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[Thomas]

If (Killing the boss of UD is impossible without being berserk) AND (Being berserk during the fight requries luck, and that amount of luck is rediculously high) is true THEN UD is too difficult.

That makes sense, right?

Anyway, you can't kill the boss of UD without being berserk. That's a no-brainer. Without the berserk armor he rips you to shreds (So fast that you can't even use large heath packs because he kills you in 2 actions).

So let's say you had 20 large health packs. Every odd health pack does nothing because he just rips the health right back off, but you get a free hit on him on every EVEN health pack.

So you get 10 hits with your chainsaw +9. It does an average of 12 damage, +9 from your brutish traits. That's 23 damage times 10 which is 230 damage. If you have TWENTY health packs, you wont kill him! You'll still fall short by 20 HP!

So not being berserk isn't an option. We need some berserkness here.

The problem is that being berserk reduces your movespeed to 0.5 seconds for 20 seconds (IIRC), giving you 40 moves before you go normal again.

Now, if you're anything like me, you were battling the demons in the doorway. That doorway is 20 moves away from the boss. And, of course, you'll want 4 to 8 attacks on the boss, that should be enough to kill him while berserk.

As you only have a 4% chance of going berserk on any given attack, if you go berserk with 24-28 moves to spare at the end then you had to have been over 50% lucky. That's right. Unless you can go berserk at will (Like in AoB), you will fail to kill everything in UC more than half the time.


Now complaining about luck in a roguelike is pretty petty, but I can compare this to someone stopping my ingenius way of attempting to play this game (Melee AoLT, works well up until level 16) at the halfway point, asking me to flip a coin and unplugging my machine should I get tails, so I still get to take the moral high ground.

The only way to solve this would be to put a berserk pack next to the boss (Or behind him, if you feel that'd be too easy) or add some sort of skill to the fight instead of just *slash* *slash* *slash* slash* *slash* *slash* until you die because you weren't berserk or he died because you were.

[Titt]

I do not think your math is quite right; if each large medpack effectively nets you one hit against the Angel (assuming it gives you two turns, one to attack, one to use the next large medpack), and the chainsaw does 13 damage per hit (14 average base damage + 9 Brute damage - 10 due to the Angel's armor), 20 large medpacks is enough to do 260 damage and kill the Angel. That's a lot of assumptions, though--but the biggest and most questionable assumption is the claim that "If (Killing the boss of UD is impossible without being berserk) AND (Being berserk during the fight requries luck, and that amount of luck is rediculously high) is true THEN UD is too difficult." I do not think it is true that the Unholy Cathedral is too difficult; it is meant to be unplayable for all but very strong melee characters, and a challenge even for them. The reward is tremendous for a melee character that finishes it, but no character has to go to the Cathedral to finish the game.

I would enjoy seeing an alternate way to beat the Cathedral than just running in and beating the Angel to death while berserk, like some kind of hidden "back door" to the Cathedral that would put you on a platform where you could shoot across some chasm at the Angel without actually being in the Cathedral; but this would only fit in a version of DoomRL much more like Crawl, with complicated interlocking dungeon branches. It wouldn't make much sense in DoomRL as it is.

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

The Cathedral was meant to be unbeatable. Being able to beat it on AoB is a bonus :). Also there is a way to clear it without AoB -- put a nuke and go down ^^.

[Blade]

As you only have a 4% chance of going berserk on any given attack, if you go berserk with 24-28 moves to spare at the end then you had to have been over 50% lucky. That's right. Unless you can go berserk at will (Like in AoB), you will fail to kill everything in UC more than half the time.

Hmm? In the last version medpacks no longer grant Berserk status in AoB. It can be obtained only by trait, which gives you 5% chance of becoming Berserk on every hit.

Second - i killed AoD twice without Berserk. One was made with heavy savescumming and tactic of "hit him, so he begins to bleed, then run while he looses hp. Then repeat". But it's impossible in current version because we don't have bleeding system any more. Second was made with just chainsaw, 2 suits of red armour, and 4 or 5 meds, all of which i used. But i won.) It's luck-dependant, but it's possible. Also it's not supposed that non-melee character should have a chance to kill AoD. It's a place for only and only melee characters. And it gives very nice reward in return of so narrow specialization.)

[ParaSait]

<Noob Question> Um... What's UD? XD </Noob Question>

[Thomas]

My maths (Which turned out to be slightly flawed because I forgot the AoD's huge armor) assumes that you have berserker and brute 3.

Basically, my AoLT strat goes like this:

Get TaN 2, kill everything with guns as per normal, but pick up the chainsaw on the way.
Start getting Brute traits, kill everything with accuracy modded chaingun, use chainsaw to kill demons and lost souls.
I start running out of bullets just before level 16, so that just allows me to pick up even more consumables. It isn't uncommon for me to have 10 consumables by level 16.
Then, regardless of my chances of survival, I enter the unholy cathedral.

I have TaN 2 (Which is pretty much useless right now because I'm planning to use berserk's +infinity armor bonus to survive), brute 3 and berserker.

Anyway, this strat is difficult because unless I find an accuracy mod quicksmart, I'm going to suffer due to my lack of eagle eye. And by level 6, I'd like to have my cahingun spewing solid death at people but I decided to go all melee instead. Not to mention that I'm relying on around half of my kills to come from a chainsaw, which can be difficult at the best of times.

So when I get 3 runs to the AoD, all of which had 8-10 consumables (One of the luckier ones managed to bring 8 large meds and a homing phase), all of which had a super duper mega chainsaw of death that one-shots pinkies, and they all get tails at the coinflip, I'm obligated to feel a little ripped off.

And killing the AoD without being berserk is indeed impossible because when I said "20 large meds" I was also therfore saying "Only 1 red armor", which is basically the only thing stopping him from killing you in 2 turns.

The main reason its so hard to kill the AoD without berserk is that berserk gives you armor. In fact, it gives so much armor that I think what it's really doing is reducing all damage to one. When the AoD does one damage per hit and hence around 10% damage in 2 turns, you can easily chainsaw him to death while he goes "WHY IS MY SPEAR NOT WORKING!?"

[nerdatron]

The trick is simply to make sure you're berserk when you see the Angel of Death!

Lure the demons in the second room next to the door that the AoD is behind (AFAIK the AoD can't open doors), chainsaw until you're berserk, then open the door and slaughter the AoD! This strategy got me thru Ultra-Violence when all else failed - practically, the AoD becomes the final boss :)

[Thomas]

The trick is simply to make sure you're berserk when you see the Angel of Death!

Lure the demons in the second room next to the door that the AoD is behind (AFAIK the AoD can't open doors), chainsaw until you're berserk, then open the door and slaughter the AoD! This strategy got me thru Ultra-Violence when all else failed - practically, the AoD becomes the final boss :)

That would work provided you can survive a few maulings, which at this point you probably can.

Alrighty, now that we have a foolproof way of beating the AoD, UC is too easy. Make it harder dammit.

[Xael]

Just to relate my experience:

My very first visit to the UC (a couple of builds ago) was a victory, despite the fact that a was playing a non-melle character then. At that time I was still lugging around my chainsaw just for fun, and i just so happened to pick up an inv. globe just before the stairs to the Cathedral. Result - killed the Angel without losing a single hp.

[metroidRL]

anoter way to kill AoD

NOTE:this only work with HR3 and boots with movement and no armor (or with an unique armor)

first kill the lost soul (easy)

next have the demons kill himself with the lava

final like previous step have the AoD kill himself with the lava

it's very hard the final step because finding an unique armor with mov. (or boots mov. mod) it's really hard

[ParaSait]

I killed him with a thermie... I know, really heroic and all XD