Best team for The Farmstead?

[BlackDragon]

This 'horde mode' is certainly a different sort of challenge... so far, I've managed to complete a 'full' run, in the sense that I reached and cleared The Sleeper. But by then, I was in no shape to continue - and I've noticed there are achievements for clearing 100, 200 and 300 kills. Seems insane!

What kind of team are you supposed to field in order to push through nasty bosses like The Miller and The Sleeper while still being in a proper shape to keep fighting wave after wave of ordinary foes? It seems like a Vestal is pretty mandatory, at the very least, considering that both The Miller and The Sleeper dish out repeated, powerful hit-all attacks...

[Esce]

I got the 300 kill achievement with: Vestal, Jester, Crusader and a Leper.

Also I got the townevent for +15% chance for virtue ( very helpful, although it runs out after reaching 200 stress)

Jester for stress, some blood damage and the ability to move the crusader from second position to the third.

Vestal for some sweet heals and range attacks

The crusader for damage and some stress heals (Holy Lance was very helpful in this party)

The Leper for killing everything coming too close and tanking everything.


Some other notes:
-There is a colour that gives you a +15% bonus on virtue
-The defensiv buffs from the leper and crusader last now the whole fight and make them nearly immune to normal damage. ( My leper got 80% (max), with quirk, buff and one trinket)
-after the sleeper there may spawn non unique bosses at the end of a "chapter" (stress overkill incoming)

[DaBo81]

I think a jester and a vestal are key for dealing with stress and hp and the other 2 need to be damage dealers.

[BlackDragon]

Originally posted by Esce:

I got the 300 kill achievement with: Vestal, Jester, Crusader and a Leper.

Also I got the townevent for +15% chance for virtue ( very helpful, although it runs out after reaching 200 stress)

Jester for stress, some blood damage and the ability to move the crusader from second position to the third.

Vestal for some sweet heals and range attacks

The crusader for damage and some stress heals (Holy Lance was very helpful in this party)

The Leper for killing everything coming too close and tanking everything.


Some other notes:
-There is a colour that gives you a +15% bonus on virtue
-The defensiv buffs from the leper and crusader last now the whole fight and make them nearly immune to normal damage. ( My leper got 80% (max), with quirk, buff and one trinket)
-after the sleeper there may spawn non unique bosses at the end of a "chapter" (stress overkill incoming)

I gave this setup a chance, and it worked, KINDA. I didn't get much farther than 200 kills, and some parts of the journey were PAINFUL. It's a powerful team, sure, but it's notably short on a few things - most obviously, a way to deal with high PROT enemies other than just wailing on them and doing scratch-damage. Any time I wound up meeting Cove-enemies, I got slowed down to a crawl, chopping my way through crabs and snails at a glacial pace, often while back-row enemies bombarded me with attacks. No armor-penetration, no PROT-debuffs, no Blight, barely any Bleed... dealing with the Thing was a horrorshow.

And of course, VERY limited back-row damage - Holy Lance and Finale are basically your only options for dealing serious damage beyond the final two rows, and the first one can get messed up VERY easily by positioning-changes, while the second is extremely situational. (You need to spend turns buffing it up, then a turn riding to the frontlines, and if you use it too early in the battle you'll be saddled with a NASTY debuff for the rest of it.)

Vestal and Jester are obviously shoe-ins, but I think the other two needs to be different. You need either some serious Bligh/Bleed or Armor Piercing (perhaps the Shieldbreaker?), and some proper back-row damage for dealing with high-priority targets back there. A setup that's SLIGHTLY less vulnerable to positional changes would be nice too. Every time I ran into a Plough Horse, I knew that I'd be UTTERLY screwed if I didn't take it out before it did its Trample-attack, and with only the Leper (generally the slowest guy around) capable of destealthing enemies, that could get pretty hairy...

[!?]

Vestal/Jester/PD/Leper works pretty well. My maximum kills with this comp is 450. Vestal for the heals and the occasional stun which is quite helpful, Jester for stress healing, Leper for big damage and PD for utility. Her main task is buffing the Leper twice with Emboldening Vapours which gives him +50% Damage and +10 Speed total. After that, she still adds alot to the team. She has both DoTs, bleeds and blights(I'm running her in position 2) and a stun which also shuffles and clears corpses. Both of those are great because 1) Clearing corpses allows the Leper to land a hit on an enemy which might be blocked by a corpse. 2) Shuffling a back row enemy to the front allows the Leper to hit that enemy and in some cases I might do this instead of using Emboldening Vapours first because I want a high priority target in the back row killed quickly.

[BlackDragon]

I have heard of this combo, and considered it... Battlefield Medicine also seems like a good adition. On my previous run, I ran out of bandages halfway through - SO MANY enemies dishing out high bleed. Kept running into crabs and their damnable Arterial Pinch, or rows of rabid dogs who'd just stack bleed on the same character like there's no tomorrow. Even though I'd brought all available bandages, it just wasn't enough, and once they ran dry, it got really hard for the Vestal to keep everyone alive against bleed-heavy foes.

But I'm a bit concerned about 'putting all my eggs in one basket', damagewise. Like, what do I do if I run into the Hag or the Siren out there? I'd have basically zero damage-output if the Leper gets disabled, and the Hag would effectively destroy me what with being immoveable and stuck behind her Cauldron. Loads of other bosses would be extremely troublesome too - against the Necromancer, you'd have a hell of a hard time killing the summoned skeletons fast enough to inflict any real damage on him, and the Shrieker would be both extremely hard to hit and untargetable half the time.

Basically, it seems like a really sweet setup for doing regular waves, and probably quite destructive to SOME bosses... but if you get unlucky and meet the wrong boss, it's the end of the road. >_> OTOH, I'm not sure there EXISTS any teams that's not true for... bah.

[!?]

Shrieker is no problem. Revenge gives the Leper +10 ACC and the Jester's Battle Balad gives him another +10 ACC(Stackable). I kill the Shrieker in 2 hits. I haven't encoured The Siren, Hag or Necromancer yet so I can't say how effective defeating them with this comp would be. Oh and another thing I forgot to mention, The PD can cure diseases which is amazing since some diseases are particularly nasty and can make the rest of your run alot harder.

[Esce]

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

But I'm a bit concerned about 'putting all my eggs in one basket', damagewise. Like, what do I do if I run into the Hag or the Siren out there? I'd have basically zero damage-output if the Leper gets disabled, and the Hag would effectively destroy me what with being immoveable and stuck behind her Cauldron. Loads of other bosses would be extremely troublesome too - against the Necromancer, you'd have a hell of a hard time killing the summoned skeletons fast enough to inflict any real damage on him, and the Shrieker would be both extremely hard to hit and untargetable half the time.

Are you sure there are the area bosses in CoM?
I have only seen the bosses you can find many times, like the Shrieker, Shambler and Thing from the stars and of course the Miller and Sleeper.

[!?]

Originally posted by Esce:

Originally posted by BlackDragon:

But I'm a bit concerned about 'putting all my eggs in one basket', damagewise. Like, what do I do if I run into the Hag or the Siren out there? I'd have basically zero damage-output if the Leper gets disabled, and the Hag would effectively destroy me what with being immoveable and stuck behind her Cauldron. Loads of other bosses would be extremely troublesome too - against the Necromancer, you'd have a hell of a hard time killing the summoned skeletons fast enough to inflict any real damage on him, and the Shrieker would be both extremely hard to hit and untargetable half the time.

Are you sure there are the area bosses in CoM?
I have only seen the bosses you can find many times, like the Shrieker, Shambler and Thing from the stars and of course the Miller and Sleeper.

Yeah I'm pretty sure you can encounter every area boss. I've encountered The Brigand Pounder, Swine King, Formless Flesh and Drowned Crew.

[Esce]

Originally posted by Sif:

Originally posted by Esce:

Are you sure there are the area bosses in CoM?
I have only seen the bosses you can find many times, like the Shrieker, Shambler and Thing from the stars and of course the Miller and Sleeper.

Yeah I'm pretty sure you can encounter every area boss. I've encountered The Brigand Pounder, Swine King, Formless Flesh and Drowned Crew.

Ok, I asked because I encountered Thing from the stars two times in my 300 kill run, plus Shrieker and Shambler and so I though they put only the random bosses in CoM.
But I guess this are good news for my heros, there are much less annoying bosses than Things from the stars or shrieker.

[Snarplord XVI]

Vestal-Jester-PD-Leper works for me.

[sovietxrobot]

Vestal-Jester-*-Leper is the most popular choice. spot 2 can beI've tried Highway Man/Plague Doctor/Crusader, personally i like highwayman the best. he gets a nice buff for the whole battle and if you stack him with ranged crit and damage, hes pretty strong. i felt that the extra crits and dropping enemies more quickly was better than stunning w/ PD and healing w/ Crusader.

[Lujo]

Are you all sure Jester is really that much better than a houndmaster for spot 3-4 ?

Hm has a -prot mark (unless I'm mistaken), a rather nice mass de-stress, good de-stress camping, hits every enemy position, and you can really pick and choose for the last skill.

[Snarplord XVI]

Originally posted by Lujo:

Are you all sure Jester is really that much better than a houndmaster for spot 3-4 ?

Hm has a -prot mark (unless I'm mistaken), a rather nice mass de-stress, good de-stress camping, hits every enemy position, and you can really pick and choose for the last skill.

Jester has a much bigger stress heal + buffs for stress resist, has a party-wide stacking buff, and Finale for instant removal.

[!?]

Originally posted by Lujo:

Are you all sure Jester is really that much better than a houndmaster for spot 3-4 ?

Hm has a -prot mark (unless I'm mistaken), a rather nice mass de-stress, good de-stress camping, hits every enemy position, and you can really pick and choose for the last skill.

I don't really like HM as a stress healer since it isn't 100% accuracy, I find it to be pretty unreliable. I've ran into many situations where one guy had a ton of stress above the rest but the HM kept stress healing everyone BUT him which was annoying.

[Arteyp]

Why no one is considering Flagellant as 4th party member? I agree on the other 3, Vestal, Jester and Leper. Flagellant does a lot of work. In tandem with Jester keeps stress at bay and helps Vestal with healing (his passive AoE heal on death door often comes in clutch, and his death blow resistance and immunity to death’s door penality is superb in the long run). Bleed helps a ton against almost anything, in particular against high PROT (the shambler is a run ender without bleed) especially considering that his attacks reduce bleed resistance (you can bleed out a skeleton with some luck) and that he can target any row.
He lacks usefulness when facing undeads, but then you can use him to suck up all the stress accumulated in previous encounters from the rest of the party.
Last but not least, if he gets displaced from the front line can get back in position in one go instead than one step at a time.

About trinkets and strategy:
Instead of focusing on high PROT, I went for high CRIT with Leper (mine has quirks that give him already a total of +7 CRIT): trinkets are Ancestor Pen (+10 CRIT, DMG and stress) and Surgical Gloves (+10 CRIT, +5 ACC and move debuff). Every battle starts by casting Revenge (+35 DMG, +15 CRIT, +15 ACC and debuffs). It’s slow, but the buff lasts the whole battle and it’s a good investment, with the help of Jester.
Jester is all on DODGE: Ancestor Coat and Camouflage Cloak (both give +15 DODGE). My Jester also has DODGE quirks so he becomes very difficult to hit. His role is to use Battle Ballad or stress heal every turn, and attacks only if really needed.
With this setup, after 3 Battle Ballads the Leper reaches a ridiculous CRIT chance, don’t remember exactly but is around 85 or 90%. He basically one shots any normal foe without high PROT (there is Flagellant for these), never misses (ACC buffs everywhere) and heals a considerable amount of stress to the whole party with the continuous critical hits.
Flagellant has Book of Sanity (20 stress resistance) and Miller’s Pipe (the new crystalline trinket that heals stress and apply blight whenever an enemy is killed).
Vestal has both trinkets dedicated to healing prowess.
I reached 280 kills without breaking a sweat, without death door penalties and without a single affliction (Leper got Rabies from a pig and that made him even stronger). Took out shambler easy peasy. At some point I got bored and gave up with a perfectly healthy party and inventory full. Didn’t realize that there is a 300 kills achievement, otherwise I would have continued.