(
If you just want to watch the video of this run, you can watch it here)
To finish up 0.9.9.7, I got one badge left to get, the infamous Everyman Angelic. When the Angelics were first introduced in 0.9.9.7, the one everyone hyped up to be the impossible one was Everyman Angelic, because just how do you beat the game with having only one trait and being unable to take any hits with only 10 max HP? Even 2Dev apparently thought it would be too outlandish even for him to post a mortem of clearing Archangel of Humanity on N!, with him making a
post saying he was "working on it" and claiming "damn it's hard", yet never posting a supposed completion of it before he suddenly disappeared after his infamous (and now debunked) Veteran/Elite/UAC/Demonic
Quad Angelic mortem. Kornel would even say he listed the difficulty for ArchAoH as "TwoDev" because he thought you would pretty much need to cheat to beat it. However Everyman Angelic would prove to not be among the impossible tier of the Angelics and was actually won before a few of the winnable Angelics (being won many years before I first won
Eagerness,
Inquisitor, and
Masochist in this version), with Tormuse famously
first cracking it in 2017 (which earned him having the difficulty for the challenge renamed after him from 0.9.9.8-onward), and then Icy would
win it too five years later. As it turns out, DRL
does give you just enough tools in addition to AoH's generous starting loadout to viably win the game on N! with almost no traits and almost no health if you get good enough luck, particularly with powerups. But luck is the big caveat here and is the reason I put this badge off after even the more difficult or tedious Angelics; no matter how good you are, with no traits nor health, you still won't make it past Phobos without good level generation or Berserk luck, and you won't survive post-Phobos without getting good enough Invulnerability luck, with it taking Tormuse over 200 attempts (with him stating 173 recorded attempts and dozens of unrecorded attempts before), and Icy didn't state how many attempts it took, but when looking at his death count on this
failed attempt to compare to his winning mortem and him saying he did 18 serious attempts up to that point, it's probably somewhere around 100 attempts for him at least. I really don't like doing challenges that amount to little more than spinning a slot machine until the RNG decides you can win, but could it really be worse than
Berserker Angelic in that regard?
For build and strategy, instead of regurgitating it, I'll just link Icy's incredible
Everyman Angelic guide. With your lone trait, of the two provably viable options between Hellrunner (which Tormuse used to win) and Intuition (which Icy used to win), I decided to go with Intuition; Hellrunner would get quite a lot more attempts past Phobos (Anomaly in particular will often kill you with no HR even if you still have the Chained Court berserk intact without coming in with Invuln, a Phase, or a Rocket Launcher), but survival past Phobos is extremely reliant on being invulnerable for the vast majority of it or at least berserked when you're not, and Intuition will be vital for finding Invulns/Berserks when otherwise you would have to hope they happen to be in the way on your path to the stairs since you can't viably explore floors in this challenge, or if you are invulned/berserked, you can't afford to be burning your precious powerup turns exploring instead of heading towards the stairs. And as someone who will take needing more early game luck in exchange for more later game reliability, Intuition was the obvious pick for me. With the starting mods, I additionally go with Icy's guide and put the P Mod on the Red Armor, T Mod on the Shotgun, save the B Mod for the Chainsaw, and save the A Mod for boots or the Anomaly Red Armor (if I found no boots prior and will have to run through Anomaly with no invuln, phase, or Rocket Launcher). I thought about saving the T Mod for a Combat Shotgun, since they aren't uncommon after late Phobos and there have been a few times where I got early vaults that I could get into with a Combat Shotgun inside, but much more often than not you'll be primarily using the basic Shotgun for most of Phobos and a better shotgun won't really matter for surviving post-Phobos, so it's better to just immediately T-mod your Shotgun to help you survive Phobos rather than save it for a weapon you likely won't even get until it's too late to matter.
In Phobos Base Entry, the usual strategy applies and is pretty easy, as a P Red Armor reduces nearly every hit to 1 damage. I resetted here a lot early on trying to get a good Phobos Entry, but I learned it doesn't really matter; the extra medkits would be nice but 1 or 2 more medkits is probably not going to make a difference, and you'll likely be able to heal early into floor 2, or can just use a Small Medkit that heals 70% here and so will likely heal off all damage you take here, while again you're very unlikely to die from running out of medkits in this challenge. So the only resets should be from the Shotgunners coming out of the base early, the Formers behaving in a way that makes it excessively annoying, or accidentally destroying all the Shotgunner corpses before you could farm one to load up on shells. Phobos 2 also is not bad and I had only a few resets here, the P-modded Red Armor reduce all Imp fireballs to 1 or 2 damage, all Lost Soul charges to 1 damage, and even Pinky bites will deal only 1 or 2 damage, while the T Shotgun is more than adequate for fighting here and you don't need any traits yet. The only danger are Former Captains (who will deal 4 damage minimum if every bullet of theirs connect, which is nearly half your health here) and Cacodemons if there's a Cacodemon vault (whose plasma damage will halve your Red Armor's effectiveness and so they deal 4 damage on average while hitting up to as much as 9), but Captains are easy to kill with your shotgun and Cacodemons can be pretty reliably corner shot to death with the a T-modded Shotgun, so even they won't be too bad if they don't catch you in the open. It's actually still easy in ArchAoH to clear out Phobos 2 with a decent camping spot, but since levelling up does nothing, killing all the enemies here achieves nothing and you won't need the ammo from the Formers when you can just farm the Shotgunners in Phobos Entry for most of the shells you'll need for the rest of the game. Clearing the floor would make it safe to explore the rest of the floor to find stuff without risk, but unless you get a vault or lucky with crates dropping a Shell Box or boots, there's nothing really worthwhile for this run that you can find on Phobos 2 other than Berserks that Intuition will let you immediately find anyway, so clearing Phobos 2 would often amount to just being a waste of time when you'll very likely just die in the next few floors regardless.
Speaking of which, the Phobos 3-5 range as usual will be what kills the majority of runs. The Hell Knights that start appearing are a huge stepup in danger, when like Cacodemons they inflict plasma damage and so will hit you for up to 9 damage, while with their 10 extra HP and 10% extra speed compared to Cacodemons, they'll get through your corner shooting a lot more often if you can't begin firing on them from far enough away or don't have a lucky early Shell Box. More monster groups start appearing as well, and even if you can reduce the damage from weak enemies to 1, a bunch of them hitting you at once can still shave over half your health away when you got only 10. As a result, you also can't safely use medkits with several enemies in vision, as they'll just knock you back below half health, and so any hot starts here without an immediate good escape path will be lethal. Mazes here will often be invariable death without nearby stairs or berserk, and even with berserk they'll still often kill you from the sheer amount of enemies killing you by attrition. Cacodemon caves will additionally be lethal without quick stairs given that they kill you in 2 or 3 hits and you probably won't have a good corner shooting spot to fight them, but getting a Lost Soul cave will be a massive breather here and you won't even care about their trash EXP yield in this challenge that makes these levels a double-edged sword normally, while Pinky caves can be surprisingly manageable as long as you don't spawn in the middle of a bunch of them, since your P Red Armor softens their bites so much. The strategy at this point is primarily just haul ass to The Chained Court, fighting only what you have to and only go for items that are in the way. Even Berserks aren't really worth going out of your way for when they don't guarantee safety, and you're not likely to find much for helpful stuff in this range, with the big exceptions of Steel Boots being able to spawn on Phobos 4+, a Double Shotgun also on Phobos 4+, and Phase Devices on Phobos 5+. Though I'll also try going for Shell Boxes (they can start starting on Phobos 4) and rockets (Phobos 5+, I won't have a Rocket Launcher yet without a lucky vault but having a good rocket supply if I do get one later is vital), as well as any medkits or Armor Shards that won't be too dangerous to go for (the P Red Armor will be pretty beaten up by this point, so a repair is very helpful as it getting damaged will probably mean you'll die in quick order). If you reach The Chained Court, you could avoid grabbing the Chainsaw or Berserks at first and get to the exit room to camp it out to safely clear out the Formers, so you don't waste any berserk having to shoot the Formers on your way out (as you can't run by them with such low HP, especially the Captains you have to shoot down or they'll shred you), but given that most runs at this point will still fail regardless, it's not worth it time investment-wise to spend several minutes mashing run -> wait every time you make it here just to die a minute later. Actually clearing Chained Court is also possible, but again you get no EXP benefit and you'll need to expend at least two of the Berserks to do so (else the Barons will quickly slaughter you once you release them, even being able to one-shot you in P Red Armor without berserk), the mods might be nice but they aren't worth losing out taking hundreds more turns of berserk with you nor damaging your armor. So the strategy in Chained Court is to just immediately grab everything and get out, while shooting down the Formers that are in the way and trying to avoid stepping into a Chaingunner's vision (other than the one likely in the exit room that you'll have to take a hit from as waiting for him to get out would waste too much berserk). The strategy for post-Chained Court will rely on trying to have that berserk last up through Anomaly, as at this point when the enemies much worse than Hell Knights start showing up (Commandos are especially deadly, without berserk they're just one-tapping you even in P Red Armor, and if you have berserk, they're still dealing 6 damage each attack), you're not going to survive without the berserk and you'll need it at minimum to get through Anomaly without invuln, a Phase, or a Rocket Launcher. Those, and maybe boots or a Double Shotgun if I don't have them yet, are additionally the only things I will go anywhere out of my way to get here, even mods I'll leave behind if it would waste too much berserk to get them.
For this particular run, after a typical Phobos Base Entry, I got a nice-looking Phobos 2 with a
quick Berserk decently close to the stairs, but I made a mistake in not checking out the exit room first to clear, which ended up having a lot of enemies in the way and so I
burned nearly all the berserk getting to the stairs. Phobos 3 had
immediate stairs with only a Lost Soul in view, but wasting that Phobos 2 berserk nearly lost me the run when I got a
Pinky + Cacodemon Cave that
nearly killed me, but luckily I was able to get behind that wall to safely heal without the Pinky getting a double move to finish me and there were no enemies near the stairs, while the Pinky would also
block one more plasma ball that could have killed me. Phobos 5 was a big breather, being a
Pinky Cave with a water river that I spawned in, and so I could just wait in the back to shotgun down all the Pinkies while the river erased their corpses. I did get surprised by a horde of stuck Pinkies after exiting that safe spot, but I'm able to make the distance to
kill them without farther damage. The cave was decently fruitful too; aside from the Armor Shard to repair my P Red Armor that was getting a bit low in its durability and a rocket stack, this cave had a
Double Shotgun. A Double Shotgun doesn't sound useful at first when I have no Reloader nor even a Shell Box and Icy didn't consider it in his guide, but it will prove handy for two important levels later... (and if you do have a Shell Box, you could viably use it to more quickly corner shoot a big enemy to death). I nearly wasted that good fortune however in Chained Court when I walked into the exit room with 6 HP thinking I would be safe with the one Chaingunner in there, but there turned out to be two, which should have been 8 damage and thus death... but luckily
I rolled two dodges and a miss, so I survive with 1 HP. It looked like my luck was going to end there when I
got a maze for Phobos 6, but somehow nothing worse than Formers and Imps were in the way to the stairs nor did the maze have walls blocking the stairs, and so I
reach the stairs pretty quickly with only a single medkit used (and that Commando at the end popped up right when I got on the stairs). I would get more luck with
finally getting a Phobos 7 Invuln (15 prior runs that made it to this point didn't get one), and there was
nothing but an Imp to contest it (who ended up just hitting himself on that barrel).
Now I was at Phobos Anomaly. A major drawback of going Intuition instead of going Hellrunner is if you didn't get a retrievable Phobos 7 Invuln, found a Rocket Launcher, or get lucky with a Phase, most runs that make it here will still die, with me being 2 for 8 with getting past Anomaly prior to this and only one of those had a Phase, while I never got a Rocket Launcher in those runs. Without HR, your movement speed isn't fast enough to meaningfully outrun the Nightmare Demons while wearing the Red Armor even with berserk, and the Nightmare Cacodemons + Imps are going to be repeatedly pelting you without any dodge bonus, while you also can't survive running naked as said enemies will be dealing too much damage when you can't dodge them much. If you haven't found boots by this point to put your starting A Mod on, you should A-mod the fresh Red Armor here, as it'll be barely slower than running naked while leaving you a lot less vulnerable and so will be your only shot to survive here without an invuln/phase/Rocket Launcher. Since I did have invuln, I could run through the ambush no problem (though I left behind the second Large Medkit and rockets I usually pick up here to waste less Invuln), but I was in a
bit of a predicament; I know I wouldn't have enough invuln to last me through the Bruisers, while the door out of the ambush hallway got destroyed with the Nightmare Demons on my ass (which I was hoping to close to block them long enough to get distance and deaggro them), and even with the A Red Armor, I probably won't make enough distance to break vision from them when I reach the Bruisers, while if the Bruisers knock me back towards the Nightmare Demons, that's probably the end of the run. This is where the Double Shotgun comes clutch, as it can be used to
kill the Nightmare Demons more quickly, and if the door wasn't destroyed but a Nightmare Demon was blocking it from being closed, I could use the Double Shotgun to knock the Nightmare Demons out of the doorway and then close it. As expected, the
invuln runs out well before the Bruisers, but this isn't a problem with my Chained Court berserk still intact, as the P Red Armor will reduce any acid ball that rolls below 19 damage to 1 and even a max damage roll from them still only does 2 damage, so I
make it out of Anomaly and this run is in serious winnable territory now.
I've gotten only two runs prior up to this point, and from here on out, I'm banking on finding Invulns ASAP or at least more berserks, you're simply not going to survive for long at this point without either, and even if you get the level luck to survive without them, beating the Cyberdemon with no traits nor health would be hopeless without said powerups (or acquiring a miracle Inquisitor Set prior to Babel, which is
technically possible as you could get a Malek's Armor prior to floor 15 from a vault and then get the Laptop Boots on Deimos 7, but if you have the luck for that in an Everyman Angelic run... you're probably going to make a good subject for a Karl Jobst video). In this run I get a good start to Deimos
with a nearby Invuln and stairs, as well as finally getting some boots (Protective Boots, which aren't the most ideal but it's better than nothing), the Invuln would have a
Revenant guarding it, but thanks to have the Chained Court berserk still being intact, he only hits me for 1 damage and I can safely kill him after retreating back behind the nearby doorway.
With the Invuln secured, I then start making a mad dash for the stairs (though I pick up that Technical Mod I ignored earlier, in case I need it later...). I get more good luck with
Deimos 2 starting me near an Invuln and having pretty close stairs with a Berserk next to them too (which also somehow didn't get destroyed after getting caught in the explosion of three acid balls from the Baron chasing me). The luck continues with more good luck as
Deimos 3 has close stairs, and Deimos 4 follows suit with
a Homing Phase and yet another Invuln on the way to the stairs, there was just a
Mancubus on the way I had to kill first to make sure he didn't blow up the Invuln. The good stair luck would end with
Deimos 5, it was a tough call but with no Invulns/Berserk along the way, still no Rocket Launcher, and Babel being around the corner, I decide I should just use the Homing Phase I picked up now, there's no good saving it for a better opportunity later if my Invuln runs out and I die before a better opportunity to use it comes. Deimos 6 would start me near the special level stairs, but with me rolling Halls Of Carnage instead of Spider's Lair, it's not a viable escape path without the Homing Phase I just used up, however I do get the most important item for this run spawned uncontested right at the start, a
Rocket Launcher! One major thing Icy overlooked in his guide is just how major a Rocket Launcher is, he briefly mentions rocket jumping being a viable option to get past Anomaly but rocket jumping is incredibly useful beyond that, as it greatly extends how far each Invuln can last and so greatly reduces the amount of Invuln + stair luck you need to win. Even without Invuln, rocket jumping can extend your Berserks as long as your health isn't too low (any Red Armor with berserk will reduce rocket jump damage to 1), and could be a life saver without either if you spawn near a group of enemies you can't safely outrun, not to mention being able to destroy walls will save you powerup turns whenever they block the direct path to the stairs or let you possibly get around dangerous enemies if you have no Invuln. My best attempt prior that made it to Hell 3 without a Rocket Launcher would have surely succeeded if I had one.
With the Rocket Launcher secured, it's time to rocket jump like hell straight to the stairs, and after an unremarkable Deimos 7, it's time for Babel. Rocket jumping shows another strong point by
safeguarding against a far away Cyberdemon spawn, without rocket jumping I would have lost several dozens invuln turns here and possibly not have enough to kill the Cyberdemon (if the Cyberdemon is any more than one hit away from dying when your invuln runs out and you aren't berserked, it's game over). Another optimization not covered by Icy and another reason why picking up a Double Shotgun if you find one is important, is if you don't have berserk, the Double Shotgun will actually kill the Cyberdemon in fewer actions than the B Chainsaw will; the B Chainsaw averages 13.5 damage per hit on the Cyberdemon (17.5 minus his 4 armor), killing him in 33.3 hits and will miss half the time, averaging 66-67 actions total to kill him, while the Double Shotgun averages 18 damage point blank (a Double Shotgun blast averages 18, gets reduced by 8 from his armor and then reduced by one more 1 point from 10% falloff, then there's two blasts and so it's doubled back up to 18), and unlike the Chainsaw it won't miss, so it kills him in 25 shots on average and averages 49 actions total when accounting for the needed reload after each shot, requiring quite a bit less Invuln to win. If you can P-mod your Double Shotgun it'll be even better, as each shot will then average 21.6 damage and thus reduce the total average actions needed to 40-41 (so if you found a spare Power Mod and a Double Shotgun, you should P-mod it). You'll need to expend a decent chunk of shells, but if you got good enough Invuln luck to make it this far, you should have enough left over from Phobos, and you won't need much if any shells after this, so the ammo cost is irrelevant. Even if you have enough Invuln to kill him with the Chainsaw before running out, you should still kill him with the Double Shotgun, as you don't know what kind of Invuln luck you'll have in Hell and so you want to retain as much Invuln as possible. It should be noted that a point blank Plasma Rifle will similarly beat the Chainsaw without berserk here, especially if A-modded (the math is a lot more cumbersome here so just trust me on it), but the Plasma Rifle is a lot less practical as you'll need several stacks of cells to have enough ammo and unlike with shotgun shells, you won't have a good opportunity to farm cells in this run (can't stop to farm a Commando or Arachnotron when you gotta stretch your powerups as long as possible and stopping to farm one when you're out of powerups would be very dangerous), so it's very unlikely you'll have enough cells for that (though if you don't have a Double Shotgun, you could use the Plasma Rifle to weaken the Cyberdemon until you run out of cells and then finish him off with the Chainsaw to save some invuln). Speaking of cells, if you could burn a Homing Phase to nab the BFG from Halls Of Carnage, it would be the actual best weapon here, averaging 33 damage and not being able to miss, so it kills the Cyberdemon in 13-14 hits on average and will average 19/20 actions total with the needed reloads, even beating the berserk B Chainsaw (which with misses factored will average 29 actions to kill the Cyberdemon), but it would require filling half your inventory with cells and so you realistically wouldn't have enough cells for that (though you could use it to weaken the Cyberdemon before using the Chainsaw or Double Shotgun to save some Invuln at least). With that strategy aside of the Cyberdemon done,
I kill the Cyberdemon and enter Hell with my invuln still intact.
I'm unsure how much invuln I have left at this point, but I get a good Hell 1 with
two Invulns, one of which is close to the stairs. I do have a problem however in that
I have only a few rockets left (a good reason why you need to be even more proactive at picking up rockets than I was in this run), so I opt to not go for that second farther away Invuln. Hell 2 is
an arena, not close stairs but an arena means I get an open area with few obstructions to only need a couple rocket jumps and so I don't lose much invuln here, as well as can nab one of the berserks along the way. I get a good Hell 3 that has
yet another Invuln and nearby stairs, so I get more invuln and don't need to rocket jump. Hell 4 then has the item I need most at this point immediately in view, a
Rocket Box! 20 rockets should be more than enough to get me through the rest of the game, and even give me enough to detour through Mortuary/Limbo. That's also another important thing about the Rocket Launcher, it makes it viable to go through Mortuary/Limbo if you have enough invuln to nab the Nuclear BFG for the guaranteed win at Dis, when you would otherwise need to get lucky with a Homing Phase dropping you at the right corner to do so, whereas if you were to try running to the Nuclear BFG, it would waste too much invuln and you'll probably have a mass of enemies around that makes it impossible to get, if you don't just get pinballed around until your invuln runs out. With that berserk I nabbed a couple floors prior still being intact to speed me up and no Archvile being near the Nuclear BFG,
I secure it with no issues and now I just need to make it to Dis to win (I realized I made a mistake in immediately unloading that Rocket Box, I should have equipped it to make my reloads faster and reduce the amount of respawns the Archviles could get off before I reached the Nuclear BFG, but fortunately it ended up not mattering here, just something to keep in mind if anyone trying this finds a Rocket Box in their run). Hell 5 would have pretty far stairs, not too bad when I got enough rockets now to keep rocket jumping, but I would get in a bad spot when it was a Revenant level and there turned out to be
a lot of Revenants around the stairs, and I proceed to get pinballed around as I try to reach the stairs (which was a major factor that lost me my prior best run, when a bunch of VMR pinballing me near the stairs on Hell 2 made me lose a lot of invuln, making it run out shortly after in Hell 3 in an Archvile level). This kind of scenario is why I nabbed that Technical Mod back in Deimos 1, as this is one of the very
very few instances where increasing knockback resistance on boots is actually helpful, unfortunately I don't got Plasteel Boots to put the T Mod on so the Protective Boots would have to do, which I then put on (after taking them off prior to not have my rocket jumps reduced) and try to power my way through the Revenants. Unfortunately the Revenants are still knocking me around and it takes me about a dozen more invuln turns to
get on the stairs, but the boots' knockback resistance is enough to make it usually only 1 tile of knockback per hit rather than the 2+ that would have made it even worse to reach the stairs, if not impossible without slowly shotgunning them down from far away. Hell 6 gives me a break though with
quickly reachable stairs and then Hell 7
follows suit. Just like that, I'm in Dis, and I probably do have enough invuln left to kill the Mastermind conventionally (the Double Shotgun works even better against her despite the extra HP she has thanks to her having less armor than the Cyberdemon), but since I have the Nuclear BFG, I'm not going to risk it, so I just run -> wait to make the invuln run out, armed the Nuclear BFG and
nuke Dis for the safe guaranteed win.
With that, I become the third person to join the Everyman Angelic club (and their first one outside of Ontario :p), and I recorded it too (you can watch it
here). I had 35 deaths prior to this win and another dozen to two resets on the first two floors (though most of that was early on before I realized I didn't need a good Phobos Base Entry), I do agree with what Icy said that Everyman Angelic isn't quite the worst winnable Angelic in 0.9.9.7; Berserker Angelic requires even more luck while having a lot less skill impression involved, Masochist and Eagerness Angelic have an even greater skill barrier while still requiring a lot of luck (especially the latter), Strongman Angelic has a high luck component too and requires you to tolerate far worse gameplay, and Inquisitor Angelic maybe has the highest skill requirement of any winnable Angelic while you can't be saved in it by Invuln luck. Everyman Angelic is still extremely difficult and it's going to require a grind for it no matter how good you are, but I would rate Masochist above it (as Icy said, at least you can still heal in Everyman, and starting with a Red Armor + each mod compared to starting with nothing actually does a lot to make up for your inability to get any traits), as well as Eagerness and Berserker, while Inquisitor and Strongman could be rated more difficult too (unsure at the moment). How Everyman Angelic will fare in JHC-era DRL will be interesting; a big change are powerups actually being time-based now, which will change the meta for this quite a bit (e.g. you're now going to need to wear faster equipment when invuln'd, and the Double Shotgun will now be worse against the bosses than the B Chainsaw... unless you got a Shell Box, in which case it's even better than it was before), as well as possibly no longer being able to stack powerup durations (hasn't happened yet but Kornel stated he wants to do that, which could push this badge to near impossible territory without farther adjustments to ArchAoH), and you got berserk being nerfed to +50% resistances and more randomized melee damage (notably the Cyberdemon and Mastermind can swing way harder, up to as much as 27, so you might want to try a Ballistic Red Armor as berserk + P Red Armor won't be enough to reduce their melee damage to 1). In addition to that are smaller but still meaningful changes like Technical Mods now giving resistances to armor/boots (T-modding your starting Red Armor and P-modding a Shotgun might become the better play, especially as that T Red Armor could be turned into a Ballistic Red Armor later), enemies no longer respawning in vision (less chance to get screwed over by an ill-timed respawn), Enraged Timer meaning slowly chipping down the Mastermind at the end to win without enough invuln/berserk or a nuke may no longer be viable (if her AI changes didn't already do that), and a buffed Reloader that might make it a viable option (though it probably still doesn't beat Intuition with how important Invulns are).
With Everyman Angelic achieved, my time with 0.9.9.7 comes to a close with all
26 Bronze badges, all
26 Silver badges, all
26 Gold badges, all
26 Platinum Badges, all
26 Diamond badges, and now
13 Angelic badges. There are four more Angelic badges left, but they're all impossible without TASing or outright cheating, ranked from most to least plausible:
- UAC Angelic - Win standard N! with no damage: Of the "Impossible Four", this is the only one you could reasonably dispute the impossible status of, as it does have the theoretical path of getting an incredibly lucky Phobos that lets you get to Phobos 7 damageless, then having an Invuln spawn on Phobos 7 that you can reach without getting hit, as well as a Phobos 7 Rocket Launcher, and then getting an even more incredible string of Invuln + stair luck with enough rockets to fuel enough rocket jumping to remain invulnerable for the remaining 2/3rds of the game. To put it in perspective though, Destroyer Diamond gives you a damage buffer of 49 to work with and the immense offensive benefits of AoMC to make avoiding getting hit much easier, as well as saving much more invuln turns by letting you kill things much faster and making your rocket jumps send you way farther, yet it's more difficult than the majority of Angelics (I would even say it's in the same tier as Everyman Angelic) and only me + papilio won the badge without cheesing it in a Dual Angel. There's then Masochist Angelic that at minimum lets you take up to 49 damage and offers some opportunity to expand the amount of hits you can take beyond that (Ironman, Blood Skulls, Medical Armors, and indefinitely with Vampyre if you can reach it), yet it's in contention with Eagerness for the most difficult winnable Angelic and nobody won in 0.9.9.7 for nearly 13 years until I did last week. Winning completely damageless like UAC Angelic requires is multiple magnitudes above these badges that already push the limit of what's possible in this game, and so I don't see it as feasible. If someone was willing to put in thousands and thousands of attempts, maybe they could eventually pull the extraordinary luck needed to win damageless, but I'm not going to do that when that would take me even longer to do than it just took me to get the rest of the Angelics and all Diamonds combined, if I even get it at all. And the novelty of 0.9.9.7 has well worn off by this point for me.
- Pacifist Angelic - Win Archangel of Pacifism with only 1 kill: I.e. make it to Dis with no traits, being completely unable to fight back, and without a single enemy dying, as your 1 kill can only be the Mastermind. Getting through any single random floor without you nor any enemy dying from infighting, spawning or running through fluids, or killing themselves from barrels or their own fireballs isn't too unlikely on any single floor, but as Icy puts it, it's tantamount to little more than a coin flip on each floor, and you're going to need to flip heads 21 times in a row, which is a 1 in over 2 million chance. Then getting through Anomaly without a Lost Soul being killed is far less likely than a coin flip, making the theoretical odds so much worse than even that. If someone absolutely no lifed this badge, maybe after many years, just maybe, they could roll the RNG lottery to win this badge. Otherwise the only way anyone is winning this badge without save scumming is something like a wrong warp being discovered to let you skip all or most of the game, but if you're abusing blatantly game-breaking bugs to win, is it really any more legit than just save scumming this badge?
- Demonic Angelic - Win standard N! with no damage and 100% kills: With the 100% kills requirement, not only will you naturally be giving enemies far more chances to hit you, but you also lose UAC Angelic's one theoretical path of getting to Phobos 7 damageless and then invuln rushing the rest of the game. The only theoretical path for this badge is to retain a 100% kill rate without getting hit until you find a miraculous Trigun and then having the invuln + rockets to nuke the rest of the game. The Trigun however can't spawn naturally until Deimos, and even if you get the unbelievable fortune to have it drop in a vault on Phobos, you'll still then need to make it up to at least Phobos 7 damageless with 100% kills intact before you can get your first invuln, which that alone probably borders on impossibility, while the odds of getting a Phobos 7 Invuln are still quite low (which is going to be nearly necessary too to clear N! Anomaly damageless), and even then, you're still going to need a Rocket Launcher with enough rockets and Invuln luck after to keep nuking every floor. I think this badge is actually even less feasible than Pacifist Angelic, as not only do you need probably comparable luck, but you're also going to need play absolutely perfectly, and each attempt is going to take faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr longer; in the time it takes you to get a single Demonic Angelic attempt just past floor 2, you would be able to get several Pacifist Angelic attempts in, so even if you tried no lifing attempts for this badge, you're going to be getting in exponentially fewer attempts. Unlike Pacifist Angelic, this isn't a badge that you could mostly shut off your brain for and maybe someday eventually brute force the RNG needed to win. Without TAS, the only way you could win this badge is absolutely stupid game-breaking bugs being discovered, such as a bug to make you permanently invincible, a bug to spawn whatever item you want whenever you want, or what one 0.9.9.9 beta actually had where you could underflow your ammo to get infinite clips and carry over certain traits from previous runs with no limit to have something incredibly stupid like SoG50 with SoB50 and TH50 (which I exploited to win UAC and Demonic Angelic in said beta), but winning by blatantly breaking the game isn't remotely legitimate.
- Speedrunner Angelic - Win standard N! in under 4 minutes: Lol, lmao, no badge shows the Angelics weren't remotely thought out and tested like this one, I'm convinced the time limit for this badge was chosen by pulling a random number out of a hat. Now there are verified ITYTD runs in under 4 minutes, but those just aren't remotely comparable to what's possible in N!; even ignoring all the ways that N! is so much more difficult, you watch these runs, and you'll simply notice how very empty the floors are, while on N! those floors would have been flooded with swarms and swarms of enemies. Even if you weren't to die horribly bumrushing through all these enemies, running through or even past these enemies is going to consume far more time, especially as the game will keep pausing as all these enemies keep throwing shit at you. You not only will you need to repeatedly get quickly accessible stairs, you'll need to nearly always have the stairs so close that enemies don't even wake up to cost you time by attacking you; someone once roughly calculated the odds to have the stairs spawn within your vision radius on every floor, while ignoring walls or you spawning near the outskirts that would limit the amount of ground your immediate vision would cover, and it basically amounts to 1 in quintillions. Lets say the needed stair luck is a little more generous than this and you only need like 1 in a hundred million odds, you're still going to need to find a nuke too to kill the Mastermind ASAP (else she is going to waste a lot of time by shooting you at you, repeatedly walking away, and having nearly twice the health compared to ITYTD), kill the Cyberdemon (who also has over twice the health compared to ITYTD), and have a Rocket Launcher or a lucky Phase for Anomaly (which unlike ITYTD has he ambush and thus lots of enemies to slow down the game even if you can survive running through the incredibly deadly N! Anomaly). This is a badge I'm not sure is even possible to TAS, the amount of RNG possibilities is finite and so there may not even be a string of RNG that would make this badge winnable even with inhumanly perfect inputs (something else I didn't touch on is how your inputs are going need to be accurately made at a breakneck pace too). The only way any human is winning this badge without hacking the game is again a wrong warp being discovered and abused, or abusing a bug that tricks the game into erroneously awarding it (such a bug being found in the ancient initial 0.9.9.8 beta by Tormuse, with the game thinking he won after letting himself die in the first minute), and yet again winning in such a manner isn't legitimate.
Hopefully eventually the Impossible Four get changed to something reasonable in an upcoming version as has been proposed and so 100% becomes actually possible, after which I'll tryhard again for the true 100% completion. Until then, and eternally in pre-JHC DRL, 26/26/26/26/26/13 is as close as anyone can legitimately get to 100%ing the game. Well with that all written up, here is my final 0.9.9.7 mortem:
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DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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=_=, level 6 Apostle Chaos General Scout,
sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
He survived 61260 turns and scored 205058 points.
He played for 15 minutes and 44 seconds.
He opposed the Nightmare!
He killed 132 out of 817 hellspawn. (16%)
Who gave him the ticket to Hell, anyway?
He was an Archangel of Humanity!
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 11
Levels visited : 4
Levels completed : 0
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Cyberdemon's Head
Compet-n Gold Cross
Untouchable Badge
Everyman Angelic Badge
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 0/10 Experience 14298/6
ToHit Ranged +0 ToHit Melee +0 ToDmg Ranged +0 ToDmg Melee +0
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Scout
Intuition (Level 1)
Int->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[a] [ Armor ] red armor [4/4] (92%) (A)
[b] [ Weapon ] nothing
[c] [ Boots ] nothing
[d] [ Prepared ] double shotgun (9d3)x2 [0/2]
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
[a] shotgun (8d3) [1/1] (T1)
[b] rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1]
[c] red armor [6/6] (100%) (P)
[d] chainsaw (5d6) (B)
[e] shotgun shell (x50)
[f] shotgun shell (x50)
[g] shotgun shell (x50)
[h] shotgun shell (x50)
[i] shotgun shell (x49)
[j] shotgun shell (x50)
[k] rocket (x10)
[l] rocket (x5)
[m] small med-pack
[n] small med-pack
[o] large med-pack
[p] large med-pack
[q] large med-pack
[r] envirosuit pack
[s] protective boots [2/2] (100%) (T)
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
Fire - internal 0% torso 25% feet 0%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
28 former humans
28 former sergeants
10 former captains
20 imps
16 demons
7 lost souls
1 arachnotron
6 revenants
2 mancubi
4 nightmare imps
8 nightmare demons
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.
He left level 13 as soon as possible.
On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
He fled the Unholy Cathedral seeing no chance to win.
Level 19 was a hard nut to crack!
On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
He managed to escape from the Mortuary!
On level 21 he stumbled into a complex full of revenants!
On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
He decided it was too hot there.
He left level 23 as soon as possible.
Then at last he found Dis!
He overloaded a nuclear BFG 9000 on level 24!
On level 24 he finally sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
Your vision fades.
You feel vulnerable again.
Are you sure you want to overcharge the nuclear BFG 9000? This will overload
the nuclear reactor... [Y/n]
You overcharge the nuclear BFG 9000! Warning! Explosion in 10 seconds!
Run - direction...
Warning! Explosion in 9 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 8 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 7 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 6 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 5 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 4 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 3 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 2 seconds!
Warning! Explosion in 1 seconds!
Congratulations! You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
466 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
245 of those were killed.
1 of those was killed by something unknown.
97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
And 13 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
110 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
8 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
65 killed the bitch and survived.
37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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Author
Topic: (0.9.9.7) [N!|ArchAoH|16%|YAVP] - Everyman Angelic + 26/26/26/26/26/13 badges! (Read 11 times)