My very first first attempted Nightmare run in the new game, and I won it! Granted, Angel of Carnage is kinda training wheels for Nightmare mode, at least for the first two moons (that's why I picked it), but it's still a victory. And since I made a point of clearing Callisto Anomaly, I managed to snag THREE platinums with this run.
Biggest bit of good fortune was that one of the two relics in the Anomaly was Fiendish sight, the one which lets you detect enemies. Detecting enemies = free rocket sniping, easier setup for hitting multiple enemies in one blast, marginally easier avoiding of revived enemies, and of course greatly reduced risk of opening a door to a pack of reavers while your only close range weapon is a vanilla grenade launcher. I would not have won without it.
I went to The Pit thinking that the extra inventory capacity would let me stock up on ammo before the portion of AoC where ammo becomes scarce. But silly me, since The Pit contains no ammo and lots of enemies with more than 70 HP, the dividing line between "enough ammo that I'm always leaving some behind" and "little enough ammo that I'm always struggling" was that level. I spent much of IO in single digit rockets, dropped to 0 several times (with some on the ground), and ultimately killed the final boss with 3 rockets left. That said I did still have some grenade launcher ammo to fall back on. In hindsight, I should have traded some medkits for extra stacks of rockets in early Europa, and should have only bothered with one stack of grenades. And I shouldn't have bothered with the red keycards.
One funny bit of luck was that the last level of Europa spawned a toxic grenade and a plasma grenade, both of which I was able to lob at the boss despite not being able to pick them up. Though luring her over to the plasma grenade put me in danger from cryoreavers so it was a wash HP-wise.
Lack of ammo made Io really dicey. I went out of my way to visit Cri Laboratories since the game had handed me 3 red keycards early on, hoping to use the big gun and the crafting stations. And ideally to find a plasma launcher. But the last level of Cri Labs was such a nightmare I had to just flee, and for some reason the branch ended one level earlier than I was expecting so I was dumped back out with no special level. In hindsight I would have been much better off aiming for Infernal Lock and hoping for a sustain mod.
Dante was short but very eventful. With an AMP that boosted stealth in two different ways, I just skipped as much of it as possible after stocking up on rockets on L1 (though I didn't stock up enough--I foolishly let myself get chased away from the second ammo station thinking I already had enough stacks).
I got a pretty nasty scare right at the end of Dante 3. A warlock+fiend pack AND a ravager pack were camping directly in front of the exit, bodyblocking it even in stealth, while there was an overhealed Medusa and an overhealed pack of Kerberos in the room behind me. If I'd fought all those guys I would have run out of ammo on the boss, and that's ignoring the Hunt countdown. Solution: Chug both my small stimpacks to get enough energy for a second stealth, back up enough that I could detonate the explosive barrels safely, stealth again, and run for it. Through sheer luck none of the enemies who survived the explosion stood in front of the elevator. I tried to get a screenshot both before and after but it looks like it only took the after screenshot, but the before image was a sight to behold.
Final boss was scary for ammo reasons, and pretty tricky manouvering-wise, but I had healing items to spare. It helps that somewhere in the final stretch of the game a random chest dropped a Cold mod pack. This was the first time I really made use of those pillars behind the boss (I only noticed them a couple runs ago), and if I hadn't forced all the reavers to walk past him to reach me (and thus close enough for rocket splash damage) I may have lost.
David, level 12 Scout,
defeated the Harbinger against all odds.
He survived for 5661 turns.
The run time was 3h 55m 20s.
World seed was 92328.
He scored 8630 points.
He opposed the NIGHTMARE!
He was an Angel of Carnage!
CALLISTO L3 -> Callisto Mines L1
Callisto Mines L2 -> Callisto Anomaly
Callisto Anomaly - Cleared!
CALLISTO L6 - Lockdown
Europa Concourse - Windchill
EUROPA L5 - Secure Vault
EUROPA L5 -> The Pit
IO L3 -> CRI Laboratory L1
Dante Station L3 - The Hunt
Awards
CRI Star (silver cluster) (+100)
* 50+ kills without taking damage
Icarus Ribbon (+100)
* Won the game in less than 6,000 turns
JoviSec Platinum Badge
* Win any game on NIGHTMARE!
Anomaly Platinum Badge
* Clear Callisto Anomaly on NIGHTMARE
Rocket Platinum Badge
* Complete AoC on Nightmare!
He killed 615 out of 885 enemies.
43 former grunts 31 fire fiends
1 former CRI grunt 21 ice fiends
5 former grenadiers 8 toxic fiends
3 corrupted grenadiers 14 CalSec sentries
2 former CRI grenadiers 12 security sentries
20 former soldiers 2 military sentries
8 corrupted soldiers 7 CalSec bots
5 former CRI soldiers 15 security bots
2 CRI soldiers 1 guardian bot
8 former sergeants 17 reavers
5 corrupted sergeants 25 cryoreavers
2 former CRI sergeants 6 toxic reavers
3 CRI sergeants 19 archreavers
24 former guards 11 kerberi
2 CRI guards 2 cyberi
14 former commandoes 11 cryoberi
17 corrupted commandoes 2 toxiberi
2 former CRI commandoes 2 medusae
4 CRI commandoes 6 ravagers
4 former heavies 5 plasma ravagers
2 corrupted heavies 20 CRI marines
1 former CRI heavy 17 CRI bots
8 fanatics 1 guardian
8 security drones 3 sentinels
8 combat drones 1 warlock
48 fiends
Traits
Dash L1
Hellrunner L3
Son of a Gun L1
Hacker L1
Hoarder L2
GUNRUNNER L2
Trait order
Das->Hr->Hr->Hor->SoG->MGU->Hor->Hr->
MGU->Hak
Equipment
Slot #1 : rocket launcher +PAC
* Freezing 2
* Longshot 8
* Calibrated 1
* Auto-calibrated
Slot #2 : grenade launcher A
* Calibrated 1
Slot #3 : JS rocket launcher
* JoviSec
Body : AV1 combat armor
* Swift
Head : combat helmet
Utility : AV3 utility AMP
* Energetic
* Improved stealth
Relic : fiend's head
* Fiendish sight
Permanents
CRI backpack
Inventory
rocket (x3)
40mm grenade (x8)
multitool (x1)
small medkit (x2)
large medkit
large medkit
large medkit