[ Information Textbook ] Heart Rates and Relationships

[Mizuumi Valley]

(( This "Book" thread explains how to progress in relationships and whatever you need to know about heart rates. ))

Let's All Fall In Love!

A guide to relationships and their requirements.

You see before you a thick well read text book, inside details pictures and information about making friends and romantic customs of the Valley. It smells of sweet flowers and seems to have been read many times over, even the corners of many of the pages have been folded to mark rather interesting chapters.

Love is a fickle creature, she can be easy to please, but difficult to impress in the long run. Love is like this in all aspects of life, may this be familiar love or romantic love. Everywhere you go people make and break friendships, live and love!

Mizuumi Valley has rather delicate customs when it comes to courting and wooing a potential partner, as there is alot of responsibility in taking such a romantic gesture. You must dedicate time, effort, and gold into making sure you get your point across. With in this book details many chapters about how to make friends and then some. Ho ho!
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OOC: In every Harvest Moon game there has been heart rates, though to be honest they have taken a plethora of shapes and equations that it is really hard to keep track of them all. I have dumbed it down as best as I can, which means it's just... Do what you feel. You can skip parts, but if you feel this is TL;DR I'm really sorry.

Basically, we have colored heart rates divided into Friendship/Romance. Gifts are implemented, but don't have to affect your relationship with another character. You control the pace of their relationship, what matters is just having fun. There are some special things you can do with your character, but it's not required ( except for marriage, but I'm not making that too easy. )

Please, just have fun.

 

[Mizuumi Valley]

Gift-Giving & Gifts
Better known as the art of bribing people to like you.

Gift Giving and Friendship is something that has been implemented in the Harvest Moon series for over a decade of gaming, and from the look of things it isn't going to go away any time soon. There have always been a set of different categories with gifts, some of the lists are long and other times they are short. In Mizuumi Valley the gift preference categories are as so:


Special
Love
Like
Neutral
Dislike
Hate
Horror

Each gift category is divided into two sets, which is Food and Items. Which means That there is always a food dish/raw ingriedient that someone will love/like/etc and an item they will love/like/etc. There is no limit as to how many item/foods you can put into each gift preference area, but you must list at least ONE of each for each heart.

'Love', 'like', and 'neutral' increase people's relationship points with you and 'Special' will always increase it dramatically! While 'dislike' and ' hate' will decrease your relationship points and 'Horror' will decrease it dramatically. How much it increases and decreases will be explained later, but let's go straight to preferred gifts and a small explanation about them.

Prefered Gifts

Many characters tend to follow a particular theme with their preferred gifts: there is usually one ingredient that they 'love' and any dish that contains it ( Milk, Strawberries, Fish, Etc ) or they tend to 'love' a certain type of item ( Ore, Junk, Books, Gems, Wonderfuls, Crafted items, Medicine, etc ) and things that can be made with it. More often than not, they will 'like' the ingredient by itself or if the individual likes to cook or craft they will tend to really like the materials just as is.

For the most part as a rule of thumb, high-quality items/foods are usually the best gifts. Though this will vary from person to person, usually their jorunal and day to day conversation with them will reveal their preferences.

The Gift Categories

'Special' Gifts is always something rare and hard to find or make- Like a King Fish, specific dishes, Rare metals, a magical artifact, 'Shining' quality items, or anything in that sort.

'Horror' Gifts are something a particular character hates with every fiber of their being and unfortunately this could be something rare or easy to find - Like Milk, Junk Ore, Weeds, wilted crops, and really anything else you can think of.

Though remember, people are unique and their preferences could be very specific -

Example: Someone who 'loves' stew could hate milk to the point it's a 'horror' gift or someone who 'likes' different kinds of metals could 'dislike' unrefined ore.

Also - Keep in mind: Every person is unique and may not all like the same things. While one person will love Fruits, another individual might be neutral towards them. So, don't try to find a catch all gift.

Side Note: Character Creation

People, keep in mind with character creation that most people as I stated tend to have a "theme" with what the like, though also like I mentioned this is not always the case.

The 'Special' gift category is ALWAYS a rare or hard to find/make item and 'Horror' is something your character will hate with a passion. Much deeper than hate. 'Horror' can be any type of item that could be hard or easy to come by and this sort of logic also passes over with the 'dislike' and 'hate' categories too.

 

[Mizuumi Valley]

Friendship & Love
Because relationships are complicated.

In Mizummi Valley we use the colored heart system, which will be divided into TWO categories and will have a few difficulties per category that you can choose from. The Two Heart Rate Categories are Friendship & Romance. Everyone has the ability to be friends or enemies, but not everyone can fall in love with each other. Also, it might be easier to befriend someone rather than to fall in love with them, or even vice versa.

Gaining/Losing Hearts

How to gain/lose hearts with another person is up to you, honestly. As roleplayer, it's easier if you chose the pace you feel is right for your character. Giving and Accepting gifts helps influence how your character feels, but they could just not care about material items or how recieving something nice from someone could change how they feel about them. Characters are chartacters, we can't really rely on numbers to tell us how they feel.

Which leads me too ---

Difficulties

Difficulties is exactly what it means, how difficult or easy is it to increase your relationship with your character? Is it easy to make friends with them or are they a flirt? Are they quick to become interested, but hate commitment? You decide, you choose how hard or easy or progressively harder it is to get into any kind of relationship with your character.

Anyways, the Heart Rates go like so:

Friendship

♥ Black - Hatred/Enemies
♥ Grey - Dislike.
♥ White - Stranger/Indifference
♥ Purple - Acquaintance
♥ Blue - Friend
♥ Green - Good Friend
♥ Yellow - Close Friend
♥ Orange - Best Friend
♥ Pink - Like Family
♥ Red - Family

Romance

♥ Black - Heart Broken
♥ Grey - Dislike.
♥ White - Uninterested
♥ Purple - Interested
♥ Blue - Budding Feelings
♥ Green - Crush
♥ Yellow - Confession/Dating
♥ Orange - Falling in Love
♥ Pink - In Love
♥ Red - Married


So, basically that big line of rainbow hearts right above just means that you can have two types of relationships with people.

For Example: Mark just met Julia, but he finds her cute. So, he would have a White Friendship with her and a Purple Romance. When you are married to a person, you are Red/Red.

There are a few exceptions to the heart rate system, for example if you have family like your parents or siblings they do not get a romance heart level ( I'm sorry? ) and you can choose ANY type of friendship with your family, you can be as friendly or as bitter to them as you like. This, also, includes marrying into a family. So, bascially you would have Red Heart ( family )/ Colored Heart ( Friendship Type ). That's it, it's really easy.

When you first meet a person you automatically start at White Heart ( or in this case Silver as white doesn't show up on posts ), this is a bit obvious why.

How to Track Heart Levels
How you are supposed to track your heart levels with people is not by how they feel about you, it's by how you feel about them. So, in your journal you are to keep track about YOUR feelings towards a person and that means you have to keep track your relationshops with people. So if you are curious about how a person feels about you, you can look into their journal/profile.

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Special Events
Special events and Heart Events can help your characters become closer or can even break a relationship if you are not careful. Though, honestly they are also just interesting events. So, have fun!

Festival Days - Festivals are special celebrations that happen every season, each festival is usually a celebration of togetherness and enjoying the people around you. Spending time with someone on a festival day usually means you appreciate the person in some way which is why it makes it so special.
Birthdays - Birthdays are a little obvious, spending time with someone and giving them gift ( or even throwing them a party! ) means you took time out of your day to spend their birthday with them. Which equals to them that you took the effort to try and get them something for their special day.
Special Events - Weddings, anniversaries, dates, births, and parties are also special occasions. Attending a wedding and giving the marrying couple a gift is very heartfelt gesture, giving your spouse gifts or doing something special for your ( or someone else's ) anniversary means something too. Having a party and having people attend count towards this as well as being there during the birth of a child or animal ( which is a big deal! ). Take into consideration about these certain events and watch your post box for any invitations to something so great!
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Heart Events

Heart Events are very special relationship events that can be either be public or private. There are 4 heart events for each relationship type ( Friendship & Romance ), with romance gaining 1 extra special event. White, Blue, Orange, and Pink for Friendship. Purple, Blue, Yellow, Pink, and Red for Romance.

The big deal about heart events is that they have to be mutual, meaning that both ( or more for friendship ) have to feel the same for each other. Such as, a group of three friends are all in a Green Friendship with each other that means they can have a Green Friendship Event.

Friendship

White Friendship Event - First Meeting ( whether you like it or not, you cant avoid this event.)

Blue Friendship Event - A Friendship is Formed

Orange Friendship Event - Best Friends!

Pink Friendship Event - We are like family.

Romance

Purple Romance Event - Catching your Eye/I'm interested in you

Blue Romance Event - What is this feeling?

Yellow Romance Event - I like You!/We should Date

Pink Romance Event - I think I love you/Marriage Proposal

Red Romance Event - Our Wedding day!

These don't have to be the titles, but this is just an example.

The Pink Romance Event is the only event that can technically be repeated twice, once for the first time you confess your "I love you"s and once more after finding the Blue Feather. Once you have found the blue feather, that means you can propose to person your character loves and they can get married.

The Red Romance Event can be public or private, but its the only event that doesnt requite both parties to have the same color romance, in fact you should both be pink. ( Unless it's an arranged marriage, then I'm sorry. ) It's basically your characters getting married, its special because well.. They're getting married! That's a big deal. You need to have have the proposal/Blue Feather Event to get married.

Unless you are in a arranged marriage, and then I'm sorry... again.

You are not required to have heart events, it's just something fun to do to make it feel more like an authentic HM experience.

So, in conclusion. Take your time and have fun.

 

[Mizuumi Valley]

The Wedding Ceremony
What to do when you've popped the question!

The Blue Feather is not supposed to be bought, it must be found or earned.

A gift from the Bird of Happiness

The Mayor

If you want to get hitched we need a priest for that condemned building you call a church first!

- Claudia LionHeart
the Mayor of Mizuumi Valley

...

 

[Mizuumi Valley]

After Marriage
What to do after you've been hitched.

Children?

...