Four Corners Farm
| Four Corners Farm | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Farm Type |
| Location | The Farm |
| Skill | Multiplayer |
| Tillable Tiles | 2952 |
| Buildable Tiles | 562 |
The Four Corners Farm is the map that gives a little of everything. Cliffs cut the property into four parcels, and each one quietly copies a different layout: the top left behaves like the Forest Farm, the top right is plain open field, the bottom left holds the big pond, and the bottom right carries a small quarry that grows fresh rock and ore every morning. It was drawn for co-op, so four farmers can take a corner each and work without treading on one another, and a cabin for each of them goes up on the first day for pocket change. Played alone it turns into something different and just as useful: the roomiest of the special layouts, with a mining shelf, a fishing pond and the Forest Farm's seed-dropping weeds all inside the farm gate. Nothing on it is the best of its kind, which is the fair criticism of the map and also the reason it is so often recommended to a farmer who cannot decide.
Layout
The dividing walls are rock. Each parcel sits at its own level with cliff faces between it and its neighbours, and the ground lost to those walls is why the map does not quite match an open field for soil. Every corner has a different job, and reading them that way is the whole trick to the layout.
The top right is the field. It holds the largest single run of soil on the map and nothing in it except the usual trees, weeds and stones, so it is where a sprinkler grid belongs and where the crop money is made. The top left is the smallest and the most interesting: a grassy clearing with a Large Stump standing in it, and weeds that always drop Mixed Seeds when they are cut. The bottom right holds the quarry, a raised patch that seeds itself with stone, ore and geode nodes overnight according to how high the Mining skill has climbed. The bottom left is water, with the one pond on the map that a rod is worth using on.
There is also a small pond tucked into each of the other three parcels. Those exist for the watering can rather than the rod, and in co-op they are the reason a farmer working the quarry corner does not have to hike across the map to fill up every morning.
Walking is the real cost of the design. Four separate corners means four sets of chores and a route between them, so the sensible habit is to settle what each parcel is for in the first season and to stop carrying tools back and forth. Chests parked in each corner, holding the tools and seeds that corner actually needs, save more time on this map than on any other.
A cleared quarry rolls for a new node each morning, and Mining skill decides what it can roll.
| Level | Stone | Artifact Spot | Geode | Frozen Geode | Magma Geode | Copper | Iron | Gold | Iridium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0, 1, 2, 3 | 60.44% | 15% | 6.72% | 0% | 0% | 17.85% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 4 | 51.37% | 15% | 5.71% | 0% | 0% | 15.17% | 12.75% | 0% | 0% |
| 5, 6 | 51.37% | 15% | 2.85% | 2.85% | 0% | 15.17% | 12.75% | 0% | 0% |
| 7 | 46.23% | 15% | 2.57% | 2.57% | 0% | 13.66% | 11.48% | 8.5% | 0% |
| 8, 9 | 46.23% | 15% | 1.71% | 1.71% | 1.71% | 13.66% | 11.48% | 8.5% | 0% |
| 10+ | 45.77% | 15% | 1.7% | 1.7% | 1.7% | 13.52% | 11.36% | 8.42% | 0.85% |
Farming
The crop plan on Four Corners is a question of how much the planting is allowed to spread. Keeping it to the top right leaves the other three corners for animals, machines and mining, and keeps all the watering in one place, which is the arrangement most farmers settle on. Spreading crops over two or three parcels gives more total soil but doubles the morning round, and the cliff margins mean no single grid can span the whole property.
Buildings are easy to place here. The unplantable ground along the cliff edges is generous, and a Barn or a shed row dropped onto it costs nothing in crop rows, which is the opposite of how an open field behaves. The quarry corner in particular has room for the smelting and crafting yard right beside the ore it is fed from.
The top left clearing is worth keeping bare. Its weeds are the unique sort that hand over Mixed Seeds every time they are cut, and a Mixed Seed put into soil becomes whatever the season will grow, so that corner quietly supplies free planting through the growing seasons. Anything paved, fenced or built on top of it stops the weeds coming back and throws the perk away.
Fishing
Only one body of water on this map rewards a rod. The large pond in the bottom left corner gives up the fish of the Cindersap Forest about half the time, with rubbish the rest, which is enough to work the Community Center fishing bundles at home and to keep a cooking supply going. Midnight Carp bites in it late at night through Fall and Winter, so the pond covers one of the more awkward catches without a walk into the woods.
The three small ponds are a different matter with a rod, since a cast into one brings up nothing but rubbish. They are still useful water. A Crab Pot dropped into any Farm Pond works as a freshwater pot regardless of what a rod would catch there, so pots can be set in all four corners and emptied each morning for Crayfish, Snail and Periwinkle, the freshwater trio the Crab Pot Bundle is waiting on.
Strategy
In co-op the map almost organises itself. Each farmer takes a corner, builds in it and works it, and the only shared decisions are the Community Center, the shipping bin and whether the wallet is shared or split. Cabins are cheap and instant: up to three can stand on the farm alongside the farmhouse on console, more on a computer, and Robin puts one up for a hundred gold on the day she is asked. A save begun alone can be opened to other players later, so a solo run on this map can turn into a four-person farm without starting again.
Solo, the map becomes a schedule rather than a layout. The quarry corner is the thing that changes the shape of a run, because copper starts turning up on the farm in the first Spring and brings the early tool upgrades forward, iron follows as the Mining skill rises, and gold and iridium arrive much later, so that corner keeps gaining value for the whole save instead of peaking in the first year. It pays best when it is left alone for a few days at a time and then cleared in one sweep, and when nothing is built or paved across it, since a tile that is already occupied spawns nothing.
The trap is treating all four corners as farmland. A farmer who ploughs every parcel ends up watering in four places, walking between them twice a day and finishing none of the jobs properly. The other trap is forgetting that the quarry and the seed weeds both want empty ground, so the corners that look untidy are the corners that are working.
Notes
A farmhand's cabin can be upgraded, but only by the farmer living in it, and the inside grows exactly as the farmhouse does. The host can demolish a cabin at any time, which puts its occupant's belongings into a chest where the building stood.
The layout is sometimes called artificial, since four neat parcels divided by cliffs look more like a board game than a valley. That is a matter of taste rather than a cost, and it is the same geometry that makes the map so easy to keep tidy.
Each perk here is a scaled-down version of the real thing. The quarry is smaller than the Hill-top Farm's shelf, the clearing is a fraction of the Forest Farm's, and the pond is gentler water than the Riverland Farm's. What the map offers in exchange is all of them at once on a property that still has a proper field in it.
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 |