Stardew Valley: Best farms to start with

I get the idea behind Wilderness Farm. It’s just not a very good one. You have a little over 2,000 tiles to till and some additional ones you can build one, and that’s about it as far as worthwhile features unless you really enjoy fighting. Monsters invade at night. You can ignore them entirely or do battle and walk away with monster parts or, sometimes, rare items. The chance of getting something like a diamond off a Wilderness Golem is very low, and since you can ignore the monsters at night, there’s not much actual challenge involved. Only pick this one if you’re curious to see how things play out.

The Forest Farm outstays its welcome after the first year or so. Its big draw is the increased number of items you can forage each season, which is handy when you’re just getting started and can’t get quite as much as you want from Cindersap Forest every day. That perk becomes less useful as you unlock options to grow your own mushrooms and flowers, though, which just leaves you with a lot of untillable land on your farm and a bunch of items you don’t need.

Hill-Top Farm finds itself beset with a similar problem. You trade tillable land for a section of the farm that spawns mining nodes, and what you get depends on your mining level. That sounds convenient, and it is – except by the time your mining level is high enough that the farm spawns valuable ore, you probably farmed enough ore from the actual mines while raising your farm level. Still, it’s a handy way to get a bit extra without having to spend time down the shafts.

There’s not much room for actual crops, though.

Four-Corners is decent if you’re playing Stardew Valley in multiplayer, though you’ll want to coordinate well with your fellow farmers. This map has just under 3,000 squares of tillable land, though each quadrant has a different theme. One is based on the forest map, for example, while another pushes you toward fishing like the River Farm. You never have enough room to expand every operation, though, so it’s a bit of a “jack of all trades, master of none” situation. Still, it’s a good way to shake up your game, if you want something a little out of the ordinary.

The Riverland farm is an excellent choice for intermediate players who want a different kind of playthrough. A river runs through this farm, unsurprisingly, which cuts the number of tillable and buildable tiles down to roughly 1,500. The lack of space means you have to plan your seasonal planting with more care and get creative with how you maximize your profits, and fishing becomes more important. You likely won’t pull treasures out of the water, but you do get access to town and forest fish from the start.

If you lose steam after Year 2 and the abundance of gold you usually start raking in from more spacious farms, this is the map for you.

The Beach Farm is deceptive and takes getting used to, but once you know how to work around it, its strengths make up for the annoyances. The beach farm has 2,700 tillable tiles, making it almost as spacious as the Standard Farm – but there’s a catch. Almost all the tillable tiles are sand tiles, and you can’t place sprinklers on sand. Manually watering your crops forces you to think hard about managing time and produce and get creative about what and where you plant.

You also get a bit of foraging, similar to what the Forest Farm offers, some ocean fishing, and – if you upgrade your home – a chance of finding supply crates with rare goods inside. The Beach Farm should absolutely not be your first farm. Stick to the Standard Farm for that. But it makes for an excellent time once you know what you’re doing.

The standard farm lives up to its name. This one comes with no bells and whistles, but in exchange for the lack of frills, you get over 3,000 tiles of tillable land, and you can use almost all of it for crops after you clear out the trees and vegetation, minus a few tiles that ponds take up. There’s more than enough room to experiment with layouts and focus on crops and animals without having to skimp on either. You can do pretty much whatever you want, so there really aren’t any drawbacks to picking this one.