So my favorite was once the Hilltop Farm. That has changed with this new update, lol. The Beach Farm is my new favorite map. Here's my thoughts on it: 1). First thing I noticed right away, is that right from the beginning of the game, you have easy access to the bottom and top exits of your farm unlike most other maps where you got to clear a bunch of junk to get there, and some maps (Hilltop..) have stuff like large stumps, logs, or boulders blocking passageways/bridges. This farm doesn't have any of that. 2). Also, I noticed the pet bowl is right next to the house, and the spouse area is a bit off to the side, which is nice because the player doesn't have any need to interact with the spouse area. Instead, you get some open land where the spouse area normally is, and that's nice for things like furnaces and other machines. 3). While it is true you can't use Sprinklers in most of the map, there is however a square of land in the mid-left of the map that is covered by huge logs. If cleared out, this spot supports 144 crops if you use Quality Sprinklers, or 192 crops if you use Iridium. These + the Greenhouse will give you over 300 crops if you use IR Sprinklers which should be plenty of crops for the casual player. To be honest, a lot of times you will likely have the Steel Axe before having Quality Sprinklers anyhow (especially since Q Sprinklers take gold to make!), so having to wait for sprinkler soil isn't that big of a deal. 4). South of the Farmhouse is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge plot of land. Not as big as the original farm, but still pretty sizable. Grass grows here, and you can't use sprinklers, so what to use it for is obvious; this makes for an awesome grazing ground. I estimate this area could easily support at least 2 barns and 2 coops worth of animals, maybe even 3 once you got a good bit of grass started. There's plenty of 'bad' land to the left to build plenty of silos, areas where there's not enough to plant crops, but yet enough to build silos there and it's way off to the side and not in the way of the rest of the farm. 5). The washed up crates are nothing to write home about, but early game the first time you break a crate and get 4 cherry bombs or 5 quality retaining soil, can be nice early-game as that few hundred gold can really give you a boost. I've only seen Cherry Bombs, QRS, and Coffee come out of these crates, not sure if any other items can. Also, coral will also wash up (another huge boost in the first week or two of the game!) along with some crabs and mollusks (the kind you normally find laying around on the beach). I haven't seen any rainbow shells yet though. I have seen, however, an out-of-season Nautilus Shell though I've only seen it once. It could have been a bug; I've not seen one since. 6). Not sure if this was changed for all maps, but like the Hilltop Farm, breaking rocks can give you coal and geodes. 7). The Greenhouse is somewhat close to the farmhouse and relatively unobstructed, though this becomes less of an issue now that it can be moved. Still nice to see. 8). Despite the lack of stumps/huge logs blocking passageways and access to the exits... there's still 120!!! hardwood distributed around the farm. As soon as you get the Steel Pickaxe, you get enough hardwood to build the Horse Stables straight away without having to visit the forest for a week to get it. This gives you a huge head-start on getting enough hardwood for various projects, especially getting the Stables early. So all of the above combined make this my new favorite map. EDIT: I know the game says the map is for "experienced players", but to be honest... the map is an excellent newbie map, despite what the game says. Animals are good for newbies, and this map is great for animals. The main handicap -- no sprinklers -- doesn't even come into play until later-game anyway.
6). Not sure if this was changed for all maps, but like the Hilltop Farm, breaking rocks can give you coal and geodes. No geodes yet, but coal has turned up a few times in my 1.5 forest farm--and once, iron.
I've just started again and tried the beach farm map. I've broken four of the washed up crates so far, and they've all been geodes.
RNG will RNG. Though to be perfectly honest, there's not a whole lot of variety with those crates; I've only ever gotten Coffee, Geodes, or Quality Retaining Soil. And maybe some Wheat Flour? That, I'm not sure about.
what do the crates look like? How do you open them? I very much like the 4 quater map for the easy access to the top and bottom of the map as well. Not to mention it has a quarry and renewable stumps on it. So I can't say the beach map is my favorite yet. But I do like it a lot and do think it is very beginner friendly. I think that the main use of the large area south of the house could also easily be fish ponds.
The crates are small brown or blue boxes that you can break with a pickaxe. I'm sure wiki likely has pictures of them by now. And for Fish Ponds? I see a nice area over near the greenhouse for those, that's where I put mine (just north of the sprinkler-able area). I was able to fit a grove of fruit trees (1 each), a grove of tapper trees (2 each) and 2 fish ponds, though it looks like I could easily fit 4 more in between there and the house, maybe even 6 more. https://stardew.info/planner/29-able-chickens-danced-easily/ This is not the exact setup I have, just something quick I threw together from memory with some extra fish ponds thrown in to prove the point. https://stardew.info/planner/21-bitter-salmons-cuddled-cordially/ This is my actual imported save file. For some reason you'll have to manually select the beach layout.
