After the extreme damage tanking that
Strongman Angelic required, it was time to go in the extreme opposite direction of taking very little damage with Demonic Diamond. This badge sits as perhaps the most imposing Diamond aside from Arena Diamond; completing standard N! with under 500 damage for the Untouchable Pin would already be an impressive achievement, winning with under 200 for the Untouchable Medal is going to make the vast majority of players nope out of even trying it. Additionally, while most of the Diamonds can be cheesed or made at least somewhat easier, Demonic Diamond uniquely sits as an uncheesable Diamond, as you can't mix it with any Angels to make it easier, and there is really nothing you can exploit in the game to win it aside from heavily utilizing general damage avoidance tactics and making the most of Invulnerabilities. Unsurprisingly, according to the
0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, Demonic Diamond was tied for the second least won Diamond/Angelic badge with only two players recorded winning it;
papilio and
Icy, i.e. the player who once held the record for most Diamonds in 0.9.9.7, and the player who broke his record and became the first to verifiably win every Diamond in any version. Two more players were also listed winning it in 0.9.9.6,
2DeviationsOut and
Firstblood, and well, anyone reading this likely already knows the story behind 2Dev, while Firstblood's Demonic Diamond mortem is one of the most outlandish things I ever seen on this forum and makes most of 2Dev's mortems look believable in comparison (doing Demonic Diamond as a Conqueror, while playing a melee build that doesn't even get Intuition until late in the game, while hitting a ton of levers for Gambler's Shield without said Intuition, while getting Hell Arena Pwnage with no AoMC and no Juggler/Finesse/Intuition, while getting the luck needed for Shambler's Head without good ranged DPS, while also getting the luck needed for Gatekeeper Diamond on N!, while being melee-locked through nearly all of Hell from the guaranteed Dragonslayer and getting through N! Mortuary melee-locked without taking a ton of damage, while by his own admission not knowing how to properly corpse dispose with a melee weapon yet still managing to clear every special level of every respawn, while also
also getting the luck for Scavenger Diamond with no Whisper Of Death cheese and being melee-locked so he had to get lucky with several Phase Devices to get in all three vaults, while it was only the second recorded run on his file that he treated like a casual N! run and is the last thing he ever posted?
Come the fuck onnnnnnn). So yeah, only two players have verifiably won this badge legit (well
Tormuse also won it in 0.9.9.4, but it had a completely different requirement prior to 0.9.9.5 of beating standard N! with only fist kills, so it isn't meaningful for comparison here).
So what to do for the build. Both papilio and Icy went masterless Scouts that opened with Int2 and then Dodgemaster, while papilio got general offense after Dodgemaster and Icy got TaN2 before getting Fin and SoB, and both had the same overarching strategy of playing through the game fast, not sticking around to clear levels and basically ignoring all the special levels besides Chained Court. I of course though don't like the masterless Scout stairdive, as I find it's too reliant on Invuln/Berserk and stair luck, and is lacking in the power to handle bad hot starts or other bad levels like mazes with stairs on the opposite side of the map; even if such a build could survive, it's sure to take a lot of damage doing so and under 200 damage doesn't give much room for error. Cateye is an option as
the damage avoidance mastery, but without being backed by AoMC, Cateye similarly has a lack of power to cleanly get through hot starts or being suffocated by enemies with subpar cover. So I want good damage avoidance, and less reliance on powerups or good level generation luck? What do you know, it's gonna be another Shottyhead run for me! Compared to my typical Shottyhead builds, I do go for Int2 after by usual Fin -> Jug opener, as while the attrition damage from general exploration is something I usually can easily shrug off, I will quickly run out that 199 damage allowance by repeatedly walking into an enemy's vision and so Int2 is pretty necessary here, especially if I don't want to run->wait over a hundred thousand turns on every single floor. I also considered Berserker as damage assurance against the VMR and Cyberdemon, but ended up foregoing it as I won't get the levels to easily fit it in without sacrificing other important traits and I plan to not stick around in later levels where the VMR will be more prominent. With the overarching strategy compared to papilio and Icy, I also do plan to clear out earlier floors when I'm able to reasonably do so with little damage since the extra levels will make me less dependent on powerup luck later, but once I get Shottyhead, I'll be looking to just go for the Invuln stairdive the rest of the way when I see the opportunity to do so.
As always, you got Phobos Base Entry at the start, and it's annoying as avoiding damage here is entirely luck-based, but if you just spam my "run straight for the base and hope the Shotgunners don't immediately come out" strat, you should get a damageless Phobos Base Entry without wasting too much time, but you can settle for getting hit by a single Pistol bullet or some Former punches if resetting for the damageless Base Entry would be excessively annoying. One good thing is you don't need to worry about getting the medkits here, as a successful Demonic Diamond run won't need much healing, but they would be nice to have still, if just as a means to restore running. If you get a bad floor 2 generated that makes you take a lot of unavoidable damage early, you might just want to reset, though after my first damageless Phobos Base Entry, I got
one of the best floor 2s I could ask for with a very safe camping spot and a vault with a Combat Shotgun, a Tech Mod to put on it, and a Red Armor (while you want to avoid giving enemies the chance to hit you at all, having very good armor is important because you won't play perfectly or will just get put in situations where damage is unavoidable and so minimizing how punishing any hits you take is important). It took a lot of camping, but I'm able to get through the first two floors
damageless (and 100% kills too, so I actually briefly had Demonic Angelic online, but you can see from the turn counter there just how ridiculous it was to do that over just the first two floors...).
I then head into Hell's Arena and do actually intend to clear it unlike papilio and Icy in their runs. Giving up the easy Chained Court sucks (and I would indeed skip Unchained Court later on), but that guaranteed Rocket Launcher is just more important for two key reasons; one, you need rocket jumping to stretch Invulns far longer than they would last otherwise, and two, if I don't get a floor 7 Invuln nor can get lucky with a Phase Device, rocket jumping is needed to ensure I don't take a big amount of damage in Phobos Anomaly. Having access to a corpse disposing weapon early is also gonna be important, because you're not gonna be able to cleanly kill every enemy in a doorway or on fluids and a dangerous enemy respawning at a bad time can potentially result in you taking a lot of damage (and if you don't get this Rocket Launcher, you likely won't get one until early Deimos, and possibly won't get one until even later if the RNG isn't cooperative). The Blue Armor before Hell Knights start showing up will also be nice, less important when I already got a Red Armor but still, it's actually slightly better at reducing damage from Hell Knights and Cacodemons than the Red Armor. Clearing Hell's Arena is also why I open with Juggler instead of Intuition, since Juggler is the single best early game trait for clearing Hell's Arena and could save a reset if I get a bad starting wave spawns (not to mention its value in aiding precise corpse stacking when I can't eat projectiles on corpses to destroy them), while floor 2 is easy enough to avoid damage in without Int2 and I should hit level 4 by the end of Hell's Arena to have Int2 before floor 3. As for how Hell's Arena goes, I do
immediately lose my damageless bid and would get hit by another Cacodemon shortly after, but the rest of the Arena went without a hitch thanks to having Juggler (the early EXP boost from that that floor 2 Cacodemon vault was also nice for letting me hit level 4 to get Int2 midway into the Arena instead of at the end). After an easy floor 3, my early strategy gets quickly justified with this
floor 4 maze with the stairs on the complete opposite end of my starting point. Running through this level would not have been viable, I would have surely been screwed by respawning Hell Knights if I couldn't blow up their corpses with the Rocket Launcher, and even with my early offensive advantage, there were too many enemies to safely push through the maze and so I had to pull back. Fortunately I was able to set up a
workable camping spot near an acid pool for corpse disposal, and while some enemies could pop up from the south, the Imps that largely did so I could safely shoot at a distance, so it took a while but I get through that floor with little damage. The next two Phobos floors would have me fight a disgusting amount of Hell Knights but I get through killing nearly everything in them (while also skipping Unchained Court, since I would likely take a large amount of damage in it), however Phobos 7 would be a very nice breather, not only being an easy safe floor but it also had the most important thing to find before the end of Phobos, an
Invulnerability Globe. After clearing the floor I skip the Phobos 7 special level (which was Phobos Lab that was going to be an automatic skip anyway, would have done Military Base though if it spawned and I didn't get an Invuln), and then take the Invulnerability into Phobos Anomaly, allowing me to get through damageless. I finish Phobos with
only 24 damage taken, considering avoiding damage is hardest in Phobos and a good Demonic Diamond attempt would finish it around 100, this is an incredible pace, but I can't get too complacent, it only takes a couple bad floors to lose Demonic Diamond.
Thanks to rocket jumping, I'm able to take the Invuln into
Hell's Armory, allowing me to safely clean the starting area and set up camp to clear it out without taking damage. My plan was always to stop by Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab since the pre-Shambler portion of them could be safely cleared out with minimal damage and getting one of the Exotic shotguns or the Jackhammer from the weapon cache would be a huge help, while the two free mods and Shell Box are also nice, and then I could just leave without fighting the Shamblers. With me having a shot at the Shambler's Head for the guaranteed Nano Mod and being so far ahead of the damage pace, I do take the risk in releasing the Shambler. Unfortunately I don't get good teleportation luck and I don't have Shottyhead yet, so
I do get hit a couple times, while the lab cache reward is an
Onyx Mod, normally great but it's actually probably the least useful of the four rare mods here, since if I'm taking enough damage for infinite durability to matter in this sort of run, it's probably over anyway (I decide to hold onto it to make Lava Boots later since it could maybe save me more damage than indestructible Red Armor or a pre-buff Tower Shield would). The weapon cache also wasn't useful; it had a
Blaster and GCB, amazing if this was a Pistol run but basically useless for Shottyhead... Coming into Armory was still worth it though for the mods (making a Tactical Shotgun and Boots) and the Shell Box. Deimos 2 would follow this up with an awkward starting room, and I would end up in a rather perilous position where I got pincered by a Baron and Commando while I didn't have Shottyhead online yet to fight them both. With running and getting closer to the Commando, it doesn't go as badly as it could have, but I do take a Plasma Rifle burst and
lose my shot an Untouchable Cross (one of three medals I'm still missing, but I'm going to need to get it anyway when I go for pure Destroyer Diamond soon, so that doesn't matter as long as I stay under 200). Deimos 3 would give me this
annoying warehouse level, where I had to keep luring enemies into this one door, and while I could have probably done The Wall damageless, I don't need the Backpack or Missile Launcher and so it would be a pointless risk. I also find a Bulk Mod to Fireproof one of my Red Armors, as since I won't be getting Berserker, getting hit by the VMR or Cyberdemon will do a lot of damage even in P-modded Red Armor. Speaking of the Cyberdemon, after getting Shottyhead, my plan was to get HR2 and Dodgemaster to ensure I could get through him damageless (as long as I didn't get bad luck with his starting spawn position), however Deimos 5 would have an Invuln on it, where I then pivot and do Invuln'd rocket jumping to skip through the last two Deimos floors to take that Invuln to the Cyberdemon, allowing me to skip getting Dodgemaster for more Finesse and Whizkid to better help me lategame. The Invuln lasts through the Cyberdemon fight, and I end up finishing Deimos with
only 59 damage sustained, giving me a generous 140 damage buffer for Hell to work with. (On a side note, that aforementioned Deimos 5 had a
second Blaster spawn, a reminder Blasters have a measly spawning weight of 2 in this version, shame I don't get this luck with the special shotguns instead...)
At this point, since the Mastermind will be easy, I'm ready to do a stair dive through Hell to Dis when I get more Invulnerability. Hell does give me a rough intro however, with Hell 1 being a
maze that has both set of stairs far from the starting point, while my Invuln from Deimos runs out shortly in. Taking it very slowly and carefully though, I'm able to get through the maze taking no more than 2 points of damage, and then Hell 2 has the
Invuln I need to finish this. After clearing out Hell 2, I take that Invuln, level up shortly into Hell 3 to get Whizkid and build myself a Tactical Rocket Launcher, at which point it's a wrap. I rocket jump invulnerable through the rest of Hell, while taking the opportunity to detour through Limbo after getting another Invuln on Hell 4 to get the Assault Shotgun and mod it up just in case the Invulns run out before Dis, but thanks to the Tactical Rocket Launcher letting me rocket jump several times between reloads, I'm able to Invuln skip the rest of Hell. The Invuln does run out shortly into Dis, but they last long enough to get me safely in the Mastermind's face, where I can hammer away with the Double Shotgun and effortlessly stunlock her to death with Shottyhead. I take just 2 points of damage through Hell, so I end up finishing the game with a mere
61 damage sustained.
And there it is, the Demonic Diamond is secured. Despite how scary this bad looks, after a few resets on Phobos Base Entry, my first run that got past Base Entry damageless ended up going all the way. Despite that first try, I wouldn't say this badge doesn't deserve its reputation, I did have to play extremely slowly and carefully before I got the Invulns to skip most of the second half, and that floor 2 vault with Red Armor + a T-modded Combat Shotgun really helped me mitigate damage in Phobos, but it's probably not the hardest Diamond. Aside from the even more infamous Arena Diamond, I think Inquisitor Diamond may have actually been harder, and I'm not looking forward to pure Destroyer Diamond, though you also have to consider that unlike those harder Diamonds, there's nothing you can do to try cheesing Demonic Diamond with its standard game restriction, other than spam quick runs until you get extremely good Invulnerability luck. An interesting thing to me about this run is that if you subtract the 14 damage I took from the Shambler that I could have not released (the Onyx mod I got from killing him did basically nothing anyway, as I made very little use of the Lava Boots I made from it), I actually would have finished with under 50 damage... which means theoretically this run would have won under Masochist Angelic's constraints even without getting any Ironman or Blood Skulls or Medical Armors to expand your health pool there. That gets me thinking, perhaps when I do eventually try to win the first 0.9.9.7 Masochist Angelic, rather than going Vampyre as I was planning, perhaps I should do this Shottyhead build again... We'll cross that bridge when I get there. Also getting this badge and many other Diamonds + Angelics with Shottyhead, perhaps that could convince people that I'm right about it being a top tier mastery? :p Anyway with Demonic Diamond, I'm at
22 Diamonds now and without cheesing any of them through Dual Angels, though Destroyer Diamond and especially Arena Diamond may test my resolve to not resort to Dual Angel abuse...
Now here is the mortem:
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DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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ONLY200?!, level 12 Cyberdemon Chaos Lt. General Scout,
defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
He survived 1227766 turns and scored 439960 points.
He played for 3 hours, 58 minutes and 56 seconds.
He opposed the Nightmare!
He killed 1078 out of 1455 hellspawn. (74%)
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 11
Levels visited : 3
Levels completed : 2
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Cyberdemon's Head
Mastermind's Brain
UAC Star (gold cluster)
Untouchable Medal
Hell Armorer Badge
Hell Champion Medal
Demonic Diamond Badge
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 83/50 Experience 62054/12
ToHit Ranged +0 ToHit Melee +0 ToDmg Ranged +0 ToDmg Melee +0
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Scout
Finesse (Level 2)
Hellrunner (Level 2)
Reloader (Level 2)
Juggler (Level 1)
Intuition (Level 2)
Whizkid (Level 1)
Shottyman (Level 1)
Shottyhead (Level 1)
Fin->Jug->Int->Int->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh->HR->Fin->WK->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[a] [ Armor ] red armor [6/6] (99%) (P)
[b] [ Weapon ] double shotgun (10d3)x2 [0/2] (P1T1)
[c] [ Boots ] tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
[d] [ Prepared ] shell box (x43)
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
[a] tactical shotgun (8d3) [5/5]
[b] tactical rocket launcher (6d6) [3/5]
[c] assault shotgun (9d3) [6/6] (P2T1)
[d] fireproof red armor [4/4] (100%)
[e] shotgun shell (x14)
[f] shotgun shell (x50)
[g] shotgun shell (x50)
[h] shotgun shell (x50)
[i] shotgun shell (x50)
[j] shotgun shell (x50)
[k] shotgun shell (x50)
[l] rocket (x10)
[m] rocket (x2)
[n] large med-pack
[o] large med-pack
[p] large med-pack
[q] lava plasteel boots [2]
[r] shell box (x100)
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
Fire - internal 0% torso 25% feet 0%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
139 former humans
194 former sergeants
40 former captains
241 imps
121 demons
156 lost souls
59 cacodemons
34 hell knights
19 barons of hell
7 arachnotrons
30 former commandos
17 pain elementals
6 revenants
7 mancubi
5 arch-viles
1 shambler
1 Cyberdemon
1 Spider Mastermind
-- History ---------------------------------------------------
He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
He left the Arena as a champion!
On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
On level 9 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
On level 9 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
On level 11 he assembled a fireproof armor!
On level 13 he assembled a lava boots!
He left level 15 as soon as possible.
On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
On level 19 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter Limbo!
He managed to escape from Limbo!
On level 21 he ran for his life from lava!
He left level 22 as soon as possible.
Then at last he found Dis!
On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
You quickly reload the double shotgun.
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the double shotgun.
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the double shotgun.
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the double shotgun.
The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the Spider
Mastermind! Press <Enter>...
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
332 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
133 of those were killed.
1 of those was killed by something unknown.
96 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
94 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
50 killed the bitch and survived.
37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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Author
Topic: (0.9.9.7) [N!|74%|YAVP] - Winning the uncheesable Demonic Diamond (Read 234 times)