Until now, I've not done a successful pistol run in DoomRL. There's plenty stacked against one -- starting pistols being pretty weak even with Son of a Gun, Whizkid being required for the better pistol assemblies (which takes perks away from an otherwise solid Scout or Marine build) and a noticeable lack of good pistols (with the ones that do show up being completely luck-based). And my pile of dead would-be pistoleros, many of them Scouts and Marines going for Gun Kata and Bullet Dance, are testament to all these things, often getting killed early before ever realizing their full power. But now, I've managed to pull my first successful pistol run.
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DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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Adrian Carmack,
level 10 Hell Knight Sergeant Major Technician,
defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
He survived 123910 turns and scored 47172 points.
He played for 1 hour, 50 minutes and 20 seconds.
He was too young to die!
He killed 460 out of 460 hellspawn. (100%)
This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 7
Levels visited : 6
Levels completed : 6
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Mastermind's Brain
Medal of Prejudice
Hell Champion Medal
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 53/50 Experience 47160/10
ToHit Ranged +6 ToHit Melee +6 ToDmg Ranged +0 ToDmg Melee +0
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Technician
Son of a gun (Level 3)
Eagle Eye (Level 3)
Intuition (Level 1)
Whizkid (Level 2)
Sharpshooter (Level 1)
SoG->SoG->SoG->EE->EE->EE->MSs->WK->WK->Int->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[a] [ Armor ] Lava Armor [4/4] (88%)
[b] [ Weapon ] high power pistol (2d6) [0/4]
[c] [ Boots ] tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
[d] [ Prepared ] 10mm ammo chain (x105)
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
[a] pistol (2d4) [8/8] (B1T1)
[b] missile launcher (6d6) [2/4]
[c] BFG 9000 (10d6) [10/100]
[d] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
[e] red armor [4/4] (59%)
[f] red armor [4/4] (80%)
[g] energy shield [0/0] (99%)
[h] 10mm ammo (x140)
[i] 10mm ammo (x140)
[j] 10mm ammo (x83)
[k] shotgun shell (x30)
[l] rocket (x7)
[m] power cell (x40)
[n] small med-pack
[o] large med-pack
[p] large med-pack
[q] large med-pack
[r] large med-pack
[s] lava element
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
Fire - internal 0% torso 75% feet 0%
Plasma - internal 0% torso 50% feet 0%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
96 former humans
57 former sergeants
14 former captains
109 imps
17 demons
78 lost souls
20 cacodemons
20 hell knights
11 barons of hell
8 arachnotrons
4 former commandos
7 pain elementals
3 revenants
6 mancubi
4 arch-viles
2 bruiser brothers
1 lava elemental
1 Cyberdemon
1 Spider Mastermind
1 Arena Master
-- History ---------------------------------------------------
He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
He left the Arena as a champion!
On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
He defeated the Hell Arena Master!
On level 7 he marched into the Military Base.
He purified his fellow comrades.
On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
On level 10 he assembled a tactical boots!
On level 11 he arrived at the Containment Area.
He emerged from the Containment Area victorious!
On level 14 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
On level 20 he assembled a high power weapon!
On level 22 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
On level 22 he found the Lava Armor!
He managed to raise Mt. Erebus completely!
Then at last he found Dis!
On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the high power pistol.
Fire -- Choose target...
You see : a Spider Mastermind (mortally wounded) | blood | [ m ]ore
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind.
Fire -- Choose target...
You see : a Spider Mastermind (mortally wounded) | pool of blood | [ m ]ore
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind.
Fire -- Choose target...
You see : a Spider Mastermind (almost dead) | pool of blood | [ m ]ore
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
Fire -- Choose target...
You see : a Spider Mastermind (almost dead) | blood | [ m ]ore
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies.
Congratulations! You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...
You feel relatively safe now.
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
164 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
143 of those were killed.
1 of those was killed by something unknown.
And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
12 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
3 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
3 killed the bitch and survived.
6 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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For this run, I wanted a Technician. Technicians have several advantages right out of the gate -- aside from turning every Computer Map into a Tracking Map which I covered in previous posts, Whizkid is a free perk for them, whereas everyone else has to plop two perks into Finesse, which not a lot of pistol builds use. Unfortunately, Sharpshooter requires a lot of preliminary perking to actually get -- Son of a Gun and Eagle Eye both have to be at 3 in order to unlock it, which means you have to be at Level 7 at the least to get your hands on the Master. It's also the only master that doesn't believe in Guns Akimbo, which suited me just fine, as one of my failed pistol runs, on a Bullet Dance build, ended with me exhausting nearly all of my ammo halfway through Hell. If I'm going to be turning my pistols into an automatic weapon, I might as well go Ammochain with a damn chaingun and save a slot on my inventory.
It started off pretty nicely. I managed to get myself a stockpile of not only bullets, but armor and health packs, which proved crucial to surviving the early game. My early ranks of Son of a Gun coupled with a tech-modded pistol let me pick off zombies and imps with two or three shots each, and assmunch demons and Cacos with three to four rounds each. I doubt I would have survived the Chained Court and killed the Arena Master or the other crap in the level without my armor and health packs. I then bulk-modded another pistol using one of the mods that I found in that level, which would become my other weapon as I journeyed through. My pistols saw me through the Military Base and the Phobos Anomaly, the latter of which had me taking down the two Barons of Hell while taking a fair amount of damage in the process.
Then it was on to Deimos and the ever-hateful acid and lava barrels. I assembled the tactical boots early on for a much-needed speed boost. Hellknights took about five rounds with the pistols to put down, something I made use of during the battle in the Containment Area, which was the only major area where I used a shotgun, on the assmunch demons in the room with the 10mm ammo chain. I wouldn't fully unlock Sharpshooter until after the battle with the Hellknights, with the first Caco I put down in the next level. But while I was now doing max damage with every round I fired, my pistols were rather limited in regards to damage, especially against the fucking Mancubus (something that usually only shows up in Hell) that ended up showing up later on after clearing the Spider's Lair and knocking me around with his fucking rockets. He took fucking near the entire mag of my bulk-modded pistol to kill. So I sunk my next two points into Whizkid, and bulk-modded the tech-modded pistol in order to give it a bigger mag, which became my main weapon through Deimos. I somehow missed the next secret level (which was either the Abyssal Plains or the City of Skulls, neither of which are a good time for pistol builds anyway). The BFG from the Spider's Lair and its ammo saw use against the Cyberdemon, who took all my cell ammo before being finished off with the tech and bulk modded pistol.
As I went into Hell, I had my eye on assembling a storm bolter using the tech and bulk modded pistol I had been using. Unfortunately, there were no bulk mods whatsoever to be had in Hell, and I couldn't assemble an energy pistol with the power mod I found either due to having bulk-modded my other. But power-modding that gun resulted in a high-power pistol that was a serious upgrade from my last gun despite the four-round mag and became my main gun through Hell. I also had to pick through the fucking lava which was everywhere and fight Imps, Mancubi, Revenants and some fucking Viles as well. There was a particularly aggravating encounter involving a Vile that kept fucking reviving an Imp again and again as soon as I put it down while hiding behind a fucking wall like a fucking chickenshit before I managed to track it down and kill it dead. I also got knocked around my fair share of times, not only by the fucking Revenants and Mancubi and their fucking rockets, but also by fucking pissant shotgunners that kept blasting me as I tried to get into fucking range, which pissed me right the fuck off. The lava area was Mt. Erebus, which I entered on an Invincibility Sphere before booking it across the lava, getting knocked around by more fucking shotgunners, killing them all, and then taking my high-power pistol to the Hell Knights and then the Lava Elemental. My reward for this was not only the Lava Element, but the Lava Armor, which I wore for the remainder of my run.
The last level before Spidey had another aggravating encounter involving more fucking Mancubi and more fucking Viles, and one Vile in particular who kept resurrecting the Mancubus so he could knock me around some more. Once I killed the Vile and the Mancubus, the rest of the level was a comparative breeze. There was one last mod to be found, but unfortunately, it was an Agility mod and not a bulk mod, so I could not assemble the storm bolter. I also couldn't find the Thermonuclear Bomb during my entire run, so I had to fight Spidey once more instead of nuking her again. Fortunately, I found and got my hands on an Invulnerability just before entering Dis, so Spidey didn't have a prayer in hell of stopping me as I put bullet after bullet into her until she finally went down.
While the RNG was pretty gracious in allowing me enough health and armor to keep me alive, I didn't find enough mods to assemble what I wanted, which was rather a shame. I would have loved to see the storm bolter in action. But still, a first pistol win is a first pistol win.