With the few winnable Angelics I have left, there is Marksman Angelic, that I largely put off because of my dislike for 0.9.9.7's pistols, but when the alternatives are Masochist Angelic or spinning the slots for either Arena Diamond or Everyman Angelic, there was really no more excuse to procrastinate this one longer. Marksman Angelic requires winning an Angel of Marksmanship + Angel of Darkness Dual Angel with 50+% kills; the kill requirement is completely irrelevant when you cannot realistically stair dive with this combo and you simply aren't going to make it if you don't kill over half the enemies along the way, so that part of the badge can be ignored. However, the combo of AoMr and AoD itself is very nasty, with pistols being the worst weapon to be stuck with for reduced vision when you are going to miss over half your shots against enemies that can still fire on you perfectly fine and later game pistols can knockback enemies into this range, whereas shotguns can still fire back with perfect accuracy, melee has the defenses and/or speed to just rush in, explosives can still hit nearby walls to damage out-of-vision enemies, and rapid fire at least can pump out enough shots to make enough of them hit to effectively kill weaker enemies. This all gets exacerbated by how terrible pistols are prior to 0.10, especially in the early game where AoD additionally makes things all the more tougher. You get AoD's doubled EXP gain that stacks with N!'s 1.2 EXP multiplier, but with how many traits pistol builds already demand to even be functional, this is more a necessary mercy to keep you from completely fucked in the early game. Even Tormuse never got the badge despite
actively attempting it, but according to the
0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters Thread, two other players have verifiably achieved it, with
Cotonou and
papilio doing so. Cotonou didn't state how many attempts it took him, but with his 6 for 157 winrate stated on his mortem, we can assume it took him lots and lots, while papilio states it took him 40+ attempts (he also did it a
second time but doesn't state how many tries it took him that time), so it's looking like I have my work cut out for me...
For the build, after discussing it with Klapaucius, I first tried a cheesy Vampyre build for a few attempts, since while Vampyre isn't outright broken in 0.9.9.7 like it is in 0.9.9.8, it's still easily the best mastery and on N! it can achieved a near-IDDQD state even with just fists, which AoMr allows you to still use. However, with the vision reduction meaning you can't safely run -> wait camp without finding an enclosed room and how terrible being stuck with fists + pistols already is in the early game, on top of the fact that I still need very good indestructible or regenerating armor to actually safely go on big Vampyre rampages with my fists, I decided to abandon the idea. It is probably doable, but would require even more early game luck than just doing this with pistols would, and it would ultimately basically just play like another Strongman Angelic run that allows you to kill things with pistols, something I do not want to go through again after having
already done Strongman Angelic. So with that ruled out, there's one mastery that's clearly far and away the best option for this badge, Cateye. Cateye is technically a rapid fire mastery, but the vision boost is beneficial for any weapon, and once you get Cateye, you would now have equal vision with the enemies, at which point you're basically playing a regular masterless N! AoMr game with no map memory but doubled EXP that makes the mid and late game easier. Cateye is what I used for the same reason with my
Hunter Diamond Conqueror run, and is what Cotonou and papilio used in their Marksman Angelic run, so I'm not breaking new ground here, but with how bad pistols are in 0.9.9.7, not using Cateye would make this badge exponentially more terrible, and I'm not gonna run hundreds of attempts just to get some more cool points with using something else.
That said, despite settling on the same mastery as Cotonou and papilio, my way to Cateye and which supplemental traits I get will be quite different. First, while Cotonou and papilio opt to open with Int2 before building their pistol traits, I just go straight for SoG3; pistols
need SoG3 to even actually adequately function, knowing where enemies are won't matter if you can't actually fight back against enemies that you can see, I'm sure Cotonou and papilio lost many attempts because they were trying to fight Hell Knights or several Pinkies with SoG1 or 2. Another major distinction then comes in that while they get Dualgunner after SoG2, I
never get Dualgunner here; I'm of the firm belief Dualgunner is actually a trap, as any gaudy-looking DPS numbers you get on paper with DG don't matter once you run into the severe reloading bottleneck that two pistols force on you, and so I find that even if not playing Sharpshooter, you're better off sticking to a single pistol and being able to use an Ammochain box to solve the reloading issue in fights that matter, while any extra DPS granted by DG usually ends up just being overkill. You additionally have better crowd control without DG slowing down your firing speed while pistols already struggle with crowds, and you'll end up wasting a lot less ammo too, I'm also sure that Cotonou, papilio, Tormuse, and others lost many runs from thinking they just needed to get Dualgunner. Not getting Dualgunner also means I can get Cateye sooner, and any additional delay to Cateye (which is already getting delayed by the three SoG levels) is painful when that means going through another late Phobos or early Deimos floor with reduced vision while far more dangerous enemies are around. I was initially going to try putting Intuition 2 off for after Cateye since that would delay it, but after getting a level of SoB, I decided that there was too much risk to stumble around without Int2 and that being able to get Cateye a level sooner won't matter if I just end up dying from stumbling into a Baron or Commando that I can't see. It is then getting Cateye after that; the two requisite SoB levels are very good for pistols when it's a farther desperately needed early combat boost and SoB is critical for hitting those knockback thresholds that pistols need to hit, but the requisite Triggerhappy level is a very painful completely dead level, however unlike with Bullet Dance, Cateye here makes stomaching the dead level very much worth it. After Cateye I would immediately want a level of Hellrunner, as at least one level of HR would be needed for the Anomaly, but in this run, since I don't get enough EXP to fit it in time and end up using Phase Devices instead, I get a level of Eagle Eye before HR, since pistols miss far too frequently without any EE (another deviation from Cotonou and papilio, since the former doesn't get EE until his very last level and papilio never gets it at all). I do really want Whizkid, but since I'm at level 12 at this point, SoG4 and 5 open up, which you have to get ASAP as pistols finally become actually very good with SoG5. Then I can stomach some dead Finesse levels for Whizkid to buff up my pistols farther, as well as squeeze one more SoB level in for more damage-boosting double-dipping.
For the immediate start of the game, if the random starting mod isn't a Technical Mod to immediately put on my starting Pistol, I reset, as the immediate firing speed buff is far more valuable in the hardest part of the game than a slightly larger clip on that Pistol or a slightly more accurate Pistol (and while immediately getting speed-boosting boots instead with that starting A mod would be very nice, you might not get your first pair of boots until late Phobos or maybe even Deimos if you're unlucky, so going with the starting T mod is a lot more reliable even if you wanted the movement speed more). This is especially so as beating Hell's Arena in this challenge isn't feasible and so I won't be getting that guaranteed Power Mod from it to buff up my early Pistol instead, making me have to rely on that T-modded Pistol even longer (up until at least Chained Court, possibly even longer until I get my first Power Mod). And as I always say, you don't need to worry about that T Mod going to "waste" when you eventually get SoG5 (and thus hit the firing speed cap), as you can turn that T-modded Pistol into an Energy Pistol, Storm Bolter, or Demolition Pistol later on. Phobos Base Entry plays mostly the same and my usual strategy there applies, but you might have to deal with a Former ending up in that awful "they can see you but you can't see them" range, which could cause a reset. In Phobos 2, you can hopefully find yourself an enclosed space to camp out, though if not, as long as you're not forced into open combat right away or get forced to fight Pinkies in close quarters before you get SoG3, this floor won't be too bad to clear out, just stay out of the open as much as you can. While clearing Hell's Arena isn't realistic, you can go in to get some kills for EXP, but I opt against it, as fighting Cacos in a largely open arena with reduced vision while pistol-locked is far too dangerous for my liking and I really don't want to burn any medkits that I don't need to at this point. As usual, the Phobos 3 to 5 range will be where most runs likely die, fighting Hell Knights does suck, but with SoG3 + SoB on a T-modded Pistol as Scout, they won't be too bad as long as you can avoid getting caught in the open by them. On this floor 3, I spawned near the stairs and a Berserk near it, it could have been tempting to take that Berserk and immediately book it, but it's not advisable in this run, as while the early Hell Knights are bad, the enemies you'll encounter in later Phobos will be even worse if you don't get your levels in now, while a Pistol build also does not get a major power boost from just making to The Chained Court, so unlike with melee builds, you cannot expect to have The Chained Court to make up for any missed EXP by stair diving to it. I did initially try conserving that Berserk to take with me to the next floor, but after taking some damage and hearing Hell Knights around, I just went back to use it now; pistols get the least mileage out of powerups since they cumulatively use up a lot more actions to kill things, but Berserk's massive speed boost and resistances are still very useful at this point for eliminating the Hell Knights and any crowds. On this floor I also find an Ammochain box, which are crucial for any AoMr run as they solve one of the pistol's primary weaknesses of reloading without you needing to invest in Reloader nor make crappy Speedloaders, but you also need to adequately conserve them and not waste their unreplenishable ammo on trash encounters that you don't need fast reloads for (generally I'll have Ammochains equipped when entering new floors to deal with hot starts, unequip them once I got a relatively safe foothold, and then reequip them for any more dangerous encounters that I can't handle with a single clip, such as these early Hell Knights or later on Barons and especially Revenants that take multiple Pistol clips to kill). Phobos 4 has a Cacodemon vault and another Berserk, which I take advantage of to find and clear the vault ASAP, since a vault guarantees a spot you can safely camp in AoD, and of course I want to kill all those Cacodemons while I have Berserk. Unfortunately the way towards where I heard the Cacodemons ended up having most of the floor's enemies and my berserk ran out shortly into it, but I keep up the push towards the vault, with the occasional tactical retreat when things get a little too dicey, and I do succeed in reaching the vault, though by that point most of the enemies have been disposed of so it wasn't much useful (also it had nothing good inside for me).
Phobos 5 would have no good camping spot but did have a horizontal water river running across it that helped with corpse disposal, and so the floor wasn't too bad when limiting my exposure in the open, while I would also get a much appreciated second Ammochain box from an ammo crate. Once my health was running a little low and with the stairs to Chained Court open, I just went into it as burning a medkit to seek out the few remaining stragglers on the floor wouldn't have been worth it. I then make the effort to clear Chained Court since I do want that mostly safe EXP while I also really want a Power and Agility mod. though unfortunately I got the worst mod outcome with a Bulk and Technical Mod, so I still don't have a P-modded Pistol and still no movement speed boost. Fortunately I can get through Phobos 6 and finally
reach Cateye by the end of it, so I'm over the biggest hurdle of the run, but I'm not out of the woods yet as I still got the ever deadly N! Anomaly coming up and am still stuck using pistols. I get another unfortunate outcome when the Phobos 7 special level is
Phobos Lab when I would have obviously really wanted Military Base. I could have possibly done Phobos Lab and not doing so means I'll be entering Anomaly without any HR (while I also got no Invuln on Phobos 7 to handle the Anomaly ambush), but since I didn't even have A-modded boots and managed to gather up three Phase Devices in Phobos, I decided to play it safe and skip it. For the Anomaly itself, with three Phase Devices, I would have to get extraordinarily unlucky to not get past it, but fortunately just the first Phase gets me past the ambush, and then I'm able to run by the Bruisers even with no HR nor speed-boosting boots by waiting behind the wall until both are near it, giving me a cleaner path around them. With that, I get out of Phobos with my first real Cateye attempt, and my
total damage taken in Phobos isn't too bad, I actually had an Untouchable Pin still intact, something I usually lose by this point even in my normal runs.
As I enter Deimos, the absolute worst things at this point are Revenants, who can take over two full Pistols clips to kill while I still don't got reliable konckback on my pistols and they of course hit very hard as well, so using the B and T mods from Chained Court to Fireproof the Anomaly Red Armor was an immediate priority. Going into Hell's Armory is a bit concerning with the two Revenants and several armored Barons, but the potential for one of the special pistols, the mods, and another Ammochain box are too good to give up. It goes surprisingly well, as I am able to mostly kill the Barons and Revenants from the ever reliable camping building before they reach me (aside from taking one Revenant missile when an "almost dead" Revenant didn't die to a Pistol shot while in the doorway, but the Fireproof Red Armor softened it a lot). The Shambler was not bad, aside from some annoyance of having to take some hits to ensure he got finished off in the lava. Unfortunately the weapon cache
didn't have any special pistols, and the rare mod was a
Sniper; two Snipers on a Pistol would be amazing but just a single Sniper is a lot less useful than any of the other rare mods would have been. At least I do finally get a Power mod to put on a Pistol (on top of SoG3 + SoB2, it increases a Pistol's knockback chance from 18.75% to 40%, making knockback semi-reliable, and when I get SoG5 soon after, it will jump up to 76%), and that Minigun isn't entirely useless as it can
store a lot more bullets than a bullet stack can. I skip the rest of the Deimos special levels, as I couldn't make an Energy Pistol before Containment Area to even attempt it (I only entered it for a faster exit), while City Of Skulls and Halls Of Carnage are obviously not worth it in this badge. Most of Deimos went pretty smooth, but I got a
pretty nasty maze for Deimos 7, which I would end up handling by using Napalm Barrels to create this
shoddy-looking camping spot while I waited for every enemy to shoot them into the lava, and it took a while but it did end up working well to get me out of the maze without taking significant damage. The Cyberdemon fight was a pushover; a Deimos 7 Berserk I brought in didn't last very long (see what I said earlier about pistols running out powerups faster from requiring more cumulative actions to kill things), but a radsuit in conjunction with the Fireproof Red Armor was reducing his hits to 1 damage, and he didn't get many shots off anyway as SoG5 + SoB2 with Ammochain support
took him down rather quickly.
Hell gave me a
pretty rough intro, as turning the corner to the right ended up having a ton of Formers and several Revenants + some Archviles, which were overwhelming me and so I had to retreat to handle them more isolated after I mostly cleared out the rest of the floor. I was hopeful the Unique that spawned was one of the pistols or armors, but it ended up being the
entirely useless Mjollnir. I also built a Storm Bolter here, I don't think very highly of it normally but with excess B + T mods available, I figured it could be nice for when the extra DPS would matter, especially for the Revenants when I've been unable to find another Power mod to make an Energy Pistol to handle them with. After an easy Hell 2, I got a Hell 3 that
put me in a scary-looking start with lots of enemies around, but as long as I stood back in the starting room, I did have a safe camping spot and I had the DPS to kill enemies as they stepped into the door, allowing me to
clear that floor without much issue. After going through The Vaults for a quicker exit to maintain more of some Berserk I got (and
getting teased with a Unique I could not get, couldn't even check the side vaults as I still had no Energy Pistol), I would get greeted with a Pain Elemental cave; normally I love getting those in N! runs since they're very easy for the Shotgun or Melee builds I'm usually playing, but as a Pistol-locked build, they may be even potentially worse than an Arachnotron cave. It did have a
Power mod to finally finish assembling my Energy Pistol, and I find the stairs soon after, which
I gladly take to immediately leave. That Energy Pistol would funnily end up unused though, as in Hell 5 I would
finally find a Homing Phase alongside getting
Invuln near stairs, then Hell 6 is a
Pinky + Nightmare Demon cave with immediately accessible stairs that I dive for, and then
Hell 7 I can
completely skip with that Homing Phase. With that Invuln still intact and the Storm Bolter repeatedly flinching her,
the Spider Mastermind stood no chance.
Excluding the attempts at the Vampyre strat and the resets to start with a Technical mod, I actually managed this my first try when going for Cateye. Not getting any mazes before I got Cateye was a huge help, as was getting an early Ammochain box, but other than that, I don't think my luck was that exceptional; no Power nor Agility mods until Hell's Armory really sucked, and not getting Military Base set me back a couple levels entering Anomaly, while I also never got any special pistols. I would still rate this badge as very much deserving its Angelic tiering in 0.9.9.7, it just wasn't quite as brutal as I thought it might have been. Now in 0.10, this badge is much easier, as due to SoG being changed to +3 damage/-10% firing time, pistols have their early game woes completely reversed, so surviving to Cateye is a much easier time and then with Cateye you still invalidate the main challenge of AoD. However, I did put in an official proposal in the
0.11 Compilation Thread to change the pointless kill requirement of this badge to a Cateye ban, since Cateye is so over-centralizing in AoD and pistols are no longer bad enough that they need to be allowed it here as a mercy. If that proposal gets accepted, it's certainly going to get interesting to see how this badge evolves in later versions. Well with Marksman Angelic obtained[ I increase my
record Angelic count up to 11, but with my only winnable badges remaining being Arena Diamond, Everyman Angelic, and Masochist Angelic, it may be a while before my next badge.....
Until then, here is the mortem for this run:
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DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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pistolssux4, level 18 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
He survived 1990595 turns and scored 1065986 points.
He played for 5 hours, 9 minutes and 6 seconds.
He opposed the Nightmare!
He killed 1340 out of 1469 hellspawn. (91%)
He held his right to remain violent.
He was an Angel of Marksmanship!
He was also an Angel of Darkness!
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 11
Levels visited : 4
Levels completed : 2
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Mastermind's Brain
UAC Star (silver cluster)
Hell Armorer Badge
Marksman Angelic Badge
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 81/50 Experience 188729/18
ToHit Ranged +2 ToHit Melee +2 ToDmg Ranged +3 ToDmg Melee +3
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Scout
Finesse (Level 2)
Hellrunner (Level 1)
Son of a bitch (Level 3)
Son of a gun (Level 5)
Eagle Eye (Level 1)
Intuition (Level 2)
Whizkid (Level 2)
Triggerhappy (Level 1)
Cateye (Level 1)
SoG->SoG->SoG->Int->SoB->Int->SoB->TH->MCe->EE->HR->SoG->SoG->Fin->Fin->WK->SoB->WK->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[a] [ Armor ] red armor [4/4] (100%) (A)
[b] [ Weapon ] storm pistol (1d8)x2 [7/9]
[c] [ Boots ] tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
[d] [ Prepared ] 10mm ammo chain (x83)
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
[a] pistol (2d5) [8/8] (B1P1S1)
[b] energy pistol (2d5) [6/6]
[c] minigun (1d6)x8 [338/338] (B2)
[d] red armor [4/4] (100%)
[e] fireproof red armor [4/4] (100%)
[f] red armor [4/4] (200%) (B)
[g] 10mm ammo (x100)
[h] 10mm ammo (x100)
[i] 10mm ammo (x72)
[j] power cell (x50)
[k] large med-pack
[l] large med-pack
[m] large med-pack
[n] large med-pack
[o] large med-pack
[p] large med-pack
[q] phase device
[r] envirosuit pack
[s] blood skull
[t] plasteel boots [2/2] (100%)
[u] 10mm ammo chain (x250)
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
Fire - internal 0% torso 25% feet 0%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
146 former humans
168 former sergeants
139 former captains
353 imps
91 demons
186 lost souls
54 cacodemons
31 hell knights
44 barons of hell
20 arachnotrons
14 former commandos
23 pain elementals
29 revenants
22 mancubi
17 arch-viles
1 shambler
1 Cyberdemon
1 Spider Mastermind
-- History ---------------------------------------------------
He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
On level 8 he assembled a fireproof armor!
On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
On level 11 he arrived at the Containment Area.
Not knowing what to do, he left.
On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
On level 17 he assembled a storm bolter pistol!
On level 17 he found the Mjollnir!
On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
He came, he saw, but he left.
On level 20 he assembled a energy pistol!
He left level 22 as soon as possible.
He left level 23 as soon as possible.
Then at last he found Dis!
On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the storm pistol.
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The missile hits the Spider
Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
You quickly reload the storm pistol.
The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The missile hits the Spider
Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the
Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
411 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
196 of those were killed.
1 of those was killed by something unknown.
97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
108 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
64 killed the bitch and survived.
37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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Author
Topic: (0.9.9.7) [N!|AoMr+AoD|91%|YAVP] - Buffing my Angelic record to 11 with Marksman (Read 7 times)