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[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 x1.1. 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. You could justify going with reducing it farther to the standard x1.0 EXP multiplier, but I think we should test the x1.1 multiplier first, especially since the Enraged Timer does add some more difficulty back to N! after its changes, and a x1.0 multiplier may overly punish players that skip most of the special levels, as well as make early A100 unreasonably difficult on N!.

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 (and you could justify removing one of them on HNTR too with how difficult the fight is, while the lower HP the Shamblers have in HNTR gets counterbalanced by the player being at a lower level). 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, however, the newly implemented Enraged mode is a big wrinkle to the outspeeding strat, as it  can take long enough to run out the Enraged Timer 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). As such, the enemy loadout can remain as is on UV and N!, with the only suggested change being to make it more apparent to newbies what Cathedral's gimmick is upon entering (this could be done by having a lone Lost Soul in view at the start, which would allow newbies to immediately see that they can't shoot any guns on the level without aggroing a bunch of enemies on them, while basically not changing the level for those that do know). 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 items within tiers aren't to any particularly order.. 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! if destroying most corpses is required). Additionally rebalance their enemy loadouts to incorporate the new enemies added, particularly on Nightmare (go to this post for details on how to rebalance each special level).

*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.

*The Marine's bio still states they get +20% fire/plasma/acid resistances, when they have been nerfed to +10%.

*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 disallow hunting enemies from infighting, 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.

*Fix the remaining bugs and issues from prior betas 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 them 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.

*Add 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 happens with Enviroboots, Medical Powerarmor, Necroarmor, and Angelic Armor) 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. It may also be related to the bug where you come unable to prematurely end a run -> wait with enemies revealed in very long games (such as A100/666).

*Various minor text/UI issues 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 listing as mid priority 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, just like how medals with differently tiered versions work.

*Have more badges require at least a standard win, rather than any win, to help make standard wins more meaningful than partial wins. 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.

*Add a replay recording and playback system (would be a great addition, but probably would demand too much dev work to add in 0.9.9.9).