Hell is filled with sewer levels and made for space marines. Let's play DoomRL!

Satonakaja commenting... Cacodemons shooting me...

I sense a pattern.

Have I mentioned that I've never seen this movie?

Or most movies, really. I don't movie much.

I assume that to get the secret ending and win the game, you must kill me, John Romero?

I just listened to our commentary, and it suddenly occured to me that nobody will know why I said "Computers, computers yeah yeah yeah".

So uh.

Here.

Good guess, but no.

Actually it's John Carmack.

Early DoomRL doesn't have much to talk about.

After the Hicks run is finished, we'll be starting up challenge runs. DoomRL has a ton of those, with unique restrictions and rules. I've only ever cleared Angel of Marksmanship, the pistol-only mode. So I'll be taking the guys left in the queue and throwing them into challenge runs! Or I can take the guys we have left and pit them against, say, Ultra-Violent difficulty.

Can't guarantee I'll play Nightmare! though. There be dragons.

angel of humanity

that'll be a quick video

Anyway, we go into Hell's Armory a second time!

Once more unto the Hellgate, lads!

Tefari's gonna comment this time!

WHAT

I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL

And now dtsund, for actual on-topic chat!

Whatever will happen with that thermonuclear bomb, I wonder?

That was enjoyable. Thanks guys!

FYI, if I were Hicks, I'd go into run-for-the-stairs mode now. It's not like there are any more traits that are going to help you a lot.

Might not be a bad idea, especially since that homing phase device he just picked up is almost a get-out-of-one-floor free card.

Very entertaining set of videos Kalir! I'll put in a suggestion for an Angel of Berserk run, just to show off some melee!

oh man just you guys wait, you don't even know the meaning of the phrase "off-topic" yet.

And so BEAT and Tefari conspired to make the most off-topic commentary ever.

It mostly worked, too!

Anyway, from here on out, it's all challenge runs, or higher difficulties. So maybe future videos won't be stupidly repetitive!

Here's what Lady did that we mentioned around 12 minutes or so.

I was yelling "Not the Mortuary!" Then "Nuke it while you're invulnerable!" Then I resigned myself to the inevitable end.

After watching the video after the recording, it suddenly occured to me that Kalir could have just nuked the floor while invincible and gotten everything he wanted.

And I was like dang

Why didn't he do that.

While that would totally work, nukes destroy items, including the reward for the Mortuary.

So, technically I'd clear it.

Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

I'm pretty sure the game doesn't even count that as clearing it. Like, you won't get the Reaper Gold badge at the end or anything.

Let's follow Flynn Taggart into H--

Let's follow Leroy Jenkins into Hell!

This marks our foray into CHALLENGE RUNS. DoomRL, like NetHack, has a bunch of optional challenges you can impose on yourself. Sadly, I was an idiot and didn't think to start playing them until just now. SO!

I'm gonna list all the stuff we have here, and then with Stiv's permission, I'll reopen the queue for challenge run characters. Since you've already seen DoomRL for the most part here, I'm going to limit it to just four more characters. Additionally, if you want to supply a challenge run for said character to go for, here's the list.

• Angel of Berserk (Very Hard): A challenge for the true berserker! You don't have a gun at the start and can't use weapons except melee weapons! To make things a little easier large health globes will act as berserk packs for you.
• Angel of Marksmanship (Easy): Fans of pistols, unite! This challenge doesn't allow you to use any weapon besides a pistol (or two if you know how!)
• Angel of Shotgunnery (Medium): It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum -- only shotguns and fists are the true weapons of the army of the dead!
• Angel of Light Travel (Medium): Who needs all that junk? Try to complete the game using only 5 inventory slots! To help you out, you get a +20% speed bonus.
• Angel of Impatience (Hard): You need to kill now! No time to carry all those medpacks and phase devices, you use them immediately on pickup!
• Angel of Haste (Hard): DoomRL is too long, you want to fight your way through, as fast as possible. Half as many levels, twice the danger increase.
• Angel of Purity (Hard): Who needs those powerups anyway? Try to finish DoomRL without them. But remember that health globes are also a powerup!
• Angel of Red Alert (Hard): You've been ordered to clear out Hell, no matter what. Every time you enter a level, a nuke is dropped and armed with a countdown of 5 minutes (around 240 moves). Warning, the areas can't be scouted!
• Angel of Darkness (Hard): You think the DoomRL levels are dark? Try this challenge, and feel a bit of painful claustrophobia! As a bonus to all that is injust in this challenge, you level up twice as fast.
• Angel of Max Carnage (Medium): You hate chance, you hate games of chance, you hate dice so much that you crush them when you see them. As a result your guns do max damage and you are almost guaranteed to hit. However this also applies to your enemies...
• Angel of Masochism (Very Hard): Okay, this one is for masochists -- neither healing globes, or supercharges, or medkits will work on you! As a small compensation you heal up to 200% at level up. Now beat this!
• Angel of 100 (Blade): 100 levels, and you win. No Cybie, no JC, no special levels, just 100 normal levels. And yes, there are more and more enemies after level 25...
• Angel of Pacifism (Blade): The monsters are beings too! They don't deserve to be killed! It's all the fault of that damn Cyberdemon, he should be NUKED! You start with a Nuke, and due to your pacifistic beliefs you gain a level every two dungeon levels. Of course -- *no* weapon usage.

There's also Angel of Humanity, but I don't have it unlocked and I won't play it anyway. I also won't play Angel of 100, because fuck's sake man.

I suggest my favorite one -- Angel of Max Carnage! (ps I always go for Cat-eye)

Angel of Carnage, no doubt. Lets see how this shit plays without dice rolls!

John Stalvern in an Angel of Darkness run.

I'm far from a DoomRL expert, but I have cleared Angel of Berserk more than once, so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents and take a moment to extol the virtues of thrown knives, since you both seem really down on them (well, dtsund more than Kalir), and you're making things harder on yourselves if you don't leverage them. I try to keep several combat knives on me at all times during an AoB run. They're pretty specific in their use, but they're quite effective at two things: blowing up barrels and killing demons. The first is pretty obvious: see a bunch of enemies taking a smoke break near a barrel and wish you had a gun? No problem.

The second, however, isn't quite as intuitive. Essentially, thrown combat knives are a poor man's shotgun when fighting demons. I don't know if demons are easier to hit (I don't throw knives at much else so I don't know if the miss rates you guys are reporting are typical or not), but I certainly don't miss them often, and when you hit a charging demon with a thrown knife, they got knocked back as if they were hit with a shotgun. Over the course of a full run, being able to deal with demons without allowing them free hits can add up to quite a health savings, and it's especially useful early on.

So I have been playing this game, largely due to the fine work of this LP. I am currently in the midst of my best run so far,but could use some advice to not screw it up. I've gone malicious blades and just acquired the spear of longinus from the cathedral. This is deeper than I've ever been so anyone have an tips for a more melee focused build?

I've also been using an assault shotgun I found for softening up folks from afar but the damage on that seems to be taking a nosedive on harder enemies.

Also is there any set of circumstances where it would be wise to attempt the mortuary to complete the angelic set? Currently I'm just running with some slightly modded sets of red armor, and a backup of medical armor.

So, did you actually clear the Unholy Cathedral on your first try then? If so, congratulations, that's quite impressive. You don't need any tips-- you've clearly got melee figured out, and Longinus is a huge upgrade over the chainsaw you likely replaced.

Shotguns fare pretty poorly against heavily armoured foes except in a few unique circumstances: blind-fire around corners, point-blank range against a wall (in which case you'll just want to bash them with your spear), and Army of the Dead. Oh, and the Jackhammer. God I love the Jackhammer.

The Mortuary can be trivialized with liberal application of the BFG if you have a LOT of plasma ammo saved up. Entering the level with berserk or invulnerability is ideal, but obviously not always possible. If you have any skulls in your inventory, you can run out (and I do mean that literally; running is a must when there's that many different enemies shooting at your) and use them for a quick boost and eliminate eligible corspes for rezzing in the process. You start right next to two red armours and two supercharge globes, and you'll likely need them, so make sure to hoover them up before enemy (or friendly) fire destroys them. The thing to keep in mind with the Mortuary is that sometimes it just won't go your way no matter how prepared you are, so don't enter it without a homing phase device and don't be afraid to use it if things get hairy. You always get the starting armours and the small loot cache in whatever corner you teleport to as a consolation prize. The set bonus isn't worth losing your first good run.

Well I did get to the Cathedral once before and ran from it because I didn't have a melee build. I did have a jackhammer that game, but I screwed up horribly on the next floor and died. I'm hoping to avoid that fate this time around.

edit: Alas death by Arachnotron