. You will get a much larger than usual Friendship boost from it, which doesn’t count toward the daily cap. But remember: Talk to them to deliver the item, rather than gifting it!

Any villager can have a rumor quest, but you won’t miss out on any storyline content if you decide to give them a pass in your playthrough. There’s also no penalty if you miss the deadline after starting one, other than not receiving the Friendship boost.

As you’re rushing about each day, it’s possible to have the occasional “accident” that can harm your reputation with a villager. The damage from these is always reversible, but you might have to bear through a few nasty remarks in the process.

Angering villagers can happen in a few ways:

• Stealing their Petals will quickly irritate any shop owner, even if they can’t pin it on you specifically. Be careful when clicking around the cash registers in their stores so you don’t accidentally sneak a few coins out of it, or they may be hard to chat with for a few days afterward.

• Purloining their Possessions is often taken in stride by villagers, but if you take too much of their stuff it can cross the line into angering them. Until you return or pay for some of the missing items, they’ll refuse to go to work and may leave the town entirely.

• Giving Terrible Gifts doesn’t win hearts, but most villagers will still appreciate the gesture. However, a few villagers have specific items they really dislike and will try to refuse them if offered as a gift. If you insist on handing one over, you’ll lose some Friendship progress.

As mentioned in the introduction, Staxel doesn’t follow a single “main story” for most of its content. Instead of trying to prescribe one for you, the following recommendations are mainly aimed at helping you unlock all the major game content early in your playthrough (preferably before Winter 1st).

These will need to be completed each time you start a new playthrough.

Once you’ve made it through this list, you’re free to explore the remaining Friendship quests in any order you like without missing out on gated content! For first-time players, there’s usually more than enough of those available to last you well into Year 3+.

Despite how hectic farm life can be, there’s every opportunity to go at your own pace with Friendship quests. There are no time limits or “ending year” to worry about in Staxel, so you can often save bigger building projects until the Winter (when there’s much less to do on the farm) or wait to stock up on gifts until you’re in the right season to grow / craft them yourself.

As with any guide, an important caveat is that game content can change at any time. The Staxel developers are still very active with patches and new updates, so don’t be afraid to experiment if you run into something not mentioned here!