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Author Topic: [N!|AALT|91%|YAVP?] Lightfoot Angelic, Undeserved Win?  (Read 2738 times)

Cotonou

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--------------------------------------------------------------
 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
--------------------------------------------------------------

 Jacob Orine, level 15 Hell Baron 1st Lieutenant Scout,
 sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 90589 turns and scored 750760 points.
 He played for 2 hours, 30 minutes and 55 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1568 out of 1711 hellspawn. (91%)
 He held his right to remain violent.
 He was an Archangel of Travel!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 5
  Levels completed : 2

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Cyberdemon's Head
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Lightfoot Bronze Badge
  Lightfoot Silver Badge
  Lightfoot Gold Badge
  Lightfoot Diamond Badge
  Lightfoot Angelic Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  ..........................................B...............#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................%...............#
  ........................................%.................#
  ..........................................%...............#
  ........................................%..%..B...........#
  .........................................%.%%.............#
  .............................................B...B........#
  .........................................B...B.B.......O..#
  .............................................B.B.......%.%#
  .............................................B...........%#
  .......................................................%%.#
  ..........................................................#
  .....................................................%.%..#
  ...........................................BB.B...........#
  ...........................................BX..B..........#
  ...........................................BB.B...........#
  ....................................X............%%%......#
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 0/50   Experience 112376/15
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +0  ToDmg Ranged +3  ToDmg Melee +3

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Hellrunner       (Level 3)
    Son of a bitch   (Level 3)
    Reloader         (Level 2)
    Dodgemaster      (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)

  Int->Int->HR->HR->SoB->SoB->Rel->Rel->SM->SoB->DM->HR->Fin->Fin->Fin->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   nothing
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   elephant gun (12d3) [0/1]
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x48)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] shotgun shell (x22)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    None

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    169 former humans
    142 former sergeants
    66 former captains
    269 imps
    94 demons
    482 lost souls
    52 cacodemons
    33 hell knights
    67 barons of hell
    18 arachnotrons
    23 former commandos
    47 pain elementals
    29 revenants
    13 mancubi
    16 arch-viles
    4 nightmare imps
    4 nightmare cacodemons
    34 nightmare demons
    2 bruiser brothers
    1 shambler
    1 agony elemental
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena before it got too hot.
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 7 he sneaked into the Phobos Lab.
  On level 7 he assembled a elephant gun!
  He broke through the lab.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 12 he found the City of Skulls.
  He wiped out the City of Skulls.
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 21 he found the Lava Armor!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He nuked level 24!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  On level 25 he finally sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 Targeting canceled.
 You dodge! Boom!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : a baron of hell (heavily wounded) | pool of blood | [ m ]ore
 You hear the scream of a freed soul!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : John Carmack (severely wounded) | floor | [ m ]ore
 You quickly reload the elephant gun.
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : John Carmack (severely wounded) | floor | [ m ]ore
 Targeting canceled.
 Carmack raises his hands and summons hellspawn!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : John Carmack (severely wounded) | floor | [ m ]ore
 You are hit! Your red armor is completely destroyed! You die!... Press
 <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 161 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 142 of those were killed.
 3 of those were killed by something unknown.
 1 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 7 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 1 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 3 killed the bitch and survived.
 3 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------

This one puzzles me.

So after getting Marksman Angelic I decided that Lightfoot Angelic was totally, 100% possible -- and in fact, probably should be a breeze.  I tried it out just for to get a feel for it and was shocked to discover that the 30% speed boost isn't just movement speed:  it is firing and reload speed as well.  Holy Christ.

Lets step back and think about this for a bit here.  At the start of the game you get 2 ranks of Hellrunner, 2 ranks of Finesse, plus a rank and a half of Reloader.  And this is supposed to be hard?  Lets break it down even further.  You have to play on Nightmare for the Angelic badge, and the primary difficulty of N! is the respawning monsters.  Okay, sure.  But the bonus you get for this challenge *directly nerfs* nightmare's most potent challenge.  Monsters respawn based on how long you spend on the level.  Thanks to the challenge bonus, you now spend 30% less time on every level.. and it *stacks* with other speed boosts.  This really needs to get turned down.

So I looked over the requirements and thought, as I'm sure almost everyone else did, "Ah-ha!  Ammochain is the way to go!"  Because in a game where you only get two inventory slots, surely the ammo conservation perk is the best!  I tried it a couple times and quickly learned why I don't like Ammochain at all... its upgrade path is just has so little synergy with normal conservative play that you die before its benefits can really manifest.  Also, locking you out of Eagle Eye and Intuition is just devastating in a game where you can't stockpile medkits for emergencies.  After a couple deaths I just gave it up.

What to do?  I know!  I'll just play my normal shotgun scout!  It seems counterintuitive, given that you can only carry 2 stacks of 50 shells, but take it from me that 100 SoBx3 elephant gun rounds is a LOT of damage.  I was never even close to running out of ammo, or even digging to far into my shell box.  At the end of the game I even felt comfortable sacrificing half my reserve ammo to carry a nuke with me.  You just have to remember to have the sergeants die on in a respawnable way.  Sometimes it even means protecting them, the poor little guys.

As a side note, I can't stress enough how happy I am that Shottyman reloads draw from ammo stacks before digging into the shell box.  That is exactly what I wanted to happen, and reliably boosts the ammo reserve on this challenge to around 200 shotgun rounds.  If it won't die after that, its probably got plot armor.

Shottyman + HR3 + FIN3 + Scout Bonus + Challenge Bonus = a streak of light blazing through the levels perforating anything in its way.  I didn't even bother trying to destroy corpses in Hell -- I was clearing the levels too fast for them to respawn.  It was pretty disgusting.

So here's the issue.  I was feeling cocky after devastating all of Hell, so when a chance to go for a full win came up I jumped at it.  Problem being?  JC killed the hell out of me.  I don't know if I got unlucky or just underestimated the challenge, but I just couldn't put out enough damage to bring him down.  I was very sad... until I saw I got the Angelic badge anyway?  I guess dying on JC now counts as a sacrificial win?  I guess that makes sense, since I killed the Mastermind, but the game still feels like a bit of a failure.  Oh well.

All in all the challenge was really fun, but not really challenge-y.  The lack of reserve ammo isn't a huge issue... the main problem is that you can't really carry medkits around with you, so it plays a bit like Angel of Impatience.  I'm sure you could completely eliminate the 30% speed bonus and still have this be totally doable.  As it stands, I think this one can be consistently won by a good player.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2013, 20:18 by Cotonou »
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Juice

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Re: [N!|AALT|91%|YAVP?] Lightfoot Angelic, Undeserved Win?
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2013, 01:37 »

Well...you make it sound easy :) Im nowhere near the level of play you demonstrate, so I cant offer insight on overpowerdness (is that even a real word or am I just making it up? :D) of ArchLT. That speed boost looks REALLY helpful, but dunno if the limited inventory cancels it out. I guess players with lower skill (like me) cant do ArchLT on N! either way and those with higher skill dont care about 2 slot inventory.

Anyway congratz on another angelic :-)
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2birds1stone

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Re: [N!|AALT|91%|YAVP?] Lightfoot Angelic, Undeserved Win?
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2013, 20:53 »

Well...you make it sound easy :) Im nowhere near the level of play you demonstrate, so I cant offer insight on overpowerdness (is that even a real word or am I just making it up? :D) of ArchLT. That speed boost looks REALLY helpful, but dunno if the limited inventory cancels it out. I guess players with lower skill (like me) cant do ArchLT on N! either way and those with higher skill dont care about 2 slot inventory.

Anyway congratz on another angelic :-)
You don't need to be able to finish it on N! to see the problem; even comparing HNTR/HMP/UV Arch/AoLT to the vanilla game at that difficulty should make it fairly clear.

With regards to vanilla AoLT, removing the shell box and ammo chain from the starting equipment would go a long way towards increasing the difficulty (you would at least be reliant on a non-Brute trait to make it to the Chained Court before horribly breaking the game, rather than building melee before you've even got the chainsaw because the first five levels easy enough as is).

With regards to ArchAoLT, I really have no idea what you can do to fix it, but removing the speed boost doesn't sound particularly terrible. I'm pretty sure that ArchAoLT is the only Archangel which actually compensates you more than the corresponding Angel challenge, so it'd make sense to at least scale it back.
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