Stardew Valley: All Farm Types, Ranked

Stardew Valley is a captivating and charming farming simulation game where players have the freedom to tailor their farm exactly to their liking. After inheriting their grandfather's old farm, players get to escape to the countryside, meet a range of unique characters, along with using their skills to create the ultimate farm. However, with a range of farms to choose from, which one is truly the best?

As of the latest 1.6 update for Stardew Valley, players can choose between a total of eight different farms before starting their Stardew Valley adventure. Though which farm you decide to go with will depend on how you want to play the game, some are much better than others for a variety of reasons. Here you will find all the available farm types in the game, all ranked from worst to best!

8 Riverland Farm

Ideal For Fishing But Offers Little Building Space

The Riverland Farm is ideal for those looking to go all in on farming fish. This farm features a large river flowing through pretty much the entirety of the farm, which offers the most variety of catchable fish out of all the farms on this list. The farm also features Bubble Spots that increase your chance of catching Legendary Fish. Automatic fish farming on this island is the main attraction, as players are offered quite a lot of area to place down Crab Pots, thus allowing you to increase your yield substantially and make lots of gold.

Players will also start with a Fish Smoker when choosing this island, but that is where the benefits cease. The Riverland Farm is, by far, the hardest farm to work with, as there is hardly any land to make use of. With nearly all available land split into small island segments, players must be much more conservative about which areas to use for farming and where to place buildings.

7 Wilderness Farm

Farm Focused On Combat That Lost Its Uniqueness.

The Wilderness Farm's main attraction used to be the fact that it was the only farm capable of spawning monsters at night. However, since the introduction of Advanced Game Options for the 1.5 update, players can now enable monster spawns on all farms, making the Wilderness Farm a little less unique. Though the Wilderness Farm does allow monsters to spawn much sooner, it also boasts some other special benefits.

For starters, this farm features two rather sizable lakes that allow you to catch lake fish 35% of the time. This makes it the only farm where you can catch Bullhead, Sturgeon, Midnight Carp, Carp, and Largemouth Bass without having to head to the Mountain lake. The Wilderness Farm also offers you a fair amount of land to work on, along with an increased chance of spawning a Wilderness Golem. However, out of all the farms, the Wilderness is arguably the least unique and doesn't offer a lot of benefits.

6 Hill-Top Farm

Great For Farming Resources But Rather Restrictive

The Hill-Top Farm is a decent consideration for players looking to farm some valuable resources for either crafting or selling. This Mining centric farm boasts a sizable Quarry on its southwest hilltop, which houses Stones, Ore Nodes, and Geode Nodes. This Quarry scales with the player's mining level, so do not expect to find Iron Nodes, Gold Nodes, Aridium Nodes, or Frozen and Magma Geode Nodes straight away. The Quarry can also often be blocked off by a boulder, making it quite a nuisance if you want to get stuck in early on. However, the potential of having them close by later on in the game can be pretty handy.

The Quarry also has a river running through the farm that offers a 50% chance of catching forest river fish (the kind you'd often find in the Cindersap Forest river). Those odds are pretty decent when compared to some other farms, and allow you to nab fish like Bream, Salmon, and Rainbow Trout. Unfortunately, the river does split the farm into two segments, and the cliffs on each segment of the farm can make building and cultivating areas to grow props rather restrictive.

5 Beach Farm

Great Farm For Fishing & Foraging

The Beach Farm is a rather decent farm to make use of. The Beach Farm is almost entirely surrounded by the ocean, granting players ample opportunity to capture ocean fish, along with lots of areas to place down Crab Pots for gathering Shellfish. You can also find quite a decent amount of forest and beach foragables scattered around the area, allowing you to gather Coral, Seaweed, along with Shellfish, and mixed seeds.

Another rather unique feature of this farm is the chances of finding Supply Crates on the shore. These Supply Crates can offer some rather lucrative and outright necessary resources, and the quality of items they contain can be improved by upgrading your house. The amount of land you have to work on is also pretty great, with the only caveat being that most of the land is sand. Sand prevents you from using sprinklers, which rather limits your ability to automatically water crops. There is a patch of grassland towards the south side of the farm, however, but will need to be cleared out before you can use it effectively.

4 Meadowlands Farm

Great Farm For Raising Animals

The Meadowlands Farm's main attraction is its ability to essentially offer you a headstart at raising animals on your farm, as you will be granted a Coop and two Chickens right from the start. Blue Grass will also naturally grow within this area, granting the animals you raise here twice the amount of friendship, thus allowing you to get better quality products a lot faster. Blue Grass also gives you twice as much Hay when cut with a Scythe, increasing the amount of Hay you can produce outside of harvesting regular Grass and Wheat. This makes it much easier to stockpile Hay to keep your animals happy during the winter.

The Meadowlands Farm also has a river that offers a 40% chance of catching forest pond fish, which is not exactly terrible odds by any means. As another pick me up, one which goes hand in hand with the Blue Grass you find in the area, Mayor Lewis will also give you 15 pieces of Hay instead of the usual 15 Parsnips. All in all, the Meadowlands Farm is a great farm to use, and is not as restrictive as some of the other previous entries.

3 Forest Farm

Best Farm For Foraging

Heading to the top three spots now we have the Forest Farm. Though having the least amount of farmable space like all the other farms in the game, the land is not as split up as the Hilltop Farm or the Riverlands Farm. This gives you a decent plot of land for crops. While there is a decent amount of non-tillable spots on this farm, they can still be built upon. This, in turn does make it rather selective with where you can build and where you can place crops.

Cons aside, however, the Forest Farm is the best farm to choose for foraging. On this farm, you can find a great number of unique weeds that guarantee mixed seeds, great for getting a starter crop farm. You will also find a decent amount of forest forageables such as Morels, and various mushroom types depending on the season. This offers you the necessary resources to craft Life Elixirs later down the line. If that wasn't enough, you can also find 8 large renewable stumps in the area, great for farming Hardwood with a Copper Axe.

2 Standard Farm

Best Farm For Open Space

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The Standard Farm is essentially the bread and butter when it comes to farms in Stardew Valley. The Standard Farm has the largest number of tillable space, granting you the most area of farmable land than any other farm in the game. This essentially gives you the most amount of land to work with, allowing you to better plan for which areas to use for growing crops, raising animals, and placing buildings.

Though this area is pretty barebones and offers no unique features whatsoever, the beauty of this farm is that you can customize it from the ground up. This grants you the utmost freedom to pursue whatever you want with your farm, whether it be solely raising animals, fishing, or maximizing the amount of crops you can produce.

1 Four Corners Farm

Most Versatile Farm With Lots Of Benefits

Though intended to serve as a farm designed solely for Multiplayer play, the Four Corners Farm is one of the most versatile of all the farms in the game. The Four Corners Farm incorporates many of the aspects of other farms, notably those from the Standard Farm, Forest Farm, and the Hilltop Farm. This farm also has the second-highest number of tiles, with virtually most of its land being farmable - though the cliffs dividing the four corners of the farm do provide some limitations on how you can use the area.

The Four Corners Farm provides quite a lot of benefits that arguably make it the best farm in the game. Farming space aside, you can find a small Quarry down at the bottom right quadrant that functions identically to that found in the Hilltop Farm. You can also find a reasonably large pond over at the bottom left quadrant, which retains the same benefit of catching forest pond fish like the Meadowlands Farm, only this time 10% higher. If that were not enough, the same unique weeds at the Forest Farm can be found in the top left quadrant, along with a single replenishable hardwood stump for farming Hardwood.