These are the best farm layouts in Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley gives players a great deal of creativity when it comes to how they approach the game. This starts right from the “New Game” menu where players pick which kind of farm they’ll be working with.

From the standard farm to the newly added beach farm, each type of farm has an optimal layout that can capitalize on the strengths or compensate for the weaknesses of each format. These are some of the best ways to approach each farm type.

How to make a Stardew Valley farm layout

Trial and error isn’t the best way to approach making a farm for Stardew Valley for console players. While PC players can use mods to effectively do whatever they want, console players have to take the time, acquire the resources, and spend the in-game money needed to construct all of the buildings and craft all of the decorative items needed to make a perfect Stardew Valley farm layout.

It’s inevitably going to be much harder to do this on consoles instead of PCs, but there are some valuable tools to help players plot out their farm. Stardew Planner gives players the ability to map out their favorite Stardew Valley farm layout. The tool allows players to map out their farm and plan out things like paths and building locations.

Best layout for Stardew Valley standard farm

The standard farm in Stardew Valley is deceptively different from the others. While one might look at its lack of forageables and minimal water and shrug, the standard farm has more tillable tiles than any other farm type in the game by a considerable margin. More importantly, there are very few obstructions to players when it comes to making their own unique designs, whether it’s a shrubbery maze or some patterns for crops.

The best Stardew Valley farm layouts for the standard farm make the most out of its vast territory for farming. Packing that area with crops is the best way to maximize profits in the early goings, and using it later on to craft a dream farm is the best approach.

Best layout for four corners farm in Stardew Valley

The four corners farm type in Stardew Valley is functionally the same as the standard, just with a relatively needless limitation. Instead of having a sprawling area for farming, the farm is segmented into four sections. The map is ultimately designed for multiplayer mode, giving each player a dedicated space to make their own, but isn’t ideal for single-player mode as it just sits as a pure downgrade compared to the standard farm.

Players are best served by tackling it the same way they do the standard farm, capitalizing on its plentiful tiles for cultivating crops. There’s an added wrinkle to it with the segmented format of the land, but all this does is remove many tiles for late-game farming.

Riverland farm gives players the ability to get creative

The riverland farm might seem like one of the weaker options when it comes to the best farm layouts, but there’s actually a deceptive amount of usable space to work with. There are more tillable tiles on the riverland farm than there are for the forest farm, and a comparable number to the hilltop farm. 

The big hit is that while there’s a deceptively large amount of room for farming, space is very limited for buildings. That lack of space arguably makes the riverland farm the worst in the game when it comes to actually looking to turn a profit. This can be offset slightly by creating abundant crab pots, but it’s not an effective tradeoff for the lack of room for chicken coops and barns.

The benefit to the riverland farm is that it’s arguably the prettiest and therefore the best for making a visually impressive farm. There are plenty of great designs out there to take inspiration from for this, but this isn’t ideal for anyone looking to get the most money out of their farm in Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley forest farm layouts need to be heavy on buildings

The forest farm has the fewest tillable tiles of any Stardew Valley farm type, but despite that, there’s still abundant space for placing buildings. That makes the forest farm skew in favor of animal-based monetization, with truffles, cheeses, and related goods being the best way to make your cash.

The good news is that the built-in perk for the forest farm steers into this perfectly. Hardwood tends to be one of the more difficult resources to come by, but the forest farm effectively doubles the amount that is available to players once they have an upgraded axe. This is key, as it allows you to craft the many different tools used to create artisanal goods including cheese presses, oil makers, and casks.

The forest farm also gives early access to the special forageables that grow in the secret woods. Those morels and chantrelles can be huge as an extra little injection of cash during the early stages of the game.

Best layout for a hill-top farm in Stardew Valley

The hill-top farm gives players an edge when it comes to mining by boasting a small patch that spawns rocks and ores for the player to conveniently harvest. It also boasts a decent amount of space for both farming and buildings, as well as a river that can be used for fishing and crab pots.

As with the forest farm, this farm layout tends to be at its best when it’s jam-packed with chicken coops and barns to make full use of all the unfarmable space. Unlike the forest farm, hardwood winds up being a bottleneck when it comes to rapidly expanding in a way that still gives the player abundant time. 

The benefit is that players will end up with a surplus of ores to quickly upgrade their farming tools.That lets them get off to a strong start without dedicating so many days to the mine.

Stardew Valley’s wilderness farm is easier than it seems

The wilderness farm in Stardew Valley is unique in that it spawns monsters based on the player’s combat level every night. This allows them to quickly level up the combat ability and also gain the various drops that come with defeating monsters. 

The farm itself is actually standard fare, however. Though it has a miniature mountain lake in the bottom left corner, it also has a great deal of farmable land as well as a decent amount of room for buildings. 

It’s a generally solid setup for any farm layout available in Stardew Valley, which is doubly the case for any players that simply prefer to enable monsters spawning at night in the advanced options of the game.

Stardew Valley beach farm is effectively hard mode

The most difficult Stardew Valley farm type when it comes to planning an effective layout is the beach farm. The setup is designed to be a “hard mode” for the game, primarily through the effective disabling of sprinklers outside the greenhouse. There are a variety of perks that offset this, including the ability to fish up beach forageables and the random appearances of supply crates, but there’s no way to completely make up for the lack of sprinklers.

As such, players need to take a unique approach to the beach farm. Retaining soils are a must in order to free up the time for trips to the mine and desert, while tree fruits play a much larger role here when it comes to players being able to have fruits and vegetables to toss into casks and kegs.