Surviving the nuke is nice for quick clears, but I didn't want to risk the Invulnerabilities getting destroyed or getting attacked in the open. Hoping for luck or using cheesy tactics may not be the most appealing method for many players, but I'm an optimizer and strategist, and will always use all my resources available to achieve my goals. :)
Day 63:Against what was recommended, I tried some Angel of 100 with Max Carnage on Nightmare and it didn't go too well. :P While Max Carnage is advantageous in combat and ammo conservation, the monster density is high enough where many starting points are surrounded and hard to control. I'll have to settle with raw Angel of 100 attempts.
I rotated a bit more, but didn't do anything spectacular. I also tried some more for Pacifist Angelic Badge and reached a new furthest point. This was a sketchy situation with nothing dying fortunately:
Lucky floor 5:
Lucky floor 6:
Rougher floor 7. To avoid monsters killing each other, I had to take a long swim through acid:
It seems that for Phobos Anomaly though, you need yet even more luck with a Phase Device for a realistic chance to get through without anything dying:
Another Lost Soul got trashed too lol:
And now for an overall progress discussion and how I'm feeling about all the remaining challenges. :)
One of the things with massively improving (in anything really) is having a stronger realization and understanding of how difficult certain tasks are, how talented top players are, and what's realistic. When I first started playing and writing here, I figured that while being a noob, I could eventually develop enough skill to get absolutely everything. Of course with plateaus, you begin to think that (now easy) other challenges are impossible until they are overcome and the process cycles until the next bump.
The thing is that I've learned a ton about this game now and I'd like to think I'm quite competent with how to play effectively. Yet, I truly don't think I'll ever achieve absolutely 100% of everything, not that I couldn't, but I don't want to end up investing thousands of hours just for certain badges. Speedrunner Angelic Badge comes to mind, but there are a couple others that are totally fucked too. Surely, anyone can get Speedrunner Angelic Badge with enough luck, but to beat the game in 4 minutes on Nightmare has very little to do with skill or learning. It's entirely a slot machine that would take a ridiculously stupid amount of time to get, which could of course be used on countless other things.
With all of this in mind, I also have a much better understanding of why people are very skeptical about 2Dev and VANDAM. I'm a firm believer of innocent until proven guilty, but being so casual about Demonic Angelic Badge doesn't make any sense, not to mention actually achieving it. If there were a supercomputer that would calculate all the mathematics and probabilities of every action and choose the best one each time, I imagine it still wouldn't be able to achieve the badge on most runs. Or just maybe, they know some secret tactics that I haven't figured out yet. Or perhaps they clocked in an ungodly number of hours.
For confirmed players, I'd strongly argue Papilio is the DoomRL's #1 with countless videos and mortems of super difficult challenges, duplicating many of those badges, and beating many without challenge abuse. Tormuse is definitely in that same tier by flaunting the most confirmed angelic badges, especially Everyman Angelic Badge. I'd say I'm a comfy 3rd place, but still behind by a major skill gap that I want to overcome.
Now, this isn't me giving up and vanishing or anything like that, but having learned and improved a lot with the game, I'm definitely going to scale my goals back a bit. Mindless grinding with little to no meaningful input by the player is not appealing at all (I'm perfectly fine with churning out runs though), but there are still many badges that offer a fair and difficult challenge that I want to accomplish. And because the game is a ton of fun, I'm definitely going to do a lot of my own personal challenges. One in particular I want to do eventually is a 100% kill game of Archangel of 666 on Ultra-Violence. I also want to do a bunch more of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 runs. Perhaps I'll also go for "un-Sereg'd" badge challenges too.
Here are my current thoughts on my remaining unachieved badges:
Strongman Platinum Badge - Tough, but doable with Invulnerability luck and using the Chainsaw for Babel and Dis.
Elite Platinum Badge - I don't think this challenge is too bad, but having to go through a long game with Mortuary/Limbo waiting near the end is scary. I'll probably go for 100% kills on this run for the needed experience.
Demonic Platinum Badge - Many of the bonus levels can be immediately exited, so I don't think this is too much harder than a regular Nightmare game. Again, Mortuary/Limbo waiting near the end is going to kill a lot of long runs, but I can definitely get this.
Marksman Platinum Badge - Probably the hardest platinum badge in my opinion. I'll likely go with a Sharpshooter build for this, but I've really never been a fan of using Pistols. Needing to kill everything keeps the player honest and also means mixing with Overconfidence is unrealistic.
Heroic Diamond Badge/Centurial Diamond Badge/Dervis' Medallion - Mostly needs a lucky start, ideally early Inquisitor set, and then it's just a stairdive. Even if this was much tougher, my last medal and a pair of diamond badges is a huge incentive to finish this soon.
Strongman Diamond Badge - Pretty damn hard. Papilio has achieved it, but I might be skipping this one.
Elite Diamond Badge - Basic Nightmare game with respawn grinding on the floor before Dis. Pretty easy, but time-consuming.
Demonic Diamond Badge - Very hard badge to earn. I think it will take a really lucky Phobos episode, followed by Invulnerability luck. Might skip it.
Everyman Diamond Badge - A step up in difficulty from platinum, but I can and will definitely get it.
Arena Diamond Badge - Really dumb luckfest badge, lol. I think only Tormuse has got it? I think the only way I'll be getting it is with a Butcher's Cleaver on floor 2, which I'm not too ecstatic to go for.
UAC Angelic Badge - Totally fucked. Nobody confirmed to have achieved.
Strongman Angelic Badge - Only Tormuse has it, and I'm not exactly excited for punching enemies for hours on end lol. Will probably skip it.
Speedrunner Angelic Badge - lol
Elite Angelic Badge - A couple players have this one which is surprising to me. Maybe I can get it on a Trigun run. :P
Demonic Angelic Badge - Shouldn't be realistically possible.
Berserker Angelic Badge - Tormuse has it from a lucky run. I'd definitely need more Invulnerability luck to get it.
Marksman Angelic Badge - Papilio and a couple others have it I think? I'm already not keen on Marksman Platinum Badge lol. I think a stair-dive with respawn grinding at the end would work, but I don't think I'll go for it.
Eagerness Angelic Badge - Nope.
Inquisitor Angelic Badge - Totally fucked.
Quartermaster Angelic Badge - It seems quite a few players have this one, and I think I can get it too. I'll definitely play for it.
Masochist Angelic Badge - I believe this is the "easiest" unachieved angelic badge? While health boosts are blocked, you can still run around Invulnerable. It's essentially a lighter version of UAC/Demonic, except you can't restore tactics either. I might try for it.
Centurial Angelic Badge - Will definitely get this one at some point.
Pacifist Angelic Badge - Never achieved and I don't think I will be getting it either. It requires far too much luck to be worth grinding for. On the plus side though, it's a nice fallback during a bad gameplay session, or for a few quick runs, so who knows. Maybe after long enough, I'll accidentally get it.
Everyman Angelic Badge - Totally fucked, but Tormuse somehow got it. Of all things though, not being able to use Intuition x2 is keeping me away from it lol.
In summary, I will go for all the remaining platinum badges, most of all the diamond badges (skipping Strongman, Demonic, and Arena), and I'll get at least up to 6 angelic badges for another ranking promotion. I'll probably be getting Centurial Angelic Badge, Quartermaster Angelic Badge, and one other, maybe Elite Angelic Badge.
I'm still overall happy with my progress thus far and have been having a blast, but this is now The Journey to 95%. :P When you shoot for the stars, you still get pretty far into space, and I definitely wouldn't have got as far as I have if not going for 100% to begin with. The top 10 in anything competitive are not players who just want top 10, but 1st.
You do indeed earn your namesake with "No-Life King", and I'm not willing to take that kind of plunge. :P I'll continue doing my best and while I think I won't be going beyond 3rd place in ranks/badges, I'd like to close the gap a bit to Papilio and Tormuse, as well as getting as far up as I can. I just wanted to share my thoughts on the game at this point where I'm seriously running low of realistically doable challenges and being nearly forced to grind for stupidly difficult challenges, but as I said, I'll still be continuing strong, so don't worry. :)
