Farmer

* Rednecks
* Redstreak
* Dale

They destroyed his farm. Now he wants revenge.

* Farmer
* Redstreak
* Dale

 **Farmer** is an elderly man who seeks to avenge his destroyed farm. He is armed with a double-barreled shotgun and dressed in a blue and yellow T-shirt, a gray short sleeve vest, black pants, and a yellow bucket hat. He sports some gray stubble.

 **Redstreak** is Farmer's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a double-barreled shotgun and dressed in a maroon shirt underneath of a green camo jacket, black pants, and an American flag print headband. He sports a gray stubble beard.

 **Dale** is Farmer's second exclusive skin. He is armed with a double-barreled shotgun and dressed in a gray T-shirt with a yellow arm patch, an orange high-visibility traffic vest with yellow reflective strips, black pants with a walkie-talkie attached to the waist, and a red baseball cap with a yellow letter H logo. He sports some gray stubble.

He is a star reward, obtained for free when players collect 4 stars.

## Functionality

### Basics

Farmer is a **shotgunner**, meaning he will launch a cone of damage upon firing and excels at dealing with weak hordes and single tanky enemies up close.

Farmer is a basic ranged unit. Though costing a low amount of courage and having a moderate preparation time, he has low health and bullet damage. His movement speed is also very slow.

Farmer fires a break-action at a slow speed, launching a cone of five pellets per shot. He can fire twice before having to preform a slow reload. If approached suddenly or while out of ammo, Farmer does a quick but extremely weak melee attack that can crit. If he gets access to critical attacks, he will shoot from two barrels on a crit, firing all ten pellets in a single shot and forcing a reload. If Police 2/2 is in effect, it will just consume two of his shells, meaning he will still have two ammo left.

Some time after dying, Farmer will turn into Tipsy.

### Perks and Abilities

Farmer is one of the few units to not possess any perks.

At level 13, unlocking Farmer's special grants him an extra 50% chance to do a special critical attack, which is separate from his usual crits. This attack can cause knockback, and will temporarily slow enemies down. It's affected by crit. damage boosts, although provides no increase to it itself.

Being able to fire both shots at once does increase Farmer's DPS since it halves his firing period, though this does cause him to reload more frequently. The added knockback effect aids in Farmer's survivability while also improving his effectiveness at crowd control. Against high health enemies, the pushback is useful for delaying them and buying time for more powerful or suitable units to come deal with the threat. Even if they possess partial or full knockback resistance, this can potentially work in Farmer's favor by landing all ten pellets to deal massive damage the closer they get. Overall, his special ability does greatly increase Farmer's usefulness and makes him far more viable as he can now provide significantly better support to other units on the battlefield even if it is partially tied to chance.

## Gameplay

### Main Campaign

As the very first ranged unit, Farmer is very useful in the beginning of the game for mission completion. He is great at doing consistent amounts of damage to enemies while keeping his distance. Very quickly, players will learn to improve his stats using upgrade items and buy other units to fight alongside him. Given Farmer's lack of perks or resistances, and his inability to hold his own when forced into close quarters, it's important that melee units such as Redneck or Mechanic are sent out alongside him to take the main fight while he stays back dealing damage and picking off low-health targets. This becomes even more important once bullet-resistant enemies such as Builder and Bulletproof start being encountered as they will dramatically decrease Farmer's effectiveness in combat.

Farmer's moderate preparation time and high damage output for the cost makes him viable in most stages of the game prior to the introduction to the Insectoid enemy. This allows him to work great as a main damager for the team until around midgame where his effectiveness wains. His special ability can also make him a competent damage dealer, as well as supporting melee units' survivability. All of these strengths make Farmer never a burden for the player and acts quite well on his own, even making him a realistic choice for the late-game stages.

However as said prior, the introduction of the Insectoid can completely negate the strengths of the Farmer, as his melee damage is pitiful and his health stat is one of his poorest attributes. Fast enemies such as the Armored Skeleton can also severely decrease his effectiveness due to his slow firing and reload speed, which most of the time results in him struggling to do anything before dying, making it essential to pair him with either another ranged unit or a fast preparing melee fighter. This in all makes Farmer outclassed by Policeman Diaz, as not only does he have similar damage outputs, but also a much faster firing speed, higher health pool and the unique melee resistance perk which make him a great shield. However, while it is helpful to swap out Farmer for Policeman Diaz once he is available to hire, pairing them both can also make for a formidable force to be reckoned with as Policeman Diaz's unique perk allows him to protect Farmer, and the combined damage output allow them to deal with most enemies quite well.

Lester is a direct upgrade of Farmer. Despite not having any changes in terms of stats, Lester's overall DPS is higher thanks to his quicker firing speed and faster reload time compared to Farmer's. It is very helpful but not necessarily essential to replace Farmer with him, if even possible given the seasonal exclusivity of Lester. In fact, pairing them up together allows for a very formidable force against most enemies with their combined firepower and quick preparation times.

### Skirmish

In League, Farmer is a decent choice for early low-level Skirmish as he has a low courage cost. His shotgun's spread damage allows him to deal against non-bullet resistant enemy units fairly easily. However, in the later level of Skirmish, his issues become more apparent, mainly being his poor health and very slow speeds. He is also outranged by a good majority of other ranged units, meaning he will have an even harder time facing them. Due to this, he is generally unviable and it will be essential to replace him with other ranged units. With knockback being enabled, non-heavyweight characters will suffer knockback on activation of his SA, potentially delaying attacks of melee units.

### Item Sets

Like most shotgunners, Farmer gets best use out of ranged-damage oriented sets, specifically Hunter and Military, with the latter being more preferable if you want to accentuate his crowd control capabilities. Tactical is also a valid option for mid-game, as it allows Farmer to properly deal with such threats as Armored Skeleton, Lubber and Sapper. During early game, Adventurer and Startup are both valid options, with the former being more preferable thanks to its damage boost; although the latter might be more appealing if you want to make the old man faster, and can compensate for lack of bonus damage through regular upgrades since it's available in rare-tier.

After getting his special ability, it's recommended to give him a book that boosts critical damage. This will make his ability useful not only from supportive standpoint, but from offensive too. Before being maxed out, Farmer can meaningfully benefit from +% Health and +% Crit. chance books, with the former providing more survivability and the latter accentuating his damage potential. However, it must be said that +% Crit. chance books become useless once Farmer's SA is unlocked, as that ability fixes it at 50%.

Although he recharges moderately quickly, Farmer still benefits from prep. time decreasing watches. If anything, they accentuate his role as a lowkey spammable ranged unit. It's recommended to go for flat boosts of both ranged dmg, and health instead of percentages, since his base stats are low. +% Crit. dmg. bonuses become especially useful once you unlock Farmer's SA, although they are also relevant if you went for a crit. chance book instead of health.

## Skins and Synergies

Farmer, along with his respective skins, is a part of several teams: Rednecks, Patriots, and College.

 Team

In all of the above teams, Farmer is never a bad option given the simplicity of his role as a supportive ranged unit. In the Rednecks team, he benefits from the ability to gain back health from courage pack drops, increasing his overall survivability. For both Patriots and College teams, he is more of a generally good option, rather than someone who can get the most out of the synergy.

## Trivia

* According to *Redneck's* deleted backstory:
	+ Redneck and Private Rodriguez are his possible children.
* Farmer is likely a reference to both Dale Horvath and Hershel Greene from The Walking Dead series, as he portrays aspects of both characters.
	+ This is further evidenced by Farmer's College skin being called "Dale" as a reference to the former character and noting his canonical name.
* Before update 2.7.0, Farmer had to be purchased with coins. The bus had to be level 2, and his price was 18 coins.
* Farmer used to have a different sprite in Dead Ahead: Quarantine.
* Farmer used to have a different reload animation.

## Gallery

Farmer's DA:Q sprite

 Humans
 TMF Squad