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[Sereg]

This run could not possibly have gone any better - and if it had gone any worse I could not have succeeded:

Level 1 Malek's Armor
Level 2 Laptop Boots, and just in time for the Mastermind...
Level 7 Trigun.

I think this might be about the only way to complete this challenge, as the conditions remove every possible aid to completing it. AoP blocks all powerups(which are HUGE in an AoOC game - trust me, I know - and probably even more important in a full 21 level Nightmare game). This means no invulnerability, no berserk, no computer maps, and your only way to even heal is with medkits. Marine means no Scout for stair location, and since you also can't see them from computer maps, you have to get extremely lucky with stair placement to even have a chance at this, as your best bet is to stairdive as fast as possible. It also removes the passive class speed bonus, which is immensely helpful in a stairdive. As one final fuck you, the major advantage of the Marine class, the increased powerup duration, is rendered useless because as an AoP you can't use powerups.

I did at least get the extra HP from Marine, and decided to go for HR as my first trait to try to make it to the stairs at least slightly faster. On level one I found Malek's armor equipped on a Former Sergeant who took his sweet time dying, but eventually gave me the first piece of the solution to probably one of the most difficult Diamond badges. Level 2 gave me another artifact message, and to my utter disbelief(not to mention sheer joy), it was the second piece of the Inquisitor's set. What are the odds? That level was heavy on Viles, so I was able to make the most of the Fire Immunity right away, clear the area around the stairs, and farm up some extra shotgun ammo. I continued to dive, getting extremely lucky with stair placement, and had no real dangerous moments between being able to lavawalk, ignore most enemies, and move really fast. I still had no idea how I was going to handle the Mastermind with N! level HP and no intuition(did I mention not being able to do this as a Scout really sucks?). Then I found my third(really? almost earned an Aurora Medallion in an AoOC game?) artifact in only 7 floors - and it's Trigun, giving me a final solution for the Mastermind if combat proved ineffective.

It did - I went a few rounds, and probably could have stuck it out and tried to chip its health down, but with no real way of knowing where it was until it had the chance to return fire, it was a dangerous proposition. Rather then continue to do that, not knowing if I even could eventually kill it that way, I decided not to risk a stupid death by misplay, and activated the Angel Arm to secure the partial win.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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

 Nathan, level 5 Arch-Vile Chaos Lt. Colonel Marine,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 8342 turns and scored 93655 points.
 He played for 14 minutes and 16 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 119 out of 303 hellspawn. (39%)
 He was an Angel of Purity!
 He was also an Angel of Overconfidence!

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

  Levels generated : 4
  Levels visited   : 0
  Levels completed : 0

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

  Inquisitor Diamond Badge

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

  ###########################################################
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  ..............................X...........................#
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  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  .&........................................................#
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  .........................................................>#
  ###########################################################

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

  Health 0/55   Experience 9918/5
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +0  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +0

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

  Class : Marine

    Hellrunner       (Level 2)
    Reloader         (Level 2)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)

  HR->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   Malek's Armor [3/3] (86%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   Trigun (3d6) [6/6]
    [c] [ Boots      ]   Nyarlaptotep's Boots [6/6] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   nothing

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

    [a] plasma rifle (1d8)x6 [40/40] (P1)
    [b] assault shotgun (7d3) [6/6]
    [c] red armor [4/4] (100%)
    [d] shotgun shell (x50)
    [e] shotgun shell (x50)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x37)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] power cell (x50)
    [k] power cell (x20)
    [l] power cell (x50)
    [m] power cell (x50)
    [n] power cell (x50)
    [o] power cell (x50)
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] large med-pack
    [r] envirosuit pack
    [s] power battery (x120)

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

    Acid       - internal 0%    torso 30%   feet 30% 
    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 100%  feet 100%
    Plasma     - internal 0%    torso 30%   feet 0%   

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

    17 former humans
    25 former sergeants
    10 former captains
    33 imps
    2 demons
    15 lost souls
    1 cacodemon
    3 barons of hell
    3 arachnotrons
    2 former commandos
    1 pain elemental
    1 revenant
    5 arch-viles
    1 Spider Mastermind

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

  On level 1 he found the Malek's Armor!
  On level 2 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 2 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  On level 6 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  He left level 6 as soon as possible.
  On level 7 he found the Trigun!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He activated the Angel Arm on level 8!
  On level 8 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

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

 You see : floor
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : a Spider Mastermind (scratched) | floor | [ m ]ore
 You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! Boom!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : a Spider Mastermind (lightly wounded) | floor | [ m ]ore
 You are hit! Boom! You are hit! You are hit! You are hit!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : floor
 You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! Boom!
 Boom! Boom! You are hit! You are hit! Boom!
 You wear/wield : a Trigun (3d6) [6/6]
 Your Trigun is already loaded.
 Do you want to use the dangerous Angel Arm?? [y/n]
 You activate the Angel Arm! Your life is drained! Congratulations! You
 defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

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

 1430 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 1238 of those were killed.
 8 of those were killed by something unknown.
 80 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 75 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

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

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


Special thanks to Icy for his ongoing thread, which helped motivate this run. Thanks also to LuckyDee and his run, further helping inspire me to pick the game back up.

Edit: After a quick look around, this also appears to be the only successful completion of this Badge on the forums(excepting papilio, who apparently has done it twice, both times without AoOC - that dude is *nuts* - and unless I overlooked one by Tormuse somewhere) so that's a first for me. Usually I only manage to copy stuff other people have done, especially for high end badges like this - I guess I ran out of stuff I could do that way =P

[LuckyDee]

And in 14 bloddy minutes too. You are evil in a very admirable way.

[Tormuse]

Congrats!  I'm pretty sure this is everyone's least favourite challenge, and for good reason.  Kudos for completing it!  :D

As one final fuck you, the major advantage of the Marine class, the increased powerup duration, is rendered useless because as an AoP you can't use powerups.

Oh yeah, that was obviously deliberate.  Total dick move on the part of the Devteam to make that the requirement for the badge.  :)

[Sereg]

Hmm, 14 minutes seems about right to me for an AoOC stairdive... right around 2 minutes per floor as an average.  Keep in mind I only succeeded here because I had excellent luck in all aspects of the game,  including stair placement. I probably had 2 or 3 floors start in sight of the stairs, which means they likely took me less then ten seconds,  giving me 13 and a half minutes for the remaining 4 or 5 floors... which is a lot longer.  Several of those floors were also fairly quick even without stairs immediately in sight,  so the bulk of my time was spent on maybe 2 or 3 floors. I also didn't spend long with the mastermind before electing to nuke it from orbit, nor did I attempt any special levels, so that's another area where I was able to save lots of time off a more traditional run.

Edit: It would be misleading to present this as the total time spent on this challenge,  of course.  I probably spent an hour on failed attempts that night alone,  and many more hours dying in previous sessions while attempting this badge.

Edit2: One further note:



 1430 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 1238 of those were killed.
 8 of those were killed by something unknown.
 80 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 75 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

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

My win/loss ratio is *abysmal*(29/1401, or ~0.02). The reason I tend to have fast games is that I play very quickly and impatiently, and while it sometimes produces results, it has its consequences. If DRL tracked average gamescore like XA does, I would be near the very bottom of that high score table, if not in fact dead last.

[scotherns]

Congratulations! Nice to see this is actually possible.

[LuckyDee]

1430 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 1238 of those were killed.
 8 of those were killed by something unknown.
 80 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 75 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

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

My win/loss ratio is *abysmal*(29/1401, or ~0.02). The reason I tend to have fast games is that I play very quickly and impatiently, and while it sometimes produces results, it has its consequences. If DRL tracked average gamescore like XA does, I would be near the very bottom of that high score table, if not in fact dead last.

Yeah, that's exactly what I try to avoid. It's a completely useless behavior, but something I just seem to be unable to shrug off.

[Sereg]

Congratulations! Nice to see this is actually possible.

With the most absurd and outrageous luck possible while Sereging, or by being papilio,  yes.

Rather difficult conditions to fulfill,  but apparently within the realm of possibility.

Lucky,  it's something I ought to work on too... additional care would certainly save some runs that otherwise fail(case in point, a careful player almost certainly could have saved a standard win rather then falling back on Angel Arm and taking a partial here), but the habit is so strong. It's definitely a factor in the current limits of my achievements in DRL, and something that will keep me well behind players like Tormuse.

[Tormuse]

With the most absurd and outrageous luck possible while Sereging, or by being papilio,  yes...

...Lucky,  it's something I ought to work on too...

You're working on being Papilio?  How does that work?  :P  (Just kidding, I know what you meant)  :)

...additional care would certainly save some runs that otherwise fail(case in point, a careful player almost certainly could have saved a standard win rather then falling back on Angel Arm and taking a partial here), but the habit is so strong. It's definitely a factor in the current limits of my achievements in DRL, and something that will keep me well behind players like Tormuse.

Impatience is something that afflicts me as well.  It's why I find damageless achievements to be pretty much impossible and why I have about a hundred failed mortems for every success.  I find, lately, the biggest factor in my success is that I take lots and lots of breaks and find other things to do to break up my gameplay so I can come at it fresh each time.

Case in point, I am currently playing an ArchAngel of Travel game (still trying to answer your challenge, Sereg)  :D  in which I have just cleared Phobos Anomaly.  After all the failures to get it so far, this time I'm forcing myself to take breaks practically every level and even that first third of the game has been spread over about 16 hours of real time and the actual gameplay has been almost three hours, going so slow and ploddingly that I don't know if the resulting recording is going to be of any interest to anyone.  Still, it's my best attempt so far, so I'm going to keep at it in the same way; it's all about finding other things to do in between gameplay sessions so I don't get bored and do something reckless.  :)

[Tormuse]

I just defeated the Cyberdemon in the above-mentioned game!  :D  Hopefully, I'll be posting the mortem...  soonish...  I've been taking such long breaks that I'm having to leave the game on overnight twice!  :o

[Sereg]

Good luck, and stay safe... I'll be looking forward to that one.