What is the best farm type in Stardew Valley?

Possibly the most important choice a player faces in Stardew Valley is which farm type to choose, because it’s impossible to know which one is best going into a brand new game for the first time.

Though Stardew Valley gives players lots of choices to make, there aren’t really many that are of any serious long-term consequence. All spouses are functionally identical outside of their dialogue and gift preferences. There’s no practical difference between cats and dogs. Cave bats or mushrooms aren’t dramatically different in the grand scheme of things.

The biggest actual choice that players are faced with is choosing which farm map they’ll play on for the rest of the save. Unlike everything else, this carries significant implications for how the game will progress. Here’s what new players need to know about the best Stardew Valley map types.

The four corners farm is the best farm type in Stardew Valley

Though there are benefits to some of the other farm types in Stardew Valley, the four corners farm is the best. 

From a money-focused perspective, the only good choices for farms in Stardew Valley are the standard farm and four corners farm. The standard farm doesn’t offer any unique perks, but what it does offer is an enormous amount of land that can be tilled and used for crops. The standard farm has 3,427 tiles that can be tilled into crops. The four corners farm, which arrived in the 1.4 update, is in second place with 2,952 farmable tiles.

What makes the four corners farm the best is the fact that it offers all that tillable land while still offering some of the benefits of many of the other farm types. The top left offers the hardwood stumps and extra mixed seeds of the forest farm. The bottom left has a pond for fishing. Finally, the bottom right has a strip that spawns rocks and ore like the hilltop farm.

In the late game, the extra farmable tiles of the standard farm are worthwhile, but most players aren’t going to have their farms so thoroughly automated that they’ll be able to effectively make use of every single tile. 

The one big knock on the four corners farm is that each corner has a cliff that mostly separates it from the other sections of the farm. Pathways can be cut once players start upgrading their tools, but it’s still a hassle early on. In the long term, this is a small trade. And if anyone does get into the very late game with a four corners farm, it offers some fun opportunities for unique layouts.