Problem Statement:
There are many different preferences Pokémon have. There is even more furniture.
So what is the minimum amount of furniture do you need to carry with you to be able to meet any Pokémon's needs? I approached this problem by creating a bipartite graph and calculating the minimum covering set. This should provide an optimal answer.
Constraints:
I only considered furniture that:
- can be crafted by the player
- covered more than 1 category by
In total this was 245 pieces under consideration.
I did not consider mechanics around light/dark, warm/cold or dry/humid. From what I can tell the candle emits a small amount of light/heat and the sink can be toggled on/off for humidity, but I still haven't gotten a clear answer on how these mechanics work quantitatively. I suspect an additional 2-3 pieces of furniture would solve for this, but do not know enough to make any recommendations.
If someone does authoritatively know how these work I'd be happy to redo the analysis to factor that in.
Results:
There are 15 pieces of furniture that would allow you to meet any of the 43 preferences of any Pokémon:
- Berry chair (covers 4 categories)
- Clear Bell (covers 4 categories)
- First aid kit (covers 4 categories)
- Garbage bin (covers 3 categories)
- Harbor streetlight (covers 5 categories)
- Modern sink (covers 5 categories)
- Pinwheels (covers 6 categories)
- Punching bag (covers 4 categories)
- Sign (covers 3 categories)
- Step stool (covers 2 categories)
- Stone bench (covers 3 categories)
- Decorative plant shelf (covers 2 categories)
- Fancy pen (covers 5 categories)
- Iron pipes (covers 3 categories)
- Slender candle (covers 4 categories)
About a half of these need to be found through dumb luck as a daily recipe or from sparkling water.
The other half will likely be found through normal game play.
The Berry chair is problematic as it requires reaching Level 9 in the Wasteland community center.
Special thanks to serebii.net for gathering the data used in this analysis.
Coverage by category:
- blocky_stuff: Modern sink
- cleanliness: Modern sink
- lots_of_water: Modern sink
- colorfullstuff: First aid kit, Pinwheels
- complicatedstuff: Fancy pen
- construction: Iron pipes
- containers: First aid kit, Garbage bin
- cute: Berry chair
- electronics: Harbor streetlight
- exercise: Punching bag
- fabrics: Punching bag
- garbage: Garbage bin
- gatherings: Decorative plant shelf, Iron pipes, Pinwheels
- glass: Harbor streetlight
- groupactivities: Stone bench
- hard_stuff: Stone bench
- healing: First aid kit
- list_of_letters_and_words: Sign
- looks_like_food: Berry chair
- lots_of_dirt: Punching bag
- lots_of_fire: Slender candle
- lots_of_nature: Berry chair
- luxury: Fancy pen
- metal_stuff: Fancy pen, First aid kit, Garbage bin, Harbor streetlight, Iron pipes, Modern sink, Step stool
- nice_breezes: Pinwheels
- noisy_stuff: Clear Bell
- ocean_vibes: Harbor streetlight
- play_spaces: Pinwheels
- pretty_flowers: Decorative plant shelf
- rides: Step stool
- round_stuff: Clear Bell
- sharp_stuff: Fancy pen
- shiny_stuff: Clear Bell
- slender_objects: Fancy pen, Harbor streetlight, Slender candle
- soft_stuff: Berry chair
- spinning_stuff: Pinwheels
- spooky_stuff: Slender candle
- stone_stuff: Slender candle, Stone bench
- strange_stuff: Clear Bell, Modern sink
- symbols: Sign
- watching: Pinwheels
- wobbly_stuff: Punching bag
- wooden_stuff: Sign