~By Sylph
lvl unique Exotic Notable Mods
1 cleaver
2 Combatshot
3 -
4 - Blaster Doubleshot
5 - shockwave pack Tech mod
6 beretta assault shotgun, Medical armour agi+bulk mod
7 onyx armour power mod
8 trigun phaseshift boots red armour
9
10 necroarmour, nano pack minigun, phasesh Arm, missile,
onyx armour pack super shotgun, sniper pack
11 gothic boots, firestorm pack
12 revenant launcher plasma shotgun, laser rifle
13 jackhammer chainsaw,
14 cyber armour, jackal
hg 15 -
h1 16
H2 17 malek's armour, railgun
h3 18 nuclear plasma rifle
h4 19 translocator
h5 20 hellstaff
h6 21 dragonslayer
h7 22
h8 23 bfg10k
24
25
This guide is written as an aside to the excellent '(Un)official doomRL strategy guide by Thomas Parasiuk', and the excellent Wiki by Aki.
Roguelike games have a tendancy to begin with a player just getting killed, so this guide is mainly focused on getting new DoomRL players piling into hell and shooting nightmarish creatures with metal legs.
I began this guide as a complete beginner (started writing at less than 1 week of playing). This may sound incredibly early to be writing a guide, but I did so in order to ensure I included information valuable to a beginner, rather than just focusing on expert knowledge alone. Thus, I understand very well what a beginner is going through when approaching doomRL. It's basically a world of expert knowledge, with nothing intermediate. The new player ends up having advice on how to best defeat the angel of death and obtain the longinus spear, but no clue how to use a pistol without losing half their health on level 1.
Given that DoomRL's combat is so vastly different from that of other roguelike games (ie - being primarily gun-based), and given that there is quite a good deal of importance to the day-to-day* fights, this can make things taxing for a new player. Think of this document as an 'I'll hold your hand while you find your feet' for a new player. (I'd write some joke about finding severed feet, perhaps involving metal legs, were it not such a painfully obvious link).
This guide is aimed at beginner and intermediate players - I've managed a few wins on nightmare, and have obtained a diamond badge**, but not a pro at nightmare yet, so that's beyond the scope of this document. That being said, I have gotten my share of platinum badges, so I'll touch on the subject of expert play, it's just that if you've already completed a few challenges on nightmare, you're past my level, and there's nothing I can teach you.
(* - is there even a daytime in hell?) (** - 10 years later, still adding this guide, and obviously I have a lot more than 'a diamond badge' now!!)
DoomRL is a roguelike game based on ID software's doom series. It's basically a tactical combat game, with a little overarching strategy. The aim is to guide a marine though 25 levels of rooms, items, and enemies, with the goal of defeating the cyberdemon.
DoomRL is a very different kind of roguelike game. We've all heard it being referred to as a 'coffee break roguelike' for it's short game completion time, but it's scope goes quite a bit further than just being quick to play.
Part of the unique charm of DoomRL is the fact that every single moment is important. There's no ploughing through an easy level, since it's one sprint to the end with no going back. More significantly, every single attack in the game does damage (there's no 'you block the goblin' or 'the goblin fails to hurt you' going on here, and although there is armour, there's also a 'minimum damage' on attacks. In short, if something hits you, you are taking some damage). Then there's the fact that health is a finite resource - the player does not regenerate health without using items to do so, and those health- giving items can only be used once each.
Add the above together and look at what happens - the player is required to approach every fight, even those with the lowliest enemy minion, with appropriate tactics. The player is constantly thinking, and very rarely just 'playing on autopilot'.
Another plus-point for doomRL is how accessible it is - it has far, far less key commands than other roguelike games. In fact it's pretty much done away with the roguelike tendancy to overcomplicate key commands. For example,
[u] in doomrl will [u]se something...
Most roguelike games would prefer to break this down into:
[d]rink potion,
[z]ap wand,
[h]andle lever,
[r]ead scroll,
[w]ield weapon,
[W]ear accessory
[E]quip armour,
[e]at food,
[u]se tool
And on, and on, and on….
In short, DoomRL is a lot easier to get into than most roguelike games due to it's simple control mechanism and popular setting.
On that matter, a brief overview of the controls follows: (Make sure numlock is turned off)
numeric keypad Move (8 different directions)
f Fire
r Reload
d Drop an item
g pick up an item
> Go to next level (must be standing on a >)
The above is all you need to know to experience your first game or two, but later on you'll want to learn the other controls:
F Alternate fire mode on weapon
R Alternate reload on weapon
U Unload item
, walk mode - select a direction to walk that way until
you encounter something.
. stay still for a turn. Can be specified as a direction
for walk mode to sit and wait.
z Swap weapons - switches to your 'off hand' weapon, which
is quicker than going into your inventory.
Ok, so we've got the game, we've started up, and we're on the title screen... What's going on here? Right, well in DoomRL, the player can unlock extra features by hitting certain criteria. For a new installation of DoomRL, the only real game type we have access to is a normal game, on easy, normal, or hard difficulty. ('I'm too young to die', 'hey, not too rough', and 'hurt me plenty', respectively.) I wouldn't advise 'I'm too young to die' unless you're having a lot of trouble getting anywhere on 'hey - not too rough'. This is because 'I'm too young to die' significantly changes some of the 'rules' of the game to make it easier for you - certain levels don't show up, healing items give twice as many hitpoints, etc. 'I'm too young to die' will only teach you bad habits, that you need to un-learn later.
If we go ahead and start a new game, we get a chance to see a nice ascii blood effect going down the screen, we get to enter our character's name, and we get presented with our one-and-only game-critical character creation choice - a trait. Traits are gained every time a player kills enough hellgoons to levelup. This is typically every couple of floors. Traits are exceedingly important in doomRL, and you can get more info about them in the 'traits' section, below. Don't concern yourself yet with finesse, son of a bitch, or hellrunner as starting traits - keep things simple for now. If you're just starting out, it might be an idea to select 'tough as nails' for it's early game power - it'll help stop you dying. Alternatively, 'Eagle eye' can also make the start of the game a more simple task - it'll help you kill things without worrying too much about range or position.
After selecting a feat, we're presented with the graphical interface of the game. You'll start in the top-left corner, and there's a building in the middle of this floor, filled with former humans. While it's possible to just rush in and grasp victory, this level is a good opportunity to learn the basics of the two most vital combat skills in doomrl - corner shooting, and giftdropping. We'll cover these in 'Combat tactics', below.
In DoomRL:
- Most enemies have guns
- There is no such thing as 'zero damage'
- There is no health regeneration
- Medikits/health globes are finite.
Put those together and you can see that every pistol-wielding nobody is a somebody you'd rather kill without giving him a chance to hurt you. Every bullet that hits you will leave a somewhat long-team gash in your health, and thus it's imperative that you avoid them.
So, what do we do about the whole bullet problem? There's armour, there's that matrix business of dodging bullets, and there's cowardice. In the DoomRL community, many players define 'defense' in 3 different classes - passive, active, and tactical. Since this guide is for the new player, we'll not be getting into traits and builds and weapons and the like just yet, instead I'd like to offer my fast translation of the '3 forms of defense':
Passive defense: standing there getting shot at
Active defense: running around getting shot at
Tactical defense: not getting shot at
It should be pretty obvious that tactical defense is the best option here. The fact that the community splits these 3 forms of defense up almost like they're 3 different options is a little strange to be honest - 'tactical' defense is basically playing doomrl as a tactics game (ie, playing it properly), while the other 2 are actual long-term strategies to defend yourself should you be forced into a situation where your tactics can't be applied. (and those situations are very, very rare if you apply all of the below tactics.)
How does tactical defense work? Simple, actually - monsters can only attack you if they can draw a straight line to you, without hitting any walls. You, on the other hand, can stick your gun out to shoot around corners.
For all those readers who want to try tactical defense, I'm not going to bother explaining/ranting and do a pictorial step-by-step instead.
Fighting a cacodemon in the arena using a combat shotgun.
╔════════╗
║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####.@.║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║........║
║........║
╚════════╝
We've heard a cacodemon to the left, so we stand here and shoot a shotgun in his general direction, hearing demon screams. Make sure to completely reload the combat shotgun after every shot.
╔════════╗
║o.......║
║........║
║........║
║.####.@.║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║........║
║........║
╚════════╝
Ok, now the cacodemon has come to greet us. It looks to me like he can probably attack us from where he's floating. Since we don't want to get shot at, we move south-west...
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║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####...║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║.....@..║
║........║
╚════════╝
From here we reload then wait a few turns. If the cacodemon follows, that's great. If he doesn't, we can always move back up and resume step 1 & 2 (and we often get to repeat step 1, 2 and 3 so many times the enemy get's killed).
╔════════╗
║........║
║....o...║
║........║
║.####...║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║.....@..║
║........║
╚════════╝
Bingo, cacodemon is here! we can shoot, or we can move left... Probably best to move left. Shooting him might just knock him backwards far enough to allow him a clear shot at us. Moving left might make him give up, in which case we can repeat steps 1-4!
╔════════╗
║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####o..║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║....@...║
║........║
╚════════╝
Ok, Ok, this guy decided to turn the corner. Give him what for.
╔════════╗
║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####o..║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║....@...║
║........║
╚════════╝
We shot him, and it knocked him back a square, but in his turn he immediately moved back to where he was before, so it looks like he just stayed still.... A combat shotgun can be reloaded extremely quickly provided there are shells left in the gun ready.
╔════════╗
║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####...║
║.#..#o..║
║.####...║
║....@...║
║........║
╚════════╝
Wow, he managed to gain 1 whole square of ground while we reloaded. This is a worst-case scenario. The cacodemon is now finally in a position in which he can shoot at us next turn. Unfortunately for the tomato, we have a loaded shotgun pointed right at him. Kaboom?
╔════════╗
║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####o..║
║.#..#...║
║.####...║
║....@...║
║........║
╚════════╝
And he got knocked back. In fact, this time he got knocked back 2 squares, but in his turn he instantly moved closer to us again... Not close enough, though. Take note of how similar this looks to step 6, above. In fact, we're in exactly the same situation. The cacodemon is now playing the unenviable role of 'shotgun thrall'. He won't be stuck in this pattern forever though,
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║........║
║........║
║........║
║.####.•.║
║.#..#%..║
║.####...║
║....@...║
║........║
╚════════╝
Because cacodemons explode when they've had enough shotgun shells pumped into them.
'Great', you say, 'but what if I don't like shotguns?'... Well, whether you like them or not, they're one of the best weapons for the first half of the game, due mainly to their ability to knock targets back so easily, but fine, let's do a different example...
Fighting a cacodemon in the arena using a chaingun. This situation can be done using a pistol too, but if you're trying to kill cacodemons using a pistol, you'd better have some of those juicy marksmanship traits, like 'son of a gun' and 'dualgunner'... Still, the nature of these weapons is very different from a shotgun. chainguns and pistols aren't as effective at knocking targets back (in fact, it takes a huge amount of work to get a pistol to knock something back, and it's both very difficult and undesirable to have a chaingun doing it.) Luckily, these weapons do have an advantage over shotguns - they're more effective at corner shooting.
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║..........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####.@║
║....#..#..║
║....####..║
║..........║
╚══════════╝
Ok, similar situation, but this time we don't have a weapon that knocks a target back, nor do we have a weapon that is good for scouting. In this case, we have to remember that after a few hundred turns on a level, monsters tend to congregate to the center of the current floor, and don't stray more than 10-15 tiles from this level's dead-centre unless they have a good reason. Knowing this, we pick a block that isn't too far away from the middle of the level. We stand in the position indicated above, and we wait. Note - the above diagram has an X to mark, roughly, where the very center of the current level is.
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║.o........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####.@║
║....#..#..║
║....####..║
║..........║
╚══════════╝
A cacodemon has appeared, but he's way too high up for us, and can hit us. We move down a few spaces.
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║..........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####..║
║....#..#..║
║....####..║
║........@.║
╚══════════╝
Ok, from this position, perhaps, we'll have a better chance of a cacodemon appearing in a decent spot. Note that we're looking just a little around the corner to see any danger approaching.
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║..........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####..║
║....#..#..║
║.o..####..║
║........@.║
╚══════════╝
Alright, a cacodemon has appeared, and he's in a spot where he can't shoot back. We give him a volley from our chaingun, just to let him know we're playing.
╔══════════╗
║..........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####..║
║....#..#..║
║..o.####..║
║........@.║
╚══════════╝
Now we're in an interesting situation. We can safely give him another volley, or we can move north-east. Moving north-east is by far the better move for 2 reasons. First, if the cacodemon persues us, we're in a better position to use chainfire to end him, because we're starting our chainfiring a turn earlier. Second, if he doesn't persue us, we can repeat step 3 & 4 until the cacodemon has died. Either one's a winner.
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║..........║
║..........║
X..........║
║..........║
║....####..║
║....#..#..║
║....####.@║
║...o......║
╚══════════╝
So the cacodemon persues... We begin using chainfire with our chaingun (use capital F instead of small f), shooting 3 bullets. Ratatat...
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║.........║
║.........║
X.........║
║.........║
║...####..║
║...#..#..║
║...####.@║
║...o.....║
╚═════════╝
Then 4 bullets... Rattatata
╔═════════╗
║.........║
║.........║
X.........║
║.........║
║...####..║
║...#..#..║
║...####.@║
║....o....║
╚═════════╝
And now 6 bullets....Dakkadakkadakka... It's highly unlikely that a cacodemon is still standing after coming this close. If a half-decent character (son of a bitch, eagle eye, finesse etc) is using the chaingun, this cacodemon should be dead. However, were it a baron of hell, we'd probably need to keep firing for a turn or 2. Even then, though, a mighty baron of hell can't take much of this 6-bullets-per-turn business.
Note that the above examples aren't an exact science. If we're not playing challenge games, we can vary from scouting with the shotgun to chainfiring with the chaingun, depending on the situations that present themselves.
There are also plenty of opportunities to change tactics per enemy - if your marine is a little too slow, the cacodemon might end up in a position where you can't keep knocking him back our of line-of-sight with your shotgun... Many situations can arise where the cacodemon is going to be getting a chance to shoot us, or one of his buddies might show up to spoil our fun. In those situations, entering running mode is a good idea, to benefit from the damage reduction, and perhaps take advantage of the dodge bonus and speed increase in order to hotfoot it out of there.
During fights like these, you need to react to what the enemy is doing, be ever-wary of when he can and when he can't shoot at you, and remember the knockback potential of powerful weapons (shotguns and rocket launchers, mainly). Always consider the option of using 'running mode' and moving away before you start eating fireballs - you get lots of running throughout the game, one per staircase, one per health pack, one per health globe - that's perhaps 4 per level, use or lose em. When you do use running mode, approach or escape from opponents at a 45-degree angle, to enjoy the massive benefit of the running mode dodge bonus.
This simple example however, should go to demonstrate how a little bit of manouvering strategy can turn a blow-for-blow painful gunfight against a hard- hitting opponent into an incredibly one-sided victory, with a good potential to actually suffer no damage whatsoever. To set up such positioning, the walk-wait command, which waits on the spot until a monster comes into view (comma, then fullstop) is your friend, and this is the reason nightmare difficulty and the 'red alert' challenge are so much harder than ultra violence. As a final note - just because I gave examples for shotguns and chainguns, don't discount the unique benefits of the other weapons... A plasmagun is basically the same as a chaingun, but the rocket launcher is unique in it's ability to knock targets back even if they are already far away.... It's amazing how much easier arachnotron-infested cave levels become when you start using the knockback effects of a rocket. Similarly, the BFG can be a great weapon to switch to in a time of need. 2 BFG shots will generally clear a third of the level.
The other forms of defense - those that involve enemy bullets being fired...
Be aware that armour slows you down, falls apart like it's made of soggy tissue, and gives you 1-4 damage reduction (special and modded armour excluded). Think of your 'running mode' as armour too - pretty strong armour, actually. Even if you're standing still firing a chaingun, it would be absolutely worth using 'running mode' in a gunfight when you're facing a lot of weak bullets hitting you, like pistols, chainguns, plasma guns, arachnotrons etc - the accuracy penalty for running mode is -2, whereas the penalty for enemies firing upon you is -4! So, why did I say it 'would' be absolutely worth using running mode for a straight-up no-brains firefight? Well, because in practice, that's very rarely the best strategy, and a bit of a waste of running mode. It's usually best to turn on running mode, and retreat to a better piece of cover, but just bear in mind that on top of movement speed and bullet dodging, runnig mode also functions a little like armour in that it makes less bullets hit you even if you aren't dodging (moving).
Running mode also makes you run quickly - faster than a demon can run, in fact (very useful if you're being chased by a demon and need to reload that chaingun). If you choose between red armour and naked running mode, you'll reduce the damage taken per bullet fired at you a little more with the red armour, but if you're moving, a turn running naked is going to take like half the time of moving with a red suit on, meaning half as many attacks are being fired per turn, which results in a very good damage reduction even before the increased miss chance and large chance to dodge shots are factored in! Plus, the running strategy is expending a very renewable resource (running mode), whereas the red armour strategy is depleting a more finite one (wet tissue paper armour!) By 'large chance to dodge shots', I mean a large chance. Even on the highest difficulty levels (ultra violence and nightmare), you'll dodge perhaps 75% of enemy projectiles when you zigzag your running to dodge bullets as you retreat. This is because running mode has a chance to 'dodge', and an increased chance for an enemy to 'miss'.
That said, there are many times when armour is important - I generally use an armour strategy based on what I find, but as a rough guide - put on a suit of green before entering hell's arena. Give up on green and start on blue when you start seeing arachnotrons, and switch to red when you start seeing archviles. Second, consider removing your good suits of armour when you have to slug it out with knights and barons - their acid attacks destroy your armour incredibly quickly.
Always keep a backup suit of armour or two - red if possible - for those awful situations where there's nowhere safe to run and you have to duke it out. If you're under fire, provided you have a decent chunk of health left, don't hesitate to change to your strongest armour even if it means eating bullets for a turn.
Dodging works differently - Basically, an enemy who misses will have their shot travel right through you without hurting, whereas dodge is a seperate chance that the enemy shot will target the square you were in last turn, rather than the one you're in now. Obviously if you haven't moved, if you moved directly towards or away from the shooter, of if a blast weapon hits a wall near you, you're going to get hit anyway. If you're trying to dodge bullets, move in a way that will dodge incoming fire (normally diagonally), and try to use running mode if you can.
This tactic is an absolute gem. With it, you need never worry about anything that used to be human, and knights and barons won't be nearly as scary as once they were.... Once again, an example serves better than just talking about it, so lets go ahead and try this:
Doing level 1 with melee using giftdropping.
Quick note - this example is for a melee-specialist. Take note, though, that the tactics contained here would be far more effective for a player armed with a ranged weapon. Ideally, a shotgun will kill emerging enemies without them even having a chance to use medikits.
Since zombies do pathetic damage in melee, we're going to use giftdropping to complete the first level of the game without being shot at.
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║#####..║
║....#..║
║....#..║
║....+@.║
║....#..║
║....#..║
║#####..║
╚═══════╝
First of all, with the door closed, we drop a medipack (or perhaps our blue armour if playing angel of berserk) on the floor outside the door to tempt the enemies out.
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║#####..║
║....#..║
║....#..║
║..../+.║
║....#..║
║....#@.║
║#####..║
╚═══════╝
Now we move to the side of and open the door, so that enemies can't see us until they're standing in the doorway. From this position, we use the walk-on- the-spot command (pressing comma enters 'walk mode', where the game will ask of us a direction to keep walking until our marine finds something interesting. When asked for a walk direction, pressing full-stop tells the character to walk nowhere - he will stand on the spot and wait a while until something interesting happens.) Repeat it a lot of times until someone arrives.
╔═══════╗
║#####..║
║....#..║
║....#..║
║....h+.║
║....#..║
║....#@.║
║#####..║
╚═══════╝
Here's the first enemy, who ran out of the room to grab the medikit we dropped! We could shotgun him for an instant kill, but since this is a melee example, we'll move north... Former human melee attacks are so pitiful.
╔═══════╗
║#####..║
║....#..║
║....#..║
║....h+.║
║....#@.║
║....#..║
║#####..║
╚═══════╝
And he slaps us for our trouble. If we're really unlucky, our health drops from 100% to 98%. Most of the time, though, he misses. All we have to do now is destroy his face, then wait for the next one.
Short example, wasn't it? Repeat step 2-4 until the level is cleared (though you'll often have to switch to a different doorway). Get used to using this technique. The Alternative is waiting at the very bottom square of the diagram and either using a shotgun to one-shot the enemies the second they show their face, or the pistol to attack enemies 2-3 times while they try to walk around the door.
There are two effective positions to gift-drop in a door. You can try it in one of the squares behind the door frame, so that monsters will see it through the doorway, as shown in the example above. You can also try it directly in the door frame, which has a better chance of encouraging enemies to come (they have more chance of seeing your item), but also blocks the door from being closed, and forces you to walk into the doorway to recover your medikit. This can be dangerous when there are monsters on the other side of the door who aren't interested in first aid.
Gift-dropping works on any enemy that can use items. That includes former humans, barons of hell and hell knights. If you employ giftdropping well, you will normally be left with a ball of imps that are not interested in your items, and you'll have to deal with them without sneaky traps. :)
Quite similar to gift dropping, above. Tagging is a method for getting enemies to come to you, without having to offer them your nice stuff. Its disadvantage over giftdropping is that you need to expose yourself to an enemy long enough to attack them (I'm assuming you're not an exhibitionist). The advantage, though, is that it works on enemies that do not pick up items (imps, cacodemons, revenants, archviles, mancubi, arachnotrons etc).
Tagging has many applications...
- It becomes incredibly useful in nightmare games, where disposing of enemies in doorframes is one of the only ways of getting rid of them for good.
- Learning to use it is also useful for bringing baddies in closer for shotgun attacks.
- With a good movement speed, it can be used to lure tough enemies like barons into situations where you can use your running speed to lead them in circles, attacking them freely whenever you gain distance on them.
- It allows a single pistol bullet to bring a monster into range for a melee attack, conserving ammo, and allowing you to bring your melee skills to bear!
However, tagging is one of those tactics that's not as immediately obvious as the others mentioned in this guide, and situations where tagging is going to be of benefit are much harder to spot, but since it's a powerful tactic, we'll go over a few applications here.
Tagging for a perfect kill.
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║......@........#║
║#+#####+########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
This looks like a nice opportunity to use a doorway for tagging! lets get ourselves in that door!
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║...............#║
║#+#####@########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
Ok, now we wait on the spot until we see a monster.
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║...............#║
║#+#####@########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║...............c║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
That cacodemon can attack us from where he is now. Let's get back around the corner, then imediately fire our shotgun blind in his direction (through the doorframe, note that we can't actually see him as we fire).
╔════════════════╗
║......@........#║
║#+#####*########║
║........*.......║
║.........*......║
║..........**....║
║............X...║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
Boom! We hear the cacodemon scream from taking shotgun damage, so we know we tagged him. Now we can reload our shotgun, and run back...
╔════════════════╗
║..@............#║
║#/#####/########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
Notice that we're sitting near another doorway and have opened the door. This is an example of opportunistic strategy in doomrl- it's something that will come with practice, and it's thinking like this that makes a good player at doomrl. (Were there no doorway we would probably be a couple of squares further to the right- close enough to do high shotgun damage, but not so close that the cacodemon could attack us from within the doorframe. Alternatively, we could have activated running mode, got some distance from the cacodemon, then led him to a more favourable firing position.) We ensure that our shotgun is loaded, and wait until the cacodemon comes...
╔════════════════╗
║..@............#║
║#/#####c########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
And here he is! Another shotgun blast will aggravate him even more, then we can run into the nearby doorframe...
╔════════════════╗
║....c..........#║
║#@#####/########║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
║................║
╚════════════════╝
We've been here before... The cacodemon is a goner!
This is a trick that doesn't get as widely discussed or used as the two above, but it is an incredibly useful and powerful technique to master. It requires a rocket launcher.
Re-architecture is directly related to how proficient in the above tactics a player is. It's useless to a new player, but to someone who has a good understanding or 'feel' for the tactical aspects of doomRL (knockback, corner shooting, enemies congregating to the center of a floor, giftdropping, tagging etc), it's invaluable.
Many players will cite 'passive defense' or 'active defense' as the strategy to turn to when there is no option of using 'tactical defense'. Re-architecture is basically the method of making an option to use tactical defense. It's being pro-active about pro-active defense!
The idea is incredibly simple, but so often disregarded - you just remodel the level you're on to give yourself an incredible firing position. Typically you'll want this firing position to be just out of combat shotgun range from the centre of the level (that is, the dead-centre of the level is 4-5 squares out of your line-of-sight.) You also want this firing position to be of a type that will allow you to kill anything up to a baron without it being able to get close enough to shoot you. Again, let's break out the examples. This time, we're not doing hypothetical, and instead I'm picking a real level to demonstrate on:
Sculpting a real level to fight an arch-vile and his friends.
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║############################################################║
║#...............................=..............|;..#.......#║
║########+#######+#######.###.=====###=######+###+###.......#║
║#...|........................======.=....#.........#.......#║
║#.......>....................=====.=.....#......+..#.......#║
║#...........0..===..........i..==........#........;#.......#║
║#.......0.....=====.......i..}==...................#.......#║
║#.....0.......===.=...i.R.h........................#.......#║
║#..........}..=====.....h......h...................#....0..#║
║#..............===.....Vihh.hAB........../.................#║
║##+#########=====##..#####o==#/#######################/#####║
║#.......%...=====....A...i==B=......................@......#║
║#...........=====}...==.R.====.....................#.....&.#║
║#............===..=..=.....==.0.........O;........./.......#║
║#....[....=.......===|........}....................#.......#║
║#.........==.....==..}.....|..|....................#.......#║
║########+#==#######=#######+######+#######+######+##......0#║
║#..|.....===.+....=................................#.......#║
║#..................................................#.......#║
║############################################################║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
After waiting a few hundred turns, open levels will usually end up looking something like this. A big ball of monsters in the centre of the map. Most levels have more walls than this, but that makes this tactic more effective - the more walls you've got, the more material you've got to make your fire-base out of.
Ok, so looking at the above picture.... It's a pretty good example of one of those rare levels where there's no way of attacking the monsters without risking return fire. That is, there's no opportunity to use tactical defense.... Ok, we're on the right of the level, in the bottom-right room of the map. Now see those boots (the semicolon) a little to our left? We'll be firing our rocket launcher somewhere above those boots, then standing in a sweetspot... Like so...
╔════════════╗
║............║
║......./....║
║#######X####║
║............║
║............║
║......O;....║
╚════════════╝
X marks the spot.
╔════════════╗
║............║
║......./....║
║######...###║
║............║
║............║
║......O;....║
╚════════════╝
Lawenilothehl
╔════════════╗
║............║
║......./....║
║######.@.###║
║............║
║............║
║......O;....║
╚════════════╝
And now we've potitioned ourselves nicely. We can fire a shotgun off to the left, and fully expect it to start hurting the monsters that have gathered there. When a monsters show up, he will usually be in a position where he can't fire back...
╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║############################################################║
║# = |; # #║
║########+#######+####### ### =====###=######+###+### #║
║# | ====== = .#. # #║
║# > ===== = ...#... + # #║
║# 0 === == ....#.... ;# #║
║# 0 ===== }== ........... # #║
║# 0 === = ............. # #║
║# } ===== ............. # 0 #║
║# === .B...../....... #║
║##+#########=====## ##### ==#/#########.@.###########/#####║
║# % ===== == = ............... #║
║# =====} == ==== ............. # & #║
║# === = = == 0 .....O;...... / #║
║# [ = ===| } ........... # #║
║# == == } | | ......... # #║
║########+#==#######=#######+######+#######+######+## 0#║
║# | === + = # #║
║# # #║
║############################################################║
╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
For example, take this baron of hell. He's dead-meat, and hasn't got a chance of walking up close enough to us before we've shot him to pieces.
Sometimes, of course, enemies will approach without standing next to the wall, and in those cases, once again, play it as you see it... Is the monster nearly dead? Can you survive a salvo off them? Is your inventory full but healthpacks are lying on the floor? Can you run south-east and wait for the monster to lose interest in you?
Complications or not, the fact remains that we can re-sculpt levels to our advantage, and this makes the rocket launcher one of the most useful tools in the game.
(This is a section for more advanced players, and is not necessary for your first few victories, so feel free to skip it and go play! In fact, with all the tools mentioned above, you're already capable of beating the lower difficulties of doomrl without much trouble, so go get'em tiger!)
Disposing of corpses is actually a surprisingly necessary duty of our marine. This is obvious to anyone who has played on the 'nightmare' skill level or the 'angel of darkness' challenge, but when such players go back to easier difficulties, they find these skills essential for fighting the dreaded arch-vile. This is because arch-viles, or nightmare difficulty, cause corpses to come back to life!
Corpses can be destroyed with area-effect weaponry. In the first few levels, before the arena, exploding barrels can be used. However, The rocket launcher is usually the first real tool a player finds to destroy corpses, but often causes as many problems as it solves as it destroy walls so aggressively. A few rare weapons, and very notably two assemblies, can destroy corpses without doing massive damage to the level walls. Unfortunately, demolition ammo requires a (rare) firestorm modpack, and plasmatic shrapnel requires a (rare) sniper modpack (see the assemblies section, later, for more details). The rarity of these items means we can expect to be playing most of our later games without being able to destroy corpses easily.
However, we need not destroy corpses! We can sink them, melt them, burn them, or even crush them in a door! There are ways of getting the level to do corpse disposal for us! Basically, corpses cannot be generated on water, acid, lava, the stairs, or an open door.
Knowing this, corpse disposal methods are obvious - either kill enemies as they traverse water, kill them in a doorway (giftdropping works well here), knock them back into acid/lava, or even push a barrel of napalm or acid on top of a pile of corpses and destroy it.
Thirdly, a monster that dies on top of a pre-existing corpse will squash the corpse, replacing it with his own. We can use this to our advantage. For example, after killing a baron, we can stand on his corpse (preventing it from rising) and wait for a former human to arrive. We can then lead the former human on to the corpse of the baron, then kill him. This leaves us with a former human corpse, that we can stand on or lead to a doorway as befits the current situation.
Standing on a corpse prevents regeneration. Make no mistake, this can be exploited to clear entire levels from a safe firing position, even when there are no doorways or water nearby. You'll be amazed at how many seemingly impossible nightmare levels, that you would otherwise skip, can be cleared simply by standing on corpses. Plus, just imagine standing with one boot on an ever-growing pile of hellspawn! Oh, I could do this all day!
When the level is cleared of roaming monsters, just take your foot off that single, last monster, and either rocket his corpse, barrel the corpse, or let him resurrect and lead him to some water/acid/doorway.
Finally, remember that when an arch-vile resurrects it's friends, or when nightmare enemies regenerate, they will stand still for the 4 turns it takes them to rise. Take advantage of these 4 turns by shooting the creature until it is 'mortally wounded' or 'almost dead'. When the creature is so near to death, you can get out of it's line of fire, wait until it treads on top of another corpse, water, or a door frame, then finish it off. This 4-seconds grace period also makes tagging such enemies quite painless, which is good for leading them into chokepoints.
Corpse disposal... I'm gonna do this example mainly with pictures, because it's more of an storyboard example of how you can clear a large volume of monsters, efficiently desposing of their corpses, than it is a single specific idea.
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║CornerAmbush║║imp dies ║║waiting ║║tagging ║║CornerAmbush║
║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║..@.........║║..@.........║║............║║............║║..@.........║
║.i####+#####║║.%####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.h####+#####║
║...........%║║...........%║║...........%║║...........%║║...........%║
║.........%..║║.........%..║║........h...║║.......-*...║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║r human dies║║waiting ║║tagging ║║ ║║e demon dies║
║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║..@.........║║............║║............║║..@.........║║..@.........║
║.%####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.c####+#####║║.%####+#####║
║...........%║║............║║............║║............║║............║
║............║║........c...║║.......-*...║║............║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║waiting ║║rdy shotgun ║║keep shoot'n║║(nearly dead║║Rdy Chainsaw║
║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║............║║............║║............║║............║║..@.........║
║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.B####+#####║
║....B.......║║...B........║║....B.......║║...B........║║............║
║............║║............║║............║║............║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║of hell dies║║waiting ║║tagging ║║ ║║r human dies║
║..===......#║║.===....h..#║║.===...-*..#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║..@.........║║............║║............║║............║║............║
║.%####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.@####+#####║║.h####+#####║║.%####+#####║
║............║║............║║............║║..@.........║║..@.........║
║............║║............║║............║║............║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║retreat ║║drop medpack║║wait ║║round corner║║wait ║
║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║............║║............║║....h.......║║............║║............║
║.%####/#####║║.%####@#####║║..####@#####║║..####+#####║║..####h#####║
║.....@......║║............║║............║║...@........║║...@........║
║............║║............║║............║║............║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗
║r human dies║║wait ║║ReadyShotgun║║wait 1 turn ║║knockback ║
║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║║..===......#║
║............║║....h.......║║....h.......║║.....h......║║.....*......║
║..####*#####║║..####@#####║║..####@#####║║..####@#####║║..####@#####║
║...@........║║............║║............║║............║║............║
║............║║............║║............║║............║║............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝
As we can see, corpses can be stacked until the level is nearly empty, then the last 1-2 can be disposed of using doorframes, liquids on the floor, or explosives.
This is a bit of a strange one, but can be very useful. If we tell our character to fire a non-shotgun weapon at an open door, he tends to make sure that his shot travels through the door without hitting the walls around it. While we can't usually see what's on the other side of the door, have faith that the bullet is flying in there. If we aim directly for the open door, here is and example of the shot trajectories (represented with 'o' characters)
╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔════════════╗╔═════════════╗
║............║║............║║............║║.............║
║.......o@...║║.......oo@..║║.......ooo@.║║.......ooooo@║
║######o#####║║######o#####║║######o#####║║######o######║
║....oo......║║...ooo......║║..oooo......║║oooooo.......║
║..oo........║║ooo.........║║oo..........║║.............║
╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚════════════╝╚═════════════╝
As you can see, we get some pretty wierd shot trajectories.
Now that we've covered basic tactics, the main thrust of this guide is complete
- the basic way of 'playing' doomRL is covered, and as such, we'll move on to content...
brief special level strats: Always beneficial:
- Hell's arena -
- Military base - Shellbox(~50%), medkits++, modpacks, envirosuit! Very easy, good rewards
- Hell's armoury - Clear level from second-leftmost doorway, farm overcharged plasma guns to ease shambler battle. Quite easy, awesome rewards
- The wall - Deadly on low ammo. Worth doing if you bring extra ammo in! Easy-ish, poor rewards
- Halls of carnage - I now use (homing)phase device to skip this level! Worth it for BFG+xp+bulkpack. Average difficulty, average rewards
- Limbo - I still just don't struggle with this level, but consensus suggests I'm an outlier here! Somewhat hard, Incredible rewards
- The lava pits / Mt Erebus - Rocket jumping: great. I think the nuclear BFG trivialities these levels. Very easy, average rewards
- Chained court + - Years back I thought 'close to a deathtrap'! These days I lose 1, maybe 2 medkits on it and it feels much less 'chancy'. Somewhat hard, great rewards
- Phobos lab - A tricky level, but there are so many medpacks, you can almost guarantee coming out stronger. Hard-ish, good rewards.
- City of Skulls - Ok, I realised that the shell box completely trivialises this level! Yeah, I was stoopid!! Very easy, poor rewards.
- The vaults - Zero healing = health deficit. If I've got the staff, I'm always game, but bring extra medpacks! Hard-ish, unpredictable rewards.
- Deimos lab - Some builds are in mortal danger from 2xshambler. At least supercharge is accessible with rocket dig! Somewhat hard, Incredible rewards.
Situational:
- Containment area - The only level I graded up! Barons can be inescapable, where not even rocket jump extricates. Hard, underwhelming rewards.
- Plains of torment - The shell box trivialises the (otherwise hard) final ambush, but very dissapointing rewards make this barely worth it. Somewhat hard, poor rewards.
- Spider's Lair - Can be tricky at times, but the BFG + battery is good, and with decent time-management the spiders aren't too deadly in this layout. Hard, average rewards.
- Unholy Cathedral - Obv. great for melee build. Otherwise It's XP and a great weapon for a cost of medpacks + speed mods / traits. Generally the cathedral is: Hard, poor rewards.
Not worth it
- Mortuary - It's not that I leave the mortuary worse-off than I entered it... It's that my chance of dying in the mortuary is significantly higher than the entire rest of the run put together! Extremely difficult, incredible rewards.
Detailed special level strats: Hell's arena -
- It's impossible to give specific tips, since this level is an exercise in standard doomrl tactics: knockback, cornershooting, and corpse disposal. Nowadays this level usually takes me 1 or 2 medpacks. (If you're an angel of berserk, don't bother!)
- Easy-ish, average rewards
Easy Chained court -
- This is the chained court for a player that failed to finish the Hell's arena. Using about 1 medpack, you can leave the level with mods, chainsaw, and berserk for days! Start by collection the chainsaw, then moving left out of starting room, and activating the lever(s) to release the left ambush. Then Run(mode) back to the start room, close the door, and pick up a berserk. Now open up right-side ambush, then move up to top-right of the map. You'll find a door leading to the exit room. You can stand in this door and giftdrop / tag monsters to lure them into the door. The entire level can be completed from this position. If you're not going for thorough completion, the berserk packs from this level can potentially last to the anomoly, which is one of only a few strategies that can overcome nightmare anomoly, and probably your only chance given that you likely don't have a rocket launcher after skipping the arena.
- Very easy, good rewards
Hard chained court (Arena completed):
- This is probably the player's greatest challenge in the game so far. Our little guy starts in a room with 4 doors, a chainsaw and 2 berserk packs. Outside of the room is a horde of former humans. Directly above and below the starting room are barons of hell, and to the far left of the level is a special arch vile. Tackling this level head-on is a recipe for disaster on higher skill levels. The arch vile, former humans, and barons will destroy a player that tries a berserk charge strategy, but if the player stays in the safety of the starting room too long, they'll be overwhelmed by baron and vile fire, and the berserk packs / cover will be quickly destroyed. Trying to deal with the barons after they have migrated to the left of the level is tricky because they have a tendancy to destroy the walls and doors of the starting room, as well as being resurrected more quickly than you can kill them, which makes getting out of the level in good shape pretty much impossible. As such, over time I've found the best tactic to be the following:
- Immediately pick up the chainsaw (since if this gets detroyed it's dire!). After collecting chainsaw, move a single tile south-west.
- Fire a rocket into the north-west of the start room. This should blow a hole in the top wall. Use that hole as a choke to shotgun-scout angering the top barons. Kill them with a berserk chainsaw (or whatever). Using the rocket launcher, ensure that any baron corpses are either below your feet in this chokepoint, or destroyed (via rocket).
- From your choke point in the north wall, fire a rocket at the south- west corner of the start room. Now use the hole to bring the southern 3 barons into your original choke point. Destroy baron corpses.
- Using the same north hole, wait on the spot, and any time a former human wanders into view, kill it without using a shotgun. This means the corpse is in your vision. Any time a former human respawns in your view, hit it with the pistol, then move east so that the former can't see you until they enter the hole/chokepoint you just vacated. Kill them in that spot, and stand on their corpse.
- After a while of this, you can start to adjust from standing on the corpse, to allowing a respawn and shotgunning the former into lava.
- When you start seeing formers get revived by archvile, go and pick up a berserk pack, then rocket-jump to the arena master and kill him with a chainsaw.
- If it hasn't been lost to baron fire / arena master fire, the final berserk pack fully heals you so that you're leaving the court intact. The above strategy is a basic outline to the most efficient 'intended' strategy I can adopt for the court. There are times that it must be adapted though, such as when the arena master has you in LOS and raises arems, and you don't want to lose berserk packs, or occasionally from roaming barons, or too much destroyed terrain to safely fire from. What I'm getting at here is don't religiously try to apply this strategy to the letter every time, but instead play reactively with this as a rough behaviour guideline. Doing this, I usually don't need more than 2 medikits to complete the chained court, which are replaced in my inventory by the mods.
The wall - Backpack is on left-centre, so don't blow it up with blind firing. Shoot through the wall with rockets, then prepare to fight some terrifying enemies, including arch-viles on high skill levels. Also, sculpting a 'niche' on the right can work well....
###########################################################
#############.........##.....##############################
...........................................................
...........................................................
...........................................................
............B........1.....................................
...........2.########.@....................................
.............#########....................................
........V...B#########.....................................
...........B.#########.....................................
.......B..B.B#########.....................................
....B.....B..#########.....................................
..B...V..BB.B#########.....................................
........B..BB#########.....................................
The idea here is to creep into position 1 and wait on the spot until a monster shows up somewhere around position 2. When you see one, shoot him once to get his attention, then fall back to the 'niche' position shown as @ in the diagram above, and finish said monster as he walks towards you.
Halls of Carnage - Always visit here, it's a free supercharge and BFG. Save the supercharge at the start of the level for later - there are two more inside. Left side of the level has shotgun guys, easy to deal with, particularly with liberal use of wait command and gift-dropping. Middle-Right side of the level has 3 locked doors, loads of cacodemons + lost souls, and a lava river with a supercharge in it. Far right of level is a load of concentric squares containing demons, cacodemons, hell knights, and barons of hell, with a supercharge on the far far right, and a BFG in the middle.
Hell's Armory - With a lot of patience and hiding round corners, this level can easily be completed without ever being shot at. Contains arachnotrons on the far-right. Always spawns 4 random (possible unique) weapons, 8 suits of assorted blue & green armour, 3 mod packs, and loads of ammo.
Unholy Cathedral - Avoid unless you're playing a melee game, have the chainsaw and 'berserker' trait, and have some decent armour. If you have those, then if you're tough enough, run straight past lost souls and demons heading right (you'll take perhaps 150% health and armour damage - trust me, it's worth it to ignore them and keep running.) While still in the demon's room in front of double-doors, go to running mode and start hitting demons and lost souls until you berserk. The second you berserk, slip on your strongest armour, use a medipack for full-health, then open the door to the right and fight the angel of death. If you don't have berserk or if it wears off, he'll decimate you - about 70% health per turn if you're not wearing armour. If you fail to berserk after fighting all those lost souls and demons, then just leave, you don't have a chance. With berserk, and a suit of red armour, the angel of death will do far, far less damage to you (about 13% per turn), and you'll kill him relatively quickly with a berserk chainsaw - perhaps only 2-3 large medikits and a couple of suits of armour.
City of Skulls - Don't flick the lever! Blow up some walls to find lost souls and pain elementals. After clearing them all, on higher difficulties the level will be swarmed with pain elementals - be ready, near the stairs, with some area weaponry. Best tactic is to carefully stand on the stairs down and rocket the north-east room's nearest corner, because it has a BFG inside... Then either leave, or get to work on the other rooms, saving the one nearest the stairs for last, so that you're ready to run away if the sudden, final elemental swarm overwhelms you. This is possible for an angel of shotgunnery brave enough to hit the lever, provided he's carrying plenty of shotguns with him - I'd advise a couple of doubles for clearing the swarm, at least 2 combat shotguns so that no time is wasted reloading, and a standard shotgun if he's using the 'juggler' trait, just for that slight extra spread shot when it's needed. An angel of berserk who picked the 'vampyre' trait should remove his armour, hit the lever, then have some fun - see how many levels your berserk lasts for after you're finished eating a few hundred lost souls! As for angels of marksmanship - don't even bother! Not a chance!
The Vaults - Rocket your way into the left and right side (far left wall of the right vault, bottom-right wall of the left vault). The center requires a phase device to get in, and I'd advise using the phase device the instant you enter the level (so that the monsters are still waking up), or doing it under invincibility - there's mancubi in there.
Spider's Lair - can be nasty, but never too bad – I used to just run straight for the north-east teleporter, then move to the top of a barricade and arm the rocket launcher. However, a recent tip on the forums revealed a new way of tackling the spider’s lair – enter the level with a BFG in your hands. 2 shots on a teleporter will destroy 3 of the teleporters. Walk through the fourth, remaining teleporter, and you can proceed to camp it’s destination tile, waiting for spiders to come through one-at-a-time.
The Lava Pits - Is this worth saving 2 environment suits for? Depends how slim pickings have been in your game - basically lets you trade envirosuits for armour, boots, and experience. Don't count on getting anything more than a few pairs of shoes, though.
The Mortuary - (Quick note - the next time I encunter this level, I want to try it with a tech-modded rocket launcher and a rocket box in the prepared slot, immediately rocket-jumping my way right, using a skull to destroy corpses, and getting the nuclear BFG. I have a feeling that this might be the most reliable way of tackling the level, since the nuclear BFG tends to be the turning point for mortuary runs, and recent angel of 66 games have taught me that you can get a good few rocket jumps in before monsters get activated. I wonder whether you can get all the way to safety in the top-right before monsters get a turn?) (The other strategy I want to test is using a skull, the homing phase device, then another skull, then the BFG fired all the way accross the level to the corpses on the opposite side. This should be the most devastating way to destroy corpses before archviles get a turn to resurrect, but might take some trial and error to find the base places to shoot the bfg, and still might not guarantee the nuclear bfg as well as the strategy above.)
Ok, make no mistake, the mortuary is probably the hardest level in the entire game, but if your character is capable of doing it without using up all his medpacks, you should go for it - there are at least 6 suits of red armour in there, as well as mod kits, supercharges, an assault shotgun, a nuclear BFG, and a protection:7 suit of armour. If you don't want to risk your life for all those rewards, you can just trade your homing phase device for a supercharge, perhaps a mod pack, and a couple of suits of red, by entering the level, picking stuff up, then leaving via homing phase device. If you want to clear it, make sure you have a BFG, and having a homing phase device for when things ultimately go wrong is a good idea. You'll also want 3-4 suits of red and 4-5 large medikits to withstand the beating you're about to receive. The basic situation in the mortuary is you, standing in the center of the level with a few small walls around you (similar to the 'monsters appear from everywhere' levels), but around the level are a few hundred corpses on the ground, and 5+ arch-viles to resurrect them all. There are two effective strategies for clearing the mortuary. The first, and most frequently advised, is to use a homing phase device to take you instantly to one of the level exits in the corner, then corner-shoot everything coming for you until there's nothing left. The trouble with this strategy is the fact that the arch viles will keep resurrecting monsters, but the viles themselves wont be very inclined to come meet you - you'll end up running out of ammunition shooting at them. This is particularly problematic in version 0.9.9.1, where the BFG cannot be fired further than the player can see. The second strategy I find effective is entering the mortuary with a fearsome ranged attack, and taking the viles and their minions from the starting, central room, ideally killing them before they come into vision (firing into the blackness). The plus point of this strategy is that the arch viles will come to you, instead of just hanging back resurrecting. The downside is that everything on the level that they summon will also come to get you. Out of the two strategies, I tend to prefer the second strategy if my character has the 'ammochain' or 'intuition 2' traits. I will also use the second strategy if my character is using shotguns and has plenty of shells and guns. This is because, for obvious reasons; shotguns, ammochain, and intuition are all adept at shooting into areas you can't see, with the hopes of killing archviles. The first of the strategies is more popular in the doomRL community, but I have more trouble pulling it off. Monsters tend to either get resurrected so quickly that they overrun my corner position, or I manage to hold them off, but can't make any ground against them, can't kill the archviles, and end up running out of ammo, healthpacks, or armour, leaving the level.
Phobos Arena - A fight with the cyberdemon. He has to reload after every shot he takes at you, so dodge his rockets, then shoot him while he reloads. There are, of course, other approaches - ammochain characters can just fire plasmagun fire non-stop until he dies (takes a few medikits), intuition 2 characters can use phase devices to fight the cyberdemon without him every having a chance to see you, characters with the 'dodgemaster' feat basically have a free win against the cyberdemon, since you have a gauranteed dodge against his rockets, and can shoot him while he reloads. Finally, nuking him is a viable option for a 'partial win' (since it kills you too). If you nuke him and survive, then you have to go on to fight JC, and it doesn't count as any kind of a win unless you defeat JC too.
There are a number of different categories for weapons. The game has its own categorisation method, colour-coding items as grey, magenta, and green/yellow (for basic, exotic, and unique/artifact, respectively), but these only roughly correspond to the actual chance of finding such items, because the narrative has our hero finding special things on his quest! I tend to mentally divide items into 3 slightly different categories: 'common', 'uncommon' and 'unique'. (In practice this is little more than just tagging 'common' on the chainsaw, arena staff & missile launcher, and 'uncommon' on the Artifact polearm, BFG, Nuclear BFG and angelic armour! The rest of the magenta, green, and yellow items I call uncommon, unique and unique, respectively. ) What I call 'common items' either drop regularly enough to guarantee them by the time a reasonable depth is reached, or have actual guaranteed appearances on special levels in the early or midgame. The green and blue armours, pistol, shotgun, combat knife and chaingun are so common they are pretty much guaranteed in the first few floors. Plasma guns, red armour, ammo boxes etc are similarly common later. This is in contrast to uncommon items, which are probably encountered about as often as they are not in a regular game. Such items as special armour (phaseshift, onyx etc), miniguns, laser rifles, nuclear plasma rifles, and combat pistols fit this category. Finally there are rare items. Most unique items (green ingame) fit this category, but there are also some exotic items that are much more rare than others, like the blaster. The actual rarity of unique items varies, with some, like the trigun, showing up perhaps once every 10 games, and others like the BFG 10k can take hundreds of games before it's found. In general, though, uniques are rare enough to never be expected to show in a given game, and the skill of using them is more about identifying and evaluating them as a group - while you can't expect to find a certain unique, you can expect to find a few random-drop uniques per game, maybe one of which will be worth using.
There are a lot of weapons in doomrl! While I'll do my best to go through each of them individually later, it feels more sensible to begin a discussion on weapons with something more general. Instead of thinking of each weapon individually, we can just think of a few groups of weapons that function differently: Melee, Pistols, Shotguns, Rapidfire(aka Burst), explosive, BFG Most characters tend to specialise in a single category, dabbling with the others where necessary. That said, specialising in a single weapon category can save a remarkable amount of inventory space, and if you just stuff that entire extra inventory space with medpacks, you'll usually be a lot better at surviving typical fights than you would trying to use all the weapon types. The lesson here, I feel, is to know when to abandon a weapon type, or when to pick up a new type. This is a surprisingly hard question to answer, but getting a feel for it on the higher difficulties could be accelerated hugely with the following:
- Plasma rifles start to be seen with some regularity near the start of deimos (~lvl 9)
- Rockets go from very rare in phobos, to incredibly common from the start of deimos.
- Bullets and shells can become surprisingly rare later in the game - relying on them is kinda rolling the dice!
- Shotguns are incredibly ammo efficient, pistols are good too.
- Playing on 'I'm too young to die' will mess up your idea about ammo supply, making it a bad place to 'learn' the game.
- Cave levels feature little ammo - care should be taken in case the next level is also ammo-shy.
- Some guns hold a good amount of ammo, some do not.
That last point is an important one. It means that just about any character should consider carrying a plasma rifle, because it holds almost an entire stack of ammo itself, and even if your character isn't particularly strong with it, it's a great way to sustain yourself should the level you're on provide cells rather than your preferred ammo type. It is also not a bad use of inventory space on its own, able to hold enough ammo to dispatch quite a few opponents. On the flip side, pistols and shotguns don't carry much ammo inside them. Now, shotguns make a great contingency for ammo problems given just how many opponents a stack of 50 shells is capable of killing, but every additional shotgun you carry is limiting your ammo carring capacity. I tend to like carrying 2 shotguns - one for long and 1 for short range combat, but I drop down to just 1 shotgun sometime in deimos. Pistols are a massive waste of inventory space - if you have no way of using 10mm and want one, carrying a chaingun is probably going to be a better answer. Miniguns, the BFG, and burst plasma rifles all carry more than their single inventory slot normally would, making them great uses of inventory.
Using weapons: Pistols Pistols are the weakest weapons in the game, and they're partnered with the strongest weapon-specific trait (son of a gun) to balance this. For characters not taking SoaG traits, they can easily be dismissed. They can be useful in that they are the best tool for tagging, but you can tag pretty well with the alt.fire of a double shotgun, solidifying the 'dismissable' status of a pistol. Practice a little with the aimed shot of a pistol, when you get used to when to use it, it's a useful ability for saving ammo or increasing the chances that an 'almost dead' monster dies now instead of using that medpack, walking out of that doorframe, reviving a comrade etc... The biggest weaknesses of the pistol are reload times - once you have a few ranks of SoaG unloading an entire clip will take about half a second, compared to more than a full second to reload! 10mm Ammo boxes completely eliminate this problem, and are so good at doing so, they startlingly make skipping the 'dualgunner' skill quite practical! If you take advantage of this, it's important to remember to un- equip the ammo chain to reload at any time that it is safe to do so. You'll find yourself having to do this again and again and again, and I find the fastest way of doing it is e-d-y-r-u (assuming your inventory is full). Later in the game (hell) I stop doing this - partly because there are so many explosive enemy attacks, you'll get the box blown up almost as quickly as you'd love it just doing all your reloads from it, and partly because usually, by the time you're in hell, you've saved so many ammo boxes from switching them out all game that you can just start eating through them and still have one for the last boss! Non-basic pistols are perhaps less common than all other weapons, and there is only 1 basic/common type of pistol. If you are lucky enough to find a non-basic pistol, it's going to be massively, massively stronger than your basic pistol. So much so, I like to change my trait selection plan if I find one, provided I can effectively do so (which leads us on to...) Pistols make a great backup weapon if you're prepared to spend the traits on them. It can seem counter-intuitive to be really strong in one strategy, then suddenly start taking traits that don't apply to it, but very often doing so is worth it. Mostly this applies to melee and masterless builds, and leans on the fact that, with 0 levels of SoaG, pistols are junk, but with 5 levels of SoaG, pistols are ridiculously strong! Now, taking level 4+ of SoaG requires a character be level 12 before it becomes available to take, which is a long wait for someone who took pistols early, but not a very long wait at all for a character that already has a fistful of levels under their belt! The combat characteristics of pistols is that they are good at long ranges (ie stand a tile back from that corner shooting to get the full vision range), but also pretty good for knockback (when their damage is boosted). This means if there are 2 bad guys next to one another running down that coridoor at you, consider retreating, as you'll be unable to knock the front guy back. 'Aimed shot' pistol can be a passable substitute for shotgun radar shooting, albeit a slow, unreliable, ammo-hungry one!
Using Weapons: Shotguns
Using Weapons: Rapidfire
Using Weapons: Melee
Using Weapons: Explosives Explosives are the weapons that are fired lineraly, producing an explosion (that can potentially damage the player) when they hit something. While I'm giving BFGs their own category because they behave so differently, I'm making an exception for the BFG10k, which I feel more firmly belongs in this group. Technically, the only standard weapon in this class is the rocket launcher, but the exotic weapon 'missile launcher' is not only a guaranteed item, it's actually guaranteed twice among 4 different special levels (the wall, containment area, city of skulls and abyssal plains!) The rocket launcher itself is also guaranteed in a special level, making this item very commonly available. Now because the rocket stacks are the smallest ammo type 'stack', it's easy to fall into the impression that ammo is scarce, and at first it's true: Ammunition for the rocket launcher starts out quite limited - we only receive about 12 rockets before we reach the anomaly. At that point, though, the whole of deimos is extremely generous with rocket ammunition in its special level (the 4th,4th,6th,7th and 8th special levels are ALL saturated in rockets, whichever version of each is taken.) After that, throughout hell, 2 of the most common monsters drop rockets in pretty large numbers. Rockets do destroy items, but a few precautions can be taken to reduce this. Often a rocket can be aimed away from items to save them (although this is more applicable for the rocket launcher assemblies than the base item). A more commonly effective tactic that works very well is to try to use the blast to knock monsters out of your vision radius. At this point, you can switch away from rockets to finish them off. This method conserves the items that the enemies drop, playing to the strengths of the launcher (above-average AOE damage) while keeping it fuelled in ammo!
Using Weapons: BFGs I know, I know, it's a bit crazy to think of the BFG not being in the 'explosive' category, given the size of its explosion! The thing is, it plays very differently
- the explosion itself doesn't hurt you, but the radius of the exlosion is too large for attempting to preseve items, and it uses a different (rarer) ammo type. The BFG can be a great weapon, but it does take a little learning. It's going to be in everyone's best interest, though, because it functions as an excellent cell carrier, so most characters will be carrying it with them; might as well learn to use it! First up, the numbers on the BFG add up quite well - it's huge area is amazing for clearing large areas, particularly when you're surrounded (those demon or pain elemental caves go from deadly to trivial if you only remember you have this weapon!) On top of big AOE, its damage and firing times are good enough for it to be worth using over your preferred weapon for single targets in a lot of cases. The better you are with your preferred weapon, though, the less benefit there is from switching to BFG, and eventually you'll reach a point where your damage is actually better with your main weapon (switching to BFG is reducing your damage/time!) This single-target break point usually kicks in sometime mid-hell, but melee characters are usually better not switching, and shotgun characters should usually switch. Also note that this only applies if you're firing all 3 BFG shots: a single BFG shot is rarely worth it to switch to for a boss. Reloading the BFG without a cell battery in the prepared slot is not only too time-consuming to be worth it, it's also outright dangerous and can get you killed in a single turn. The BFG blast damage slopes off at certain points in its area, and it actually does a full, 100% damage to a good few tiles! It's almost a 5x5 area:
xxx
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Outside of this area, damage slopes off dramatically. This means that, if you have a critical foe you need dead, you can actually fire off a few tiles to the side without losing damage. This can be really useful if said target it blocked by other monsters. For example, imagine that JC just summoned a wall of barons, blocking your path to shoot him with your plasma rifle: If you fire your BFG directly at him, he will still be blocked by the monster between you and him, but by firing it to the side (south of JC), the barons will be thrown to the other side from the blast, giving you a clear shot at him in future! Outside of boss fights, the BFG can be great at clearing larger groups of monsters. The afforementioned knockback can be significant here as well, mostly to try to knock monsters out of LOS so that they can't retaliate if they survive. More often than not this is not possible, but its worth bearing in mind because when it can be done, it's perfect! This tends to be important for the BFG because, unlike the rocket launcher, the blast here is too big to try to save items in the room with us. The pickups are going to be fried anyway! Speaking of destroying all the items: those points I touched on about it being different from a rocket launcher come into play. It requires a great deal of ammo to fire, and destroys a great deal of equipment on the level, which can cause ammo problems! You can work around this, though, by understanding how explosions do or don't damage things on the other side of walls. If an explosion doesn't destroy a wall, it is contained. This even applies to the BFG (confusingly, since the BFG explosion graphics draw it on the other side of the wall, unlike the usual (red) explosion.) Let's just consider, then, the case that the explosion destoys a wall. Common sense would suggest that the explosion has a reduced chance of dealing damage beyond that wall. In practice, though, it deals normal damage (as though the wall were not there) if it is penetrating top- to bottom, downwards through the wall, or left-right (ie the explosion detonated on the left of a wall, the items/monsters on the right are effected normally). If, on the other hand, the wall is above or to the left of the centre of the explosion, then the wall will still be destroyed, but everything on the other side of the wall is unharmed. With this information in mind, it is a lot easier to make use of the BFG without shooting yourself (!) in the foot by destroying important goodies. The weird wall penetration quirk can also be important in the case that you fear the monsters on the other side of a wall - bear in mind that the explosion will blow up the wall whether it penetrates or not, so if you're scared of the idea of opening up a wall and having a group of monsters firing upon you, but still want to fire, try to make sure that your explosion moves down or right across the wall, so that the monsters you fear are weakened or killed by the blast that opened the wall. Speaking of opening up walls and potentially being ambushed, this wall penetration also applies to more walls!!! A bfg blast left-to-right will go through multiple walls. Hypothetically, if one were to reach the special level 'the wall' with a BFG, opening it up would take the usual time. If we reached the containment area, though, we would get through really quickly! As an easy way to remmember how the blast penetrates, just remember that the game writes its explosions like we would write text - left to right, top to bottom! I think this is likely the source of the bug, too... If the game evaluates a tile within range of the blast centre, it first tries to see whether there's anything blocking the 'shot' from the origin (blast centre) to target (tile being checked). If there is a wall in the way, then target it safe. When you logically follow this through, the reason the bug exists makes sense - by the time it's got to the bottom-right tile, there is nothing left blocking the path from the origin to the target! Here's what this looks like, as a before and after BFG detonation (labelled o -> X) inside a thick cavern of walls:
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################# #######.....#####
########o######## ---> #######.X........
################# ######...........
################# #####............
################# ####.............
While the huge ammo cost and significant time investment are often obstacles in the way of the BFG becoming a truly 'ultimate' weapon, learning to harness the nuances of it's blast, and learning to know when you can afford its cost, can result in a decent functionality to draw from what is overwise a very useful energy carrying suitcase!
Pistol
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The pistol is a surprisingly effective weapon considering it's weakness in ID software's Doom. In the very early game, it is nearly as effective as the shotgun when firing at long-range against single targets. It makes use of 10mm ammo, but unlike the chaingun, actually rolls 2 damage dice to determine damage done per bullet. This means the pistol fires 10mm bullets at a higher power than the chaingun, getting more damage dealt per bullet fired, but at less damage per second spent firing. For most characters, the chaingun is a much better platform to fire 10mm ammo from, but if a player takes relevant pistol traits, or finds a unique pistol, it can be a formiddable weapon. As an extra point - note that traits probably make more difference to the pistol than any other weapon - with a typical handful of traits a pistol user can fire twice as many bullets per shot, for free (whenever he dodges), and get a free reload whenever an enemy is killed. There is a large number of special pistols in the game, giving you a pretty strong chance of discovering one if you're making a pistol-based character. The only surprise I'll spoil involves 'trigun' - it's alternate reload, 'angel arm' will nuke the current level, and kill you, if you're not invulnerable.
Shotgun
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Never misses, spreads out, hits multiple targets, but gets weaker at longer range, and the player has to spend a great deal of turns putting shells into the thing. The shotgun is an exceptionally useful weapon for 'firing blind', that is, when you feel there may be an enemy in a room, simply firing shotgun shells into an area out of your vision and listening for screams. Armour is subtracted twice when a shotgun hits an armoured target, but don't mistake this for 'the shotgun is poor against armoured targets' - armour is counted 4 or more times against each chaingun volley, and even more times for some other weapn types!
Combat knife
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More powerful melee attack, but melee is still only worth it for berserker characters or in niche situations. Can be thrown 4 squares to destroy barrels in angel of berserk, or to get monster attention.
Combat shotgun
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A slightly more rifled shotgun (better at long range, less spread), with a unique feature - 4 'quick reloads' per fight. These mean reloading extremely quickly, or reloading for free automatically when moving. After 4 quick reloads, you can't do any more until you manually pump shells back into the thing, taking a turn per shell as normal for a shotgun. The combat shotgun is not particularly suitable for firing around corners, it's rifled shots do not follow the standard projectile rules for corner-shooting, so you often have to position yourself further away from a corner in order to fire around it. On the plus side, given its range and spread, it can still be highly useful to use the protection of a corner to blind fire a combat shotgun at enemies you cannot see.
Double shotgun
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Rubbish at range, incredible up-close, but still not too good against strong enemy armour. Overall great for its ability to knock targets back, setting up great corner knockback tricks etc. Unlike the other shotguns, the double shotgun is generally good for all corner firing. I find, at higher levels of play, that the double shotgun becomes an extremely important tool in a character's arsenal for it's ability to impede a target's progress more than the time it takes too switch to and fire the double shotgun. This is hugely important when we are guarding a doorway (gift-dropping, chokepoint, corpse disposal etc), and we see a tough monster approaching at an angle that can't be defeated with corner-shooting and knockback (ie. a diagonal angle, since cardinal approach can be dispatched using the doorframe for corver). In this diagonal-dilemna, we can duck out out sight behind the doorframe, then move a single tile away from the door/doorframe/monster, leaving us a knights-move away from the door. From this position, with a double shotgun ready, we can blast the baron/cacodemon/whatever when it appears in the doorframe, and it will be pushed so far back, it can't shoot back. Importantly, it will now have a cardinal direction of approach to the door we were guarding. This means, essentially, I consider the double shotgun a tool that can turn a diagonal approach into a cardinal approach for the cost of only 2 shells and no hitpoints! It's hard for me to overstate the importance of this ability - a diagonally- approaching tough monster is by far the most common way that a good doorframe defense position is breached, and given that a doorframe is a great way of dispatching corpses on nightmare difficulty, having an answer to its main weakness is a huge boon. So much so, that in a typical nightmare playthrough I feel a definite lifting of the challenge when I first get my hands on this tool. A final point to note - while the double shotgun certainly isn't a gauranteed find, this tactical advantage involving doorframes and diagonal approaching enemies can also be solved with another item - the elephant gun. Particularly when tech-modded, an elephant gun can serve the same purpose, and is somewhat more gauranteed, albeit more expensive, given that 2 power mods are more likely to be found that a double shotgun, but could be useful elsewhere. I feel that this is worth mentioning because there are niche cases where I would build an elephant gun specifically to meet 2 criteria - this doorframe chokepoint defense, and a shellbox strategy for clearing the anomaly. In practice it's actually very very rare that 2 power mods are found prior to the anomoly, but given that I tend to save power mods for red armour (the first suit of which is usually found in the anomoly itself), there are a number of games where an elephant gun becomes a replacement for a double shotgun to help clear the anomaly.
Chaingun
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Excellent ranged weapon. The chaingun is effectively your 'sniper rifle'. It is excellent for firing around corners, clearing a coridoor of enemies while you remain safe and out of sight. It's poor against well-armoured opponents, but mods or traits can help alleviate this flaw.
Rocket launcher
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Powerful, massive area of effect, and very strong knockback make this weapon quite safe to use in the open against a big horde of monsters. When using, be wary of the fact that items on the ground will be destroyed - you'll kill the enemy swarm, but won't get any ammo for doing so. The rocket launcher is probably best used for fighting arch-viles and their minions. When you hear an arch vile, if you can't take it down outside of direct combat, then rather than going headfirst into a battle with it, it's a better idea to use the rocket launchers from a fairly long range - blow up some walls, and pound rockets until you hear an arch-vile death scream. The area effect of the weapon means that resurrected minions will be killed while you're still hurting the arch vile.
Plasma Rifle
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Much, much more powerful chaingun, with limited ammo and armour-penetrating bonus. This is probably the most effective single-target weapon in the game, and it's worth saving some cells for tricky situations against tough opponents. Note that although it functions much like a chaingun, the plasmagun is much more powerful, and does not share the weakness to armoured opponents that the chaingun does. With appropriate traits (ammochain), the plasma gun also becomes the most powerful of your weapons, capable of killing an arachnotron or a hell knight in a single turn of firing. I also feel worth mentioning the alternate reload of the plasmagun. In recent playthroughs, typically at a very high diffuclty level (nightmare, going for angelic badges) I've started to utilise the overcharged plasma rifle more regularly. At the stage where former commandos start appearing, nightmare monster regeneration makes it no drain on resources to carry an overcharged plasma rifle around, and with typical rapidfire traits, an overcharged plasma rifle does enough damage to kill a regular enemy (including mancubi, barons, and arch-viles if SoaB is high enough) in a single salvo of fire. This functions as an incredible 'emergency' weapon, and can be great for killing a target that wanders into a doorframe or staircase at an opportunistic move. This has been useful enough that I've started to prioritise an overcharged plasma rifle above a stack of cells in my inventory! The take-home here is not to neglect overcharge. I must have played years of DRL without really using this outside of shambler hunting in the armoury, but nowadays I've started to realise the power of the overcharge!
BFG
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(Ok, so 'technically' this is not a standard weapon (purple text etc), but it's gauranteed every playthrough, relatively simple to obtain, and even has a keyboard shortcut by default! As far as I'm concerned this, and the chainsaw, are basic weapons (albeit great ones!)) The BFG 9000 is like a really, really big rocket launcher, that can fire more than one shot before it needs to reload, and that always detonates on the targetted tile. Incredible weapon! Bulk mods are also great on a BFG, not only does each bulk mod add an extra shot before needing to reload, it also improves the BFG's secondary ability, which is as a sort of 'carrying case' for energy cells, since it holds so many more than a single inventory space would otherwise hold!
Chainsaw
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Surprisingly high damage, effective melee weapon. Even characters not specialising in melee can make use of the chainsaw (usually provided they have juggler and eagle eye), since melee attacks have other advantages (use no ammo, cause no knockback).
Pistols: Blaster Combat Pistol
Shotguns: Assault Shotgun Super Shotgun Plasma Shotgun
Minigun
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It may surprise you to hear that the minigun is actually the most powerful burst-fire weapon available. Properly modded (3xTech and 2xFirestorm) it actually does more damage, in the hands of a typical rapidfire-specced character, than a firestorm hyperblaster, burst laser rifle, modded plasma gun etc! It also holds an awesome amount of bullets. The only downside is how many ammo stacks it takes to reload! I used to consider the minigun to be a 'middle of the road' rapidfire weapon, comparing it, perhaps, to the gatling gun assembly. Since really pushing with it, I've come to respect it as the ultimate in damage dealing for raidfire characters!
Nuclear Plasma Rifle
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This one is actually my personal favourite weapon in the game. It recharges much more quickly than typical recharging weapons (4 cells per turn) and lends itself wonderfully to the 'burst cannon' assembly. Best used with the 'juggler' trait, this becomes a workhorse that conserves your ammo in your more powerful weapons for the difficult opponents.
Laser Rifle
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A ridiculously accurate version of the plasma rifle that fires 1 less shot per volley. The massive accuracy, sadly, is usually something of a waste - a character that is not spending traits on rapidfire weaponry will benefit greatly from it, but without SoaB and triggerhappy, still won't really get enough mileage to make it worth carrying around. A rapidfire-spec character, OTOH, probably has enough eagle eye to be at or near the accuracy cap, wasting the +10. An exception, though, is the 'burst cannon' assembly. This assembly increases the damage per shot and the number of projectiles fired, but at a cost of a rather large accuracy penalty. This is a great fit for the laser rifle, and the resulting weapon is not only one of the most damaging rapidfire weapons available, it also functions as a great 'carrying case' for cells, since it holds 104 with a bulk mod!
Explosive: Missile Launcher Napalm Launcher Nuclear BFG 9000
Mods are added to your equipment to improve it. Weapons, armour, and boots can be improved with a single modpack(*).
The 'whizkid' trait lets you add an extra 2 mods to weapons, and an extra 1 to armour or boots. Whizkid can be taken twice, for a max of 5/3/3 on weapons/boots/armour.
Armour cannot take more than 1 of the same mod type, and a weapon can't take more than 3 of the same type - you can't put 2 bulk (for 300%) or 2 power (for 8 defense) on that red armour, but with whizkid you can use 1 bulk and 1 power (for 200%, 6-defense)!
(*: A non-whizkid can actually add 2 modpacks to a single item if the second completes a basic assembly. For example - BP is high power weapon, so if your pistol has P mod, you are able to add a B mod to it even without whizkid, but only if you say 'yes' to the 'do you want to build a high power weapon' prompt.)
Agility mod - 9/10 times, these first go to steel boots. You can put a second a-mod on steel boots as well (tactical boots assembly), and if you finished your tactical boots after getting whizkid:2, you can put a third agility mod on them! Extreme as it sounds, I would advise all 3 of these in almost every game, with the only common exception being I already found a pair of faster boots, and pistol/chaingun users without eagle eye (where a agility mod on the weapon is pretty mandatory). Power mod - Great for pistols to go towards knockback (you'll need traits, too, though). Good for chain/plasma guns to help overcome armour and give extra damage per shot. Probably best, though, on red armour - red armour with a power mod gives a massive -6 reduction in damage taken per shot (for most characters, this means 12% health deducted from every hit). Due to the way armour damage works (armour durability damage is prevented by its own protection value just like hp is!) a power mod usually extends the life of a suit of armour as much as a bulk mod does, while also protecting hitpoints more effectively, and not slowing the player's move speed down like a bulk mod would. In angel of max carnage, power mods on weapons become more desirable, since it's a flat +1 damage, but it's still probably more well-placed on red armour. Finally, note that power mods are used in a great deal of the more important assemblies. Tech mod - Consider tech mods the 'damage increase' mod. For rapidfire weapons (and pistols if you've solved the need to reload) tech mods add more damage/second than power mods (but don't add any ammo efficiency ofc). To get the most out of their effect you should apply the max of 3 on your weapon, even if it means one less firestorm (TTTFF is best!). Feel free to scroll down to 'mathsy tech rant' at the bottom of this document for a little dabbling on additive bonuses, then a good little rant about frontloading damage, and how lower attack speed+higher dps like the hyperblaster isn't always best! In contrast. tech mods are terrible on armour and boots - For most characters, knockback is our friend; helping us escape from powerful enemies that are pelting us with pain like mancubi, revenants, arch-viles etc! Since tech mods are so good on weapons and so bad on armour, and since there aren't that many required for a good set of assemblies in a typical game (hyperblaster is perhaps the most important tech-heavy assembly), they tend to kinda look after themselves, leaving us with a surplus. Bulk mod - Possibly the most useful mod - I tend towards gatling gun for the first Recipient of a bulk (but sometimes prefer red armour). Bulk mods help your red armour - it effectively triples the lifespan. (200%, but armour still degrades at 50%, so bulk gives 150% full-strength red, instead of only 50%). Also good on rocket launchers and double shotguns, since you spend more time reloading than you do firing with those weapons. For melee weapons, bulk mods increase damage, and they increase it more than power mods do.
While much more rare than standard mods, one or more of these is guaranteed in the armoury/deimos lab, and knowing how to best apply them is essential to optimal midgame play...
Sniper mod - A single sniper mod removes range penalties, which are 0 at point blank, and -2 at max sight range, continuing to increase outside of sight range up to about -14 at max range (a little over half the map). This generally give a better or equal accuracy increase than agility mods, and since it can't be applied to armour, it's always better to put a sniper mod on a weapon for accuracy than an agility mod. That said, the accuracy increase isn't fantastic - it's definitely noticeable, but nothing huge. A second sniper mod removes the -50% miss chance for shooting at a target that cannot be seen directly. Generally speaking, the usual accuracy penalty makes firing upon unseen targets impractical and a waste of ammo, and even with an infinite ammo gun you'll still usually trying to get LOS just to save the time invested in missing all those shots! The second sniper mod, in these situations, isn't only noticeable, it's completely game-changing. I wouldn't usually advocate it because it's so hard to find 2 sniper mods, and since completed assemblies can't be given 2 mod packs, but if you happen to have sniper mods and a nice ammo-efficient weapon, go for it and make yourself what feels like a special assembly of its own! In Ao666 I actually make it an important goal to get a [SSPPP]Blaster! These accuracy increases are ok, but the sniper pack's strongest application is actually on shotguns, where they can create a plasmatic shotgun. Plasmatic weapons use shotgun shells to deal plasma damage, which is a great ammo efficiency technique, as well as working around the biggest disadvantage of shotguns (weak armour penetration at long range). This goes from an advantage, to an almost godlike boon in nightmare, where the corpse-destroying ability of plasma damage fired in a long-range shotgun cone (one that leaves powerups and items intact!) nullifies the biggest difficulty factor of nightmare (regenerating monsters). Before I started using nightmare as my base difficulty, sniper was perhaps my most dissapointing 'special' modpack reward from the armoury. Since harnessing plasmatic shrapnel shotguns on nightmare, sniper modpacks became one of the most significant pickups in a typical game.
Firestorm mod - A firestorm mod increases the number of bullets per salvo of a rapidfire weapon by 2. Alternatively, it increases the radius of explosive weapons. While adding a firestorm mod to a hyperblaster does provide a significant increase in damage output, it's hard to even argue the case against a simple tech or agility mod, given the ammo-efficiency dive that firestorm lends to a hyperblaster. Other additional salvo or blast radius slots are only less impressive, leaving the basic function of a firestorm pack pretty underwhelming. However, it lends itself to 2 assemblies - the first is the biggest fucking gun. This is one of the strongest items in the game, and can even be applied to a nuclear BFG. However, getting 2 firesstorm mods is very rare, and even when you do, the limited ammunition of the weapon prevents it from being anything particularly game-changing. The other firestorm assembly, though, 'demolition ammo', is an absolute monster! I'd argue that perhaps demolition ammo is the most underrated item in the entire doomrl community, because of the countless posts I've seen comparing chaingun or pistol damage with base types and concluding that it's a poor assembly. For me, it's wonderful. First of all, consider it a pistol assembly, not a rapidfire one. Now, just to briefly talk damage values; the demolition ammo pistol may well be sightly lower than other pistols, which feels dissapointing for a 4-modpack master assembly featuring a rare mod. However, the damage of demolition ammo is close enough to other pistols to be competing for damage, and let's face it, pistol marines have enough damage/second to disregard a few decimals here and there. The vaue of demolition ammo is in perhaps 4 other areas: The first, of course, is corpse disposal. While not as powerful as plasmatic shrapnel, demolition ammo is still an efficient enough corpse-killer to trivialise nightmare regeneration or arch-vile resurrection. Second, though, demolition ammo destroys walls, functioning as an extremely precise and ammo-efficient rocket launcher for rearchitecture. This alone can solve otherwise tricky levels. Third, the splash damage of demolition ammo creates many situations where an 'unmissable' shot can be fired at a wall near an enemy to gaurantee a hit on a target, maybe more than 1 target! This is much more important against enemies that are out of our line of fire, and more significant an advantage when we have intuition:2, but basically it means we can 100% hit many targets outside our line of sight. I'd encourage experimenting with a demolition ammo pistol and intuition:2 just to see how regularly it lets us clear levels without ever being in danger of enemy LOS! Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that fire damage has a knockback threshold of 7 (rather than the regular 12, for bullets). This provides a demolition ammo pistol with almost double the knockback of a standard pistol, and it potentially knocks away whole hordes, too! For a weapon that can be fired 10 times for every monster turn, having this monstrous level of knockback makes a demolition ammo an amazing 'safety device' for a pistol wielder. It's not at all uncommon to descend the stairs to a new level, be greeted immediately by an ambush of 10 nasty monters, and have every single one of them either dead or knocked out of LOS before the 4 seconds it takes a new level's monsters to 'activate' have passed!
Onyx mod - The onyx mod is the special defensive modpack. Perhaps its best function for a whizkid is just its default application - making armour indestructible. This also, notably, doesn't slow down the move speed of the player as a bulk mod would! A suit of basic red armour with a power, agility, and onyx mod applied is very much one of the best pieces of armour in the game. (Not quite but...) close to the best defense (protection + resistance) in the game, and somewhat average movespeed. This is more than enough to be your 1 and only piece of armour in a normal (non- Ao100) game. Aternatively, onyx mods are ingredients in the following assemblies: Lava boots - Basic fire-immune footwear. 2nd/3rd onyx often goes here! Fireshield - Irreperable, and weaker than modded Red armour. Avoid. Cybernano - Cybernano gothic is fun! Total waste of a nano though. Tower shield - For non-whizkids, this is often the best use of an onyx mod. It is easy to underestimate the incredible defensive power of this armour, and despite it being irreperable (except via megaspheres), it will often last all game if used sensibly (ie, remove it before maneuvering).
Nano mod - Ah, the nano pack! Probably the most powerful item in the game. Almost certainly the most versatile item in the game. The nano pack's basic function is extremely useful - it causes the item it is applied to to regenerate (ammo for weapons, durability for armour). This is always a huge saving in inventory space, as well as offering massive longevity, and opening many new strategic options and/or contingencies. It is also almost(*) always the worst way of using the nano pack (!), because the assemblies it can create are right up at the top of the list of 'most powerful items in DRL'. Power armour - power armour does not require whizkid, and can only be applied to the 3 basic armour types. This 'choice' is a no-brainer though - it should always be applied to a red armour. The result is a very good protective piece, with a great move speed, and regenerative durability. The downside is the fact that it can be destroyed if durability creeps too low. This is the best use of a nano pack for most non-whizkid characters. Antigrav boots - Antigrav applies a massive move speed bonus to a pair of boots, stacking with the move speed of the base item. While it is ideal to apply it to phaseshift boots, the base speed boost of antigrav is capped, making them no faster than antigrav steel boots. Don't go waiting for antigrav to drop - apply this assembly to steel boots if you don't already have phaseshift boots to hand. Nano-shrapnel - A shotgun assembly that greatly reduces the damage of a shotgun, but makes it completely ignore armour. It also has infinite ammo and no need to ever reload. Don't let the damage penalty fool you - applying this assembly to a super shotgun makes for an obscenely strong weapon, and we're talking game- breakingly strong! Without the rare super shotgun, though, it's nowhere near the powerhouse that it is with a super. That being said, even if it's just applied to a normal shotgun, this is still not a terrible use of a nano pack, resulting in an strong weapon that can radar-shoot into the fog of war to clear most levels without taking damage, albeit over a long, painful time period! Cybernano armour - The 'biggest' and most expensive assembly, cybernano, an armour based on high protection value, is sadly not worth making, mostly because nanofibre skin outperforms it on almost all armour bases, and the bases on which cybernano are better than nanofibre skin (notably, gothic armour) are all much weaker than the best nanofibre skin bases. Ultimately, a pointless assembly, and a massive waste of a nano pack. (Also note - cybernano armour cannot be removed.) Nanofibre Skin armour - A great suit of armour that bases it's defense strategy on resistances - by boosting the resists on the suit it is applied to. The best use for this assembly is undoubtedly the (rare) energy-shielded vest with an additional power mod applied. This suit has a massive 75% resistance to fire, acid, and plasma, as well as a basic protection value of 3. Note that, while this is a great piece of armour, definitely among the best, it isn't removeable, leaving the player with a weakness to melee that cannot be circumvented. It's also, ultimately, a dubious use of a nano pack when compared with the more powerful nano assemblies. Nanomanufacture ammo - This assembly removes the clip from a weapon altogether, allowing indefinite sustained firing without clip size or ammo supply to hold it back. Not only does this save inventory space, it also allows us to fire into the fog of war without wasting our ammo reserves, making DRL significantly easier. I'd consider any sensible nanomachic weapon one of the very best items, and a lot of fun to use (after all our getting used to ammo conservation!)
(*): I say 'almost' always, because there are certain situations in which we want to put a nano pack on a previously built assembly to create the most amazingly kickass weapons in the game, but this opportunity almost never shows up outside of angel of 100 runs.
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║ Quick reference (assemblies) ║
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║I've made this quick reference to keep within eyeshot during a game. ║
║Dividing them into item-type categories that I find much more useful than ║
║the standard big recipe list. ║
║Within each category, I've sorted by an approximate 'significance'. The top ║
║of each list will feature what I feel is the most important assembly to ║
║know for a character using that item type, and the bottom will be of least ║
║importance. ║
║(It's harder than expected, rating them like this, so as a general rule of ║
║thumb I assumed nightmare play, *not* angel of 100. On easier difficulties ║
║the demolition ammo and plasmatic shrapnel probably jump from top to bottom ║
║within their categories!) ║
║Assemblies involving exotic mods have their own category because a player ║
║is usually deciding which assemblies to use based on the best use of a given ║
║inventory slot, but in the exotic mod case, we are instead choosing the best ║
║use of our single (/few) exotic mod across all slots. ║
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║ Pistol | Rapidfire: | Shotgun | Melee ║
║Demolition PTTF | Hyperblaster** ATT | Plasmatic PS | piercing Bl AP ║
║Energy PPT | Gatling gun** BB | Focus Double PAT | ChainSword** PB ║
║HighPower PB | Burst PBB | Elephant** PP | Ripper** TPPB ║
║Speedloader AT | AssaultRifle AAA | Aslt Shotgun PT | DoubleChain** PPB ║
║StormBolter TBB | ║
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║ Boots | Armour | heavy | Nano/Onyx ║
║Tactical AA | Cerberus* PPAT | Tac Launcher BBB | Nanomanufacture BBBN║
║Cerberus PPAT | Tactical AA | BiggestFG BBFF | Gravity Boots NAA║
║Fireproof BT | Fireproof BT | VBFG9000 PPP | Power Armour** PN║
║Enviro Boots* BPT | nanofibre PB | MicroLauncher TT | Nano Shotgun PPN║
║ | Ballistic AT | | Tower shield PO║
║ | Lava boots TO║
║ | NanofibreSkin PPN║
║ *: Cerberus armour retains melee, bullet, shrapnell resistance, and ║
║ durability of it's target armour. Probably best on onyx or gothich armour║
║ to avoid durability problems, and allow an additional power mod pack. ║
║**: Strict targets. More strict restrictions for items assembly can fit on: ║
║ Gatling gun=chaingun | Hyperblaster=plasma rifle | ElephantGun=Shotgun ║
║ Power armour=the 3 basic armour types (but please only use red!) ║
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Assemblies are 'special' items made by applying certain modpack combinations to mundane or exotic items. Many of them have enhanced or different propeties over their base items. All assemblies are restricted to which items they can be applied to. While some assemblies enjoy a reasonably large range of potential targets (highpower weapon can go on any pistol or rapidfire weapon), others are extremely limited (elephant gun can ONLY go on a basic, standard shotgun). Note that basic assemblies (those that require only 2 modpacks, and can thus be built without taking ranks in whizkid) are balanced to be somewhere between normal and exotic items in power, whereas advanced assemblies (available to whizkid characters) range from exotic to unique in their equivalent power.
Before going into detail about every assembly in the game, I'm going to put out a tactical reference. The tactical reference will cover which assemblies are worth building, which are worth taking whizkid for,etc.
One thing that applies pretty much across-the-board for assemblies is that a player should generaly choose from one of two strategies... No whizkid, or 2 levels in whizkid. This is because of the strange manner in which assemblies contradict usual modpack usage. A non-whizkid can put a single modpack on an item, but can squeeze 2 mods on if it means completing an assembly, which makes the basic (2 mod) assemblies a good deal for a non-whizkid. A level-1 whizkid can put 3 modpacks on any normal item, but is confusingly incapable of making 4-modpack assemblies, and cannot make basic assemblies any better than a non-whizkid. A level-2 whizkid, on the other hand, can make all assemblies, and can put a modpack on any assembly, provided she finished the assembly AFTER she took a second rank in whizkid. This means that a player going for whizkid x 2 should really never assemble any items until after reaching the final whizkid rank, and this mad dash to whizkid x 2 makes going for only whizkid x 1 a very poor strategy.
Most notably powerful assemblies (ie, the ones worth checking out for general gameplay):
Non-whizkid: Characters that never plan on taking levels in whizkid need to consider assemblies without the additional modpack, and compare them to single-modded non-assembly items. Following are the good assemblies that don't require the whizkid trait at all, but they are often also useful for whizkids.
highpower minigun <- This thing is Massively stronger than the gatling gun if you have a few levels of Eagle Eye Tactical boots Let's face it, The insane movespeed you get from a couple of agility mods is hard to pass up. The question is rarely IF you should build tactical boots, but rather WHEN. In a typical playthrough (like 9/10 games) these are going to be your best endgame boots, so always put surplus agility mods on steel boots, and if you aren't one of those non-eagle eye non-shotgun charcters, you probably want this to be your top priority for A-mods too!. I tend to find it best to use the first agility pack on boots, then if I'm going for tactical armour agility pack 2 & 3 go there. THEN I finish tactical boots (to maximize movespeed at any given point, without having to lug around a broken, useless piece of A-modded green for too long, and probably delaying assembly creation long enough to crucially have whizkid:2 by the time I complete them.) Tactical armour Almost as amazing as tactical boots, and hugely underrated by a lot of players to boot(!). Make no mistake, insane movespeed is usually better than high protection value - you don't even have to take damage 99% of the time if your movespeed is this high, and in the rare situations that you do, you can usually run to a safe place before changing armour. This great defense, plus regenerating armour(!!!), without needing any rare drops is wonderful! Note that tactical armour is the only way a non-hellrunner can increase dodge chance, and due to the additive nature of dodge calculations, this assembly will make your running mode miles better at dodging projectiles. If nothing else, though, slapping a P mod on this is going to give a great regenerating suit of armour without very much cost in resources. Gatling gun Extremely strong weapon available to all characters to help see them through levels ~5-15. The gatling gun is endgame-capable, cheap to mod, and almost gauranteed. It requires eagle eye to use proficiently though! Consider it an early-available plasma gun that uses bullets instead of cells! Tactical Shotgun A good upgrade to the combat shotgun, for a whizkid the tactical shotgun tends to pale in comparison to an assault shotgun if one is found. For non-whizkids, the tactical shotgun is about equal to an assault shotgun. I would still argue whether the power mod might not be better spent on a red armour, but the second power mod is certainly well-spent on this assembly, which is a great workhorse weapon, viable for the majority of the game. This in a very interesting assembly in that it is only really worth it for non-whizkid characters. Whizkids can get a better long-range shotgun simply by slapping 5 mods on a regular combat shotgun, but non-whizkids, with their single modpack option, are much better off making a tactical shotgun. Elephant gun The elephant gun is super-powerful shotgun, balanced by its huge reload time. The reload time means that an elephant gun is only a great item if the character has a solution to this problem: Shotgun-based builds probably have reloader and shottyman, which solves things to some extent. Alternatively, jugglers can simply use the elephant gun as a 1-shot super shotgun, and it's great in this role not only for its massive 'get out of jail free' knockback, but also for its amazing ammo efficiency, which is amongst the best damage-per-inventory-space ammo efficiency items. Fireproof armour Not only is fireproof armour a good assembly in itself, offering a good, strong piece of armour for the late game, with an easily avoidable weakness to melee; it can also be built out of a ruined bulk-modded red and a lousy tech mod, which are both very common items that we would normally be tempted to dump. Ballistic armour The fire vulnerability makes this a terrible armour for general use, but specifically against melee opponents, putting this on a duelist or gothic armour (or in a pinch, ballistic vest) can really help. It doesn't often come up, but it can be worth having one in your inventory if the item drops have made it uncostly to produce, just in case you bump into a pain elemental or nightmare demon cave. It can also be used strategically to help fight the angel of death, or as a switch-to contingency after closing in on the cyberdemon. Powered Red Armour Probably the best use of a nano pack for non-whizkid characters. It's only really worth putting on a suit of red (it can't go on exotic armour), but when you do so, you get a 5-proection suit of regenerating armour with the movespeed penalty completely removed, and a huge 50% fire resistance, with a bit of melee resistance as a cherry on top! This alone is enough to satisfy all defensive needs in any normal game without 'backup' armour. Plasmatic shrapnel Corpse disposal on Nightmare difficulty is invaluable, and this assembly allows corpse disposal for the cost of the (terrible) sniper modpack. Tower shield For non-whizkids, this is often the best use of an onyx mod. It is easy to underestimate the incredible defensive power of this armour, and despite it being irreperable (except via megaspheres), it will often last all game if used sensibly (ie, remove it before maneuvering). Speedloader pistol I list this here only based on the community popularity of the speedloader pistol. In my own experience, I find speedloader a complete waste of tech and agility mods. While it's true that it does reduce the weaknesses of most pistols - reload times, I personaly find that a 10mm ammochain is a far more effective solution to the problem of reload times with pistols. The reason I disagree with most of the DRL community on this item might be because I un-equip 10mm ammo chains whenever I need to reload when monsters are not present, which I'm the first to admit is rather awkward, but once the muscle-memory on de-equipping an ammo chain is learned, I think it completely removes the reload time problem of pistols, and also makes high power pistols much stronger. It could be because of this habit that I find the speeloader a poor assembly, but there might be something else I'm missing that makes me disagree. Either way, the result is that I personally don't condone the use of this assembly, but I want to list it in recognition and notice of the fact that this is not the general opinion of the DRL community - most players find speedloader pistols to be good early-midgame pistols!
whizkid 1 (Basically, don't bother. If you're taking 1 level of whizkid, you're almost obliged to get the second, since a second level of whizkid allows you to further improve the advanced assemblies. For an advanced assembly not to need an extra mod, it would have to either be an item desireable for it's utility rather than numbers, or an item that doesn't get much benefit from modpack iprovement. The closest things to those exceptions are probably:
Focused double shotgun This is a lovely shotgun. It combines the huge damage of the double shotgun with the ranged potential of the combat shotgun, and given that even when playing a non-shotgun character I spend a lot of most games wasting 2 inventory spaces just to carry those two items, combining them into one is amazing! The knockback, crowd control, and 'panic button' functionality of this is amazing, especially for jugglers. My only real concerns with it are the whizkid requirement, and the way the super shotgun eclipses it in all areas. In practice it feels a lot like a more powerful elephant gun, albeit one that uses double the shells! This is one of the only assemblies worth thinking about taking with Whizkid 1, since most shotgun characters will find that they don't really require any superior weaponry to a focused double shotgun. The drawback, though, is that a player need only find a super shotgun to make this assembly completely redundant, and again, it's still better with whizkid 2! Tactical rocket launcher Obviously this is better with whizkid:2, since it somewhat benefits from an agility mod, but if your character has a few ranks of eagle eye, then this is another item thatcan, in an extreme situation, be assembled without whizkid:2 without causing too much damage later! There are a lot of very similar rocket-spewing items in DRL, so much so that we players are fairly spoiled for choice with them! The differences can be easy to forget, so to summarise: The basic rocket throwing choice is between 2 guaranteed items: rocket vs missile, trading accuracy and clip (missile) for rocket jump (It's a tough choice; but I probably pick rocket jump more often). However, to further complicate this choice, there is also the micro launcher assembly (like a faster, more accurate version of the rocket launcher with lower damage; consider this a rocket-jumping tool for the non-EagleEye player), the exotic napalm launcher (v.high damage, and leaves lava tiles), the revenant's launcher (homing/can't miss, high damage, no jump or clip) and the acid spitter (extreme damage, weird ammo mechanic). On top of all those, though, is the tactical rocket launcher. It kinda needs eagle eye, given its poor accuracy, but for an EagleEye character, it's almost certainly the best of the bunch. It combines the clip (5 rounds in this one!) with rocket jumps, giving the best of both worlds. Additionally, it has the ability to reload all 5 rockets in just one action, and one that takes less than a second, too! My favourite thing about the tactical rocket luancher, though, is the ability to have a rocket-jump contingency with just a single inventory space - 5 rockets in the clip means you don't really need to carry a stack of rockets from level to level, and that alone makes this a great item to build if the game throws a surplus of bulk mods!
Whizkid 2: There are a lot of whizkid 2 items that are good, and many are absolute game- changers. Think of whizkid 2 as a way of being certain to get an 'almost as good' alternative in a run where appropriate exotics and uniques don't drop.
Burst laser rifle Burst laser rifle (with firestorm or power mod). This is pretty much the top of the entire bunch for damage output. That being said, it only equals a manually modded plasma rifle. In fact 3 tech mods on a plasma rifle doesn't even need firestorms - it can be given power mods and still equal the burst laser rifle. However, the burst laser rifle holds a great deal of ammo, which makes it a better gun. Also, it's a niche case, but in the hands of a non eagleeye character, the burst laser rifle is miles ahead (ammochain master trait, anyone!?). The burst assembly has another very important use: creating ammo chests! A burst plasma rifle or laser rifle holds over double the ammo of a usual inventory slot. In an even more extreme case, a burst minigun can hold 5 times the ammo that a single inventory slot usually carries! This can be significant in angel of 100, when we don't really need any more mod packs, they are still useful for making ammo chests! Nanofibre skin energy shielded vest: A ridiculously strong suit of armour. When P-modded, the player will be taking 1 damage from almost every enemy attack, and not only can this armour never be destroyed, it also regenerates! Burst nuclear plasma: extremely quick ammo regeneration, extremely high damage, good ammo capacity. It's hard to lose a game with this item. Nanomachic weapon Nanomachic weapons are extremely powerful. Which is the best is a tricky subject, but most players find plasma rifles and rocket launchers to work best. Note that the nanomachic assembly is probably on the weak side of game-changing, but is available with reasonable regularity. Special case - the tristar blaster! It's rare, but when the opportunity arises to make a nanomachic tristar blaster, consider trying it! It's only about equal to a nanomachic rocket launcher, but it's a lot of fun! Gravity boots The movespeed from these is probably the most powerful application of a nano modpack, and that's saying something! Agility mod them and enjoy never having to fight anything that's in a position to fight back ever again! VBFG9000 A surprisingly useful place to dump your spare power modpacks, this gun can put a lot of damage out, particularly if you have access to the 'juggler' trait so that you don't have to waste turns equipping it! Biggest Fucking Gun It's rare that you ever get 2 firestorm mods, but given that the BFG is a great place to dump bulk mods anyway, it's always worth considering this assembly. In angel of 100/666 games, I'd advise trying to build one of these and getting a nano pack on it. 2 shots are often enough to trivialise a level!
hyperblaster or TTT plasma rifle : The hyperblaster has great ammo efficiency, but only average damage output, and very weak burst (damage in a single round of firing). However, if a player manages to get movement speed below 0.5s, then a T-modded hyperblaster or a TTT modded plasma rifle can fire quickly enough to guarantee that a monster is unable to fire back, even without cover. Provided the player continues to step backwards, then side-to-side until the enemy comes into range. Essentially this unlocks a new form of tactical defense, and it's game-breakingly powerful (hence its inclusion here). disregarding movespeed tricks, the hyperblaster is still one of the very best items for any rapidfire-based character. Triggerhappy works very well with it, and overall while it's not the very best in either category, it offers a very high damage/second, very high ammo efficiency, great capacity, and decent utility, making it probably the most all-round powerful rapidfire weapon that you can bet on getting in any given playthrough. That is to say, if your character is specialising in rapidfire traits, it's usually best to plan on having a hyperblaster as your endgame weapon.
Demolition ammo pistol See 'plasma shotgun', above. The power of this itemlies in it's ability to dispose of corpses onNightmare difficulty, without expending rare or valuable ammunition. This assembly is weaker than the plasma shotgun due to its restricted targetting (it needs a wall to shoot against), and uses a firestorm mod (which is more valuable than a sniper mod), but in a nightmare game where no sniper mod, Antifreak Jackal, or plasma shotgun has been found, I wouldn't hesitate to use my first (and only) firestorm mod on this assembly. When you can dispose of corpses with such ease, nightmare doomrl is simply an easier ultra violence (with double healing and duration from powerups). This item also has strengths from its knockback potential (since fire damage has a much stronger knockback threshhold than bullet damage), and can be intentionally fired into walls to damage monsters outside of line of sight to gaurantee hitting what are otherwise low to-hit odds. The knockback, in particular, can be a lifesaver.
Cerberus armour Cerberus is a great assembly. It's surprising just how easy it is to create a 4-mod assembly! This is good on just a green armour, but best saved for gothic armour or onyx armour, where it is a game-changer, and certainly tied for 'best armour in the game' - and the items that tie with it involve extremely rare drops! Cerberus boots A bit of a niche item for a regular playthrough, but borderline essential in angel of 100/666. Cerberus boots are easy to craft, and while they have poor movespeed, their fluid immunity is incredible. Hard to completely justify in normal games given the availability of envirosuits, they are important in angel of 100 because the lava tiles just get more and more plentiful the deeper you dive! Energy pistol As a main weapon, this is a pretty poor pistol. While plasma damage can help for killing revenants and destroying walls, overall you only really get the worth of the mods you spent (2 power and a tech gives an assembled pistol equivalent to 1 power mod, one tech mod, and plasma damage type). However, this is a very important assembly for pistol users. Pistols are generally crazy ammo-efficient, but later in the game it's not unusual to run into 2 or 3 levels in a row without any 10mm ammo, and this is a horrible way of losing the game. The important feature of the energy pistol is how it lets us sustain ourselves from arachnotrons and former commandos, making it a pretty important sidearm for pistol specialists.
Modpack use: Nano
- The nano pack is undoubtedly the best modpack in the game. It's basic function is making an item regerate it's ammunition/durability (after a 5-turn pause), which is extremely useful, but it has 3 incredibly strong uses in assemblies, too:
Nanomachic: BBBN A nanomachic weapon has no ammunition, and never needs be reloaded. Whether this is better than simply using a normal nano pack is situational, though, since this assembly gives no damage increases whatsoever, and allows only a single additional mod.
The very best weapons: To finish this section, I'll indulge myself in a little speculation on the absolute, dream-world, best items in any category are. This is a little list of what a player can dream of, and note that any one of these items are strong enough to make a regular playthrough into something of a joke:
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Inquisitor's set (Malek's armour & Nyarlaptotep's boots) Malek's armour is among the best armours in the game. While it certainly falls short of the best, given it's mediocre protection value and middle-of-the-road resistances (30 acid/plasma, 50 fire, 3 protection ; as opposed to, say, 50 plasma, 70 fire, 4 protection from lava armour, or 50 acid/plasma, 70 fire, 2 protection from cerberus), it has a built-in 25% movespeed increase, which makes it, alone, among the best armours to wear. When combined with Nyarlaptotep's boots, though (which are already the second- fastest boots in the game!), the player is given total immunity to fire. That is useful for walking on lava, but absolutely game-changing for combat. The most dangerous enemies use fire for damage. The exceptions are shamblers, arachnotrons, nightmare arachnotrons, and baron/knight/bruisers. Even in the deepest levels of Ao666, players swarmed with opponents will typically find sniping out the non-fire enemies pretty trivial, and there's something very satisfying about being surrounded by 20 cyberdemons, thrown pillar to post by their rockets, with total invulnerability to their attacks!
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Cerberus Gothic armour (or onyx armour) Cerberus Onyx is incredible given that, when P-modded, it draws almost all sources of damage to 1 or 2hp, with only melee, shotguns, and spider mastermind being likely to hit for much more. In non-nightmare games I would argue that cerberus onyx is ideal. However, in nightmare, where armour shards replenish 50% (instead of 25% on easier difficulties), the added physical protection of gothic armour puts it ahead of onyx for a cerberus base, imo. Gothic cerberus still has 200% durability, which is more than is ever normally needed, and protects exceedingly well against every attack type.
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Nanofibre skin energy shielded vest. This would be the best armour, were it not the fact that it can't be removed, and there are situations where wearing the inquisitor's set (surrounded by fire- damage monsters) or shielded armour (melee swarms like nightmare demons or agony elemental levels) is better. If a player absolutely must use only 1 suit of armour without changing/wasting inventory space with other suits, then this would be the number one. It has 75% resistance to all of the important elements (fire/plasma/acid), 25% resistance to to the physical attacks, and 3 protection (given a P-mod). This is marginally stronger than cerberus against most attacks, and also has a higher movement speed. Finally, it regenerates and cannot be destroyed. Overall the single best suit of armour, but not as sound a defensive strategy as switching between cerberus gothic, malek's, and shielded armour. It's also, despite it's power, probably no better a use of a nano pack than other options.
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Lava armour The fantastic thing about Lava armour is that it's a single pickup. The other strong entries in this list involve a combination of good items, including multiple specific rare item finds, making the practicality of obtaining them in a regular game pretty low! Lava armour is just 1 item, and while it's not as good as entries 1-3 here, it's incredibly close, and is an incredibly well-rounded defensive solution. It's only real weakness is a lack of resistance to acid damage. With 4 protection, this isn't particularly debilitating, as the main danger of acid isn't from hp reduction, but from it's double damage to armour. Given that Lava armour has a great built-in repair mechanic, it is resistant to acid, in a very roundabout way; it resists the biggest peril of acid attacks. That said, if we're surrounded by barons and knights, it can be prudent to change armour, but for almost all other situations Lava armour is pretty much the full package - good protection value, resistance to the important elements, indestructible (though it can have it's durability reduced), and it has a unique but essentially versatile and available means of repair. It's replacement of shards with a lava-bathing repair method is not a disadvantage. Consider it a huge advantage, in fact. Using running mode, even without fire-resistant footwear a player need not take too much lava damage to fully repair this armour at the end of every level, and the protection it provides means, in a normal game, the lava armour is all the protection you'll ever need!
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Shielded armour This is incredibly situational, and doesn't really deserve a spot in this list, other than the fact that it can be combined with other items here to give a comprehensive'best' defense strategy. Most of the time, it's a pretty terrible defensive item, given its huge movespeed and knockback penalties, poor protection (2), lack of moddability, and zero protection against the important (energy) damage types. What it does have, that nothing else can offer, is an indestructible 90% resistance to melee (+ bulets/shrapnel). On some levels, such as pain elemental/agony elemental caves, the player will be forced into fighting melee oppponents, and in those situations this thing is the very best. With that being said, even the best defense will only reduce attacks to 1 damage, and lost souls have very high speed and numbers, meaning that 8 lost souls surrounding the player are going to deal a good 8 damage despite the very best armour. Because of this fact, I would still argue that the best strategy to adopt when surrounded by melee opponents is to leave the level, so don't consider shielded armour part of the same category as the other 4 armours in this ''top 5'. It's just a nice trick to pull out when melee (including unholy cathedral) is the order of the day!
- Biggest Fucking Gun [n] I went through a period of trying to get the BiggestFG assembly on the nuclear BFG, but ultimately it's very rare to actually find two firestorm mods. Given that, I started to instead aim for the VBFG assembly on a nuclear BFG, but it turns out the VBFG assembly is far weaker than the biggest. In fact, VBFG doesn't feel a great deal stronger than a normal BFG shot. VBFG certainly feels a lot closer to 'big explosion' (BFG) than it does 'nuke half the level' (BiggestFG). In time, though, I came to realise that the obscene power of the BiggestFG assembly means that 1 or two shots is enough to trivialise a floor, and that often (outside of BFG-boost assemblies) the best strategy is to use a non-nuclear BFG as a cell-holding device with bulk packs, retaining the potential of adding a couple of firestorm modpacks for that dream item! If you can make a BiggestFG assembly, on nightmare, there are usually enough arachnotrons and commandos to farm yourself back up to full capacity, since the weapon itself holds enough cells (2 shots) to finish a level. In an ideal world, though, where we have any resources available to us, the best end-result of this area of weapon study is to apply a nano pack to a non-nuclear BFG that has already received the BiggestFG assembly. This results in a weapon that can fire 2 shots - as mentioned enough to trivialise a level, then recharge before descending to the next level to repeat. It's hard to explain how this actually feels - I'd encourage anyone to try it and see, but it basically feels a little like almost thermonuclear bombing the level without hurting yourself, then regenerating the ammo for free ready for the next level. I do feel it's important to mention that the nano pack is partly for convenience - in angel of 666 it's often the case that, after 2 BiggestFG shots, you can find a cell-dropping enemy amongst the ruins of the level you just blew up, or in the next few non-dangerous floors, and farm it for full cells, so just bear in mind that you don't necessarily need the nano pack - the biggestFG assembly alone gives a lot of the power of this weapon, and the nano pack just takes it from obscene to ridiculous+convenient. To use the weapon, it's not as straightforward as you might think - it's important to realise that explosions penetrate walls as though you're reading a book - left to right, top to bottom. They can't penetrate walls right-to-left nor bottom to top. This is a weird quirk of the DRL engine, and usually unnoticeable, but with explosions this big and powerful, it's essential to understand! If you want to clear up on both sides of a wall, your shot needs to explode on the left side of it! This can be important to hit all nearby enemies in the blast, but it's perhaps more important to intentionally contain the BFG blast, preventing item destruction. You'll find many occasions where you can intentionally contain your blast to save destroying that megasphere or valuable mod pack, while still killing your target. In case my explanation here isn't clear... imagine a scenario where a pack of VMR are to one side of a wall, and an invulnerability is on the other:
╔════════╗ ╔════════╗
║........║ ║........║
║MV..#...║ ║...#..MV║
║VMR.#.^.║ ║.^.#.VMR║
║RM..#.h.║ ║.h.#..MR║
║....+...║ ║...+....║
║........║ ║........║
║....@...║ ║...@....║
╚════════╝ ╚════════╝
If we fire our BFG at the bottom mancubus, it will kill the pack of VMR enemies! In the lefthand diagram, the wall will be completely destroyed, and so will the human and invulnerability on the other side of the wall. If we do the same thing in the right diagram (attack the bottom mancubus), the VMR pack will be killed, the wall will still be destroyed, but the human and invulnerability will be intact. When you get the hang of this, more often that not you find yourself using it to contain your BFG blasts. The bottom of the level is for 'contained' blasts, as is the right, and if you manouver yourself down and right upon entering a level, you'll find yourself able to take advantage of these 'contained' BFG blasts.
it's also important, though, to recognise that while the safe side of a wall is uneffected, the wall itself is obliterated, so ensure there's nothing evil threatening you on the other side! All-in-all, I'd consider this assembly+nano pack the absolute strongest item in DRL (and probably rightly so - it's 4 rare items drops, including 1 nano pack (the jewel in the crown of DRL drops!). It has just about everything you could want - rescue from dire situations, quick clearing without fuss or fiddling, and self- sustenance to repeat it. In all my time playing I've not encountered a weapon that even comes close to this for power.
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Nano-shrapnel super shotgun Another recipe that requires 2 rare items, this one is really, really great, especially if you take a couple of ranks of the 'intuition' trait. I'll be the first to admit that I usually avoid shotgun-based characters, more because I find them less challenging to build than for power reasons. A trend that I have realised over the years, though, is that shotguns tend to be ridiculously good without any traits invested, but don't tend to reach the highest power levels even when traits are pumped in levelup after levelup! In that regard, shotuns can be considered perhaps the opposite of pistols. Nano-shrapnel, then, could be considered the exception to that rule, because it's crazy strong, but only when applied to the super shotgun and with traits (intuition:2). There is no other shotgun to use as a base that provides even nearly the power level that the super shotgun does for this assembly. All that said, nano-shrapnel super shotguns are a game-breakingly powerful weapon! With intuition, it becomes pretty easy to play damageless from that point forward, simply hammering the right mouse button in the direction of any purple X (intuition) that is seen!
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Nanomachic your weapon here There was a time, before assemblies, where the master trait 'ammochain' provided infinite ammo with rapid-fire weaponry. Back then, before classes, ammochain was the single 'diamond in the rough' to dig out of rapidfire builds. Nowadays, of course, we have assemblies, but it's worth remembering that back then, ammochain was balanced with the fact that it blocked 'eagle eye', and still it got nerfed in later versions (the nerf was having it use the ammo of 1 projectile for each full salvo fired, instead of zero)! Since the nanomachic assembly was introduced, it became the de-facto super-weapon from that moment on - the (relatively) practical weapon that a player could hope to create every few games, and one that would truly make the character feel like they just ascended to a superhero level of power! Whether it's put on a rocket launcher, a pistol, or a plasma rifle, this assembly is game-changing. Not only alowing a player to use their boss-killer secret weapon against even the weakest enemy mooks, but also allowing us yo spam it into the fog of war without fear of recriminations, and on top of all that, saving us 4-5 inventory spaces from the ammo saved! Nanomachic is an incredible assembly, and should be enough to create a victory out of any normal games!
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Burst nuclear plasma rifle. This item, with a little care, can carry us singlehandedly through the rest of the game. The nuclear plasma rifle is a great item, and it's biggest weakness is it's small clip size (24), which, it turns out, is often not enough to dispatch a target on it's own. The burst assembly features, among other benefits, a doubled clip size, which on other items is of reasonable use, but in the case of the nuclear plasma rifle, which is held back primary by clip size, this assembly is basically doubling its effectiveness. The burst assembly allows the nuclear plasma rifle to kill almost any target without needing further charging time, and that makes it an infinite-ammo monstrosity in line with most nanomachic assemblies.
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Grammaton Cleric Beretta I was as surprised as anyone to see this making the list! The beretta is usually 'just' a decent unique pistol. However, as a rapid-firing pistol, it stands on its ability to benefit from both pistol and rapidfire traits, namely SoaG and triggerhappy. Most master traits block part of this combination, so the Beretta is best suited to a masterless build, but in such a build, it stands out as having the highest damage-per-second of any weapon in game, and it's not even close! Unfortunately its clip size and bullet hungry nature means that it requires a 10mm ammo chain on hand to come near its potential.
CAUTION - SPOILERS FOLLOW.....
There are actually 3 types of item in doomrl - normal, exotic, and unique. Exotics are far more rare than normal weapons, and unique are even more rare than exotics. Most weapons have one or more exotic and unique counterparts, and in this section I will not only list them all, I will try to cover detailed use of each and every weapon in the game:
(Sorry for missing a few uniques right now, there's just so many!!!)
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║ Basic weapons ║ Exotics ║ Uniques ║
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║ Combat knife ║ ║ Butcher's Cleaver ║
║ Pistol ║ Blaster ║ Trigun, Beretta, Jackal ║
║ Shotgun ║ Plasma Shotgun ║ ║
║ Combat shotgun ║ Assault Shotgun ║ Pencor Jackhammer ║
║ Double shotgun ║ Super Shotgun ║ ║
║ Chaingun ║ Minigun ║ ║
║ Rocket Launcher ║ Missile Launcher ║ Revenant's Launcher ║
║ Plasmagun x ║ Laser Rifle, Nuclear plasma ║ Railgun ║
║ BFG 9000 * x ║ Nuclear BFG ║ BFG 10,000 ║
║ Chainsaw * ║ Longinus Spear * ║ Dragonslayer ║
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║ Power Modpack ║ Firestorm Modpack ║ ║
║ Agility Modpack ║ Sniper Modpack ║ ║
║ Tech Modpack ║ ║ Nano Modpack ║
║ Bulk Modpack ║ ║ Onyx modpack ║
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║ Green armour ║ Phaseshift armour ║ Malek's armour ║
║ Blue armour ║ Onyx armour ║ Baron armour, Necroarmour║
║ Red armour ║ Gothic armour ║ Cybernetic armour ║
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║ Steel boots ║ Phaseshift boots ║ ║
║ Protective boots ║ ║ ║
║ Plassteel boots ║ Gothic boots ║ ║
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║ Phase device ║ Combat translocator ║ Hell staff ║
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*: Note that, technically, the chainsaw and BFG 9000 are in fact exotic weapons. They're listed as normal here because they have a lot more in common with normal weapons than they do with exotics - they are common (in fact, gauranteed in all standard games), have their own exotic and unique counterparts, and have a number key associated with them. Similarly, the longinus spear is only listed here as an exotic weapon - because it is common (gauranteed in every game, in fact).
Note that many unique weapons don't really fall into a neat category in the way that normal weapons and exotics can simply be put into pistols/shotguns/chainfire/explosive weapons. Because of this, I'm just going to summarise these special items without categorisation. I'll be listing them in the rough order that they come to mind, so while not exact, consider items higher on this list as more 'important' to know about!
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Cybernetic armour. armour: 7 movespeed/knockback mod: -30% / -30% resistances: 50% Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee. Special: indestructible, irremoveable, fully moddable by technicians. The cybernetic armour is a suit of armour with a great defensive potential, but one that cannot be removed and doesn't self-repair. This makes it a very, very dangerous item to equip. It can be useful, but situations in which it's ideal to equip it are not common at all (standard games, last boss fight, no angelic armour). In most situations outside of 'the game is just about to end', equipping cybernetic armour is really dangerous - the player is committing themselves to getting lucky enough for random armour repair to keep them in the game, and while this can be acheived quite reasonably, it's never really necessary to endanger our marine like this! The physical resistances of cybernetic armour are good, but 7 armour already solves the problem of most physical attacks, so they're a bit pointless! The lack of energy resistances, though, leaving a gaing hole in a player's defense even when cybernetic armour is intact (ie: p-modded red protects better than 100% cybernetic against arch viles, mancubi, and revenants, and with less movespeed penalty!) All things considered, cybernetic armour isn't exactly the 'deathtrap' it's cometimes described as being, but there is a danger of being trapped in a broken suit. Most importantly, though, even in ideal circumstances, the benefits offered by cybernetic armour just aren't that good! Special cerberus suits, or for non-technicians even just a P-modded red, offer better protection without the huge downsides.
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Lava armour Armour: 4 movespeed/knockback mod: -15% / -20% resistances: 75% fire, 50% plasma special: Repairs 5% every turn a player spends in lava tiles.
While the nano modpack is probably the best item in the game (both incredibly versatile and incredibly strong), lava armour might be the only rival candidate, the nano pack is only ahead of lava armour because it leans on 2 levels of the whizkid trait. Lava's only rival in terms of defense is cerberus gothic, and even there, lava armour usually has the better protective qualities. Cerberus gothic armour is better against hell knights and barons, lava armour is better against everything else. This armour is also far more readily repairable than any other! It's easy to be dissuaded, at first, by the need to stand in lava, but by utilising running mode, berserk, and the surplus of health globes often scooped up at the end of a floor, you basically always have 100% lava armour upon descending a staircase. Just a single health globe will repair anything from 40-95% of the durability of the lava armour, so consider its unique 'lava bath' repairing mechanics a massive bonus, not a downside. Essentially, upon collecting this item, we gain access to the absolute creme-de- la-creme of protection, easily sustainable for the rest of our run, without having to worry about selecting specific traits, collecting and combining components, or adaptive sutuational switching. We just pick up the lava armour, and become nigh- indestructible for the rest of the run!
- Nuclear plasma rifle damage / clip: 1d7x6 / 24 type: plasma accuracy: +2 fire/reload time: 1/- Special: Alt:chain-fire, Alt:nuclear-overcharge, regen:4 (4)
It feels odd to be writing so soon about the non-unique nuclear plasma rifle, but after considering uniques such as the railgun, bfg10k, and acid spitter, I feel that the nuclear plasma rifle (alongside a few other specials) is unique and game-changing in a way that most actual unique weapons are not. I think the most important thing to point out about the nuclear plasma rifle is that it does NOT regenerate like a nano-modded plasma rifle. It regenerates 4 cells at a time, which puts it somewhere between nano and nanomachic in terms of regenerative utility! Next, the fact that it's fully moddable: The first consideration we usually give to fully customisable weapons is always 'nanomachic?!', but obviously this is one of those cases where nanomachic is not only 'not worth wasting a nano mod on', but in fact probably not the best option even if we had nano packs on tap! So what is best? If our build has given us a rank or two of eagle-eye, then it's almost certainly 'burst nuclear plasma rifle'. The burst assembly offers, alongside other improvements, a doubled clip size. For a self-charging weapon this is a huge boon, because the nuclear plasma rifle is typically limited by it's cell capacity, so doubling the clip size doubles the effectiveness of the weapon!
The final pack on top of this can be either firestorm, sniper, or tech. Agility is overshadowed by sniper, and power creates knockback, which is undesirable in a rapidfire weapon. Sniper is the best 'cherry on top' if our eagle eye isn't great (1 or two ranks). If our eagle eye is 3 ranks or more, then the best final modpack may be tech or firestorm, although given the additional ammo/second from tech or firestorm, I still usually tend towards sniper.
- BFG 10k damage / clip: 8d4 / 50 type: plasma accuracy: +3 (irrelevant, see details) fire/reload time: 1/2 Special: Alt:chain-fire, uses 5 ammo per projectile, unavoidable debilitating inaccuracy Warning - after extended testing, I have serious reservations about this item. On paper it seems absolutely awesome, and would very much be a 'champion' for the uniques in the endless battle between uniques and assemblies. However, it's incredibly rare, and the one time I've found it while being in a position to really study it, a major problem occured to me - it's trash! It seems the game is somehow coded to make this regularly fire off-angle by about 30 degrees, which makes it largely ineffective outside of point-blank firing (and point-blank firing hurts you, too, so that's off the cards!). Next time I find one, I'll try it without the 'high power' assembly, just in case it was this assembly that was messing the weapon up for me, but I don't think it was, and if it wasn't, this is awful! (Old writeup, pre accuracy bug: The BFG10k is one of 2 uniques that can accept a modpack (the other being a railgun), provided that the player is a technician. It's an obscenely strong gun, and remarkably well suited to a nano pack (the large reload time means reloading it in combat is generally a bad idea, so you don't lose much to get regenerating ammo). So, the BFG10k is probably the most straightforward item on this list, but what's weird is that it doesn't really resemble any of the standard weapons. In fact, the only weapon that it does resemble in use is the tristar blaster (an exotic). A technician can mod a BFG10k with a nano pack and, provided they have juggler, can enjoy the destructive nonsense that results! That said, any class can get a feel for this power level with what I'd consider the 'mini BFG10k' - a tristar blaster, (preferably with the nanomachic assembly!) Again it's multiple rare drops, but it feels much the same - spam out scattershot plasma explosions that feel like missile launcher shots, and provided one takes care not to death-sentence oneself inside the blast area, we can expect all hostiles (and doors, walls, powerups, and corpses) in the immediate vicinity to be blown to pieces. That being said, the nanomachic tristar blaster absolutely does not belong on this list - it's way too weak in comparison to the other entires, it just feels similar (although it's still great!) Note: Unlike the tristar blaster, the BFG10k will fire a reduced salvo if it doesn't hold the ammo for a full salvo. This, in turn, makes building a highpower BFG10k dubious - a highpower BFG10k can still be great for a juggler to fire off a single salvo before switching back, but it's probably better not to build this assembly, and fire off 2 salvos instead. So how else to explain the 'feel' of this very exclusive weapon group? Well, basically, it feels like just bouncing huge crowds of enemies around before killing them, effectively eradicating corpses, and simultaneously destroying all ammo and powerups, severely limiting our longevity unless we take care to stop firing before all the pickups in the level are demolished. If you can get used to when exactly to stop plasmexploding things, this is a great weapon class.)
Inventory in doomRL is probably the most important aspect of the game-spanning strategy that there is. Managing your inventory is something a player has to get the hang of, but this section will deal with a few tips and guidelines for effective play:
Health packs - use 'em or lose 'em Health packs are lovely items. However, be absolutely aware that saving these is not an effective strategy. I see a lot of Dead characters who were carrying 5 or more medipacks. As well as posing the obvious question 'why was stocking up on medikits more important to this player than surviving?' it also highlights what a waste of inventory space this practice is. The golden rule to medikits (and most other inventory equipment) in doomrl is: Use it! It's all well and good hanging on to the valuable stuff until you absolutely need it, but only a very good player is able to tell when those situations arise before the game-over screen appears. (I certainly can't!) We might think we're gonna know what that situation is, but it's doubtful anyone who hasn't been playing doomRL for years actually can. The better approach is to take the following strategy: Always try to use your equipment, and only worry about when you 'absolutely need it' when you've run out. This feels dangerous, but you'll quickly find that you never actually encounter that situation where 'you absolutely need it'... Why? Well, because the situation came and went. You used the item without realising it was one of those situations, and your character is still alive and kicking. Furthermore, it's surprising just how quickly an empty need in your inventory gets filled.
Ammo - your lifeblood Make no mistake, ammo is incredibly important. In fact, it's more important than health packs, armour, phase devices, mod kits, and even weapons. You can live off health orbs if you're out of health packs (try playing angel of impatience), you can use other forms of defense if you're out of armour (including health packs and orbs), you can finish the game without mod kits, phase devices can be as dangerous as they are helpful, and even going through the game with only 2 weapons (one in each hand) is a fairy easy task. Playing without ammo, on the other hand, is impossible for most characters. If you run out of ammo, you are in a desperate situation. To keep on top of the ammo situation, first we're going to talk about efficiency. Spending inventory space on some ammo is more 'efficient' than others.
10 rockets
- These can deal out lots of kills with blast effects, but due to the fact that it destroys items, it's actually not a very efficient ammunition type to carry around (perhaps best just to take enough to destroy walls and blast away spiders). Typically, you'll kill about 10 creatures with a stack of rockets, but blow up all your treasure.
100 bullets
- 10mm ammo is very efficient when fired from pistols. From a pistol character, you'll kill perhaps 25 creatures with one stack. Very nice. In the hands of a chaingun user, however, you'll kill perhaps 10, and if you're scouting properly, the number will be far less.
50 Shotgun shells
- Incredibly efficient if used correctly. 50 shotgun shells will kill perhaps 35 monsters when you're using the layout of the level like a good shotgunner should. (you'll kill about 30 if you're scouting with your stack too).
50 Cells
- Not very efficient. These will pretty much never rival a shotgun for inventory efficiency. However, despite only carrying half as many per inventory space, cells aren't much worse per slot than chaingun bullets, and give you perhaps 10 kills per stack against a typical mix of monsters. The fact that energy cells should be saved for the toughest opponents usually makes this number far lower, but that's ok. From a BFG, a stack of cells will do a nice chunk of damage, but like rockets, above, the item destruction makes it an inefficient use of ammo.
Given the above, it's easy to see that shotgun shells are one of the best ammo types to carry around with you. Unfortunately, shotguns themselves don't carry much ammo in the weapon, meaning if you want a stack of shells as a backup ammo supply, you're going to have to spend 2 inventory slots to get it.
Often, a player can choose to 'give up' on a specific ammo type, which saves a little inventory space because it means he can stop carrying around the weapon associated with it. For example, many players give up on shotgun shells, or 10mm ammo. This can be an effective strategy, as long as you know you're going to be ok on what you have. There are, however, characters that can't get as much mileage out of their ammunition. Typically this is characters than have not selected damage- increasing traits, and the best examples are those taking the 'fireangel' master trait. Such characters are very likely to run out of ammo if they don't manage it well, and as such are well-advised not to completely give up on an ammo type. An effective strategy for conserving ammo is to think of your inventory ammunition as 'backup', and make sure to bring along a weapon capable of firing everything you find on the ground. In this method, you're killing the monsters from a level using the ammo you pry from their cold, dead hands. For example, you might have a character than mainly uses shotguns, so you enter every level carrying 150 shotgun shells, 10 rockets, 100 cells, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, a chaingun, and a plasmagun. Despite carrying no 10mm ammo (because it's not very efficient), you can fire every clip you find on the level, because you bought your chaingun along. While it takes some getting used to, this strategy is a great way to gaurantee never being desperate for ammo for too long.
Typical inventory guidelines.
For new players, who haven't got the hang of just how much to carry around, I'd say the following is fairly typical:
Left hand: Rocket Launcher 1/1
Right hand: Chaingun 40/40
Blue armour [2] 80%
a combat shotgun 5/5
b plasmagun 40/40
c BFG 9000 100/100
d red armour 4 78%
e red armour 4 [B] 200%
f 10 rockets
g 50 shotgun shells
h 100 bullets
i 100 bullets
j 100 bullets
k 100 bullets
l 50 cells
m 50 cells
n 50 cells
o small health pack
p Large health pack
q Large health pack
r Large health pack
s Phase device
t Homing phase device
u Thermonuclear bomb
Breaking it down, that's: 3 spaces for extra weapons (give or take) 2 spaces for spare armour (more if necessary) 4 spaces for primary ammo (whether it's shells, bullets, or energy cells) 3 spaces for energy cells (for emergencies) 1 space for backup ammo (make it something efficient) 1 space for rockets (for demolishing walls) 4 spaces for health packs 2 spaces for phase devices 1 free space for bombs, mod kits, etc.
h color - white name - former human. speed - 80% ranged - 4-16% melee - 2-4% (usually misses) health - 10 armour - 0-4 description - weak opponent armed with a pistol. Hardly bears even being careful around. Drops pistol + ammo. Only has armour if it picked some up.
h color - grey name - former sergeant. speed - 80% ranged - 2-50% (range dependant, 50% is a rough figure) melee - 2-4% (often misses) health - 10 armour - 0-4 description - Shotgun guy - can be dangerous if he fires at close-range. Best killed by setting up a position where he can't shoot at you, or at long range where his weapon is uneffective. If you're close and see one, moving to melee range is also safe (compare his melee damage to his ranged). Drops shotgun + shells. (Note - range damage maximum is a rough guess - theoretical maxumum for point- blank is 16-72%, but since they never fire at point-blank range (they melee attack instead), this will never be witnessed. I've personally never seen more than 50%.
s color - yellow name - Lost Soul speed - 220% ranged - 0 melee - 4-8% health - 10 armour - 0 description - Incredibly fast and incredibly weak. Swarms of these can be dangerous. Try to take then down with a shotgun at fairly close range. That way, you can kill the whole swarm with 2-3 shots, and take no damage.
i color - brown name - Imp speed - 105% ranged - 6-34% (armour counts twice) melee - 6-10% health - 12 armour - 0 description - Dangerous at all ranges, and can't be lured with giftdropping since he doesn't use items. Best killed with tactical defense, shooting around a corner where he can't fire back. Often, you'll have to wait for him to wander into your sight to set this up. Running mode also makes dodging his fireballs very effective, which can allow you to rush into cover or into melee with him.
c color - pink name - Demon speed - 120% ranged - 0 melee - 14-18% health - 22 armour - 1 description - Pretty easy, actually. He takes some punishment, but 2 pretty- close-ranged shotgun shots will kill usually kill him, and will almost certainly knock him back, out of melee range. The main tricks for fighting demons are: Using weapon swap/inventory screen instead of reloading for shotguns, stepping diagonally around a doorframe to make the demon give up chasing you, and using 'running mode' to run quicker than them if no other option presents itself.
h color - red name - former captain. speed - 80% ranged - 2-12% (4 shots) melee - 2-6% health - 10 armour - 0-4 description - His chaingun is fairly dangerous at all ranges. Best killed with tactical defense or giftdropping.
o color - red name - cacodemon speed - 100% ranged - 8-44% (armour counts twice) melee - 14-18% health - 40 armour - 1 description - Basically, almost exactly like an imp, but tougher and deals more damage.
B color - brown name - Hell knight speed - 100% ranged - 8-38% (armour counts twice) melee - 14-18% health - 50 armour - 1 description - Dangerous opponent at all ranges. Can be lured with giftdropping, but when he comes to pick up the gift, you won't kill him the instant he appears - he's too tough for that. Best dealt with by setting up a good firing line such as:
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║#####.@║
║B......║
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O color - brown name - Pain elemental speed - 100% ranged - 0 melee - 14-18% health - 40 armour - 1 description - Spits special lost souls, which give no experience when killed. Only spits out lost souls when it can see you, so closing a door on it pacifies it, and shooting at the swarm of lost souls while out-of-sight of the elemental will let you thin the swarm effectively. Note that, when you have the 'vampyre' trait, it's in your best interest not to kill these, as their lost souls can be farmed for 200% health as many times as you like.
B color - Red name - Baron of hell speed - 100% ranged - 10-54% (armour counts twice) melee - 18-22% health - 60 armour - 2 description - Bad news. Much like the hell knight above, but with even more health, more armour, and a more powerful attack with a large radius.
A color - Yellow name - Arachnotron speed - 130% ranged - 2-10% (6 shots) melee - 6-10% health - 50 armour - 2 description - Pretty accurate shooter. The bad news - at close range a single lucky arachnotron is capable of taking you from 100% to zero health in a single turn (due to it's speed 130%)! Good news: when you get used to the way armour works, these things are no sweat. Just consult the following chart, which concerns plasma vs armour.
- green armour: -1% per bullet
- blue armour: -2% per bullet
- red armour: -4% per bullet
- berserk: -4% per bullet
- running mode: -4% per bullet (plus very good chance to dodge bullets) Since armour has half effect against plasma attacks, you'll be wanting the red, or the blue + running. You don't really need red + running because d5-4 isn't much different from d5-2 when the minimum of 1 damage is considered, but running mode is always welcome, since it doesn't use any resources to go into. Alternatively, get into melee range. When fighting multiple arachnotrons, play very slowly: it's surprisingly frequent how many situations crop up where you can run into melee range of an arachnotron, and use it as a shield to fend off the shots of it's brethren.
h color - blue name - Former Commando speed - 100% ranged - 1-14% (6 shots) melee - 6-10% health - 20 armour - 2-6 description - Surprisingly scary zombie. If they pick up a suit of red, they've probably got more armour than you, and aren't going down before they've had a chance to fire at you once or twice. If you're not wearing armour, they can do up to 114% damage to you in a single turn so, like arachnotrons, remember the armour, berserk, and running effects on damage.
M color - Brown name - Mancubus speed - 80% ranged - 6-62% plus 16-96% splash from 2 extra attacks melee - 0 health - 60 armour - 2 description - Really, really dangerous, but also easy to deal with if you're not caught flat-footed by them. The mancubus can be beaten using tactical defense (but watch out - one screw-up and your defensive wall is gone). It can also be killed by hugging it at point blank range (just be careful not to knock it away with shotguns). The bad news, of course, is that if one fires at you when your back is to a wall, you'd better be wearing some strong armour, because you're gonna lose an average of 89% health without it (and on a particularly unlucky day, you're losing 158%). If you decide to stand nex to them (for a melee attack, perhaps), you'll find that they can't fight back, and will simply try to move away from you. This can often be a safe way to beat them.
R color - white name - Revenant speed - 120% ranged - 10-50% melee - 0 health - 30 armour - 4 description - Good armour, plenty of health, a weapon that never misses and knocks you around in inconvenient directions... Eek... It's usually best to defeat these with tactical defense - using wall tricks to shoot them without return fire. Dodging is useless against their attack, and armour isn't very effective either. Take note, however, of the lack of a melee attack. If you enter running mode when a revenant is close by, you can keep running into them and attacking them with melee or rapid-fire weaponry, and in their turn they will harmlessly only move away - they cannot attack or shoot at point-blank range.
V color - Yellow name - Arch-vile speed - 160% ranged - 22% melee - 0 health - 70 armour - 2 description - Ack! Absolute nightmare! Their speed of 160% means arch-vile's usually attack twice with their 22% damage flames that never miss. running mode and red armour still help, of course. If an arch-vile attacks twice while you're running+red, it will deal only 12% damage in total - much better than the 44% you take without protection. Their speed of 160 also means that they can only be outrun if you have unique armour/boots, and even then it's hard work. This, in turn, means their lack of a melee attack is hard to take advantage of, and only really worth trying for berserker games. There are three good ways to deal with arch-viles:
- The first costs normal ammo and doesn't always work - it is done with a decent wall and perhaps a coridoor (the usual corner tricks), but this is difficult because there will always be normal monsters that come out before the arch-vile, and the arch-vile will just resurrect the normal monster again and again until you run out of ammo. If you know there's an arch vile nearby, shoot and listen for his hissing gasp... If firing up the coridoor doesn't hurt him , then relocate yourself and find a different angle of attack. This method is much more practical if you have ammochain, eagle eye, or army of the dead traits.
- The second method costs 2-3 stacks of rocket/cells and your treasure. This method is less situational, generally always being somewhat effective, but sadly very taxing on your resources. Use missiles to blow up walls, and pound monsters with missiles or a BFG until the vile shows up, at which point you can pound him with missiles until he's dead. Trouble here, of course, is that not only did you just use over a hundred cells or 20-odd rockets, but you blew up all the ammo on the ground too! This causes ammo problems if you do it too often, so you're best doing this only when you can't get a good snipe on the vile.
- The third method costs XP. This is probably the most effective way to deal with Arch-viles in the long run... You open your inventory screen, check it against your traits and think about whether you're on track to beat a cyberdemon on level 25 (tip - I've been killed by him once in 25 fights). If you are on track (you probably are), then you walk around the arch-vile and avoid fighting him. If you're lucky, you'll find an invulnerability globe that will make killing him safe & simple, or the stairs down, which means for the cost of a little XP you can keep both your items and your life.
C color - Red name - Cyberdemon speed - N/A ranged - 6d6 melee - ? health - 200 armour - 4 description - The cyberdemon has different AI than most monsters. It also has a powerful weapon. The way it walks towards you in between its bouts of firing, combined with its massive health and armour, mean that you usually end up either backing to a wall taking splash damage from its rockets, or in melee with the thing! Beating it is never too hard though - you can try to dodge it's missile then shoot back while it's reloading, you can guide it past a pillar, then use running mode for a few moves to get around its side and hit it with a few gauranteed BFG shots (5-6 are required), you can try tactical corner-shooting to wear it down with a plasma rifle, and you can even phase device, relying on the fact that the cyberdemon moves left/right as much as possible before it starts moving up-left or up-right to get to you. Diagram?
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║.....................####..........║
║..1..................# #..........║
║.....................####..........║
║...................................║
║.....CDEFG......................5##║
║................................4# ║
║................................3##║
║.......####....................2...║
║.......# #........................║
║.......####........................║
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The above diagram shows 5 turns. The player, in position 1, started getting worried, and used a phase device, appearing in position 2. He then walks up to 3, 4 and 5. The cyberdemon prefers to walk horizontally, and thus moves through C, D, E, F and G towards the player. Once the player is in position 5, despite not being able to see the cyberdemon, he can spam plasmagun shots or rockets to his left for 14 turns or so (being a good shot or having infinite ammo helps).
@ color - Blue name - John Carmack speed - N/A ranged - ? melee - ? health - 250 armour - 5 description -
A color - Red name - Angel of Death speed - (roughly) 130% ranged - 0 melee - (Roughly) 23% (3 hits) health - 250 armour - 10 description - The angel of death is fought in the unholy cathedral, which means ranged weapons cannot be used to defeat him (they don't work on that level). The melee damage is my own rough estimate - it is in no way accurate. Pay special attention to his stats - it's clear that with his 10 armour, fists and the combat knife will hardly scratch him. Furthermore, his massive damage means you can't rely on large health packs to tank him, you use the large health pack for 100% health, and in the same turn he brings you back down to 30% health, meaning you have to use another large health pack, and thus can't attack or even put on armour without being killed that turn. Now bear in mind the effect of armour - we're taking 70% dmg per turn, but red armour will save you 24% health, berserk or running will save another 24%, and tough as nails or a power mod on your armour will save an extra 12% each. With some decent armour, say, a suit of red, tough as nails 2, and berserk, you'll take only 10% health dmg per turn.
The way to beat him is pretty clear - make sure you have berserk - the combination of 4 extra protection and a damage high enough to penetrate his armour is the only real way you can fight him in melee and win. Since his level has a lot of demons and lost souls, the best course of action is taking the 'berserker' trait, and running straight past the lost souls and the demons. Stand next to the double-doors that lead to the angel, then, while still in running mode, kill all the lost souls and demons in melee, hoping to trigger your 'berserker' trait. When it triggers, pop on your best suit of armour (red with bulk or protection), open the double doors, run to the angel of death, and chainsaw him to death. After killing him you get the longinus spear - an incredible melee weapon that should be just perfect for your already melee-optimised build.
Angel of 100 secret enemies:
i color - Blue name - Nightmare Imp speed - ?? ranged - ?? melee - ?? health - ?? armour - 0 description - Similar to the imp, but it seems to be a little tougher to kill (still goes down to a single volley of most decent weapons), and do a little more damage. The biggest difference, however, is the fact that the nightmare imp does not make any noises.
c color - Blue name - Nightmare demon speed - ?? ranged - ?? melee - ?? health - ?? armour - 0 description - Similar to the demon, but it seems to be a little tougher to kill (still goes down to a single volley of most decent weapons), and do a little more damage. The biggest difference, however, is the fact that the nightmare demon does not make any noises.
o color - Blue name - Nightmare Cacodemon speed - ?? ranged - ?? melee - ?? health - ?? armour - 0 description - Similar to the cacodemon, but appears to do more damage. May be tougher to kill, but it's hard to say... The biggest difference, however, is the fact that the nightmare cacodemon does not make any noises.
In addition to their 'natural' advanced trait (a single advanced trait that the class can take without prerequisite basic traits) and their master traits (5 class-specific, extra-powerful traits that have steep requirements and restrictions to meet before they can be taken), each class also has some inbuilt abilities that are totally seperate from traits. These are certainly not created equal - For convenience, I gave them a rough rating out of 10 for how powerful they are relative to one another.
-=Marine =-
- The Marine has a little extra health (2/10), and increased powerup duration (3/10). The health bonus is only just noticeable, but it does stop 'berserker' from proccing as easily, to the point that some players have intentionally stripped off those extra hitpoints using azrael's scythe just to get their berserker threshhold back! Urgh! On top of the health bonus, though, is an increased powerup duration. This one is noticeable, but obviously it relies on random level generation, making for nothing that can be strategically relied upon, and to rub salt into the wound of marine class abilities, its bonus is halved on nightmare (WHY!! Haha!), the difficulty level where every little advantage like this is truly tested! The advanced trait a marine gets to skip to is 'badass', which is actually a (situationally) really useful trait, but at the end of the day it's just defense, and the pre-req the marine is skipping is tough as nails - a great defensive trait itself! The issue here is that, if a player levels up and decides to get defense, taking badass early is merely skipping a defense trait to get a defense trait - there's no real feeling of a shortcut being taken here! The marine's master traits range from absolutely abonimable (bullet dance) to massively game-changing (Vampyre). Ammochain is also extremely strong but, like most great master traits, is difficult to get to, given that it's a raidfire-based strategy that forbids eagle eye. Vampyre is something of an exception in that it's a ludicrously strong, game-changing master trait that doesn't have unreasonable requirements, and doesn't block anything particularly limiting. Due to this, while the marine's unique class abilities are undoubtedly the worst, the class itself can be a contender for the best due to the versatility, ease of access, and power of vampyre.
-= Scout =-
- The scout gets StairSense (7/10), and increased speed (5/10) applied to all actions. The speed bonus is +10%, and is actually quite a significant bonus. Due to how so many enemies have the same base speed as the player, having even this small bonus means that a scout can play 'ring-o-roses' until monsters lose interest (although this wont work with demons, imps or other fast creatures.) The speed is perhaps most noticeable, though, on N! difficulty, where it allows a player to safely wait on the spot in the early levels, as we're fast enough to prevent the rare-but-significant chance of an imp getting 2 turns in a row when it comes into view. As well as speed, the scout also gets an inate ability to see the location of the stairs of each level. This can range from worthless (100% clearance playthroughs) to utterly incredible (speedrunning, angel of red alert etc). The scout's 'free' advanced trait is intuition. Intuition level 1 is pretty terrible, but intuition level 2 is an absolutely amazing trait, affording a scout a massive advantage when taking it early, especially for a build that doesn't need eagle eye (like melee or shotgun builds).
-= Technician =-
- In addition to map hacking (3/10), the technician can almost instantly use inventory items (9/10). I actually regard this as the most powerful class advantage, to the point where the technician is my favourite 'base' for masterless builds. Many items ike mods aren't so important since we just use them when no monsters are around, but medpacks usually take a turn of in-combat time to use, which can often cost us the game despite being really well stocked up simply by being surrounded by aggressive monsters - if in the time it takes to use a medikit, our aggressors damage us enough to put us into the 'danger zone' where we need to use another medikit, we effectively lose any advantage of medikits, and might as well be holding none! In this situation it's tempting to just keep using all out medikits while hoping for a lucky turn where the monsters miss, but in practice all this tends to do is break our armour, putting us in even more danger! It's better to use a phase device or perhaps rocket jump (and this is why I always save a single inventory slot for a phase device), hoping that our destination isn't in sight of enough monsters to kill us. Technicians never have this problem, and for them, carrying a stack of 4 large medikits is like carrying a few 'extra lives' from level to level. It should be evident, then, that a situation in which we are dedicating an entire inventory slot just to get a roll of the dice lucky chance to survive, is a dire situation indeed! In fact it's probably the biggest source of unavoiable deaths, and thus, a technician being able to work around it is an amazing boon! As mentioned above, techs can also hack computer maps, making all maps function as tracking maps. There are many situations where this is actually a disadvantage, since tracking monsters puts animation on the 'wait' command. The result is that waiting for a thousand turns takes minutes, instead of milliseconds. Without a practical 'wait on the stop' command for ambushes, the game requires a very different strategy. That said, ultimately, this becomes an advantage once the character has the means to attack opponents that they cannot see efficiently. The most common method of doing so is nano packs for infinite ammo! Ultimately (angel of 100/666 only in practice) we can take a double-sniper modded weapon, which suffers no accuracy penalties for range (about 5% per tile) or being outside LOS (50%). With a double-S weapon, this becomes an amazing class power, letting us play damageless after the initial 'start of level' ambush provided a map can be obtained (somewhat practical if we took intuition to find powerups). Techs also get the ability to tinker with some unique items that the other characters cannot. These are a very limited list though - the railgun, BFG10k, and cybernetic armour. Of these, 2 are so rare that the advantage is negligible. The third, cybernetic armour, is sadly not good enough to be worth getting trapped inside, making this second technician advantage pointless. If you do happen upon one of the weapons, though, be aware that this is a unique situation in which a single mod can be applied (like whizkid:0), but assembles can be modded (like whizkid:2), allowing us to build, for example, a high-power BFG10k with a nano mod applied! Finally, techs start with a tech mod. I find this a nice little edge. In leiu of anything else, just putting it on a pistol (ideally with finesse) gives us a way of passing half-turns while we wait, which turns out, if we take care to actually use it, a lot better than the scout's speed increase for those essential ambush situations. The tech's 'free trait' is whizkid. We've covered whizkid enough in this guide to understand how great this is, but given that the prereq being skipped - finesse, is actually useful for almost all characters, and needed to unlock juggler anyway, being able to skip taking finesse isn't that useful.
Before getting into details and builds, I wanted to give a general overview on traits. There are 3 types of traits. First, there are basic traits, which are available to every character from the start of the game. Second, there are advanced traits, which require 2 ranks of a basic trait before they can be taken. Each class has a single advanced trait that they can take without the 'key' basics that are normally needed to unlock it. Finally, there are 15 master traits. Each character class has 5 of these, typically having 1 fitting shotgun characters, another fitting pistols, a third fitting rapidfire weaonry, a fourth for melee specialists, and finally an all-round master trait.
I actually wouldn't find discussing each category as productive as having a more general discussion around which traits are appropriate to whom, at which points in the game:
We get a single trait choice before the game begins. There are a few effective approaches to this early stage, but notable they tend towards more offensive traits. I imagine this is because using defensive traits to reduce the rataliatory damage we receive from monsters Will only ever be a partial reduction to the damage taken, whereas we can gain an absolute reduction to damage taken by despatching them before they ever get an opportunity to retaliate.
In my experience I have found the most effective early-game trait choices for a new character to be:
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Finesse --> Juggler. (Jack of all trades) Juggler is an obscenely strong trait, easily equalling, in my estimation, 2 or 3 other traits. This obscene power is well balanced by the fact that the nature of the trait lends itself switching between different weapon types, which is a tax on inventory space, and prevents a player from really excelling in one area. Juggler is effectively the 'jack of all, master of none' approach. With a little skill, a juggler can glide through the first few floors off the back of little more than a stack of shotguns, because being able to switch to another shotgun negates the need to reload in between shots. This, of course, is extremely taxing on inventory space, but for the first few floors while we're still slowly filling our inventory, juggling shotguns is great. The more obvious strength of juggler is being able to switch to appropriate weapons when neded. Chaingun at range when we have cover, shotgun for a knockback trap, melee weapons to conserve ammo when a monster gets too close etc. This advantage is less significant than it might seem, because, being 2 traits behind the usual 'power curve', our juggler's weapons are much less effective. For example, while a juggler might fire a chaingun at long range, and change to shotguns for defensive knockback as a monster approaches; a non-juggler would have killed said monster before it ever got close enough to worry about keeping it away! The third, perhaps most significant, advantage of juggler is how effectively they can use appropriate weaponry to have a monster die on the exact tile that we want their corpse on. This is only really important on nightmare difficulty, but it is a huge advantage there. In fact, I'll usually advise players that are having difficulty getting rid of nightmare corpses to practice with the juggler start.
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Brute --> berserker. (Melee) Starting with brute is the ideal start for melee-focused characters, but note that outside of Angel of Berserk games, a character planning to use melee as goal is usualy more likely to succeeed by leaning on their ranged attacks for the early game. Consider this, as many melee master traits are better reached by first taking their non-melee components. Now, while bearing that in mind, consider that the 'berserker' trait is not only a melee trait. In fact there have been some some very difficult 'no melee' badges won by taking the berserker trait. Berserker is perhaps primarily a defensive trait, and provides a huge boost to a character's survivability, so despite leaning on our ranged attacks, it can still sometimes be best to go straight for brutex2->berserker. As a speciality trait, brute is great for how self-sufficient it is. Unlike most traits, brute increases both the damage done and the accuracy of melee attacks, so it alone can make melee attacks effective.
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Son of a Gun --> Dualgunner (Pistols) Pistols are a really weak class of weapon. In fact they're absoolutely woeful. They are only worthing taking because of the absolutely insane power (and stackability) of the 'Son of a Gun' trait. It's even quite practical to skip 'dualgunner' and just take 3 ranks of SoaG, which itself is enough offense to get by! An interesting point to consider with this start is that pistols by their nature are extremely ammo-efficient, which in turn means that there is usually enough inventory available to give us some space for another weapon strategy - instead of going straight for a master trait, we can supplement a SoaG start with melee, shotguns, or explosives. Later in the game, SoaG is so powerful, that a master trait isn't really needed, so if a SoaG build has any trouble at all reaching the end-game, I'd advise skipping a master trait and taking whatever traits help patch up the 'weak area' instead.
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Reloader --> Shottyman. (Shotguns) Compared to the other starts in this list, reloader and shottyman are really, really poor traits! Well, shottyman is actually pretty powerful, but reloader is catastrophically bad, and the meagre benefits that it does gain are totally incompatible with the benefits from shottyman - a reloading strategy of either moving or standing still must be chosen, while using shottyman, reloader does nothing, and vice-versa! That said, these traits are terrible for a reason - shotguns in Doomrl are characterised by their power without traits, so if shotgun traits were any good, they would make shotguns horribly overpowered! Generally, while shottyman is a nice trait, spending 3 levelups for it would usually be a huge waste of traits, and is only really worth doing in order to unlock a master trait that requires it.
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Son of a bitch, eagle eye --> triggerhappy. (Raidfire) Taking traits that lend themselves to rapidfire weaponry can be a very effective way to begin, but is perhaps harder to pull off than some of the others. The maths behind these weapons work in such a way that we kinda need all of them to see good benefits. The best order in which to take them can vary - Son of a bitch also helps with shotun damage (and knockback), whereas Eagle eye lends itself to a more reliably fatal 'quickdraw salvo', which of course prevents enemies from retaliating. If choosing this approach, it's important to set up good firing positions, ensuring that we are in cover before engaging a firefight, so be well versed in the 'cornershooting' sections above. A futher mechanical complication here is that in order to use chainfire we need uninterrupted line of sight, which makes the ideal firing position not flush against a wall, but rather a single tile back from the wall we are cornershooting around. Speaking of chainfiring - in almost all cases, chain firing is more effective than normal attacks if we are going to be spending 3 or more turns firing at the target. In the phobos area, this is usually the case for demons, cacodemons, knights, barons etc. Former humans and imps are usually best tackled without chainfire, unless we're trying to conserve ammo by reducing the bullets fired in the first salvo. It's also important to recognise that while chain firing, a player that has to turn to adjust the angle of firing from one target to another will 'waste' a number of bullets while pivoting, and this can often mean that it's better to cancel the current firing chain than waste ammo in this manner. In truth chain firing can be an advantage, but isn't really a neessary part of using rapidfire weapons, so don't endanger yourself just to facilitate chain firing opportunities, and don't feel that you're missing out on too much if you rarely find yourself using it!
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Hellrunner Finally, a less voilent approach can be taken, where we attempt to just survive, rather than claer levels. Of all the defensive traits available, hellrunner is probably the best, as instead of reducing damage taken, it prevents it altogether, and offers more reliable and unique strategies when 'dodgemaster' is reached. The dodge chance from hellrunner does not make monster ranged attacks just go through you - it only makes them target the tile that they saw you in during their last turn. This is a very important distinction - it means that if you aren't moving, the dodge will do nothing, an dif you are moving, you still still be hit unless you're moving in a direction that would avoid a projectile fired at your last location. Without playing around this mechanic, hellrunner isn't a particularly powerful trait, but if we're moving strategically to dodge attacks, hellrunner becomes awesome!
After our initial (probably offensive) traits are taken, the midgame affords us a few different priorities that can effect the way we build our character. For example, both phobos lab and the anomaly are levels whose challenge is significantly eased by taking the 'hellrunner'' trait. Interestingly, though, both of these levels can also be made bearable if we have been lucky enough to find the 'shell box' item. This can make it very much worth adapting the traits we select based on the items we've found so far - if we have enough agility mods for tactical boots we may not need the speed of hellrunner etc. Another example of the midgame effects on trait selection is around character level 6-8 (depending on difficulty) where we'll encounter the armoury (or deimos lab), and the abundance of mod packs on that level mean that the second rank of the 'whizkid' trait, if we're taking it, should be reached at some point around here. If we get whizkid much earlier than this, we're wasting traits and fighting levels with an underpowered character, potentially costing us resources or even our lives! If, on the other hand, we get whizkid later, we will probably not have enough inventory space to carry the mod packs out of the armoury, and thus we'll be wasting a lot of resources, limiting the advantages of whizkid.
Ok, so, what are some common trait directions to move in after we've established out initial firepower?
Hellrunner is one of the most effective forms of defense that traits can afford us. It is also hugely versatile, since it also gives us other advantages like outrunning any enemy until we have a good firing position, outrunning melee enemies and shooting them at range (effectively solving any 1v1 fight against a melee enemy), and, if dodgemaster is taken, offering a perfect strategy to kill the cyberdemon without using any resources. If you're still unsure, consider that just taking ranks in hellrunner and going from staircases to staircase without trying to fight is absolutely a viable strategy on every difficulty level! All put together, hellrunner is an excellent backup to any offensive base.
Whizkid is pointless in the early game, because it can't really work without modpacks that will not have dropped in significant numbers prior to the midgame. With a few modpacks, though, this might be the most significant trait in the entire game. It provides the ability to add more than a single mod pack to items, which itself can provide huge benefits, easily matching 2 or 3 traits for power! Additionally it unlocks advanced and master assemblies, which similarly affords us massive bonuses to our equipment. My thoughts, and general concensus, is that these benefits are among the very best available to us through traits, making whizkid a contender for the best trait, and it's not even a master trait! With a bit of study and thought, whizkid gives us access to the most powerful items in the game, because not only are modded items and assemblies among the best available, modding is also the only way we have of combining mutliple 'rare' item finds! Rare items modded with rare modpacks are balanced to be superior to single 'rare' drops, and in fact rival or even surpass unique drops! There is another side to this issue though, and it's an important one. While rare drops and even uniques are often not as good as the best whizkid mod projects, they aren't that far behind (in fact some are equal to the dream-machines a whizkid can hope to make). Whizkid might well be worth 2 or 3 traits for a character that is improving 'normal' items, but it's worth nowhere near that many if we compare that modified plasma gun to a decent unique drop. Now, given that whizkid makes no difference to the power of uniques, a character that has found, say, lava armour and the Beretta is going to find almost no advantage whatsoever from the whizkid trait. After many, many games, I've come to realise that whizkid, while extremely powerful, is often only worth as many traits as you actually spend on it. The takeaway I've got from this is that skipping whizkid is always worth considering. In fact I've started to kinda proactively skip whizkid when I want to build an assembly (like tactical armour) before reaching whizkid:2 to mod assemblies! (That is, if I have a few agility mods, I'd rather get tactical boots now rather than wait for whizkid 2 so that my tactical boots can accept a third agility pack). Whizkid modding projects are, by their nature, going to take a long time to create, and the nature of whizkid is that you need WK:2 before finishing an assembly if you want to add a mod to it, so if you're planning to take whizkid, it's optimal to delay your assembly until you have both levels, so the power of a good find is somewhat delayed unless (confusingly) you skip whizkid! Those trait points will go to use elsewhere, and it's often more fun to skip it and be able to optimally use uniques - a playthrough with the revenant's launcher or a railgun can be a surprisingly fun departure from normal DRL gameplay! If you do choose to skip whizkid, become familiar with the 'power armour' and 'tower shield' assembly, power armour being the best use of a nano pack for a non-whizkid, and tower shield being a really strong assembly that, given it's lack of moddability even for a level 2 whizkid, becomes a really good use of an onyx pack for non-whizkid characters.
Another viable consideration is to further expand our offensive abilities. This approach is great if we're opting to clear entire levels, thereby using the large pools of experience to stay 'ahead of the curve' when it comes to power. What is meant by this is that most characters have their strongest chance of success if they realise when they've crossed a 'line' where the monsters of a level become more draining to our resources than the level provides replenishment. At that point, the best path to victory moves to just picking up what we can find before leaving a level, dashing for the end of the game before we run out of what we've got! Taking additional offensive traits can keep us ahead of this point for longer, and it's possible to stay ahead for the entire game, which is the realm of 'Yet another Asskicking marine' (killed 100% of monsters) and 'conquerer' (cleared all special levels) victories.
There are 2 ways of categorising master traits - per character, or per specialisation. Obviously we get to choose both which character we use, and which weapons we use, but certain challenges and badges require specific weapon types, whereas very few challenges require certain characters, so I think it makes sense to choose our character around a certain weapon specialisation. For this reason, I'm listing master traits per weapon specialisation, so that we can choose which of the 3 characters have the optimal master trait for the required category. I'm also attempting to provide the convenience of listing master traits in order of weakest to strongest per category. This is somewhat subejctive, but I feel that there's enough objective difference in strength among the masters to make it significant enough to be useful.
-= Bullet dance =- ------------ First up, the marine's pistol trait, bullet dance! I would actually rate this amongst the weakest master traits in the entire game, and given the natural manner in which pistols aggressively scale in power as we level up, it's truly damning to have a pistol master trait this bad! Bullet dance offers our pistols the ability to fire extra bullets as per the 'triggerhappy' trait. While this sounds strong, there are a ton of drawbacks that slaughter any potential here:
- First of all, it block eagle eye!!! A single rank in eagle eye makes a huge difference for pistol users, one that an agility mod can only slightly compensate for. On top of that, just planning to put an agility mod on pistol assemblies isn't effective because A: Agility mods are really important on our defensive equipment for movement speed. B: The point at which we reach both bullet dance and whizkid is so later in the game, you might not even see it before encountering the spider mastermind! and C: An agility mod isn't really enough, 2 are required to equal a single level of eagle eye!
- Second, bullet dance requires at least 4 prerequisite traits that improve pistol damage. In a sane world, given the multiplicative nature of SoaG, 3 or more ranks will be taken, so in practice we're talking 5+ damage-increasing traits. This expands the max damage of a pistol from 8 to 13, which has a potential to knock targets back. Any player thas has acheived knockback with multi-shot weapons will appreciate how undesireable this is, even for the tiny 2-shots of dualgunner. This means that while bullet dance has the potential to fire out 4-6 shots, the huge knockback will make it extremely likely that the target is removed from the line of fire after less than half of the shots have connected.
- Third, the tiny magazine capacity of pistols and the large bullet count we're firing per turn make reloading a far more common activity during combat than firing, ruining the good-on-paper numbers of this build. The ammo spray also causes ammo problems (which feels unprecedented for a pistol user!), and runnig out of ammo in hell is not unheard of here. This problem can be circumvented by using 'aimed shot', but if we do that, we're effectively spending trait after trait to acheive an ability that we're then willingly taking a time penalty just to not use!!! Overall, this trait is aboslute garbage, and if we absolutely must use a marine in a pistol challenge, not taking a master trait at all is massively preferable to bullet dance!
-= Gun Kata =- -------- Ah, the 'original' pistol trait! Gun kata is a great msater trait, amongst the best trait points that we'll be spending in our game, and unlike the other pistol masters it doesn't block anything essential to our core pistol strategy (eagle eye or dualgunner). On the flip side, it isn't that powerful - it sits snugly in the realm of 'decent trait', giving us an occasional free shot, and somewhat regular free reload. All said and done, gun kata is a sound pistol master trait, ultimately leaning pistol scouts closer to this trait than masterless strategies.
-= Sharpshooter =- ------------ Then we have sharpshooter! While bullet dance is a trait ruined by the fact that it blocks essential core skills, and gun kata is a trait that does not block core skills, sharpshooter is a trait that absolutely has to block core essential skills for balance reasons. Alone, it is among the very strongest traits in the game, and even blocking dualgunner (which any experienced player will tell you is a huge turning point for powering up pistol strategies), sharpshooter is still crazy-strong. It can prove a challenge to get through the eary game, although since it doesn't block juggler it's not difficult to just lean on other weapon types to manage this. Once sharpshooter is acheived and into the late game, though, the player effectively has one of the highest damage/second attacks in the game, With a gauranteed knockback (up to 10 times per enemy move!), and ridiculous ammo efficiency such that a single stack of ammo will clear a few levels! Sharpshooter is a true monstrosity of a skill. In fact it might be the best example of a powerful master skill in this entire list.
Rapid fire master traits:
-= Entrenchment =- ------------ I like to compare entrenchment to 'bullet dance' for pistols. While bullet dance is hugely limited by blocking eagle eye for pistols, entrenchment is somwhat less, but still limited, by blocking finesse. Finesse is a great skill to improve the damage of any weapon, but also allows juggler and whizkid, so the entrenchment block on finesse is effectively blocking 3 awesome skills! There are worse skills that could be blocked, but this is still a huge disadvantage! So how about the advantage? It's actually really good! A defensive-only master trait is a little unconventional, but in this case it works really well, it can be utterly top tier if a player can obtain a good resistance suit, but given that entrenchment blocks finesse-whizkid, the go-to resistance armour (cerberus) is not possible, and there aren't that many alternatives, outside of lucky uniques. In a typical playthrough, though, we can easily get by using P-modded red for major defense, bulk-modded red for a more general 'combat' armour (ie, enter levels with wht [P]red, but switch to bulk when it becomes safer), converting the ruined [B]red into fireproof to economise. If we find bulk or nano mods, we can use tower shields or powered red armour for a complete defense. Another important fact to consider is that entrenchment in way way hampers melee combat. Taking berserker is not only possible, I'd say it's somewhat recommended for a character taking this skill! A great ammo-saver, help with corpse disposal, and an awesome in-combat solution when you get swarmed! So all in all, we are usually left with a decent master trait that blocks too much to be worth taking. Sadly, this falls into the category of 'not as good as masterless'.
-= Cateye =- ------ Here we have the radpifire master trait that neither breaks the game in power, nor blocks anything too important. Blocking brute is unfortunate given berserker's defensive power in the late game, but easy enough to build around, and blocking tough as nails is almost unnoticeable, resulting in a 'tradeoff' that doesn't really feel like we're losing anything - similar to gun kata. Unlike gun kata, though, the plus side of this 'tradeoff' is way beyond the middle of the road. Cateye is an great trait! Increasing vision range by 2 is certainly not just for rapidfire characters. In fact, cateye feels more like a 'jack of all trades' master than a rapidfire one! It's also, imo, the best 'jack of all trades' master in the game, and if I was asked to, say, unlock as many rewardss as possible using only 1 build, I cateye would probably be one of only 2 masters I would consider. I suppose that's one way of saying that ceteye is a contender for the best master trait in the game! If you're taking it, though, do yourself a favour and take a second rank of intuition - we're already nearly there with Int:1, and while intuition and cateye acheive similar goals (sight beyond regular sight), they work together without really treading on one another's toes - one lets us see through walls, the other lets us see monsters directly without them seeing back. Note that intuition's range is '2 tiles beyond vision', and thus is does increase in range when we get cateye! Overall, cateye has spent years being my go-to tool for trying out new challenges, and makes a strong (albeit contested) argument for the scout being the best class.
-= Ammochain =- --------- If entrenchment can be compared to bullet dance, then ammochain can be compared to sharpshooter - a master trait so obscenely powerful, it needs to block essential core skills for balance reasons! In this case, ammochain blocks eagle eye, which is usually even more important for rapidfire weapons than it is for pistols! I say usually, because the only way around the problem for pistol users is agility mods, whereas there are some rapidfire weapons with extraordinary accuracy that don't need eagle eye. In fact, there are enough such rapidfire weapons that rely upon! There's the exotic 'laser rifle', which has so much accuracy, not even a single rank of eagle eye is really worth it for this weapon! That's a rare find though, as is the 'sniper' mod pack which can also help in this category. Not to worry though: The hyperblaster doesn't require any rare drops, and one of its defining features is a high accuracy, which lends itself perfectly to this master trait! An ammochain marine, firing a hyperblaster, is among the best doomrl warriors! Good damage output, lack of protection against plasma damage, and incredible ammo efficiency make for a nice, leisurely and rather straightforward game going forward! Great master trait - well balanced, and interesting in that it provides some interesting character building challenges by blocking eagle eye.
Melee master traits: -= Vampyre =- ------- If cateye is a contender for the best master trait, vampyre is undoubtedly the trait it's contending with! Vampyre's blocked traits don't really stop shotguns or pistols from being a viable offensve, and even if Vampyre is only used as a situational utility skill to accompany a ranged strategy, it is still godly in power! This is because it overcomes a mechanic that I mentioned in the very first section of this guide - lack of 'unlimited' health regeneration. Vampyre is pretty simple in it's use - it allows a player to steal health while performing melee kills. The health stolen is proportional to the monster's max health. With a little thought, this trait is just insanely strong. In fact, it has been a contender for 'best trait' even since the days where there were no classes. Back then, it competed with ammochain for the best master trait, and ammochain got a significant nerf since then (Vampyre got a change, too, but it wasn't really a nerf or a buff). Not only is this great for angel of berserk, it's a great go-to for angel of light travel, angel of impatience, and angel of purity, too! All-in-all, vampyre has a gentle progression to reach, and upon reaching it, the player's power jump is massive, making the rest of the gun among the easiest that doomrl gets!
-= Blademaster =- ----------- Blademaster allows a player to get a 'free turn' after every melee kill. This is a useful, but certainly not 'powerful' trait, and leans onpowerful traits and items to be useful (berserker, chainsaw). Additionally, it blocks traits that are necessary for pistols and rapidfire strategies, forcing a player into a shotgun+melee build.
-= Malicious Knives =- ---------------- This is a weird one. It's a melee master trait that helps ranged characters almost as much as it does melee ones. In fact, due to the fact that it block berserker (essential for melee doomrl), you could argue that it helps ranged characters more than melee! It's basically a large, large defensive buff, and a less significant extra source of melee damage.
Shotgun master traits: -= Army of the Dead =- ---------------- This makes shotguns ignore armour (usually they double the effect of armour!). It's a very middle-of-the-road trait, successfully allowing shotguns to scale well enough to be viable in the late game, without offering anything particularly outstanding.
-= Shottyhead =- ---------- Shotgun specialists already have traits that make reloading take a fraction of a turn. The requirements for this trait include hellrunner, which makes moving take a fraction of a turn. This trait makes shotgun shots take a fraction of a turn. Consider it just a blinding-speed shotgun approach, and beware of ammo issues when you start facing well-armoured demons in the later levels.
-= Fireangel =- --------- This doesn't feel like a shotgun trait at all! It's a useful trait, allowing rockets to be used at close-range. Sadly, it blocks eagle eye, meaning a character has to rely on the missile launcher to hit with this enhanced rocket attack, and in turn lacks rocket jumps, which this skill would work great with! If you really want to try this, I suggest carrying 2 rocket launchers, one for jumps, and the other for combat! For combat, if you can't get a missile launcher, use a couple of tech mods to get the accurate micro-launcher assembly.
General master traits: -= Survivalist =- ----------- This just offers massive toughness. Similar to malicious knives, just consider it a huge defense bonus. Pretty simple. Not particularly powerful, doesn't block anything particularly noteworthy, and totally unremarkable in effect, this certainly isn't the worst master trait in the game (ahem BulletDance), but it's certainly the dullest!
-= Gunrunner =- --------- This is a great skill, but one that you have to take great consideration to effectively use, and potentially dangerous if you dont. It simply makes single-shot weapons attack the nearest target whenever you move. Free attacks are nice and all, but getting a single-shot weapon to deal significant damage when you have to spend the time cost of a move is tricky. It's probably best combined with gravity boots and a fast suit of armour like malek's or phaseshift, even then you run into ammo issues later on! Fun, but bad. I've mentioned elsewhere that non-whizkid builds can be surprisingly powerful if properly planned, and this is a great candidate for experimentation with skipping whizkid, particularly if you've got 'stuck in a rut' taking it every game!
-= Scavenger =- --------- Scavenger is a truly great master trait, mostly due to how little it interferes with your build. Blocking berserker makes melee unviable, and blocking triggerhappy makes rapidfire unviable, but interestingly, blocking dualgunner does not prevent a pistol approach, and shotguns are still fair game. This is because at high levels of Son of a Gun, the pistol does easily enough damage/second in just one hand, and there are even significant benefits for a pistol user to skip dualgunner (10mm ammo chain sidesteps all of the problems with pistols). The result can be a great build that slaughters enemies using shotguns for grunts, uses pistols against stronger targets, and gets the bonus of having incredible equipment due to this master trait! In a typical game, it offers perhaps double the 'endgame' equipment. In angel of 100, you do reach a point where it's rather inconsequential, but until you get there, this is amazing. In fact, it was with scavenger that I acheived my first centurial angelic badge (Archangel of 666, nightmare difficulty).
I'm currently enjoying a hilariously tricked out build - a technician, specialising in pistols, but with scavenger instead of sharpshooter... It might seem insane to forgo the sharpshooter damage bonus, but having being able to take tough as nails is a really nice bonus, on top of the main effect, which is obviously to get great mod packs! I'm currently on about level 150. I've been unlucky enough not to have a single nano pack drop, but I got both trigun and BFG 10k. I actually used BFG10k for a while, with the highpower assembly on it. I was planning on giving it a nano, but after a good few practice fights with it, I realised there is a massive accuracy issue with it. For some reason the salvo fires at an off angle! I've tried targetting tiles closer to me, tiles further away, tiles near monsters, tiles with monsters on them, and even hope that the angle it's off by could be 'learned' to compensate (it can't, it's off randomly). This results in the highpower 10k not even killing a starting cluster of demons successfully. Also, I don't know whether it's the effects of knockback, but sometimes it seems to go wrong even when luck aims properly. I had one setup where a starting pod of VRs and captains were in front of a wall - perfect setup! After firing a salvo from full ammo, the pack scattered, but mouse-overing an arch vile had him on 'lightly wounded'!!! I scavenged the 10k shortly after that!
Here's what has been fun though (and likely the kind of fun you can only get with a single-pistol wielding Ao666 scavenger) - my main armament is a Blaster[PPPSS] in the main hand, and a nanomachicPistol[P] in the off hand. With intuition 2, this is just delicious. The blaster has great knockback, fires the usual 10 shots a turn, and critically, can hit targets spotted by intuition or the technician's hacked/tracking maps with pinpoint accuracy. There's something about having a shambler appear, and just immediately knocking him out of LOS before he can fire, then finishing him off and seeing his corpse appear halfway up the map! The next amazing thing about this weapon combo is that recharging weapons do so based on our turns, so having a nanomachicPistol gives us an easy way of completely recharging our blaster in the time it takes a monster to move 1 tile! For special weaponry, we have a plasmatic assault shotgun[T], for obvious reasons on a nightmare run. We also have a tactical rocket launcher, carried only to allow rocket jumping without wasting 2 inventory spaces due to it's decent-enough clip. Then we have a CombatPistol[PPPSS], which can back up the blaster if there's plenty of ammo lying around, and lastly a Grammaton Cleric Beretta - ever done the numbers on this thing? In 0.3 seconds I'm dishing out about 60 damage! That's way higher than SoaGx5 trigun! I was originally carrying the beretta around to inject damage into tough targets, but after an alarming fight with a lava elemental, I came to realise just how short it falls against armour, and it devours ammo; although that's ok because I have the afforementioned ammo regen shenanigans in my main weaponry. Speaking of ammo regen shenanigans, for heavy weaponry I have a BiggestNuclearFuckingGun[T], and a Buggest Fucking Gun[N]. The speed at which you can recharge these by firing a nanomachic pistol into the nearest wall is joyous! It's pretty simple to start one of those 'monsters come from everywhere' maps, fire a BFG blast at your feet, clearing nearby enemies, then just firing the nanomachic pistol at a wall - by the time the next bunch of monsters come into view, I've recharged about 80 of the 100 cells it took to fire; so that's 230/250 ammo on the BstFG and 100/100 on the NuclearBstFG! I've still not got to the point where I can just start unleashing hell on every level, because I'm still scraping around for items. I got my first gothic suit at 140, and while I've got the boots, I've still not got Malek's armour, so I'll need to find that before I can start disregarding levels! The rest of my kit is pretty expected - Lava armour, switching out for [AOP]Red or cerberus phaseshift where necessary (still haven't finished my cerberus gothic), and cerberus gothic boots, or phaseshift boots. I like being able to make a phaseshift set so that I can mouseclick through lava (because without floating, the game will not steer over lava even if you're immune!). I look forward to having the option to 'dig in' with cerberus gothic + cerberus boots - anyone know if that works properly? (I imagine it would, I know TaN works properly!). (Update - I've tried it. I'm not sure whether it's just my TaNx3 or whether the gothic set kicks in, but so far I haven't managed to take more than a single point of damage from any attack while wearing a cerberus gothic set.) (Also, yes, lava armour can be recharged somewhat quickly by a nanomachic pistol shooter standing in lava with cerberus boots on!) Anyway, I had to have a rant, it's one hell of a fun little run!
Fun WIP build ideas: Non-whizkid rapidfire-melee character. Starting with hardcore rapidfire traits, then moving into berserker. I feel this might work well with entrenchment!
Traits are the solitary character advancement mechanism for doomRL. When you kill enough monsters, you get to choose a new trait. That's it, and the system is elegantly designed for some surprising levels of character planning depth.
Traits are formed into a 'tree'. There are basically 3 tiers of traits
- Basic traits that can be purchased at character creation, 2, Advanced traits that require other traits to 'unlock' them,
- Master traits that require more than 1 trait to 'unlock' them.
The trait tree is designed so that no master trait is avaiable for purchase until at least character level 7. Also, all master traits 'block out' certain basic traits. This block goes both ways - the master trait cannot be bought if a player posesses a blocked basic trait, and the basic trait cannot be bought if the player posesses the blocking master trait. Note - in the current version (0.9.9.1) all master traits block in such a way that it is impossible to ever get more than a single master trait. This is probably intentional, and will likely continue in future versions of doomRL. I've split the trait trees below into 'general' traits, and 'task-specific' traits. The task specific traits are typically less powerful than the general ones, and are best suited to the angel of shotgunnery, berserk, and marksmanship challenges.
General Traits ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The following master traits are useful for 'all round' character types:
Brute ToughAsNails Finesse SonOfABitch EagleEye Ironman
Brute ToughAsNails | Finesse SonOfABitch EagleEye Ironman
Berserker Badass Juggler Whizkid TriggerHappy Intuition Ironman
Vampyre AmmoChain Cateye
Task-specific traits ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ The traits below are more 'specialised', and best suited to a character on a challenge game, or one who strongly favours a single weapon type:
Hellrunner Reloader ToughAsNails Brute Hellrunner SonOfAGun
Hellrunner Reloader ToughAsNails Brute Hellrunner SonOfAGun
Dodgemaster ShottyMan Badass Berserker Dodgemaster DualGunner
FireAngel ArmyOfTheDead Vampyre BladeMaster GunKata
FireAngel blocks Eagle eye, Son of a Bitch, Son of a Gun
AmmoChain blocks Tough as Nails, Son of a Gun, Eagle Eye
Cateye blocks Tough as Nails, Reloader, Brute
ArmyOfTheDead blocks Finesse, Hellrunner, Eagle Eye
Vampyre blocks Hellrunner, Son of a Bitch, Eagle Eye
BladeMaster blocks Tough as Nails, Son of a Gun, Son of a Bitch
GunKata blocks Tough as Nails, Son of a Bitch, Brute
Generally, for trait strategy, aim for a master trait. Most master traits are far, far better than ordinary traits. There are plenty of great character builds that don't use master traits, but there are plenty of bad character builds too... Going for a master trait is a sure-fire way of getting a decent character in the game, and it's a good idea to try out every master trait before experimenting with off-the-wall builds.
Ideally, a player should select a general master trait when going for a normal game. Weapon-specific traits should be considered in challenge games, such as 'angel of shotgunnery', 'angel of berserk', or 'angel of marksmanship'.
Of all the traits, a lot of the community is currently in a moderate agreement about 'Ammochain' being the most powerful trait, with some players calling for a nerf. However, there are players that think that Cateye and Vampyre are also strong contenders. My personal experience, both from my own games and from other community members posting on the boards, is that Ammochain is vastly more powerful than the other master traits.
FireAngel
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Reloader Hellrunner Brute Ironman ToughAsNails Finesse
Reloader Hellrunner Brute ToughAsNails Finesse Juggler
ShottyMan Dodgemaster | Brute Berserker Badass Whizkid
FireAngel Blademaster
-
In the most recent game update, the requirements of Fireangel were changed to make it a 'shotgun trait'. Unfortunately, this spoiled it's use for all-round characters, since it now blocked 'son of a gun' and forced all-round builds to look elsewhere for a master trait. In the process, however, fireangel became a lot more compatible with the 'Blademaster' master trait, such that the two are possible to obtain together. Whether a player would want to outside of a melee-orientated game is another matter entirely. In the current build, consider picking fireangel if you are using an 'active' shotgun build, and like to do a lot of moving while fighting. The downside to fireangel, though, is that the player's weapons are so weak, he is going to run into ammunition problems later in the game. You always have the option of being a chainsaw berserker to save ammo, but it's quite possible to live without. Perhaps check the 'inventory strategy' section of this guide for a little help.
AmmoChain ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
SonOfABitch Finesse Reloader Brute Hellrunner Ironman
SonOfABitch Finesse Juggler Reloader Brute Hellrunner
TriggerHappy Whizkid ShottyMan Berserker Dodgemaster
AmmoChain
-
Ammochain is an incredibly powerful trait. It has 2 main focuses - infinite ammunition on rapid-fire weapons, and increased attack ability with rapid-fire weapons. A marine using a well-modded plasmagun and ammochain not only has infinite ammunition, but is also quite capable of killing revenants, arachnotrons, and barons with a single turn of shooting. Realistically, an ammochain player can fully expect to mod a weapon up to 2-turn baron disposal in a regular game. The only real downside of ammochain is the fact that it blocks intuition 2 and badass, making it a lot more difficult for the player to survive the attacks of opponents. All things considered, think of ammochain a little like you think of 'angel of max carnage', but with infinite ammo...
Cateye ¯¯¯¯¯¯
SonOfABitch EagleEye Finesse Hellrunner SonOfAGun Ironman
SonOfABitch EagleEye Juggler Finesse Hellrunner SonOfAGun
TriggerHappy Intuition Whizkid Dodgemaster DualGunner
Cateye
-
Cateye is another extremely powerful master trait. It falls a little short of ammochain later in the game, but is stronger for the middle part. Its blocked traits aren't as bad, though - you're never going to want to take brute in a game where you are taking eagleeye and triggerhappy. Losing reloader can hurt, but since it's so easy to get juggler here, you can fix that by carrying a spare plasmagun in place of a stack of cells. Losing tough as nails and badass is a nasty one though. Overall, cateye would be an excellent master trait, were it not for the fact that the best thing about it, intuition 2, is available earlier in the game, and blocks nothing. cateye itself is simply icing on the cake, and it's icing you don't need.
ArmyOfTheDead ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
Reloader ToughAsNails SonOfABitch Brute SonOfAGun Ironman
Reloader ToughAsNails SonOfABitch Brute SonOfAGun
ShottyMan Badass TriggerHappy Berserker DualGunner
ArmyOfTheDead
-
This trait is useless for anyone who isn't going exclusively shotguns. For shotgun users, it's very powerful, but even in angel of shotgunnery, where no other weapons can be used, it is only perhaps equal to other character builds. It's not bad, by any stretch, and just about the only way of having a chance of killing john carmac using a shotgun, but don't expect the kind of paradigm-shifting effect you get from a chaingunner user cateye or ammochain. Basically, with ArmyOfTheDead, a player can kill well-armoured monsters such as revenants, mancubi, and barons without wasting a stack of shotgun shells and a minute of in-game time. When you meet a revenant backed up by an arch-vile, you'll really feel the drain on your ammo just trying to get past it unless you have this trait. On the other hand, a character using finesse and juggler is almost certainly better at using shotguns to take down unarmoured opponents, which are the majority of opponents in the game. The finesse build also utilises shotgun knockback traps to better effect than the ArmyOfTheDead character, and said juggler later has access to the 'fireangel' master trait, which allows him to bypass the well-armoured foes when they are not in a position to be killed.
Vampyre ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
ToughAsNails Brute Finesse Reloader SonOfAGun Ironman
ToughAsNails Brute Juggler Finesse Reloader SonOfAGun
Badass Berserker Whizkid ShottyMan DualGunner
Vampyre
- The premier melee trait. Vampyre lets you steal a little health from every opponent you kill in melee. While this doesn't sound like much, remember this is a game where health is usually finite. This trait is the only way to regenerate your health, and with a little ingenuity (standing next to pain elementals, or near a corse on 'nightmare' difficulty), you can spend most of your time on 200% health. Of course, since the path to obtaining vampyre includes getting badass, that 200% health isn't going down as time passes either! After taking vampyre and brute(3) the best strategy is probably to plough points into ironman, so that your 200% health is actually 160hp instead of just
As a final note, it's worth mentioning that Vampyre is actually very useful outside of 'melee only' games. The ability to steal health from opponents is powerful in it's own right, but when a player is faced with an endless stream of opponents to kill in melee, be it from a pain elemental, arch-vile resurrection, or a nightmare game, he is able to take 200% health every time such a situation arises.
GunKata
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
blocks Tough as Nails, Son of a Bitch, Brute
Hellrunner SonOfAGun Finesse EagleEye Reloader Ironman
Hellrunner SonOfAGun Juggler Finesse EagleEye Reloader
Dodgemaster DualGunner Whizkid Intuition ShottyMan
GunKata
- Gunkata is a decent trait, but, like shottyman, I can't help but feel that there are more powerful builds for pistol-uesrs. For players using a pistol, the 'dualgunner' trait is clearly the pick of the bunch, but to expand beyond that, a player is faced with a choice: Do I spend points on my dodging skills in order to make free reloads and free shots available? (Gunkata) Or do I work on my raw pistol damage so that I can knock back or kill targets without getting shot at? Often, the second option is better for a pistol user, and this trait can often be left on the sidebench.
A note should be made here about 'juggler'. This is an awesomely versatile trait that is available very early in the game. Used well, it can be worth it's weight in gold (not that it weighs anything). Take note that 'swapping' to the prepared item costs no time, as well as arming a weapon with one of the weapon keys. This goes beyond the obvious pistol/chaingun/shotgun swapping. For instance, a shotgun can be placed in both the weapon and the prepared slot, allowing 2 shotgun blasts without any downtime. If a player has an inventory full of shotguns, they can make use of juggler to dramatically reduce their sustained-fire reload time, too... Fire a shotgun, switch to combat knife, drop the empty shotgun (0.5 seconds), then press 3 to arm a shotgun - the player just spent 0.5 seconds to get a freshly loaded shotgun in their hands, half of the reload time that a shotgun would normally require, and significantly less reload time that the 'shottyman' trait takes (0.8s). Making use of these shotgun tricks will make hell's arena a breeze, even without a combat shotgun or chaingun.
Normal games allow players the option of using all weapons. In such a game any decent build is viable, but the very best are probably those that use the chaingun in the mid-game. This is more than likely because shotgun weapons are not as effective at firing around corners. I've hand-picked a few builds which I find particularly effective.
Jack of all trades ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Finesse -> Juggler -> Tough as nails -> Tough as nails -> Badass -> Brute -> Brute -> Berserker -> Vampyre
An immensely tactical build, this has the distinct advantage of being able to run on very low ammo, and as such is great in any general game, including angel of light travel. Vampyre is a trait easy to ignore when not doing an angel of berserk game, but it's actually immensely powerful even when melee isn't your prime focus. The build focuses on corner-pulling enemies using a pistol, using shotgun knockback with juggler to pound them to next-to-zero health, then finishing them off with a vampiric melee attack to regain health. Used correctly, it tends to keep a player on 200% health most of the time. It's powerful from the very start of the game (juggler), and has the huge advantage of being able to cope with arch viles so well, you're almost pleased to hear their welcoming scream. A good corner and you end up with a worthy health-leeching target that the archvile will be all too happy to continue to resurrect for you, until you're at 200% health with berserk activated, at which point you can peek around the corner with 6 damage reduction even without armour, let loose a double shotgun blast, hurting the vile pack and having him dispose of corpses for you, before backing off to repeat the trick when you're back on 200% berserk. Make no mistake, this build takes some serious getting used to, but once the player is proficient in it's use, there's very little stopping him. After vampyre is obtained, the last 3 traits are completely dependant on player preferances, or the items obtained in the current game. You can expand into whizkid if you're finding a lot of mod packs, son of a gun if you have a decent pistol (even an ordinary modded pistol will do), ironman if you want your leeching to go even further, or shottyman if you've been lucky enough to find a unique or exotic shotgun. Any unique you find will be highly useful to the build, meaning the 'power boost' that most builds get from finding a relevant unique will be present in over half of your games. Note - this build is extremely useful in a 'Nightmare' difficulty game, due to the respawning enemies and health leech. Every level will tend to start you on 200% health. Similarly, pain elementals are basically replenishing supercharge globes - don't kill them, take your armour off and leech leech leech!
shottychain - for the plasmagun fan ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ finesse -> juggler -> finesse -> SOAB -> SOAB -> Triggerhappy -> Whizkid -> Ammochain -> Ironman -> Ironman -> Ironman Probably my favourite build for nightmare difficulty. This build begins with a focus on shotguns, but instead of using shotgun-specific traits like 'shottyman' or 'army of the dead', it simply uses the power of finesse + juggler to attack with a very high rate of fire on shotguns. The biggest disadvantage of shotguns are the need to constantly reload, and their inability to penetrate armour. This build uses juggler (instead of shottyman) to get around the reloading problem, and instead of penetrating armour with 'army of the dead', it moves into an ammochain build for the plasmagun against the well- armoured opponents later in the game. In the early game, With juggler, you can use 'swap' and the number keys to get a lot of shots out before you have to reload. For example, you could hold a shotgun in each hand, and a combat shotgun in your inventory. This lets you fire 3 shots without any time at all reloading, and another 4 with minimal reload time. Finesse means you're firing shotguns quicker than enemies can move, and with knockback that means a lot of enemy control. Another variation is holding 2 combat shotguns (1 in each hand), and discharging both of them to continously knock a target back, slowing his approach. By the time he's finally walked dangerously close to you, you can change to a normal shotgun and finish him off. The combination of instant weapon-switching instead of reloading, and the increased firing time from 'finesse', gives you so much knockback power in the early game that, with a good tactical defense, opponents will never get to attack you. It also keeps you able to change instantly to chaingun when needed, and only holds back your ammochain for a single level. Later on, the ability to rely on an infinite-ammo plasmagun, but switch to a BFG for crowd clearance, an overcharged plasms rifle for assassination, or a rocket launcher for an emergency rocket jump, is another huge advantage for those tricky situations.
shocket - for a big-boom kinda guy (rockets and shotguns) ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Note - this build can no longer be used, with the requirement changes of fireangel.
finesse -> juggler -> EagleEye -> ToughAsNails -> ToughAsNails -> badass -> IronMan -> FireAngel -> EagleEye -> Intuition -> Intuition This is a somewhat different approach. While still maintaining a strong shotgun-juggling based early game (see shottychain, above), this build doesn't move on to using the chaingun. Instead it skips right over into Fireangel. This build capitalises on the knockback effect to protect the player, but also has 'tough as nails' offer an extra armour bonus, as well as an immunity to splash damage. It is strong in dealing with arachnotron caves, where dual- wielded rocket launchers and even rocket jumps can help keep the spiders at bay. This combination then allows the player to get the 'intuition' trait, at which point he can start using the plasmagun without wasting his cells, since he knows where the enemies are. Intuition also allows strategic rocketing groups of enemies, and late-game ammo problems aren't quite as much of an issue since mancubi and revenants drop rockets. A slight variant on this is taking finesse and whizkid instead of the second eagleeye and intuition.
CrackShot - for the strategic player ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ EE->EE->Int->Int->HR->HR->DM->Fin->SoB->SoB->TH->SoB->TH A very quick rush to intuition, allowing the player to see the position of monsters, and have the ability to hit them reliably with a chaingun. This build then gives the player a good dodging ability, to avoid ranged attacks from barons and cacodemons. Finally, it further builds up rapidfire skills, to obtain an awesome plasmagun attack by the end of the game. This is a build without master skills that is surprisingly consistent throughout the whole game - accurate chaingun at the start, intuition very shortly after the arena, dodgemaster in time for arachnotron caves, and a strong plasmagun to make use of the cells in the lategame.
Light weapons guy ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Finesse -> Juggler -> SonOfAGun -> SonOfAGun -> SonOfAGun -> Dualgunner -> Hellrunner -> Hellrunner -> Dodgemaster ->
This is an experimental build, not very powerful, but an incredibly fun one to play. The build focuses on switching constantly from pistol to combat shotgun, occasionally using the rocket launcher, chainsaw, overcharged plasma rifle, and bfg when necessary. Essentially, this build monopolises on the awesome power of the pistol when 3 traits are spent on 'sonofagun', combined with the incredible knockback power of finesse + combat shotgun. When using good tactical defense, a single pistol can often kill a baron while it approaches (something a 3-trait chaingun user will struggle to do), but in the event that a target gets close enough to shoot back, the player can use juggler to instantly switch to a combat shotgun and initiate a knockback loop for 5 shots, easily enough to finish off the pistol- wounded target. Provided a good defensive position is used, this marine can kill all targets without exposing himself to enemy fire. Playing the build features a massive amount of weapon switching, and reveals the pistol's surprising ability to penetrate armour at range - to such an extent that it's not worth carrying around cells until a BFG is found. Plasmarifles are carried, but should be overcharged on pickup for that single- shot power. After every fight a light weapons guy should equip dual pistols. Upon seeing a monster, he can use these pistols, but be sure to change to a shotgun before the enemy gets close enough to fire back. If the finesse shotgun pushes an enemy back out of this 'danger range', then switch back to a single pistol - even without dualgunner, sonOfAGun makes for an awesome pistol attack. Furthermore, the build requires very little ammunition to use - 2 stacks of shells, and another 2 stacks of bullets, are more than enough to clear most levels, freeing up inventory space for rockets, medikits, cells, and armour. At about level 10 ammo should be hoarded, ready for the trek through hell where ammo can become a serious issue. A bulk mod on the pistol is a big help, and a power or agility mod is also useful. This build's main weakness comes from arachnotron caves... Running mode and dodgemaster help alleviate the problem a little, but it's hard to find a good shooting spot in such levels, which leads to regular skipping of caves - don't try to get 100% kills using this.
There are, of course, many other effective builds to call upon. I included the above simply because they are very effective builds that make use of all the game's ranged weapon types, which makes for a character that is both powerful, and fun to play.
And now we'll cover which builds to go for in various special situations:
Pistol: The primary disadvantages of the pistol are the reasonably low damage, and the clip size.
SonOfAGun -> SonOfAGun -> DualGunner -> SonOfAGun -> SonOfABitch -> SonOfABitch -> SonOfABitch -> EagleEye
This pistol build does not bother with GunKata, but instead focuses on getting pistol damage so high, it reliably knocks opponents away from the player. With a good application of tactical defense and a power-modded pistol, focusing on damage is a good way to tackle a pistol challenge, but I'd still advise taking hellrunner -> dodgemaster before confronting the cyberdemon.
SonOfAGun -> SonOfAGun -> DualGunner -> HellRunner -> HellRunner -> DodgeMaster -> GunKata -> SonOfAGun This pistol build, on the other hand, selects the GunKata trait. GunKata allows a player to use his pistol while performing other actions (namely, firing while dodging, and reloading whenever a kill is made). It's a very powerful trait, but to use it well the player is required to see opponents and dodge shots, both of which could be considered avoidable dangers were a different character build taken.
Shotgun: The main advantage of the shotgun is the ability to knock targets away when they are trying to approach, and the ability to hit more than 1 target with a single shot. The shotgun's biggest disadvantages are the time it wastes being reloaded, and it's inability to penetrate armour at long range.
Finesse -> Juggler -> Hellrunner -> Hellrunner -> Dodgemaster -> Reloader -> Reloarder -> Shottyman -> FireAngel -> Finesse -> ToughAsNails -> whizkid
A very versatile and powerful way of using a shotgun. This build uses the 'juggler' trait to almost completely eliminate the large reload times on shotguns. Instead of reloading shotguns in combat, a marine can just use his juggler skills to instantly pull out a fresh, loaded shotgun. However, this build does nothing to improve the shotgun's inability to penetrate armour at range, and as such well-armoured opponents are difficult to fight later in the game, hence the use of 'fireangel' to RUN past revenants, mancubi, and arch-viles without suffering damage.
Reloader -> ToughAsNails -> ToughAsNails -> Badass -> Reloader -> Shottyman -> ArmyOfTheDead -> This shotgun build, on the other hand, usese 'reloader' to reduce the reload time on the shotgun, and 'ArmyOfTheDead' to attack armoured targets. It is a powerful shotgun build, but reloader does not completely eliminate the reloading disadvantage of the shotgun. Compared to the above 'fireangel' build, using an army of the dead shotgun character is harder in the early and mid game, and only becomes the more powerful shotgun build when stronger enemies start to arrive.
Rapidfire: Rapidfire weapons include both the chaingun, and the plasmagun. These weapons are very similar in their application. The plasmagun is undoubtedly the better of the 2, but has a rarer and heavier ammo source. Rapidfire weapons have the advantage of a very high single-target damage, but consume ammunition quickly, and generally cannot knock a target back (unless a player tries very hard to acheive knockback effects, which will completely spoil the rapidfire weapon because targets knocked back will often be missed with subsequent bullets in the salvo)
Ammochain build: Finesse -> Juggler -> Finesse -> SonOfABitch -> SonOfABitch -> TriggerHappy -> Whizkid -> AmmoChain -> SonOfABitch -> TriggerHappy -> Ironman -> Ironman -> Ironman Behold, the awesome power of ammochain! This build is pretty much the best way to reach ammochain for me - Juggler makes shotgunning your way through the early game incredibly easy, and your infinite-ammo plasmagun will still arrive in time to defeat archviles (at 'the wall' for ultra violence games). Not much to say that hasn't already been said.
Eagleeye build: EagleEye -> EagleEye -> Intuition -> Intuition -> Hellrunner -> Hellrunner -> Dodgemaster -> Finesse -> SonOfABitch -> SonOfABitch -> TriggerHappy -> SonOfABitch -> TriggerHappy This is a different way of using rapidfire weapons. It handles the early game using pistols and chainguns, and moves straight into intuition 2 to see where all monsters are on the current level. After that, it sets up a bit of defense (only really needed for nightmare difficulty), then moves on to making the marine better at wielding his chaingun/plasmagun.
By 'normal game' I'm referring to completing the game (with any ending) on any skill level other than nightmare, with no challenges or particular badges being saught. Under these conditions, the game is a relatively easy challenge once you've got used to the general tactics detailed in this guide. Specifically, though, I'd go with a character build that uses the 'ammochain' trait if possible. Ammochain is useful not only for it's infinite ammo and powerful plasmagun, it's of particular significance in a standard game because of the inventory space it saves - this allows the player to save phase devices, enrivosuits, and medikits to help him tackle any levels he comes across. Usually, in a normal game, the best way of succeeding
There are many 'angel of' challenges in doomRL. Completing them all is a much more difficult challenge than a simple victory, but perhaps best tackled through badge hunting (thereby killing 2 birds with one stone [Why you'd want to be killing birds is beyond me.])
Badges are doomrl's way of giving lasting challenge and appeal to determined players. Each badge features a different test of a players skills. It’s possible to try for more than one badge in a single game, but the more difficult badges (diamond and platinum) are exceedingly difficult, and a player would be well advised to focus on one at a time when he reaches this level.
Note - this section was written many years ago, and is probably horribly inaccurate. Nowadays, the best DRL players can regularly complete the game on nightmare, with many acheiving challenges on nightmare that make the game a horrendous degree harder than a basic nightmare game.
Suffice to say, this section badly needs rewriting! Nowadays nightmare playthroughs with 100% completion are my default casual game type. It's weird to think how much progress we as a community have made!
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DoomRL is a very different game on nightmare difficulty. This is because dropping a gift and waiting for monsters, or waiting on the spot until a monster walks into your vision so that you get the first shot, is not an option
- any amount of waiting will allow enemies to respawn, and the longer you stay on a level, the quicker monster respawn times become (from 10% per 'tick' to 100%). At 100% per tick, which kicks in after a few thousand turns, a typical room of monsters will regenerate far more quickly that you can even kill them, let alone get past them.
Playing on nightmare generally consists of 2 tactical shifts - the first is that you want to try to kill enemies while they are standing on an open door, water, acid, lava, or a corpse from another monster. If they die like this, they don't leave a corpse, and thus can't be resurrected. The second is about speed - try to get everything done in as few turns as possible, to minimise the effect of enemy respawns. Always consider walking down stairs when you see them, and try not to walk through the same area more than once (or twice, if you have to).
I personally have a great deal of difficulty playing on nightmare skill level. Giftdropping is exceedingly effective for leading monsters into doorways to deny them a corpse, but those monsters that do not pick up items, or those that can survive a turn or two of sustained firing, are incredibly difficult - it's hard to deny them a corpse, because they don't die when you want them to.Probably the worst are cacodemons and hell knights - at the stage they show up (level 3+) you don't have the equipment to properly deal with them, but avoiding them denys you experience, meaning you end up meeting arachnotrons in caves without the traits to beat them.
This being said, there is one effective strategy for stomping in nightmare - selecting the 'angel of max carnage' challenge game. This gaurantees hits, and gaurantees maximum damage. In nightmare, this is invaluable, as it lets you deal with tricky opponents like hell knights as quickly as you would usually deal with imps. In fact, on angel of max carnage, if you pick the relevant traits, a plasma gun will kill an arachnotron, hell knight, baron, cacodemon, and revenant in a single turn, making nightmare games comparitively easy under this 'challenge' game.
Outside of 'angel of max carnage', each level should be examined as you play it
- sometimes, if the layout is right, it's possible with a lot of patience, giftdropping, and waiting, to completely clear a level using corpse denial. This should be attempted on the first 5 levels or so for items and experience. Other levels don't have the right layout, or the right monsters, to make this possible. On such a level, a player must adopt the opposite strategy - not patience, no giftdropping, and no waiting - you should rush through the level while the regeneration chance is at 10%, and try to kill and pick up as much as you can on your way to the stairs. Most of the later levels, including any that involve mancubi or revenants, should be tackled this way.
Experiment at some point: Start with rapidfire build, then WK, then juggler, THEN berserker. Iin fact, try it without whizkid! It could be a really powerful, cool, go-to build!
I just got out of another game, one where I was collecting platinums for a rank up (N! scout explorer), and I had a go with the following build: EE->SoB->SoB->TH->TH->SoB->HR->EE->Fin->Jug->Fin->WK->WK->Bru->Bru->Ber->Fin-> It was obscenely strong in the early game (2 salvos killed hell knights), and later on, I was killing knights with a single barrage of my gatling gun. I think I even single-salvo'd a baron a few times. On top of this, it got hellrunner in time for phobos lab (and you can do phobos lab with just 1 rank of HR and an agility mod, but it requires a lot of care not to allow formers to use the medpacks, because you need a lot of running mode to beat those demons). It also gets juggler in time for deimos lab/armoury. It's actually quite impressive how easily 2 shamblers can be taken down when you have 15 overcharged plasma rifles, EE2, SoaB3, and juggler! Later on, it gets berserker for lategame play, although with certainty the hardest part of the game was the mortuary without berserker - I burned 6 medpacks, and spent ages battling my way through that level.
Juggler+spear lets you un-equip melee for 3 attacks, then spear for the finish, which is basically a free berserk any time you walk near a corpse.
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This 'need for all 3 techs' is because the attack speed+ from tech mods are additive, so each extra tech mod is a lot more effective than the last; the third alone offering a whopping +50% dps by itself! (If we were allowed a 4th it would be an extra 100% damage increase on top of that, and a 5th would be + ∞ %!) That being said, even if you aren't a whizkid, just a single tech mod still adds more damage/second than a power mod, although it's a little closer in that case, and in fact there are a few situations in which power mods offer more dps (exceptionally armoured targets like lava elementals and cyberdemons). A single firestorm mod also adds more damage than a tech mod if you have access to one. Sorry for all the maths here. The reason for all this maths is because you need to do it to find the difference! :P In a real game the speed at which a PPPFF drops a shambler compared to a TTTPP isn't really noticeable! What is noticeable, though, is how 'bursty' our weapons are - our attack speed vs our 'damage per salvo'. Having a low attack speed is obviously a huge advantage in many situations - being able to attack without as many opponents retaliating. Effectively splitting our attacks to have an opportunity for a first-aid break in the middle, and perhaps most significantly, not wasting a full second of firing time on a little former human that, with our 40dps, we should be killing in a quarter of a second! This time advantage is the reason the hyperblaster shines, but there is actually also an advantage to the other strategy, and no insignificant one at that! Due to the nature of doomrl combat, we probably open most fights by having a monster walk into our view (at least if we're properly spamming walk-wait we do!). Suppose, for a second, that it's a revenant, and we have a juicy hyperblaster, and a plasma rifle with no tech mods on it. I'm guessing we've taken some kind of rapidfire build, and the hyperblaster is looking nice for dropping him (hyperblaster is a kickass gun!) In truth, it's a bad idea. The modded plasma rifle is a much better choice, even if it has a lower DPS, because the flip-side of the 'fast attack speed' coin is all about frontloading. (For those unaware, frontloading is the damage-dealing equivalent of 'buy now, pay later!'. Doing all of our damage right away, then leaving ourselves stunned for ages after the bullets have been fired!). In the revenant situation, the plasma gun will kill the revenant immediately, so it doesn't matter that we're stuck recovering for a whole second after firing - he's' dead, he can't exploit our slow recovery! The speedy hyperblaster, on the other hand, despite its higher damage per second, has a much lower damage per salvo. After it fires its first salvo, the revenant will still be alive, and we're simply hoping that the revenant wandered into our LOS towards the end of our wait command recovery time (which is rightly hidden info!). If he didn't, we're eating a missile. This situation is a great example of how dps (per second) isn't the only factor to consider, different situations call for different tactics. I often find myself taking advantage of both, too. It becomes relevant very often when I'm carrying a minigun and a hyperblaster. If someone survives my hyperblaster salvo but doesn't get a turn, I know that they are about to get a turn whether I fire the hyperblaster or the minigun, so I'll juggle in the minigun and decimate whatever the hyperblaster failed to finish!
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Doomrl : My current 'mission' in doomrl is to achieve a N! 100% conqueror victory using every single master trait option (also counting 'masterless' as an option for each class). In this process, which I think gets quite a lot of ingame experience around mechanics and challenges and such, I've made a few general observations:
- Early game can be conquered with only finesse+juggler. These two traits
alone can pretty much carry you to the armoury (although anomaly is
tricky). I firmly believe that juggler is the best trait in the game, including masters. It just allows you to play so much safer and more strategically! - 1 ammo chain lasts practically the whole game if you unequip it before any 'safe' reload chance.
- Pistols are probably the best offense. On N!, you get more experience than other difficulties, which in turn means snowballing SoG faster than usual. They have top dps, safe firing time, and excellent ammo efficiency. Juggler relieves small clip size. Note that I rarely take dualgunner! I find single pistol high enough in dps, and much better for pulling and ammo efficiency.
- Tech-mod the chainsaw ASAP. I accept that a strong argument can be made for the piercing blade, but in most games you'll only be using it for the cathedral, and for a non-melee build on nightmare, a piercing chainsaw is nowhere near enough to beat the angel of death without kiting it. If you are kiting it, though, and do so flawlessly (not that easy, but practice makes practical!), then you're not taking any damage either way, so there's no point! In fact, it's much easier to kite the angel of death with a tech modded chainsaw due to the need for fast attack speed! Despite how important this can be, it's still not the reason I advocate teching the chainsaw; there's another much more important use for it: waiting on the spot for 0.68s by attacking the air! This is amazing for waiting while a monster comes round a corner/into a door, comes into vision range, respawns etc. Basically, waiting on the spot is not safe, and can be outright suicide on nightmare. Tech-chainsawing on the spot is safe though.
- Onyx mod can be great on a tower shield, but is probably best for a whizkid to simply put it on a red with a (p) mod. Onyx armour, otoh, should always become cerberus.
- Exotic mods are game-changing: The rewards from the armoury / deimos lab are an essential turning point, influencing the way the second half of the game is going to be played based on which random exotic mod you got. If you got onyx, you just kinda lost the coin toss, and will have the most difficult resulting game. I've found that the best way to adapt tends to be using the onyx mod for a suit of [OPA] red. tower shield of cerberus are alternatives. If you got sniper, you probably got the best of the bunch - plasmatic shrapnell is simply amazing on N!. If you got firestorm, demolition ammo is best - it functions like plasmatic shrapnel (albeit not as good for corpse disposal, but with a few other utility features like knockback against an ambush. Finally, nano, which should be somewhat self-explanatory. Interestingly, in recent games I've started to move away from gravity boots, despite nightmare's corpse-camping ammo farming (which you'd think would make nanomachic weapons less important?!)
Doomrl In my eyes, a good 'test' of a build is whether it can complete nightmare, visiting every special level, with a 100% kill rate. This is because the build is surviving all of the hardest challenges of a typical doomrl game.
My best builds to do this challenge are:
Starting with finesse and juggler, this build then moves into Eagle eye, son of a bitch, and trigger-happy. After achieving these skills, which will allow the player to kill any standard enemies that approach without retaliation, I used to go for hellrunner. This was mostly to deal with phobos lab, but it's quite possible to skip hellrunner and still do the lab with plenty of medpacks remaining, if you're conservative with running mode and tackle the nightmare demons without wearing armour (gotta get that speed!). Nowadays I have started to choose finesse level 2 instead. You'd think this was a poor choice compared to building whizkid for the upcoming armoury, but finesse:2 is surprisingly good for the anomaly, especially if you have a shell box. I surprised myself recently by entering the anomoly with no plasma gun, no shell box, and only 1 combat shotgun (I did have the double and the rocket launcher). With finesse2 at work, but I just stood close to the door, middle of the screen vertically, and fired then reloaded double shotgun until it was clear. Only needed 2-3 health packs. Half lost p modded red. The most important thing to know about clearing the anomaly is that you should rocket jump right, not left, triggering the ambush as you fly through midair. From here you can use the right door chokepoint to fight the bulk of the forces. You can (and will) still get seriously overrun here, but the aim is to have the cacodemons help kill the bulk of the nightmare demons inside that choke while you hut them with aoe shotgun blasts. Don't try to conserve shell boxes here; this is arguably the best use of them! Now, sooner or later those demons will push through the choke as you get knocked about by cacodemon plasma. The difficult but crucial trick here is to ensure that you always have an adjecent empty tile suitable for a rocket jump escape - if 3 demons occupy all 3 adjecent tiles to your left, you can't rocket jump, and given that you can't outrun the demons, you'll get 'stuck' and eaten alive! If, on the other hand, you maintain some distance, the relatively low cost of a rocket jump will keep you save from demon maw while you finish them off, at which point it's just a matter or corpse mop-up!
After the anomoly, the build begins to really get ahead of the curve. Plasma guns are incredible, and all the build needs at this point is a way of removing corpses. Rockets are fine, demolition ammo pistol is better, and plasma(tic) shotgun is best.
This scout will almost certainly be using a hyperblaster with either a tech mod or a firestorm mod. I prefer tech, despite its inferior DPS, because it will not waste ammo (and turns) overkilling weaker enemies. Other rare possibilities are a burst laser rifle, and a burst nuclear plasma (b), either of which tends to be superior to the (much more gauranteed) hyperblaster..
After killing the shamblers (which a juggler can do with a backpack full of overcharged plasma rifles) the scout can either spec into cateye for remarkable late game safety (I've cleared the mortuary without phasing or getting the nuclear bfg early this way), or berserker (for the damage resistance more than melee). This build is probably the strongest late game, but can struggle before the shamblers are beaten.
Again, starting with finesse and juggler gets the player through the early game, but this time the technician takes Eagle eye then SoG3. Juggler trivialises the game up until phobos lab, but it's quite possible to do the lab without hell runner, and the payoff (sharpshooter for anomoly) is worth skipping it! This isn't guaranteed at all though: there are runs where you just don't gen the spawns to levelup for sharpshooter, so be ready to do the anomoly without! (shell box+) A power mod before the anomaly should go on a pistol for knock back, if you're going to levelup in time. Getting an ammo chain means high power pistol is viable, but hardly optimal, and the bulk mod is still probably better placed on red armour unless you were lucky enough to get 2 power mods. Phobos anomaly is still possible without pistol knockback (if you were unlucky enough to get no power mods), but it's probably going to require a shell box and double shotgun. Getting a really good pistol is probably the top priority. PPPBB is likely best, or for a combat pistol skip the bulk mods. Don't waste sniper mods on pistols, Eagle eye 3 is more than enough accuracy, and snipers are better used for plasmatic shrapnel. Getting used to un-equipping an ammochain before reloading when you're safe is important, as it means you'll always have fast reloads when you're not safe. This habit should end when you start to encounter VMRs, because if you're dropping the box to reload their explosive attacks end up destroying your shell boxes while you reload. If you're not dropping the box to reload, you need spare inventory space, meaning you probably dropped something else to make room, and whatever you dropped is similarly vulnerable! Even without firestorm or sniper mods for corpse disposal, this build has enough inventory space to use rockets for blowing up corpses, and later the nuclear bfg, so the late game shouldn't be too challenging.
Finesse and juggler, again, to make the early game straightforward. After juggler, though, this build has 2 options... The harder option is to get SoG3 before berserker. The easier option is undoubtedly getting vampyre right after juggler. You should have vampyre in time for phobos lab. Now focus on combining vampyre with pistols: this is fantastically effective, but be in the habit of making pistols your mainstay. It's so tempting to run out of your cover when berserker procs, but it's more dangerous than it seems and can lead to deaths. The better habit for this build is to use your pistols for tagging enemies, pulling them into your ambush position for melee execution. The amazing thing about this is that not only did you gain health for safely killing that monster; you now have a corpse in melee range of your cover. Farm that corpse for 150%(+) health before continuing, then usually you'll just want to stand on the corpse and wait for more enemies. Vampyre is an amazing trait; perhaps the best master trait in the game, but your armour gets absolutely shredded, so try to build a nano fibre red after or during the Anomoly ambush, and when you have whizkid you'll want a p-modded nano fibre red or an onyx-power red. Indestructible armour is almost essential here. This is the also the only N! conqueror build listed here that can beat the angel of death with brawn, instead of speed. Mortuary or limbo are surprisingly difficult for this build, due to the lack of exceptional ranged combat (in comparison to trigger-happy hyperblaster or sharpshooter pistols), but it's still possible. The difficult part here is that destroying corpses isn't so much of a no-brainer ; you need them to leech health from, so just blowing corpses up with a nuclear BFG isn't a simple answer to the mortuary. This build is probably the most straightforward to get a win with, because of berserker reducing so much damage. Still, it's common to lose cover and take massive damage despite the berserker damage resistance.
Hell's arena: juggler and a backpack half filled with shotguns should make relatively easy work of the arena. I usually leave with 3 or 4 med packs.
Chained court: Enter with an inventory space free, immediately pick up the chainsaw, then move down-left. From this spot, rocket the top-left corner of the start room, kill the 2 top barons, then repeat with the bottom wall. After all baron corpses are gone, pull former humans to your cover position (the hole you made in the top wall) then stand on their corpses in your cover niche spot. Whenever there's a lull in the action, let the corpses stand up and shotgun them into the lava. Repeat until the arena master shows up, at which point you can get a berserk pack, rocket jump to the master, and chainsaw him. This strategy is a 'loose framework', and you have to adapt if things go wrong. The main 2 ways things can go wrong are: 1) The barons get clear of the north/south of the start room, blowing up a lot of the cover or even the berserk packs. Work around this by not being afraid to leave the start room and 'loop round' the rop or bottom while you dispatch the barons, rocketing their corpses generously. 2) The arena master blowing up berserk packs. The best workaround for this is by keeping a former human corpse a few tiles to your left, in open sight range, once the barons are killed and enough time has elapsed that you can reasonably expect the master to show up soon. Once the corpse gets resurrected, you know the master is nearby, so take this cue to grab a berserk before you actually see one another.
Phobos lab: Speed helps immensely against nightmare demons. So much so, that blue armour is a hindrance and you're better naked. You also need to constantly have running mode ready when pulling nightmare demons. You want to pull them over the acid, then knock back trap them with shotgun juggling. Bring many med packs, but stash the med packs to allow inventory space for shotgun juggling. After the first half of the level is complete, tackle the second half by using rocket jumps for distance, retreat to start area acid chamber, and get a vantage point where you can see the double doors, but there is acid between them and you.
Military base: So much easier than Phobos lab! Simply work your way north to the top of the map, then gift drop to victory (there are 8 door tiles at the top of the map: 4 to the left, 4 to the right. I find using the bottom of the 4 on your left as the best spot). Note that elite formers don't leave corpses. The second half of the level (left side) can be tackled in the top corridor above the exit by pulling any non-elite formers to your cover, and simply corner-shooting the elite formers since they don't leave corpses.
Phobos anomaly: Note: I recently cleared the anomoly with no shell box easily, using a super shotgun. From subsequent games, I suspect it was partly down to finesse2, and partly just luck in not getting knocked back by cacodemon plasma explosions. That being said, it's led me to suspect that, rather than running right after the rocket jump, it might be best to stall a little to draw the cacos left. When the demons are upon you then run right. Given that demons are faster than cacos, this might prevent caco splash from knocking doomguy out of the choke. I just finished anomaly with no shell box, only finesse1, and a double shotgun. It took me 5 or 6 medikits, I lost the [P]Red armour, and I had to rocket jump away from a demon pack. There were plenty of close calls, and were I not a technician, I'd have died (instant healing important). This leads me to wonder whether pre-planning rocket jumps might help, since the main issue was being unable to rocket jump away from the demons, because a point-black demon in your face prevents a rocket jump from targeting his tile (it'll fire, but not move you). This level is a huge step up in challenge. In fact it might be the hardest level relative to its depth (depending on whether it's the (dreaded) mortuary or (just) limbo generated later). When I first started trying nightmare I used to believe you needed a lucky invulnerability globe or a lucky phase device to get past it. Of course, I've gotten much better since then, but it always felt like you needed a bit of luck. The good news is that there are all kinds of pickups that make it possible, albeit sometimes losing 5 or 6 medkits! Luckily, the special level before it always gives lots of health packs! OK, so, important items: The Shell box is probably the best item for clearing anomaly, as it allows you to dispatch the start ambush at a choke. Power mod pack (for the red) massively reduces your damage taken. Double shotgun. This is much better than a combat shotgun for the choke. Agility items: getting enough move speed to outrun nightmare demons makes it much easier, but this is hard, rare, and not usually optimal. Walk 12 steps out of the door (unlucky 13 is the trap) then fire bullets to the unexplored area to the right to destroy the door, then rocket jump towards it. This chokepoint is the best way to deal with the nightmare ambush, but you'll still sometimes need rocket jumps when they get in and overwhelm you. Shotguns are imperative to do enough damage to stem the tide of nightmare creatures. Also note that nightmare demons have much more armour than nightmare cacos, you have to kill them with shotguns, plasma, chainsaw, rockets, or sharpshooter pistols; ideally shotguns. After the ambush is beaten, deal with the bruisers by wearing no armour, combat shotgun, and running mode. If you use a shell box, you'll find that by the time you have kited them all the way to the level entrance they're nearly dead and can be killed in the door frame. If you don't use a shell box, but you use running and wear no armour, then they'll not be too much trouble to deal with in the start room door.
Hell's armoury: Just using good cover and ranger weaponry is pretty simple to clear the first half, but be sure to farm plasma rifles (like 20!). For the shambler, juggling overcharged plasma rifles works, as does berserk or sharpshooter knockback. Destroying the rooms above the armour+weapon stash helps.
Deimos lab: Kill all roaming monsters in the doorway above the teleporters, farm plasma rifles. Then enter the lab. The hidden superchargers can be easily reached by hitting the top wall above the acid from next to the mod pack rooms, 3 tiles left of the superchargers. When supercharged, unlock the revenants, beware their bullet resistance, destroy their corpses. Now juggle overcharged plasma (or berserk chainsaw or sharpshooter pistols), and be absolutely certain that you kill their corpses immediately.
The wall: trivial.
Containment area: I've noticed that going for the backpack is very luck based, and can lose a run. Instead, a phase device is probably useful, but could still get you killed. Activating the ambush and then rocket jumping left is suicide (died on the turn I jumped, while wearing onyx(p)). I need to evaluate this level some more. Perhaps shell box for knockback is best? Perhaps missile launcher rocket box spam is important?
The vaults: Rocket the secret entrances to the left and right vaults, other than that this level is trivial.
Cyberdemon: Pretty easy fight for these builds. Envirosuit and/or fireproof red can make it even easier.
Unholy Cathedral: Having move speed+ is important. Finesse1 and tech nodded chainsaw is enough to kite the angel of death, he'll runner not needed with agility boots. Vampyres should not ditch the chainsaw for the scythe though: scythe gibs your health-farms prematurely.
Limbo: Not too bad, keeping the central cover intact helps immensely though! Without the central cover, things can get dicey. Work your way to the top-right for the nuclear bfg.
Mortuary: Hands-down the hardest part of the game! I'm currently using a strategy of 'screw the left side, and move right immediately, getting nuclear bfg before first nightmare respawn check.'. Once you have nuclear bfg, it gets much easier. Until then, though, you often have to farm cells from arachnotrons to safe enough ammo for bfg corpse destruction, and it's a very slow slow!
Lava pits: Kill all flyers from the starting island, then use nuclear bfg to clear revenants. Rocket jumping right is way better than walking. Envirosuit is almost essential.
Mount Erebus: Easier than lava pits, but can sometimes catch you off-guard. Be careful and see 'lava pits' strategy, above.
Dis: Nuke the mastermind using invulnerability/ lava element.
Lair of true evil: Save your bfg shots for after a summon, and fire it to the side of Carmac to scatter his minion cover. Envirosuit helps massively, as does fireproof red.
(My next challenge will be A: getting dragonslayer the guaranteed way. I think it's best done using a scout with int2 as starting talents, perhaps branching into rapid-fire build with berserker support, but not blademaster. B: completing N! 100% conqueror runs with other builds. I'd love to get a win with all of the master traits!)