First off: holy crap, two uniques, and both were pistols? You guys get some awesome luck at times. The only luck I've had in an AoMr game is a floor 3 Blaster (which is awesome, but it doesn't let you forego offensive traits like the uniques do). That game was, as a matter of fact, nearly a walk in the park because of that, by the way. I can only imagine the kind of victory I could get with Trigun OR Grammaton, let alone both.
Despite my terrible luck with Hell's Arena in AoMr, I went for it this time around. Got Dualgunner early in it and had it pretty easy from there, what with how much I'm shooting around the pillars. The cacodemons in the last round had trouble hitting the broad side of a barn. I chose to keep my extra pistols in case I found another accuracy or power mod.
It's been a result of my experience to choose the third SoG over DG and, unless you absolutely must have MGK by level 7, it's better in all aspects other than chance to hit. So long as you're shooting with four tiles or so, this is never a problem (and in Hell's Arena, more important anyway). Either way, MGK aside, always round off your gun traits with SoG(x3)/DG by level four.
Had 4 large medpacks by floor 6, but I still saw no point in going to Chained Court (no explosives readily available to me), so I didn't.
Since you were aiming 100% kills, this is an easy mistake by players who don't know how effective berserk is on hazardous terrain. Hell, even on UV, you can slap the zerks on and get the Barons to kill the walls enough to make it out without retracking through the lava. Chained Court is ALWAYS easy experience, and usually an easy two agi mods (AoMr/AoB being the typical exception).
I could not believe it on level 14 when I found the Trigun. Now all I needed to do was not screw up. Hellgate was easy on account of me entering the place supercharged. I acquired Gun Kata just as I was wrapping up that place.
I'm convinced at this point that Hellgate AoMr is absolute hell without some great luck or careful preparation. Homing phase (probably) fixes it, normal phases are a gamble as usual; otherwise you WILL need berserk or invulnerability heading into that first wave on UV+.
Of course, the game still had cruel tricks up its sleeve, by having me start Phobos Hell level 5 surrounded by four cacodemons, THEN put a cluster of former sergeants surrounding a commando nearby. THEN spawning two arch-viles right next to each other on TOP of that (luckily I only fought one at a time).
Normally, for an MGK run, that's a really bad roll of monsters (ideally you want Arach caves). Grammaton and Trigun turn that into swiss cheese, though. My guess is that the Cacos died pretty quickly...
I had about 10 large medpacks and 3 red armors entering [Phobos] Arena, and Cybie was still not a cakewalk by any stretch.
I make a note on the Marksman Silver badge in my guide that, in spite of DM, MGK will find the Cyberdemon hard because of reloading times. I can only imagine this was amplified by the fact that you carried two uniques, which require 2.0s per reload. As a tip for the next game, take Rel instead of EE in preparation for Cybie: Trigun already has like, +6 or something, so I doubt you had THAT much trouble hitting the enemies.
Hardly noticed the dodge benefit from Gun Kata or even Dodgemaster, but the autoreload was worth enough as it is. I don't know what I'll do without getting uniques like I had this time (maybe go with TaN and Eagle Eye right after Dualgunner instead of going for Dodgemaster?)
Dodgemaster automatically dodges attacks as long as you're sidestepping the enemy. This is important: it's not the same as standing still and the enemies' projectiles avoiding you. In addition, it only dodges the first attack on a given turn (someone correct me on this if I have it wrong; the wording is STILL hard to understand on that trait), which means it doesn't save you forever. Against a couple of Barons you're practically invincible at a distance, but Arach caves can still become a problem if they surround you. Sidestepping means you move in such a way that circles your opponent, as opposed to towards or away from (which, if it's in the same path as their attack, knocks your dodge rate to zero).
Pistol runs are generally divided into either an Gun Kata build or focusing entirely on offense. With MGK, EE isn't as necessary because you can afford to get close to most enemies, though you don't really need Fin either because of MGK's awesome insta-attack after a dodge. Personally I'd choose Fin over EE so I can reach WK and power-mod my pistols to make up for the blocked SoB. With an offensive build, it's just SoG/DG, a point of EE for good measure, and plenty of SoB/Fin, with a point of Rel somewhere near the end for Cybie. It's not typical to build defense on pistol runs because you're already lacking the kind of offense that can stand out and shoot into the masses. Conservative corner-shooting and scouting are the way to go and, as a result, things like TaN and Iro are really unnecessary in favor of anything that can kill the enemies as quickly as possible.
I should note that, with SoG(x3) and SoB(x3), you get some wicked knockback chances from your pistols. This makes it so that most enemies can't even stay in your vision (and is the reason for the point of EE) and you're free to pick them off as they continuously enter your vision.
So yeah, 3 more bronze badges and I'll unlock Nightmare difficulty, then 2 more each of bronze and silver badges to unlock the remaining challenge modes.
If you want some suggestions:
- AoSg is pretty easy until Phobos Hell, by which point you'll have wanted to stock up on a ton of shells. Combat for long-range, double for anything that gets close. I prefer MAD over MFa on easier difficulties, because there are few enough monsters to worry less about being hit.
- AoH is simple enough if you find a nuke, and reaching level 8 (for the Bronze) is remarkably easy with some luck.
- Make sure you check out Vaults/Mortuary at some point, they have really easy Bronze/Silver badges. Lava, Brick, Skull, and Arachno are all easy Bronzes, too.
- AoMC is a great way to practice tactical combat skills. Since you always hit all enemies for full damage (and vice versa) if forces you to play "kill before they can hit", which is the basis of conservative techniques in this game. After a while you get used to the strategy involved and it turns into a pretty easy challenge.
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Topic: [M|AoMr|96%|YAVP] First REAL AoMr win... not without incident. (Read 2522 times)