How do I endless harvest?

[Spice must flow]

Good day,
I am 168 weeks in the latest unmodded build of game with "Crimson Court" and "Colours of Madness" installed. I have completed everything except for DD missions, so I've decided togo for 300 kills achievemnst in Endless Harvest. Turns out I am pretty terrible at it, since I can barely get past the Sleeper and my recrord is 88 kills. The 2 compositions, that have managed to get me past the sleeper are:
Vestal - Jester - Shieldbreaker - Man at Arms
Houndmaster - Occultist - Shieldbreaker - Highwayman
A lot of people swear by Houndmaster's stress recovery, but I don't understand why: ancestor scroll or not, it does nothing against monsters stress focusing 1 hero. Maybe I am doing something wrong?

[Purple]

Who are these mad men swearing by the HM stress recovery? That skill is almost as bad as rallying flare, it sucks ass.

Try Jestal + Other (Personal favourite is MaA + Hel with her CC set equipped for some block and low health synergy, pop an AoE heal with the Vestal if there are a lot of AoE/Stuns on the enemy team that could put the Hel in a bad spot)

But true immortality is Anti - Anti - Cru - SB
Spam the dodge buff with the Anti's, Cru is on stress/health (which you hardly need since you are almost never hit) and SB is her usual, broken as all hell, self, spam the everloving ♥♥♥♥ out of the most busted skill in the game (pierce) and murder kill everything that spawns

[PalmTree]

It's probably not suitable for the 300 kills achievement but I find that I had the best results with Vestal/Jester/Crusader/Hellion. Jester's just a stress heal/buff bot that occasionally uses Slice Off or Harvest when he needs to land a kill, Vestal's got the standard selection of both her heals, Judgement , and Dazzling Light, Crusader's got Smite, Zealous Accusation, Stunning Blow, and either Holy Lance or Rallying Cry. Hellion has Wicked Hack, Iron Swan, If It Bleeds, and either Yawp or Adrenaline Rush.

[Spice must flow]

Originally posted by dixon sider:

don't heal stress, instead fish for virtuous. You can bring trinkets to improve virtue chance then swap them in between fights to force people into virtuous. then you don't need to re equip the trinkets on that character for 300 cumulative stress damage. Only heal stress if you get an affliction

How exavtly do I swap trinkets? Can I bring along extra trinkets and put them in proviosion slots?

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Spice must flow:

Originally posted by dixon sider:

don't heal stress, instead fish for virtuous. You can bring trinkets to improve virtue chance then swap them in between fights to force people into virtuous. then you don't need to re equip the trinkets on that character for 300 cumulative stress damage. Only heal stress if you get an affliction

How exavtly do I swap trinkets? Can I bring along extra trinkets and put them in proviosion slots?

No, but you can take a trinket off of a hero in the middle of a mission and put it into your inventory. You can use this to swap the trinkets you already have equipped between your heroes.

[RopeDrink]

A lot of people swear by Houndmaster's stress recovery

They do, and rightly so - but not for endless.

Houndmaster is to stress-healing what an Occultist is to healing. They can pump out higher healing/shealing than the more reliable alternatives (Ves/Jes) overall, but they are inconsistent - and inconsistent won't serve you well in an environment that can go on and on and on and on, because there will always be that one hero taking more damage/stress than everyone else.

You will be infinitely better off with the consistency of Jes, or even Cru/Flag when it comes to stress-healing in endless and in general. It is just a far safer and more reliable bet. Better yet, you can take two, such as Jes+Flag (which is great bleed potential, an off-healer, and two solid and consistent stress-healers).

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by The Muffinman:

Who are these mad men swearing by the HM stress recovery? That skill is almost as bad as rallying flare, it sucks ass.

HM is good enough for any dungeon in the game other than endless. And better than JES for anything else, except in endless.

JES is killer in endless because single target stress heals are very necessary and because battle ballad spamming is ridiculously OP.

My Endless team is VES/JES/HWM/LEP. VES spams group heals, single target heals, and attacks/stuns in roughly that order of frequency. JES spams Battle Ballad, with the occasional Slice Off, Dirk Stab for unshuffling, and stress healing as necessary. HWM alternates riposte and PBS. LEP smashes everything.

This can go to 300 easy.

[Spice must flow]

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

My Endless team is VES/JES/HWM/LEP. VES spams group heals, single target heals, and attacks/stuns in roughly that order of frequency. JES spams Battle Ballad, with the occasional Slice Off, Dirk Stab for unshuffling, and stress healing as necessary. HWM alternates riposte and PBS. LEP smashes everything.

I wanted to try this as well, but I figured, that in this party only Vestal with judgement and Jester with Finale can attack position 4 (phase 1 of sleeper, foreman, virago, stress dealers, etc.). In the end, I went with Shieldbreaker instead of Leper to reliably burst down rank 4. I suppose your party crushes rank 1 and 2 so quickly, that the backrow enemies are constantly within reach.

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Spice must flow:

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

My Endless team is VES/JES/HWM/LEP. VES spams group heals, single target heals, and attacks/stuns in roughly that order of frequency. JES spams Battle Ballad, with the occasional Slice Off, Dirk Stab for unshuffling, and stress healing as necessary. HWM alternates riposte and PBS. LEP smashes everything.

I wanted to try this as well, but I figured, that in this party only Vestal with judgement and Jester with Finale can attack position 4 (phase 1 of sleeper, foreman, virago, stress dealers, etc.). In the end, I went with Shieldbreaker instead of Leper to reliably burst down rank 4. I suppose your party crushes rank 1 and 2 so quickly, that the backrow enemies are constantly within reach.

Give HWM Pistol Shot and there's your backline damage.

[Spice must flow]

I've always thought Highwayman's Pistol is not worth using without a mark. Is it reliable enough damage-wise?

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Spice must flow:

I've always thought Highwayman's Pistol is not worth using without a mark. Is it reliable enough damage-wise?

It's the exact same upfront damage as Open Vein. It's also got one of the highest crit rates in the game, so it crits ridiculously often.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by Spice must flow:

Originally posted by Skinny Pete:

My Endless team is VES/JES/HWM/LEP. VES spams group heals, single target heals, and attacks/stuns in roughly that order of frequency. JES spams Battle Ballad, with the occasional Slice Off, Dirk Stab for unshuffling, and stress healing as necessary. HWM alternates riposte and PBS. LEP smashes everything.

I wanted to try this as well, but I figured, that in this party only Vestal with judgement and Jester with Finale can attack position 4 (phase 1 of sleeper, foreman, virago, stress dealers, etc.). In the end, I went with Shieldbreaker instead of Leper to reliably burst down rank 4.

HWM can also hit back rank with Pistol Shot if in position. And Leper in front rank can hit the back rank with Intimidate if it's critically important to do so so I very occasionally do that and keep it on the bar for that purpose.

I switch in Finale, Tracking Shot and Revenge for bosses.

I suppose your party crushes rank 1 and 2 so quickly, that the backrow enemies are constantly within reach.

That's the general idea, although I'll make exceptions and focus a back ranker sometimes. For instances, those horses should be taken out as quickly as possible, before shuffling if possible. It's fairly common to be able to finish one with Intimidate or get a bleed on it that finishes it.

It also helps to have Super Leper.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1652192714

HWM from same team:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1673467391

[Spice must flow]

Many thanks for your replies. I got the 300 kills achievment with the Vestal-Jester-Highwayman-Shieldbreaker in the latest (and probably the last) 24839 build of the game with "Crimson Court", "Colour of Madness" and "Shieldbreaker" DLC enabled (no mods). The End Game condition was +speed and crit on monsters.

The fact that my riposte Highwayman was a force of nature with 3 hater/slayer and prismatic force quirk helped a lot. I've intentionally let stress build up on him and got "powerful" virtue, thanks to his "Crimson Court" set. His grapeshot, which I've never used before, is great against annoying "seeds of madness", and does significant amout of damage, when supercharged by quirks and Battle Ballad. Tracking Shot for bosses, Open Vein in position 1, Duelist advance for everything else.
Unparalleled Finese and Gallows Humour are excellent camping skills.

Shilebreaker had nice quirks like eldritch slayer and +melee crit. I've followed some redditor's suggestion and ran Spectral Speartip and her unique armour piece with an exotic name, that I can't spell properly. It a was a brainfart on my part though, since I could have picked Flesh's Heart with greater bonuses and no maluses. Anyway, having a big HP pool on a shieldbreaker does help a lot in endless - you can shrug off treebranch smackdown and other assaults that would normally put you to the death door.
Main skill is Pierce, secondary is Expose against pesky stealth monsters, and I didn't really use anything beside it.
Not a big fan of her camping skills, to be honest, but, once you've you completed all the Nightmare Battles in regular dungeons, she buffs herself by default.

I can't stress enough (pun intended) how crucial Jester is to this party: unparalleled stress recovery and Battle Ballad buffs, that not only fix your accuracy and crit on Shieldbreaker, but also give you essentially a free turn every wave, thanks to speed advantage.
Quirk-wise, Jester had most excellent Lumionous and some melee quirks, which were not that important.
I used Bright Tambourine and Miller's locket as a "whatever" trinket. His crystal version of Tamoburine looks a bit better, though.
Skill-wise, it's Battle Ballad spam coupled with Inspiring Tune. Occasional Harvest, when everyone is buffed and calm, Dirk stab for repositioning. You should swap either Dirk Stab or Harvest for Finale, when fighting bosses. Truth be told, I am bad at keeping track of boss spawns and routinely missed the opportunity to swap for finale, though I didn't feel like it was a big deal.
Excellent Stress Recovery and single target buff when camping.

Vestal does her usual thing, but stuns and direct damage via Judgement are also important, so don't use her Sacred Scroll trinket - use Salacious Diary instead. Her crystal trinket is also an interesting option with more offensive power against the sleeper gang and everything eldritch. I used Siren's Horn as a secondary trinket, but it is, probably, better to get something with disease resistance.
Nothing impressive quirk-wise on her, but one would, obviously, want to get Hippocratic.
Solid stress recovery and single target buff when camping.

The downsides of this party are absence of disease and Mortality Debuff removals. One should lock disease quirks (the Shrieker provides the best one). I see some people swap Vestal for Occultist, effectively trading healing power for utility marks and Mortality Debuff removal via his camping skill.
End-game conditions change randomly every week, so pick the 1 out of 4 you are most comfortable with.
I hope this will be of help for people, who are struggling with Endless Harvest.