Farmstead help please!

[Stallionista]

During my playthrough I reached and killed the Miller, and now post-game for the life of me I can't even get past him to reach the Sleeper!! I'm aware of the post-game conditions in the Farmstead but honestly that can't be so significant to cause my struggles. I'm having to be doing something wrong. I alternate between a group of shard mercenaries (Ves-MAA-Fla-Hel) and my own (Ves-HM-MAA-Hel) and I feel that getting to the Miller is generally fine (sometimes I struggle, but HM's cry havoc is incredibly good for stress!).. For some reason I can't even beat the Miller now, no clue what I did last time!!

I'd like to ask what teams, set ups and all that people generally employ for the farmstead, please. I just want to beat the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sleeper but can't even reach him right now! I know this borders on "spoilers" now but I would love the advice so I have a team that can last in endless mode long enough to encounter both bosses and kill them both.

Thank you in advance!

[SirQuestinghood]

I still think VES-PD-Jester is the strongest combo for most learning to play the farm. Never underestimate PD's blight against bosses.

[SirQuestinghood]

I just re-read your post and I'm just waking up so sorry for double post.

I don't use shard mercenaries... I cultivate my perks in my characters. Use your strongest perked characters with trinkets that go with what you are trying to achieve.

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by SirQuestinghood:

I still think VES-PD-Jester is the strongest combo for most learning to play the farm. Never underestimate PD's blight against bosses.

May I ask whether you have the Jester for stress, bleeds, stat buffs or a combination of that? I think PD is a fantastic choice now you mention it because the Miller likes to be guarded by a protect-buffed farmhand so blight will help chip away, also his battlefield med ability is perfect for the blight-happy enemies in general. In my last few runs I've gone in bleed happy and the flagellant's bleed resist debuff helped a bit, but I'll try a blight happy party next!

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by SirQuestinghood:

I just re-read your post and I'm just waking up so sorry for double post.

I don't use shard mercenaries... I cultivate my perks in my characters. Use your strongest perked characters with trinkets that go with what you are trying to achieve.

I wonder whether shard mercenaries are purely designed for early-mid game when Lv 5+ heroes are harder to come by, and yeah I don't see what much more they do for me than my current roster would right now, except for taking a share of the crystal heirlooms or whatever theyre called!

[Glioburd]

One of my favourite and most effective team for the Farmstead is the simple Vestal - Jester - Double Higwaymen. It's a free double hit when the sleeper attacks (riposte). Works well with a MaA too instead of two HM. Last time I tried a variant with Vestal - Jester - HM - Shieldbreaker, works well too (chaining impale / point blank shot is pretty effective for the non-bosses waves).

Originally posted by Stallionista:

May I ask whether you have the Jester for stress, bleeds, stat buffs or a combination of that? I

In my case, the jester casts most of the time battle ballad for maximum crits. You barely need stress heal when every hit and riposts are crits.

[No One]

Champion miller is much stronger than veteran miller.

The miller is bleed resistant, and the hellion can't reliably AOE anymore, meaning she's just kind of bad in the farmstead.
Man-at-arms isn't important until you get past the sleeper and see folks like the prophet or Vvulf. Though riposte is quite nice on the miller.

Not bringing a VES-JES core to farmstead is indeed doing it wrong. You need maximum heals and maximum stress heals.

The old leper team can still get you through the sleeper. VES-JES-PD-LEP. You can also use an abomination variant.

The best team is probably Ropedrink's VES-JES-HWM-FLG.

So what's actually killing you? Stress? Reaping crits?
Also, what are you using for trinkets?

[SirQuestinghood]

I tend to not use her battlefield med as much when Ves is in the party. But I always make sure both front and back row blight is enabled. Also PD's buff can be very strong when you have time to use it. (For example, the sleeper is a bit slow getting started)

Shard mercenaries are a lot like trinkets. They come with good and bad perks/quirks. But well maintained characters will have there negative quirks removed... thus always being stronger.

I can't really tell you how to run the farm :) You have to play with your own style and find what works well for you. I'm sure there are a few excellent runs on YT to watch. Might find some styles that fit your own there?

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by Glioburd:

In my case, the jester casts most of the time battle ballad for maximum crits. You barely need stress heal when every hit and riposts are crits.

I love the sound of that, Jester is 100% in for my next run. Thanks!

Originally posted by No One:

Champion miller is much stronger than veteran miller.

The miller is bleed resistant, and the hellion can't reliably AOE anymore, meaning she's just kind of bad in the farmstead.
Man-at-arms isn't important until you get past the sleeper and see folks like the prophet or Vvulf. Though riposte is quite nice on the miller.

Not bringing a VES-JES core to farmstead is indeed doing it wrong. You need maximum heals and maximum stress heals.

The old leper team can still get you through the sleeper. VES-JES-PD-LEP. You can also use an abomination variant.

The best team is probably Ropedrink's VES-JES-HWM-FLG.

So what's actually killing you? Stress? Reaping crits?
Also, what are you using for trinkets?

I'll have to ditch the hellion then, sounds like there are much better alternatives out there for this run. As for what's actually killing me, stress has never been a massive issue for me, at least one that's caused me to fail. The most recent run, I took too much health damage across the board from the miller and his friends and I had strategy all wrong.. Wrong party comp and bad in-fight decisions. Maybe PD's blight would have helped me more than the bleed-happy party i brought. The run before that, I lost during the round of enemies before the miller and again it was some unlucky crits and being too low on health across the board, some bad luck but again I felt it was a poor decision of what I had in my arsenal to fight with when that happened. As for trinkets, I gave virtue rings to two character and I think a couple other virtue+ items to the others, and went for Dodge (can't really rely on dodge so one mistake there), accuracy and particularly crit and damage on the HWM.

Originally posted by SirQuestinghood:

I tend to not use her battlefield med as much when Ves is in the party. But I always make sure both front and back row blight is enabled. Also PD's buff can be very strong when you have time to use it. (For example, the sleeper is a bit slow getting started)

Shard mercenaries are a lot like trinkets. They come with good and bad perks/quirks. But well maintained characters will have there negative quirks removed... thus always being stronger.

I can't really tell you how to run the farm :) You have to play with your own style and find what works well for you. I'm sure there are a few excellent runs on YT to watch. Might find some styles that fit your own there?

So I guess it won't hurt taking on new mercenaries each week to find one with amazing quirks! Yes the PD is sold on me now, guess he's the way to go. Erm I suppose my current farmstead strategy is get riposte up/bolster on MAA if he's there, get bleeds going on high protect enemies and hit away with hard hitters like hellion with vestal on hand to heal and HM alternating between damage/bleeds and cry havoc. A few attempts since my victory against the miller (can't remember what I did against him to win!) and this strategy clearly isn't working for me. I'll have to research on youtube then i guess! I'll have another go later with Ves/PD/Jes/Abom, MAA, SB or any character who's suitable for pos 1. I'll be back afterwards to update you guys on whether I succeed and have a laugh if I get spanked by the Miller or his predecessing enemies again!!

[SirQuestinghood]

Blight and riposte can be great tools in the farm :)

I don't ever think I have used Abom there? o_O ever o_O

[No One]

The miller can RNG you down sometimes. Farmstead is the only place where RNG can't be completely controlled. If he triples up on reaping crits, then I hope you made your deathblow checks.

That said you can still reduce the odds of this by rapidly clearing his adds. AOE helps since it can hit stealth and bleed over into the Miller himself. E.g. a roided-up leper. Riposte helps turn his advantage against him. Also, the pendant has a hidden effect that makes him easier to kill, giving him less time to decide to reap the heck out of you, and further gets him into harvest range quicker.

I can pretty reliably get through the sleeper regardless of what I decide to bring. (Though I've never decided to bring a hellion.) I use double +heal on the vestal, except occasionally if she already has hippocratic. I use double +soothe on the jester, because normally what kills me is post-sleeper affliction chains. Normally I go for mondo damage on the other two, because in the farmstead particularly, a good offence is the best defence.

I've tried dodge. As you've noticed, it sucks. Even when the MAA could use OP bolster every wave, dodge simply isn't powerful enough. You need 80 or more dodge before it starts to be comparable to a damage alternative.

I've also tried a stun-happy party, but with limited use on the AOE stuns, it's not very good. When excrement eventuates, you can't just stall it away again, because the waves respawn. I think I'll try it again at some point, but it's purely replicating the study at this point.

I want to try a high crit loadout but last time I tried it I let a large corpse eater kill my FLG and then couldn't be arsed to re-♥♥♥♥ the machine to try again.

I like mercenaries in the farmstead because instead of fixing them you can dismiss them and hire new ones. Especially nice before postgame, as you can send free mercenaries into the farmstead with minimal supplies and simply take whatever they can pull out.

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by No One:

The miller can RNG you down sometimes. Farmstead is the only place where RNG can't be completely controlled. If he triples up on reaping crits, then I hope you made your deathblow checks.

That said you can still reduce the odds of this by rapidly clearing his adds. AOE helps since it can hit stealth and bleed over into the Miller himself. E.g. a roided-up leper. Riposte helps turn his advantage against him. Also, the pendant has a hidden effect that makes him easier to kill, giving him less time to decide to reap the heck out of you, and further gets him into harvest range quicker.

I can pretty reliably get through the sleeper regardless of what I decide to bring. (Though I've never decided to bring a hellion.) I use double +heal on the vestal, except occasionally if she already has hippocratic. I use double +soothe on the jester, because normally what kills me is post-sleeper affliction chains. Normally I go for mondo damage on the other two, because in the farmstead particularly, a good offence is the best defence.

I've tried dodge. As you've noticed, it sucks. Even when the MAA could use OP bolster every wave, dodge simply isn't powerful enough. You need 80 or more dodge before it starts to be comparable to a damage alternative.

I've also tried a stun-happy party, but with limited use on the AOE stuns, it's not very good. When excrement eventuates, you can't just stall it away again, because the waves respawn. I think I'll try it again at some point, but it's purely replicating the study at this point.

I want to try a high crit loadout but last time I tried it I let a large corpse eater kill my FLG and then couldn't be arsed to re-♥♥♥♥ the machine to try again.

I like mercenaries in the farmstead because instead of fixing them you can dismiss them and hire new ones. Especially nice before postgame, as you can send free mercenaries into the farmstead with minimal supplies and simply take whatever they can pull out.

Oh I've been there with the dodge attempts!! And yeah as good as stuns are across the game, and I feel stuns are still viable in the farmstead, it isn't something I'm comfortable relying on with the reinforcements each time! High-crit sounds tempting considering the extra damage AND stress heal, I'll play around with trinkets and see what I can cook up. Thanks again for the help, I'm trying a Farmstead run soon today so that'll be fun aha.

Originally posted by SirQuestinghood:

Blight and riposte can be great tools in the farm :)

I don't ever think I have used Abom there? o_O ever o_O

I never thought to bring a PD until today with this thread! I'm going to gear my next party towards blight and away from bleed, I;m considering Abom because of his blight on ranks 2 and 3.. is the abom something you strongly advise against then or is it something you just genuinely haven't used because of better alternatives?

[SirQuestinghood]

I just don't think I have ever seen Abom used in an epic farm run either? (i.e. 2k+ kills)

Of course, strats are a bit different when doing very long runs compared to just going for sleeper. (for example... virtues) I just don't ever think of using Abom in the farm? o_O It might work?

[No One]

Rake stacks up to +75% damage. Revenge: 35% damage, plus -10 dodge and 25% extra damage taken, including from DOTs, etc etc.

2k+ kills probably aren't possible anymore. ♥♥♥♥ can certainly get you through the sleeper reliably, at least with PD backup.

[Stallionista]

I may not bother with Abom because I just remembered that the Shieldbreaker can not only hit hard and blight, but also bypass guard with puncture (i think it's puncture). With some excellent trinkets, I reckon she'll be a great farmstead character. So I'm going to roll in with PD, Ves, Jes, SB. My only SB is Lv4 so I'll either look out for a mercenary SB or raise mine up tonight and then try that!

Thank you everyone for the replies and the help as usual, best community on Steam.

[No One]

If you want blight, then yes SBR is simply a better choice than ♥♥♥.