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Author Topic: Nightmare difficulty - how?!? (update - demo now included for critique)  (Read 9883 times)

Sylph

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Hi folks...
I've been playing nightmare difficulty recently. It seems the common concensus from the post mortem boards is that ammochain is the easiest nightmare build, so I'm giving that a try. However, I figure I need the agility mods from the chained court in order to do this, and that means a rocket launcher. Without agility mods from chained court, I've not even managed to get into hell (furthest I got was level 13)

Reading the mortems, it seems players are clearing the arena (I assume for the rocket launcher)... I just can't for the life of me figure out how to tackle this. My closest game managed to kill 1 baron, but there was another baron, and a handful of other demons, still in there, and it cost me 5 medikits and 200 shotgun shells (plus a bunch of 10mm)... I still died.

I'm here to ask if anyone has a video, or a decent set of guidelines, on how to clear the arena on nightmare difficulty. Without even spending a turn waiting for anything to happen, I still spend nearly all my turns shooting monsters, and end up running out of ammo...
« Last Edit: November 23, 2009, 14:55 by Sylph »
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Sylph

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Re: Nightmare arena - how?!?
« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2009, 07:47 »

I managed to complete the arena on nightmare - by bringing 300 shotgun shells and a combat shotgun, then just blind spamming endless shotgun fire around assorted corners. Must have killed the same cacodemons some 15 times each! Still cost me 4 medikits and 2 suits of green though.

Still hoping for some tips for nightmare play though - I'm totally stumped... I can be killing former humans in a doorway to prevent them respawning, but then when a baron of hell walks around the corner, what do I do? Do I run or stand and fight?
I've tried both answers so I really must be missing something here - running makes me end up in the caves knee-deep in arachnotrons with not much experience and no treasure (ammo,  health packs and armour) , but standing and fighting in such situations slowly wears me down until eventually, if I'm very lucky, I arive in the caves knee-deep in arachnotrons with experience and no treasure... Either way, those spiders crucify me - I'm stumped!

Ultra violence is an absolute walk in the park, but this nightmare difficulty is excruciating and I want my mum! (Or a little help here)
« Last Edit: November 18, 2009, 07:56 by Sylph »
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Fanta Hege

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #2 on: November 18, 2009, 09:33 »

Well to be honest with you, Arena on Nightmare is a large pain and I personaly wouldn't really recommend it too much considering on Nightmare you have way higher chances of getting good weapons from the possibly vaults that might spawn on the early levels.

However, your best bet to beat it is to hope for a friendly amount of good pillar positions.

Few tips;

-Corner shoot a lot and a lot.

-Keep your distance from the barons and CHAINSHOOT THEM. If you started your Ammochain build with SOAB, and cleared the first two levels extreemly well, you should be level 3 by Arena, which means you would have Soab, Soab, TH. This makes your chaingun deadly and way better for taking out Caco's and Barons. Basicly scout with shotgun, and when they are in the vision use the Chaingun.  If they are very very close or in the meelee then give them a shotgun blast for maximun damage aswell unless they are almost dead.

-Make sure the bodies don't get the suprise you. Try kill the enemies into a pile, and not too spread. If they are very spread around you will have trouble with them.

-When you're looting, be quick.


Also generally killing barons and hell knights, I'd recommend trying to lure them behind a small pool of lava/acid and shoot them from afar as they are stuck, good way to do this is with barrels. But if you're ammochain building, hell knights and barons should fall quite quickly to chainshooting with chaingun and plasmagun.
But still, try avoid direct barons fights unless you have Blue armor or better and you're overcharged in health.

Also few small general tips;
-If you're fighting near water/lava/acid, make the finishing shot in close with a shotgun or rocket launcher if you're taking distance to knock them to water/lava/acid thus disposing the body.
-Abuse berserk packs and invulnerabilities as much as you can, as they give double time in Nightmare.
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AStranger

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #3 on: November 18, 2009, 14:17 »

I think the easiest trait for N! depends on your play style. Generally I only take ammochain for Ao100 or for a specific challenge I think it will work well for (AoMC actually), but that has a lot to do how I play. My 'standard' N! build as of late has been Bru->Bru->Ber->TaN->TaN->Bad->MVm->Bru->TaN, but that's because I think melee is fun.

In terms of the most useful N! hints I can give is that I play UV and N! a lot differently. UV I take my time, meticulously clearing the level and searching for power-ups. This works well because of the fact that mobs stay dead, so you have all the time in the world. In N! every in-game moment counts, so I'm much more likely to just grab power-ups as I see them, not when they could give me the most benefit. The less time spent walking around, the less time things can spend raising. Killing a mob twice does no good unless it is dropping ammo that you need. If you find the stairs you need/want to take, really think about if you need to go try to grab another small medpack ~40 steps away, or if you can do without it. To put it in perspective, out of the few times I've done the Mortuary in N!, I don't think I ever bothered finding the Angelic Armor, because it wasn't worth the risk (which makes me wonder why I do the Mortuary in the first place....).

I generally stay out of Hell's Arena in N! unless I've found a combat shotgun and even then I still have to feel good about the medpack /power-up situation. A few factors that play into that are that I generally get TaN and not HR, I use technical mods on weapons over agility and the agility usually go on boots to make up for no HR. My last ammochain character went firing speed instead of accuracy, so it's not much a loss for me not to pass up the free agility mods in the Court regardless of my traits, but again, it's my play style. Although if you want to do the Arena, a combat shotgun is a near must. Shoot in the dark until something hurts, then keep shooting until you can see it. At that point it's up to you which weapon you feel better about. Keep all the corpses near the center, ideally so there is very little walking involved to kill everything, because the faster things die, the less you have to kill. This is the reason I prefer the combat shotgun over the chaingun, shooting one target often hurts 1-3 that you can't see, softening them up before they can see/attack you.

In the end, my rambling comes down to do everything as quick as possible (in-game not real-time, it's not uncommon for me to stop in the middle of combat for 30 seconds or so to really consider my next step or two).

Also few small general tips;
-If you're fighting near water/lava/acid, make the finishing shot in close with a shotgun or rocket launcher if you're taking distance to knock them to water/lava/acid thus disposing the body.
-Abuse berserk packs and invulnerabilities as much as you can, as they give double time in Nightmare.
These are definitely worth stating again, I pretend I'm almost invulnerable when I'm berserk and less corpses is just more better.
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AStranger

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #4 on: November 18, 2009, 16:52 »

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the most important thing of all, sheer luck. Lots of it. Probably more luck then the average person gets in a life time. There are just way too many things (levels) that go instantly wrong. If you aren't lucky enough to get 'winnable' levels, tough luck, start over. I'd say at least 85% of my N! characters die early level, 10% die after level 20, the other 5% die between levels ~7-20. Maybe I'm just good after I've gotten started, but really I think it has to do with the insane amount of luck that is required to get the character through the early levels. After that it's just hoping you don't get screwed with a bad arachnatron cave layout, a bad starting room or all the tough mobs on the level hanging out around the stairs, probably a few things I'm forgetting also.

So yeah, good luck.
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Passionario

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #5 on: November 19, 2009, 03:37 »

I think the easiest trait for N! depends on your play style.

This.

(For comparison, 90% of my N! games begin with me beelining towards Intuition2)
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UnderAPaleGreySky

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #6 on: November 19, 2009, 04:10 »

A fine tactic indeed. You NEED to know where all those monsters are, so you can avoid getting instakilled when you open doors.
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Dervis

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2009, 06:02 »

Hi folks...
I've been playing nightmare difficulty recently. It seems the common concensus from the post mortem boards is that ammochain is the easiest nightmare build, so I'm giving that a try. However, I figure I need the agility mods from the chained court in order to do this, and that means a rocket launcher.
You can get the agility mods from the Chained Court without a rocket launcher relatively easily, so you don't need to win the Arena just for it.
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UnderAPaleGreySky

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #8 on: November 19, 2009, 06:25 »

Was wondering when Dervis or Blade would stumble in on this thread :P

But about N! difficulty.. I tend to play AoMC.. high risk, high pay-off :D
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rax

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #9 on: November 19, 2009, 09:27 »

You can get the agility mods from the Chained Court without a rocket launcher relatively easily, so you don't need to win the Arena just for it.

Really? Sorry if I'm asking something that should be obvious, but how?
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Madtrixr

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #10 on: November 19, 2009, 09:45 »

The Wiki says use the Cacodemons, but can they destroy walls? Or am I missing something?

EDIT: I just thought about Phase Devices.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2009, 09:46 by Madtrixr »
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UnderAPaleGreySky

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #11 on: November 19, 2009, 23:10 »

Can Caco's destroy the Chained Court walls? I shall check.

EDIT: Answer - Not in any way I can produce.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2009, 23:16 by UnderAPaleGreySky »
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Fanta Hege

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2009, 01:57 »

...
You guys realize thise Cacodemons are Barons in N!, right?
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UnderAPaleGreySky

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2009, 02:44 »

Yes, but we were discusing the Caco's mentioned in the wiki.
« Last Edit: November 20, 2009, 02:45 by UnderAPaleGreySky »
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Fanta Hege

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Re: Nightmare difficulty - how?!?
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2009, 04:12 »

The wiki is probably not updated then, as the caco's got nerfed in this version.
They were able to blow up walls on 9.9.8 though
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