Beach Farm
| Beach Farm | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Farm Type |
| Location | The Farm |
| Skill | Foraging and Fishing |
| Tillable Tiles | 2700 |
| Buildable Tiles | 1928 |
The Beach Farm swaps a field for a shoreline. Most of the ground is sand, and sand will not hold a sprinkler, so the usual plan of widening the crop rows every year and crafting sprinklers to keep up simply does not work here. One strip of ordinary soil in the middle of the western side does take sprinklers, and a scattering of firm tiles around the ponds takes them too, which is the whole of the automated watering the map allows. Everything else it hands over is found rather than grown: the ocean's catch list is at the door, beach and forest forage both spawn on the shore, the shells that only appear at the beach in one season appear here all year, and supply crates wash up out of the sea with fertiliser, bombs and geodes inside. The game itself describes the map as one for seasoned players and not as a first farm, and that is honest advice rather than a warning about danger.
Layout
The coastline does the shaping. A long, uneven run of sand follows the sea along the south and east, grass and firmer ground sit inland, and two ponds break up the middle of the property. The result is a great deal of open room with very little of it behaving like farmland.
The one strip that behaves properly is the patch of non-sandy soil towards the middle of the western side. It runs roughly twenty tiles by ten with a couple of tiles over, and it is the only place on the map where a block of sprinklers covers a block of crops the way it would anywhere else. Getting the use of all of it takes clearing, because trees and Large Logs stand on part of it, and a Large Log needs the Axe taken up to steel before it will break. Around two dozen further firm tiles are dotted about the map, mostly along the edges of the ponds, and those are worth marking with a path so they are not forgotten.
Everything the sand refuses to grow it will happily carry. Barns, Coops, Sheds and Fish Ponds all stand on it without costing a single crop row, which is the reverse of an open layout, and grass spreads across sandy ground as readily as across soil, so a herd can graze on the beach. Fifteen bushes stand about the property and clear once the Axe reaches copper, and several of them are berry bushes worth leaving in place for the two short picking windows they give.
Farming
Crops on this map are planned around water rather than around space. The firm strip takes the sprinkler grid and should be given to the crops that stay in the ground longest, since every tile of it is precious. The sand takes retaining soil instead. Basic and Quality Retaining Soil both cut the watering round down in the early years, and Deluxe Retaining Soil settles the problem for good, because a tile treated with it stays watered from the first can until the harvest. The recipe is bought from the Island Trader for Cinder Shards, which puts it well into the second half of a run, so the early seasons on the Beach Farm are worked with an upgraded Watering Can and a modest planting rather than with a wide field.
Until that fertiliser arrives, soil that is not sand is worth more here than anywhere else in the valley. That puts unusual weight on the Greenhouse, whose floor is flat, watered and immune to both the seasons and the beach, and later on the plot across on Ginger Island, which takes the volume planting the shore will never carry. The firm tiles beside the ponds are the natural home for Rice Shoots and Taro Tubers, both of which want soil next to water anyway.
Animals are the honest answer to all that open sand. Grass grows on it, the pens can be as large as wanted, and a herd turns the part of the map that refuses a hoe into milk, wool and eggs. Fish Ponds do the same job along the water's edge, breeding a species without any daily attention, and the machine yards that turn produce into artisan goods sit on sand without an argument.
Fishing
This is the only layout where the sea itself is part of the farm. A rod cast off the shore draws on the catch list of The Beach, so the ocean fish that the Fish Tank bundles ask for can be hooked between chores instead of on a trip into town. Seaweed comes up often, which is useful for cooking rather than for selling, and there is a small chance on any cast of pulling up an Oyster, Coral, Mussel or Cockle directly, which happens nowhere else on a rod.
Crab Pots are the quiet money. Floated along the sea shore they act as saltwater pots, which means Lobster, Crab, Shrimp, Oyster, Clam, Cockle and Mussel, the whole saltwater half of the Crab Pot Bundle, arrive on the farm overnight. Baited in the evening and emptied on the way to the shipping bin, a line of pots along the coast is the least demanding income the map offers.
The two inland ponds are a different story. A rod dropped into either brings up nothing but rubbish, and a Crab Pot placed in them is noticeably more likely to come up with junk than a pot anywhere else in the valley, so the ponds are better kept for refilling the can and for the soil along their banks.
Strategy
The first year is spent finding out how little hand watering is tolerable. A small planting on the firm strip, a larger one once the Watering Can is upgraded, and the rest of the effort put into fishing, foraging and animals is the shape of a comfortable run. Trying to plant the sand at scale in the first Spring is the standard way the map goes wrong, because every one of those tiles has to be watered by hand every morning before anything else gets done.
The supply crates reward patience. They wash up now and then along the shore and open with a tool, and what is inside them improves as the farmhouse is upgraded. Early crates carry Mixed Seeds, Quality Retaining Soil, geodes, Cherry Bombs and a meal or two. After the second upgrade the same crates start producing Deluxe Retaining Soil, Artifact Troves and Mega Bombs, which is a pleasant loop: the fertiliser that solves the map's one real problem begins arriving free on the beach.
Hardwood is a one-off windfall here. The map carries more Large Logs and stumps than most layouts, each one paying in Hardwood rather than ordinary Wood, but they do not come back once they are cut, so the haul is best saved for the moment a building or a tool upgrade actually needs it rather than cleared on the first sunny day.
Foraging is the skill the map quietly levels, since shore forage appears every morning and picking it up is exactly what raises the skill. The professions it leads to pay back here more than on most farms. Gatherer, chosen at level five, gives a chance of a double harvest on everything foraged, and Botanist at level ten makes every foraged item come up at the highest quality, which turns a morning walk along the sand into real money. The same route takes in the bushes and whatever has washed up overnight.
Notes
Both forest and beach forage spawn on this shore, which is a combination found on no other farm, and the seasonal beach items keep no calendar here. A Rainbow Shell belongs to Summer at The Beach and a Nautilus Shell to Winter, yet either can turn up on this farm in any season, and both sell for a good deal more than ordinary forage.
The ruin on the property is repaired into the Greenhouse by way of the Pantry bundles, or by paying Joja instead, and once it is standing it can be lifted and set down elsewhere by Robin or by the Wizard. That matters more on this map than elsewhere, because it means the one building that grows crops reliably can be set down next to the one strip of soil that does.
A common complaint is that the sand leaves nowhere for animals to graze. Grass does spread over sandy ground, so a herd can be fed from the farm itself once a patch has been allowed to establish, and a Silo turns the cut grass into the Hay that carries the animals through Winter.
All Farm Types
The table lists every layout with the skill it favours and how much of it can be farmed or built on.
| Name | Skill | Tillable | Buildable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Farm | Farming | 3427 | 235 |
| Riverland Farm | Fishing | 1578 | 516 |
| Forest Farm | Foraging | 1413 | 1490 |
| Hill-top Farm | Mining | 1648 | 930 |
| Wilderness Farm | Combat | 2131 | 444 |
| Four Corners Farm | Multiplayer | 2952 | 562 |
| Beach Farm | Foraging and Fishing | 2700 | 1928 |
| Meadowlands Farm | Farming | 2066 | 2141 |