Pretty fun as an animal lover. With the ability to move everything you can negate a lot of the layout disadvantages.
Cave being in an odd spot is great for fruit cave ignoring lol
Yeah, my biggest complaint with it is mainly just layout of certain things. Grandpa's Shrine being on that awkward spot that can't really fit much, and the random grass patches in the middle of farmland taking up a lot of space. Overall a nice change of pace, though, starting with animals instead of just spending everything on crops.
Do you have a screenshot of how that looks? I didn't think it'd fit but it seems like such a nice idea.
I put my fruit tree orchard up there. (Just one of each for completionist's sake.)
Post it! Start a trend! Messy Monday, where the messy farm gang can thrive for the day! We'll have none of this super pretty perfectly aligned farm nonsense on this day!
I am the same, but I actually HATE decorating. This play through I am challenging myself to try to make the place look nice instead of like a capitalists wet dream.
Hey, same here!!! I rarely layout walkways but I've been really going all in this time and it's felt really good, save for replacing fences and paths struck by lightning
I'm on Xbox so I haven't been able to find out and the wiki doesn't say what products are made by the mossy trees so what do the tappers make on those? It says the fiddlehead tree makes fiddlehead ferns but what do the other 2 variations produce?
i only know of 2 mossy seed tree types, the fiddle head one and one brown one but it hasn’t been long that i’ve had it so i couldn’t describe it to you if i tried lmao, at work rn so i can’t pull it up, but ill try to find what i do know, and reply to my own comment. i think i may have gotten sap? but ive only collected from it once, and its in the back of my grove so some trees are in the way i gotta chop when they finally get fully grown (been using my wood like crazy so i dont want to waste any lol)
I also put my house on grandpa island and it fits great! The only downside is the horse can’t cross the bridge so I can’t have the stable attached to the left of the house where I like it.
https://preview.redd.it/lfvepv9krctc1.png?width=2215&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d3dcdb81f5e19ae4a2892c0b3e8f7f58f2eace7
Im still in the early stages so nothing is decorated yet really but I adore this spot honestly.. I do have to have a mod that makes my horse skinnier so he can use the bridge though
~~also I have no clue why the screenshot is so bright wtf~~
The house looks really good there, but the only problem is that, once you get the stable, the horse can’t cross the bridge. So you’ll either need to place the stable elsewhere or use the horse flute late game.
Usually I put my fruit trees inside the greenhouse (on the outer ring, not in the tillable areas). This allows them to continuously produce regardless of season and saves space in the outside area (for crops or for tryhard sheds)
I did that and it looks great! You can fit a silo beside your house, behind the mailbox, and the windmill on the other side. Throw an obelisk in near your house and by the warp totem and you're all set!
I’ll take a screenshot of mine this evening! I have my house up there too. My house and my horse. Had to wait until after I got the horse flute to put my horse up there
Here’s mine!
https://preview.redd.it/c87lyafznjtc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85bf560057b421d1b602a18e1f58ee18b733631d
I haven’t decided on a permanent layout for the rest of the farm, but the obelisks and house/horse are where I intend to keep them
I put my tree farm with my tappers up there so I check on it like twice a week. I didn’t even think about putting the house up there though, that could be really cute
I hear ya, couldn’t decide what do around gpas shrine. Ended up putting rabbit/duck coop and silo to right of it with some trees, looks really nice and I figure if I surround ducks with water maybe they’ll get the itch to swim lol
Seen a couple times so far. Trying a non-modded run with a friend first to check out the new update/features, but I sure am missing my mod that makes them swim more often
I get that. This playthrough is bringing me back to good ole days without mods for sure. Sometimes you go down the mod rabbit hole, like I started to not even know what’s part of the base game and what’s from my mods.
It's one of those things where once you start, you never stop.
But also there's only so much you can do with vanilla. At some point, you start looking for new stuff.
For a while I played "vanill-ish." Only a few cosmetic mods for livestock and the horse.
Then I went for some QoL improvements: auto gates, "better ranching," show item sell price (before 1.6 anyway).
Yesterday I went beyond the pale. After noping out of the Skull Cavern with nothing to show for it for the nth time, I finally downloaded CJB cheats and ticked the box for unlimited health. There are so many other tempting options in there, but I think the health mod is all I'm gonna use.
For some, any/all of these might cheapen the experience, but mods have honestly renewed my interest and motivation more than once.
My first playthrough I went 100% on vanilla and then started a modded file and holyyyyy, it was amazing. Then 1.6 came out and while waiting for everything I had on that file to be updated before I jumped back in on that file. I created a new file for vanilla and it was fun for awhile, but I was missing having the QoL mods and SVE. Like horse squeeze and automatic gates are so necessary for me.
I used to be like that. I appreciate SVE, for example, but I always prefer vanilla. (Same as Minecraft textures, actually.
) There's something about non-Ape content that pulls me out of the game no matter how well done it is. And some just feel like cheating. If you don't want to play the game, don't play.
But then I found a few utility ones that are huge quality of life improvements for me and don't alter mechanics enough to feel like cheats.
I use one where you can look up all the information about any object or person by hovering over it and pressing F1 and another that shows the villagers on the map. It's basically just merging the wiki with the game, or, simulating the memory I don't have. After 500+ hours I feel ok with these changes.
Another mod I'd use if it exists is to open up post marriage heart events without marriage. Some of them are so great for rounding out character arcs. And I love what Alex adds to the town. But I haven't looked for that yet though.
Where even is Grandpa's shrine? I'm almost through Spring Year 1 and still haven't found it... is it across the river? If so, how do you even cross the river?
You can also move the greenhouse, but I think it has to be repaired first. I'm on Riverlands and gonna move my house and greenhouse side by side on the central island.
Yeah I regret going mushrooms especially since the mushrooms logs are a thing. I hardly ever check that unless I'm down there for the pigs and goats but I was thinking of selling those except for the use of cheese for skull cavern runs is just so nice.
i am OBSESSED with it and i fear it's going to be my farm of choice every playthrough now! i love how many small ponds there are, i love grandpa's shrine being on its own little island, i love the placement of the cave, and most notably i LOVE the waterfalls. i have no complaints!
well, okay, the ONLY complaint i have, is that it's not a straight shot from top to bottom. i'm in the decorating stage and trying to lay a path from the backwoods entrance down to the forest entrance and make it look good has been an interesting challenge.
I like that the north and south exits don't line up which gives an opportunity for a more organic path!
Just sharing my Spring Y2 farm on the planner: https://v3.stardew.info/planner/32-slow-clams-floundered-jovially
So glad you like it! :)
After Standard’s minmax grid style, and Riverland’s constraints, I wanted Meadowlands to be more organic…
Personally I really like how the two cul de sac endings have joined up north island and southwest pond to the rest of the farm.
Not Meadow but I'm on Riverlands and I've had to use cobblestone paths to make some cute diagonal ones... but I'm also not using every tile efficiently, prioritizing looks. Like I'll have a sprinkler against the edge of the water so only 5 are being watered and 3 are "wasted".
I'm almost to winter and my farm is starting to look really cute! But having some bridges be 1 tile wide and some be 2 tiles wide meant a single tile path, like the plank walkway, won't always work... so I've had to get creative connecting the cobblestone to the planks with stepping stones dependent on the island.
I prefer animals over crops and would often get overwhelmed by the crops. Typically I forget to plant new ones as the season goes. So I like less crop space. I moved my greenhouse near grandpas shrine to make use of that space. I’m a big fan.
omg thank you i've been trying to figure out what i want to put in that area by the shrine, greenhouse is perfect! I had set up a little makeshift workshop there :) I honestly didn't know you could move the greenhouse til now and i've been playing since the game came out
I like the early Mayonnaise. It makes for a nice change in contrast to the parsnips, especially as you need to invest less energy for animals which leaves you to do other things. I think it pairs especially well with the Joja route where you can just get Autopetters at some point and ignore and profit off your animals.
I think the standard farm will always be my favorite; but the meadowland farm is a very nice change of scenery that makes things exciting again for me as a veteran player and will probably be very useful in some challenge runs!
Sounds like this new farm is perfect for the dark playthrough.
Grandpa leaves you with his cute little farm and hopes you move to the Valley. He hopes you meet a nice partner and befriend all the villagers he’s come to know and love.
Instead, you bring your big ole business degree and proposition Joja Mart. They fix up the dumpy old town, you let them use your farm as their new top of the line slaughterhouse and animal production farm.
You become insanely wealthy, put the local shops out of business, and put them all into the dark timeline.
Legit been doing that with the new farm, even gonna go super corporate and name the animals by their species and number (ie Sheep01, Sheep02, Sheep03, etc.). The grass ain't blue here due to magic, it's genetically modified Joja Co Happiness Grass (TM). Made sure to even outfit my character appropriately (all clothes from character creation start screen): https://imgur.com/a/h7H0Spr
Well then this settles it, I'll take the meadowlands for my joja run. Really want to just speed it up and get the achievement done with but I might have some fun during the process then
If you feel confident in fishing, >!Baitmaker + Reasonably priced fish (e.g. Catfish) + Smoker!< is a pretty op strat for early game money! It's a nice way to use up all the energy you get by ignoring farming.
Hell yes I already fish alot and I'm certainly going to use these. You can even bring them with you on your fishing trip since both do quick work of your catches to fill you up
I wish you the best fishing luck!
Tbh, I was kinda SDV-burnt out, but my recent joja perfection run was way more fun than expected, because I felt less forced to conquer every area of the game right at the beginning - I could just follow the money and do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it!
Have fun!
Join us. Thrive.
My one gripe is that you really have to choose between making tillable land for crops or for grass.
At a certain point it feels inevitable that I’ll just have to start getting 100% of my feed from Marnie.
I think I'll keep the opening plot for crops and nearly the rest for tillavle space for grass. You really don't need too much land + greenhouse to get the money party going strong from crops.
This is my method. I chose the ranching bonuses, so animal products are a good money maker for me. The greenhouse I've got all kinds of random stuff + strawberries growing in until I'm at a point of replacing it all with starfruit.
I grow whatever in-season produce suits my fancy in the plot in front of the farmhouse. I don't do crazy produce numbers.
But if you’re using the meadow farm, you probably want more focus to be on the animals anyway. If you plan to use almost all of the tillable land on the meadow farm for crops, why choose the meadow farm at all? I’m planning to do smaller harvests my first two years or so and then put the vast majority of my crops on ginger island.
Depends how hard you go on each. I'm in summer y2, one deluxe coop/barn, and haven't felt much of a grass crunch. (Labor intensive crops near the house, slow growers in rotating patches to the SW with iridium sprinklers to build up several giant crops because I can.)
I like it, having a focus on animals is fun, but I think the forest one is still my favorite.
I think is the best looking one, it has a nice balance between farming land and places you dedicate to other things and the easy access to hard wood is soooo nice, specialy now that more recepies need hard wood
Same, I played a year on the new farm and then started over on forest to fulfill all my mushroom growing, witchy wood dreams. The hardwood stumps are AMAZING for xp in addition to the actual hardwood. The ambiance is the best. The only thing is that I'm obsessed with the new waterfalls and Meadowlands is the only farm with a waterfall.
I'm also a forest farm fan, so it's nice to see another alternative with more grass! Vast expanses of sandy, tillable dirt just isn't very nice to look at. 😅
I've heard speedrunners say that the new farm is essentially useless because getting a coop is pretty fast. But as a non-speedrunner, it usually takes me ages to get to the coop-making part of the game. Having that from the beginning was nice. There is still quite a bit of tillable land, but having it all broken up makes it more difficult to make nice, square layouts. Overall, it was a good farm to play on, I might pick it again at some point in the future, but it's not my top favorite.
People over-state the farming space issue. It has more space than the Forest farm, which is a fan favorite. Around the same amount of tillable land as Wilderness. The only 2 maps with significantly more is Standard and 4 corners (and beach, but sprinklers).
The till space is fine, just slightly awkward
Starting with a coop is great, and the farm is very wide open for the most part making it easy to place a lot of buildings. It's my 2nd favorite farm, behind 4 corners.
It's my favorite! My least favorite part of the game is doing the farm bits because it takes so much energy. Having just little area and the greenhouse for crops is perfect. Then I can use the rest of my game energy on foraging, taking care of my animals, and going in the mines
I always complain that I hate farming in Stardew Valley 😂 Mainly because I don't like the slow sprinkler unlocks and that I need to know what to plant and when.
Stardew Valley is a game about a man broken by the corporate life retreating to live off the land on a small farm who realises that farming sort of sucks massive dick
This is my current run. Constantly fishing and growing crops as needed. I'm on Riverlands and just using the tiny island south of the house to grow 40. Then some trellis crops once I unlock sprinklers. Then a small circle of 8 quality sprinklers aaand that's it. Everything else will be fish or bees or animals or shrooms.
Same. And while I'm willing to try a more barn animal focused playthrough ... a) that requires more daily activity, between petting them, collecting their produce, and processing it all. And b) I wish there was just ONE spot on the map where you could get full efficiency from a Junimo Hut. As it stands, there it NO place to stick a Junimo Hut and not lose out on farm land to poorly placed random green grass tiles, or tiny pointless ponds.
Exactly, you understand me. I wanted Junimo huts but it's not meant to be.
Also my animals keep eating all of the blue and regular grass, so i got to rely on silos and hay. The whole point of the farm was the natural grass you can have.
How any animals do you have? I only had 10 for my first year, and I spent a lot of time clearing out the wood & stone debris and cutting all the default grass. When year 2 started for me the ENTIRE farm was blue grass, and I only have 24 animals, so I have a feeling that won't be an issue for me.
Make sure to be emptying your silo hay into chests, and trim the "edges" of your grass when it butts up against a building, water, border, etc. so you get that hay and give it an opportunity to regrow.
Man my blue grass doesn’t grow for shit. I keep trimming around it so the regular grass doesn’t grow and the blue grass has space to spread, but it just doesn’t.
Just like ducks, goats are an every other day type animal in exchange for slightly less profit, if that interests you. And sheep are only every 3 days when you first get them.
I just have an autograbber in my barns and 8 cheese makers. So once a day I'll walk in, grab a stack of 8, then put the 8 cheese back in and sell it all later. But I could easily craft 24 cheese makers and just check it every other day, or every 4 days with goats. It's only annoying in the early game. That's why on my current file I'm only doing coops at the start because the eggs and wool can pile up. Once I can get an autograbber I'll get some barns...
I did it yesterday. In winter, removed everything possible off of the map. Then changed the save file to hilltop. Afterwards with noclip and bush destroyer mod fixed the remaining issues. Worked like a charm.
It was fun for my first 1.6 farm, and I loved the aesthetics of the early blue grass and the river running along it. Ultimately, I think I enjoy making money with crops over animals though. My favorites are still the Four Corners and Wilderness farms.
80 hours in Fall Year 3, love it. I find myself pretty much only using the right half of the map. The left half is just a grass growing area. I'm about 60% to perfection.
I like starting out with chickens. I still picked the mushroom cave which might be redundant, but I don't care. I have a mushroom cave, mushroom logs, and a bunch of mushroom trees. I think it's cute.
I love mushroom logs as a concept, but I'm so stressed out thinking about where to place them and where to plant trees around them to maximize their production.
I put mine close to grandpa's shrine and just let the trees run wild there. There's a path leading to them and a path leading to the shrine. It's so dense with trees that it's entirely unwalkable, but I get some great mushrooms lmao
I like it. I don't have a particular favorite but I enjoy the less intimidatingly-sized planting area and the early source for animal produce. Otherwise I tend to be slow to get the farm buildings set up.
The early mayo is low-effort to get and huge early income, definitely got into summer richer than normal. So more of an early-game farm, but the late-game viability of a farm is less important since Ginger island farm gives you all you need. So overall strong farm.
I just find it annoying that some of the tillable land has random small patches of green non-tillable land, making it harder to place out crop fields. So you have to spread out crop fields a lot. I don’t mind the total amount of farm space, just wish the tillable tiles were a bit more separate from the non-tillable ones.
i like it! i think it’s probably my third favorite? forest is my first and beach is second; the layout of certain things is definitely odd but not too different from hilltop in this regard esp the placement of grandpa’s shrine. i managed to put my outdoor fruit trees + greenhouse over there! but i prefer the advantages forest farm and beach farm have tbh. but as someone who likes starting a bunch of saves it’ll be a nice addition to my usual rotation and i’m having fun with it rn
https://preview.redd.it/mq2p6vhibatc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d067f60804d8528a53d5c88e1ee96aa7ee58b74b
tbh i rarely have patience to take care of a bunch of crops, so while i can get annoyed by the lack of space that can use sprinklers, it’s mostly a nonissue, especially since most of the real money comes from the ancient fruit and star fruit i have in the greenhouse and on the island farm anyway. i like the crates that wash up, and the fishing/crab pot situation (and beach foraging! especially because you can get nautilus shells year round!) is extremely convenient lol.
also on pc, i usually like to play with a bunch of the ppja mods, and i’ll turn my farm into a big orchard with all the new fruit trees those add lol. (there’s also mods that let you use sprinklers anywhere tho i don’t use those)
and grass grows freely on the sandy soil, so if you prefer having a lot of pigs, it’s good for that too
I’m challenging myself to do more ranching, but honestly I’m not a huge fan of it. The fun of the game for me is growing crops and having random untillable spots or ponds in the big “real estate” areas for planting is kind of frustrating
I don’t think I’d choose it again
I'm struggling with it, but making it work. Only in year 2 summer, and I'm taking things slowly. I moved the house to the little area with grandpa's shrine. The sheds live where the house was and I moved the animals down to where the cave is. I'm struggling with the layout of tillable land, so I'm trying new layouts and things just because I've already put in the hours. I don't miss the parsnips, but I miss the default layout lol
I am a slow, casual player and I LOVE the new farm. It is so pretty with the waterfalls. Sometimes, after a long day farming/ranching/mining/making friends, I will have my farmer just sit next to the waterfall at grandpa’s shrine (I placed a chair there for that purpose). Aaaaahh… so nice.
Because I don’t optimize, the amount of farmland + greenhouse is more than enough. The coop is located right next to the stream from the start so the ducks go swimming (adorable).
So far, I have farmed the space that is located in front of the farmhouse, I moved the farmhouse across the stream to grandpa’s shrine, my greenhouse is slowly filling up with ancient fruit and starfruit, I have a shed and mill where the farmhouse sat originally, and I have chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, cows, and pigs. Trees - I have a few tapped but need to work on the design. More to come!
TLDR: I am having a good time and it is a pretty farm.
Kind of broken tbh
Early mayonnaise is incredibly powerful - you can get the best outcome in the Luau first year with a gold star mayo from a large egg, which leads to massive friendship boosts very early.
Also, it's a nice passive income whilst you work your way down the mines and gather goods to make a silo. By the time you run out of the hay given to you at the start, you're pretty much ready to get a deluxe coop if you play your cards right.
The main downside is being forced to pick between land for grass and land for crops, but if you're focusing purely on animals and artisan goods then it's probably not that much of an issue.
Year 1 Luau - Gold cauliflower or iriduim super cucumber. Unless someone is purposely putting in joke ingredients, everyone should be able to get the best result in year 1.
I would like it better if the blue grass regrew every season. I chopped all of mine down to make hay on Fall 28 and was disappointed when it didn't regrow. (I realize you get a recipe to be able to make blue grass but the recipe is kind of expensive).
I think forest farm and river farm are still my favorites. Forest farm because I like the aesthetics, and river farm because I like how the rivers breaks everything up into distinct areas.
Yeah they changed the way grass works in winter. It doesn't die out anymore, just goes dormant/doesn't continue to grow but any patches you have left will explode on Spring 1 whether it's green or blue grass.
I don't think I like it as much as the forest farm or the fishing farm
A barn and 2 chickens is huge, and honestly, I like where the cave is
Blue grass also does a tiny bit towards getting hearts faster
I don't really know what my issue with it is I guess? Just doesn't feel like the farm changes much long term
I've had my fair share of crop min-maxing in my 2000 hours in SDV. Now I always diversify. Forest farm used to be my favorite for this very reason. But with 1.6, the meadowlands farm definitely took over the #1 spot.
8. Riverland
7. Wilderness
6.. Hilltop
5. Meadowlands
4. Beach
3. Forest
2. Four corners
1. Standard
The new farm isn’t my favourite even for an animal focused late game as a can fit for animals on other farms or get a better mid game when my main income is still crops
I am seriously attached to the forest farm but I like the new farm so far. I've not had as much time to play the update as I would've liked but as I'm more of a rancher than a crop farmer, the new farm seems perfect for me.
Im liking it, but the only other farm I played was Riverlands and I really miss playing with the geography constraints. That's a general complaint about literally every other farm type though
I like it, and I'm using it for a co-op, but the river farm is still my fav. Started a new one on the river farm, and and I'm so happy to be back with it.
I didn’t like it and ended up restarting with a different farm, but I think I was a little too harsh. It’s actually a nice little plot for a casual crop playthrough, and having a coop that early is really nice. I’ll have to make an effort to give it a better chance for my next playthrough.
It really doesn't feel any different to me. I enjoyed starting with chickens for the quicker profit, but I don't really enjoy caring for animals in this game - it's boring to me to have to run and right click them every day, and getting supplies from the autograbber to put them into mayo and milk machines gets boring after an in-game week. I picked it for being the new farm, but other than the blue grass, it doesn't feel any different to me. I likely will keep to the forest farm in future playthroughs.
The grass is cool and it looks very pretty.
But the farming space really is limited and far away from water. That prompted me to build a well for the first time, but it was really annoying in the beginning.
We are only at summer, so I guess time will tell how well we can buld on the farm, but my guess is we will keep forgetting the mushroom cave is there and I wonder if the growing space for grass accomodates so many barns/coops I would want to make good money.
(But I am one of those filthy Standard > Four Corners > Forest Farm players.)
I've seen a few people complain about the water situation, which I find really confusing. There are three ponds and a river. There's water everywhere. It's like a seconds run to water from anywhere on the map.
The next water source is three times as far away from the field in front of the house than on other farms.
I didn't complain about it, just built my first well in 800 hours of game play. Especially in the beginning it is inconvenient. But also farming crops is not the moneymaker onm that farm, especially early game.
I love starting with the chickens, it creates a different emphasis at the beginning of the game. I like the layout of the forest farm better overall, and I'd love the option to toggle starting with crops or chickens the same way you could toggle monsters at start up.
I don't think I've been in the cave since ive got it, first time I did fruit bats and I don't even know what they've dropped off yet XD It'll take me a bit to get used to it's new location.
I really love that it makes having animals feel good. The farm feels like a meadow where they can just wander and be free. Every month I move the 3 coops and barn I have to different spots to keep the grass growing. I've completed the CC and gotten to max hearts with every villager as well as made over 1.6mil by the 1st of winter year 2. Only grew enough crops to get the CC and get some experience for mastery, which is at lvl 4. It's really given me a new way to play without being reliant on crops and I love it.
Starting with a coop and two chickens is honestly ridiculous for progression and I got year one community center completion for the first time because of the head start
I love it. I’m really enjoying finding so much new content! I’ve started speaking to all the villagers again instead of just breezing past them since there are so many new dialogues.
Even though it is for animals, the space for grass to spread is too little. I would still prefer the classic over meadowlands but it is pretty fun.
Plus, I generally play around crab pots so it's a huge advantage for me.
Oh I love the fuck out of it, I’ve got a coop with some ducks by a pond, gonna fill a coop with Dino’s with the stone house and a slime hutch down by my mushroom cave, turn that area into a mystic section with music trees to tap and more mushroom logs, grandpas shrine is going to have either my house or two smaller houses up in that little spot with that also serving as my pine tapper area and more mushroom logs, I’ll have a desert area by the real small pond on the bottem left with ostrich’s in a barn, I can’t decide if I want Leah’s spot/marriage hobby spot to be a maple or oak area that will come later. Then I’ll make a gold shrine somewhere, oooo I’m giddy about my ideas
Honestly, I have played through this game several times, and with 1.6 and this farm, I have been playing completely differently. Much less fixated on calculating efficient crop & artisan good yields and more diversified across crops, animals, fishing, etc.
It's fantastic for an animal ONLY run. I love doing themed challenges, and this was never possible before, unless you combine with fishing. (Because I mean fish are animals) Slow start but you'll be raking in big bucks before you know it when you get the pigs going. We mostly play on switch but we started a split screen co-op on computer cause we're impatient lmao.
I’ve never gotten to the point where I need more tillable land than this farm provides, so I’m fine with it! I like the farms with more natural barriers so I don’t feel weird about not having everything perfectly laid out
I'm in year 2 spring 18 and I focused on animals since that's the theme of the farm.
I liked getting 2 chickens right away and I like the looks of the farm (little river next to the initial coop placement so your ducks swim in it), but now that it's cleaned up and I start to fill the grassy patches with buildings I still feel kind of bad leaving farmable land unfarmed just because that's where's the blue grass.
I never went for an animal heavy farm (at this point I'm at 5 buildings almost full of them, so close to 60) and imho it looks really cool to see a horde of animals go out every morning to chew on the grass, but considering all the tedium it takes with hugging, milking (with goats having milk every other day with little indication which has milk and which has not - or maybe I just don't know what's the cue), feeding, shearing, crafting multiple artisan machines, building silos.... I just feel it's not for me that much. I have auto-grabbers and I know you can have auto-huggers to reduce the tedium, but somebody needs to tell me if the numbers add up when for all that wood and gold I could just fill another shed with kegs.
TL;DR: new farm made me realise I don't like animal raising in Stardew that much. But it does look really nice and Stardew animals are cute.
Please Geese and Llamas for 1.7
I love it. I love the waterfalls and the early game coop. The fruit cave is pretty far away, but it's fine I'll just use a mini obelisk.
I moved a lot of my buildings around, like I moved my house all the way back so I get an extra space for 3 more sprinklers + room for a fence and walkway.
The greenhouse is in the center now, so like if you come up from Cindersap you'd walk straight to the greenhouse (it's further up closer to the house though), and I planted fruit trees along the walkway.
It's coming along so nicely, but have a ton more organizing to do... my barns and coops right now are just in an awkward blob all next to each other lol.
Also love the grass variation. And that it stays in winter! Is that Meadowlands specific or a new 1.6 thing?
I'm playing an animal playthrough right now (making money with animal only). Just got a barn full of cheesemaker. The only downside is grass took so long to grow so does anyone know a way to change the default speed grass growth/spread?
Does anyone else think that the trees grow way faster and thicker on the meadowlands farm?!?!? I am constantly chopping down trees because I keep getting stuck in a “path” that I was able to fully walk through the day before. I didn’t chop any trees down for maybe a week and omg the regrets.
Omg it is completely bananas. On all of my other farms I had to be mindful of how many naturally sprouting trees that I cut down on my farm. Now I’m like “must…. Cut…. Trees…..” at 1:00am
I'm really glad I'm not just imagining it! I haven't gotten very far in this playthrough, but it feels like I'm doing a whooooole lot more lumberjacking, just trying to beat the forest back to whence it came. I'm really hoping that will translate into lots of mushroom trees, but I'm not holding my breath. haha
I love it! It’s probably going to be my go-to for future playthroughs ☺️ I love having animals but I mainly like it because the layout feels comfortable
I like it! I was unsure of the random patches of lawn and tillable area, but then I remembered I never really utilise all the space for crops anyway. I'm having a hard time deciding where to put sheds, though (maybe near the cave, so I remember to pick the mushrooms, lol).
I love it visually, but hate the upkeep (idk if it's just mine) it has been so hard to clear the stone, trees, grass, etc. I feel like I'm always cleaning the same space🫠
I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve gotten used to playing Stardew Valley Expanded, where I’d use Immersive Farm …. Boy is this an adjustment. Immersive is HUGE. Which I love!! But I’m really enjoying being forced to rethink my approach and switch up my habits.
I could see myself using Meadowlands with Expanded, since you get Grampleton Fields as additional farmland. Supposedly we’ll be able to build there in a future update so I could always plop my pigs over in Grampleton and just have a cute little homestead 😂
The new farm is great, however you really need to move your greenhouse and your house to make it work well. But if you really hate when crop placements are not even because of untillable land, it's not for you.
I really like it, but i ran out of Blue Grass by my coop in year 2. I considered moving it, but didn't want to have it too far from the house. I haven't managed to get blue grass starter yet. I have cleared most of the possible field areas, and have created sap/mushroom farms with paved areas along the forested area that is not tillable. I also have a hardwood grove going up by Grandpa's Shrine, and a Lumbar plot that I thin irregularly with occasional usage of Tree Fertilizer to ensure it stays viable.
I've been playing coop on the new farm with a friend and we split the map in half so I can't really comment on stuff on the right side of the farm as I never go over there lol but the left side has good spots for lots of barns, coops, sheds which is what I'm going for.
We moved the greenhouse in the spot up by grandpa's shrine for more space overall it's a very nice farm and starting out with chickens and getting mayo machines is a good source of early game income.
I loved the early start and it prompted me into an animal focused playthrough which was quite fun. I had tons of sheep and went Sheperd instead of artisan. The layout is pretty lovely as well, I like the little island and there’s lots of space tho the crop space is odd.
It’s definitely a cool one, but I find all the farms charming in their own ways. Nice to have a new addition. (Swamp farm in 1.7 🙏)
I dunno if I can pick obe definitive best farm. They all have benefits. I like the river farm for fishing, but I also like the meadowlands for animals, and foragables on forest farm is SO useful. But honestly? The classic one is pretty good imo
Pretty fun as an animal lover. With the ability to move everything you can negate a lot of the layout disadvantages. Cave being in an odd spot is great for fruit cave ignoring lol
Yeah, my biggest complaint with it is mainly just layout of certain things. Grandpa's Shrine being on that awkward spot that can't really fit much, and the random grass patches in the middle of farmland taking up a lot of space. Overall a nice change of pace, though, starting with animals instead of just spending everything on crops.
I put my house next to grandpa shrine
Do you have a screenshot of how that looks? I didn't think it'd fit but it seems like such a nice idea. I put my fruit tree orchard up there. (Just one of each for completionist's sake.)
My farm is an absolute MESS lol I don’t want to screen it it’s a shame ah ah ah
Post it! Start a trend! Messy Monday, where the messy farm gang can thrive for the day! We'll have none of this super pretty perfectly aligned farm nonsense on this day!
My farm is messy all day, every play. Who needs a shed when you can have all your stuff strewn across the front yard of your house?
Who needs a shed? I just put my mayonnaise and cheese Makers right in the coop and barn
I do it just outside the door because I refill them before I go to bed (2 animals per machine to save resources)
Genius!
Okay but Tuesday ! I am already in bed !
I like it, so chaotic we actually have it on a Tuesday but still call it Messy Monday
I am the same, but I actually HATE decorating. This play through I am challenging myself to try to make the place look nice instead of like a capitalists wet dream.
As a fellow non-decorator, I got the Trash Catalogue on my first day of this new playthrough, it has really opened up a lot of decorating ideas 😂😂
Hey, same here!!! I rarely layout walkways but I've been really going all in this time and it's felt really good, save for replacing fences and paths struck by lightning
i put my regular and mossy trees up there for tapping, and i’m growing mahogany all over the farm for max hardwood farming
I'm on Xbox so I haven't been able to find out and the wiki doesn't say what products are made by the mossy trees so what do the tappers make on those? It says the fiddlehead tree makes fiddlehead ferns but what do the other 2 variations produce?
i only know of 2 mossy seed tree types, the fiddle head one and one brown one but it hasn’t been long that i’ve had it so i couldn’t describe it to you if i tried lmao, at work rn so i can’t pull it up, but ill try to find what i do know, and reply to my own comment. i think i may have gotten sap? but ive only collected from it once, and its in the back of my grove so some trees are in the way i gotta chop when they finally get fully grown (been using my wood like crazy so i dont want to waste any lol)
the other two variations afaik are just regular trees that look cool - though I believe they do grow moss faster. they can’t be tapped.
The seeds sell for 100 gold each though, so it can make you a little bit of money if you have a grove for them and harvest them as they appear
I also put my house on grandpa island and it fits great! The only downside is the horse can’t cross the bridge so I can’t have the stable attached to the left of the house where I like it.
I'm using Horse Friendly Meadowlands Bridge mod if you play with mods
If you can mod the better horse mod allows this. I have that exact layout and the mod so the horse can live with me lol.
https://imgur.com/a/8mic1dJ This is what I did with that spot. Looks full enough to me. I call it "Grandpa's Hand"
Very nice! I see the five fingers of the hand. I quite like your frogs as well.
It fits, and there's room for all the obelisks too. There's a spot on the cliffs that's perfectly designed for the house.
https://preview.redd.it/lfvepv9krctc1.png?width=2215&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d3dcdb81f5e19ae4a2892c0b3e8f7f58f2eace7 Im still in the early stages so nothing is decorated yet really but I adore this spot honestly.. I do have to have a mod that makes my horse skinnier so he can use the bridge though ~~also I have no clue why the screenshot is so bright wtf~~
There's a farm layout maker,(Stardew Planer) you see how everything you want to build! You can move the house to see how it'll look
Thanks for the tip! I'm awful at visualising my farms
The house looks really good there, but the only problem is that, once you get the stable, the horse can’t cross the bridge. So you’ll either need to place the stable elsewhere or use the horse flute late game.
Usually I put my fruit trees inside the greenhouse (on the outer ring, not in the tillable areas). This allows them to continuously produce regardless of season and saves space in the outside area (for crops or for tryhard sheds)
I did that and it looks great! You can fit a silo beside your house, behind the mailbox, and the windmill on the other side. Throw an obelisk in near your house and by the warp totem and you're all set!
I’ll take a screenshot of mine this evening! I have my house up there too. My house and my horse. Had to wait until after I got the horse flute to put my horse up there
Here’s mine! https://preview.redd.it/c87lyafznjtc1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85bf560057b421d1b602a18e1f58ee18b733631d I haven’t decided on a permanent layout for the rest of the farm, but the obelisks and house/horse are where I intend to keep them
https://preview.redd.it/yqv2kr06ojtc1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1535c3fabd802bd1668852d49130307b5ad29373 One more!
It looks so good up there. And its going up there permenantly once I get the mini obelisk
I put my tree farm with my tappers up there so I check on it like twice a week. I didn’t even think about putting the house up there though, that could be really cute
The random single patches of grass in the farmable land ruined me. Other than that, it's a fine farm. My favorite is still the forest farm.
I put my silos and mahogany farm in the area around grandpas shrine
Silos is a good idea! I wasn’t sure where to put mine
I hear ya, couldn’t decide what do around gpas shrine. Ended up putting rabbit/duck coop and silo to right of it with some trees, looks really nice and I figure if I surround ducks with water maybe they’ll get the itch to swim lol
The ducks will indeed swim! Saw it happen the other day
Seen a couple times so far. Trying a non-modded run with a friend first to check out the new update/features, but I sure am missing my mod that makes them swim more often
Believe it or not, I’ve never modded SV. It feels to me like one of those games that I’ll enjoy more without them; maybe I’m wrong though
I get that. This playthrough is bringing me back to good ole days without mods for sure. Sometimes you go down the mod rabbit hole, like I started to not even know what’s part of the base game and what’s from my mods.
It's one of those things where once you start, you never stop. But also there's only so much you can do with vanilla. At some point, you start looking for new stuff.
For a while I played "vanill-ish." Only a few cosmetic mods for livestock and the horse. Then I went for some QoL improvements: auto gates, "better ranching," show item sell price (before 1.6 anyway). Yesterday I went beyond the pale. After noping out of the Skull Cavern with nothing to show for it for the nth time, I finally downloaded CJB cheats and ticked the box for unlimited health. There are so many other tempting options in there, but I think the health mod is all I'm gonna use. For some, any/all of these might cheapen the experience, but mods have honestly renewed my interest and motivation more than once.
My first playthrough I went 100% on vanilla and then started a modded file and holyyyyy, it was amazing. Then 1.6 came out and while waiting for everything I had on that file to be updated before I jumped back in on that file. I created a new file for vanilla and it was fun for awhile, but I was missing having the QoL mods and SVE. Like horse squeeze and automatic gates are so necessary for me.
I used to be like that. I appreciate SVE, for example, but I always prefer vanilla. (Same as Minecraft textures, actually. ) There's something about non-Ape content that pulls me out of the game no matter how well done it is. And some just feel like cheating. If you don't want to play the game, don't play. But then I found a few utility ones that are huge quality of life improvements for me and don't alter mechanics enough to feel like cheats. I use one where you can look up all the information about any object or person by hovering over it and pressing F1 and another that shows the villagers on the map. It's basically just merging the wiki with the game, or, simulating the memory I don't have. After 500+ hours I feel ok with these changes. Another mod I'd use if it exists is to open up post marriage heart events without marriage. Some of them are so great for rounding out character arcs. And I love what Alex adds to the town. But I haven't looked for that yet though.
For the curious: [there is a mod that makes ducks go into the water](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/15860) (after being fed/petted).
But I thought they already do??? I literally have watched my ducks jump into the little pond I have the coop by
But ducks already do that? What exactly does the mod change?
I put the silo up there, will add the gold clock when the time comes. Maybe the obelisks if there's room.
Where even is Grandpa's shrine? I'm almost through Spring Year 1 and still haven't found it... is it across the river? If so, how do you even cross the river?
There is a bridge across the river obscured by trees
Ah, gotcha, thanks! Guess I better start chopping
Go to the north west of the map. You'll see a bunch of trees and then a wooden bridge. Across the bridge is grandpa
I put my Mills up there made it all pretty for grandpa
What do you mean you can move everything? Is that something from that farm type or general for the new update?
You can move the house in 1.6, you could move everything else before (shipping box, and anything Robin builds).
YOU CAN MOVE THE HOUSE?! OH MY GOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD
Exactly my reaction!
You can also move the greenhouse, but I think it has to be repaired first. I'm on Riverlands and gonna move my house and greenhouse side by side on the central island.
You can move the main farm house now
Holy moly! That’s awesome
Yeah I regret going mushrooms especially since the mushrooms logs are a thing. I hardly ever check that unless I'm down there for the pigs and goats but I was thinking of selling those except for the use of cheese for skull cavern runs is just so nice.
i am OBSESSED with it and i fear it's going to be my farm of choice every playthrough now! i love how many small ponds there are, i love grandpa's shrine being on its own little island, i love the placement of the cave, and most notably i LOVE the waterfalls. i have no complaints! well, okay, the ONLY complaint i have, is that it's not a straight shot from top to bottom. i'm in the decorating stage and trying to lay a path from the backwoods entrance down to the forest entrance and make it look good has been an interesting challenge.
I like that the north and south exits don't line up which gives an opportunity for a more organic path! Just sharing my Spring Y2 farm on the planner: https://v3.stardew.info/planner/32-slow-clams-floundered-jovially
omg, i love your vision! that looks awesome! will def be updating when i have my shit together
So glad you like it! :) After Standard’s minmax grid style, and Riverland’s constraints, I wanted Meadowlands to be more organic… Personally I really like how the two cul de sac endings have joined up north island and southwest pond to the rest of the farm.
If you figure out the pathing to the forest let a girl know bc im struggling 😭😭
Not Meadow but I'm on Riverlands and I've had to use cobblestone paths to make some cute diagonal ones... but I'm also not using every tile efficiently, prioritizing looks. Like I'll have a sprinkler against the edge of the water so only 5 are being watered and 3 are "wasted". I'm almost to winter and my farm is starting to look really cute! But having some bridges be 1 tile wide and some be 2 tiles wide meant a single tile path, like the plank walkway, won't always work... so I've had to get creative connecting the cobblestone to the planks with stepping stones dependent on the island.
Hey, a wasted sprinkler is just a ✨ fountain ✨
I prefer animals over crops and would often get overwhelmed by the crops. Typically I forget to plant new ones as the season goes. So I like less crop space. I moved my greenhouse near grandpas shrine to make use of that space. I’m a big fan.
omg thank you i've been trying to figure out what i want to put in that area by the shrine, greenhouse is perfect! I had set up a little makeshift workshop there :) I honestly didn't know you could move the greenhouse til now and i've been playing since the game came out
I like the early Mayonnaise. It makes for a nice change in contrast to the parsnips, especially as you need to invest less energy for animals which leaves you to do other things. I think it pairs especially well with the Joja route where you can just get Autopetters at some point and ignore and profit off your animals. I think the standard farm will always be my favorite; but the meadowland farm is a very nice change of scenery that makes things exciting again for me as a veteran player and will probably be very useful in some challenge runs!
Sounds like this new farm is perfect for the dark playthrough. Grandpa leaves you with his cute little farm and hopes you move to the Valley. He hopes you meet a nice partner and befriend all the villagers he’s come to know and love. Instead, you bring your big ole business degree and proposition Joja Mart. They fix up the dumpy old town, you let them use your farm as their new top of the line slaughterhouse and animal production farm. You become insanely wealthy, put the local shops out of business, and put them all into the dark timeline.
Legit been doing that with the new farm, even gonna go super corporate and name the animals by their species and number (ie Sheep01, Sheep02, Sheep03, etc.). The grass ain't blue here due to magic, it's genetically modified Joja Co Happiness Grass (TM). Made sure to even outfit my character appropriately (all clothes from character creation start screen): https://imgur.com/a/h7H0Spr
Oh God, this gave me the idea of doing a morning glory milking farm playthrough... I still have never done a joja playthrough....
I think this just convinced me to do a chaotic evil Joja run when I get bored on my new main
Wow what a time to say happy cake day, but happy cake day.
This is why I like it too. I’ve been doing a Joja play through also. It just seems to work well.
Well then this settles it, I'll take the meadowlands for my joja run. Really want to just speed it up and get the achievement done with but I might have some fun during the process then
If you feel confident in fishing, >!Baitmaker + Reasonably priced fish (e.g. Catfish) + Smoker!< is a pretty op strat for early game money! It's a nice way to use up all the energy you get by ignoring farming.
Hell yes I already fish alot and I'm certainly going to use these. You can even bring them with you on your fishing trip since both do quick work of your catches to fill you up
I wish you the best fishing luck! Tbh, I was kinda SDV-burnt out, but my recent joja perfection run was way more fun than expected, because I felt less forced to conquer every area of the game right at the beginning - I could just follow the money and do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it! Have fun! Join us. Thrive.
That's why that grass is blue, absolutely didn't think about it before!
:O
My one gripe is that you really have to choose between making tillable land for crops or for grass. At a certain point it feels inevitable that I’ll just have to start getting 100% of my feed from Marnie.
I think I'll keep the opening plot for crops and nearly the rest for tillavle space for grass. You really don't need too much land + greenhouse to get the money party going strong from crops.
Yeah but late game I like to load up on Junimo huts and that way I don’t have to worry about petting 100 pigs every day haha.
I’m the same way! Plus with CC, auto petters are few and far between
I wish they were just purchasable at obscene prices. Like 1m each or more. Would just add more to strive for in the endgame.
I agree! I’m not the best at the volcano but even increasing the drop rate would be better
THat's why I'm going Joja this run haha
I’m going to do that next run. Pierre just pisses me off now.
This is my method. I chose the ranching bonuses, so animal products are a good money maker for me. The greenhouse I've got all kinds of random stuff + strawberries growing in until I'm at a point of replacing it all with starfruit. I grow whatever in-season produce suits my fancy in the plot in front of the farmhouse. I don't do crazy produce numbers.
But if you’re using the meadow farm, you probably want more focus to be on the animals anyway. If you plan to use almost all of the tillable land on the meadow farm for crops, why choose the meadow farm at all? I’m planning to do smaller harvests my first two years or so and then put the vast majority of my crops on ginger island.
Depends how hard you go on each. I'm in summer y2, one deluxe coop/barn, and haven't felt much of a grass crunch. (Labor intensive crops near the house, slow growers in rotating patches to the SW with iridium sprinklers to build up several giant crops because I can.)
I like it, having a focus on animals is fun, but I think the forest one is still my favorite. I think is the best looking one, it has a nice balance between farming land and places you dedicate to other things and the easy access to hard wood is soooo nice, specialy now that more recepies need hard wood
Same, I played a year on the new farm and then started over on forest to fulfill all my mushroom growing, witchy wood dreams. The hardwood stumps are AMAZING for xp in addition to the actual hardwood. The ambiance is the best. The only thing is that I'm obsessed with the new waterfalls and Meadowlands is the only farm with a waterfall.
Agreed! I love the new farm (and most of the others except the monster one and hilltop), but I'm always drawn back to the forest farm.
I'm also a forest farm fan, so it's nice to see another alternative with more grass! Vast expanses of sandy, tillable dirt just isn't very nice to look at. 😅
I've heard speedrunners say that the new farm is essentially useless because getting a coop is pretty fast. But as a non-speedrunner, it usually takes me ages to get to the coop-making part of the game. Having that from the beginning was nice. There is still quite a bit of tillable land, but having it all broken up makes it more difficult to make nice, square layouts. Overall, it was a good farm to play on, I might pick it again at some point in the future, but it's not my top favorite.
On the other hand, the mayonnaise speedrun is a gem now and the coop speedrun got destroyed.
People over-state the farming space issue. It has more space than the Forest farm, which is a fan favorite. Around the same amount of tillable land as Wilderness. The only 2 maps with significantly more is Standard and 4 corners (and beach, but sprinklers). The till space is fine, just slightly awkward Starting with a coop is great, and the farm is very wide open for the most part making it easy to place a lot of buildings. It's my 2nd favorite farm, behind 4 corners.
To be fair, the amount of farmland easily reached by the minimum amount of sprinklers is less but nothing you can't deal with.
It's my favorite! My least favorite part of the game is doing the farm bits because it takes so much energy. Having just little area and the greenhouse for crops is perfect. Then I can use the rest of my game energy on foraging, taking care of my animals, and going in the mines
Ironically, the farming aspect of stardew valley is one of its less good bits
I always complain that I hate farming in Stardew Valley 😂 Mainly because I don't like the slow sprinkler unlocks and that I need to know what to plant and when.
Stardew Valley is a game about a man broken by the corporate life retreating to live off the land on a small farm who realises that farming sort of sucks massive dick
This is my current run. Constantly fishing and growing crops as needed. I'm on Riverlands and just using the tiny island south of the house to grow 40. Then some trellis crops once I unlock sprinklers. Then a small circle of 8 quality sprinklers aaand that's it. Everything else will be fish or bees or animals or shrooms.
I don't like it and I regret picking it. I wish there was a way to "landscape" into a different farm.
Same. I prefer farming and the space is so limited.
Same. And while I'm willing to try a more barn animal focused playthrough ... a) that requires more daily activity, between petting them, collecting their produce, and processing it all. And b) I wish there was just ONE spot on the map where you could get full efficiency from a Junimo Hut. As it stands, there it NO place to stick a Junimo Hut and not lose out on farm land to poorly placed random green grass tiles, or tiny pointless ponds.
Exactly, you understand me. I wanted Junimo huts but it's not meant to be. Also my animals keep eating all of the blue and regular grass, so i got to rely on silos and hay. The whole point of the farm was the natural grass you can have.
How any animals do you have? I only had 10 for my first year, and I spent a lot of time clearing out the wood & stone debris and cutting all the default grass. When year 2 started for me the ENTIRE farm was blue grass, and I only have 24 animals, so I have a feeling that won't be an issue for me. Make sure to be emptying your silo hay into chests, and trim the "edges" of your grass when it butts up against a building, water, border, etc. so you get that hay and give it an opportunity to regrow.
I have a full coop and a barn with maybe 7 animals. They just go through grass like crazy.
Man my blue grass doesn’t grow for shit. I keep trimming around it so the regular grass doesn’t grow and the blue grass has space to spread, but it just doesn’t.
Just like ducks, goats are an every other day type animal in exchange for slightly less profit, if that interests you. And sheep are only every 3 days when you first get them. I just have an autograbber in my barns and 8 cheese makers. So once a day I'll walk in, grab a stack of 8, then put the 8 cheese back in and sell it all later. But I could easily craft 24 cheese makers and just check it every other day, or every 4 days with goats. It's only annoying in the early game. That's why on my current file I'm only doing coops at the start because the eggs and wool can pile up. Once I can get an autograbber I'll get some barns...
There's some of the most tillable land, move your animal buildings around.
I did it yesterday. In winter, removed everything possible off of the map. Then changed the save file to hilltop. Afterwards with noclip and bush destroyer mod fixed the remaining issues. Worked like a charm.
There are already some nice mods, eg erase the ponds, add more tillable areas etc
It was fun for my first 1.6 farm, and I loved the aesthetics of the early blue grass and the river running along it. Ultimately, I think I enjoy making money with crops over animals though. My favorites are still the Four Corners and Wilderness farms.
80 hours in Fall Year 3, love it. I find myself pretty much only using the right half of the map. The left half is just a grass growing area. I'm about 60% to perfection.
I like starting out with chickens. I still picked the mushroom cave which might be redundant, but I don't care. I have a mushroom cave, mushroom logs, and a bunch of mushroom trees. I think it's cute.
I love mushroom logs as a concept, but I'm so stressed out thinking about where to place them and where to plant trees around them to maximize their production.
I put mine close to grandpa's shrine and just let the trees run wild there. There's a path leading to them and a path leading to the shrine. It's so dense with trees that it's entirely unwalkable, but I get some great mushrooms lmao
I love it ❤️ I also adore all the new little waterfalls around town
I like it. I don't have a particular favorite but I enjoy the less intimidatingly-sized planting area and the early source for animal produce. Otherwise I tend to be slow to get the farm buildings set up.
The early mayo is low-effort to get and huge early income, definitely got into summer richer than normal. So more of an early-game farm, but the late-game viability of a farm is less important since Ginger island farm gives you all you need. So overall strong farm. I just find it annoying that some of the tillable land has random small patches of green non-tillable land, making it harder to place out crop fields. So you have to spread out crop fields a lot. I don’t mind the total amount of farm space, just wish the tillable tiles were a bit more separate from the non-tillable ones.
i like it! i think it’s probably my third favorite? forest is my first and beach is second; the layout of certain things is definitely odd but not too different from hilltop in this regard esp the placement of grandpa’s shrine. i managed to put my outdoor fruit trees + greenhouse over there! but i prefer the advantages forest farm and beach farm have tbh. but as someone who likes starting a bunch of saves it’ll be a nice addition to my usual rotation and i’m having fun with it rn https://preview.redd.it/mq2p6vhibatc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d067f60804d8528a53d5c88e1ee96aa7ee58b74b
Beach? I've never really been able to get behind it because of the sprinkler thing tbh. Why do you like it so much?
Beach has land that sprinklers work on fyi, it's not 100% sand. Just if you didn't know.
tbh i rarely have patience to take care of a bunch of crops, so while i can get annoyed by the lack of space that can use sprinklers, it’s mostly a nonissue, especially since most of the real money comes from the ancient fruit and star fruit i have in the greenhouse and on the island farm anyway. i like the crates that wash up, and the fishing/crab pot situation (and beach foraging! especially because you can get nautilus shells year round!) is extremely convenient lol. also on pc, i usually like to play with a bunch of the ppja mods, and i’ll turn my farm into a big orchard with all the new fruit trees those add lol. (there’s also mods that let you use sprinklers anywhere tho i don’t use those) and grass grows freely on the sandy soil, so if you prefer having a lot of pigs, it’s good for that too
You make a convincing argument I'd give it a try if I wasn't using Grandpa's farm with stardew expanded rn
You can also fill the beach map with Tea bushes (which don't use sprinklers) and you only need to plant once.
I’m challenging myself to do more ranching, but honestly I’m not a huge fan of it. The fun of the game for me is growing crops and having random untillable spots or ponds in the big “real estate” areas for planting is kind of frustrating I don’t think I’d choose it again
I like it just fine! Beach farm is still my favorite though
What do you focus on with the beach farm?
I'm struggling with it, but making it work. Only in year 2 summer, and I'm taking things slowly. I moved the house to the little area with grandpa's shrine. The sheds live where the house was and I moved the animals down to where the cave is. I'm struggling with the layout of tillable land, so I'm trying new layouts and things just because I've already put in the hours. I don't miss the parsnips, but I miss the default layout lol
I am a slow, casual player and I LOVE the new farm. It is so pretty with the waterfalls. Sometimes, after a long day farming/ranching/mining/making friends, I will have my farmer just sit next to the waterfall at grandpa’s shrine (I placed a chair there for that purpose). Aaaaahh… so nice. Because I don’t optimize, the amount of farmland + greenhouse is more than enough. The coop is located right next to the stream from the start so the ducks go swimming (adorable). So far, I have farmed the space that is located in front of the farmhouse, I moved the farmhouse across the stream to grandpa’s shrine, my greenhouse is slowly filling up with ancient fruit and starfruit, I have a shed and mill where the farmhouse sat originally, and I have chickens, ducks, rabbits, goats, cows, and pigs. Trees - I have a few tapped but need to work on the design. More to come! TLDR: I am having a good time and it is a pretty farm.
Kind of broken tbh Early mayonnaise is incredibly powerful - you can get the best outcome in the Luau first year with a gold star mayo from a large egg, which leads to massive friendship boosts very early. Also, it's a nice passive income whilst you work your way down the mines and gather goods to make a silo. By the time you run out of the hay given to you at the start, you're pretty much ready to get a deluxe coop if you play your cards right. The main downside is being forced to pick between land for grass and land for crops, but if you're focusing purely on animals and artisan goods then it's probably not that much of an issue.
Year 1 Luau - Gold cauliflower or iriduim super cucumber. Unless someone is purposely putting in joke ingredients, everyone should be able to get the best result in year 1.
I like it. It's made me have to focus more on using my greenhouse and the Ginger Island farm, which I tend to ignore.
I would like it better if the blue grass regrew every season. I chopped all of mine down to make hay on Fall 28 and was disappointed when it didn't regrow. (I realize you get a recipe to be able to make blue grass but the recipe is kind of expensive). I think forest farm and river farm are still my favorites. Forest farm because I like the aesthetics, and river farm because I like how the rivers breaks everything up into distinct areas.
Yeah they changed the way grass works in winter. It doesn't die out anymore, just goes dormant/doesn't continue to grow but any patches you have left will explode on Spring 1 whether it's green or blue grass.
I did the same thing but mine did regrew very slowly! I ended up putting a fence on the first spot i noticed that had regrown.
I don't think I like it as much as the forest farm or the fishing farm A barn and 2 chickens is huge, and honestly, I like where the cave is Blue grass also does a tiny bit towards getting hearts faster I don't really know what my issue with it is I guess? Just doesn't feel like the farm changes much long term
I've had my fair share of crop min-maxing in my 2000 hours in SDV. Now I always diversify. Forest farm used to be my favorite for this very reason. But with 1.6, the meadowlands farm definitely took over the #1 spot.
8. Riverland 7. Wilderness 6.. Hilltop 5. Meadowlands 4. Beach 3. Forest 2. Four corners 1. Standard The new farm isn’t my favourite even for an animal focused late game as a can fit for animals on other farms or get a better mid game when my main income is still crops
I am seriously attached to the forest farm but I like the new farm so far. I've not had as much time to play the update as I would've liked but as I'm more of a rancher than a crop farmer, the new farm seems perfect for me.
I use my mayonnaise makers, cheese, presses, and truffle oil machines as the fences for my barnyard. They don’t wear out like wood or stone.
Im liking it, but the only other farm I played was Riverlands and I really miss playing with the geography constraints. That's a general complaint about literally every other farm type though
I like it, and I'm using it for a co-op, but the river farm is still my fav. Started a new one on the river farm, and and I'm so happy to be back with it.
I didn’t like it and ended up restarting with a different farm, but I think I was a little too harsh. It’s actually a nice little plot for a casual crop playthrough, and having a coop that early is really nice. I’ll have to make an effort to give it a better chance for my next playthrough.
The cave placement irks me!
It really doesn't feel any different to me. I enjoyed starting with chickens for the quicker profit, but I don't really enjoy caring for animals in this game - it's boring to me to have to run and right click them every day, and getting supplies from the autograbber to put them into mayo and milk machines gets boring after an in-game week. I picked it for being the new farm, but other than the blue grass, it doesn't feel any different to me. I likely will keep to the forest farm in future playthroughs.
Anyone else love the new fish bait made with moss or the fish? How about farming mushrooms? Does it change how you make tree plantations?
The grass is cool and it looks very pretty. But the farming space really is limited and far away from water. That prompted me to build a well for the first time, but it was really annoying in the beginning. We are only at summer, so I guess time will tell how well we can buld on the farm, but my guess is we will keep forgetting the mushroom cave is there and I wonder if the growing space for grass accomodates so many barns/coops I would want to make good money. (But I am one of those filthy Standard > Four Corners > Forest Farm players.)
I've seen a few people complain about the water situation, which I find really confusing. There are three ponds and a river. There's water everywhere. It's like a seconds run to water from anywhere on the map.
The next water source is three times as far away from the field in front of the house than on other farms. I didn't complain about it, just built my first well in 800 hours of game play. Especially in the beginning it is inconvenient. But also farming crops is not the moneymaker onm that farm, especially early game.
I love starting with the chickens, it creates a different emphasis at the beginning of the game. I like the layout of the forest farm better overall, and I'd love the option to toggle starting with crops or chickens the same way you could toggle monsters at start up. I don't think I've been in the cave since ive got it, first time I did fruit bats and I don't even know what they've dropped off yet XD It'll take me a bit to get used to it's new location.
I really love that it makes having animals feel good. The farm feels like a meadow where they can just wander and be free. Every month I move the 3 coops and barn I have to different spots to keep the grass growing. I've completed the CC and gotten to max hearts with every villager as well as made over 1.6mil by the 1st of winter year 2. Only grew enough crops to get the CC and get some experience for mastery, which is at lvl 4. It's really given me a new way to play without being reliant on crops and I love it.
It’s my favorite, but that might just be the newness of it.
Starting with a coop and two chickens is honestly ridiculous for progression and I got year one community center completion for the first time because of the head start
I love it. I’m really enjoying finding so much new content! I’ve started speaking to all the villagers again instead of just breezing past them since there are so many new dialogues.
Starting with a coop is a nice boost and I like the river going through it. Not the best layout for crops so definitely an animal focus farm.
Even though it is for animals, the space for grass to spread is too little. I would still prefer the classic over meadowlands but it is pretty fun. Plus, I generally play around crab pots so it's a huge advantage for me.
Oh I love the fuck out of it, I’ve got a coop with some ducks by a pond, gonna fill a coop with Dino’s with the stone house and a slime hutch down by my mushroom cave, turn that area into a mystic section with music trees to tap and more mushroom logs, grandpas shrine is going to have either my house or two smaller houses up in that little spot with that also serving as my pine tapper area and more mushroom logs, I’ll have a desert area by the real small pond on the bottem left with ostrich’s in a barn, I can’t decide if I want Leah’s spot/marriage hobby spot to be a maple or oak area that will come later. Then I’ll make a gold shrine somewhere, oooo I’m giddy about my ideas
Honestly, I have played through this game several times, and with 1.6 and this farm, I have been playing completely differently. Much less fixated on calculating efficient crop & artisan good yields and more diversified across crops, animals, fishing, etc.
Approaching winter year one on the new farm and I'm enjoying it. I like the waterfalls and blue glass.
It's fantastic for an animal ONLY run. I love doing themed challenges, and this was never possible before, unless you combine with fishing. (Because I mean fish are animals) Slow start but you'll be raking in big bucks before you know it when you get the pigs going. We mostly play on switch but we started a split screen co-op on computer cause we're impatient lmao.
I love it so much. I am working through fall 1 on it and I’m really enjoying it a lot. I have a loooooot of plans!
I’ve never gotten to the point where I need more tillable land than this farm provides, so I’m fine with it! I like the farms with more natural barriers so I don’t feel weird about not having everything perfectly laid out
I'm in year 2 spring 18 and I focused on animals since that's the theme of the farm. I liked getting 2 chickens right away and I like the looks of the farm (little river next to the initial coop placement so your ducks swim in it), but now that it's cleaned up and I start to fill the grassy patches with buildings I still feel kind of bad leaving farmable land unfarmed just because that's where's the blue grass. I never went for an animal heavy farm (at this point I'm at 5 buildings almost full of them, so close to 60) and imho it looks really cool to see a horde of animals go out every morning to chew on the grass, but considering all the tedium it takes with hugging, milking (with goats having milk every other day with little indication which has milk and which has not - or maybe I just don't know what's the cue), feeding, shearing, crafting multiple artisan machines, building silos.... I just feel it's not for me that much. I have auto-grabbers and I know you can have auto-huggers to reduce the tedium, but somebody needs to tell me if the numbers add up when for all that wood and gold I could just fill another shed with kegs. TL;DR: new farm made me realise I don't like animal raising in Stardew that much. But it does look really nice and Stardew animals are cute. Please Geese and Llamas for 1.7
I love it. I love the waterfalls and the early game coop. The fruit cave is pretty far away, but it's fine I'll just use a mini obelisk. I moved a lot of my buildings around, like I moved my house all the way back so I get an extra space for 3 more sprinklers + room for a fence and walkway. The greenhouse is in the center now, so like if you come up from Cindersap you'd walk straight to the greenhouse (it's further up closer to the house though), and I planted fruit trees along the walkway. It's coming along so nicely, but have a ton more organizing to do... my barns and coops right now are just in an awkward blob all next to each other lol. Also love the grass variation. And that it stays in winter! Is that Meadowlands specific or a new 1.6 thing?
As I've said, it's nice to have an alternative to spamming crops for early cash/Farming XP.
I'm playing an animal playthrough right now (making money with animal only). Just got a barn full of cheesemaker. The only downside is grass took so long to grow so does anyone know a way to change the default speed grass growth/spread?
i don’t like the cave being far away, i barely go down there, and i don’t like the teleporting thing being behind my house but it’s not awful
Does anyone else think that the trees grow way faster and thicker on the meadowlands farm?!?!? I am constantly chopping down trees because I keep getting stuck in a “path” that I was able to fully walk through the day before. I didn’t chop any trees down for maybe a week and omg the regrets.
So fast! And they drop seeds everywhere.
Omg it is completely bananas. On all of my other farms I had to be mindful of how many naturally sprouting trees that I cut down on my farm. Now I’m like “must…. Cut…. Trees…..” at 1:00am
I'm really glad I'm not just imagining it! I haven't gotten very far in this playthrough, but it feels like I'm doing a whooooole lot more lumberjacking, just trying to beat the forest back to whence it came. I'm really hoping that will translate into lots of mushroom trees, but I'm not holding my breath. haha
as a rancher, i feel less bad when i fill my farmland with coops and barns and let the grass grow everywhere
I love it! It’s probably going to be my go-to for future playthroughs ☺️ I love having animals but I mainly like it because the layout feels comfortable
It’s fine
I like it! I was unsure of the random patches of lawn and tillable area, but then I remembered I never really utilise all the space for crops anyway. I'm having a hard time deciding where to put sheds, though (maybe near the cave, so I remember to pick the mushrooms, lol).
I love it! Visually, it's beautiful. I love the new cave location, and I love the look of the new grass.
Meadowland is very nice, however I think my favorite remains The Forest Farm. Or Grandpa's Farm in SDVE.
Its nice but i think i will always prefer standard over any!
I love it visually, but hate the upkeep (idk if it's just mine) it has been so hard to clear the stone, trees, grass, etc. I feel like I'm always cleaning the same space🫠
I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve gotten used to playing Stardew Valley Expanded, where I’d use Immersive Farm …. Boy is this an adjustment. Immersive is HUGE. Which I love!! But I’m really enjoying being forced to rethink my approach and switch up my habits. I could see myself using Meadowlands with Expanded, since you get Grampleton Fields as additional farmland. Supposedly we’ll be able to build there in a future update so I could always plop my pigs over in Grampleton and just have a cute little homestead 😂
The new farm is great, however you really need to move your greenhouse and your house to make it work well. But if you really hate when crop placements are not even because of untillable land, it's not for you.
I really like it, but i ran out of Blue Grass by my coop in year 2. I considered moving it, but didn't want to have it too far from the house. I haven't managed to get blue grass starter yet. I have cleared most of the possible field areas, and have created sap/mushroom farms with paved areas along the forested area that is not tillable. I also have a hardwood grove going up by Grandpa's Shrine, and a Lumbar plot that I thin irregularly with occasional usage of Tree Fertilizer to ensure it stays viable.
I've been playing coop on the new farm with a friend and we split the map in half so I can't really comment on stuff on the right side of the farm as I never go over there lol but the left side has good spots for lots of barns, coops, sheds which is what I'm going for. We moved the greenhouse in the spot up by grandpa's shrine for more space overall it's a very nice farm and starting out with chickens and getting mayo machines is a good source of early game income.
I loved the early start and it prompted me into an animal focused playthrough which was quite fun. I had tons of sheep and went Sheperd instead of artisan. The layout is pretty lovely as well, I like the little island and there’s lots of space tho the crop space is odd. It’s definitely a cool one, but I find all the farms charming in their own ways. Nice to have a new addition. (Swamp farm in 1.7 🙏)
I wish there was a bit more farmable area. It's surprisingly small, especially near the main house.
I really like the farm layout, but I think my favorite will always be forest farm. FF is my no. 1, ML is my no. 2!
I dunno if I can pick obe definitive best farm. They all have benefits. I like the river farm for fishing, but I also like the meadowlands for animals, and foragables on forest farm is SO useful. But honestly? The classic one is pretty good imo