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Author Topic: Can someone explain to me how angel of berserk is meant to be possible?  (Read 14040 times)

Captain Trek

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Alright, this is ridiculous...

It's getting to the point where I'm really starting to think that anyone's who's beaten this challenge is some kind of freak because for my money it's fucking impossible, even on HNTR... Trying to play this challenge seriously (as opposed to just running past everything, which got me to level 10 at one stage, which allowed me to achieve lieutenant rank), I can never get further than base level four, have only gotten to character level three a grand total of once and have never once laid eyes on the chained court (except in the game where I ran past everything)... I've tried over and over again and have failed to make progress... If I didn't just close the window after is says "you die!" but before the mortem comes up, the relevant folder would be clogged with dozens of mortems detailing just how much I suck at AoB by now... Oh sure I know about (and make use of) gift dropping, running, going diagonally in a zig-zag... all that... but is seems only to prolong the inevitable by one floor at most (and that's on a good run)...

So could somebody explain me how this is supposed to work? Could someone tell me what mystical play strategy will allow me to even get to the chainsaw (my current goal for AoB is reaching the chained court, not winning the game, then my goal after that will be to reach level 15 so I can get to captain rank), let alone defeat the cyberdemon? Will the freaks who somehow completed this challenge please come forward? I'm really stumped and frankly, my alienation with this challenge is translating into alienation with the entire game... I really like DoomRL, but AoB is just pissing me off that much...

And for those who are wondering, I don't consider myself completely hopeless... I have thus far completed a standard game on ITYTD and an angel of light travel game on HNTR (one of the other requirements for captain rank, as you know), but Angel of Berserk, thus far, seems impossible, the only conclusion I can draw from the evidence presented to me being that I must doing something wrong... So what is it? Could somebody please explain to this me? Because I... just... don't... get it...
« Last Edit: December 11, 2008, 07:03 by Captain Trek »
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LockeCarnelia

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Weeeeell, one major hint I can give to you is that you need armor.  Badly.  I mean... REALLY badly.

And plus, yeah, you should run.  If you get a computer map before you enter the level, and you see that there's no loot worth picking up, don't bother with the level, just move on.  No point in wasting time in beating up all the monsters when there's nothing to use there anyways.

Also, Hellrunner and that trait that increases HP and TaN is nice.
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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Check the Video topic for AoB runs :)
http://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php?topic=1222.30
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Kornel Kisielewicz

Titt

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It becomes a lot easier once you have the chainsaw. The hardest part is surviving to the Chained Court.
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Thomas

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stuff

You're never going to win AoB ever unless you kill stuff. You need at least all 4 melee traits (Brute and Berserker, obviously) and 3 survival traits (I suggest HR, Berserk gives you enough armor to not warrant TaN).

Humans: Sergeants you will need to ambush. Unless you can see one around a corner. Shotguns can't shoot around corners (Unlike 10mm weapons seem to be able to) so you can just wait there and he'll be forced by his AI to engage you in melee.
Other humans miss rediculously frequently. Use the running bonus or the strafe bonus and they shouldn't be able to hit you once while you charge them down.
Imps: They miss even more, just strafe them and you'll be fine. Because they're decent at fighting in melee, don't bother killing one unless you're reasonably sure you can one-shot him (Combat knife + Brute 2)
Demons: Don't bother killing them until you get the chainsaw. You will have to run away and close doors ('c') behind you. If you're berserk, THEN you can try to kill one with a knife.
Lost souls: Make sure you only fight one at a time. Remember that they move two squares at once, so if there's only one square between you and the lost soul, move back a bit so that they don't use their second action to attack you.

Use these strategies to kill at least 80% of the early game enemies, you want to be at least level 4 by the chained court.

More general melee tips:
Make sure you have a very high dodge chance whenever you're charging something. Moving in a way that would theoretically dodge their bullets gives you a huge "Strafe bonus" and running mode makes you pretty nimble too. I'd suggest holding back running mode until you really need it.

Don't use any medpack, small or not, until you're absolutely sure that you would die without it. In fact, this is a golden rule of regular games too. But it's more important in melee because you're relying on running mode and the only thing that gives your running mode back is healing.

Berserk gives you double damage, but also +6 TaN. As such, take off your armor whenever you berserk so it doesn't get damaged.
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Arch-Vile Chaos Major Thomas
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Captain Trek

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For anyone who's interested, I just got a standard win on AoI on HNTR with about a 95% kill rate... Beat the cyberdemon by the skin of my teeth though...

Quote
You're never going to win AoB ever unless you kill stuff.

That's the thing I have been trying to kill stuff... That's the hole point of this thread, that I wanted some help playing AoB "properly", as opposed to just running past the levels as I had previously, where I managed to get to level 10, which let me unlock sargeant and lieutenant...

Quote
Humans: Sergeants you will need to ambush. Unless you can see one around a corner. Shotguns can't shoot around corners (Unlike 10mm weapons seem to be able to) so you can just wait there and he'll be forced by his AI to engage you in melee.

I see... So, basically I have to sit like a lemon mashing the "." key waiting the the sargeant to come to me, as long as it can see me but I'm in a position where it can't shoot me, correct? Sounds like a good (if tedious) idea... But how sharp does the corner in question need to be? Would either of the sargeants be able to shoot me in this situation, for example? I assume the lower one would, but what about the upper one? What if the upper one were two squares closer to me?

.@# . . .
. . / . . h
. .# . . h

Gotcha, gotcha and gotcha on the former humans, imps and demons...

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Lost souls: Make sure you only fight one at a time.

I guess that shouldn't be too much of a problem, considering you mostly only see them in the occasional vault early on anyway... I guess you could stand in a doorway and create a bottleneck for them as well...

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More general melee tips:
*Snip*

Thanks for the tips... Not that I didn't know about strafing (I'm already using or at least trying to use it), taking off armour while berserk and so on already, but still sounds to me like sound advise... :)

Well, now that I've beaten AoI, I guess I'll give AoB another shot... tomorrow maybe...
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Thomas

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Alright, I was trying a bit of AoB (And recording it just in case I managed to win it again. No such luck.)

Sergeants: God damn it these guys are fucking annoying. The only foolproof way to kill them is by either tanking a shot or two (I suppose this is why you start with 2 large HP packs) or using my corner strategy.

However, it turns out that the reason they don't fire around corners is because they can't actually see you. As such, they don't charge you either. You need to give them a reason to come over, like dropping ammo on one side of the corner and waiting on the other.

Killing stuff: On my runs that made it to the chainsaw (Around half of them), I killed over 90% of the monsters. The only ones I couldn't get were sergeants in the middle of big rooms. Also, here's how I spent my XP:
Bru->Bru->TaN->TaN->Ber->HR->HR->HR->whatever

Brute 2 (But not 3) because you basically have enough damage with brute 2. You don't need the +4 on the end.
TaN because for the love of god you need armor so badly.
Berserk at level 5 instead of level 3 because it sucks as a trait, but you better have it before Dlvl16 or you're going to get slaughtered.
HR to help you charge and dodge, TaN 2 is enough.

I leave on this note:

Most common causes of death in the 10 or so AoBs I just played
1st: "WHY IS EVERY MONSTER IN THE SAME ROOM GOD DAMN IT!?"
2nd: "I can dodge that fireball, I'll heal later."
3rd: "Oh boy, the only doorway I have leads to certain imp/sergeant/barrel filled death."
Least Common: Being chipped to death by enemy melee attacks, after running out of HP packs.
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Arch-Vile Chaos Major Thomas
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Captain Trek

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Quote
However, it turns out that the reason they don't fire around corners is because they can't actually see you. As such, they don't charge you either. You need to give them a reason to come over, like dropping ammo on one side of the corner and waiting on the other.

Which would be so much easier if you could drop stuff in any of the nine squares around you, instead of only being able to drop it on the spot where you're standing... Maybe that could be made an option in the coming version... "d" for a regular drop as we have now and "D" for a directional drop (you'd get a "choose direction" message as you do when you press "c" whilst standing next to more than one open door or you press "f" when weilding a melee weapon)...

That way, in the situation I described previously (except that this time the door is just a gap in the wall)...

.@# . . .
. . . . . h
. .# . . .

... I wouldn't have to come out of cover to drop something into the tile below me to attract the sargeant...


EDIT: Tried another dozen odd times today and I've reached the following conclusion: I can't do it! I just can't fucking do it!!! Arghh! This is the only thing keeping me from trying Haste, Purity, D&D and Red Alert... fucking Angel of Berserk... I've beaten AoI and I've beaten AoLT but I can't even begin to make headway on Angel of Berserk... I still haven't seen the chained court once (though I made it to base level seven once today, so I might have accidentally skipped it in that case) and I'm still no closer to a solution... As far as I'm concerned, the only way I'm ever going to get to captain rank were if (and I very much think this should be done) the AoB requirements for getting the various ranks were each bumped up a rank in the next version, so that sargeant required no AoB levels, lieutenant five, captain ten and major 15... Not letting me play four challenge modes because of one challenge mode that's completely different from any of the others is not only a truly erect dick move, but it's quite possibly a big enough one to turn me off DoomRL entirely, I'm sorry to say... The game giving me a series of challenges to complete so I can unlock more content is fine, but when one of them is totally impossible, I'm more than likely to pack up and move on to something I can actually accomplish instead of continuing to bash my head against the brick wall that is Angel of Berserk...

Unless, of course, one of you knows a magical "make the mode possible" button... No? Didn't think so...
« Last Edit: December 13, 2008, 00:44 by Captain Trek »
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Karry

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Imps: They miss even more, just strafe them and you'll be fine.
Yeah, but they take it back by shooting three times (it happened) per second. So statistically - they'll hit ya.

Quote
Not letting me play four challenge modes because of one challenge mode that's completely different from any of the others is not only a truly erect dick move, but it's quite possibly a big enough one to turn me off DoomRL entirely, I'm sorry to say...
Thats what i've been saying for months, but what do i know, cant fight all the 1337 people who beat the game in their sleep. Welcome to the club.
As for getting those challenges - just hack the health and get that rank.
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007bistromath

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You guys really need to take

1) a chill pill.

2) Kornel's advice.

I was one of the main haters of AoB back in the day. You can do a search of my name to find me saying pretty much the same things. I think pretty much all newbies hit that wall, and getting over it is what makes them not newbies anymore. AoB is hard, no doubt of that, but if you understand the tactics it's possible and even fun.

If you don't have the patience for the videos, I can distill the main points for you.

1) Use bait. Oh lordy would you use bait. In AoB, your main threat for most of the game is shotgunners. They have one important weakness though; any color h (and I think the Bs, too) will, until it is very close or unless it is already standing on something it likes, approach an item on the ground to the exclusion of any other action. Blade, the top player of the game, pioneered this tactic, but I feel I made my own refinements to it that you can see in the video and my short discussion with Blade in the thread about how it worked. This and other tactics which require you to sit behind something may sound boring, but the tedium can be largely eliminated by remembering that run mode works with waiting, and it's very satisfying kicking in the door and cutting some fool to ribbons after he picks up the empty pistol you dropped for him. If you see a wad of hs in the middle of a big room, also remember that you can string them along with more than one piece so long as the FoV from one reaches the other.

2) Use corners, doorways, and other cover/chokepoints. Entering the line of sight of as few monsters as possible is key to your survival. Peek around a little to get a sense of what's around the next bend before you run in. If it's too much to handle, you'll be able to get back into cover before they hurt you, and you can approach from a different angle or just skip that group. This is especially important against the melee enemies; using cover can turn a pack of c or s of absolutely any size to a pile of XP at almost no risk once you have the chainsaw.

3) Shut the doors! This is especially important in "maze of rooms" and "lots of barrels" levels. This limits LoS, makes traps safer to use, prevents non-humanoids from wandering, and lets you know where wandering humanoids are since you can see on the map when a door opens. If you know the situation, you control it.

4) Close the distance. Don't be afraid to get in the fray. Basic foos shoot like storm troopers, all you need to take out up to three of them is to juke and jive your way up there. Imps and captains can be almost totally neutralized by running and green armor. With a level of HR and some blue, commandos, O, and B become your prey. The thing to remember is that with the exception of Mancubi and possibly Barons, enemies will not use their ranged attack when you're toe-to-toe with them, and the two exceptions are still pretty rare. If you can run fast enough to get to the center of a large group of enemies without taking too much, it doesn't matter what letter they are, you win.

5) Let c and s close the distance for you. These are faster than normal enemies. If you walk into their face, they'll get the first hit, sometimes the first two. Close until three-four squares separate you, then start strafing and backpedaling until they stumble into your reach. As Musashi said, cut them down strongly.

6) Use discretion. You need to kill most of the monsters. You do not need to kill all of the monsters. Killing everything gets you to about level ten in NTR, but you become a fearsome juggernaut at level six or seven. Distance is the main factor. Can you get to the middle of those seven O before they start burping at you? If not, let it slide. If you're fully stocked and the noises you're hearing are bigger than the XP you need, you can even skip most of a level without losing too much.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2008, 11:49 by 007bistromath »
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myuzinn

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In a current AoB game, I just got to chained court, and having spent Ber->Ber->Bru, decided I'd put one in EE to increase that horrible 50% melee accuracy. I'd seen it picked before in an AoB YAVP mortem.

Well, after tagging EE, I hit @, and it says my melee chance to hit is still only 50%. Did I just waste a pick, or is the @ screen not displaying the hit chance properly?
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007bistromath

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1) I don't think EE applies to melee.
2) Even if it does, you're much better off taking the survivability traits.

This is basically the only good AoB build order.
Bru->Bru->Ber->HR->HR->Fill rest with TaN/Iro/HR/Bru depending on equipment and preference. Sometimes if you're low on armor and/or meds it's best to take a level of HR before Ber, but ideally not.

The thing to remember about melee is their hit chance isn't any better than yours.
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Kornel Kisielewicz

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1) I don't think EE applies to melee.
It does.
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Kornel Kisielewicz

skarczew

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Quote
Well, after tagging EE, I hit @, and it says my melee chance to hit is still only 50%
1) I don't think EE applies to melee.
It does.
Maybe '@' command is bugged then ?

Another strange thing: I was playing AoB recently and I found few Large Healing Spheres - and they did not give me Berserk. Wth ...
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myuzinn

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Well, I just won an AoB, 100% even. Doable once one gets the knack of things, but still difficult. As I say in the mortem, not being stinjy with healing seemed to be my major obstacle to getting far before.
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