In my estimation, they want either big, expensive things, or lots and lots of whatever you donate (ie 500 trillion dust bunnies). They always act like they're doing YOU a favor, but ignore it. Every time you get an extra cherry or bean, just toss it to 'em. I earned 11 Giant medals that way, and I didn't stress...
Just to simplify, I'll observe that food's street price tends to be exactly equal to it's energy yield, so "10% of street price" is enough to remember.
Yeah, it's item value divided by 10. Energy is just a function of value as well.
A super donation bonus will change the operator, making it item value times 10.
Items without value can still be used to get favour, but at much reduced rates. Red elements have a value of 0.2, so you'd need to donate 100 of them to get a round point of favour.
How do you get that super donation bonus of item value times 10? Best I've gotten is a multiplier of 0.3 of item value using Extremely Hallowed Shrine Powder.
What happens if you try to donate a baby animal? The gods accepting animal sacrifices seems counter to the spirit of the game and I'm not dumb enough to actually try it and risk getting smited.
Capture a pig and donating it is like over 100 favor points. Selling it is like what, $300-350.
During BETA, it was found that the Garden Gnome was the highest priced item, use the favor-increasing-powder on it, and that would the highest offering. ALWAYS use the powder if you want your stuff to yield more favor points.
Not sure now w/the cube-animals and toys, if those grant higher points... as those were added towards the end of Beta.
Oh, negeta if that's the case, next time try mixing up a compound :) A compound with three elements in it is one currant, so that would give you a value of .3333 per element. and making the compounds is free energy wise :)