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[Omega Tyrant]

With 0.9.9.8 officially released, many of the suggestions in this compilation suggestions thread for 0.9.9.8 have been implemented. So at Kornel's suggestion, I'm starting up a new compilation thread for 0.9.9.9, to start a fresh thread and to have a better organized OP that doesn't cover all the stuff that was already implemented or formally rejected, as well as to cover new suggestions.

I'll be maintaining this thread in Icy's absence, and any new suggestions from anyone else is welcomed, no matter how mundane or outlandish the suggestion may be. Before suggesting anything though, I would recommend reading Icy's OP in the aforementioned linked thread, consider the feasibility of being able to implement the suggestion, and backing your suggestions with well-reasoned points, while being open to any feedback your suggestion gets. I'll also note that I do not have any authority with the game nor am I a member of the ChaosForge team, so my own ideas are not above anyone else's, I'm just a passionate player organizing this and offering feedback.

Changes

This thread will be organized into separate posts for changes (which itself will be organized into bugs/exploits/fixes, traits, equipment/items, enemies, special levels, and miscellaneous), everything for badges/medals, and new content ideas. A suggestion marked with an "X" in its box and colored light blue means it has been implemented; a suggestion marked with "~" and colored light green means it has been partially implemented; a suggestion marked with "-" and colored pink has been soft rejected but may by partially implemented in another way; a suggestion marked with "?" and colored light yellow means an attempt was made to implement it but needs testing to confirm it is working properly, or marks an "issue" that may not be an issue at all; and a suggestion that is struck through and colored red has been officially rejected by Kornel. Each suggestion will additionally have links to the posts explaining the justification for the change and other discussion regarding it.

Bugs/Exploits/Fixes

[?] Bug: The game may lock up on the trait selection screen upon levelling up, where the game still runs with the music playing and you're able to scroll through the background with the mouse, but your trait selection does not register and you cannot exit the screen, forcing you to kill DRL in Task Manager to exit and lose your progress. 1 2 (May have incidentally been fixed in the JHC UI changes, needs thorough testing to fully confirm it has been fixed, but so far there has been no reported instances of this critical bug in any of the 0.9.9.9 betas.)

[-] Bug: Nightmare's -10% speed penalty seems to not be working. 1 2 (Kornel has no recollection of ever adding Nightmare's speed penalty nor likes the idea of difficulties nerfing the player, and after farther testing previous versions back to 0.9.9.6, it may have never actually existed in the first place, or was removed in a very old pre-graphics version. It's up in the air on if this "feature" will be (re)implemented as a universal speed bonus for enemies instead, which needs discussion.)

[ ] Bug: If you complete a special level on Nightmare/AoD and then exit with any respawns alive, the exit text and mortem history text gives you the level's completion messages, and you'll earn any badges/medals that require completing the level, but the game doesn't actually count the level as completed for Conqueror purposes. 1

[X] Bug: If a former is killed out of vision by something other than you, an error message may pop up stating it failed an attempt to call a table value. This most commonly occurs when a Former Sergeant shoots a barrel and kills himself. 1

[X] Bug: Corpses will sometimes be ungibbable by explosions and plasma(tic) shotguns for no apparent reason. 1

[X] Bug: Lightfoot Diamond and Angelic badges aren't being awarded when their criteria is fulfilled, perhaps indirect kills are being counted as "melee" kills? (I can confirm this badge isn't being awarded, unsure what is the cause if it's not the change to indirect kill attribution causing it) 1 2 3

[X] Bug: The melee accuracy bonus of Brute is still not properly applying to thrown weapons. 1

[X] Bug: Sharpshooter doesn't work with explosive pistols, even on direct hits. 1

[X] Bug: In armor and boots assemblies that require a Technical Mod, if the Technical Mod is applied before completing the assembly, the Technical Mod's resistance boosts will stack onto the assembly's resistances, making assemblies like Fireproof Armor more powerful than intended. 1

[X] Bug: The new modding UI in the latest beta will not allow you to attempt modding non-compatible equipment with Firestorm and Sniper mods, which prevents you from assembling Demolition Ammo (and any future assembly that would require applying them to normally non-compatible equipment). 1

[X] Bug: The Dragonslayer's permanent berserk isn't working, with it granting no additional turns of Berserk at all. 1

[?] Bug: Using the Dragonslayer's altfire, Whirlwind, can crash the game. It's unclear what conditions causes this crash, as sometimes you can use Whirlwind without the crash happening. 1 (An attempt was made to fix this, needs testing to confirm if the fix has worked.)

[~] Bug: When initiating a rocket jump, the targeting cursor can extend beyond immediately adjacent tiles, despite rocket jumping only being able to hit immediately adjacent tiles (in previous versions, the game wouldn't let you extend targeting beyond this range). Additionally when initiating a rocket jump with enemies onscreen, the targeting cursor will default onto an enemy, forcing you to move it back to an adjacent tile to rocket jump. 1 (Reverting back to 0.9.9.7's targeting isn't possible, so Rocket jumping will now let you fire on a tile more than 1 tile away, with the fired rocket just exploding at 1 tile towards the direction fired regardless.)

[?] Bug: Projectiles can go through walls without exploding from certain angles, including the outer boundary walls, and explosive projectiles will not explode when clipping. (Needs more thorough testing to fully identify how this bug works). 1 (An attempted fix was made, needs thorough testing to determine if it's fixed.)

[X] Bug: Ammo stacks dropped by ammo levers are not affected by the difficulty multiplier. 1

[X] Bug: The lava flood in Halls Of Carnage sometimes does not activate. 1 2

[X] Bug: Screenshots aren't saving properly as of the latest beta, unless you manually create a folder named "screenshot" in DRL's root folder. 1

[ ] Bug: Technician, Armorer, and Heroic badges are bugged in a way where it seems the game checks if you fulfilled their requirements before you start up a run, rather than as you complete it. As a result, you won't earn these badges in the run where you actually first fulfilled their requirements, but in the immediate run after. 1 2

[ ] Bug: If too many sounds play in quick succession, the music can get turned off until you enter a new floor or save and reload. 1

[X] Bug: When booting up the game, the loading bar will stretch beyond the screen.

[?] Bug: If a flood event occurs on an island level, it's possible to start in the middle of lava. 1 (This may have been fixed in the old 0.9.9.8 beta, neither I nor Icy have ever experienced this and no one has reported it happening yet, and the hard restriction on no longer spawning in any fluid should have fixed if it's still in the game.)

[?] Exploit: The Spider Mastermind can get stuck when shot across the bottom or top middle pillars, making it only able to go up and down. The AI might need to be adjusted. 1 (This may have been fixed in the old 0.9.9.8 beta, and the AI was adjusted farther in the 0.9.9.9 betas, needs more thorough testing to confirm.)

[X] Fix: The Unlock All option doesn't unlock the harder difficulties.

[ ] Fix: The item reveal mechanic when all enemies are dead does not work in Nightmare, it should activate when all enemies are dead at the same time, or after each individual enemy has been killed once. 1

[-] Fix: Damage calculation on direct hits with explosive attacks seem to happen after knockback is applied, resulting in direct explosive hits doing less damage than they should, or possibly no damage at all. 1 2 (Confirmed to be an intentional design choice, but a direct damage component on explosive hits may be added?)

[ ] Fix: The new screen shaking effect should have its intensity based on the strength of the inciting projectile/explosion, rather than shaking at the same intensity regardless. 1

[X] Fix: The new modding menu can display incorrect info, noticed instances so far is it displaying bulk mods making armors/boots 10% faster rather than -10% slower, and showing you being able to apply more than one of the same mod to armors/boots/melee weapons when you can't. 1

[ ] Fix: The mortem's kill ratio message in the latest beta is based on the total enemy kill ratio with respawns, rather than the unique enemy kill ratio, when it should be based on the latter. 1

[ ] Fix: The character info screen doesn't account for equipped ammo boxes with its displayed reloading speed, when it should.

[ ] Fix: Ironman's trait description is unclear with it stating you get +20% max health, which isn't fully true as Marines still only get +10 HP rather than 12 HP, so it should be reworded to state +10 HP. 1

[ ] Fix: In Scavenger's trait description, update it to clarify that melee weapons, armors, and boots can be scavenged. 1

[ ] Fix: Angel of Humanity's and Archangel of Humanity's descriptions should clarify that Marines start with 12 max HP rather than 20. 1

[X] Fix: For weapons with very long names (such as the "Burst nuclear plasma rifle"), the name can stretch beyond the available UI space on the HUD, obscuring its ammo. And for armors with very long names, their names will instead stretch into the next line the HUD, obscuring your weapon's name. Whether it be scaling down long names, letting them stretch farther into the HUD, or anything else, something should be done to fix this issue. 1 2

[X] Fix: When using the Look command, you are unable to scroll the screen with the keys, forcing the use of a mouse to do so. As an obvious detriment to keyboard-only players, this should be fixed. 1 2

[ ] Fix: When equipping a weapon from the ground that auto-equips on pickup, such as Azrael's Scythe, the game will erroneously give the "You don't have [X weapon]!" message. 1

[ ] Fix: Charch's Null Pointer shows that its damage is 0d0, when it's actually 10d1. 1

[ ] Fix: The infinitely spawning Nightmare Demons and Nightmare Cacodemons when equipping the Dragonslayer and Berserker Set severely complicate clearing special levels with said equipment. Either they shouldn't count towards a special level's completion, their spawning should be disabled in special levels, or they should have a spawning limit of some sort. 1

[X] Fix: When the Apostle spawns on the final floor of A100/A666, the ability to see all enemies immediately activates since all enemies technically die when you first enter the floor. Given this is supposed to be a boss fight, this mechanic should be disabled when the Apostle spawns like it is for boss levels. 1

[ ] Fix: Archangel of 666 shows both in-game and in the high scores that it's Ao100. Additionally, the ending mortem says you "finally completed 100 floors of torture". 1 2

[X] Fix: Non-lava fluids are supposed to be able to appear in A100/666 beyond floor 30 for greater level variety, but you still only encounter lava except for in specific level types/events/features that could already have water and acid appear. (Fluid spawning formula was tweaked farther in addition to two new fluids in blood and mud, later A100 is not a complete lava fest anymore.)

[X] Fix: Elite Former Captains erroneously didn't get the melee damage buff that all the other Elite Formers got. 1

[X] Fix: Nightmare Imps erroneously had two different speed values applied to them. 1

[X] Fix: The player's sprite does not update properly when armor is destroyed. The player additionally doesn't show the proper armor and weapon equipped at the start of challenges and mods that have different starting default equipment. 1

[X] Fix: In the ASCII version, the cursor for the look command does not show and the targeting cursor blends in the invulnerability overlay. 1

[X] Fix: Music resets to max volume regardless of setting whenever booting up the game or entering a new floor.

[ ] Fix: Repeated sounds (such as from several enemies being hit at once) can still get too loud, the sounds should be better staggered out instead of stacking all at once on each other, or perhaps add a limit of some sort that prevents the same sounds from being stacked too loudly on each other. 1 2

[-] Fix: Ensure bridges that go over rivers are not blocked off by walls or rooms without doors. 1 2 (This might be too technically difficult to implement.)

Traits

[ ] Make masteries less restrictive in general. 1

[X] Nerf Hellrunner's dodging bonus to +10% per level (needs discussion). 1

[X] Buff Tough As Nails to give +5% inherent resistances to fire, acid and plasma per level in addition to inherent +1 protection. If implemented, the Marine's inherent energy resistances will need to be nerfed to prevent them from getting too tanky. 1 (Implemented with a 10% resistance buff per level instead)

[X] Nerf Vampyre (needs discussion). Some ideas include increasing its prerequisites, disallowing Vampyre from healing beyond 100%, and/or prevent the resistances of berserk from stacking with the resistances of the Marine. If the aforementioned TaN buff is implemented, also change Vampyre's SoB block to TaN instead. 1 2 (Has been nerfed indirectly from berserk and Marine resistances being toned down, as well as directly with TaN block and no more healing over 100%.)

[X]Buff Entrenchment (needs discussion). Some ideas include increasing the resistance bonuses to +50% when chain firing, granting +20% to all resistances when just equipping a chain firing weapon, and some means to allow chain firing longer (such as reduce ammo consumption when chain firing or instant reloading when your clip runs out during chain firing). Alternatively, Entrenchment could be replaced with an entirely new mastery, a la Running Man -> Gunrunner in 0.9.9.7. 1 (Indirectly buffed from TaN buff and buffed directly with +50% resistances and 1 ammo on subsequent Chainfire volleys.)

[~] Give Bullet Dance the additional perk of reloading faster when dual gunning. 1 (SoG changed to give +3 damage and 10% firing speed reduction per level, needs to be tested to see if farther adjustment to SoG or Bullet Dance itself needs to be made.)

[X] Give Fireangel an additional offensive-based perk (needs discussion). One possible idea is when using rocket-based weapons, each shot will get +2 dice in damage calculation. 1 (Was buffed to have explosions gain +1 radius and all projectiles they shoot are explosive.)

[~] Buff Gun Kata to have an instant Pistol attack after dodging instead of it being near-instant. Also consider letting it apply Dodgemaster to all enemy projectiles inbetween moves (needs discussion). 1 (SoG changed to give +3 damage and 10% firing speed reduction per level, DG firing speed penalty was removed, and Gun Kata now fires much faster after movement. Needs to be tested to see if farther adjustment to SoG or Gun Kata itself needs to be made.)

[X] Change Gunrunner's prerequisite of Juggler to Finesse 2. 1 (Prereqs were changed to just Hellrunner 2 and being level 5, so the idea of this change was practically implemented.)

[X] Buff Malicious Blades (needs discussion). One idea is, in addition to nerfing Berserk, change Malicious Blades' TaN block to Badass or Son Of A gun. 1 (Now deals double damage with blades.)

Equipment and other Items

[ ] Add sounds for all actions for exotics/uniques/artifacts. 1 2

[X] Lessen the speed penalty for heavy boots, to make them less punishing to wear in fluids with the new fluid-slowing mechanic. Exact proposed values are in the linked message. 1

[ ] Allow Technicians to add a single mod or basic assembly to the following unique armors: Medical Powerarmor, Necroarmor, and Shielded Armor. 1 2 3

[ ] Buff the Chaingun's accuracy to +3. 1

[ ] Increase the Blaster's generation weight to 4. 1

[ ] Frag Shotgun needs farther buffs. One idea to make it standout is to change its damage to 6d3 and decrease its firing speed to 0.5 seconds. Additionally allow it to spawn sooner and be less rare (such as a depth of 10 and weight of 3). 1 2

[ ] Increase the Medical Powerarmor's generation rate to 3 (matching the similarly powerful Necroarmor in rarity). [1

[ ] Let Mega Buster use alt fire to switch modes, but you have to collect all the damage types (more similar to Mega Man). 1 2

[ ] Increase the Mjollnir's generation rate to 2 or 3. 2 3

[ ] Allow Subtle Knife kills to count as "knife kills". Additionally modify it to spawn sooner and be less rare (such as a depth of 7 and weight of 2). 1

[ ] Nerf Trigun's Angel Arm to not be an instant nuke and require 10s like regular nukes. 1

[ ] Buff the Assault Rifle. See the linked post for details on the suggested changes as they are extensive. 1

[ ] Farther buff Ballistic Armor by having it retain any plasma and acid resistances the base armor has. 1

[ ] Buff Grappling Boots to retain the base boots' movement speed instead of having a set -10% speed. 1

[X] Change Nano-shrapnel to a master assembly, with an assembly requirement of PPPN or PPTN. 1

[ ] Change the resistance values that Technical Mods add to boots to be +20% acid and fire resistances while removing the other useless resistance buffs, rather than using the same values they apply to armors. They can keep the +20% plasma resistance as well if the proposed blood fluid is added and utilizes plasma damage. 1

[ ] Buff Agility Mods to give +2 accuracy when applied to melee weapons instead of only +1. 1

[ ] Allow Firestorm and Sniper mods to be applied to melee weapons (needs discussion on exact effects). Current ideas are a Firestorm mod will turn their damage type to fire so they can gib much easier, in addition to possibly increasing the lower of damage die or sides by +1 too, and a Sniper mod will give them the autohit property. 1

[ ] Allow Firestorm mods to be added to explosive weapons with an explosion radius of 1 and 2. If done, consider making the mod give them only a +1 radius boost rather than the usual +2 boost. 1

[ ] Allow Firestorm mods to be added to Shotguns, with the effect of increasing their spread size by +1 with no sacrifice in dropoff damage. 1

[ ] Give Sniper mods an effect for Shotguns, instead of doing nothing. One idea is each Sniper mod applied to a Shotgun will reduce its dropoff reduction rate by 1% (so a basic Shotgun with one Sniper mod will have its dropoff damage reduced from 7% to 6% per tile, and if triple modded with Sniper mods, its dropoff damage will be reduced from 7% to 4% per tile). 1

[ ] When a third Sniper Mod is applied to a ranged weapon, have it give the autohit property instead of doing nothing. 1

[ ] Allow the Lava Element to appear as a randomly spawned item. Make its spawning weight 2 or 3, and perhaps give it a spawning depth of 30+ so it can only randomly appear in A100/666. 1

Enemies

[ ] Add sounds for Nightmare enemies, Lava Elemental, Agony Elemental, Arena Master, and Apostle. 1 2

[ ] Add sounds for enemies spawning, enemies reviving, and Archviles charging their attack. 1 2

[ ] Nerf the amount of bullets that Former Captains carry from 100 to 40. 1

[~] Make Cacodemons and Nightmare Cacodemons more aggressive in their attack frequency. Possibly also consider buffing Nightmare Cacodemons to hit slightly harder. (needs discussion) 1 (Neither Cacodemon is more aggressive, but Nightmare Cacodemons been given a very serious buff.)

[ ] Farther buff all Elite Formers by increasing their melee accuracy. 1

[ ] Farther buff the Nightmare Archvile by increasing its attack's explosion radius to 2, matching the Arena Master's explosion radius. 1

[-] Lower the Nightmare Cacodemon's spawning depth in A100/666 to 50+. 1 (New enemy added with a spawning depth of 41, so the Nightmare Cacodemon's 51 is probably intentional.)

[~] Lower the Shambler's spawning depth in A100/666 to 70+. 1 (Lowered to 60+ instead)

[ ] Increase the Lava Elemental's generation weight to 2 or 3 so it isn't so uncommon in deep levels of A100/666. 1

[ ] Allow the Angel Of Death to spawn in very deep floors of A100/666. Its spawning depth can be either 80+ or 90+. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[~] Buff the Apostle to have 500 HP and always teleport after being hit. Also when it dies in A100/666, kill all enemies and end the game like JC. 1 2 3 4 (Apostle has gotten massive resistances instead that makes it drastically more durable, but instant teleportation on hit has not been added yet nor ending the game when it dies in A100/666.)

[~] Change hunting AI to not ignore items and armors (if implemented, Cyberdemons may need their ability to use items removed or medpacks may need a healing limit of 110 HP to keep them from being potentially too obnoxious). 1 2 3 4 5 6 (Hunting AI still ignore items, but Cyberdemons have altered AI where they'll not hunt immediately in A100, so they can pick up items and armors they spawn near before their hunting behavior activates)

Special levels

[ ] Most special levels should have their clear condition require killing every distinct enemy once rather than having enemy dead at the same time, so that they are much less tedious ordeals to clear on Nightmare and in Angel Of Darkness. Only The Wall/Containment Area, The Vaults/House of Pain, and The Mortuary/Limbo should be exempted from this change, since Archviles are a key component of those special levels' challenge. 1

[ ] Many special levels should have their enemy layouts altered on the harder difficulties to utilize the newly added batch of enemies. See linked post for details on exact suggestions. 1

[~] When special levels are destroyed by a nuke, disable any traps/subsequent enemy spawns they may have from triggering and have the game register them as cleared (this includes Containment Area, City of Skulls, Abyssal Plains, House of Pain, The Lava Pits, and Mt. Erebus) 1 (Nuking Containment Area and Abyssal Plains now counts as clearing them and disables their respective traps, but the other special levels still have their enemy spawns after nuking remain).

[X] Make Military Base more difficult as it's still much easier than Phobos Lab. 1 (Patrolling AI and the newly introduced Enraged Mode invalidates excessive camping strategies, which makes Military Base no longer easily cheesable and thus now comparable to Phobos Lab in difficulty.)

[X] Change how Schematics drops in Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab work, so that players do not miss out on a rare mod because of them and so each run is truly independent (can probably just have them drop separately from the rare mods). 1 2 3 4

[ ] Have The Wall/Containment Area open up after all enemies are dead to prevent softlocks if you use a Phase Device. 1 2

[ ] Replace the redundant Missile Launcher in City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains and make these levels potentially more appropriately rewarding. What to replace it with needs discussion, but the current suggested idea is a random guaranteed exotic armor, since none of the current Deimos special levels give a good armor reward. Alternatively, it can instead be a random guaranteed exotic non-BFG ranged weapon, though this idea is less preferred as Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab already has a very high chance of rewarding exotic/unique ranged weapons. 1 2

[ ] In City of Skulls, replace the lever with a horizontal coordinate trap, so that it isn't free to run through. Also extend the middle pillars to go all the way up to the top and bottom of the screen, so that the player is forced to be between the pillars when the trap activates. 1 2 (Kornel prefers the lever trap for added flavor)

[ ] Buff the enemy layout on the Nightmare! version of City of Skulls and Spider's Lair, as these levels currently have no difference compared to UV (aside from extra HP for the Agony Elemental) and are much easier than their respective counterpart levels (needs discussion). Current idea for City Of Skulls is replacing all the initial Lost Souls in the first wave with their Nightmare variants and then replacing 3 or 4 of the Pain Elementals in the second wave with their Nightmare variants, while replacing a third or half of the Arachnotrons with their Nightmare variants in Spider's Lair. 1

[~] The Nightmare! version of The Vaults was supposed to give each of the six Barons in the right vault a set of Red Armor to pick up, but currently it seems only one Red Armor is spawning. Additionally, have the two teleporters in the center vault have their teleport destinations be on opposite ends of the map, or modify the center vault in a way that makes its teleporters inaccessible to the Nightmare enemies inside, so a player cannot easily camp the teleport locations to safely kill each of the center vault's Nightmare enemies. 1 (Barons had their Red Armors added, but the ease of teleporter camping has not been addressed yet.)

[~] If you don't have the Arena Master's Staff, you can softlock in House Of Pain on Nightmare and in Angel Of Darkness from dead enemies reviving while you're locked in another room, so something should be done to prevent this softlock. 1 (Enemy respawning has been disabled on the level altogether for the timebeing, may be temporary if another solution is figured out to prevent softlocks while enabling respawning.)

[ ] In House Of Pain, make using the Arena Master's Staff required to access the Large Health Globes on the level. 1

[X] Define a default song to play for House Of Pain in the music.lua file, so that it doesn't play a random song at default that will likely be unfitting. Suggestions for the song to use are either Sign Of Evil (i.e. E1M8's track) or Dark Secrets (i.e. The Vaults' track).

[~] Make Unholy Cathedral more difficult (needs discussion). 1 (New Enraged Timer complicates out-speeding strategies, so a farther difficulty buff could make the level unreasonably difficult for non-melee builds to beat.)

[ ] Make it more immediately apparent to newcomers that you can't shoot in Unholy Cathedral, whether through having a lone Lost Soul at the start that will immediately let players safely realize it without meaningfully changing the way the level plays, or having a message at the start that outright tells them. 1

[ ] Add ammo pickups to The Mortuary and Limbo, to compensate for respawns no longer dropping ammo. Current idea is an ammo box in each corner, and double them on Nightmare. 1

[X] If Blood is added as a new fluid, replace the lava in Limbo with it. 1

[ ] In The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus on Nightmare difficulty, remove the last Radsuit, so that there is no Radsuits on the level at all. 1

[ ] Prevent being able to teleport into the "mountain" on Mt. Erebus, so that the player does not end up potentially softlocked 1 2 3 4

[ ] Make Mt. Erebus more difficult (needs discussion). This level needs extensive changes, so view linked post for details on what to change. 1

[ ] Disallow nukes from being activated in Hell Fortress altogether. Additionally have any active powerups get turned off when entering Hell Fortress, so you cannot take an Invulnerability or Berserk stack into Hell Fortress to trivialize it. 1

[ ] Improve the Apostle fight in Hell Fortress. Suggestions include giving it unique entrance text, unique victory text, and have the fight spawn a ton of corpses of strong enemies when entering the level, so that the Apostle's resurrecting capabilities get utilized. 1

Miscellaneous

[ ] Reduce the EXP multiplier on Nightmare to x1.1 or x1.0, to compensate for newly added enemies and planned additions of a new special level pair. 1

[ ] Expand the amount of possible Dual Angel combinations, every combination that isn't outright incompatible should be allowed. 1

[X] Nerf Berserk to give +50% all resistances instead of +60%. 1

[ ] Have dying to John Carmack count as a normal death instead of as a partial win. 1

[ ] Add method for guaranteed Berserker Armor and Dragonslayer in Angel of 100 / Archangel of 666, so that full wins in A100/666 aren't terribly luck-based. 1 2 3 4

[~] Obtaining high scores mostly devolve into playing Archangel of 666 and aren't really used as a means to compare runs. Perhaps they should be changed (needs discussion). 1 (High scores have been separated into their own individual boards for each challenge, so A100/666 scores will no longer dominate a player's high score leaderboard.)

[ ] Give EXP for pulling levers (but consider disabling this bonus if the player has Intuition) 1

[ ] Make single enemy type levels be able to have Nightmare enemies at sufficiently high level rolls, just like how caves can.

[ ] Add unique level feel messages for Nightmare enemy-only levels. 1 2

[ ] Adjust armor and ammo crates to have their drop tables improve at deeper depths, or add "enhanced" versions of these crates with improved drop tables that spawn at deeper depths. 1 2

[Omega Tyrant]

Medals, Badges, and Rankings

This post is for everything regarding medals, badges, and rankings. This is primarily fixing redundant or realistically unwinnable medals/badges, and bringing up the count of Angelic badges to be equivalent with the count of the other badge tiers. Any ideas for new medals and badges will also be here though.

[ ] Add color-coding to medals and badges in mortems at the end of a game. 1 2

Medals

[ ] Change "Shotgunnery Cross" and "Marksmanship Cross" to each require 100% kills, so that they're not redundant with the Angel of Shotgunnery and Angel of Marksmanship challenges, and so that you can't cheese obtaining them in a pacifist run. 1

[ ] Change "Malicious Knives Cross" and "Sunrise Iron Fist" to require 50+% kills or some other non-negligible amount of kills, so that you can't cheese obtaining them in a pacifist run. 1

[ ] Allow Gargulec Medal to be obtainable alongside Gargulec Cross if you haven't already achieved it prior, like how it works with other lesser versions of other medals. 1

[ ] New: Experience Token - Reach experience level 15 (excludes Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666). 1

[ ] New: Aurora Star - Find 10 uniques or more in a single game (Allow all challenge types). 1

[ ] New: Technician Medal - Create 15 or more different assemblies in a single game. (Allow all challenge types) 1 2 3

[ ] New: UAC Cross - Kill 2,500 or more enemies. (Allow all challenge types) 1 2 3

[ ] New: Marathon Medal - Complete Angel of 100 in under 2 hours of real time. 1

[ ] New: Zero Master - Complete Angel of 100 on UV or N! in under 1 hour of real time. (Upgraded version of the former, named after Doom's greatest speedrunner)

[ ] New: Boss Slayer Cross - Clear a boss floor and exit alive. (Boss floors are special floors where all enemies are one of the boss enemies, which are Bruiser Brothers, Shamblers, Agony Elementals, Lava Elementals, or Cyberdemons. This does not include Phobos Anomaly, Tower of Babel, Dis, and Hell Fortess). 1 2 3 4 5 6

[ ] New: Unexplored Star (or alternatively Medal of Chance) - Visit no generated levels and win the game. (Excludes Angel of Confidence, Angel of Overconfidence, Angel of 100, and Archangel of 666) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[ ] New: Keen's Helmet - Clear Hell Fortress without getting damaged. 1

[ ] New: A medal for completing a Conqueror run in any of Angel of Red Alert, Darkness, Impatience, Purity, and Masochism (name needs discussion). 1

Badges

[ ] Disallow Dual-Angel challenges for all badges that require performing a feat on a specific challenge. This includes Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge, Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge, Berserker Gold Badge to Arena Gold Badge, Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge, and Reaper Diamond Badge to Arena Diamond Badge. 1

[ ] Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. To prevent the awards section of UV/N! mortems from becoming absurdly large, have only the highest tier of each badge appear on the mortem 1 2

[ ] Have more badges require at least a standard win, rather than any win. Current suggestion is every Gold, Platinum, and Diamond badge that requires winning the game should require at least a standard win, with the exceptions of those that already require a full win and Pacifist Gold. 1

[ ] Have higher rankings require more of the previous tier badges (get to needing 15 Bronze, and then a few rankings later, start requiring them again for 18 Bronze, 21 Bronze, etc). 1

[ ] No-Life King ranking should require all badges of every type. Currently it only requires Angelic Badges. 1

[ ] Change Heroic Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond Badges to require 10%/30%/50%/70%/90% of total medals respectively, so that the series remains proportional as new medals are added. 1 2

[ ] Add a new set of badges for House of Pain, since the Scavenger series doesn't work for it (as it doesn't require luck to complete without the Staff). You can read my linked post for ideas on what do for the badges. 1

[ ] Add a new set of badges for The Chained Court (needs discussion on badge requirements, linked post has my current ideas). 1

[ ] Add a new set of badges for Phobos Lab and Military Base (needs discussion on badge requirements, linked post has my current ideas). 1

[ ] Add a new set of badges for Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab (needs discussion on badge requirements, linked post has my current ideas). 1

[ ] Veteran Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different from Medal of Prejudice. 1

[ ] Speedrunner Bronze Badge - Change this to 40 minutes so that it's a little different from Compet-n Silver Cross. 1

[ ] Arena Bronze Badge - Change this to requiring a standard game so that it's at least a bit different from Hell Champion Medal. 1

[ ] Gatekeeper Gold Badge - Change to passing Phobos Anomaly on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty without taking damage, so that it isn't practically the same as Cyberdemon's Head and is less trivial. Alternatively, change it to both passing Phobos Anomaly + clearing Tower Of Babel without damage on at least HNTR. 1 2

[ ] Marksman Gold Badge - Change to requiring HMP instead of UV, as it doesn't make much sense for this badge series to skip HMP, and there isn't much reason to go for this badge instead of jumping straight to Platinum when it's not that much more difficult than the current Gold requirement.

[ ] Lightfoot Gold Badge - Add the additional stipulation of requiring clearing the game in under 40,000 turns, as AoLT is bit too easy of a challenge to require just beating the game and it leads to a more natural progression towards Lightfoot Platinum's requirement of under 20,000 turns.

[ ] Daredevil Gold Badge - Add the additional stipulation of requiring 100% kills, as it's too easy for a Gold badge that can be quickly won by just spamming fast attempts until you get lucky.

[ ] Arena Gold Badge - Perhaps change this to beating Hell's Arena on UV in any challenge(s) but AoMr, AoSh, AoMC, AoLT, or AoPc, as since due to SoG's upcoming change that makes Pistols much stronger in the early game, beating Hell's Arena in AoMr is no longer a difficult feat, while beating Arena in AoSh, AoMC, and AoLT is also too easy for a Gold, and it's of course impossible in AoPc.

[ ] Longinus Gold Badge - Perhaps add the stipulation to beat Unholy Cathedral without Berserker or Malicious Blades? As is, this is the most free Gold badge by far, and it makes no sense to put it on par of an achievement as beating Mortuary or Limbo (as Reaper Gold requires).

[ ] Berserker Platinum Badge - Remove the kill count requirement, so that it isn't too similar to Gargulec Cross. 1 2 3

[ ] Shottyman Platinum Badge - Change to requiring Ultra-Violence and winning the game without a Shotgun or Generalist mastery, as currently if you're able to beat AoSh on N!, you should be able to do so with 80% kills and will thus usually skip this badge to go straight to Shottyman Diamond, while this will also make for a more interesting challenge (at least if you don't Sereg it).

[ ] Hunter Platinum Badge - Change to requiring Ultra-Violence and needing 75+% kills, as there's little reason to go for this badge instead of jumping straight to Hunter Diamond and UV is nonsensically skipped in this badge series. 1 2 3 4

[ ] Centurial Platinum Badge - Change this to require the Experience Medal in addition to UV difficulty, so players will have to kill a large chunk of enemies along the way and to have a more natural progression to the proposed Centurial Diamond change.

[ ] Everyman Platinum Badge - Change it to requiring 100% kills, so that it isn't the same as Thomas' Medal. 1

[ ] Longinus Platinum Badge - Change it to beating Unholy Cathedral without Brute on any difficulty or at least without Brute on HMP, as it's currently a very uninteresting badge and a freebie for Nightmare players. Also disallow Angel of Max Carnage and Light Travel from being able to earn it since they trivialize it. 1

[ ] Berserker Diamond Badge - Remove the kill count requirement and instead require the newly suggested medal "Unexplored Star/Medal of Chance" for a more unique and fitting challenge. 1 2

[ ] Marksman Diamond Badge - Change this to require the Explorer Pin in addition to Nightmare difficulty, as with the upcoming SoG change and buffs to the Pistol masteries, AoMr has gotten significantly easier, and so an additional stipulation is needed for an appropriate Diamond-level challenge.

[ ] Centurial Diamond Badge - Change this to require the Experience Cross in addition to Nightmare difficulty, so that it isn't the same as Dervis' Medallion and so that players must kill most enemies in A100 instead of stair diving the back half of the challenge. 1

[ ] Daredevil Diamond Badge - Change this to require 100% kills, as it is too easy for a Diamond badge, and it makes little sense to require less kills in AoOC than what Elite Diamond requires (which is 90% kills in a standard game). 1

[ ] Longinus Diamond Badge - Disallow Angel of Max Carnage and Light Travel from being able to earn it, since they make the badge much easier. 1

[ ] UAC Angelic Badge - Change to requiring Ultra-Violence, as it is realistically unwinnable, especially now that the Enraged Timer + patrolling enemies means that extensive camping strategies the badge would have required are no longer viable. 1 2

[ ] Speedrunner Angelic Badge - Change to requiring 10 minutes or less, as it is realistically unwinnable, to such an absurd degree that it may not even be possible with TAS. 1 2 3

[ ] Demonic Angelic Badge - Change to winning a standard game on Nightmare with 100% kills and Untouchable Medal or even an Untouchable Pin, as it is an even more absurdly impossible version of UAC Angelic. Perhaps consider something else entirely, as long as it's changed to something that's realistically possible and isn't just a harder version of another Angelic badge. 1 2 3 4

[ ] Shottyman Angelic Badge - Change to requiring 100% kills, as it is too easy for an Angelic Badge, even with the Nightmare changes that eliminates the cheese of farming respawns to buff the kill count. 1 2

[ ] Pacifist Angelic Badge - Change to requiring Nightmare and remove the kill count requirement, as it is realistically unwinnable without absurd save scumming, especially now that proper infighting being added makes it incredibly unlikely to get through more than just a few floors without something dying. 1

[ ] New: Heroic Angelic Badge - Achieve all medals. 1 2 3

[ ] New: Destroyer Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of 100 on Nightmare with Untouchable Pin. 1

[ ] New: Hunter Angelic Badge - Complete the proposed Archangel of Darkness on Nightmare. If this challenge isn't created, instead go with completing Angel of Darkness on Nightmare as a conqueror. 1 2 3

[ ] New: Daredevil Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Overconfidence + Angel of Darkness on Nightmare with 100% kills. 1

[ ] New: Gatekeeper Angelic Badge - Clear Phobos Anomaly, Tower Of Babel, and Hell Fortress on Nightmare without taking damage in any of those three levels, while disallowing Angel Of Max Carnage and Light Travel. Only add this badge however if the suggestion to disallow the activation of nukes and disabling of powerups in Hell Fortress is implemented.

[ ] New: Purist Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of Purity + Angel of Light Travel on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Apostle Angelic Badge - Kill the Apostle in a standard game on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Sunrise Angelic Badge - Complete Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills using only Fists. 1

[ ] New: Reaper Angelic Badge - Complete The Mortuary/Limbo in Angel Of Humanity on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Scavenger Angelic Badge - Clear The Vaults by luck in Angel Of Light Travel on Nightmare. 1

[ ] New: Longinus Angelic Badge - Complete Unholy Cathedral on Nightmare without Brute, Finesse, and Hellrunner, while disallowing AoMC and AoLT. (Needs discussion) 1

[ ] New: Arena Angelic Badge: Complete Hell's Arena in Archangel Of Humanity on Nightmare. (Needs discussion) 1

[Omega Tyrant]

New Content

This post will cover all suggestions for new content to add to the game. It is organized by general features, equipment/items, enemies, new challenges, and miscellaneous stuff (a traits and special levels section could be added too if Kornel says they're on the table and anyone has decent suggestions for them).

Features

[ ] Have the trait selection screen be more color-coded (example by Mader Levap): 1 2

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ ] Add a toggle in the settings that turns off the powerup overlay filters of Berserk, Invulnerability, and Envirosuit. 1 2

[ ] Add a toggle to enable legacy inventory selection (where each inventory slot was instantly selectable by an associated letter key) for players who preferred that method. 1 2 3 (Too technically difficult to implement)

[X] On the UI bar, in the empty right side of it, show the total amount of loose ammo in your inventory for your equipped weapon (or the ammo left in your equipped ammo box if you have one equipped). 1

[ ] When playing Nightmare or Angel of Darkness, have a message that informs you when every unique enemy on the floor has been killed at least once, so that a player going for 100% kills but not meticulously disposing of every corpse doesn't need to keep bringing up the player info screen to check when they have gotten 100% kills on any floor. Also maybe consider adding a visual indicator to respawned enemies to help immediately discern them, such as some dull-colored aura? 1

[ ] Consider having a time display in the player info screen? 1

[ ] Create/readd locked vaults, as they're described on the wiki. 1 2

[ ] Add trap rooms. These would have a powerup/exotic/unique item inside, and when picked up, has a randomized chance of spawning enemies similar to a summon enemies lever, or floods the room with acid, lava, or blood. The weight of the powerups/exotics/uniques would not impact the rest of the floor, and any enemies spawned by the trap will not give EXP. The chance of the trap activating can be affected by depth level and/or difficulty. 1 2 3 4 5

[X] Add support for more music slots beyond level 25 in the music.lua file, so that players have the option for more different music to play in A100/666 if they desire. 1 (Designating music tracks for levels 26 through 100 in the audio.lua file now works, levels beyond 100 for A666 have not been tested however.)

[ ] Add a replay system to record and playback runs. 1 2

[ ] Consider adding an option to change your name ingame? 1

Equipment, assemblies, and other Items

[-] New common Pistol type (suggested example is "Magnum" with more power and less accuracy). 1 2 (Kornel stated in one of his streams that he doesn't find the idea of the Magnum to be very "Doomish". Also SoG's greatly ramped up damage devalues the need for a more easily obtainable stronger Pistol.)

[ ] New exotic: Acid-Proof Armor, which is 3 Protection, 95% Acid Resistance, -10% movement speed, everything else normal. (Could alternatively be named "Baron's Hide" to have a more flavorful name) 1 2

[ ] New exotic: Glass Armor, which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 50% all resistances. 1 2

[ ] New exotic: Glass Shield, which is 0 Protection, 50% Durability, 80% all resistances, cannot be repaired, cannot be modded, doesn't degrade. 1 2 3 4

[ ] New unique: Dimensional Boots, which is 4 Protection, -30% Move Speed, +30% Knockback, and when worn, you move two tiles for each movement rather than the usual one tile. 1

[ ] New assembly: Scouting Armor (any armor + AS), which is original with +1 Vision, +10% speed. 1

[ ] New assembly: Blastproof Armor (any armor + TF), which is original with half damage to explosions, +30% knockback. 1

[X] New assembly: Grappling Armor (any armor + BA), which is original with +30% Melee Resistance, -50% knockback. 1 2 3 4

[ ] New assembly: Sniper Rifle (Chaingun + BAS), which is original with auto-hit property. 1 2

[ ] New assembly: Laser Blade (Combat Knife + BTN), which is 5d5 plasma damage with 0.8 sec firing speed, -2 accuracy, and when equipped, it has the ability to reduce any plasma hit that deals less than 5 damage before armor/resistances to 0 (or if that is too difficult/annoying to program, alternatively have it give +50% plasma resistance when equipped). 1

[ ] New set: Tactical Set (Tactical Armor + Tactical Boots), which gives Dodgemaster. 1 2

[ ] New set: Bruiser Set (Acid-Proof Armor/Baron's Hide + Acid-Proof Boots), which gives 100% acid resistance. 1

Enemies

[X] New enemy: Nightmare Revenant, which is much faster, hits much harder in melee, and swaps its fire damage and resistance for plasma damage + resistance. 1 (Deals jacked up fire damage instead and keeps the fire resistance instead of plasma, but the idea is basically implemented as proposed.)

[X] New enemy: Nightmare Mancubus, which is far tankier, hits much harder in melee while having melee resistance, and its projectiles deal acid damage while being able to leave behind acid tiles.. 1

[X] New monster group: 2 x Baron of Hell, 2 - 6 x Nightmare Imp, with a minimum depth of 30, maximum depth of 60, and a weight of 4. 1

[X] New monster group: 2 x Bruiser Brother, 4 - 9 x Nightmare Imp, with a minimum depth of 60, and a weight of 3. 1 (Implemented with the newly added Nightmare Knight instead of Bruisers but the idea is the same)

[X] New monster group: 4 - 9 x Nightmare Demon, with a minimum depth of 50, and a weight of 3. 1

[X] New monster group: 3 - 6 x Nightmare Arachnotron, with a minimum depth of 70, and a weight of 2. 1

[ ] New monster group: 1 x Elite Former Sergeant, 2-6 x Elite Former Human, with a minimum depth of 60, maximum depth of 80, and a weight of 4. 1

[ ] New Monster group: 1 x Elite Former Captain, 2-3 x Elite Former Sergeant, 2-3 x Elite Former Human, with a minimum depth of 70, maximum depth of 90, and a weight of 3. 1

[X] New monster group: 1 x Elite Former Commando, 2-3 x Elite Former Captain, 2-3 x Elite Former Sergeant, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2. 1

[X] New monster group: 2-3 x Lava Elemental, 2-3 x Shambler, with a minimum depth of 70, and a weight of 1. 1

[X] New monster group: 1 x Agony Elemental, 3-8 x Nightmare Cacodemon, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2. 1

[X] New monster group: 1 x Cyberdemon, 4-9 x Baron of Hell, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2. 1

[X] New monster group: 1 x Cyberdemon, 3-6 x Bruiser Brother, with a minimum depth of 90, and a weight of 1. 1

[X] New monster group: 2 x Nightmare Archvile, 3-6 x Mancubus (or 2-4 x Nightmare Mancubus if they're added), 3-6 x Revenant (or 2-4 x Nightmare Revenant if they're added), with a minimum depth of 90, and weight of 2. 1

New challenge ideas

[ ] "Angel of Gladiating" and "Angel of Labyrinth" (or any other appropriate name): The former challenge will have all floors be Arena-type levels, and the latter challenge will have all floors be mazes. Alternatively, the challenges can be combined together and caves could be thrown into the mix for a "hard level types only" challenge. 1

[ ] "Angel of Misfortune" (or any other appropriate name): Every floor will have a level event. 1

[ ] "Angel of Spilling" (or any other appropriate name): Your inventory will be reset to the starting loadout upon entering every floor, emulating the popular Pistol Start challenge in Doom. The starting loadout may be modified to give you more of the standard weapons and some ammo for them, so that you're not practically forced to use Pistol builds. Exotics/uniques may also have increased chances of spawning to compensate for the temporary equipment, and an exception to resetting inventory could be made when entering boss and special levels, so that they all remain beatable. 1

[ ] "Archangel of Darkness": You have a vision radius of 4 and enemies revive, but you gain x2.5 experience. 1 2 3 4 5

New level events

[ ] "Mortuary event": All enemies will immediately die when entering the floor (and not give any EXP in the process), then a random number of Arch-Viles will be spawned around the floor (and especially bad level rolls on UV/N! could spawn Nightmare Arch-Viles). Also disable the "reveal enemies" mechanic and stair sense in this event. 1

[ ] "Max Carnage event": Emulates Angel of Max Carnage for a single level, i.e. the player and enemies always deal maximum damage while having +12 accuracy. Particularly bad level rolls should instead have a "Snake Eyes" event, where only enemies always deal maximum damage and have +12 accuracy. 1

[ ] "Masochism event": Emulates Angel of Masochism for a single level, i.e. the player will be unable to heal through conventional means until they exit the floor. To prevent a player from getting screwed by entering such a floor at low health, have the player get supercharged upon entering the floor. 1

Miscellaneous

[X] New fluid: Blood, which deals 8 damage, and while it harms the player, it does not harm enemies. (Needs discussion on damage type, it could just be Plasma, so that a third resistance type is relevant to boots, but some boots will need that resistance added). 1 (Implemented as proposed but with 12 plasma damage instead.)

[Omega Tyrant]

I'll use this post to explain my rationale for the new suggestions I added to the OP while making it.

*Farther buff all Elite Formers by increasing their melee accuracy.

Elite Formers were given a substantial buff to their melee damage to make them less exploitable and weaken camping strats in Military Base. However, I realized their accuracy wasn't buffed either, and their accuracy with melee attacks range from mediocre to terrible, limiting the impact of their melee buff as even on UV/N! they'll miss you often with their melee attack. Just buffing them all by +2 should suffice.

*Lower the Nightmare Cacodemon's spawning depth in A100/666 to 50+.

I noticed the Nightmare Cacodemon has a spawning depth of 51+, which looks like a typo, when all other enemies from floor 30 onward have spawning depths that are a multiple of 10, with this lone exception. So that should be corrected.

*Lower the Shambler's spawning depth in A100/666 to 70+.

When looking over when the later enemies start spawning in A100, while floor 60 only introduces one new enemy (Elite Former Sergeant) and floor 70 introduces two enemies (Elite Former Captain and Lava Elemental), floor 80 introduces a whopping four of them. So this suggestion is to more even out when new enemies get introduced instead of having this big spike at floor 74-80, of which the Shambler in that floor 80 group makes the most sense to have spawn sooner.

Give EXP for pulling levers (but consider disabling this bonus if the player has Intuition)

On Discord, after someone erroneously thought that levers gave you EXP, Kornel stated he thought that could be a good idea, and I think it can be too, so I want to formally propose it, to farther incentivize gambling with levers. I would also suggest possibly disabling that EXP bonus if you have Intuition, so that Intuition doesn't get buffed farther.

Change "Shotgunnery Cross" and "Marksmanship Cross" to each require 100% kills, while also changing "Malicious Knives Cross" and "Sunrise Iron Fist" to require 50+% kills

Aside from the former two new medals being redundant with the already existing challenges where you're restricted to only using Shotguns and Pistols, I discovered you can easily cheese getting them alongside the Malicious Knives Cross, Sunrise Iron Fist, and the new Zen Master Cross all in a single pacifist run (as you can see in this mortem I posted to the Discord). Ignoring the blatant cheesing to get a bunch of obtuse medals at once, this seems to be clearly against the spirit of these medals where you're supposed to be actually killing enemies with the designated weapon type. A simple solution would be adding a 100% kills requirement to the Shotgunnery and Markmanship Crosses (that additionally has the bonus of making them somewhat distinct in purpose from the pre-exisiting shotgun/pistol challenges), while adding a 50% kills requirement to the Malicious Knives Cross and Sunrise Iron Fist. You could technically still get them all in a single 100% kills fist-only run, but that takes a ton more effort than spamming pacifist runs until you get lucky (and at least you wouldn't be able to double them up with the Zen Master Cross and Pacifist Medal).

*Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. To prevent the awards section of UV/N! mortems from becoming absurdly large, have only the highest tier of each badge appear on the mortem

Being able to reobtain badges was shot down by Kornel, under the reasoning that it would make Nightmare mortems' award sections become hugely inflated. I agree with that reasoning but still would like this idea, so I want to propose amending it to where you can reobtain badges, but only the highest tier badge of each set will appear in the mortem's awards section (for example, if you fulfill the conditions to earn the Veteran Diamond Badge, none of the lower tier Veteran Badges will appear in the mortem). The main cause of this potential inflation is that obtaining the higher tier badges will also fulfill the requisites for all the lower tier badges in the set, with only a few exceptions, so this should prevent the award section from becoming too inflated in size with redundant badges.

*Add a new set of badges for House of Pain

Currently the Scavenger set of badges do not apply to House of Pain. You could simply include House of Pain in this badge set, but given that unlike The Vaults, House of Pain is conventionally beatable without the Arena Master Staff, so getting the Scavenger badges on it would be much much easier. Considering that, House of Pain should have a new set of badges for it. The requisites need to be hammered out, but I have the following ideas:

Homewrecker Bronze: Enter House of Pain, and decline the invitation.
Homewrecker Silver: Clear House of Pain.
Homewrecker Gold: Clear House of Pain on HMP or higher without using the Arena Master's Staff.
Homewrecker Platinum: Clear House of Pain on UV or higher in Angel of Confidence.
Homewrecker Diamond: Clear House of Pain on N! in Angel of Overconfidence.
Homewrecker Angelic: I'm at a loss for this one and really need ideas, maybe clear it on N! without using the Arena Master's Staff in an Angel of Purity + Angel of Humanity dual challenge? (i.e. beat it on N! with no health and no powerups)

*Change Everyman Platinum Badge to requiring 100% kills, so that it isn't redundant with Thomas' Medal.

Kornel has stated that he doesn't want to change any of the medals named after old players, named after them for being the first players to achieve that medal's particular feat. So if changing Thomas' Medal is off the table, then Everyman Platinum should be changed to not be redundant. One idea is to change Everyman Platinum to require 100% kills instead of being a conqueror, so that it remains a tough platinum badge that is still available to obtain on HNTR difficulty.

*Change Centurial Diamond Badge to require the Experience Cross in addition to clearing A100 on Nightmare difficulty, so that it isn't redundant with Dervis' Medallion

Similarly, if changing Dervis' Medallion is off the table, then Centurial Diamond Badge should be changed to not be redundant. My idea is to make it also require obtaining the Experience Cross, so you must actually kill most enemies to max out your level instead of just trying to stair dive through, but you don't have to go through the tedium of destroying all corpses or repeatedly killing a reviving enemy as kill percentage doesn't matter unlike with many other badges.

*Add the Bruiser Set (Acid-Proof Armor/Baron's Hide + Acid-Proof Boots), which gives 100% acid resistance.

If the Acid-Proof Armor (or Baron's Hide as I think it could be named) is added, it makes an obvious pairing with the Acid-Proof Boots, that can work as a weaker counterpart to the Inquisitor Set with full acid immunity instead of fire immunity, while also giving the underutilized Acid-Proof Boots a bit more potential usage.

*Add new monster groups for deeper levels in Angel of 100/666

0.9.9.8 added a new monster group of Pain Elementals + Cacodemons that spawns exclusively in A100/666 as its minimum depth is beyond standard game limits, which got me thinking that there could be more groups added to shake up deeper A100/666, utilizing the nightmare and boss enemies that have no such groups. Plus seeing the 100th Archvile + Barons/Revenants/Mancubus group gets repetitive, so more promotion of variety is nice and helps to make deeper A100 floors a bit more potentially dangerous. Several new monster group ideas I have:

2 x Baron of Hell, 2 - 6 x Nightmare Imp, with a minimum depth of 30, maximum depth of 60, and a weight of 4 (an upgraded version of the Baron + Imps group that stops spawning after floor 21).

2 x Bruiser Brother, 4 - 9 x Nightmare Imp, with a minimum depth of 60, and a weight of 3 (a farther upgraded version of the aforementioned group).

4 - 9 x Nightmare Demon, with a minimum depth of 50, and a weight of 3 ("Phobos Lab flashback", an upgraded version of the mass Pinky group that stopped spawning dozens of floors ago).

3 - 6 x Nightmare Arachnotron, with a minimum depth of 70, and a weight of 2. ("You can't tank this", an upgraded version of the mass Arachnotron group, though accordingly more uncommon).

1 x Elite Former Sergeant, 2-6 x Elite Former Human, with a minimum depth of 60, maximum depth of 80, and a weight of 4 ("Elite platoon", an upgraded version of the old Former Sergeant + Former Humans group)

1 x Elite Former Captain, 2-3 x Elite Former Sergeant, 2-3 x Elite Former Human, with a minimum depth of 70, maximum depth of 90, and a weight of 3 ("Elite platoon Mark 2", a farther upgraded version of the Formers-only group that utilizes the newly spawning Elite Former Captain).

1 x Elite Former Commando, 2-3 x Elite Former Captain, 2-3 x Elite Former Sergeant, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2 ("Elite platoon Mark 3", an even greater upgraded version that brings out all the big guns).

2-3 x Lava Elemental, 2-3 x Shambler, with a minimum depth of 70, and a weight of 1. ("Fireblu", a rare yet potent combination of lava and plasma, plus these two guys both teleport and regenerate, while not making good group buddies with anyone else).

1 x Agony Elemental, 3-8 x Nightmare Cacodemon, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2 ("The Dark Cloud", a significantly more threatening version of that cute meatball cloud group we've been seeing for the past 50 floors).

1 x Cyberdemon, 4-9 x Baron of Hell, with a minimum depth of 80, and a weight of 2 ("Tricks And Traps", a homage to one of Doom 2's most famous setpieces, unfortunately this time you can't make them fight each other).

1 x Cyberdemon, 3-6 x Bruiser Brother, with a minimum depth of 90, and a weight of 1 ("You can run but you can't hide", a rare upgraded version of the former group, as aside from Cybie having even beefier backup, this time they will all be hunting you alongside him).

2 x Nightmare Archvile, 3-6 x Mancubus (or 2-4 x Nightmare Mancubus if they're added), 3-6 x Revenant (or 2-4 x Nightmare Revenant if they're added), with a minimum depth of 90, and weight of 2 ("Nightmare VMR", of course we need the upgraded version of this classic trio group to round out the end of A100).

Add a new fluid, Blood, which deals 8 damage, and while it harms the player, it does not harm enemies.

Kornel mentioned the possibility of adding a new fluid, and when thinking of it, we're missing the third classic damaging fluid from Doom, blood. To make it more interesting, I think it should do substantially less damage than lava at 8 damage, but it should be even harder to get good foot protection against it (perhaps it should utilize plasma damage?), and it has the farther unique effect of being a fluid that doesn't damage enemies, making it a more serious impediment than lava can be (which you can normally exploit to great effect against most enemies, whether to escape them, corral them to a favorable position, or knock them into it to severely injure or kill them). It should be made to only generate in Hell and beyond, and be a bit uncommon, while you can also add it to the pool of lever effects. If it's added, some boots may need the relevant (assumed plasma) resistance added, of which I propose the following:

Plasteel Boots -> 10% plasma resistance (just so it saves you one more point of damage than what Protective Boots would)
Environmental Boots -> +30% plasma resistance (should take more than an advanced assembly with cheap mods to get that good of resistance to it)
Cerberus Boots -> +95% plasma resistance (I don't think they should have full blood immunity, so that this fluid is much more difficult to get immunity to)
Nylaptotep Boots -> 30% plasma resistance (matching Malek's Armor)
Enviroboots -> 100% plasma resistance (should be the only boots immune, also gives it a niche over A-modded Cerberus Boots that otherwise obsoletes it)

Maybe could also add new standard or exotic boots that only has a good plasma resistance and nothing else (and if exotic, perhaps a minor speed bonus too just to make it a bit more unique, as currently only Phaseshift and Laptop boots make you faster at base)

[TNT]

Thanks for the compilation, Tyrant.

A small U/X suggestion based on my recent experiences with DRL:
It would be convenient if we had a way to show how much ammo is left in your inventory for the current weapon you're wielding. Feels like there's space to the right of the weapon itself, at least.
I know you can open the menu to look, but not having to stop the action to look and keep track may make gameplay flow better, especially with ammo-hungry stuff like rapids.

There's a lot to go through and respond to here, but for the moment, +1 to having an upgrade to the basic pistol that isn't a special drop you could never see in a given run.

EDIT: Also, after once again staying up until almost 3 AM playing the game, I think it'd be -extremely- helpful to have a clock display somewhere >~<
It can maybe be toggled or something but it'd certainly help with keeping track of time, especially when playing in fullscreen.
ToME has this as an add-on and it's probably the only reason I don't stay awake playing until ungodly hours

[Omega Tyrant]

Thanks for the compilation, Tyrant.

A small U/X suggestion based on my recent experiences with DRL:
It would be convenient if we had a way to show how much ammo is left in your inventory for the current weapon you're wielding. Feels like there's space to the right of the weapon itself, at least.
I know you can open the menu to look, but not having to stop the action to look and keep track may make gameplay flow better, especially with ammo-hungry stuff like rapids.

There's a lot to go through and respond to here, but for the moment, +1 to having an upgrade to the basic pistol that isn't a special drop you could never see in a given run.

EDIT: Also, after once again staying up until almost 3 AM playing the game, I think it'd be -extremely- helpful to have a clock display somewhere >~<
It can maybe be toggled or something but it'd certainly help with keeping track of time, especially when playing in fullscreen.
ToME has this as an add-on and it's probably the only reason I don't stay awake playing until ungodly hours

Having an ammo display on the UI bar would be convenient and there is certainly space for it. Main issue is ammo boxes and other weapons of the same type with ammo in them, but I would imagine that it wouldn't count them since that isn't ammo you can readily reload with. And if you have an ammo box equipped, it could instead show the ammo left in it.

As for a time display, I personally don't see much use for it, but it is one of those "sure why not" things, as long as there's a clean spot in the UI to fit it in (and it of course isn't too much a pain to program in).

Updated the OPs to include this and a more up-to-date bug list.

[Khashishi]

I miss the ability to select items by pressing a letter key corresponding to each row of the inventory. It is much more efficient than scrolling to the item and pressing enter. Both methods of selection should be available.

The volume of the sound from using the arena master staff on multiple enemies should be reduced, or it should only be played once regardless of enemy count.

I'm not sure if knockback has been fixed; I haven't tested enough 0.9.9.8. But in 0.9.9.7 knockback occurred at a different time to damage, so hitting enemies with tactical rockets would frequently cause them to get knocked back but take no damage. Also, I think that you can get knocked back twice by enemies with splash damage if they knock you back into a tile where the splash hasn't resolved yet. I'm not sure how this affects damage.

I suggest not basing knockback distance on damage so that son of a bitch doesn't increase knockback. This is a nerf to son of a bitch, which is very powerful. You could add increased knockback to the reloader trait, which would synergize well with the shotgun and rocket focus, though you might need to change the name of the trait.

Maybe a guaranteed combat pistol somewhere would be nice, like in Phobos lab.

UI change: When using look mode, the screen should scroll if you try to look near the edge of the screen. I'm not sure if there's a way to scroll the screen without using the mouse, but I don't like using the mouse to check around the map.

[Omega Tyrant]

I miss the ability to select items by pressing a letter key corresponding to each row of the inventory. It is much more efficient than scrolling to the item and pressing enter. Both methods of selection should be available.

I personally hated this and was glad to see it removed, as too many times I misclicked on the inventory screen and it made me waste a medkit or other consumable item. I suppose there is no harm though in adding it as a toggle in the legacy settings if people really want it back though (assuming there is no coding complications with it).

The volume of the sound from using the arena master staff on multiple enemies should be reduced, or it should only be played once regardless of enemy count.

This is a problem in general with how repeated sounds being played at once have their audio stacked together. This was pointed out in the 0.9.9.8 thread and some adjustments were made for it (notably, tripping a wall destroying lever no longer breaks your ear drums), but more could be done.

I'm not sure if knockback has been fixed; I haven't tested enough 0.9.9.8. But in 0.9.9.7 knockback occurred at a different time to damage, so hitting enemies with tactical rockets would frequently cause them to get knocked back but take no damage.

This is already reported in the OP, being the second point in the bug report section.

Also, I think that you can get knocked back twice by enemies with splash damage if they knock you back into a tile where the splash hasn't resolved yet. I'm not sure how this affects damage.

Could you elaborate on this, and perhaps accompanied by screenshots demonstrating it, because I'm not understanding what it is you're reporting here. If you're just saying that some hits can knock you back two spaces, then that's a completely normal function of the knockback mechanic, where any shotgun blast and non-BFG explosive hit knocks you back by one tile per 7 damage before armor/resistances, and so an explosive hit that rolls 14+ damage will knock you back two or more tiles, which such strong attacks are possessed by several enemies.

I suggest not basing knockback distance on damage so that son of a bitch doesn't increase knockback. This is a nerf to son of a bitch, which is very powerful. You could add increased knockback to the reloader trait, which would synergize well with the shotgun and rocket focus, though you might need to change the name of the trait.

I'm going to strongly disagree with this. Aside from knockback being tied to an attack's strength being intuitive and how it works in actual Doom, this would be a huge fundamental mechanic change that goes beyond just player balancing (now how would you determine knockback from enemy attacks if it's no longer tied to damage?). Son of a Bitch is additionally not so strong that it merits any nerfs, not to mention it being able to increase knockback can already be a drawback (notably having high amounts of SoB resulting in rapid-fire weapons knocking enemies out of vision and so your subsequent shots miss the now out-of-sight enemy), and Reloader already got a substantial buff in 0.9.9.8 by having its effect be improved to -30% reloading time per level (while shotguns also don't need any farther buffs when they were already the most reliable weapon type before the aforementioned Reloader buff gave them a complete cakewalk of an early game). On top of that, not tying knockback to damage would be a crippling nerf to Pistols that heavily depend on reaching the damage thresholds to cause knockback to stay out of an enemy's vision and kill enemies before they reach them, and Pistols are already easily the weakest builds in the game.

Maybe a guaranteed combat pistol somewhere would be nice, like in Phobos lab.

This would be very strong for Pistol builds and worthless for every other build; special level rewards should avoid only benefiting a small amount of builds, the guaranteed Combat Shotgun is a far better reward in Phobos Lab and Military Base (being an invaluable utility weapon for every build in the game and not just benefiting Shotgun builds). Additionally, the suggestion for a new stronger common Pistol already does cover Pistol builds being handicapped by the lack of a guaranteed upgrade (first point in the equipment section of the New Content post).

UI change: When using look mode, the screen should scroll if you try to look near the edge of the screen. I'm not sure if there's a way to scroll the screen without using the mouse, but I don't like using the mouse to check around the map.

I use mouse and so never use the look command, but I certainly see how this is annoying and an outright gameplay detriment for keyboard-only players in graphic mode, so this is a no-brainer fix. Will add it to the OP.

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

I personally hated this and was glad to see it removed, as too many times I misclicked on the inventory screen and it made me waste a medkit or other consumable item. I suppose there is no harm though in adding it as a toggle in the legacy settings if people really want it back though (assuming there is no coding complications with it).

This would be a nightmare to sensibly support alongside keybinding rebindings unfortunately, that's why I removed it.

[Omega Tyrant]

This would be a nightmare to sensibly support alongside keybinding rebindings unfortunately, that's why I removed it.

Noted, supporting rebinding keys is definitely more important in that case than maintaining support for legacy item selection.

[Buzzard]

Wording Change:

Currently, Ironman specifically states it gives you 20% more health points when in fact it gives you a flat 10 regardless of what class you are. If you were a Marine, 20% of your starting health would be 12 more hit points. I understand that this is partly due to how Angel of Humanity works, but Angel of Humanity already tells you that Ironman only gives you +2 more health points. In addition, Marine itself says you get 10 more health points instead of a percentage increase.

I would reword Ironman to just state that it grants you 10 more health points (just like how choosing Marine does now) and just keep the wording on Angel of Humanity where it says that Ironman grants you +2 HP now. I would also probably add in that Marines do start with 12 on AOH on the AOH trial selection screen, just to be clear.

[Omega Tyrant]

Updated the OP, as well as got a few new suggestions:

*Buff the Chaingun's accuracy to +3

The Chaingun is in an awkward spot compared to the other standard weapons, where it not only has a better standard weapon of the same type that completely outclasses it (the Plasma Rifle, after which being obtained, rapid fire builds will only keep the Chaingun around for ammo conservation purposes), but it is also a rather lousy weapon in the early game without several cumulative levels of EE + SoB or playing in Angel of Max Carnage, with its very unreliable damage output (especially against high armor enemies like Pinkies and enemies with bullet resistance like Lost Souls, where half the time a bullet from a Chaingun will only do 1 damage to them without SoB). Even when playing rapid fire builds, I find myself still mostly using Shotguns until I get a Plasma Rifle because the Chaingun is so unreliable (especially with Ammochain, where you're blocked Eagle Eye and so can't hit anything with the Chaingun), and if I'm not playing a rapid fire build, I basically never bother with a Chaingun (with its only possible niche for them is when playing Nightmare or Angel of Darkness, being a means that is slightly better than the Pistol to kill enemies without knockback so they die exactly in a spot that destroys their corpse). The Gatling Gun assembly exists to give a big early improvement to the Chaingun, but you typically won't get the two Bulk mods to make it until you clear Phobos Lab/Military Base, by which point you likely have a Plasma Rifle or will get one very soon, and so you likely rather save them for Fireproof armor, buffing the Chainsaw, making a Tactical Rocket Launcher, or possibly building a Nanomachic weapon.

Buffing standard equipment is tricky, as they're so integral to how the game been balanced since its inception and a buff to them that is a little too much can upend that balance, but I would like to see the Chaingun get some help and there is room to improve it. So I propose PowerPlayer's/Buzzard's idea to slightly buff the Chaingun by increasing its base accuracy to +3; this gives it a bit more crucial reliability so burst builds will actually use it more and non-burst builds may find it a bit less frustrating to try using, as well as gives it something over the Plasma Rifle rather than just using a cheaper ammo source. I think you could increase its accuracy to +4 instead or its damage to 1d7 too without shaking things up too much, but again given how delicate the balancing of standard equipment is, I rather err on the side of caution with buffing them. This change would also indirectly buff Former Captains, but since they are usually such a nonthreatening enemy (with Sergeants even often being more threatening despite the Captains having the higher danger rating), them getting buffed would be fine.

*Have Sniper mods reduce the dropoff reduction penalty on Shotguns.

Currently you can apply Sniper mods to Shotguns, but like Agility mods, it does nothing. There is the Plasmatic Shotgun assembly so Sniper mods can do something for Shotguns, but this isn't an assembly you'll necessarily want to make (especially if you're not playing Nightmare or Angel of Darkness for its corpse disposing abilities), as Shotguns can be buffed a lot more through conventional modding and not lose the ability to corner shoot with them (as turning it Plasmatic would). This makes Sniper mods a pretty lousy find for Shotgun builds much of the time, and gives no worth finding multiples of them (woe behold the Shotgun build whose "reward" from Deimos Lab is two Sniper mods), farther enforcing Sniper mods being the least useful rare mod by far.

Considering that, Sniper mods should do something directly on Shotguns rather than nothing, and an obvious idea that comes to mind is to have Sniper mods improve their long distance damage by reducing the Shotgun's dropoff reduction rate by 1% per applied Sniper mod. This makes Sniper mods always valuable in a unique way for Shotguns, whether you're a Shotgun build or not, and gives more interesting modding ideas for Shotguns so that going PPPTT or PPTTT isn't the only optimal modding endgame for them, while not necessarily being broken either even if you triple Sniper mod a Shotgun (as even a Combat, Assault, and Plasma Shotgun couldn't have their dropoff reduction rate fall below 2% per tile, so they would still see some damage reduction at very far ranges).

*Add new Unique boots: Dimensional Boots (or any other more interesting name)

Currently we only have two Uniques in the games that are boots; the Enviroboots and Nyarlaptotep's Boots. This is for good reason, as you are limited in interesting things you can do with boots, and the existing special boots already cover strong fluid protection (Acid-proof Boots, Gothic Boots, and the aforementioned Enviroboots), faster movement (Phaseshift Boots), and both (the aforementioned Laptop Boots), but we could have one more to have a bit more variety with the available Unique boots. When thinking of interesting effects new boots could have to merit putting them into the game, one idea that came to mind is boots that let you move two spaces for each action, which has the following unique applications:

*You would now have a means to actually dodge Revenant missiles, as well as dodge Archvile zaps within their vision.
*You have a means to avoid fluid damage without outright fluid immunity over 1 tile wide fluid rivers/pools, and otherwise can farther limit fluid damage without needing big fluid resistances, by effectively having to move through half the fluid tiles.
*You can get more usage from action-based powerups, as you'll cover more ground in less actions (especially useful when you can't rocket jump for whatever reason).
*Has a drawback in that only moving two tiles at a time gives you less precise control, while switching to another pair of boots takes time. Can also come with a big movespeed penalty so that you're not moving across maps absurdly fast.

I'm unsure of what to name them, but "Dimensional Boots" comes to mind if no one can think of something better. Exact stats also need to be hammered out if this idea is doable and accepted, but I have the following stats in mind:

Protection: 4
Resistances: None
Durability: 100%
Move Speed: -30%
Knockback: +30%
Depth: 12+
Weight: 2

[Khashishi]

I think the problem with Entrenchment isn't that Entrenchment is bad, but that chain fire is bad. Chain fire should be changed, then Entrenchment can be reëvaluated. Right now, I only use Chain fire to save ammo. I suggest removing the 2/3 fire speed shots penalty from the first turn (so you fire full shots from the start), and make chain fire the default firing mode. Then make burst fire as an alternative fire which fires 2/3 shots and cancels any current wind-up. This is a buff to chaingun (which kinda needs the buff, imho). It's only a slight buff to plasma gun since we are usually more concerned with ammo efficiency than raw output on plasma gun. Hyperblaster might need nerfing though if this goes through.

I'm wondering how OP Entrenchment would be if it gave you defense any time you take any action except for moving. Maybe the defense could build up based on the time spent standing still. Or, to keep it attached to rapid fire weapons, the defense could scale with amount of chain fire wind-up.

[TNT]

Related to Chain-Fire, Entrenchment could remove the current limit of 3/2 number of shots after the third turn. Just how far the number would go may need to be tested.

I suppose it could be done as just a general buff to chainfiring even outside of Entrenchment as Khashishi suggests

[Omega Tyrant]

I think the problem with Entrenchment isn't that Entrenchment is bad, but that chain fire is bad. Chain fire should be changed, then Entrenchment can be reëvaluated. Right now, I only use Chain fire to save ammo. I suggest removing the 2/3 fire speed shots penalty from the first turn (so you fire full shots from the start), and make chain fire the default firing mode. Then make burst fire as an alternative fire which fires 2/3 shots and cancels any current wind-up. This is a buff to chaingun (which kinda needs the buff, imho). It's only a slight buff to plasma gun since we are usually more concerned with ammo efficiency than raw output on plasma gun. Hyperblaster might need nerfing though if this goes through.

I'm wondering how OP Entrenchment would be if it gave you defense any time you take any action except for moving. Maybe the defense could build up based on the time spent standing still. Or, to keep it attached to rapid fire weapons, the defense could scale with amount of chain fire wind-up.

Related to Chain-Fire, Entrenchment could remove the current limit of 3/2 number of shots after the third turn. Just how far the number would go may need to be tested.

I suppose it could be done as just a general buff to chainfiring even outside of Entrenchment as Khashishi suggests

Maybe you could buff Chainfiring, but turning it to the default fire would definitely be a no-go. One problem with chainfiring is how when switching targets, your fire "pans" over and several shots get wasted in the process, weakening your damage output and wasting ammo, so even if you buffed it so it started at a normal fire rate, it would be a nerf to rapid fire weapons when you can no longer switch targets so smoothly and when built up rapid fire weapons will often kill enemies in one normal burst anyway.

The other problem with Entrenchment, having actually used it in 100% UV runs in the standard game and A100, is that actually trying to take advantage of it will result in your clip running out fast and now you're stuck having to reload with no extra resistances (a problem that becomes even more severe if you have Chainfire deplete your ammo even faster), unless you find a Minigun and bulk mod the crap out of it (while hoping enough Chaingunners spawn to support your 600 bullets a minute diet), or you're lucky enough to find a Nano mod and make a Nanomachic Plasma or Laser Rifle, both requiring lots of luck. Speaking of the Laser Rifle, yet another serious issue with Entrenchment is that it also requires several auxiliary traits to function effectively, as unless you find a Laser Rifle, you practically need Eagle Eye to effectively use rapid fires and preferably at least two levels (unless you got a mastery like Ammochain that can get away with it by affording the ammo cost of the more dakka route), while also really needing Whizkid (without a Nano mod, you're gonna need several bulk mods so you can actually chain fire more than a few bursts, and with a Nano mod, you're gonna need WK2 in order to build a Nanomachic weapon), and then there is still all the good stuff to invest into, all for one of the weakest mastery effects in the game. If a mastery is going to require significant secondary investment, it's gotta be actually worth it (like Gunrunner needs Shottyman and Whizkid, but it can be somewhat worth it as it offers one of the highest potential ceilings in the game).

[Buzzard]

Nightmare! currently does not show you the 10% speed debuff that is applied to all classes. It should probably be noted in the player statistics to ensure that people don't get confused about why they are getting double-moved on.

[TNT]

Fair enough on the ammo problem. Given that after a lot of firing, chainguns are super hot and keep on spinning a bit, maybe you could have the resistances last a couple of turns after you stop the chain fire be it voluntarily or if you ran out of ammo midway

I remember on the server we brought up maybe having it auto-reload which could be good/nice to also have but is also gated by having ammo - that can't really be addressed without something ultra drastic like ammo-chain sadly. You could try and move slightly in that direction by having so that while chain firing, you require less ammo to fully reload. Assuming that's doable you could even tie it to how many turns you've spent on chain fire.

[Buzzard]

Scavenger mastery text needs to be updated to state that you can also scavenge boots and armor now.

[Omega Tyrant]

Got a bunch of new suggestions for badges and medals:

*Allow the Gargulec Medal to be obtained alongside Gargulec Cross

It was changed so that you could obtained lesser versions of medals alongside their greater versions if you haven't obtained them already, but as I found out when doing a 100% UV AoB run, you still cannot obtain Gargulec Medal alongside Gargulec Cross. If you've proven you can get 100% kills in AoB on UV or N!, you shouldn't be forced to do another 100% AoB run on a lower difficulty to get both medals.

*Add a new medal for defeating John Carmack without getting damaged

We have the Cyberdemon's Head and Mastermind's Brain for no damaging those respective bosses, and even Shambler's Head for beating Hell's Amory/Deimos Lab without damage, so why not an equivalent medal for the true final boss? I'm unsure for the name though, maybe "Keen's Helmet"?

*Add a new medal for completing a Conqueror run in any of the following challenges: Angel of Red Alert, Darkness, Impatience, Purity, and Masochism (while also requiring it to be a pure challenge, so it can't be cheesed by doing a dual angel with AoMC)

Seeing how Thomas' Medal exists for doing a Conqueror in Angel Of Humanity, I think we should also have a medal to acknowledge the achievement of doing Conqueror runs in these challenges where it's arguably as hard or even harder to complete a Conqueror run in (seeing how rarely they all been done, with me having firsts in two of them (AoI + AoD), a first in the pure challenge on UV for another (AoMs), and a second in one more of them (AoRA)). You could have one medal encompassing them all, or individual medals for each challenge. The potential name has to be discussed.

*Change Longinus Platinum to beating Unholy Cathedral without Brute on any difficulty, while also excluding Angel of Max Carnage and Angel of Light Travel from being able to earn it and Longinus Diamond

Current Longinus Platinum is just a check on if you can play Nightmare. You're able to play Nightmare well enough to make it to Unholy Cathedral? Then here's a free platinum for you, when any melee build will run through the Cathedral all the same regardless of difficulty, making it a very plain badge with no interesting challenge to it. Considering that beating Cathedral without Brute requires some ingenuity or particular technical play regardless of difficulty, it should be rewarded on difficulties below Nightmare. If you really don't want this badge being winnable on HNTR, then restrict it to HMP or at least UV. Current Longinus Diamond can stay as is, as beating the Cathedral on Nightmare without Brute does add some more depth to it (as the 10% speed penalty complicates speed-based strategies, and resurrecting complicates trying to utilize the Hatred Skull). I also want to propose disallowing Angel of Max Carnage and Angel of Light Travel from this badge, as they make it much easier, and apply the same restriction to Longinus Diamond as well.

*Add a new set of badges for The Chained Court

I find it weird how only a few special levels have complete badge sets related to them and some having no badges at all, so I think that should be rectified. The Chained Court is especially conspicuously absent with its complete lack of awards for it, given how it's one of the more iconic special levels and has a harder version that is ripe for challenges. As such, I propose the following badges for it:

Unchained Bronze: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena.
Unchained Silver: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena on HMP.
Unchained Gold: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena on UV in Angel of Shotgunnery (Shotguns have quite a bit more trouble here given the lack of good corner shooting spots and the inability to slug it out with the Barons and Arena Master from far range, but not too much more difficult as to merit beyond Gold).
Unchained Platinum: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena on UV in Angel of Impatience or Angel of Masochism (you got the berserks that can be easily destroyed by the Barons or Arena Master, or one Supercharge if you can get a well timed level up, making that all the healing you get, and you gotta do the annoying task of clearing Hell's Arena in AoI/AoMs first to even get an attempt).
Unchained Diamond: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena on N! in Angel of Purity (good usage of the Berserks is critical to beating the Unchained Court, especially on Nightmare, so having only the single berserk from the Chainsaw to work with should make this a worthy Diamond challenge, not to mention you have to beat Hell's Arena on Nightmare for every attempt, likely burning a lot of medkits in doing so).
Unchained Angelic: Clear The Chained Court after clearing Hell's Arena on N! in AoSh + AoP (essentially combining both the Gold and Diamond challenges together, not to mention on AoSh you're going to have a lot more complications with destroying the Baron corpses that will revive without the Arena Master's help, you really better make that Chainsaw berserk count).

*Add a new set of badges for Phobos Lab and Military Base

Phobos Lab and Military Base lacking any badges is more understandable as they arrived in 0.9.9.7, but they're still ripe for interesting badge challenges with them and so should have a set. They could have their own distinct set of badges given they're completely different levels, but I think they can work with a shared set to simplify things, so I propose the following (naming the badges after John Romero since he created both of these original Doom maps and currently he is conspicuously missing from any references in the game):

Romero Bronze: Clear Phobos Lab or Military Base on HNTR.
Romero Silver: Clear Phobos Lab or Military Base on UV (gotta at least deal with the Nightmare Demons or the full Elite Former squad for the Silver).
Romero Gold: Clear Military Base on UV in Angel of Impatience (thus you must clear it without being able to manipulate the Elite Formers to favorable positions with gift dropping, and camping the start will leave you with no means to heal).
Romero Platinum: Clear Phobos Lab on UV in Angel of Marksmanship without Sharpshooter (getting Sharpshooter allows you to reliably knockback the Nightmare Demons and thus makes an otherwise brutal challenge a lot more manageable, so it should be disallowed, but it would still be fine enough to implement without any trait restriction).
Romero Diamond: Clear Phobos Lab or Military Base on UV in Angel of Red Alert (while extremely extremely difficult, I think this can be doable without Angelic tier luck if you specifically gear your build all towards it).
Romero Angelic: Clear Phobos Lab or Military Base on N! in Angel of Red Alert (this one I'm not sure is even possible, but the extra level or two and extended powerup duration you get in Nightmare could make it barely doable with lots of rockets for gibbing + rocket jumping).

*Add a new set of badges for Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab

Another special level pair that weirdly lack a badge set, only having two basic medals, and again they very much make for good challenges. As such, I propose the following badges:

Quake Bronze: Enter Hell's Armory or Deimos Lab and leave without releasing the Shambler(s) (Avoiding making it the same as the Hell Armorer medal).
Quake Silver: Clear Hell's Armory or Deimos Lab on HMP
Quake Gold: Clear Hell's Armory or Deimos Lab on UV in Angel of Confidence (thus clearing them with only a couple levels and minimal equipment, but given the ease at which you can grind runs for this, it shouldn't be higher than Gold).
Quake Platinum: Clear Deimos Lab on UV in Angel of Masochism or Angel of Humanity without Berserker (thus you must beat the dual Shamblers without being able to heal nor activate run more than once, or in a challenge where even with ideal armor you can't take more than a few hits inbetween medkits, and without Berserker being able to greatly increase your durability against them, while also excluding Hell's Armory as it is too much easier to be an appropriate Platinum challenge).
Quake Diamond: Clear Deimos Lab on UV without taking damage, excluding the Angel of Max Carnage and Angel of Light Travel challenges (beating the dual Shamblers without getting hit is so hard that the devs didn't even bother programming in any extra reward for doing it like with Hell's Armory, so it should be worth a Diamond badge without playing Nightmare, just disallow AoMC and AoLT from getting this badge since they will make this badge much easier).
Quake Angelic: I'm not sure, perhaps clear Deimos Lab on N! without taking damage in Angel of Berserk, Angel of Marksmanship, or Angel of Shotgunnery (aside from the extra HP the Shamblers will have and the 10% speed penalty complicating manners, the weapon locked challenges will also complicate disposing of the Shamblers' corpses without lucky equipment finds, making it more distinct than just "same as Quake Diamond but a bit harder").

The Brick, Skull, Spider, and Lava series could be completed as well, and Halls of Carnage could use a badge set too, but I'll leave those free for anyone else to suggest new badges for them.

*In House Of Pain, seal off the Large Health Globes behind walls/doors that require the Arena Master's Staff to open

After very thorough playing with House Of Pain, I find it is still a bit too easy. While I think the Demons could still be replaced with their Nightmare version on UV/N!, the big culprit for the lacking difficulty is the four Large Health Globes, that means I almost never need to expend any medkits on this level. Additionally, saving the Arena Master's Staff for House Of Pain isn't rewarding enough on this level (in the beta testing when The Vaults was disabled, I never bothered bringing the Staff along since it didn't make a meaningful difference, and in official 0.9.9.8 I often forget the Staff is even an option for this level, if I just don't ditch it once I see House of Pain spawned instead of The Vaults). As such, I want to propose requiring the Staff to access the Health Globes, so this level is a lot more likely to burn your resources without the Staff, thus more encouraging you to bring and use the Staff here.

*Increase the Blaster's generation weight to 4

The Blaster currently has a generation weight of 2, which makes it as rare as most uniques. The Blaster is certainly very good, it's arguably the best thing a Pistol build can find, but it's not so good as to be made as rare as a Nuclear BFG, especially when it's still near worthless for any non-Pistol build. Increasing its generation weight to 4 would be more appropriate, and this would make it equivalent to a Nuclear Plasma Rifle, a similar innate nano weapon that has more utility for builds beyond those specializing in its weapon type.

*Have the Ballistic Armor assembly retain plasma and acid resistances from its base


The Ballistic Armor did get a nice buff in 0.9.9.8, but something I noticed that I didn't before is that if the base armor has any plasma or acid resistances, they'll be removed entirely when used for this assembly. The -20% fire resistance is already a harsh enough drawback, removing other energy resistances is just excessive, and in particular makes using Blue Armor very bad for this assembly. This also isn't inline with Fireproof Armor, which retains the base armor's other resistances.

*Have Grappling Boots retain the base boots' movement speed instead of being -10%

Grappling Boots is one of the least used assemblies in the game. There is a theoretical niche for it with melee builds that are getting annoyed by too much by knockback, for Invulnerable stair diving if VMR are knocking you around too much as you try to get to the stairs or for anyone that's really paranoid about getting knocked back into lava. But any such non-Invuln use for it is killed by the -10% movement speed, and the set -10% movement speed also means if someone dislikes the knockback boost of Phaseshift Boots, they can't use this assembly on it to get knockback resistance + increased movement speed. Grappling Boots would still rarely be made if they retained the base boots' speed, but if they didn't slow you down, there could be instances where you would consider it.

[Omega Tyrant]

For another potential hotfix for bugs and other issues, here is how I would prioritize the listed bugs and other issues based on how urgent I think they are:

Critical priority
*The trait selection lockup bug. (Uncommon but game-ending when it happens, with no way to salvage your game nor even a mortem in that state, but no apparent cause has yet been identified)

High priority
*Lightfoot Diamond and Angelic badges aren't being awarded when their requirements are fulfilled. (This is likely being caused by indirect kills being erroneously categorized as "melee" kills, which would effectively make these badges impossible to get)
*Dragonslayer doesn't grant any amount of berserk. (Aside from this notorious weapon's signature mechanic not working, this is a potential run ender if picked up by a build without Berserker or Malicious Blades, as you need to be berserked or have Malicious Blades' defensive boosts to survive being locked to a melee-only weapon)
*Halls Of Carnage's lava flood sometimes doesn't activate, allowing you to play the level at whatever pace you desire. (A beneficial bug, but aside from making a special level much easier than intended, this bug seems to occur at random and so it cannot be anticipated if any given run will benefit from this bug or not)
*You can easily softlock in House Of Pain on Nightmare and in Angel Of Darkness if you don't have the Arena Master's Staff, from an enemy reviving in an earlier room while you're locked in a later room. (While there are a couple other special level softlocks, this one stands out as it doesn't require an unwise Phase Device use, but it may not have an easy quick fix that would make this eligible for a hotfix, ideas on how to address it are in the special level section of the OP)

Mid priority
*A Technical mod's resistance boosts on armors/boots get carried over in assemblies that uses a Technical mod, as long as the mod isn't applied last to finish the assembly. (A beneficial bug, but it does make several assemblies better than they're supposed to be)
*Corpses can sometimes be ungibbable by explosions and plasma(tic) shotguns. (I see it frequently happen in House Of Pain's first room, where a Pinky corpse or two will just refuse to gib, but it's unclear what is causing it and that is not the only level it can happen)
*Brute's accuracy bonus is still not being applied properly to thrown knives/Mjollnir.
*When using the look command, you are unable to scroll the screen with your keyboard, preventing keyboard-only players in graphic mode from seeing the whole floor.
*Direct explosive hits seem to have their damage calculation occur after knockback, making them weaker than they should be or even deal no damage at all. (Would list this as high priority but it's a long-standing bug from prior versions and so may not have a simple fix)
 
Low priority
*Sharpshooter's effect doesn't work with the Demolition Pistol and (presumably) the Anti-Freak Jackal. (Could arguably be mid priority, but the affected weapons are rare and Sharpshooter isn't hurt that much by it, so it can be set aside for the next full version if it's not a simple fix)
*When rocket jumping, your targeting cursor can extend beyond immediate adjacent tiles, despite not being able to target any tile beyond that range. Previous versions would just lock its targeting to its valid range, which made rocket jumping around quicker to input. (As a heavy rocket jump user that is very annoyed by this bug, my personal bias wants to label this as mid priority, but it ultimately has little gameplay impact)
*Projectiles can occasionally clip through walls at weird angles, including explosive projectiles going through outer boundary walls without exploding. (Could be quite exploitable in the right circumstances, but happens rarely enough and is usually not impactful enough to be an urgent bug. Needs more testing to determine what causes it, I seen it happen in House Of Pain's first room a couple times in particular but seen it in random floors too)
*Ammo stacks dropped by ammo dispensing lever aren't affected by the difficulty multiplier. (Not sure if this is an actual bug or intended, but it's a minor issue either way)
*In floors beyond level 30 in A100/666, you still predominantly only see lava instead of a greater variety in fluid generation. (Not sure if an actual bug or if the new level 30+ fluid generation formula just has a very heavy bias towards lava, but either way you're not seeing greater fluid variety in deep A100)
*When the Apostle spawns on the final floor of A100/666, it and all enemies that revive/get spawned will be immediately revealed by the enemy reveal mechanic since technically everything dies when you first enter the floor, despite this being a boss fight. (Could arguably be mid or even high priority, but labelling as low priority since very very few people will actually encounter this and since the Apostle hasn't gotten its planned buffs yet that could make it an actually compelling boss fight).
*House Of Pain doesn't have a default song defined in the music.lua file, so it'll play a random song unless you add a proper entry for it in the music.lua file yourself.
*Various UI issues that don't affect gameplay. (see the OP for all that been compiled so far)

[Omega Tyrant]

With the release of the first 0.9.9.9 beta, I'm gathering new bugs and other fixes to make regarding it here:

*Screenshots aren't being saved, unless you manually create a folder named "screenshot" in DRL's root folder

Self-explanatory, screenshots aren't saving without the aforementioned manual fix. With this version shaking up the folder structure, and moving the screenshot folder into the "drl" subfolder of the "user" folder, it simply seems the screenshot function hasn't been updated to account for the new folder setup.

*Nightmare's -10% speed penalty may not be working

So before, one of the errors listed was the player info screen not reflecting Nightmare's -10% speed penalty, but after playing Nightmare, it never seemed like I was any slower than usual, and after getting a setup to test with a Cacodemon while I was a Marine wearing equipment that neither sped me up nor slowed me down, I can confirm no speed penalty is applying (as the Cacodemon never got a double move, which it should about every 10 movements if the speed penalty was working).

After farther testing with previous versions back to 0.9.9.6 and Kornel stating he has no recollection of ever adding this "feature", it turns out it may not have actually existed in the first place (or if it did, it was silently removed back in a very old version prior to 0.9.9.6). Kornel also stated he doesn't like the idea of adding difficulty by nerfing the player, so we can probably expect it to never get (re)added to the game. However, there is the question on if enemies could get a universal +10% speed bonus instead (it has a similar effect to the speed penalty but the player won't be given a harder time on any time-sensitive event like a timed nuke level and dealing with N!'s respawning that becomes more frequent the longer the player is on the floor). It would have probably been overkill on old Nightmare that a lot of people found too difficult/unfun even with it lacking the supposed speed penalty, but with the new N! changes making respawns easier to manage and no longer needing to fuss with corpse disposal for kill %, it could be added as a farther means to spice up N! (as well as assuage any potential complaints from returning players of the changes making N! too easy), and farther replicate the "fast monsters" aspect of actual Doom's N! difficulty (my concern though would be that it could make some barely possible badges like Everyman Angelic veer into the realm of borderline impossibility, either way this should get some discussion).

*Item reveal is not working in Nightmare. Have it activate when all active enemies are dead, or after all unique enemies have been killed once.

The enemy reveal mechanic works as it's supposed to in Nightmare (triggering when there's 3 or less active enemies alive on the floor at once), but item reveal isn't activating, even if everything is dead and you destroy every corpse. Having it activate when you have everything dead at the same time, or after all unique enemies have been killed once, will work.

*The game may crash if you attempt to use the Dragonslayer's altfire, Whirlwind.

When testing the Dragonslayer, the good news is I can confirm the permanent berserk effect now works as it's supposed to. The bad news is, we got yet another game-breaking bug with it, this time the game will get a fatal error if you attempt to use Whirlwind. After reloading saves and testing it some, the bug is not consistent and Whirlwind will sometimes work as it's supposed to, while sometimes it crashes with said fatal error, so I'm unsure what's causing it.

*Technician Gold badge wasn't awarded on the run that fulfilled its condition, and was instead awarded at the end of the immediate next run.

A weird little bug I noticed; after copying over player data I used in prior betas, I did some quick test runs to knock out some more assemblies, so I don't get any Schematics when testing Nightmare, and in the process I finished all the basic assemblies, which should give Technician Gold. However, in the run I did so, I was not awarded Technician Gold, and it was instead awarded in the immediate next run after where I died before I could even make any assemblies. The linked Discord mortems show it, but for additional info, the Power Armor assembly was the last Basic Assembly needed, and in the run I got both the Schematics for it from Armory and created Power Armor immediately after before leaving Armory, so maybe that caused this bug?

*The Mortem's kill ratio message seems to be based on the total enemy kill ratio with respawns factored, rather than the unique enemy kill ratio.

Self-explanatory, so for example if you kill every unique enemy at least once and thus fulfill 100% kills but leave any respawns alive, you won't get the "This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!" message. Badges and medals that have a requisite kill ratio are being properly awarded based on the unique enemy kill count however, so a minor bug.

*If you fulfill the clear condition for a special level (typically having every enemy spawn activated and having everything dead at once) and then leave with any respawns alive, the game will give you the level clear message in the exit text and the Mortem, as well as any badges/medals that require clearing the level, but the level will not be counted as completed for Conqueror.

Another weird bug noticed; I thought with the change to how the enemy kill count works regarding respawns, you could now have special levels be considered complete after fulfilling their complete condition without having to make sure no respawns are up when exiting. If you do complete a level and then exit with any respawns alive, you get some weird half-state of completion; the level's exit text and the Mortem's level history text will be what you get for completing the level (e.g. for The Vaults, the Mortem states "He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!" rather than "He managed to scavenge a part of the Vaults' treasures.", as seen in this mortem), and after testing, I can confirm you still get any badges/medals tied to completing the level (as seen in this mortem, where I still got the Grim Reaper's Pin and Reaper Diamond badge after leaving Limbo with respawns alive), but the level won't be counted as actually completed in the special level count section, so you won't get the Conqueror medal and (presumably) any badges that require achieving a Conqueror run.

*Modding display menu sometimes has inaccurate info.

The new modding display menu is a good addition to inform players what they're actually doing with any mod, but I noticed a couple issues. The first is when applying a bulk mod to armor and (presumably) boots, the display will show the bulk mod making said armor/boots 10% faster when it's the other way around (when applied however, the bulk mod still works as it's supposed to with making your armor/boots -10% slower). The second is when making an assembly like Tactical Boots or the Ripper that requires a second mod of the same type that you normally can't apply, the modding display will show the added effect of the second mod despite being unable to apply it without making the assembly (for example, if assembling Tactical Boots, the effect section will display your Steel Boots going from +10% to +20% speed).

*The game will not allow you to attempt applying Firestorm and Sniper mods to non-compatible equipment, notably preventing you from assembling Demolition Ammo.

Self-explanatory, this issue would also prevent being able to make any future assemblies that require adding a Firestorm or Sniper mod to non-compatible equipment (such as the proposed Scouting and Blastproof Armors).

*If too many sounds play in quick succession, the music will be turned off.

When employing the usual camping strats on Military Base, I noticed the music stopped playing. I saved and reloaded, which got the music playing again, but then I spammed some more run -> wait while nearby all the formers in the locked room and indeed that knocked out the music again. So it seems the cause is simply having too many sounds play at once, which can happen when spamming run -> wait near a group of enemies that can't reach you. The aforementioned saving and reloading restores the music, as does entering the next floor.

*Add ammo pickups to The Mortuary and Limbo.

A major mechanical change that was tested out is respawns no longer dropping any weapons and ammo they inherently have, both enemies revived by Nightmare/Angel of Darkness and by Archviles. With the other major respawn changes (corpses in your vision don't revive in Nightmare/AoD, and respawned enemies of either variety don't count towards the kill counter), this appears to be a fair change (100% kills in Nightmare without playing a melee build is very much viable, while you conversely can no longer farm a full inventory of ammo and Plasma Rifles off of any isolated Former, nor cheese Archviles with Formers on any difficulty to get as much ammo as you want). However, the big concern is Mortuary on any difficulty, as before you could rely on all the respawn ammo drops to soften the huge ammo sink the level normally would be, and even then you would still often come out with a significant net negative in ammo. With respawns no longer dropping ammo, you're outright in danger of running out of ammo or otherwise will likely deplete your ammo to a crippling degree, and if playing Nightmare, I don't see Mortuary being even viable without melee investment + strong melee weapon or having a Nano weapon (the Nuclear BFG helps, but aside from being able to easily get destroyed before picking it up, you can't easily recharge it when you got a bunch of enemies bearing down on you and it's not even that strong). To compensate, I think Mortuary should have ammo added, which can be in the form of at least one ammo box in each corner (have 10mm Ammochain in the top left, Power Battery in top right, Rocket Box in bottom right, and Shell Box in bottom left), and then on Nightmare, double the amount of them. As for Limbo, I thought it was fine without added ammo previously, as you could exploit the lava to great effect to easily dispose corpses and save lots of ammo, but with the new blood replacing the lava, thus requiring you to deplete much more ammo to kill enemies and allowing the Archviles to resurrect more than they could before, I think Limbo should get the same proposed ammo box in each corner (and then doubled on Nightmare).

*In the Nightmare version of The Vaults, the six Red Armors that are supposed to spawn next to the right vault's Barons may be bugged as it appears only one Red Armor is spawning, and the ease at teleporter camping the center vault's Nightmare enemies should be fixed.

As part of 0.9.9.8's big difficulty buff to The Vaults, on Nightmare it has UV's Arachnotrons and Archviles replaced with their Nightmare versions, and was supposed to spawn Red Armor next to the right vault's six Barons, so that they all have very good armor instead of only having one random armor between them. However, the Red Armors' spawning appears bugged or improperly implemented, as each time I played it, I only ever saw a single Red Armor drop from a right vault Baron each time (and it doesn't appear these Red Armors are accidentally spawning anywhere else, as the left vault with Nightmare Arachnotrons has no armors and I'm not seeing a bunch of Red Armors on the center vault's Barons either). Another issue is due to all Nightmare enemies becoming immune to fluids in 0.9.9.8, the newly added N! Arachnotrons and Archviles can walk over the lava blocking the center vault's teleporters and allow them to escape. Now I don't think this is itself a bad thing, it can add quite the scare factor to the level and it can put you in a really bad spot if a N! Arachnotron or Archvile suddenly pops up in a very awkward time across the long thin halls on the level or when you're trying to clear out one of the side vaults, and when going for the Scavenger badges, you still need to get lucky with Phasing into the center vault as the Barons still can't escape it. However, once you realize this and know both teleporters deposit teleportees right next to the stairs, you can simply camp next to the stairs to more safely kill each of the center vault's Nightmare enemies one-at-a-time, and then once they're all dead, you'll have a much easier time clearing out all the vaults. To prevent this, you can replace the lava blocking the teleporters with walls that can be destroyed conventionally, or by tying them to a lever inside the center vault that will destroy them (just make sure the lever is indestructible so it doesn't get destroyed in the inevitable crossfire when a player phases inside). Alternatively, if you want to keep the Nightmare enemies telporting outside of it, change the teleport destinations so the left teleporter's is as it currently is next to the stairs, while the right teleporter's drops you off on the opposite of the map; this would still allow you to spawn camp some of them (or maybe even all if you're lucky), but some others (or even most if unlucky) will evade the spawn camping and trying such can put you in a very dangerous position if one pops up in an unwanted direction while trying to kill another that just teleported in. I'm ok with either solution; the former makes opening the center vault and phasing into it a ton more dangerous, but the latter makes general exploring of the level paranoia-inducing and can be really evil with its potential to pinsir you between some of the nastiest enemies in the game.

*When using the Dragonslayer/Berserker Set in special levels, make killing the Nightmare Demons/Cacodemons not required for completion.

So to access the super secret Apostle fight, you're supposed to make it to Hell Fortress with the Berserker Set on, which you can find randomly if you're very very lucky, but are intended to fulfill the conditions on Nightmare to get them the guaranteed way. Getting the Dragonslayer works fine enough, but then to get the guaranteed Berserker Armor from Mortuary/Limbo, you have to use the Dragonslayer. Prior to 0.9.9.8, this was very difficult, as being stuck using the Dragonslayer means you can't use any corpse disposal weapon and the Dragonslayer itself can't gib big enemies like the Spear and Scythe since it deals melee damage, but it was doable. 0.9.9.8 however, made it so that just equipping the Dragonslayer now spawns infinite Nightmare Demons, while equipping the Berserker Set spawns infinite Nightmare Cacodemons on top. This is fine on normal floors, but this makes beating Mortuary/Limbo on Nightmare with the Dragonslayer an insane task, as in addition to all the corpses repeatedly reviving, you now got the Nightmare Demons repeatedly spawning, who will also repeatedly revive when killed. When testing I was able to do it... but when playing an AoMC + AoLT game (so I guaranteed one-shot everything and guaranteed gibbed Revenants, Cacos, and Arachnotrons, while having the big speed boost of AoLT both limited damage I took and limited respawns/NDemon spawns), and when having Vampyre (which is near-IDDQD since 0.9.9.8). Even then I got low on health at points, and without AoMC + AoLT, I'm not so sure I could have gotten everything dead at once. I simply don't see beating Mortuary/Limbo on Nightmare with the Dragonslayer being viable with any build except with Vampyre and maybe Blademaster.

The simple fix to this would be to not count the infinitely spawned Nightmare Demons towards the level's completion, that way you won't end up in a state where Nightmare Demons keep spawning/respawning on opposite sides of the map and you're unable to ever get everything dead at once. I would apply this to other special levels too, as it makes completing them much more of a tedious pain (Lava Pits/Erebus could also get out of hand if you get bad luck with the Nightmare Demon spawns, especially since lava doesn't kill them anymore). If it's not possible to program it that way, perhaps the Nightmare Demon/Cacodemon spawning should be disabled on special levels, or if that isn't possible either, then maybe just cap their spawning at like 50 per floor (on any normal floor you shouldn't be ever facing more than that, and as a bonus it also limits some potential cheese strategies where you abuse the infinite Nightmare Demons to puff up your kill ratio).

*Have screen shaking intensity vary based on the strength of the projectile/explosion

A new toggable feature in 0.9.9.9 is the screen shaking whenever an explosion of any sort happens. I do sorta like it, but it's rather janky in its current implementation, as the screen shake is pretty strong and seems to always play at the same intensity, regardless of if it's a 2 damage Imp fireball or a 36 damage rocket. This obviously isn't intuitive, and is rather annoying to see the screen shaking so much when just getting pelted by Imps.

_________________________________________________________

The following aren't specifically fixes to issues with the new beta, but rather just new ideas for 0.9.9.9 in general I had that I haven't proposed here yet, and I thought I may as well get them out now instead of continuing to sit on them until it's too late:

*Have more badges require at least a standard win.

Currently, with any badge that require winning the game, a partial win will still award it, except for the few that explicitly require a full win. Unless you actually care about your run's score, this makes a standard win and partial win nearly functionally identical, when they will result in earning nearly all the same awards (the only exception is any badge/medal that has a damage limit requirement, as nuking yourself can push you beyond the damage limit, while instantly disqualifying you from any that require damageless). This also makes the Mastermind even more of a nonfactor than she usually is, since as long as you make it to her with a nuke, you can just set it off and get whatever badge(s) you were hunting without any worry of dying to her. As for what badges to change in this regard, I think every Gold to Diamond badge that require winning the game should at least require a standard win (if they don't already require a full win), with the obvious exception of Pacifist Gold (since you can only get a partial win unless you get a second nuke + Invuln near Dis and pull off a double nuke on the Mastermind + JC), and I would also leave out the Angelic badges as a bit of reprieve, since they're absurd enough as is (though if you wanted to make them require a standard win too, Pacifist Angelic would need an obvious exception, and I would make an exception for Everyman Angelic too).

*Have dying to John Carmack count as a normal death instead of as a partial win.

Something I always found a bit weird is how dying to Carmack still counts as you winning the game, and aside from that being unintuitive, due to partial wins being nearly identical to standard wins as described prior, this results in the choice to fight Carmack having no real risk to it. Die to Carmack while on a Diamond badge run? No big deal, you'll still be awarded the badge. If the prior change is implemented to make partial wins less rewarding, this would be less of an issue, though I would still make this change.

*Disallow nukes from being activated in Hell Fortress, and consider having any active powerups get turned off when entering Hell Fortress.

When fighting the Apostle most recently, I noticed the game outright doesn't let you activate a nuke when it spawns, and I thought why not have this apply to Carmack too? The Lava Element only having 9 actions of invulnerability is deliberate to prevent you from getting easy double nukes off on the Mastermind + Carmack, but as long as you find an Invulnerability on Floor 23 and can rocket jump, it's trivial to nuke the Mastermind and then make it to Hell Fortress to nuke Carmack in time too with that single Invuln (and if you have the Trigun, it's possible to get a double nuke on both with just the Lava Element). To get a full win, I think you should be required to actually fight and kill Carmack conventionally, rather than rely on getting lucky with a floor 23 Invuln and skip having to fight him altogether. On another note, perhaps have any active powerups get disabled when entering Hell Fortress too, as even without nuking Carmack, you can take a floor 23 Invuln all the way to him and easily kill him without damage, or at least get most of the work done before he is able to actually fight back (the game already tries to enforce a fair fight by punishing you for trying to shoot him from out of vision, so it'll be fitting for him to depower you upon entering).

*Spruce up Hell Fortress' Apostle fight.

So I finally got to experience fighting the Apostle in Hell Fortress... and it was even more disappointing than the A100/666 fight. No unique entrance text to indicate anything is different, just the standard victory text when winning, and there's nothing different about the level itself, so you just fight the Apostle in a big empty room (which also means its resurrecting abilities don't get displayed, as the only other enemies are the Nightmare Demons/Cacodemons spawned by the Berserker set, which the fight should end before enough of them spawn to really get involved). Aside from more flavor with unique entrance and victory text, and the prior proposed buffs to the Apostle itself, a big way I think the fight could be improved is having a ton of corpses spawn in Hell Fortress with the Apostle, so its resurrecting capabilities actually get put to use.

*In The Lava Pits and Mt. Erebus on Nightmare, remove the last remaining Radsuit.

Previously I proposed have difficulty-dependent Radsuits on Lava Pits and Erebus to make them more appropriately difficult on the harder difficulties, which was implemented. When finally playing Nightmare however, I noticed the last Radsuit was not removed. Considering Lava Pits and Erebus see no real difficulty increase on N! as is compared to UV, other than a moderately more durable Lava Elemental, having no Radsuits on the level should be a fair change, especially since Radsuits last longer on N! and you can get more use of that single Radsuit than you could on UV (well Erebus needs way more than that, but even if its difficulty is buffed up elsewhere as I proposed before, I think it should still have the Radsuit removed).

*Allow Firestorm mods to be compatible with explosive weapons that have an explosion radius smaller than 3, having them increase these weapons' explosion radius by +1 instead of the usual +2.

Currently, there's an odd restriction with the Firestorm mod, where explosive weapons with an explosion radius of 1 or 2 cannot be modded with it (with the exception of the Tristar Blaster). This restriction doesn't make any real sense and is completely unintuitive (even Icy mistakenly thought you could apply Firestorm mods to small explosion weapons, as you can see in his guide to the Napalm Launcher here), as well as needlessly farther limits the utility of a rare mod that is already limited in its usage. If there's concern of a Tactical Rocket Launcher/Napalm Launcher having its explosion radius increased from 2 to 4 or a Demolition Pistol having its radius increased from 1 to 3 being too strong, then simply have the Firestorm mod give these weapons only a +1 radius boost rather than +2.

*Let the Lava Element appear as a random drop.

The Lava Element is an item with some potentially interesting applications beyond just serving as a guaranteed means to get a full win, as a source of temporary on-demand Invuln at any time. However, even if not saving it for a full win, you only have it for a single random floor you likely won't have any trouble with and then Dis, while you can never get it in A100 where you'll be much more probable to come across a floor that you would actually want to use it. As such, I think it would be neat if you could get the Lava Element outside of Lava Pits/Erebus as a random drop if you're lucky and get to play with it in more interesting scenarios beyond "set off nuke, pop Lava Element at 2 seconds left". You could give it a spawning weight of 3 or 2, and if you want to make the random drop of it an A100/666 exclusive, then set the spawning depth at 30+ .

*More Angelic badge ideas for existing special level sets

I previously thought up ideas of badge sets for special levels that currently have none, so why not potential ideas for completing the sets that already go up to Diamond?

Reaper Angelic: Clear The Mortuary/Limbo on N! in Angel of Humanity. (This is certainly a lot harder than Reaper Diamond, and gives you a reason to actually play AoH on Nightmare).

Scavenger Angelic: Clear The Vaults by luck on N! in Angel of Light Travel. (I don't think just upping it to Nightmare is enough compared to Scavenger Diamond, so the AoLT stipulation will add even more luck to it as you won't be able to stockpile much Phase Devices nor much rockets for a Napalm Launcher, nevermind the added difficulty of just making it to The Vaults with limited ammo and medkits in your inventory that you're sacrificing to fit Phase Devices and rockets in).

Longinus Angelic: Unsure, perhaps clear Unholy Cathedral on N! without Brute, Finesse, and Hellrunner, while excluding AoMC and AoLT? (Restricting Finesse and Hellrunner means outspeeding strategies will need some very specific equipment, particularly a Ripper or else you'll need to spend hours throwing a knife, or a very very good melee armor or two with a Hatred Skull or lots of medkits, might still be too easy for an Angelic badge but could be ok if the proposed change of adding Nightmare Demons to UC on N! is implemented)

Arena Angelic: I'm unsure of this one too, maybe clear Hell's Arena on Nightmare in Archangel of Humanity? (It is difficult to think of something harder than current Arena Diamond without pushing it into the realm of impossibility or lottery luck, and I'm thinking Archangel of Humanity is the only viable option here; you're not restricted to melee-only, but missing out on those two or three extra traits is very significant and of course you only have 10-14 max HP, I think it could be harder than AoB but shouldn't be impossible with the implemented Nightmare changes)

[Omega Tyrant]

This post is to organize new bugs and issues found in the 2nd beta of 0.9.9.9.

*Various audio issues

In addition to certain sounds having defaults that have always ignored any new sound you try defining for them in the sound.lua and now audio.lua files (such as the Nightmare Cacodemon and Lava Elemental projectiles using the default fireball sound regardless of what you put in for them, or the Revenant's projectile using the Rocket Launcher's sound even if you try giving it a different sound), I have found new sounds that ignore what you set for them.

*The Shambler's projectile now always uses the default fireball sound, ignoring what you set it for it in the audio file.
*All melee weapons use the default fireball sound when attacking with them, not only ignoring what you set for them but also the default sounds that were already assigned to some of them.
*Activating levers uses the powerup sound, rather than what you set for them nor the default switch sound (this does not apply to levers in special levels however, which are correctly using the switch sound).

One other minor audio issue is when releasing the Shamblers in Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab, their act sound upon releasing is distance-based. This is fine for Deimos Lab when you're right next to the spot they spawn when hitting the lever to release them, but in Hell's Armory, since the Shambler is released on the other side of the map, you don't hear it at all. Maybe you could argue it's better this way, but previously this sound wasn't distance-based.

*Warning messages are not colored

Self-explanatory, warning messages for when your armor is damaged/destroyed, when a nuke countdown is happening, or simply from killing everything on the level, are no longer colored. You can see a screenshot of it in this Discord message.

*If an item's name gets too long, it'll take up two lines of space in your inventory menu, and push other items off the screen.

Also self-explanatory, you can see a screenshot of it in this Discord message.

*If a run earns enough unique medals to earn one of the Heroic badges, you won't be awarded said badges until the next run you complete.

So like with the Technician badges, it appears the Heroic badges are also bugged to not be awarded on the actual run you earn them in, with the game instead giving them on your next run you complete, as seen in this Discord message. I assume this issue will also apply to the Armorer badges.

*You are unable to equip autoequip weapons from the ground if you are already holding another weapon, even if you have inventory space for it.

Yet another self-explanatory issue, you can see a screenshot of it in this Discord message.

*Gunrunner's autofiring is bugged.

So with the new JH targeting opening up the possibility to control Gunrunner's autofiring when running instead of only firing at the closest enemy, I thought to try testing if it worked that way now... only to find that Gunrunner's autofiring doesn't work at all. You'll run, and the targeting cursor will go to the closest enemy if you have it targeting a different enemy, with no firing happening. And even if you were pre-targeting the closest enemy, it still doesn't autofire. A pretty crippling bug that needs to be fixed ASAP (and hopefully Gunrunner will gain control over where its autofire shoots when that is fixed).

*If you reload a save, when you run -> wait with enemies revealed, you cannot stop it manually.

Normally, if you do run -> wait when enemies are revealed from a Tracking Map or the enemy revealed mechanic, you are able to interrupt it before whatever max wait time you have set in your config file. However in the current beta, if you save and then reload it, you are unable to stop it until an enemy gets in your vision or it hits the max wait time, and any inputs you do try inputting seemingly get "buffered" to get inputted immediately after you reach the max wait time. Weirdly this bug seems to only be present when you reload a save, as I have not encountered it on any run before saving.

*Cerberus Boots have a flat 50% plasma resistance, rather than giving +50% resistance to the base boots with a cap of 100%.

Not a bug, but something I noticed when making Cerberus Plasteel Boots, they had 50% plasma resistance rather than 60%. This isn't a big deal in this particular instance, but the main reason I bring it up is if you were to make Cerberus Boots out of the new Blood Boots, the resulting Cerberus Blood Boots would have 50% plasma resistance rather than 100%, which makes no sense. Since the only other moddable boots with any plasma resistance is Plasteel boots, this change would mainly just allow you to make Cerberus Blood Boots that retain their blood immunity (and make Plasteel boots a slightly better option for Cerberus Boots, which isn't a bad idea to help differentiate the resulting Cerberus Boots based on which boots you use, as otherwise they're all identical aside from Cerberus Gothic Boots having 200% durability).

*Blood Boots (almost) cannot be obtained outside of A100/666

I noticed in the source code that Blood Boots have a minimum depth of 25, which considering boots cannot spawn in vaults, this make Blood Boots almost unobtainable outside of A100/666 (I say "almost", because you can obtain them in Lava Pits/Mt. Erebus since item spawns there are based on floor 25, but your chances are very low that you'll get them there). I imagine this was intentional, given blood is primarily an A100 feature, with its only standard game appearance currently being in Limbo and rarely in caves on UV/N!. However, making Blood Boots an almost A100 exclusive makes it a particular pain in the ass for the Armorer badges, as now you cannot possibly get Armorer Gold without playing A100 or getting very lucky in the one special level you can find them, which isn't a big deal, but the bigger pain comes in that you now wouldn't be able to get Armorer Diamond without playing A100 at least three times (and likely more as you can go entire A100 runs without ever finding the Blood Boots), or otherwise getting very lucky with them spawning in Lava Pits/Erebus three times. And Blood Boots could still be useful in the standard game, so being able to get them if you're lucky could be nice (whether to make Limbo easier or as a life saver if you get a really bad late blood cave on UV/N!). A minimum depth of 17 or even 20 for the Blood Boots can work. If these boots must be kept an A100 exclusive, I wouldn't mind the Armorer badges being overhauled however to be less of a pure grind.

_________________________________________________________

The following aren't bugs/issues, but a couple more balancing ideas.

*Lessen the speed penalty on heavy boots.

A new mechanic added is fluids slowing your movement down by 20%. I like this change, but I think this change is excessively punishing on heavy boots that were given a big movespeed penalty to previously compensate for their ability to run through fluids with little to no damage, back when there was no speed penalty from fluids. For example, when playing a Scout wearing Cerberus Boots with no Hellrunner, you will have an abysmal 1.48 second movement speed in fluids with no armor on (or armor with no speed bonus/penalty), and an abominable 1.77 second speed when wearing Red Armor that wasn't agility-modded on top of those boots (better hope there's no speedy enemies around or you might get triple-attacked). And of course those numbers would be even worse for the Marine and Technician, while if the N! enemy speed bonus is added back on top, maybe a quadruple attack could be possible... As such, I propose the following move speed adjustments:

Gothic Boots: -15% -> -10%
Environmental Boots: -25% -> -15%
Enviroboots: -25% -> -15%
Lava Boots: -30% -> -20%
Cerberus Boots: -30% -> -20%

I'll also note that these new values still make these boots slower in fluids than they were in versions prior to the fluid-slowing moving mechanic, and they're still slow enough that you would rather wear movement-boosting boots normally, even after agility-modding them (-10% speed Cerberus Boots vs +25% speed Tactical Boots is no contest for what you want to be wearing at all times).

*Buff Tough As Nails to give +5% inherent energy resistances per level in addition to +1 inherent protection, nerf the Marine's inherent energy resistances to 10%, nerf Berserk's resistance bonuses to +50%, change Vampyre's SoB block to TaN, and change Malicious Blades' TaN block to Badass or SoG.

This is several different things but I'm putting them all under the same entry, as they're tied together, addressing TaN being an underpowered trait whose block means little to any mastery that blocks it, a requisite Marine nerf that would be needed if TaN is buffed to keep Marines from getting too tanky, addressing the overpowered defenses granted by Berserk and the Berserker trait, and a way to farther nerf the currently broken Vampyre, while giving the currently underpowered Malicious Blades something. I wrote up a big post explaining the rationale behind these changes in the JH Discord, but in case the person reading this isn't in the JH Discord or don't want to open Discord up, I'll repost it here under the following spoiler tags:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wondering if Tough As Nails could get buffed. It's the basic trait i pick least by far, and I find it to be a "whatever" block for nearly every mastery that blocks it, while Ironman is the usually more useful filler defensive trait. Aside from general "offense > defense", some particular issues with it:

*1 point of protection matters little against bigger enemies, unless you already have such good armor that you can reduce their attacks down to around 5 or less damage.

*It is applied separately from your armor in damage calculation, which means TaN does not reduce the damage your armor takes, unlike inherent resistances will.

*TaN1 literally does nothing against plasma damage, since it's applied separately from armor (meaning it can't stack on armor with odd value protection to save an extra point of plasma damage) and gets rounded down to 0. TaN3 additionally provides no extra benefit against plasma, since it still can't stack with armor and will get its protection rounded down to 1.

*If you have good enough armor to reduce damage to 1, then any additional levels of TaN does nothing.

Just letting it stack properly with worn armor in damage calculation could be an idea to help address issues 2 and 3, though I don't know if that would be a pain to program, and it would also buff enemies that find armor, which could be either good or bad depending on how you see it (though that would only apply when a Hell Knight finds a Green Armor or another 1/3 protection armor, as now it would take 1 less damage from plasma hits, other enemies that can wear armor already have even value inherent protection and so gain no benefit from it). Another idea is to take a page from Ironman's buff and have each level of TaN give you +5% inherent energy resistances in addition to +1 protection, which will let it make more of a difference against the big hard-hitting enemies, help reduce the damage your armor takes, and will make TaN1 + 3 actually matter against plasma damage. If the latter idea was to be implemented, you would need to nerf the Marine's inherent energy resistance to 10%, or at least 15%, which would end up serving as a slight indirect nerf to Ammochain (which is blocked TaN).

I'm also thinking berserk's resistances could be nerfed to +50% rather than the +60% it is now. Aside from +60% being a weird number, Berserker itself is a very powerful defensive trait without even considering the offensive benefits of berserk; take any hit that deals 16 damage or more, you automatically reduce it by at least 60% (which stacks with whatever armor resistances and other inherent resistances you have), while you then get 20 actions performing all actions 50% faster and will reduce any farther damage by 60% during those actions (while getting even more berserk actions if you take any subsequent hit that deals 16+ damage), which you can utilize to kill the threat(s) much easier or escape without depleting your tactics. It's so good that in A100 and Nightmare runs, I find it well worth going out of my way to get Berserker shortly after I get my mastery + WK2 even if I'm not intending to use melee (though since berserked melee is so strong, having a competent melee sidearm is always handy). Reading old forum threads, I see once upon a time, berserk's resistances were briefly +50% after being nerfed from whatever it was prior, but people freaked out about melee being "nerfed too much" and so it was made +60%, don't know if people overreacted as I wasn't around for those early versions, but in current DRL, I think +60% resistances is too strong and melee would still be very powerful with berserk resistances toned back down to +50%. This would partly help Malicious Blades being grossly outclassed by Berserker too (though I think Malicious blades would still need help to be worth not being able to get Berserker).
 
If you implemented the TaN buff, the Marine inherent resistance nerfs, berserk's resistance nerf, and then changed Vampyre's SoB block to TaN, that would go a long way to reign Vampyre back in, without hurting the other non-Ammochain Marine builds. For some number crunching, with 10% inherent energy resistances + 50% berserk resistances + 12% fire resistance from a Nanofiber Red Armor, berserked Vampyre would have 60% acid and plasma resistances in addition to 72% fire resistance. This results in the following new damage calculations

*An Archvile zap gets reduced to 4 damage (currently it deals 1 damage)
*An average Revenant and Mancubus rocket gets reduced to 2 damage (currently 1 damage), and max damage Revenant/Macubus rocket gets reduced to 5 damage (currently 1 damage)
*An average Cyberdemon rocket gets reduced to 4 damage (currently 1 damage), and max damage Cyberdemon rocket gets reduced to 8 damage (currently 1 damage). This damage calculation also applies to intentional facerockets to trigger Berserker.
*An average Baron acid ball gets reduced to 3 damage (currently 1 damage), and max damage Baron ball gets reduced to 6 damage (currently 2 damage)
*An average Hell Knight/Cacodemon plasma ball gets reduced to 2 damage (currently 1 damage), and a max damage plasma ball gets reduced to 4 damage (currently 1 damage)
*An average Shambler bolt gets reduced to 4 damage (currently 1 damage), and max damage Shambler bolt gets reduced to 7 damage (currently 3 damage)

With these numbers, Vampyre would now need to get much more rare indestructible/regenerating armor in order to achieve near-IDDQD status than just building a Nanofiber Red Armor. Vampyre could put a power or technical mod on Nanofiber Red Armor to reduce nearly every energy hit to 1 to 3 damage, but then it would sacrifice the much needed agility mod it can currently put on to mitigate Vampyre's lack of Hellrunner, meaning it takes a bit more chip damage when rushing in to hordes. If you made these changes and also disallowed Vampyre from healing over 100% and/or made its prerequisites harder, I think that would knock it back down to the A tier without going as far as preventing berserk resistances from stacking with the Marine's or other inherent resistances. For one more note, if TaN was buffed and Vampyre was blocked it, I would suggest letting Malicious Blades get TaN, both to alleviate so many masteries blocking it and to farther help give Malicious Blades something over the other two melee masteries (change the block to Badass or Son Of A Gun).

[TNT]

- Levels that only have Nightmare enemies should have their own feeling, feels appropriate. Something along the lines of "A dreadful silence rings in your ears..." to tie into the fact that they do not make noise.

- Acid Spitter should reload -much- faster, given how finicky it is to do so in the first place.

- Enviroboots should have more plasma resistance. I understand preferring to keep the bloodboots as the only one with 100% immunity, but the enviroboots should have at least 50% if not more.

[Omega Tyrant]

- Levels that only have Nightmare enemies should have their own feeling, feels appropriate. Something along the lines of "A dreadful silence rings in your ears..." to tie into the fact that they do not make noise.

- Acid Spitter should reload -much- faster, given how finicky it is to do so in the first place.

- Enviroboots should have more plasma resistance. I understand preferring to keep the bloodboots as the only one with 100% immunity, but the enviroboots should have at least 50% if not more.

-Nightmare enemy only levels having a special message can be nice, but I'll note it's proposed to give them sounds (+ sounds to all the silent bosses too) and it has been discussed in the Discord, due to it seeming unintentional and the current modding grey area that exists with modding them in sounds yourself like I do (Kornel also mentioned he forgot to give them sounds when adding all the new Nightmare enemies).

-I wouldn't oppose the Acid Spitter reloading faster, but it ultimately wouldn't matter, as it's not a weapon you can reload with enemies around regardless, whether its reload time is 1.2 seconds or 0.1 seconds (reload time only matters when you got an enemy in vision/pursuit or some time sensitive event is going on). In any active combat scenario, you get one shot with it, and then you have to wait until the immediate threat is gone before you can get to scooping the acid back up.

-Yeah Enviroboots aren't great for plasma protection (only reducing blood damage from 12 to 9, 1 more than unmodded Plasteel Boots), but as mentioned in the Discord, it doesn't affect their usage that much; in A100 you're still building Cerberus Boots regardless, and in the standard game, they'll be virtually identical except with Enviroboots being worse for Limbo and the rare late blood cave but it won't require the massive mod cost that Cerberus Boots does, making Enviroboots still a very valuable find. So I would be ok with Enviroboots getting that plasma buff, or keeping it as is to give some extra flavor difference between them and Cerberus Boots.

[TNT]

-Nightmare enemy only levels having a special message can be nice, but I'll note it's proposed to give them sounds (+ sounds to all the silent bosses too) and it has been discussed in the Discord, due to it seeming unintentional and the current modding grey area that exists with modding them in sounds yourself like I do (Kornel also mentioned he forgot to give them sounds when adding all the new Nightmare enemies).

-I wouldn't oppose the Acid Spitter reloading faster, but it ultimately wouldn't matter, as it's not a weapon you can reload with enemies around regardless, whether its reload time is 1.2 seconds or 0.1 seconds (reload time only matters when you got an enemy in vision/pursuit or some time sensitive event is going on). In any active combat scenario, you get one shot with it, and then you have to wait until the immediate threat is gone before you can get to scooping the acid back up.

-Yeah Enviroboots aren't great for plasma protection (only reducing blood damage from 12 to 9, 1 more than unmodded Plasteel Boots), but as mentioned in the Discord, it doesn't affect their usage that much; in A100 you're still building Cerberus Boots regardless, and in the standard game, they'll be virtually identical except with Enviroboots being worse for Limbo and the rare late blood cave but it won't require the massive mod cost that Cerberus Boots does, making Enviroboots still a very valuable find. So I would be ok with Enviroboots getting that plasma buff, or keeping it as is to give some extra flavor difference between them and Cerberus Boots.

1. Very interesting. Probably wouldn't be opposed to it, but it feels like it'd be a bit of a shock after all these years of silent Nightmare enemies. Even if the line changes though, glad to hear you do think having a feeling for it could be good.

2. Fair enough. It just seems like adding something unnecessary on top of it. It's a shame that it's so unwieldy since it's really fun to use.

3. I agree that some differentiation is nice, just feels like kinda unfortunate when you finally find it and there's no reason to pick it up ;_;

---

Having said all this, I think I'd like to bring up a topic that we've talked about before on the server.

Crates should be buffed/diversified, especially for late game.
Their utility early on is somewhat nice since you can find an armor or boots here or there, with the obvious prizes being ammo boxes... but their utility drops off as you advance along the game. In later levels you're not likely to find much of anything of use - if you open them in hell (or Beyond, for ao100), you're likely to still be getting just green armors, bullets, the occasion steel boots.

I'd like to propose that as levels increase, you can find other stuff that could be useful in the crates. The main idea would be plasma cells and rockets (their associated ammo boxes too maybe?), although there's plenty of other stuff to consider - medkitz, maps, phase devices, red armors... could even consider a mod pack here or there. This is without even considering if any uniques could have a super-low chance of appearing.

Crates are funny to blow up and see what goodies may be inside, and replicating that feeling beyond Phobos seems like it -shouldn't- be that difficult. It'll help add some more variance, and IMO shouldn't be too problematic, especially since in later levels a lot of enemies are prone to just destroying them along with any goodies they may contain. So it sets up its own sort of minigame of how to approach and dodge/tank if you want to try to open up the crate without the given enemy destroying it first.

I know stuff like exotics and rare mod packs are off the menu (maybe in Ao666?), but even with what I've mentioned above it feels like it'd improve the treasure hunting experience, so to speak.

[Omega Tyrant]

Crates should be buffed/diversified, especially for late game.
Their utility early on is somewhat nice since you can find an armor or boots here or there, with the obvious prizes being ammo boxes... but their utility drops off as you advance along the game. In later levels you're not likely to find much of anything of use - if you open them in hell (or Beyond, for ao100), you're likely to still be getting just green armors, bullets, the occasion steel boots.

I'd like to propose that as levels increase, you can find other stuff that could be useful in the crates. The main idea would be plasma cells and rockets (their associated ammo boxes too maybe?), although there's plenty of other stuff to consider - medkitz, maps, phase devices, red armors... could even consider a mod pack here or there. This is without even considering if any uniques could have a super-low chance of appearing.

Crates are funny to blow up and see what goodies may be inside, and replicating that feeling beyond Phobos seems like it -shouldn't- be that difficult. It'll help add some more variance, and IMO shouldn't be too problematic, especially since in later levels a lot of enemies are prone to just destroying them along with any goodies they may contain. So it sets up its own sort of minigame of how to approach and dodge/tank if you want to try to open up the crate without the given enemy destroying it first.

I know stuff like exotics and rare mod packs are off the menu (maybe in Ao666?), but even with what I've mentioned above it feels like it'd improve the treasure hunting experience, so to speak.

As discussed in the Discord server, I'm in agreement with this. Crates mostly lose their value by mid Deimos, unless you're in need of health or are playing a Shotgun build that's really short on ammo. The current drop values for them are staticly:

Ammo crates = 30/40 nothing, 4/40 10mm Ammo, 4/40 Shells, 1/40 Ammochain Box, 1/40 Shell Box.

Armor crates = 45/60 nothing, 4/60 Green Armor, 4/60 Steel Boots, 4/60 Small Medkit, 1/60 Blue Armor, 1/60 Large Medkit, 1/60 Protective Boots.

Even the stuff that can still be useful in the later game (the ammo boxes, Large Medkits, and a backup backup Blue Armor) have very low drop rates, and so it's rarely worth your while to bother breaking crates beyond early Deimos. Ideally as the game progresses, you could up the drop rate on the aforementioned stuff and add some more stuff to the crates' drop table (such as other ammo types, Red armor, Plasteel Boots, Phase devices, maybe mods and a very very low chance for certain exotic armors/boots). If it's too much hassle to give crates a level-dependent drop table that improves over time, then perhaps "enhanced crates" can be added as a separate object that start appearing later in the game with the better stuff in them.

[Omega Tyrant]

A new post to organize bugs/issues in the latest beta:

*Special levels are even more obnoxious to clear on Nightmare without good corpse disposal tools, so clear conditions need to be addressed.

Clearing special levels on Nightmare always been a pain in the ass, with them all requiring you to have everything dead at once, especially the early special levels where you lack good corpse disposal tools and so had to meticulously corpse stack everything or camp near a door. With the new patrolling AI, this problem has gotten exponentially worse, as now you cannot camp in a good spot and viably corpse stack more than a handful of enemies, while by the time you go from one side of the map to the other, something would have inevitably revived on the other end. Hell's Arena in particular demonstrates how severe this problem is, and the only remotely viable ways to clear it on Nightmare is either come in berserked, kill everything ASAP, and get very lucky with both little to no enemies respawning and having the spawns of the final wave near each other, or go through a long drawn out process where you repeatedly lure Cacos and Barons to corpses to blow them up for you, while being lucky enough to have come in with enough medkits to withstand the tons of damage you'll have to take in that process (you can see me going through the ordeal of clearing N! Hell's Arena with patrolling AI even as an optimal build here).

The obvious ideal solution would be to have special levels' clear condition require every unique enemy being killed once, rather than having everything dead at once, thus you don't need to bother with any corpse disposal to clear special levels but respawning will remain a challenge (and lining up with how the kill rate now works too). I would just make an exception for Mortuary/Limbo, since putting all the respawns back down is an intrinsic part of their theme, and maybe you could make an exception for The Wall, Containment Area, The Vaults, and House of Pain, since Archviles are a primary part of those special levels' challenge on UV/N! too (while both level pairs also have lots of rockets around to aid with corpse disposal). If it's not possible to program it this way, then I would say disable respawning in all special levels outright aside from Mortuary/Limbo, or at least, disable respawning in all Phobos special levels and in Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab (as after that point you'll likely have sufficient means of corpse disposal, but not being forced to do any corpse disposal would be ideal), while buffing up the difficulty in those levels on N! through other means.

*AI issues

Several of the reported AI issues after the big AI adjustment have been addressed already in the hotfixes, but a few remain.

**Formers and Hell Nobles sometimes get stuck right on top of items, not picking them up nor moving unless you aggro them. Any surrounding Formers and Nobles will also get stuck trying to reach the item another Former/Noble has parked their ass on and won't move off of (here's a screenshot with a big group of them stuck because one wouldn't pick up the item).

**Formers and Nobles sometimes will not use items even when their health drops below 50%.

**Elementals may sometime remain permanently aggro'd? In this instance, I had a Pain Elemental chase me all the way across a floor, when enemies normally deaggro long before then. When playing Cateye, I also noticed that it seems Elementals may not aggro when you hit them out of their vision? That will need some more testing but I thought to report it here in case.

**Lost Souls also do not seem to aggro properly when hit (previously they would instantly charge towards whatever hit them), and weirdly Cyberdemons in A100/666 will not aggro when you hit them out of their vision.

**Another AI issue regarding infighting with Lost Souls and Cyberdemons is that they will not retaliate against other enemies that hit them, so they'll just sit there and let other enemies they anger beat them up until they die or something else hits that enemy to get their attention.

**I noticed that sequential AI will no longer fire a second volley when you're in melee range, whereas previously they would ignore melee before letting off that second volley (as seen in this instance where a Nightmare Arachnotron melee me after firing only once).

**With patrolling AI, if an enemy steps into a teleporter that brings them outside their patrol zone, they will they try getting back to that zone, but can get stuck doing so (as seen in this instance on Deimos Lab).

**Not all Pinky errors have been fixed, as I got one here after a Pinky killed an Imp.

*Infighting fixes.

Proper infighting has been reimplemented, and it's not breaking things like I thought it would, though some more exceptions should be added to keep it from trivializing certain difficult battles. Some ideas:

**Add a "no infighting" level flag like Doom 64 did, which will disable infighting on any level that it's applied to. This could be used on all boss levels (as currently you get stuff like Bruisers fighting each other in Anomaly and Carmack's spawns fighting each other, making these fights much easier), as well as on certain special levels (such as Mortuary/Limbo, given that they're supposed to be super hard and infighting does lessen their difficulty a bit, and Deimos Lab so you can't cheese the dual Shamblers, unless the following suggestion is applied).

**Don't have enemies infight their own species, just like how Doom does. If you want to emulate Doom farther, you add this exception but don't have it apply to Formers (who would still infight in Doom because hitscan attacks ignored this rule).

**Don't have enemies retaliate against Archviles, just like how Doom also does (you don't kill your healer!).

**If possible, perhaps enemies in monster groups shouldn't infight with others from their same monster group? This one I imagine may not be programmable, but I noticed spawning near monster groups is less dangerous now as ones in the back of the group will inevitably hit those in the front trying to hit you, which then makes the group infight each other, giving you time to escape and leaving you with less of them to mop up after.

*Trait adjustments.

We got big balancing changes a couple betas ago, so this will be what I think should be adjusted:

**Survivalist should have the double healing on Small Medkits and Health Globes removed.

After the TaN buff to give +10% energy resistances per level, and the SoG change that makes investing in Pistols for offense much more efficient, Survivalist is now overturned even with the Marine nerf. It's not at 0.9.9.8 Vampyre levels of broken, but I found Survivalist has become too tanky with just modded Red Armor, and it's not struggling as much with offense as it did previously either, while it also can now get Hellrunner to not be slow in the late game. If TaN was toned down to give +5% energy resistances per level as originally proposed, Survivalist could be back to being ok, but if not, Survivalist will need the double healing ability to go, so that it at least can't stockpile a huge health reserve so easily (especially so on Nightmare, where Small Medkits basically become pseudo-Supercharges as the double healing stacks on N!'s own double healing bonus).

**Entrenchment should have to build up its resistance boost when Chainfiring, or have its resistance boost reduced back to +30%.

I found Entrenchment has also became too tanky, as the original +50% resistance proposal was made back before the aforementioned TaN buff. With no armor at all, chainfiring will have Entrenchment with massive 70% energy resistances, that on top of the inherent 2 protection from TaN2, will reduce an Archvile zap all the way down to 4 damage, and just donning unmodded Red Armor will reduce nearly every energy attack down to 1 damage. An idea is that Entrenchment will have to build up its resistances when Chainfiring (so it starts at +20%, then the next volley it will become +30%, and then reaches +50% once chainfiring is fully on), thus Entrenchment can't suddenly get 70+% resistances on demand and it will be more thematically fitting, but if it's too difficult to program, then reducing it back to a flat +30% resistances should do.

**Reduce Bullet Dance's firing speed penalty to +20%.

An idea Kornel mentioned himself and is probably already planning for the next beta, but I thought to post it here as a reminder just in case. It was also thrown around to remove the firing speed penalty entirely, but I would start with reducing it to +20% since Dual Gunner had its firing speed penalty entirely removed, and seeing how much stronger dual gunning got, I want to err on the side of caution. There is also the original proposal still to let Bullet Dance reload faster when dual gunning, but we can wait to see how Bullet Dance performs first with the firing speed buff before buffing it farther.

I also would still like Finesse becoming a 5 level trait as Kornel mentioned he may be willing to do as a compromise with nerfing it, but I don't feel too strongly yet about it and am willing to do more testing with it as a nerfed level 3 trait. There is additionally the idea of replacing Fireangel's new ability to turn all missiles explosive with making all its Shotguns have +1 spread size, it's not something I'm fully on yet either (as turning all missiles explosive is a cool idea even if it is a bit niche in application), but thought to post here, as it has been discussed previously to possibly give Fireangel a Shotgun-based perk since it's supposed to be a Shotgun mastery.

*In the new Grappling Armor assembly, the requisite Agility mod speed buff or Bulk mod speed penalty gets carried over.

Like previous assembly bugs, if you apply the Agility mod first and then assemble Grappling Armor, the +15% speed buff will get carried over, while if the Bulk mod is applied first, then the -10% speed penalty gets carried over (but oddly the boosted durability does not).

*Issues with enemy placement of The Vaults.

The Barons got their Red Armors in The Vaults, but a couple new issues have arose on the level.

1: Two of the Barons in the right vault on UV/N! were removed (removing the symmetry that existed previously with the six Arachnotrons in the left vault), while with the way the Red Armors are placed, one Baron will always go for the random armor instead that is often worse, leaving a fresh Red Armor for the player. I would recommend adding the two missing Barons back and one more Red Armor in the right vault, that way five of the Barons will get the Red Armors and then the last will get whatever the random armor is.

2: On Nightmare, one of the center vault's enemies will erroneously spawn in the right vault, as seen in these two posts on Discord (first and second).

*Give the Cybernetic Armor a much lower drop rate in the Deimos Lab prize cache.

Previously, the Cybernetic Armor would rarely drop as a prize in Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab. In Armory, since it's in the drop pool with the standard mods that have much higher spawning weights, it's still rare. But in Deimos Lab, since it's in the drop pool with the rare mods and it'll get rolled twice, it's much more common. So over a third of the time, one of the rare mods in Deimos Lab will be replaced with a reward that is almost worthless for Marines and Scouts, and isn't much better for Technicians unless the other rare mod is a Nano or Onyx mod (or they otherwise are lucky enough to find one soon). Looking at the source code for Deimos Lab in 0.9.9.8, it looks like the Cybernetic Armor previously had a separate roll that determined if it replaced one of the rare mods or not so that it would be more rare, rather than being thrown into the drop pool with the rare mods. This should be reimplemented, or if not, at least do what Armory does and have Cybernetic Armor in the spawn pool with the standard mods.

*In Halls of Carnage, a Former can spawn where you're supposed to, which then spawns you in the starting wall.

A funny bug, as seen here. Don't know if this is unique to the beta or just a bug that always existed but been rare. You can just move out the wall normally, so it's not particularly harmful (being slightly beneficial even, as you can get a headstart out of the starting room if you don't care about picking up the Health Globe first).

___________________________________________________

The following is a compilation of previous bugs/issues in the 0.9.9.9 betas that have not been addressed yet. I thought to compile them here so Kornel doesn't need to go through my previous posts to pick out the ones he missed (and to keep this post from getting too big I'll hide their explanations in spoilers):

*Various audio issues

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In addition to certain sounds having defaults that have always ignored any new sound you try defining for them in the sound.lua and now audio.lua files (such as the Nightmare Cacodemon and Lava Elemental projectiles using the default fireball sound regardless of what you put in for them, or the Revenant's projectile using the Rocket Launcher's sound even if you try giving it a different sound), I have found new sounds that ignore what you set for them.

*The Shambler's projectile now always uses the default fireball sound, ignoring what you set it for it in the audio file.
*All melee weapons (aside from your punch and the knife) use the default fireball sound when attacking with them, not only ignoring what you set for them but also the default sounds that were already assigned to some of them. Weirdly, when throwing a knife (or the Mjollnir), it uses the punch sound instead.
*Activating levers uses the powerup sound, rather than what you set for them nor the default switch sound (this does not apply to most levers in special levels however, which are correctly using the switch sound).

One other minor audio issue is when releasing the Shamblers in Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab, their act sound upon releasing is distance-based. This is fine for Deimos Lab when you're right next to the spot they spawn when hitting the lever to release them, but in Hell's Armory, since the Shambler is released on the other side of the map, you don't hear it at all. Maybe you could argue it's better this way, but previously this sound wasn't distance-based.

*If too many sounds play in quick succession, the music will be turned off.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When employing the usual camping strats on Military Base, I noticed the music stopped playing. I saved and reloaded, which got the music playing again, but then I spammed some more run -> wait while nearby all the formers in the locked room and indeed that knocked out the music again. So it seems the cause is simply having too many sounds play at once, which can happen when spamming run -> wait near a group of enemies that can't reach you. The aforementioned saving and reloading restores the music, as does entering the next floor.

*Warning messages are not colored

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Self-explanatory, warning messages for when your armor is damaged/destroyed, when a nuke countdown is happening, or simply from killing everything on the level, are no longer colored. You can see a screenshot of it in this Discord message.

*Technician, Armorer, and Heroic badges aren't being rewarded on the run you fulfilled their requirements, but rather in the immediate run you do after.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Demonstrated in this mortem on Discord.

*The Mortem's kill ratio message is based on the total enemy kill ratio with respawns factored, rather than the unique enemy kill ratio.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Self-explanatory, so for example if you kill every unique enemy at least once and thus fulfill 100% kills but leave any respawns alive, you won't get the "This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!" message. Badges and medals that have a requisite kill ratio are being properly awarded based on the unique enemy kill count however, so a minor bug.

*If an item's name gets too long, it'll take up two lines of space in your inventory menu, and push other items off the screen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also self-explanatory, you can see a screenshot of it in this Discord message.

*If you reload a save, when you run -> wait with enemies revealed, you cannot stop it manually.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Normally, if you do run -> wait when enemies are revealed from a Tracking Map or the enemy revealed mechanic, you are able to interrupt it before whatever max wait time you have set in your config file. However in the current beta, if you save and then reload it, you may become permanently unable to stop it until an enemy gets in your vision or it hits the max wait time, and any inputs you do try inputting seemingly get "buffered" to get inputted immediately after you reach the max wait time. Weirdly this bug seems to only be present when you reload a save, as I have not encountered it on any run before saving.

*Add ammo pickups to The Mortuary and Limbo.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A major mechanical change that was tested out is respawns no longer dropping any weapons and ammo they inherently have, both enemies revived by Nightmare/Angel of Darkness and by Archviles. With the other major respawn changes (corpses in your vision don't revive in Nightmare/AoD, and respawned enemies of either variety don't count towards the kill counter), this appears to be a fair change (100% kills in Nightmare without playing a melee build is very much viable, while you conversely can no longer farm a full inventory of ammo and Plasma Rifles off of any isolated Former, nor cheese Archviles with Formers on any difficulty to get as much ammo as you want). However, the big concern is Mortuary on any difficulty, as before you could rely on all the respawn ammo drops to soften the huge ammo sink the level normally would be, and even then you would still often come out with a significant net negative in ammo. With respawns no longer dropping ammo, you're outright in danger of running out of ammo or otherwise will likely deplete your ammo to a crippling degree, and if playing Nightmare, I don't see Mortuary being even viable without melee investment + strong melee weapon or having a Nano weapon (the Nuclear BFG helps, but aside from being able to easily get destroyed before picking it up, you can't easily recharge it when you got a bunch of enemies bearing down on you and it's not even that strong). To compensate, I think Mortuary should have ammo added, which can be in the form of at least one ammo box in each corner (have 10mm Ammochain in the top left, Power Battery in top right, Rocket Box in bottom right, and Shell Box in bottom left), and then on Nightmare, double the amount of them. As for Limbo, I thought it was fine without added ammo previously, as you could exploit the lava to great effect to easily dispose corpses and save lots of ammo, but with the new blood replacing the lava, thus requiring you to deplete much more ammo to kill enemies and allowing the Archviles to resurrect more than they could before, I think Limbo should get the same proposed ammo box in each corner (and then doubled on Nightmare).

*In the Nightmare version of The Vaults, the ease at teleporter camping the center vault's Nightmare enemies should be fixed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As part of 0.9.9.8's big difficulty buff to The Vaults, on Nightmare it has UV's Arachnotrons and Archviles replaced with their Nightmare versions. However, due to all Nightmare enemies becoming immune to fluids in 0.9.9.8, the newly added N! Arachnotrons and Archviles can walk over the lava blocking the center vault's teleporters and allow them to escape. Once you realize this and know both teleporters deposit teleportees right next to the stairs, you can simply camp next to the stairs to more safely kill each of the center vault's Nightmare enemies one-at-a-time, and then once they're all dead, you'll have a much easier time clearing out all the vaults. To prevent this, you can replace the lava blocking the teleporters with walls that can be destroyed conventionally, or by tying them to a lever inside the center vault that will destroy them (just make sure the lever is indestructible so it doesn't get destroyed in the inevitable crossfire when a player phases inside). Alternatively, if you want to keep the Nightmare enemies telporting outside of it, change the teleport destinations so the left teleporter's is as it currently is next to the stairs, while the right teleporter's drops you off on the opposite of the map; this would still allow you to spawn camp some of them (or maybe even all if you're lucky), but some others (or even most if unlucky) will evade the spawn camping and trying such can put you in a very dangerous position if one pops up in an unwanted direction while trying to kill another that just teleported in (this suggestion won't work though if you replace the Barons with Nightmare Knights here as will be proposed later, otherwise you would be able to get the Scavenger badges without having to get lucky with teleporting into the center vault).

*Have screen shaking intensity vary based on the strength of the projectile/explosion

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A new toggable feature in 0.9.9.9 is the screen shaking whenever an explosion of any sort happens. I do sorta like it, but it's rather janky in its current implementation, as the screen shake is pretty strong and seems to always play at the same intensity, regardless of if it's a 2 damage Imp fireball or a 36 damage rocket. This obviously isn't intuitive, and is rather annoying to see the screen shaking so much when just getting pelted by Imps.

[Omega Tyrant]

Now here is the big post about special level adjustments to account for the new enemies added.

First I want to state that I think the EXP multiplier in Nightmare should be lowered to the standard x1.0, or x1.1 if you want to keep it having a higher EXP multiplier than UV. A big part of why later N! loses a lot of bite is that you get so much EXP between the boosted multiplier, even greater enemy density than UV, and special levels having stronger enemies with greater EXP yields, so the difficulty gets somewhat compromised by how much stronger the player gets. Currently, killing everything and clearing the special levels will have you regularly entering Deimos at level 9 and you'll soar past level 12 by the halfway point, while enemies with even greater EXP yields are going to be added to special levels and a new special level pair is going to be added in Phobos, which will make the player's level on N! soar to even greater extents if the EXP multiplier is not toned down to compensate.

Now onto the special levels:

Hell's Arena
Fine as is on UV, and I seen Kornel has plans to modify it below UV, which will be interesting to see. Nightmare is where it's in dire need of adjustment currently though, and how to modify it depends on what is done to address the ordeal that is trying to get everything dead at once while lacking the means for proper corpse disposal this early, when the corpse stacking strategy has been rendered mostly unviable by patrolling AI and the Enraged Timer.

*If it's adjusted so you just need to kill every unique enemy once rather than having everything dead at once, then Hell's Arena enemy force is probably fine as is, considering how much more difficulty respawning adds to the level (maybe you could replace the Lost Souls with their Nightmare counterparts to spice things up a bit and add a couple of them to the second wave too). Also when clearing the final wave, not only disable respawning, but have every remaining respawned enemy drop dead too (especially now that the Enraged Timer could run out as you try running across the arena to pick up your rewards).

*If it's adjusted to disable respawning entirely, then the enemy force will need to be buffed considerably. How to is uncertain though, you certainly can't just replace Pinkies and Cacodemons with their Nightmare counterparts this early as it would probably make the level near impossible for most runs. You could replace the Lost Souls with Nightmare Souls though and add some to the second wave, as well as perhaps throw in extra Cacos and Pinkies, and then for the final wave, maybe you could throw some Nightmare Imps in to assist the Barons?

New floor 4 special levels
These aren't in the game yet, but I'm just going to throw it now that they'll certainly need the clear condition on N! to be killing every enemy once rather than having everything dead at once, as even if you beat Hell's Arena earlier to get the Rocket Launcher, you likely won't have enough rockets to destroy every corpse here and in the next special level, nevermind using those rockets to destroy corpses on the standard floors inbetween.

The Chained Court
Fine as is on UV and below. As for Nightmare, it's too a level that would greatly appreciate changing the clear condition to killing everything once, or even disabling respawning, as otherwise you have to do a ton of door camping to get everything dead (that you can no longer do with the Enraged Timer), when you'll still probably lack any means of corpse disposing weapons (especially as accessing this version of Chained Court means you didn't clear Hell's Arena and thus didn't get the guaranteed Rocket Launcher). Whatever is done, I think the Former Humans should be replaced with Sergeants on N!, as currently its enemy force is the same as UV, and whichever method is implemented to make clearing less tedious, the level would probably be easier than UV if the enemies aren't altered, considering you'll come in a level or two higher and the berserks will last twice as long.

The Unchained Court
The enemy force is fine as is for UV and below. On N!, similar to its normal counterpart, destroying all corpses isn't viable here without door camping that you can no longer do, even with the guaranteed Rocket Launcher since your rockets will be limited, so changing the clear condition to killing everything once or disabling respawning would be greatly appreciated. Beyond that, again replace the Former Humans with Sergeants to buff up the enemy force to compensate for N!'s double extended Berserks.

New alternative special level to Chained Court
Not in the game yet and may not make it in to 0.9.9.9, but in case it does, the Chained Court alt will definitely need to have its clear condition also be killing every enemy once for the reasons stated with Chained Court.

Military Base
The enemy force is fine as is on all difficulties, I'll just retract my previous proposal to remove the Tracking Map on UV and N!, as with the new Enraged timer making any prolonged camping unviable, the Tracking Map is rather necessary to handle the exit room, otherwise there's a lot of luck involved in clearing it without Intuition 2. However, clearing all the Former corpses here on N! is a tedious affair (not to mention possibly being impossible to do without running out the Enraged timer), and beating the level fast enough before anything revives is a flatout impossible task when there's so many enemies and the level makes you go all over the place, so again another special level that  the clear condition should be changed to killing everything once or disabling respawning. If the latter is done, you wouldn't need to buff the enemy force here, as the main threat of the level, the Elite Formers, couldn't respawn anyway.

Phobos Lab
Fine as is on all difficulties, just again another level on N! that should have killing everything once being the clear requirement or disabling respawning, so you don't need to lure every Former and Imp on the level over doors or near acid to destroy their corpse to get everything dead at once (especially again when like Military Base, this is a level with a ton of enemies and requires going all over the map, making frequent respawning inevitable and perhaps not even feasible to get everything dead at once without running out the Enraged Timer).

Phobos Anomaly
Fine as is on UV and below (as long as the infighting adjustments I mentioned in the previous post get implemented). As for N!, after the huge buff the Nightmare Cacodemons got, I think they're too strong to have in the ambush; the N! Anomaly ambush already bordered on insanity previously, being largely luck-based to get past without rocket jumping, and now the Nightmare Cacos hit about as hard as the Bruisers do... but faster with plasma damage and more accurately, not to mention that they're a lot harder to kill now too with their buffed HP and insane energy resistances. So perhaps each Nightmare Caco should be replaced with double or thrice the amount of Nightmare Souls. If this is done, space would need to be made for those extra Nightmare Souls in the ambush walls... which may need to be filled up with stuff on lower difficulties to keep the player from inadvertently phasing into one of the empty wall spots and getting softlocked if you can't turn those spots into no phase zones (you could just fill them up with normal Lost Souls on lower difficulties, 4 or 8 more of them shouldn't be too much). Alternatively, the Nightmare Cacos could be toned down a bit (regardless at the very least, they should have their 50% fire and acid resistances removed that don't make much sense on them, keep the 50% plasma resistance though, I like giving rapid builds a reason to not entirely ditch bullet weapons for plasma).

As for the clear condition, it's not too relevant, as clearing Phobos Anomaly isn't required for Conqueror, and Gatekeeper Platinum requires just making it past Anomaly on N! without damage, while Gatekeeper Diamond requires UV and so respawning isn't a factor. For the technical clear condition though, in case a Gatekeepr Angelic badge is added in the future that requires clearing Anomaly on N! instead of just passing it, or in case a player goes for Gatekeeper Diamond on N! or in Angel Of Darkness for some reason, it should be killing every enemy once rather than having everything dead at once, so you don't need to needlessly fuss with destroying corpses or having to put down a respawned Bruiser or Nightmare enemies down again when you lack the firepower to kill them quickly this early in the game.

Hell's Armory
Fine as is on UV and below, especially now that patrolling AI + Enraged Timer means you can no longer just camp in the starting north building to safely kill everything before the Shambler, making the level not the complete breather it was previously. As for N!, another level that it would be nice to change the clear condition to killing everything once or disabling respawning as you're still not quite at the point that you can easily corpse dispose and the tight corridors of the level makes it not so easy to blow up corpses without hurting yourself. For the enemy force on N!, it's the same as UV except the Shambler has more HP and is more aggressive, which could be considered enough, but if you want to add some oomph on N!, you could replace the Imps here with their Nightmare counterparts (or with a mixture of Revenants and Arachnotrons), as well as replace a couple of the Cacos with their Nightmare versions as well (though certainly not many of them, again given how strong and durable they now are).

Deimos Lab
Enemy layout is fine as is on UV and below, I'll just note that if it's made available on ITYTD, then you must remove one of the Shamblers on that difficulty, as the dual Shambler will certainly slaughter any newbie even with ITYTD advantages. Additionally, the Formers near the teleport destinations should be moved away, as due to you no longer being able to safely camp them until they get teleported into the teleport room, there's a high random chance that stepping into the teleporter will drop you right in view of a Captain, or much worse a Commando, where they will then get a full burst on you with no chance to dodge (and because teleporting takes extra time, they might even get a double attack, which with a Commando could mean instant death from full health if you're unlucky).

As for N!, once more a level that should have the clear condition changed to killing everything once or disabling respawning, especially so when unlike Hell's Armory, you don't got a stash of rockets around except for the dozen rockets you get from the Revenants, and when you don't exactly want to be destroying your cover when you got the dual Shamblers to fight. For the enemy force, it's the same as UV... except for a single extra Cacodemon. You could keep the enemy layout the same as UV though as the buffed HP and extra aggression for the Shamblers is a big deal in this fight, but if you want to add extra spice to it, like with Armory you could replace a couple of the Cacos here with their Nightmare versions.

The Wall
Fine as is on UV and below. For N!, I think this is one of the few special levels you can keep having everything dead at once being the clear requirement, given Archviles are a big part of this level's challenge on N! and UV (while you also get the Missile Launcher and a big stash of rockets to easily dispose the corpses here). With the enemy force, it's the same as UV, which definitely has to be buffed as that currently makes The Wall a special level that is actually easier on N! for this point of the game. Simply replacing half the Barons with the new Nightmare Knights on N! should be sufficient and fitting.

Containment Area
Fine as is on UV and below. For N!, like The Wall it's fine forcing everything to be dead at once to count as clearing it (just maybe add some extra rockets on N! since you only got the single Rocket Box and the 4 rockets in the Missile Launcher). Unlike The Wall, I wouldn't add Nightmare Knights to the Backpack ambush, N! adding a second Archvile to it already makes it very difficult, and Nightmare Knights would probably make it impossible for most builds to survive without a Homing Phase. You could replace all the Imps and Pinkies here with their Nightmare counterparts however to make the pre-ambush part of the level no longer a breeze.

City of Skulls
Fine as is on HMP and below, but maybe the Agony Elemental should be added to ITYTD, it's weird that City of Skulls lacks it but Abyssal Plains has it. On UV, I was thinking this level could be buffed as I always found it very easy unless I was playing AoMr, but the Elemental AI changes and summoned enemies activating faster does make things a bit more hairy. N! definitely needs a big buff however, as currently the only difference with it is the Agony Elemental having more HP, while respawning isn't even a factor here when no enemy here can respawn. Replacing all the preset Lost Souls in the first wave with Nightmare Souls is obvious, and for the second wave, I say replace 3 or 4 of the Pain Elementals with Nightmare Elementals (more than that though in conjunction with the Agony Elemental would probably get too insane and consume way too much ammo).

Abyssal Plains
Firstly, if City Of Skulls not having the Agony Elemental on ITYTD is kept, then Abyssal Plains shouldn't have it either, especially if the reasoning is that it's too hard for newbies when Abyssal Plains features a more difficult fight with it. Secondly, I think Abyssal Plains may be a bit too hard on HMP; all the Imps being replaced with Hell Knights makes the opening ambush nasty, enough that I think Abyssal Plains could be the hardest special level on HMP outside of Mortuary/Limbo and Deimos Lab, while the jump to UV isn't significant (just two of the Lost Souls get replaced with Pain Elementals and the Agony Elemental gets extra HP, which is negated by you coming in a level or two higher). For adjusting HMP and UV:

*On HMP, keep the 8 Imps from HNTR intact instead of replacing them with Hell Knights. Enough changes are made elsewhere (5 of the Cacos getting replaced with Arachnotrons and extra Lost Souls + Pain Elementals being added to the trap) that replacing the Imps with Hell Knights is excessive.

*On UV, rather than replace the 8 Imps with Hell Knights, do what N! does and replace them with Nightmare Imps instead. Always felt UV should have Nightmare Imps somewhere aside from Limbo and the rare lategame vault with them, and it's more unique than the 14 Hell Knights that are currently here, while being a more natural evolution from HMP. I think you could additionally replace the 15 preset Lost Souls here with Nightmare Souls too, since the preset Souls don't really do much at this point in UV.

As for N!, the main setpiece (the Agony Elemental trap) isn't affected by respawning, but since you do got lots of enemies around that do respawn and in a level that will naturally take a long time as you have to make a complete circle, as well as have to deal with the aforementioned Agony Elemental, changing the clear condition to be killing every enemy once should be done here. For enemy adjustments, alongside keeping the changes of UV, I would say replace the two Pain Elementals wandering outside the trap area with their Nightmare versions, but probably not more than that to keep City Of Skulls' extra Nightmare Elementals and Nightmare Souls a unique hazard to it (plus N! already does add a ton more Pain Elementals to the Abyssal Plains trap, so the trap doesn't need more done to it).

Halls of Carnage
Fine as is on all difficulties. Respawning isn't even a issue on N! as the lava flood will destroy the corpses anyway, and it floods so fast that you will never be able to activate the Enraged Timer here without deliberately doing so by camping on the stairs or with lava-immune boots. Maybe you could just change the requirement to killing everything once though, so if something does respawn after you killed everything, you can just exit the level instead of waiting for the flood to take them out or having to kill them again. The only thing I will note is that there is currently no special clear message for Halls of Carnage, so having one would be nice.

Spider's Lair
Fine as is on UV and below. Making the clear condition on N! being kill everything once should be done, but the main issue with the level is that it is the same as UV, which results in it being one of the easiest special levels on N!, especially when compared to how brutal its counterpart Halls Of Carnage gets on N!. Just simply replacing the 8 outer Arachnotrons here with Nightmare Arachnotrons should give this an appropriately big bump in difficulty (but certainly not all, as that would almost certainly make the level get unreasonably difficult with how deadly just a single Nightmare Arachnotron can be). Also, maybe you can do what Hell's Arena does and disable respawning once you clear it, since a bunch of rewards get spawned all over the level and trying to get them without disposing of all corpses first is hazardous as a result.

The Vaults
Fine as is on HMP and below. For UV, I mentioned the error previously with the missing Barons in the right vault and how an extra Red Armor should be added there in conjunction with the two missing Barons. As for N!, I will first say this is a level where it's fine to require having everything dead at once to clear the level since Archviles are a big part of the challenge here (but you could disable respawning to have it consistent with House Of Pain and since respawning isn't a serious issue here either way). For the enemy adjustment, as we got a proper Nightmare versions of the Barons now, you can replace them with the Nightmare Knights. Just if you do that, you really have to do something to prevent the Nightmare enemies from teleporting out of the center vault, as otherwise it would make getting the Scavenger Platinum and Diamond badges (as well as the proposed Angelic) much simpler.

House of Pain
Aside from the proposal to make the Arena Master's Staff required to access the Large Health Globes (and perhaps removing two of them entirely, getting four full heals is pretty excessive, I rarely ever have to use any medkits here), and maybe a clear message once you beat the final fight, the enemy loadout could use some changes.

*Fine as is on HNTR.

*For HMP, I'm thinking the Nightmare Archvile should get some help, as a player skilled enough for HMP probably knows to dispose of the corpses in the first room ahead of time, and a single Nightmare Archvile isn't too scary of a fight at this point in the game. To fit with how this fight will evolve on harder difficulties, I first thought of 4 Hell Knights to help him, but since they can steal the prize armors, that's probably too harsh for HMP, so 4 Nightmare Imps backing him up should be fine enough.

*For UV, just like HMP, the final fight with the two Nightmare Archviles should get backup, as I've repeatedly found the fight to be overly easy once you know to dispose of the corpses ahead of time. Replacing the 4 Nightmare Imps with Hell Knights that can steal the prize armors should be the appropriate big bump.

*For N!, the Pinkies in the starting room should be replaced with Nightmare Demons. Then the final fight could keep the Barons backing up the Nightmare Archviles, but you could also replace them with Nightmare Knights if you really want to amp up the final fight (maybe you would want to keep the Nightmare Knights exclusive to The Vaults in this level pair though). This level already disables respawning to prevent soft locks, but you could have the technical clear condition be having everything dead at once, since the VMR room and the final battle both make significant usage of Archviles.

Unholy Cathedral
If you were to make Unholy Cathedral actually challenging for lategame melee builds, it would make it nearly or even outright impossible for non-melee builds, so that wouldn't be ideal (melee investment or getting lucky with a nuke + Invuln shouldn't be necessary for Conqueror runs). Despite that, I was proposing to buff up the enemy force here with how easy the outspeed strat made the level before (namely, replacing the Lost Souls with Nightmare Souls on UV and then replacing the Pinkies with Nightmare Demons on N!). However, the newly implemented Enraged mode is a big wrinkle to the outspeeding strat, as that strat can take long enough to trigger it before you kill the AoD if you don't got sufficient Brute, EE, and/or a strong enough Chainsaw (especially as the AoD gets extra HP on higher difficulties), which then will get you killed in short order. As such, the enemy loadout can remain as is on UV and N!. Also respawning isn't an issue on this level, but the technical clear condition can be killing every enemy once, so if a random Pinky respawns while you fight the AoD, you don't need to waste any time hunting it down.

The Mortuary
Aside from what I mentioned in my previous post about how ammo pickups should be added to compensate for respawns no longer dropping ammo, Mortuary's enemy loadout is fine as is on all difficulties; Mortuary should even keep the clear condition being having everything dead at once, since killing all the respawns is so central to its challenge and theming (while the player has more than enough levels and tools at this point to get every corpse destroyed even on N! before triggering the Enraged Timer, especially with the aid of the Nuclear BFG here). If the disabled infighting flag is added, Mortuary should definitely have infighting disabled however, to maximize the challenge of the level.

Limbo
Like Mortuary, it should have ammo picksup added, disabled infighting, and should retain the clear condition of everything being dead at once. It could use some adjustments to the enemy loadout though:

*On HNTR, add Nightmare Imps to the corpse pool, while also removing Nightmare Demons and Revenants. Having Nightmare Demons on HNTR made more sense back when Limbo had lava and Nightmare Demons had no lava immunity so they just inevitably killed themselves in it shortly after being resurrected, but now when that is no longer an issue here, the Nightmare Demons are far more threatening than the Nightmare Imps are and so can be rather much for a HNTR player to deal with. I would remove Revenants on HNTR too, as with them being fast and their undodgeable projectile that inflicts a lot of knockback, they are the most often source of knocking the player multiple tiles deep into fluids, and with Limbo now having blood instead of lava, that can be a swift death sentence for an unprepared player.

*On HMP, add Nightmare Demons and Revenants back to the corpse pool. Unlike currently how there's barely a difficulty bump in Limbo on HMP, you'll really notice the bump with this adjustment.

*On UV, add Nightmare Cacodemons to the mix as is done currently.

*On N!, add Nightmare Arachnotrons as is done currently, as well as add the new Nightmare Knight to the corpse mix. You could alternatively have the Nightmare Knights appear on UV, but I think they're nasty enough of enemies to not have them appear here until N!, especially as they can steal the Red Armors and Large Medkits on the map.

Also, with the blood making Limbo much more difficult, more difficult than Mortuary in my testing, it may no longer be necessary to have it spawn extra Archviles compared to Mortuary, but perhaps we can leave the Archvile amount as is and tone it down later if we get too many complains about the new Limbo being too much harder than Mortuary.

The Lava Pits
Fine as is on HNTR and below (well, the combat looks really light on ITYTD, but I'm not fussed about trying to make things harder on ITYTD). For HMP, all the preset Lost Souls could be replaced with Nightmare Souls, I think there should be somewhere that you can encounter Nightmare Souls on HMP in the standard game and individual Lost Souls are generally very unthreatening this late in the game. For UV, alongside keeping the Nightmare Souls, maybe you could replace a couple of the Pain Elementals with Nightmare Elementals if you want to have somewhere to fight them on UV but I'm fine without, the main challenge of Lava Pits is the resource attrition rather than the combat. On N!, I think it's about time that Nightmare Revenants get utilized by replacing all the Revenants with them here, and about half the Pain Elementals should be replaced with Nightmare Elementals too. This would be a big bump in the enemy force, but respawning is basically a complete nonfactor on this level, and currently N! Lava Pits really isn't any harder than it is on UV (there's also the proposal to remove the last radsuit, which could be done in conjunction with this, but the radsuit could be kept if you want to exhibit some mercy here). As just mentioned, respawning is a nonfactor, but the technical clear condition should be killing everything once, so if you did kill a Nightmare Revenant on land, you won't need to seek it out if it respawns later.

Mt. Erebus
Lots to do here, Mt. Erebus is supposed to be the combat-centric alternative to Lava Pits but is a complete pushover on harder difficulties.

*First, add two more enemies into the innermost mountain (to make room for them, just move the two rocket stacks there into the outer ring), it is weird that only a single enemy is released with the final lever, while adding two more would also have inner mountain enemies be equivalent in number to the outer mountain enemies.

*Mostly fine as is on ITYTD, just make the aforementioned change (which would result in two Hell Knights being added inside the innermost mountain).

*Mostly fine as is on HNTR, just make the aforementioned change (which would result in two Mancubi being added inside the innermost mountain).

*On HMP, replace all the Lost Souls with Nightmare Souls for the same reason as in Lava Pits, but especially so here in the combat-cenetric counterpart level. The aforementioned change should additionally result in two Revenants being added inside the innermost mountain.

*On UV, keep the Nightmare Souls, but do not replace the Cacodemons with Pain Elementals, replace half of them with Nightmare Cacodemons instead (aside from Nightmare Cacodemons being a much bigger threat here and adding diversity in damage types, it differentiates this level more from Lava Pits, and is more faithful to the original Mt. Erebus in Doom, where it was the official Doom level with the most Cacodemons in it). Additionally, have the Mancubi back on the outside of the mountain (unlike the current version that has them inside), while replacing the 7 Revenants inside the mountain with their Nightmare versions (for this level this late into the game, I think UV can handle it, and it will make that lone radsuit a more stringent resource if you do not have very strong fire resistance on hand).

*On N!, in addition to keeping the Nightmare Souls and replacing all Cacodemons with their Nightmare counterparts, swap the Nightmare Revenants to the outside of the mountain, and then replace the 7 Mancubi inside the mountain with Nightmare Mancubi, introducing the last of the Nightmare enemies, who will eat away at the amount of safe land you have here with their acid splashing. I would also definitely remove the last radsuit here to really hammer in the threat of the Nightmare Mancubi and the subsequent battle with the Lava Elemental. As for the clear condition, most enemies will die over lava or have their corpses gibbed in the usual combat of the level, but like with Lava Pits I would make the clear condition be killing every enemy once, so you don't need to fuss with corpse disposal here nor seek out a random enemy that respawned when you're on your way back to the exit.

I mentioned previously, in the original proposal post about buffing the difficulty of Erebus a while ago, about how potentially Erebus could end in fighting two Lava Elementals, but with these big enemy buffs, perhaps that won't be necessary.

[Omega Tyrant]

Kornel mentioned on his last stream how he found masteries too restrictive to build variety and suggested to me the idea of relaxing their prerequisites. I've seen several other high level DRL players express the opinion that going masterless was best in 0.9.9.7 because they preferred the freedom, so this certainly isn't a minority take. Previously, it seems the prereqs of masteries was baked into their balancing, but thinking of it, I think you could make all masteries require six levels without seriously buffing them, and it would address the weird inequality where only a few masteries before required less than seven levels. Making them all require five levels like the current generalist masteries would be too much though, it works for the generalist masteries as they don't grant such a large immediate power boost, but being able to get game-changing masteries like Vampyre, Ammochain, Shottyhead, and Sharpshooter by level 5 would give a significant advantage over masterless builds and other masteries that don't provide such a large immediate power boost. As for making all masteries have only two blocks, I think it could almost work, most masteries would not be made broken with less blocks, but there are a couple where three blocks are pretty necessary like Vampyre. That concern could be solved however by just being willing to have an uneven level of blocks between each mastery (which considering the actual amount of traits blocked by each is already uneven because of basic trait blocks also blocking advanced traits that require them, it wouldn't be necessarily inconsistent). That said, I think this is how the prereqs of each mastery can be adjusted:

*Vampyre - Keep prereqs as is; all blocks are crucial to keeping it from being overpowered, but if all masteries are to only have two direct blocks, then Ironman would be the least powerful trait for Vampyre to unblock.

*Blademaster - Change the requirement of Brute 3 to Brute 2; Son of a Gun is the only block I think you can remove, BM wouldn't care about having SoG but being allowed TaN or SoB would be potentially too strong.

*Malicious Blades - Change the requirement of Dodgemaster to Hellrunner 2; you could unblock Tough as Nails to lessen the amount of masteries blocking it and so at least one melee mastery allows it, but it could be potentially too strong if TaN isn't toned down to 5% resistances per level, so you could unblock Eagle Eye instead with no risk of making MB overpowered.

*Bullet Dance - You could either change the requirement of Dualgunner to Son of a Gun 2, or change the requirement of Triggerhappy to Son of a Bitch 2, the latter would solve the glaring flaw of BD requiring a dead level but you would have to adjust Bullet Dance to not require TH to shoot an extra bullet, otherwise you would still be forced to take TH at some point to get any effect out of BD; you can remove the Intuition block.

*Gun Kata - Change the requirement of Dodgemaster to Hellrunner 2; I think all three blocks for Gun Kata are pretty necessary, but if one had to be unblocked, Son of a Bitch would be the least impactful unblock.

*Sharpshooter - Change the requirement of Eagle Eye 3 to Eagle Eye 2; Sharpshooter would like SoB but that could be potentially too strong, so I think unblocking TaN would be better and so not all three Pistol masteries allow SoB.

*Army of the Dead - Keep prereqs as is; remove the block on SoB.

*Shottyhead - Remove Hellrunner from prereqs; I would really like having SoB on Shottyhead but I'm certain that would be too strong, so Eagle Eye would be the least impactful trait to unblock, or you could justify keeping all three blocks.

*Fireangel - Change the requirement of Shottyman to Reloader 2; remove the block on SoG if Fireangel keeps its ability to turn all projectiles explosive (so it can better utilize that ability with pistols), or remove the block on EE if that ability is changed to Fireangel having larger spreads on Shotguns (to more enforce it being a Shotgun mastery).

*Ammochain - Change the requirement of Triggerhappy 2 to Triggerhappy 1; all three blocks are rather necessary for how strong Ammochain is, but you could remove the Ironman block if one had to go.

*Cateye - Keep prereqs as is; I'm thinking you could justify all three blocks here as Cateye would substantially benefit from any of these traits, but Reloader would be the most acceptable allowance if any are unblocked.

*Entrenchment - Change the Badass requirement to Tough as Nails 2; remove the SoG block, and I mentioned it before but Entrenchment should be blocked Berserker because of how strongly berserk resistances stack with the newly buffed Entrenchment, it could be either added as a third block or replace Reloader.

Then the Generalist masteries are already level 5 masteries and have only two blocks in the latest beta, so no need to suggest changes to their prereqs/blocks here.

____________________________________________

The following are just a few more proposals I threw around in the Discord server and am recording here so they don't get forgotten about.

*Fix the Assault Rifle

The Assault Rifle is a weird and rather worthless assembly, where for the hefty cost of three Agility mods on a rapid fire weapon, you get a weapon with less damaging bursts and overall worse DPS (especially once SoB is factored as you're firing half the shots), while you don't even save on ammo from the stronger individual shots, as the ammo consumption remains the same due to each shot consuming 2 ammo. The +3 accuracy boost is irrelevant too as the requisite Agility mods already gave that (and to think it was even worse prior to 0.9.9.8 with a +2 accuracy boost, making the weapon outright inferior). The only useful thing this assembly actually does is cut the weapon's reload time in half, but this just does not matter at all for Ammochain when it has both Reloader and the ability to fire so many shots before needing to reload, while other builds would rather a weapon that can more effectively kill things before needing to reload, or for extended fights, equip an ammo box to speed up their reloads. The Assault Rifle's current sorry state was the result of a hefty nerf when it was supposedly too strong in much older versions of DRL, so I looked up its pre-nerf stats on the wiki, and it was:

Damage: 2d5 x 2 shots (no extra ammunition cost)
Accuracy: +6 (+4 over the base Chaingun)
Fire time: 0.8 seconds
Reload time: 1.0 seconds
How to make: Chaingun + AAA

...Which doesn't seem overpowered at all? This weapon in fact has barely more DPS than the vanilla Chaingun before any levels of SoB (15 vs. 14, and it just increasingly falls behind with each level of SoB), so it was just saving you some marginal ammo, far from worth the hefty mod cost. Maybe it was stronger in an even older version of DRL than the wiki documents, but that would mean it got hit with a big nerf stick... and then nerfed again. As for what to do with this assembly, first I would make it only compatible with a 10mm chainfire weapon (so the Chaingun and Minigun); the Plasma Rifle already has the Hyperblaster, while the Laser Rifle and Nuclear Plasma Rifle certainly don't need this assembly, so something more unique to the 10mm Chainfire weapons would be better (as well as remove the headache of trying to balance this assembly for both the bullet and plasma weapons). Then for the stats, I would go:

Damage: +1 die, -1 sides (so both the Chaingun and Minigun would become 2d5), with half the shots (but without the double ammo cost).
Accuracy: +4 on the base weapon (so Chaingun becomes +6 and Minigun becomes +5).
Fire time: Original * 0.5 (so Chaingun becomes 0.5 seconds and Minigun becomes 0.6 seconds).
Reload time: Original * 0.5 (so Chaingun becomes 1.3 seconds and Minigun becomes 1.8 seconds).

This is almost the same as the original (it will now actually help you conserve ammo and I feel it needs to grant an extra point of accuracy over the requisite Agility mods, especially to better set it apart from the stronger Hyperblaster), but with much faster firing time; with 0.5 second firing speed, the Assault Rifle would have a DPS advantage over the vanilla Chaingun and Minigun (even with maxed out SoB), as well as grant more safety when firing while exposed. As huge an improvement as this is, I still see myself rarely making it; the Gatling Gun assembly offers an even bigger combat improvement on the Chaingun for a more economical mod investment, and just normal modding on the Chaingun and Minigun can outstrip the DPS potential of this proposed Assault Rifle (while I also ultimately would rather use those Agility mods on boots and armors, or a Plasma Rifle). But at least this assembly would have real use if you come across a surplus of Agility mods while playing a build with no Eagle Eye, or can at least be used to make the Minigun a lot less unwieldy without a bunch of EE and technical mods.

*Have less restrictions on Dual Angel combinations

Something I noticed when looking at valid Dual Angel combinations is how needlessly restrictive they are. Some combinations are obviously incompatible, like the weapon-locked challenges with each other, or any of AoCn, AoOC, and A100 together. But then I look at other restrictions and I just wonder why; why can't you do AoMC with the weapon-locked challenges nor AoH, why can't you do AoP and AoI together, why can't you do AoLT nor AoRA with A100, why can't you mix AoMs with over half the other challenges? Most of these combinations certainly wouldn't make things easier, and if that was otherwise a concern, the proposal of disallowing challenge-specific badges from Dual Angel runs can be implemented.

*Allow Firestorm mods to be applied to Shotguns, with the effect of increasing their spread by +1

Currently, finding a Firestorm mod as a Shotgun build is mostly a dud, all you can do with it is just slap it on the BFG, and if you're playing AoSh, you don't even have that option, making getting one in Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab particularly annoying. The proposed Blastproof Armor would give them another option if it's added, but when thinking of it, they should just be compatible with Shotguns themselves, and a fitting idea that came to mind is having it increase a Shotgun's spread size by +1 without any loss in dropoff damage, making the Shotgun even more effective against crowds. Also more ways to meaningfully mod Shotguns aside from loading them up with Power and Technical mods would be appreciated too.

*Nerf the amount of bullets that Former Captains carry from 100 to 40.

The amount of bullets that Captains carry always been rather absurd, as they would be very lucky to deplete the clip on their Chaingun a single time before they (or you) die, much less actually burn through 140 bullets. The main reason I'm proposing this though is with the SoG change, Pistols have become even more ammo efficient, so much so that when playing Pistols on the latest betas, I find myself just firing away at out of vision enemies without care for the extra ammo burned, as ammo is such little concern when bullets are as plentiful as they are and you need so relatively little to kill enemies. A single Captain can provide enough bullets to clear out a floor while still allowing me to exit the floor with all my bullet stacks filled out, and with multiple Captains on a floor, I may as well have infinite Pistol shots. The suggested 40 bullets ensures that should a Captain actually deplete their Chaingun's clip, they would be able to reload one more full clip before running out of ammo (as well as still retain being a nice ammo source in general).

[Omega Tyrant]

Kornel asked for a priority list on what to focus on of the remaining unimplemented proposals and unresolved issues, as he wants to wrap up 0.9.9.9 soon, so I'll get that done now. Note that the tiers aren't ordered within based on priority, but rather trying to order stuff based on how the OP is ordered. As things get finished up, I'll strike them through and color them light blue if they were implemented, pink if they're officially postponed to the next version, or red if they're officially rejected.

TOP PRIORITY
The following are things I think are absolutely necessary for 0.9.9.9:

*Make most special levels on Nightmare require killing every distinct enemy once to clear them rather than having every enemy dead at once, so that they no longer require an extremely tedious ordeal of corpse disposal to clear (especially now that the Enraged Timer could make it near impossible to clear the earlier special levels on N!). Additionally rebalance their enemy loadouts to incorporate the new enemies added, particularly on Nightmare (go to this post for details).

*Finish the trait rebalancing since we got some loose ends there still (covered in this post, particularly Bullet Dance still needs its buff, Survivalist + Entrenchment are overtuned, and Tough As Nails could be toned down to the originally proposed +5% energy resistances per level). The masteries can all be made less restrictive too as covered in this post.

*Fix the error with selecting Bullet Dance, and the bug with additive traits that sometimes causes their bonuses to get applied twice in a level up.

*Patch up the rough edges of infighting, as covered in this post (namely, add a flag that disables infighting in boss levels and certain special levels, disable infighting when Enraged Mode is triggered or with hunting enemies, don't have enemies infight their own species, don't let enemies retaliate against Archviles, and if possible, prevent enemies in a spawned monster group from infighting each other). There is also some remaining AI issues in that post that need to be fixed too (namely, Formers/Nobles will occasionally get stuck on items/armor instead of picking it up, Formers/Nobles will sometimes not use items at low health for unclear reasons, Lost Souls/Elementals/Cyberdemons will not aggro when you hit them out of their vision, and Souls/Cyberdemons will not retaliate when hit by other enemies).

*Fix the bug that is making full reloads instantaneous.

*When the Combat Shotgun's clip runs out and you do a normal reload, either manually or with Shottyman, you must still pump it after reloading to shoot it again, when previously any reload would cover the pump. Note that full reloading still covers the pump.

*Fix the Acid Spitter being unable to reload.

*Fix the Lava Armor being unable to regenerate its durability in lava.

*The remaining bugs and issues in this post that have not been addressed yet (too many to list here, just CTRL + F "Grappling Armor" and look at every entry from there).

*Fix the unwinnable 4 Angelic Badges so that true 100% completion can be possible; UAC Angelic, Demonic Angelic, Speedrunner Angelic, and Pacifist Angelic (go to the Badges post of the OP for current suggestions on what to do with them).

*Fix Item Reveal not working in Nightmare when all enemies are dead. Also add a new message that notifies you when all distinct enemies on a floor have been killed in Nightmare and Angel of Darkness, so that players seeking 100% kills don't need to keep bringing up the Player Info screen to check (and perhaps tie the aforementioned Item Reveal to triggering that message?).

*Replace the redundant Missile Launcher in City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains (current suggestion is a guaranteed randomized Exotic Armor since current Deimos special levels are lacking in armor rewards).

*Fix the softlocks in The Wall, Containment Area, and Mt. Erebus

HIGH PRIORITY
These are important things I think would really improve 0.9.9.9 and a good chunk of should make it into 0.9.9.9, but they aren't all necessary to implement now if stuff has to be left on the wayside for the next version (1.0.0.0 or 0.9.9.9.1?):

*The Chaingun, Frag Shotgun, Assault Rifle, and mods changes listed in the equipment section of the OP (the other suggested equipment changes listed would be nice, but those ones aren't as important and so I would put them down in the mid priority tier).

*Give default sounds to all mute enemies (the Nightmare enemies, Elite Formers, Lava Elemental, Agony Elemental, Arena Master, and Apostle). Aside from the subjective value of it livening up the game, it eliminates the ethical grey area with players modding sounds for those enemies, and it would be nice compensation for the Enraged Timer no longer letting you camp them too, so that players exploring around without Intuition 2 can detect these enemies are around without stumbling face first into them. Since adding new sounds into the game isn't on the table because of copyright concerns, Nightmare enemies and Elite Formers can just reuse the sounds of their normal counterparts, the Agony Elemental can just reuse the sounds of the Pain Elemental, and the Arena Master and Apostle can just reuse the sounds of the Archvile; Lava Elemental is unclear with what sounds to give, though in my own personal setup I gave it Mancubus sounds.

*Nerf the amount of bullets that Former Captains carry to 40, and buff the Nightmare Archvile's explosion radius to 2, as covered in the enemy section on the OP. Also Nightmare Cacodemons are overtuned after their massive buff and can be a bit tedious to kill, so they should have their current 50% fire and acid resistances nerfed or removed outright, or alternatively, have their innate armor reduced to 1 or give them a -25% resistance to bullet + sharpnel damage to better emphasize their vulnerability to physical weapons.

*Make single enemy type levels be able to have Nightmare enemies just like how Caves can (and make Archvile + Elite Formers be possible in the Black Magic level type) at sufficiently high level rolls, so that they no longer remain breather levels in deeper A100 and on higher difficulties. Also add a unique level feel message for these new Nightmare-enemy only levels and for spawning in Nightmare Demon/Cacodemon/Arachnotron/Elemental caves.

*From the Badges post of the OP, implement the suggested changes to the listed Bronze, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond badges, as well as change the Heroic badge series to be percentage-based as suggested (10%/30%/50%/70%/90% of medals for the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond tiers respectively) to account for the new medals added in 0.9.9.8 and possible addition of any new medals in this or future versions, and add Heroic Angelic for obtaining all medals.

*Also from the aforementioned post, implement the suggest changes to the Shotgunnery Cross, Marksmanship Cross, Malicious Knives Cross, Sunrise Iron Fist, and Gargulec Medal.

*A toggle in the settings to disable the overlay filter of powerups.

*Some more of the proposed new exotics, uniques, and assemblies listed in the New Content post of the OP (don't need to do all of them now, but some more new toys than just Grappling Armor and Blood Boots would be sweet).

*Finish touching up the Apostle, in both its A100/666 fight and Hell Fortress fight, by increasing its teleporting chance per turn and implementing the suggestions for the Hell Fortress fight in this post (CTRL + F "Spruce up Hell Fortress' Apostle fight" to quickly find the exact suggested changes).

*Add method for guaranteed Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor in A100/666, so full wins in those modes do not remain terribly luck based. (If something more elaborate cannot be thought up, current idea is a 100% killrate up to floor 50/333 will spawn a Berserker Armor if you haven't found one already, and a 100% killrate up to floor 99/665 will spawn the Dragonslayer if it hasn't already spawned, while possibly locking the guaranteed spawns behind UV/N!).

*Allow access to Hell's Armory, Deimos Lab, The Vaults, and House Of Pain on ITYTD (I can think up of enemy loadouts for them if needed, just Deimos Lab absolutely needs to have only one Shambler on ITYTD so that it won't be a death trap for newbs).

*Add the new special level pair on floor 4, currently conceptualized as Nuclear Plant and Toxin Refinery.

MID PRIORITY
These are things I would like to see still, but they are definitely expendable to postpone if need be:

*When Enraged Mode triggers, have the screen shake and have all remaining enemies' act sound play at once, for more aesthetic flair.

*The music can be turned off if too many sounds play at once (this only really happened to me when I spammed run -> wait near a lot of enemies, which given the Enraged Timer now invalidates, this isn't too important to fix if it's not simple).

*When picking up a Unique for the first time in a run, the accompanying green flash may not happen, though it's unclear if this bug is with certain Uniques (confirmed it happened with Enviroboots and Medical Powerarmor) or happens for other reasons. The yellow flash when repairing armor/boots with an Armor Shard also sometimes doesn't happen for unclear reasons. Both of these bugs are purely graphical however, as the Uniques without the green flash still get counted as collected, and your armor/boots are still repaired by Armor Shards regardless of the yellow flash not happening. All other flash effects appear to be working as they should.

*If you hold the wait command for an extended amount of time while enemies are revealed, enemies' sprites cannot visually keep up with their actual movement. As a result, when you let go of the wait button, the enemies' sprites will continue to move around until they "catch up" to their actual positions. This bug appears to be purely graphical however, as proceeding to do other things before the sprites "catch up" will have the game work correctly off of the enemies' actual positionings.

*Various minor text/UI errors listed in the OP.

*Add default sounds for all exotics, uniques, and artifacts.

*The rest of the suggested equipment changes in the Equipment section of the OP that weren't specified as High Priority prior.

*Add sounds for enemies spawning, reviving, and Archviles charging their attack.

*Add corpses for Elite Formers and Lava Elemental, as well as a corpse sprite for the player when they die. The Angel Of Death also currently lacks a corpse, though maybe that could be left intentional as a mercy in case it's added to the A100/666 spawn pool, or in case the player kills it in Unholy Cathedral before killing all the other enemies on N! to trigger the Cathedral collapsing, thus ensuring it can't respawn and force the player to kill it again.

*Allow the Angel Of Death to spawn in very deep floors of Angel Of 100/666 (suggested depth is 90+).

*In House Of Pain, seal away the Large Health Globes behind walls or doors that can only be opened with the Arena Master's Staff, farther incentivizing to carry the Staff along for this level.

*Disallow nukes from being activated in Hell Fortress, and disable any active powerups when the player enters Hell Fortress, so that they cannot trivialize Carmack with a Floor 23 Invuln or Berserk stack.

*Have dying to John Carmack count as a normal death instead of as a partial win, so that there is more risk in going for a full win.

*Expand the amount of possible Dual Angel combinations, as covered in this post.

*Allow the action command to open armor and ammo crates. Alternatively, allow them to be opened by bumping into them.

*Add more Angelic Badges, so that there is an equal amount of them compared to the amount of badges in the other badge tiers. Go to the Badges post of the OP for ideas.

*Any of the other new medal and badge ideas in the aforementioned post can also be considered mid priority.

*Adjust the higher level rankings to require more badges of the lower tiers, instead of capping out at 15 for each badge tier. Also make No-Life King require every badge, not just every Angelic.

*Create/readd locked vaults as they're described on the wiki, as well as add the proposed new Trap Rooms in the Features post of the OP. (It would be very cool to have these, but I don't think they'll be easy to add and test).

*Any of the new level events proposed in the New Content post of the OP. (Though getting at least the Max Carnage and Snake Eyes events would be neat)

*The new Chained Court alternative level, that is currently conceptualized as Central Processing (though Kantarza may already have that in the works?).

*When you have the Berserker Set equipped, the infinitely spawning Nightmare Demons and Nightmare Cacodemons severely complicate clearing special levels, so some caveat should be added to make clearing special levels with that set a much less tedious ordeal (whether not counting the spawned Nightmare enemies towards a special level's completion, disabling their spawning in special levels, or giving them a spawning limit of some sort so that the Berserker player will be guaranteed able to get everything dead eventually).

Low Priority
These are things I would still support being done, but yeah you don't need to worry about them right now unless they would be very low effort to implement:

*Ensure bridges that go over rivers aren't blocked off by walls or rooms with no doors.

*Give EXP for pulling Levers, but consider disabling it if you have Intuition.

*Add color coding to badges and medals in the endgame mortem.

*Disallow Dual-Angel challenges for any badge that requires a specific challenge. This includes Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge, Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge, Berserker Gold Badge to Arena Gold Badge, Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge, and Reaper Diamond Badge to Arena Diamond Badge. (Aside from effort concerns, I'm also putting this in low priority because I'm not so sure I still support it, Sereging is very cheesy but maybe players should be allowed the extra creativity when badge hunting that Dual Angels allow. Maybe though just address some of the most egregious cheese that clearly goes against the spirit of the badges, like the Destroyer badges not actually requiring their respective Untouchable medals and all the badges that require Explorer/Conqueror not actually requiring those medals, thus resulting in those badges being much more easily won in AoOC despite it disqualifying the earning of said should-be requisite medals).

*Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. To prevent the awards section of UV/N! mortems from becoming absurdly large, have only the highest tier of each badge appear on the mortem.

*Have more badges require at least a standard win, rather than any win. Current suggestion is every Gold, Platinum, and Diamond badge that requires winning the game should require at least a standard win, with the exceptions of those that already require a full win and Pacifist Gold.

*Have the trait selection screen be more color-coded (see the Features post of the OP for the example).

*Add a time display to the Player Info screen.

*Add support for more custom music slots in the Audio.lua file beyond floor 25, to give people the option to have more varied music play in A100/666 if they desire. (Don't know if this was intentional or not but this already works, so checking off).

*Any of the new challenges proposed in the New Content post of the OP.

[Evilpotatoe]

Wow, nice compilation.  Thanks for all this work.

I just discovered 0.9.9.8 and completed my first game (UV, kept my 0.9.9.7 player.wad)


Most suggestions I've seen here looked relevant to me.
After reading most of this thread (but about nothing else yet), here's my 2cts hot-feedback, for you to consider/inculde/ignore :)
note : While I notice the improvements, I rarely send flowers about what's good.  What I focus on is always the issues.

First : after grabbing all I could from my old configs, there's a few things I'm really missing, and which I didn't see adressed here :

• No quick selection keys anymore for weapons is extremely painful.
  My usual run uses no more than shotgun/chainsaw(scythe)/plasma(laser) rifle/tac RL.  I don't want to bind them manually every game, which even seems to need de-equipping them first so they are in invertory.
  The old system where every weapon could have its quick key (and I did bind every one of them) was MUCH more efficient.  Its only issue was quick-keying did give a movement-cost reduction, which was nonsense and shouldn't be paired with what is just a UI feature.
  

• Additionnaly, asking to switch to a weapon currently in my offhand tells me "I'm already using it", even if my current weapon is rocket launcher.  So every time I wanna switch & fire, I gotta check it actually did the switch I asked ?
  Tell me this is already reported/fixed, please ! Checked 0.9.9.9B7 : it is
  
• Is keybindings.lua not meant to come back ?  I also had some bindings to use items.  Especially both medkit and phase devices.  Having to open inventory for this is an annoyance
• And a BIG annoyance, since I now also have to scroll manually to item slots.  I've read that for some technical reason, inventory bindings would be complex to keep (I wonder why, yet), but remain surprised by such sacrifices.  I think this will hamper playability too much for me and while I'll try a few more games, may very well end-up sticking with 0.9.9.7 if UI remains like this in the future.
• Oh, and having to press space to go downstairs feels weird.  First roguelike I play where I can't press > for it.
  I can deal with this, but knowing I'll someday mistakenly go downstairs because I accidentally pressed spacebar is a bit more annoying.  Secondary for sure, but a small loss remains a loss.
  
• +targetting's new colors (Blue, I think ?) make it really hard to see while berserk.  Used to be green from what I see in my 0.9.9.7

---


Now, some feedback about feedbacks :

• Shoudl'nt "blood boots" be "Butcher's boots" ? Could even pair for a set with some cleaver ♥)

• Maybe a guaranteed combat pistol somewhere would be nice, like in Phobos lab.

  
  This would be very strong for Pistol builds and worthless for every other build; special level rewards should avoid only benefiting a small amount of builds, the guaranteed Combat Shotgun is a far better reward in Phobos Lab and Military Base (being an invaluable utility weapon for every build in the game and not just benefiting Shotgun builds).
  Additionally, the suggestion for a new stronger common Pistol already does cover Pistol builds being handicapped by the lack of a guaranteed upgrade (first point in the equipment section of the New Content post).

  
  
  
  Phobos lab might be too early, or maybe we need some more ego pistols and get a random one. (Lack of variety is a bit sad here).
  Thing is : the issue is more how pistols work than the drop itself.  Guaranteed or not, CP is always useless unless you're a pistol freak.
  Pistols are ALL specific to pistol builds and useless for anyone else (save Trigun). I see this as arguable game design... but on the other hands, making pistol as good as "real rifles" wouldn't seem very consistent... so putting the difference in the skills somehow makes perfect sense.
  Why give shotguns and a chainsaw but not a peashooter ? Playing angel of pew-pew without finding any cool pistol just sucks
  Alternatively, some rewards (pistols or other) could depend on picked skills.  E.G. you could get a guaranteed pistol in HA if you skilled at least SOG2.
  As a side note, I never pick-up a combat shotgun anymore. And I always play mostly shotgun all game long (unless I get a nano for my plasma rifle).
  I genuinely think regular shotgun with SOB2+ and/or P mods is MUCH more powerful. Hence, I don't agree with it being of any more use than a pistol.
  ... except maybe for the 5 ammo I salvage from it :)
  

• [ ] Disallow nukes from being activated in Hell Fortress altogether. Additionally have any active powerups get turned off when entering Hell Fortress, so you cannot take an Invulnerability or Berserk stack into Hell Fortress to trivialize it. 1
  

  I strongly disagree with arbitrarly disabling powerups: Messing with normal flow of the game in ways requiring to die-and-retry is painful.
  Phobos lab's exception is terrible-enough already, we don't need more of this !  Isn't anyone fighting an apostle berserk and already steamrolling anyway ?
  Plus, these edge cases need specific roguelike luck.  From what I see, you currently can't activate a thermobomb in this level ?  Well, remove this then.  I already lost more than one character due to supid exceptions of this kind in several games --which might include this case--, and unless the game tells you in advance, this shit is just frustrating.  Game should just follow the rules, not require you to parse the wiki/forums or die until you know every surprise trap.
  Also, this kind of vicious additions removes some tactical play, like fast-diving through 4 levels because you just found 3 invu globes in Hell4 and wanna try some fun ending.  Love diversity, let players use rare cool cases instead of inciting them to rely on a generic safe strat !  THIS . IS . ROGUELIIIIIIIIIKE !
  
• Previous case reminds me of my first visit to UC.  There should definitely be some warning telling you you can't shoot when entering.  It could be as simple as a lone lost soul facing you 3 squares away...
  

• *Have dying to John Carmack count as a normal death instead of as a partial win.

  I'm not sure. I think killing Carmack shuld be more rewarding for this to make sense.
  A lot of players probably play it like I do, and just routinely kill it because "100%".  The notion of partial wins seems enough to me : it's a fun notion when reading your stats.
  We could imagine something bigger (Like what JH has near the end), but it looks decent to me in its current form.
  If I wanted a rework, I'd say boss fights after anomaly could be made more interesting (I now always berserk into Cyber and nuke/berserk for ending...  yeah, these could definitely use some rework :p)
  
• Have less restrictions on Dual Angel combinations
  Yes, but please, make them a separate category for medals.
  There's a small bunch of badges/medals like N! shotty I only got because I Angel-of-overconfidence'd into Dis, probably relying on some luck (be it invu, berserks, or any other great drops trivializing the ending)
  This feels absolutely lame, and wayyyyy less deserved than the badges I got for winning say, my first nightmare games (which were also conqueror 8)).
  I'm sure medals for dual angels can make sense too, but as long as an angel challenge gives any positive counterpart, we probably need to make them specific.
  An alternative could be to note for every badge what were the winning conditions : Soldier class, challenges... could even be linked to mortem.  (and with a properly seeded game to the full replay -- Yeah, I'm going a bit further... but I think replays in these kind of games should always be available.  They don't just help us boost our ego, they also help making tutorials or reporting/understanding bugs !)
  

[Omega Tyrant]

Wow, nice compilation.  Thanks for all this work.

I just discovered 0.9.9.8 and completed my first game (UV, kept my 0.9.9.7 player.wad)


Most suggestions I've seen here looked relevant to me.
After reading most of this thread (but about nothing else yet), here's my 2cts hot-feedback, for you to consider/inculde/ignore :)
note : While I notice the improvements, I rarely send flowers about what's good.  What I focus on is always the issues.

Nice to see you back, and any feedback is welcome! I'll also note that 0.9.9.9 is on the horizon, and we have active beta tests going for it if you're interested (check out the #doomrl-testing in the Jupiter Hell Discord server).

No quick selection keys anymore for weapons is extremely painful.
My usual run uses no more than shotgun/chainsaw(scythe)/plasma(laser) rifle/tac RL.  I don't want to bind them manually every game, which even seems to need de-equipping them first so they are in invertory.
The old system where every weapon could have its quick key (and I did bind every one of them) was MUCH more efficient.  Its only issue was quick-keying did give a movement-cost reduction, which was nonsense and shouldn't be paired with what is just a UI feature.

I find the manual ingame quickkey binding to be very quick and second nature once you get used to it, and for people like me that used to frequently change the quickkey weapons manually to use them with exotics/uniques, I've found this to be a very welcome change. Perhaps though an optional setting could be added that automatically sets the quickkeys to the old defaults, would have to ask Kornel if that is possible to implement.

Is keybindings.lua not meant to come back ?  I also had some bindings to use items.  Especially both medkit and phase devices.  Having to open inventory for this is an annoyance

The settings.lua file keeps the information for your settings, including keybindings (you can modify settings ingame, but you can also still modify them in this lua file, or copy it over to other versions to not to have readjust your settings ingame again). I'll also note that you can still set the quickkeys to items ingame.

And a BIG annoyance, since I now also have to scroll manually to item slots.  I've read that for some technical reason, inventory bindings would be complex to keep (I wonder why, yet), but remain surprised by such sacrifices.  I think this will hamper playability too much for me and while I'll try a few more games, may very well end-up sticking with 0.9.9.7 if UI remains like this in the future.

I personally hated the old inventory system, as far too often I would misclick some random key on the inventory screen and end up wasting a medkit or worse (I also use a mouse for faster item selection). If you do really want the legacy inventory system or at least the technical explanation, you'll have to take it up with Kornel directly (alternatively, if you got the programming skills, you could try your hand at implementing it, DRL and the latest beta are open sourced, and additional programming help would be appreciated).

Oh, and having to press space to go downstairs feels weird.  First roguelike I play where I can't press > for it.
I can deal with this, but knowing I'll someday mistakenly go downstairs because I accidentally pressed spacebar is a bit more annoying.  Secondary for sure, but a small loss remains a loss.

From experience, it was weird at first but I got used to it. If you want a workaround, you could set the general action key to ">". Otherwise, you can see if Kornel can add a dedicated key for descending to the "legacy" keybindings (where some other old inputs like opening/closing doors and saving were added).

Shoudl'nt "blood boots" be "Butcher's boots" ? Could even pair for a set with some cleaver ♥)

The Blood Boots were added without any specific inspiration, to give a rare means to obtaining immunity from the new blood fluid. I would like more sets and so would be fine with this if a good idea comes up for what the set will do (maybe it'll let you ignore the fluid-slowing mechanic in blood, useful though a bit mundane).

Phobos lab might be too early, or maybe we need some more ego pistols and get a random one. (Lack of variety is a bit sad here).
Thing is : the issue is more how pistols work than the drop itself.  Guaranteed or not, CP is always useless unless you're a pistol freak.

SoG has been changed to +3 damage/-10% firing time, and even the basic Pistol will be outputting serious power (at the expense of weaker DPS in the lategame), so a stronger more commonly available pistol isn't really needed anymore.

Alternatively, some rewards (pistols or other) could depend on picked skills.  E.G. you could get a guaranteed pistol in HA if you skilled at least SOG2.

Hell's Arena already has challenge-specific rewards, so it should be possible that Phobos Lab/Military Base have the Combat Shotgun replaced in AoB/AoMr, or Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab could have two of the weapons in the weapon cache be guaranteed to be pistois or shotguns if you're playing AoMr or AoSh respectively (making all four be pistols or shotguns may be a bit much though, since that would give you great odds at multiple exotic/unique pistols/shotguns).

As a side note, I never pick-up a combat shotgun anymore. And I always play mostly shotgun all game long (unless I get a nano for my plasma rifle).
I genuinely think regular shotgun with SOB2+ and/or P mods is MUCH more powerful. Hence, I don't agree with it being of any more use than a pistol.
... except maybe for the 5 ammo I salvage from it :)

I strongly disagree with this, but this isn't the place for arguments on tactical differences :p

I strongly disagree with arbitrarly disabling powerups: Messing with normal flow of the game in ways requiring to die-and-retry is painful.
Phobos lab's exception is terrible-enough already, we don't need more of this !  Isn't anyone fighting an apostle berserk and already steamrolling anyway ?
Plus, these edge cases need specific roguelike luck.  From what I see, you currently can't activate a thermobomb in this level ?  Well, remove this then.  I already lost more than one character due to supid exceptions of this kind in several games --which might include this case--, and unless the game tells you in advance, this shit is just frustrating.  Game should just follow the rules, not require you to parse the wiki/forums or die until you know every surprise trap.
Also, this kind of vicious additions removes some tactical play, like fast-diving through 4 levels because you just found 3 invu globes in Hell4 and wanna try some fun ending.  Love diversity, let players use rare cool cases instead of inciting them to rely on a generic safe strat !  THIS . IS . ROGUELIIIIIIIIIKE !

You can activate nukes in Hell Fortress against Carmack, only when you're fighting the Apostle that you're unable to activate nukes. As for carrying powerups into Hell Fortress, I feel you shouldn't be able to trivialize Carmack because of lucky invulns, and going for full wins is supposed to be something extra with enhanced risk and difficulty to it. This isn't a suggestion I feel too strongly for though, and I just realized that it could apply to the Dragonslayer's permanent berserk if a specific exception isn't programmed in, which would be catastrophic if you're fighting the Apostle and don't have Berserker (but at least definitely don't let people nuke Carmack anymore).

Previous case reminds me of my first visit to UC.  There should definitely be some warning telling you you can't shoot when entering.  It could be as simple as a lone lost soul facing you 3 squares away...

Having a more direct way of letting you know you can't shoot in the Cathedral for the newbies seems no brainer to me, and one of Kornel's goals with DRL's renewed development is making it more newb-friendly.

I'm not sure. I think killing Carmack shuld be more rewarding for this to make sense. A lot of players probably play it like I do, and just routinely kill it because "100%".  The notion of partial wins seems enough to me : it's a fun notion when reading your stats.
We could imagine something bigger (Like what JH has near the end), but it looks decent to me in its current form.
If I wanted a rework, I'd say boss fights after anomaly could be made more interesting (I now always berserk into Cyber and nuke/berserk for ending...  yeah, these could definitely use some rework :p)

My problem is that there's currently no real risk with going for the full win, as you'll still be rewarded any badges/medals for winning unless it requires a full win in the first place (I'm reminded of this mortem by apalapan, where he died to Carmack but was still rewarded the Hunter Diamond badge). It also doesn't make much sense to me to get killed by Carmack and the mortem acts like you won; fun fact, there's a unique death message for dying to Carmack ("[Player] was pwned by John Carmack"), but you'll never see it ingame because dying to him counts as a partial win and thus you get the partial win message ("[Player] sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress"). I wouldn't be opposed to making the boss fights more elaborate, but boss changes would need a lot of consideration, because it could make the hardest badges unreasonable or outright impossible (for example if the Cyberdemon fight got spruced up and made harder, it may no longer be possible to beat him in Archangel Of Humanity without nuking him with invuln).

Have less restrictions on Dual Angel combinations
Yes, but please, make them a separate category for medals.
There's a small bunch of badges/medals like N! shotty I only got because I Angel-of-overconfidence'd into Dis, probably relying on some luck (be it invu, berserks, or any other great drops trivializing the ending)
This feels absolutely lame, and wayyyyy less deserved than the badges I got for winning say, my first nightmare games (which were also conqueror 8)).
I'm sure medals for dual angels can make sense too, but as long as an angel challenge gives any positive counterpart, we probably need to make them specific.
An alternative could be to note for every badge what were the winning conditions : Soldier class, challenges... could even be linked to mortem.

I strongly agree with finding Sereging to be extremely cheesy and to not be in the spirit of the achievement the badges represent (while also finding it annoying when looking through the Badge Hunters thread for strategies used and seeing most of the Diamonds were gotten with a lame AoOC stairdive and pray or with AoMC), and so I did support disqualifying Dual Angels from earning badges that don't explicitly require a specific Dual Angel combination, but I have wavered on pushing for it. Aside from limiting creativity in winning badges, we would miss out on cool ways to earn badges like Tormuse winning Everyman Diamond by combining AoH with A100. Creating new badges/medals to account for these Dual Angel runs instead sounds excessive though, so I'm not sure that's doable either. I did come up with a compromise of sorts in the new Badge Hunters thread, where I note if each mortem won a badge purely or by mixing it with another challenge in a Dual Angel, so those looking for mortems that didn't Sereg a badge or whatever criteria can find them without having to check each individual mortem.

and with a properly seeded game to the full replay -- Yeah, I'm going a bit further... but I think replays in these kind of games should always be available.  They don't just help us boost our ego, they also help making tutorials or reporting/understanding bugs !)

A replay system would be great, especially as a means of proof for people that don't have the means to record their runs (and would help safeguard against another 2Dev situation happening). it's probably too late for 0.9.9.9, but I'll add it to the OP anyway.

[Evilpotatoe]

Thanks for the detailed answer. (Btw, I tried 0.9.9.9b7 yesterday, and joined the Discord. I'm "Balmipour" out there)

Not the place to discuss, I guess, but I got some new feedbacks after testing 0.9.9.9b7... and it looks like here's the best place to put them:
(Maybe I'll moves bugs, yet)

• I love the idea of ennemies getting enraged with time, but I think it needs a visual indicator for the player, like a progress bar.
  Clearing game as UV conqueror, I think the only level where level name went purple was the Mortuary, so timer looks right to me.  Makes me think I was scout, yet
• I strongly want to disable the pop-ups in Hell's arena. I agree it's a much more clean system than small messages in the corner, but please Kornel, let me skip to the only actual question : continue ? Yes/No.  Texts are really cool, once.  Then, i wanna check some "don't bother me again" box, like I did for skipping intro or naming my guy.
• (bug) View re-centering on player after every shot when targetting off screen is very annoying (using mouse targetting & moved viewport a bit with mouse on screen's edge)
      Note : I don't like using mouse for this, but I don't recall having a keyboard alternative. Ctrl-left right or something like this to move viewport could be cool). I remember a point about this is already in the OP's list, but wanna say I support the idea
• (bug) shooting the last 4 ammo with my plasma gun gives me 65k ammo via some overflow.  Cool (and works the same with a chain-fired chaingun), but needs fix :D.  I've read about it on Discord too, but it looked 100% reproducible to me. Even got saves if necessary
• The new "use mod" menu is nice, but I wish w/a/b were bound to the 3 common choices.
      Would avoid breaking our habits and keep in line with having a good usability and direct keys rather than having to parse interface elements to do simple actions.
• (Accessibility) Visual item animations (cell pack, etc.) are nice, but I'd love to disable them.  Maybe even fluids. A per-item setting in a LUA (or easy modding access) would be perfect.  I just wish I could somehow.
• I'd also wish I could disable the glowing red eyes on enemies.  Makes differenciating them harder (and looks ugly to me)
• I think my suggestion of adding a lone lost soul facing you a few squares away when entering UC is decent-enough to be added to the list.
      Any veteran will just enter and stomp it even before it wakes-up, but it would help every noobie trying to shoot it, which is valuable
• And unless I forgot a point, reworking boss fight looks quite relevant to keep in the "TO-DO list" as well. I must say JC's fight being a dummy one and this poor spider being nuked every time we meet it is a bit sad.  Complex point, I must agree... but worth a thought.
• (unrelated to version, but useful) : have a "rename character" command !  Reading about Tormuse's AoHu badge did remind me how I tanked the mortuary (Went for a survivalist marine --0996 or 0997 survivalist--), since my scouts were all dying to a clumsy-moves-into-lava with their 10hp.  Had to manually rename my guy in the mortem (possibly screwing checksum xD) because I wanted my hero to be "Homer simpson"

And finally,
I just tried to play a 2nd 0.9.9.9b7 game.
Since I had beaten UV, I did dare going HNTR this time, and tried to make it fast.  2 things about this :

Well, first, I ended-up rage-quitting because pressing 3 didn't switch to shotgun and my character shot himself a rocket in melee in the CC, destroying both zerk packs and the chainsaw.
... so I'll insist : I definitely hope using a good old inventory where each letter is statically bound to a slot will go back as an option.
I don't care for dynamic remapping and genuinely don't even understand what it's good for (maybe for your 2/3 weapons ? What else ???) when it costs many more keystrokes (or using mouse) for basic actions like using a medkit.
I sometime misuse items too (and did with this version, because it's still one misclick away).  I just think the right fix would be to propose confirmations for using items (like we have, e.g. in Angband, via an horrible (auto-)inscription system).
In 0.9.9.7, with medkits, phase device and weapons all having a direct keybind, I think I only opened inventory for dropping ammo, switching armor or using a skull


But I'll aslo ask whether the difficulties have been reworked.
The reason I try UV before HNTR is because it feels much easier to me !
HNTR gives little XP (and stuff), and I often ended-up with stupid death, because I was lacking things (be it traits, mods, or even a common plasma rifle).  None of these is necessary, of course, but I don't think lesser difficulties feeling harder than higher ones is a good thing.  Doom or quake never felt like this to me.
I'd suggest giving an XP boost to balance for the lack of enemies in these difficulties, but slightly better items drops would probably be a good thing too.
Might be the occasion to give back some accuracy to enemies in these skill levels.
I remember reading a post... probably a JH update from Kornel, where he told easy difficulties were reworked because they didn't help us learning to play properly and gave bad habits to players.
I don't know much whether this applies to DoomRL, but one thing I can remember is I didn't know about cornershooting for quite some time when discovering the game, and could go "quite far" despite this. (I'm sure I did die to the shambler.  Probably even to Cybie)
I think slightly more dangerous enemies but much more dangerous doomguy might help against this. Such discussions would need a separate thread, though. (Sorry for dumping my ideas as they go, I feel a bit guilty of cluttering here :ashamed:)

[Omega Tyrant]

Thanks for the detailed answer. (Btw, I tried 0.9.9.9b7 yesterday, and joined the Discord. I'm "Balmipour" out there

Ah I didn't recognize you there, since Kornel already responded to some of your stuff in the Discord, I'll respond to the stuff he didn't.

(bug) shooting the last 4 ammo with my plasma gun gives me 65k ammo via some overflow.  Cool (and works the same with a chain-fired chaingun), but needs fix :D.  I've read about it on Discord too, but it looked 100% reproducible to me. Even got saves if necessary

Yeah it's a simple underflow bug whenever you shoot a burst that would deplete more ammo than you have in your clip remaining, but it has been already fixed for the next beta (if you want some broken fun though in the meantime, try exploiting it with a Jackhammer or full-auto GCB :p).

I think my suggestion of adding a lone lost soul facing you a few squares away when entering UC is decent-enough to be added to the list.
Any veteran will just enter and stomp it even before it wakes-up, but it would help every noobie trying to shoot it, which is valuable

Done

And unless I forgot a point, reworking boss fight looks quite relevant to keep in the "TO-DO list" as well. I must say JC's fight being a dummy one and this poor spider being nuked every time we meet it is a bit sad.  Complex point, I must agree... but worth a thought.

Maybe when we get to making the compilation list for the next version (1.0.0.0 or 0.9.9.9.1?) and some good ideas are brought up, but this is something that definitely isn't going to be possible for 0.9.9.9 when we're currently in the cutting room floor for it (I will note that Carmack did get buffed in 0.9.9.9, as spawned enemies now "wake up" faster, his spawns infighting each other neuters it at the moment though but that could be fixed if the proposal to disable infighting in boss levels is added. The Mastermind also got AI tweaks if you actually fight it and so it shouldn't be getting stuck anymore, but I haven't really experimented with its AI yet).

(unrelated to version, but useful) : have a "rename character" command !  Reading about Tormuse's AoHu badge did remind me how I tanked the mortuary (Went for a survivalist marine --0996 or 0997 survivalist--), since my scouts were all dying to a clumsy-moves-into-lava with their 10hp.  Had to manually rename my guy in the mortem (possibly screwing checksum xD) because I wanted my hero to be "Homer simpson"

Like the time display suggestion, this is something I personally don't see much use in but also no harm, maybe it could mess with the game's data recording but otherwise it would be up to Kornel to decide if it's worth programming or not.

But I'll aslo ask whether the difficulties have been reworked.
The reason I try UV before HNTR is because it feels much easier to me !
HNTR gives little XP (and stuff), and I often ended-up with stupid death, because I was lacking things (be it traits, mods, or even a common plasma rifle).  None of these is necessary, of course, but I don't think lesser difficulties feeling harder than higher ones is a good thing.  Doom or quake never felt like this to me.
I'd suggest giving an XP boost to balance for the lack of enemies in these difficulties, but slightly better items drops would probably be a good thing too.
Might be the occasion to give back some accuracy to enemies in these skill levels.

This is something I strongly disagree with (and seeing how many people got their shit pushed in when making the jump to UV and asked here and on the Discord for help dealing with UV, it being easier is a very fringe opinion). True you don't get as much EXP (even though you do have a 1.2x EXP multiplier in HNTR), and you probably won't get a Plasma Rifle until Deimos because Commandos no longer spawn in Phobos unless you find one in a vault, however you're overlooking some very important things that are much more meaningful:

*Enemy counts are increasingly smaller on the easier difficulties, the difference in enemy density on floors between HNTR and UV is huge, especially so when high weight enemies are involved (Hell floors in particular can become pretty empty on difficulties below UV).

*Stronger enemies show up much later. For example, UV is infamous for its floor 3 Hell Knights, while on HNTR, they don't start showing up until floor 9. While you don't get EXP as fast, you will still be at a higher level when you start fighting Hell Knights on HNTR (level 6 or 5 if you 100%ed everything prior and didn't skip the special levels) than you would be on UV (only level 3 if you completed Hell's Arena, even lower if you skipped Arena). You'll also have much better equipment by that time too (item generation is not difficulty dependent, more floors means more chances at finding good stuff, and nearly all special level rewards are not difficulty-dependent, with the only major exceptions being the Scythe, Dragonslayer, and Berserker Armor). When you start fighting Hell Knights in HNTR, you should at minimum have Red Armor and multiple Blue Armors, a Combat or Tactical Shotgun, several mods for your equipment, a Shell/Ammochain box or two, and a stash of Large Medkits, whereas in UV, most of the time you'll be fighting them with only a basic Shotgun or Chaingun or unmodified Pistol, a Rocket Launcher with very limited rockets and a single Blue Armor if you completed Hell's Arena, Green Armors that don't do anything against their plasma balls, and only a single Large Medkit on hand and a few small ones.

*The special levels themselves see big jumps in their enemy loadouts between difficulties, and some even farther tweaks on higher difficulties (such as the flood being faster in Halls Of Carnage or Lava Pits/Erebus taking away Radsuits). Phobos Lab on HNTR is not remotely comparable to Phobos Lab on UV.

*Enemies having that universal +2 accuracy boost on UV does matter. For example, Arachnotrons have +3 accuracy normally, which works out to them hitting 84% of their plasma bolts at point blank and 62% at edge of vision. On with the UV boost, they now hit 95% of their bolts at point blank, and 84% at edge of vision, seriously improving their effective damage output. This is why you take so much more damage on Spider's Lair in UV than on HMP, despite UV only adding two more Arachnotrons to it.

*Level types and level events also get nastier the higher the difficulty, for example nuke events get a smaller timer, deadly air events drain health faster, flood events are faster (and if on UV or N, can flood as fast as Halls Of Carnage), or some stuff won't even appear below UV (such as boss-only levels or blood caves in the standard game).

I think the only thing I would maybe change here is giving UV a slightly lower EXP multiplier (maybe x0.95?), particularly to account for the new special level pair that is being added on floor 4, and some new more EXP-heavy enemies being added to special levels.

EDIT: I did a standard HNTR run just because it has been so long since I did one and was thinking maybe I underrated the impact of getting less levels... and nah, beating it was completely mindless. No Hell Knights and nothing else bigger than them in Phobos made it a breeze to run through with no caution, and like I said, by the time I did have to fight them, I already had pretty good equipment to handle them. Then Deimos levels never had more than a few of the bigger baddies, I didn't even encounter an Archvile until Hell 3, and speaking of empty Hell levels, I spawned near an Archvile + Revenants group on the penultimate floor, where after dispatching them, the enemy reveal activated as there were only three enemies left on the entire rest of the floor. The special levels were also all way easier, the only speedbump was Cathedral because I couldn't get Brute nor Finesse 3 before reaching it (lacking the latter made my Chainsaw not quite fast enough to where he sometimes got hits in during my timing trick), but since he had so much less health, I was able to outlast him without much trouble (and kill him before getting any warnings about the Enraged Timer). Only ended up missing out on the Conqueror because the levers on Erebus are currently bugged and I didn't have the Scythe to fallback on to kill the unreachable enemies.

The only real annoying thing with gaining levels at a slower pace on HNTR was that I couldn't get Whizkid until over halfway into the game, while the game gave me a ton of mods. But since the difficulty was so light, I could get away with having my inventory being halfway full with mods and running around with a single Large medkit in reserve without ever being in real danger.