Known for being an overwhelmingly positive game, Stardew Valley is winning hearts! It has all the characteristics of a great game: charming aesthetics, engaging storytelling, and immersive gameplay. Moreover, its open-ended adventure calls out to players, new and old. This role-playing game starts when your character inherits a Stardew Valley farm in a small town called the Pelican Town.
When modern life makes no sense to you, you move to your grandfather’s old farm and try to make a living in a new place, and adopt a new way of life. You’re given hand-me-down tools from Clint, the Blacksmith, a fishing rod, from Willy, the Fisherman, and a sword, from the Adventurer’s Guild. You can now start off your journey farming, fishing, and mining through the 4 seasons of Stardew Valley, earn gold, make friends, and progress in your new life.
What makes this game perfect for everyone is that it has 7 game modes or 7 farms for you to choose from. Each farm offers a different level of challenge and focuses on a unique profession. While the standard farm’s perfect for a little bit of everything (fishing, farming, mining), the beach farm focuses on farming and foraging, whereas the hilltop farm focuses on mining. Hence, when you choose the type of farm at Stardew Valley, you’re choosing the adventure you’re going to have.
➡️ How to Choose a Farm in Stardew Valley
Choosing a farm in Stardew Valley is straightforward.
- As the game homepage opens, click on New.
- The character pop-up box will open.
- On the right, find the different types of farms listed.
- Hover your mouse to see which farm is what, and choose the one you like best.
- If you don’t make a choice, you’ll be given the default: Standard Farm.
Don’t just choose any farm. Take a quick look at the different types of farms in Stardew Valley, and find one where your interests align:
Standard Farm
New to Stardew Valley? This might be the best way to get to know the Stardew Valley game universe. It’s quite simple and makes for an enjoyable gameplay. It’s also the default type of farm in Stardew Valley. Unless you go pick another farm, this is the one the game puts you in.
The standard farm’s plot has enough space for you to raise animals, and cultivate crops. It’s run down with bushes and trees that’ll need clearing. There’s also a small pond, and a lake on your farm as well.
Now, you might think, what’s the use of having a standard farm if it doesn’t have any features that make it stand out? It has the highest number of tillable tiles – 3472, and 235 buildable tiles.
The most associated profession with this farm is that of farming. You can also fish in the oceans, lake, and rivers. You can also mine in the mines, and the quarry.
Riverland Farm
Want to be a fisherman? Run wild in Riverland Farm, made up of small interconnected islands and scenic riverbanks. Most of the farm plot is water, so that reduces your farming area by a lot.
The total number of tillable tiles is 1578, and 516 buildable tiles. You’ll be able to catch river fish 70% of the time, like Chub, Walleye, Rainbow Trout, Bream, Sunfish, Salmon, and others. And for the remaining 30%, you’ll be able to catch forest fish found in Cindersap Forest, like Carp, Catfish, Midnight Carp, and others.
What’s special about Riverland Farm? Bubbles will spawn on your farm. Now, how’s that any good?
- You’ll be able to know there’s fish
- Fish here will bite 4 times faster
- Fishing zone is increased
- So is your chance to catch legendary fish
Your main source of income will be fishing. Though you’ll be able to farm and raise animals, your area is limited. Fish might not be as lucrative for gold coins as farming is. Plus, fishing is one of the harder skills to master in Stardew Valley. That’s why I don’t recommend Riverland Farm for beginners.
However, you can turn your Riverland farm into a fishing farm by covering it with crabpots, once the crafting recipe is unlocked. A crabpot will catch fish automatically when placed in water and loaded with bait.
Forest Farm
Forest farm is perfect for the foraging profession. Wild items will spawn on your farm. Not only that, you’ll have the highest hardwood (a precious, harder-to-find wood variety) availability on your farm.
Now, there’s a downside to this: unless you have been able to upgrade your starter axe to a copper or a steel axe, you won’t be able to cut down the stumps and clear your farm space for cultivating crops.
Forest farm has random patches of grass that can’t be removed. Plus, the woods make your farming space limited. However, it has 1417 buildable tiles to allow the construction of farm buildings like coop, barn, and silos. You’ll also have unique seeds dropping from forest trees! The number of tillable tiles is the lowest in Stardew Valley at 1400+.
Additional ponds and lakes are 4 in total. This reduces space on your farm, but can increase chances of fishing Woodskip.
Hilltop Farm
With a river running across your farm, the Hilltop Farm is perfect for the mining profession. As you might have guessed, you’ll have a mine right on your farm. A farm quarry might be blocked by a large stump or a large boulder. The player will need the right tool upgrade to a copper axe or a steel pickaxe to enter.
In addition to a mine, a hilltop farm also has a farming area perched on hilltops. However, the space is limited, and the rocky terrain might make farming more exhausting. The tillable tiles are 1648, whereas the buildable tiles are 930.
So, what’s the advantage of having a mine quarry on your farm itself? Most crafting recipes require ores – copper, iron, gold, and iridium, in addition to minerals like amethyst, diamond, topaz, and others. You’ll need copper, iron, and gold ores to make metal bars that ultimately help you upgrade farm buildings, build new ones, upgrade tools to the highest quality in Stardew Valley.
For all other types of farms in Stardew Valley, you’ll need to travel a long distance to the mountains to access the mines. The quarry on the other side of the bridge only opens up in the later stages of the game, after Year 1 or Year 2. In fact, you’ll also need to go down mining levels, fighting monsters to access harder-to-find ores like gold and iridium. It goes without saying, the challenges get more difficult as you progress through the levels.
Hence, having a hilltop farm takes off a lot of load from you, as minerals and ores spawn every 4th day on your farm. You can also catch forest river fish in the river, but that’s only 50% of the time. For the remaining 50%, you’re just fishing out trash. However, if you do choose the Hill-top farm, make sure to check out our guide on how to get iron ore in Stardew Valley, as you’ll be mining ores for a decent amount of time!
Wilderness Farm
Wilderness farm is for the adventurers and the tough guys out there! It’s a unique farm layout in Stardew Valley, where monsters spawn at night. The monsters have to be fought, and defeated. While that goes without saying, your combat level increases, and you can raise your numbers on the Adventurer’s Guild easily.
You’ll find the highest number of wilderness golems on this farm. They are monsters that’ll wander around aimlessly and damage the player. They can be killed with a sword, and might drop precious minerals like diamonds, omni geodes, and prismatic shards in the advanced levels.
However, it might be argued that Wilderness Farm is overrated. With monsters spawning randomly, you not only waste a lot of your energy fighting them, but also lose out on time that could have been used doing something more lucrative.
The farm also has 1 pond and 1 lake within the plot. You can find mountain lake fishes like midnight carp, sturgeon, bullhead, and others 35% of the time. The remaining time, it’s just trash.
2131 tillable tiles can be found on this map, with 444 buildable tiles that are non-tillable. There are also cliffs in this plot, which just reduces the farming area. For the uninitiated, farming and raising animals is quite lucrative in the valley. You reap countless benefits selling animal goods like milk, eggs, wool, or even selling fruits and crops.
Beach Farm
Fancy a beach house? Here’s your chance to live it right in Stardew Valley. A beach farm is a newer addition to the game and is perfect if you’re looking to amp up the difficulty of the game. A beach farm is perfect if you want to fish and forage, but not just do one!
Fishing is one of the harder skills to master in Stardew Valley. Hence, a beach farm might not be ideal if this is your first farm. It’s best for seasoned players due to its multiple technicalities.
Surrounded by the salt waters, a beach farm has enough space for farming and raising animals. However, there’s one downside. Despite unlocking the sprinkler recipe, you’ll not be able to use sprinklers to water your crops. Sprinklers don’t work in salty waters, so you’ll have to do the job of watering your crops every single day.
You’ll have supply crates wash up on shores with a lot of harvest, which can be useful. That’s a unique feature just available on this farm in Stardew Valley. You can get mixed seeds, geodes, omni geodes, cherry bombs, mega bombs, cooked food items like espresso, super meal, survival burgers, and more. However, that’s not all!
Your farm will have both beach and forest forages spawn right outside your door. So, you’ll find dandelions, daffodils, oysters, mussels, and so much more.
The total number of tiles on this farm is the highest in Stardew Valley. However, the total tillable tiles are 2700, and the buildable tiles are 1928. You’ll also be fishing for a lot of ocean fish like albacore, tilapia, flounder, squid, red snapper, eel, herring, octopus, and more!
Four Corners Farm – The CO-OP
Love Stardew Valley and want to share it with your friends? The good news is you can, with a Four Corners Farm, the CO-OP edition. Have you always wanted to stay with your friends, but have your own little farm too? That’s precisely what Four Corners Farm is about. You can also play it solo, so don’t worry!
A Four Corners Farm has 4 aspects of a farm on four corners. On the top left, there’s the forest farm where you live, much similar to a standard farm. On the bottom left, there’s a pond. And, on the top right, there’s farming space, whereas on the bottom right, there’s a hill-top farm equivalent with a quarry for spawning rocks and ores.
The number of tillable tiles is 2952. While you get the best of four worlds on this farm, you won’t be able to access most parts of the farm unless you’ve not upgraded your tools and removed large stumps and boulders blocking your access.
You can also ask your friends to join you in this multiplayer mode. Or else, you can have just 4 designated areas for your crops, fishing, mining, and other activities.
Stardew Valley Farms Show You the Simple Things in Life Matter
What makes Stardew Valley a hit is its core message: the simple things in life matter. It’s this that makes it one of the most popular comfort games, with a blend of open-world adventure and RPG. In fact, its ethereal, soothing music helps set a relaxing and easygoing tone.
Stardew Valley, no matter the type of farm you choose, has a lot of things for you to do. Go mining and find precious ores and minerals like ruby, diamond, and prismatic shard. Farm crops, grow fruits, and sell them at Pierre’s or bring them to someone in need!
Also, raise animals, sell produce, and grow as you go. Moreover, what makes this game special is it has character. You’ll feel good about doing normal things, and realize that money truly can’t buy happiness. For example, while upgrading the coop with an auto-feeder mechanism, you still have to go and pet your animals every day.
That shows that there’s no substitute for love. Or, you have to go speak to your friends every day, and remember their birthdays, to increase friendship points. Like we said, the simple things in life matter, and this game holds up that ideal so very well that it’s not going anywhere!
If you want to make more friends in the game, be sure to check out our guide on Stardew Valley’s Luau Festival and what you can do to increase friendship points!
