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Author Topic: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?  (Read 5505 times)

Faintly

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Later on on I'm very happy to throw them on a BFG to save inventory space. Or if I get a nano mod I'm assuming that nanomanufacture is great.

if I get them early I can't think of uses, and I'm not too sure about the ones I have.

uses:

1. fireproof armor or onyx shield. How useful is it if I get cerberus? I suppose a spare high quality armor is good so maybe pretty good.

2. I could throw one on the chainsaw? It's not necessarry for the cathedral, which is why I'm carrying it, but maybe I could throw an agility mod on it as well to use it without brute, or just let the bulk mods tell me to get melee skills instead.

Beyond those two, i'm not sure if any of the rest are useful when you haven't invested in accuracy:



Burst cannon looks cool but low accuracy. Maybe with a sniper or agility mod?

Environmental boots look good on paper but seem like a waste to assemble from steel rather than plasteel, and the only reason I would want them anyway is lava pits, which is way later, and carrying an extra envirosuit around might anyway be just as good anyway as carrying plasteel boots and spending 3 mods on it.

tactical rocket launcher seems like its for when you're not getting the missile launcher, which I always aim to.

Storm bolter pistol looks cool but I have no accuracy and i usually find an artifact pistol anyway.



So should I just lug them around until nano or bfg and use one on red armor and maybe one on chainsaw?

« Last Edit: May 17, 2017, 11:34 by Faintly »
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ZicherCZ

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2017, 11:39 »

First, welcome to the forums!

Now, you confused me a bit, mentioning a shotgun build in the post title and then listing a lot of weapon assemblies that are not shotgun (IIRC, shotgun do not benefit from bulk mods directly, assemblies or otherwise - they do decrease reloading times for them, but taking Reloader trait is always a better choice, and Shottyman makes this use completely obsolete). Nanomanufacture assembly, for instance, does not work for shotguns.

Bulk has other uses though. First and foremost, it alone doubles your armor durability. Then, you can later turn the armor into a fireproof one - this is quite a cheap (non-Whizkid) way to gain lots of fire resistance, especially when made of red armor. And you can use it for a plenty of secondary weapons you already listed (BFG or chainsaw - most of the other assemblies are way better used by appropriate builds, instead of shotgun builds).

And if you're not happy with these uses, you can simply leave the bulks on the floor.
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Faintly

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2017, 18:21 »

First, welcome to the forums!

Now, you confused me a bit, mentioning a shotgun build in the post title and then listing a lot of weapon assemblies that are not shotgun (IIRC, shotgun do not benefit from bulk mods directly, assemblies or otherwise - they do decrease reloading times for them, but taking Reloader trait is always a better choice, and Shottyman makes this use completely obsolete)



thanks, hi

Well that's exactly my problem, if I go shottyman etc, my primary weapon can't be a dump for bulk mods, like (-I'm guessing-) it can with other primaries, so in consequence I have trouble finding uses for them when a lot of them drop. Nanomanufacture isn't a shotgun mod but it seems like a strong use for bulk mods on a shotgun build, where you can't use them for a shotgun assembly. (Infinite rockets!)

Or wait did "shotgun build" mean 'angel of shotgunnery' build? I just meant getting shotgun traits and focusing on it in a normal game.


about armor, it seems good with red armor for eventual fireproof, but otherwise I'm not running out of armors to wear, and the speed penalty hurts a lot before I get hellrunner or speed boots. Maybe armor health will be more tight on higher difficulty settings. The red armor mod does seem solid.

About the chainsaw, is it worthwhile when you don't get brute? Seems like I take a lot of hp damage when I use it to save ammo. I've been carrying it only to make outspeeding the cathedral angel easier. Also I'm glad to hear the BFG is a good use, though unsurprised. The weapon capacity to inventory slot ratio is really high.

And if you're not happy with these uses, you can simply leave the bulks on the floor.

I wouldn't be asking if I knew how happy I should be w/ them!

It never occured to me that the best use for a mod might be to forego a permanentish power up. That's, like, blasphemy. Well maybe a less RPG mindset is in order, the inventory in this game is the tightest I've ever seen. (Or it seems that way anyway. Maybe it's inexperience seeing as there's a challenge to beat the game with even much less lots.)

« Last Edit: May 17, 2017, 18:29 by Faintly »
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Thomas

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2017, 23:56 »

About the chainsaw, is it worthwhile when you don't get brute? Seems like I take a lot of hp damage when I use it to save ammo. I've been carrying it only to make outspeeding the cathedral angel easier. Also I'm glad to hear the BFG is a good use, though unsurprised. The weapon capacity to inventory slot ratio is really high.
When you're fighting a single arachnotron, if you don't have good cover to hide behind then the best strategy is to dodge towards them and kill them in melee range because their melee attack does much less damage than their gun. Using a shotgun will knock them back (and then they'll shoot you), so a chainsaw is really good in this kind of situation.

That's the only situation where I would be very happy to have brought a chainsaw with me without brute, so it doesn't come up very often. If you want to use it to save ammo then you should take brute+berserker or at least juggler, or the cost of using it will always be greater than just shooting them.


Quote
It never occured to me that the best use for a mod might be to forego a permanentish power up. That's, like, blasphemy. Well maybe a less RPG mindset is in order, the inventory in this game is the tightest I've ever seen. (Or it seems that way anyway. Maybe it's inexperience seeing as there's a challenge to beat the game with even much less lots.)

Your inventory will mainly depend on how many special levels you want to clear. Clearing special levels generally fills your inventory full of useful junk that you have to carry around for a long time (take the staff to the vaults, take the chainsaw to the cathedral, take some envirosuits to the lava pits)

So any character that wants to do a lot of special levels (or all of them) is pressured in to getting brute and berserker, so that when they run out of ammo halfway through the game they can win the rest of it with the chainsaw/spear that they're built to use.

But if you don't plan on doing a lot of them and you don't want to get brute, then just bring more ammo. You already know it costs a lot of HP to save ammo, and when you think about it like that, 50 shotgun shells will "heal" you more than a small medpack or even a large one. Obviously you need SOME medpacks to live but if you ever run out of ammo, even if it doesn't kill you, then you know that next game you should drop more medpacks or spare weapons for ammo so that it doesn't happen again.
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Evilpotatoe

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2017, 14:58 »

I'd go for the TacRL.
I often try to get one for the Armory, since it makes shambler's head easier (and getting it tends to give you a nano, which is neat).

It can never be guaranteed, but I don't see much use for those (great) B-mods anyway. My next ones usually go on a plasma gun (which I try to make nanomachic), then on BFGs (which barely ever use, but big BFGs are cool, and makes me comfortable)
You might also consider the gatling gun, which is great.  I stopped crafting it since I reserve my B for tacRL & my plasma gun, but it rocks.
The only sad thing is that it's a sort of plasma gun... with bullet type damages.  Which is a bit weak.  On the other hand, it's usually easier to find a bunch of bullets.
The other assemblies seem pointless to me, since a normal weapon with 5 mods will often be just better than a dubious assembly.

I don't remember well.  Was the movement penalty for bluk-modding armors removed in 0.9.9.7 ?  If it wasn't, I wouldn't advise to do it.
Fireproof can probably be a good armor, but I forgot about it due to its lack of versality, since some (maybe too good) stuff exist, and don't have such drawbacks.

Putting B on chainsaw is cool, but I doubt it's as useful as it should be, since BRU/BER give you insane damage boosts already anyway, and the AoD basically requires either great speed, or crude melee power, which kinda both make the damage difference unnecessary.
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Faintly

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2017, 19:11 »

thanks for the all the info.

more questions

could bulk mod on shottyman build be good with shottyhead on a focused double shotgun?

on the topic of the cathedral, is there any hp threshold where actually beneficial to use azrael's scythe ability to get berserked more often?

how does tactical rocket launcher help clear that level without taking damage? (also is there other achievment-reward pairs like that which I should know about? I know there's a special one on nightmare, but in other difficulties?)

iirc bulk mod takes off 10% speed in my 0.9.9.7 version
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Thomas

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Re: What to do with early bulk packs on shotgun build?
« Reply #6 on: May 18, 2017, 22:20 »

on the topic of the cathedral, is there any hp threshold where actually beneficial to use azrael's scythe ability to get berserked more often?

The main thresholds are 30, 50 and 60.

You always want to be below (or equal to) 60 max HP, because then Arch-Vile attacks will always make you go berserk. 50 max HP is even better because then Cyberdemon and Angel of Death melee attacks will make you go berserk.

Going below 50 is risky in my opinion. It will help against things that do medium-high damage, like barons of hell and close-range shotgun blasts, but it also means you die faster to plasma. I'm more scared of plasma, so I don't use the scythe's alt-fire.

Once you get down to 30 max HP, going any lower won't help you go berserk more, because you can't go berserk from an attack that does 9 or less damage no matter how low your max HP is. At 30 or lower (eg. playing an Angel of Humanity challenge run with Berserker) many, many things will make you go berserk, but you have to start watching out for cacodemons and hell knights because they usually do less than 10 damage.

Quote
how does tactical rocket launcher help clear that level without taking damage? (also is there other achievment-reward pairs like that which I should know about? I know there's a special one on nightmare, but in other difficulties?)

You can see rank, badge and medal requirements on the DoomRL wiki, on this page: https://drl.chaosforge.org/wiki/Achievements

If you want to kill a shambler without taking damage, rocket launchers are better than shotguns because shamblers have good armor and HP regeneration - killing them with shotguns takes a long time. And the tactical rocket launcher is even better for fighting than a regular rocket launcher because it has much better accuracy and holds 5 rockets instead of 1.

Even before you fight the shambler and on other levels, the tactical rocket launcher deals a lot of damage and knockback at long range, which helps you fight safely and not take damage even when out of cover.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2017, 22:27 by Thomas »
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Arch-Vile Chaos Major Thomas
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