So when the new layouts came out I immediately started a Riverlands farm, fishing being one of my favorite parts of this game. It started out well, but by summer I was already forgoing my farm to fish in more profitable spots and struggling to find a place to build a coop that would leave enough space for grazing. At that point I made this post about how the greenhouse was the problem, but now I think it may just be the layout itself. The first problem to fix is the fish. The fishing layout takes away half your land to give you the Town river fish, the least profitable one, at least in spring and summer. (see this infograph) I think that the Mountain lake fish should be added to the possible fish, giving you access to Bullhead and Largemouth Bass, two year round, mid-level fish that would help the usefulness of the layout. Second, I think it may be a good idea to add something like the special weeds on the forest farm, but instead that give you bait, or maybe the addition of minnows to the water on the farm, either catchable by fishing or crab pot. Once again, this helps both the short and long term usefullness of picking this layout. And finally, the most obvious answer, give us more space! I know that all that space is taken away to compensate for giving us this huge boon, but just because I chose this layout doesn't mean I don't want to do other things like have animals or a slime hutch, and the current layout only really gives a few good spots to have a decent field to feed your animals with wild grass. In the end, I feel that doing even just one of these things will go a long way to helping this farm be useful in it's proper place, and rise from the bottom of my list when starting a new farm.
I had a lot of trouble finding a good place for my slime hutch. I still don't really have it in a great spot. I like doing a mix of crops and animals and while I love the riverlands map, it would be nice if there was just a liiiittle more space for buildings/crops.
Riverland is really more of a swamp land, except without any of the good things. Since there's so little terrain it'd be great if it had some bonuses to it like water retaining marshes or fertilized basins.
That is an interesting idea, but we want it to be viable for fishing, and that just makes it better for farming.
It would be nice to focus more on fishing, but the fishing game is pretty small. There aren't many item options and there isn't much infrastructure to worry about. A farmer can dole out over a hundred thousand gold EASY to get animal upgrades and trees and a tractor full of seeds. For a fisherman all you need is an 1800 pole and some bait. Pay another 7500 gold and you've basically maxed out your fishing. Sure you can get some more money by using the crab pots. They are pretty costly to set up and give an okay bonus to income. But crabbing gets very tedious very quickly and I pity the poor soul who uses the river map to make crabbing their main business. The simple problem with expanding the fishing game is you can't farm fish. There's no way to accumulate fish, feed them, and sell them as a business strategy. There's no expensive boats to invest in and no oceans to trawl for big money. And while that is okay for an ordinary farmer, you won't be able to grow your fishing business beyond one fishing pole and a pile of pots. Fishing is a fairly minor part of the game, so it should be no surprise that the fishing map is a pretty weak option as well.
Just because it is for fishing does not give it an excuse to be the worst layout, and that's coming from someone who's favorite part of this game is fishing. This is probably why the fishing layout currently has so many small Islands, as it increases the shoreline. Because fishing and crab pots are in the same skill tree, the layout needs to cater to both options. I do feel that this option should be kept in mind, which is why I suggested more land last.
