The Ocean farm kinda sucks.

[Hawk]

Picked it for my new game for 1.5 and at first the no sprinkler rule didn't seem all that bad but now by fall of the first year it's becoming a problem. I blow through most of my stamina watering crops and the foraging options don't offset the negatives. It is nice being able to catch ocean fish but you could already do rivers with the river farm without any of the drawbacks.

I get it's meant to be a more challenging farm but maybe it needs a small tune up? Increase the rate of the random forage and the washed up boxes so you get more benefit from that aspect?

[esotericist]

remember that there's a dirt patch on the west half which can use sprinklers, and it's useful even before you can remove all the large logs.

i'm fairly certain the primary intended usage of the beach farm is to use the extensive space for buildings rather than crops. i'm working towards quite a number of fish ponds in my current playthrough.

basically, the first year on the beach is kinda rough, but once you get the sprinkler-able patch cleared, and the greenhouse working, things ease up a lot. one particularly nice thing in year 2 spring, you can plant a ton of rice along the coasts; the ocean water counts for irrigating the rice.

[Humpenstilzchen]

I think this farm is for having lifestock specifically due to the huge area for grass and if you play it like this it is great.

[esotericist]

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

I think this farm is for having lifestock specifically due to the huge area for grass and if you play it like this it is great.

yeah, that's absolutely a valid approach (although i personally dislike dealing with livestock, especially free roaming)

ultimately, i think the ideal purpose of farm variants is to guide players towards different kinds of gameplay.

someone evaluating them all primarily in terms of "how many crops can i plan/keep watered with sprinklers" is pretty much a signal that what someone probably wants is to play the baseline farm.

[arcanorj]

At Ginger Island have a new retaining water fertilizer of 100%, you don't need more of Sprinkler if you don't want.

[FafnirChaos]

IDK I kinda like it, makes it easier to manage when you have ginger island to work with, I'm half way done my fish farm.

[Hawk]

I don't know what ginger farm is. I've played a lot of Stardew but never made it past year three in any one game. I've got the early game down pretty pat, with remixed bundles I'm pretty much done with the community center by early Fall year one. But anything "end game" is almost completely unknown to me.

I think Ocean Farm incentives a different style of play which I'm gonna have to get used to. Feels "worse" because my usual isn't as effective on it.

[esotericist]

Originally posted by Hawk:

I don't know what ginger farm is. I've played a lot of Stardew but never made it past year three in any one game. I've got the early game down pretty pat, with remixed bundles I'm pretty much done with the community center by early Fall year one. But anything "end game" is almost completely unknown to me.

ginger island is an unlockable part of the game you can get access to after the community center. it's an entire set of explorable areas, with farmland, a quarry, a new set of mines, and other things to do.

at this point, what was "endgame' prior to 1.5 is pretty firmly "mid-game" nowadays

Originally posted by Hawk:

I think Ocean Farm incentives a different style of play which I'm gonna have to get used to. Feels "worse" because my usual isn't as effective on it.

all of the alternative farms have this effect to different degrees to different people. the beach farm is just more stark about it for the most basic playstyle (i.e. farming)

but people who are already into ranching and other building-centric things as their normal playstyle are probably seeing it as easy mode, seeing as how it has the most buildable area of all of the farms (including the original farm).