Hi everyone. Old returning player, i'm sure there's been quite a few of those, so no need for anything special.
I saw there was a quick questions thread...but I thought the question required a more 'broad' answer then the thread might have given. If that's wrong, please feel free to get me to repost/merge it there, and sorry in advance!
Anyway, I really enjoy playing DoomRL and eagerly await the next version...if indeed there will be one, with all the Jupiter Hell activity. However, I've reached a bit of a lull in my adventures. The maximum difficulty I can reasonably attempt is UV - I don't have a problem with doing challenges on that difficulty, and indeed that's my default setting unless i'm doing a fun run or playing AoB (I could do it, I imagine, but I don't want to be running around throwing knives at a Hell Knight on the first few floors for ages just to get max kill rate. :p). However, I struggle a lot with Nightmare....
Indeed, i've only played around 10 games on nightmare in the past, going back to.. 0.9.9, if my memory serves me correctly. And I remember each time it was utterly frustrating to play - Respawning enemies is one thing, but they also have the 10% speed buff (Or you have a 10% speed penalty, I don't remember which) and on top of that, they spawn even worse then UV.
Now, this could be attributed to my playstyle. I do do a lot of camping and cornershooting with giftdropping (A recent UV game of mine was 594499 turns, and this was even after I got the BFG and the Scythe and practically destroyed the hell levels with berserk and high movespeed), which leaves a pile of corpses stacked on the wall next to me. Now, that's not that bad even if there's a few Archviles around, focus them down first, then go back to gibbing whatever they ressurected, but on N! at low levels when you're armed with a few traits and even fewer methods to clean up corpses besides stacking them, this strategy is completely unviable.
I was hoping to get some advice from some of the more experienced players on how to ease into Nightmare. Ease being a relative term, of course. I've played a few games hoping to get some experience for myself, but have had little success in getting...well, anywhere, really. And i'm really not looking forward to the N! Hellgate, which just looks flat up impossible with nightmare enemies at such a low dlevel...it makes UV Phobos Lab look like a picnic.
As an extension question - how do you complete no damage/speed challenges? Now, obviously you can kite the Angel of Death around the UC - that's no big deal if you have enough movespeed and combat knives (Or you are confident in timing your steps and attacks). And taking on enemies 1v1 damageless is also suitably easy given you have some form of cover or high movespeed. But how are you supposed to do this with multiple enemies?
Now, obviously we can't all be Neo, er, TwoDev, but I don't understand in what way he (and others! Credit where credit is due) performs some of the challenges he does - and in very little time, at that! A recent AoMs YAAM of mine gave me the line " He played for 2 hours, 35 minutes and 8 seconds.", and i'd consider that fairly fast!
In what way do you go about doing challenges like this? Things like the higher level gatekeeper badges, clearing the mortuary without damage, etc.
I understand it is supposed to be difficult, but I don't understand what basic tactics or the method you would go about doing these kinds of things. Having random creatures fireball you out of the blue happens to me more often then not unless I camp - which doesn't work on these kinds of challenges. And the Gatekeeper just seems flat out impossible, given i've never gone to the bruiser brothers without a significant paddling.
Thanks in advance for the advice. It's quite frustrating having worked out how to pick up the Dragonslayer on a recent Ao100 game I completed (No Berserker Armor spawned, unfortunately) and having the feeling of "I worked out a cool secret!" overshadowed by "It takes me over half an hour to get past Phobos Base Entry on Nightmare", so I greatly appreciate it.
