Choosing a map to begin your new life on is a daunting choice in any game, especially Stardew Valley. There are several available Stardew Valley farm layout options, all of which have unique traits and aspects that suit certain playstyles more than others. All areas offer a certain amount of tillable land, though depending on which map you choose, there may be more or less to work with as each layout focuses on a different area of production.
If you find this guide helpful, then you might want to check out our other Stardew Valley content, too, including a Stardew Valley fish list, as well as guides on Stardew Valley’s Lewis and Stardew Valley’s Sebastian, detailing their likes, dislikes, and gifts.
Here’s everything you need to know about Stardew Valley farm layouts.
Stardew Valley layout tips
Work with what you have
This pertains mostly to which farm layout to pick. For instance, if you pick the beach farm, you’re not going to be going heavy on the crops, or if you choose the wilderness farm, you’ve got a funky shape of map.
Take time to explore your farm to see what it offers, and work to those strengths. If you have a lot of forage-ables, maybe you should consider making products from them or filling up the regular layout’s space with 15 barns… or not, it’s up to you.
Leave room for paths
We all want to go wild and cover our entire plot with machines, coops, and plants, but it’s key to remember that you need to move around, too. When laying out your items and sowing seeds, make sure to leave a space for a path. You don’t have to dig a path or put anything down, but you do need space to walk, especially around beans, grapes, and other crops that you can’t move through.
Maximize space
Once you’ve got some paths sorted out, it’s time to figure out what to put, and where. We recommend that you don’t randomly put things down and that you have a vague plan before planting 200 pumpkins and building plenty of furnaces.
You can place some items everywhere – like putting Kegs in the center of town, or even in the mines. Items like silos, coops, and fish ponds are a little more restricted. As of Stardew’s 1.6 update, you can move your farmhouse and greenhouse, which means you can tweak your space to fit items in.
To best use your planting area, you can use a 15 x 15 tile area. Reddit user VicariouslyHuman sums this up the best, but this size of area ensures you can use all sizes of sprinklers, and watering cans, and include a Junimo hut in the middle to collect all of your crops.
Label your chests
You can craft wooden or stone signs, and then put an item on them – these are fantastic for remembering what’s in each chest. Pop a sign next to or in front of a chest, and stick an item on it that you find in the chest. No more wondering where you left those seeds! We also recommend keeping an area just for storage chests – either inside or outside – to make sure everything is in one place.
All Stardew Valley farm layouts
Standard farm layout
The classic Stardew farm map is the standard. Offering plenty of space for crops, animals, sheds – you name it, you can fit it. There’s a pond for fishing and a lot of wild grass that grows, but the key thing here is tons of usable space with a whopping 3,427 tillable tiles. If you want to maximize your crop rotations, this is the layout to choose. There are some other tiles you can build on, too.
We recommend this for a first-time playthrough as it gives you resources on top of tons of room while you figure out what kind of farmer you want to be. Plus, you can make use of the space and spread things out nicely.
Meadowlands farm layout
You start this farm with a coop and two chickens. That’s it. That’s the pitch. You also find chewy, blue grass that animals love to eat. Bear in mind that your welcome gift on this farm is hay for your chickens, and not seeds, so we recommend this one for animal lovers over parsnip pluckers. There are fewer tillable tiles on this farm as the focus is mostly on coops and barns, but you can move your farmhouse and other buildings around to access a bit more space.
Riverland farm layout
This one’s for the fishing-inclined farmers. The riverland farm has a lot of water running through it. This does mean there’s less room to plant crops and put coops or barns, but who needs that when you can catch cod all day? Note that there are more tillable tiles than nontillable, but you can build on any type of land. Plus, the islands make for fun little areas to theme. Also, note that most of the fish caught on this map will be river fish.
Forest farm layout
If trees are your thing, we recommend the forest farm layout. You get just over 1,400 tillable and non-tillable tiles to fill with crops and gadgets, in eight clearings amongst plenty of trees and bushes. These clearings spawn stumps that provide hardwood, which is really handy. This farm provides seasonal forage items on top of the usual wood and stone drops and has an area for fishing.
Hilltop farm layout
The hilltop farm isn’t the biggest in terms of available farmland, with only 1,600 tillable times. There are nearly 1,000 untillable tiles you can use to put machines and coops on, though. This farm can spawn rocks, ore, and even geodes, but larger logs and stumps do block your path until you get the right tools to clear them. You’re going to need a higher mining skill to make this farm work. There’s a very nice stream that runs through the map, though, offering fishing opportunities.
Wilderness farm layout
This layout offers combat on your doorstep. At night, monsters spawn on your farm and scale with your ability level. You can still fish and farm, though you can only catch mountain fish. The tillable farmland is just over 2,000 tiles, with 444 nontillable tiles to put your machines on.
Four Corners farm layout
As the name suggests, the four corners map has four sections. Each one is similar to an area in Pelican Town and is meant to be a multiplayer farm map, though we like it for orderly single-player saves too. One quarter spawns stones and minerals, one is forestry, one has more water available, and the top right quarter is your bog-standard farmland. There are just over 2,900 tillable tiles on this map to fill with all kinds of produce.
Beach farm layout
Ah, the sea. Imagine farming by the sea? Well, you can with the beach farm. There’s no difficulty level as such with Stardew, but we’ll be the first to say that we don’t really recommend this farm to first-time players unless you know you only want to focus on fishing. You can catch ocean-dwelling fish here, along with using crab pots. There is a very limited area that you can actually farm on, so make sure you’re ok with one small crop.
There you have it, that’s all you need to know to make a start on your new farm. If you enjoy Stardew Valley but would like to try your hand at something different, head over to our guide on the best Switch RPGs, you never know what you might find.
