The Actual Gift Guide For My Time At Sandrock
I spent more weekends than I care to admit figuring out who likes what in Sandrock. The gifting system in this game is deceptively deep. Get it wrong and your friendship grinds to a halt at four hearts. Get it right and you unlock commissions, quests, and basically every piece of late-game content before the story forces it on you. Here is the breakdown that actually matters, based on what I've learned the hard way.
My Time At Sandrock Gift Guide
Start with the heart system. Every NPC has a preference tier for gifts: loved, liked, neutral, disliked, and hated. This isn't arbitrary. Loved gifts give 300 friendship points. Liked gives 150. Neutral gives 50. Disliked takes away 50. Hated takes away 150. The math matters when you're trying to hit 10,000 points for max relationship and unlock a character's full arc. The shortcut most guides miss is that certain items are universally loved or universally liked across multiple characters. Copper Ore is liked by almost everyone. It's worthless in terms of profit but extremely efficient for bulk gifting early game when you're grinding relationships. Don't waste rare gifts on people who like common resources.
The Characters Who Actually Matter for Quests
Surena loves any artisan product: pottery, carpentry, anything from the workshop. She'll take a Wooden Vase the same way she'd take a custom table. I learned this after wasting hours trying to craft special gifts for her when she just wanted basic crafted goods from the shop. She's also neutral toward raw materials, which is why early-game copper and iron ore gifting works better than crafting attempts. Bodhi is a different story. She only likes one thing: any fish. Not any seafood. Fish. She dislikes everything else, including the rare fish that other characters love. This meant I had to farm the desert fishing hole repeatedly instead of buying from merchants. The workaround was investing in the better fishing rod early and just walking the map until I found the exact spawn spots. Took about two evenings but unlocked her questline immediately after. Ryos likes any fruit, but specifically desert fruits. Apricots, grapes, the works. What I discovered that wasn't obvious: he also likes any item from the mushroom collection. Common mushrooms, which you find everywhere near the greenhouse, are treated as a loved gift by him. I spent way too long growing expensive fruit in my greenhouse before realizing I could just pick common mushrooms off the ground behind the tavern.
Get the Full Details
The Hidden Gift Mechanics
There is a daily limit on how much friendship you can gain from gifting one person. It's 450 points per day, max. This means you can't cheese relationships by giving someone ten loved gifts in one day. After three loved gifts (900 points), any additional gifts that day give zero friendship. You have to space them out. Another thing nobody mentions: gifts given on birthdays count double for friendship points. I didn't figure this out until I accidentally gave Surena a Copper Bar on her birthday and watched the friendship meter jump nearly half the distance to the next heart. Mark every major NPC's birthday in your calendar. I use the in-game calendar app and set reminders three days before each event so I have time to gather the right items. The disliked and hated categories deserve attention. Giving a disliked gift still adds five friendship points, just minus fifty. So if you're trying to reach a threshold and only have items someone dislikes, it's still worth doing. It's slower, but not worthless. I've pushed relationships from seven to eight hearts using only disliked gifts because I had no better options and didn't want to waste the day.
Where to Get the Items You Need
For early game, the trading post in the settlement is your friend. But the prices there are inflated. Wait until you unlock the courier system and order from the larger city shops. The price difference on things like fish and fruit is significant enough to matter over a full playthrough. I saved maybe 15,000 gold total by just waiting to buy supplies rather than purchasing them on the spot. If you're going for perfection and want to know exactly what every NPC likes, there's a community spreadsheet that tracks every gift preference. It updates with patches. Search for "My Time At Sandrock gift tracker spreadsheet" and you'll find it. I keep mine pinned to my browser and reference it every time I'm about to give someone a gift I'm unsure about. The one edge case I ran into that isn't covered anywhere: Romal. He's an NPC you barely interact with for most of the game, but he appears during a specific side quest. Everyone assumes he follows the standard gifting rules, but he doesn't. He only responds to one specific gift type and ignores everything else, including the items his family members like. I tried gifting him copper ore for twenty minutes before realizing he was completely immune to standard gifts. The workaround was checking the quest description carefully, which mentions the one item he accepts. Read the quest text before assuming.
Most people skip the gifting side of Sandrock entirely because it feels tedious. It is tedious. But the content you unlock changes the game significantly. Maxing relationships opens up crafting commissions that pay well, side quests with unique rewards, and dialogue that makes the world feel less empty. The time you save by understanding the system upfront far exceeds the time you'd spend grinding it blindly.
