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1

Post Mortem / Re: [HMP|100%|YAVP] Strongman Diamond

« on: April 17, 2025, 10:57 »

Very nice to see the progression continue, and to see someone finding my progression thread useful!

Attracting attention with a pistol and then punching a monster (with Brute) from behind the doorway works well. Probably something to remember for future N! runs.

Yeah luring enemies into doors and meleeing them (or killing them in a way that won't knock them back) is one of the core strategies of N! (and Angel of Darkness), upcoming changes to how kill% works in 0.9.9.9 would render such corpse disposal strategies no longer completely necessary, but would still be handy to know to permanently get rid of any troublesome enemy.

Dodging formers bullet shots is not hard and saves a lot of damage

This is actually a 0.9.9.8 thing, currently dodging is bugged in a way that makes dodging everything (that can be dodged) have a 95% dodge rate regardless of no dodge-boosting factors. Normally with dodging pistol and chaingun fire, you only have a 10% dodge chance at base that increases by 3% for each tile of distance, so without any HR, you would get shredded from repeatedly approaching them in the open without the aforementioned dodging bug. So do keep that in mind if you reattempt this badge in 0.9.9.9! (where this bug has been already fixed)

Monsters who wall-slide up on you won't fire a ranged attack. For some reason I thought they did.

And this is a core part of why corner shooting works :p

If you pistol shoot a former captain and you hear them use a medkit, your next shot may still kill them!

Small medkits do heal a percentage amount (2 HP + 25% of the monster's health), which results in formers getting 5 HP back from them, so yes a sufficiently damaged former could have less than 9 HP after using a small medkit and thus be still in killing range for a Pistol.

Using a shotgun at long distance is probably ok. Probably.

I generally wouldn't risk this unless it's something bigger than an Imp you're shooting at and you're absolutely sure there's nothing behind out of vision that could get killed, very high damage rolls from even an unmodded Shotgun can one-shot a Former or Imp from long distance (or they could already be damaged from other factors like spawning in damaging fluids or getting telefragged, or you could easily blow up a barrel right out of your vision). If you used the Double Shotgun's single fire on the other hand, that could be safe, since it can't hit stuff outside your vision (except for one tile out in very specific angles), and it has such steep dropoff that even max damage rolls will fail to one-shot Formers and Imps near the edge of your vision. Hmm maybe I'll try a Double Shotgun when I reobtain this badge in 0.9.9.9's official release.

2

Post Mortem / Re: Badge Hunters for Version 0.9.9.8

« on: April 09, 2025, 22:17 »

A bit of an update, 0.9.9.9 is still under development and seems still a while way from releasing, but seeing how more significant additions and balance changes than I anticipated are coming to it (some of which already been implemented in the betas, and some more planned), as well as some fundamental reworkings of Nightmare (the difficulty that most Diamond and Angelic badges require), I'm thinking I am going to separate the 0.9.9.8 badges to their own post after all, as the difficulty of obtaining each badge may significantly alter (or otherwise require strategy adjustments). In the meantime however, I decided to add new headings to indicate which mastery (or lack of) each listed mortem used; when browsing the old Badge Hunters thread, something I always wanted to immediately know was which build each run used (whether it be because I wanted to see the mortem of a specific build or to note which builds were most commonly used for a given badge), but you had to click the links to each individual mortem to get that info, making getting that info tedious. So I thought to make getting that important info more convenient in this new Badge Hunters thread, hopefully others find those new headings useful.

3

Nightmare! / Re: [N!|AAo666|30%|YAVP] Centurial Angelic

« on: April 09, 2025, 21:41 »

Oh very nice, a new Angelic mortem for 0.9.9.8.

As @OmegaTyrant mentioned, Vampyre is game-shattering but after getting through the dungeon, I struggle to believe you could make it another way. As you work your way into the latter half of the game, some levels started with over 200 monsters. Navigating that without berserk and healing seems improbable without savescumming.

Oh A666 on Nightmare without Vampyre is definitely doable, back in 0.9.9.7 there were five verified Centurial Angelic mortems, and none of them did it with Vampyre (granted Vampyre wasn't absurdly broken then, but it was still the best mastery on N!), while a couple didn't have Berserker either (though unless your mastery blocks it, I think you should always pick up Berserker in A100/666, as aside from being a very powerful trait in general, it's a very nice failsafe if you get surprised by a big hit at a bad time or run out of ammo without any sort of nano weapon). By the time you encounter such absurdly dense floors, you should have the firepower to kill enemies swiftly and the armor to withstand many hits.

I only found about 1 chainsaw every 100 levels, the first at 120 and the second at 230. Possibly they were being blown up but chainsword (P) is a perfectly fine weapon.

Yeah a P Chainsword can be surprisingly sufficient with a few levels of Brute, another reason Vampyre is broken is because you don't even need the Chainsaw nor any of the melee artifacts to just steamroll through everything, just the Chainsword is enough to destroy everything (and then if you do get the Chainsaw or the melee artifacts...).

Given you don’t need armor, focus on speed (and onyx protection purely for comfort). Faster means more you, less monsters and less pressing enter to get through the messages. Phaseshift APO armor is awesome, as are antigrav plasteel boots. Down to 0.16s while berserk (i.e. always since early on).

With 0.9.9.8 Vampyre, yeah you want to prioritize speed on your armors, suddenly the Hellrunner block becomes rather irrelevant when you're able to run around with Phaseshift Armor everywhere while still reducing basically every hit to 1 damage. The upcoming Marine and berserk resistance nerfs in 0.9.9.9, as well as Vampyre's TaN block, may change the math on that though.

All nests are comfortably clearable except nightmare arachnotrons. I did one to show I could and then skipped the rest. Very risky in open arenas.

If you're not going for all kills and you don't see anything nice on the level, I agree to just get out of Nightmare Arachnotron caves ASAP, they're probably the only level that can actually threaten Vampyre when enough of them shooting at you at once can instantly deplete all your HP, even Shambler levels would be preferable for Vampyre (which are normally I think the nastiest level you can encounter for most builds).

If you weren't sure, you can reach level 25 before dungeon level 100 by clearing levels. I think I got there about dlevel 89.

Indeed, in versions prior to 0.9.9.7 (where A666 and dual angels were first added), the only way to get the Experience Cross was to play A100 on N! (but now you can do it on any difficulty by playing A666 or doing a dual angel of A100 + AoD).

Finally, a big shout out to OmegaTyrant for his great advice, and Epyon for giving me so much fun!

Happy to see my advice helps! I've also updated the Badge Hunters thread with your mortem for Centurial Angelic and Technician Diamond, it's great to get a bit more activity there before 0.9.9.9 drops.

4

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: April 06, 2025, 21:53 »

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).

5

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: March 11, 2025, 05:36 »

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

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

Now onto the special levels:

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

*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, maybe consider not only disabling respawning, but have every remaining respawned enemy drop dead too.

*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?

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 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, but if possible, I would give the Arena Master the old free roaming AI so that he can rush you before you're ready for him, unlike now where he'll stay far from the central building while you take care of the enemies around there at your leisure (enrage mode and larger patrol zones being added could address this though). On N!, similar to its normal counterpart, destroying all corpses is tedious here, 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.

Military Base
The enemy force is fine as is on all difficulties, I'll just reiterate the previous proposal to remove the Tracking Map on UV and N!. Additionally, clearing all the Former corpses here on N! is a tedious affair as well, 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 would greatly appreciate the clear condition being 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 would appreciate 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).

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).

Hell's Armory
Fine as is on UV and below, especially now that patrolling AI 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 4 of the Cacos with their Nightmare versions as well (though certainly not all, again given how strong and durable they now are).

Deimos Lab
Enemy layout is fine as is on UV and below, I'll just note that if it's made available on ITYTD, then you must remove one of the Shamblers on that difficulty, as the dual Shambler will certainly slaughter any newbie even with ITYTD advantages. Additionally, the Formers near the teleport destinations should be moved away, as due to the patrolling AI, 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). Larger patrol zones could help, but minimizing the chance of getting instantly shredded when stepping into the teleporter will be ideal.

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 outside 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 aggressive 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 few 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 deal with the aforementioned Agony Elemental, changing the clear condition to be killing every enemy once would be very nice 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).

Halls of Carnage
Fine as is on all difficulties. Respawning isn't even a issue on N! as the flood will destroy the corpses anyway and it floods so fast. 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 would be nice, 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 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).

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). However, once you learn the outspeeding timing trick to kill the Angel Of Death, this ends up becoming a pretty easy level that doesn't really get any harder on higher difficulties (actually being easier as you get more levels to more easily get the necessary levels of Fin + HR in), while you got more options than before to build up the physical defenses needed to actually duke it out with the AoD without being a proper melee build, and the enemy force before the AoD usually isn't much of a factor, which all results in Longinus Diamond being one of easiest Diamond badges to get. I had ideas on sprucing the enemy loadout on harder difficulties here (namely, replacing the Lost Souls with Nightmare Souls on UV and then replacing the Pinkies with Nightmare Demons on N!), but the planned Enraged mode is potentially a big wrinkle here, as depending on how strict it is and if it gets stricter on harder difficulties, that alone could make beating Unholy Cathedral on harder difficulties a lot more arduous with the outspeeding strat. So I will want to see Engraded mode in action before really pushing for buffing enemy loadout on Cathedral.

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 otherwise 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. If the disabled infighting flag is added, Mortuary should definitely have infighting disabled however. Additionally, having enemy here AI roam rather than patrol would be ideal, as patrolling AI does make it a lot easier when you no longer have to worry about being pincer'd (but if larger patrol zones are added with Enraged mode, that could be enough to bring back the difficulty lost from that).

Limbo
Like Mortuary, it should have ammo picks up added, disabled infighting, roaming AI (unless larger patrol zones + Enraged mode is added), and should retain the clear condition of everything being dead at once. 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 currently, as well as the new Nightmare Knight.

*On N!, add Nightmare Arachnotrons as done currently.

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 Nightmate 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).

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 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, 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 Nightmare Cacodemons, 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.

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.

6

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: March 04, 2025, 15:57 »

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.

**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. (Note I haven't checked if this bug is still in the latest beta.)

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.

7

Requests For Features / Re: I am way behind on 0.9.9.7+ features, but, technician buff?

« on: February 24, 2025, 22:10 »

Technicians did get buffed in 0.9.9.8 by getting exclusive access to Whizkid 3 (so up to seven mods on ranged weapons, four mods on armors/boots/melee weapons, and two mods on assemblies), which allows them to get better equipment than the other two classes can possibly have, and they can mod much more uniques than before too (this wiki page covers what they can mod and to what extent). Their masteries were still largely lousy though aside from Scavenger (which also got buffed in 0.9.9.8 to be able to scavenge armors, boots, and melee weapons), but that is getting addressed in 0.9.9.9 (the exact changes aren't finalized yet, but so far; Malicious Blades deals a lot more damage with blades; Fireangel gets larger explosions and can make all non-shotgun ranged weapons explosive; SoG now deals +3 damage per level in exchange for only -10% firing speed, which completely reverses Sharpshooter's early game hell; Scavenger gets even more trait freedom than before; and with indirect buffs like Tough As Nails giving 10% energy resistances per level and direct buffs like ammo reduction on subsequent chainfire volleys, Entrenchment is actually good now instead of horribly awful).

Non-pistol Technicians still have a much harder early game than Scouts and Marines though, as the modding advantage and improved masteries don't manifest until later into the game, and near-instant item use and turning Computer Maps into Tracking Maps are more situationally useful than 10% faster speed on all actions or extra HP + inherent energy resistances, while the starting Technical Mod also doesn't really immediately help much unless you're a Pistol build or you get an early vault with a Combat Shotgun or good armor in it. I'm not sure how this can be addressed though; your proposed extra ammo capacity isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it wouldn't help the Technician's harder early game, the area they're struggling most in. I had an idea where they could get one "mulligan" per floor with activating levers, i.e. they can trip a dangerous lever once per floor without it activating (as it fits into their "hacking" theme and levers are more potentially useful early in the game where healing and armor recovery is more limited), but that ability is situational too and could be a hassle to program. Perhaps Technicians will just have to be accepted as the class that starts out weaker, but has stronger potential in the end than Scouts and Marines do with being able to obtain superior equipment.

Also since you brought up the Marine's energy resistances, I thought to let you know they are being nerfed to 10% in 0.9.9.9, as the 20% proved too strong since it still stacked with berserk and armors (which made Vampyre stupidly broken and Ammochain borderline broken too). But that 10% will still stack with all other resistances, including the aforementioned buffed TaN, and so they'll still be noticeably more tanky than the other classes (even without any armor nor TaN they'll still be able to take a couple extra hits, while the difference becomes very pronounced once they do get strong armor to stack that resistance on).

8

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: February 24, 2025, 21:36 »

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.

9

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: February 14, 2025, 19:04 »

- 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.

10

Bug Reports / Re: Level feel 1 description

« on: February 11, 2025, 10:36 »

I don't do any of the developmental stuff myself, I've just been beta testing, proposing ideas, and giving + organizing feedback. I would recommend joining the JH Discord to ask Kornel/Epyon that stuff, he might see it here but you could get a faster response asking him directly there. Here is the link to the Discord. If you don't have a Discord account, you could also try posting on the Github page itself.

11

Bug Reports / Re: Level feel 1 description

« on: February 10, 2025, 19:48 »

I hate to mention this because you guys do a fantastic job. It's a just a little graphical issue.

I died in the Arena in N! doing AoSh, second group of monsters (second attachment).
I then jumped into a fresh game with the same parameters, and found that the level feeling had not been reset. It still showed the Arena Master's voice booming (see attachment).

I tested and can confirm this bug is in the current 0.9.9.9 beta (killed myself on the second floor and upon immediately restarting another run, Phobos Base Entry did indeed have the same level feeling).

12

Nightmare! / Re: [N!|Ao100|57%|YAVP] Centurial Diamond - easier than expected

« on: February 10, 2025, 19:20 »

Certainly that was my first thought too. As much as I enjoyed the win, it's better to recognise genuine skill. Completed my first AoB/N! yesterday on the same strat but didn't watch my kill count and just drifted below 60%. Given what you've said, I'll switch to some other challenges (rather than cheesing) and reassess when 0.9.9.9 comes out.

Shame to come just short of the Diamond like that, 0.9.9.9 will be making some changes to Nightmare to make it less tedious, and one such change is that the respawns will no longer count towards the kill percent, though several of the badges that require a certain kill percentage on N! may end up changing. Ain't nothing wrong though with getting badges by whatever means the game grants you, but yeah I would recommend trying to branch out to other builds and try to take HMP then UV games with them, to help build your fundamental skill at the game and better prep you for challenges where the cheese option isn't available.

The manuals sometimes skimp on detail (which leaves the experience appreciably open).

Funny you bring this up, as a recent topic of contention about DRL in the JH Discord is how much of a "wiki game" DRL is and how much it detriments the game. Some things have been discussed to make ingame guides available and general information more available ingame, though nothing concrete yet (other than a new modding UI that shows what the mod you're applying to your equipment will actually do).

Haven't even attempted one yet, although I did punch the odd barrel to start berserk mode.

Nice, this is a fun trick to do in AoB (or in any other scenario where you don't have rockets) when you need to trigger Berserker before taking on a pack of enemies (especially Arachnotrons or other enemies that can't trigger Berserker from hitting you) or for just a general speed boost when you need it. (Napalm Barrels will nearly always trigger it, Acid Barrels usually will but can sometimes fail and their acid damage is harder to get good resistance against, and normal Barrels will have a slightly less than 50% chance of doing so)

As a new player, I searched but failed to find any information on why Sereg got his name on a difficulty mode. This fills in an important lore gap for me.

Yes, was an easter egg added in 0.9.9.8 to reference his infamy with exploiting AoOC. You can check out the old Badge Hunters thread to see all the Diamonds he got from his namesake strategy. Speaking of the Badge Hunters thread, I added your run to the new thread, it is nice to get a new name on there as it has been a while!

tbh that was a weigh up too. However I wasn't sure if they would perish on lava or acid. The help files don't declare it even though it makes physical sense.

Antigrav Boots do retain the Nano mod's durability regeneration, so you don't really need to worry about their durability (especially if you make them out of Plasteel Boots or better Phaseshift Boots), and they also can't be destroyed even if you were to run on enough acid/lava in such a short period to actually wear them out.

Wunderbar! and a huge thanks for taking the time to level me up.

Always happy to help people when I can!

13

Nightmare! / Re: [N!|Ao100|57%|YAVP] Centurial Diamond - easier than expected

« on: February 08, 2025, 23:41 »

Nice job, good thing you got this done now, because Vampyre is slated for some pretty serious nerfs in 0.9.9.9 as it is super busted in 0.9.9.8 :p

As a testament to its power, I see you didn't even get any sort of indestructible armor and still survived clinging on to crummy Blue Armor (a tip for if you try getting more badges with Vampyre before its nerfing, just build a Nanofiber Red Armor, even with no TaN and no Power mod on it, it on top of Berserk resistances stacked with the Marine's resistances will be enough to reduce any fire hit to 1 damage, reduce a max damage Baron acid ball to 2 damage, and reduce a max damage Shambler bolt to 3 damage while any lesser plasma hit can't deal more than 1). Also don't ditch the Rocket Launcher, it's Vampyre's best friend as rocket jumping will cover for your lack of movement speed to let you close gaps against troublesome enemies instantly, and you can face rocket yourself to trigger Berserker whenever (when Berserker triggers from being hit, its resistances are applied before damage is inflicted to you, so you'll just be trading 1 HP for 20 actions of Berserk if you got any half decent armor on). Without using 0.9.9.8 Vampyre, I definitely wouldn't recommend going for Centurial as someone's first Diamond though; if someone just wants to get Diamonds no matter how, trying to cheese them through getting lucky AoOC stair dives are far easier ("Sereging" as it's known), and otherwise I would say stuff like Strongman Diamond and Gatekeeper Diamond are far easier than Centurial (ignoring the pure grind badges like Technician and Armorer). The lack of guaranteed items and extra EXP from special levels makes the early game hell of Nightmare even worse in A100, and trying to just stair dive through is far less viable when you got 100 floors to get through and some inevitable very nasty ones if your level and equipment aren't up to snuff (though I suppose that makes it more bragworthy to have Centurial as your first Diamond).

My chief regret was wasting a nano mod. I couldn't work out whether to take a powered armor, or to nano a cerberus red.

Powered Red Armor (or even Powered Blue Armor) definitely would have been the better option, it would be already reducing basically every hit to 1 damage when you're berserked and would reduce many melee hits to 1 damage without berserk too, while more importantly, it wouldn't have slowed you down at all (which Vampyre greatly appreciates when the Hellrunner block is basically its only hindrance in 0.9.9.8). Alternatively, Antigrav Boots or even a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher would have been even better options for Vampyre, as the former makes you way faster for a build that wants any movement speed it can get, and the latter would grant you infinite rocket jumps and Berserker face rockets.

The forum help file suggested I post my victory. I found the file but couldn't work out how to make it look schmick like @Tormuse does.

You just need to copy paste your mortem inbetween the mortem tags

Code: [Select]

[mortem] [/mortem]

14

Century Lounge / Re: [M|Ao100|100%|YAAM] PISTOLERO! (Masterless Marine Win)

« on: January 18, 2025, 13:50 »

Interesting strategy - been a while since I played A100 or a pistol build (or much at all), but I have fond memories of Sharpshooter builds for that challenge. Combine that with HR and INT and you can get yourself out of harms way and snipe a ton of enemies off before they become a problem. That worked on HNTR though, don't think I ever tried higher difficulty A100 runs.

Pistols can still work on higher difficulties in A100, though the early game problems get really exacerbated in A100. I've done Sharpshooter in UV A100 before, but I think a Scavenger works best for a Pistol build in A100; you can get traits to help you survive the early game, and then get SoG when you find a pistol actually worth using, while Scavenger lets you get all the rare mods that really benefit pistols (if you ever want to achieve the dream of wielding a P3N2S2 Combat Pistol or P3N1S2 Blaster, Scavenger makes that actually possible without playing A666). You lose out on Dualgunner, but I think Dualgunner is a trap anyway on higher difficulties without a Nanomachic Pistol or Nano-modded Blaster, where you'll far too often empty your pistols while several enemies are still in range, and so a single souped up pistol + ammo box is much more reliable. Cateye is another nice A100 pistol build option if you want to keep Dualgunner and want to stack SoG with SoB, while having a mastery that still helps pistols. Not too viable in the standard game as it requires so many traits (which will make you either not get Cateye or your pistols up to speed until very late), but in A100 you got more than enough time to make it work, while having a much smoother early game than with the actual Pistol masteries. I once did a UV A100 + AoMC run with Cateye where I finished as a pistol build and it was quite fun.

My most hated enemies by far were the VMR and the Nightmare Arachnotrons (which came probably the closest to ending me in the second big cave near the end). I ended up using a Hellwave Pack to even the odds against a mess of Viles and Mancs that were too tightly packed together for me to get at the Viles easily. I also ended up having to fight two Cyberdemons near the end of the run, one on an island level where he was right in the lava, and another in a regular level, and in both cases, they took two full double-mags to bring down.

If you really hate VMR, I would strongly advise picking up Berserker in A100 runs even if you have no intention to use melee (and it's just nice insurance in general to protect you in case you do get ambushed by a big hit or accidentally push a Napalm Barrel into lava). Archvile zaps will always trigger it, and Mancubus and Revenant rockets will trigger it nearly half the time, while when it does trigger, berserk's +60% resistances are applied before damage calculation. This is especially powerful with the 0.9.9.8 Marine, as those resistances stack on top of their inherent 20% energy resistances, and so you're basically running around with inherent 80% resistances against them before your own armor is factored (this reduces an Archvile zap down to 4 damage, and even a max damage Revenant/Mancubus rocket won't deal more than 5, while unmodded Red Armor or even weak Nanofiber Red Armor brings that down to 1). It's not just VMR either, high damage rolls from other several hard-hitting enemies, like Barons and the bosses, as well as barrels, and your own splash damage, will trigger it too. And of course when you're berserked, you're now much faster at everything to help you kill them easier (or escape if needed). Alternatively, if you don't want to get Berserker (or before you can get it), just simple Fireproof Red Armor will neuter the VMR's threat; with a Scout/Technician, it'll reduce an Archvile zap down to 5 damage and Revenants/Mancubi won't do more than 7 at max, while with the Marine's energy resistances, it'll just outright reduce their damage down to 1 without any mods nor TaN.

As for Nightmare Arachnotrons... yeah they're the biggest bastards and there's no way to effectively eliminate their threat, while they can't trigger Berserker either, and even if you got the defenses to reduce all their hits down to 1, you still won't be able to tank a swarm of them. If you spawn into a Nightmare Arachnotron cave and have Berserker, you could facerocket yourself to at least trigger it and speed yourself up, you really need speed to not get overwhelmed by them. They're also a very big reason you want to keep Tactical Boots or other speedy boots handy and don't want to only have a pair of heavy boots (especially when you got no Hellrunner...), speed is crucial to survive them and if each movement takes you over a second, a swarm of Nightmare Arachnotrons will just gun you down as you try maneuvering to better positioning (at least on HNTR, caves will have relatively few enemies and so you can more realistically stand your ground against them, but if you ever try A100 on the harder difficulties, definitely don't leave behind those speed-boosting boots).

I entered the final level on an Invulnerability, and since it was another Pitch Black level, I decided fuck it and busted out the Angel Arm for the first and only time on the run to finish things off with a bang.

Darkness levels are very nasty, especially when you don't got Berserker to protect you if you stumble into a big hit, so I would say just nuking it was a wise decision!

15

Requests For Features / Re: Compilation of fixes, changes, and new ideas for version 0.9.9.9

« on: January 01, 2025, 22:15 »

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).