Next up in my 0.9.9.7 conquest, I decided it was time to get that 9th Angelic to tie Tormuse's record and become the second ever player to have verifiably gotten the Chaos Lt General rank. Among the dwindling options, I decided to go for Strongman Angelic, a badge with only one verifiable win in 0.9.9.7 by
Tormuse (it was also won in 0.9.9.8 by
micerang, though it was much easier in that version with the dodging bug, the overly buffed Marine, and that version's hideously broken Vampyre). This is a badge that certainly lives up to its Angelic billing and I'm not surprised only Tormuse got it in 0.9.9.7, even papilio apparently gave up on it
after stating he was going for it. In Strongman runs, you don't actually need to only use your fists, you can use other weapons to weaken enemies, as long as all finishing blows are from punching enemies, but even with that reprieve doing this in Nightmare is still extremely difficult. The idea of "weaken enemy to near death with your Pistol/Shotgun, then punch them out in one hit when they get close" sounds nice in theory, but the sheer enemy density of N! means you often can't do this cleanly to enemies one at a time and having to fight several at once in the open like N! often forces will be a death sentence when you're slowly trying to punch out everything. You also need cover to do this, as with N!'s increased enemy aggression, any ranged-attacking enemy that sees you will keep firing on you, and if you weaken them from a distance, you'll still need to get in through their constant barrage to punch them, thus making you even more dependent on floors generating with good cover. Then you of course have N!'s trademark respawning on top, while being unable to kill with weapons that inflict knockback nor be able to use stronger melee weapons that can gib, and using rocket launchers or other large explosives to blow up corpses is very risky, when some Former or other weak enemy could inadvertently get caught in the explosion to end the run, thus making you also heavily dependent on floors generating with doors or fluids in spots with usable cover. Even if you get a perfect camping spot with a doorway or fluid tile, and so can perfectly funnel every enemy single file while being able to weaken each of them before they reach you, anything bigger than an Imp you often won't perfectly weaken to be killed in one punch and even Imps can get hits in annoyingly often, so attrition damage racks up fast in ideal scenarios.
The worst thing however hanging over your head is that if a single enemy dies to any weapon, you are immediately disqualified from earning this badge; an enemy wasn't quite in one-punch kill range but your Shotgun/Pistol shot rolled unexpectedly high and killed them, you tried shooting something with a Shotgun and some enemy behind them you didn't see gets killed by it, a Pistol misses and blows up a barrel behind the enemy you shot at that then kills them or another enemy, that's it run is over, Q+Y and try again. There's also the fucked indirect kill attribution of 0.9.9.7, where if an enemy dies by indirect means (e.g. from items, infighting, telefragging, or damaging fluids), the kill will be attributed to the weapon you had equipped at the time of their death. This means you must ardently limit the time you have a weapon equipped, so you can't run -> wait or move around a floor with a weapon equipped, else if an enemy attacks you and kills something else in the crossfire or Formers keep walking into a teleporter and telefrag each other or some Pinky on the other side of the map dies while running through acid, your run is over if you happened to have any weapon equipped when those things happen, and you might not even notice it if you don't pay good attention to the messages to notice the "You hear the scream of a freed soul" message. Being unable to have your weapon out at all times doesn't just make this run more annoying to play, it makes the attrition damage issue even worse, as without Juggler, the time it takes to swap to a weapon will allow an enemy to move back out of vision or to a tile where they get LoS on you, or it's a bigger enemy that moves closer and costs you a crucial additional shot you could have gotten on them before punching them. At least if you punch an enemy with a weapon equipped, the game will correctly attribute it as a fist kill, so you don't need to waste time swapping back to your fists to punch things (before attempting this I did a quick HNTR AoOC test to verify if I could still get Sunrise Iron Fist after punching enemies to death with a weapon equipped, doing a Strongman Angelic run and then not getting the badge if the kill attribution was fucked that way too would have been very deflating).
For the build, there is really only one viable option and that's Vampyre. As mentioned, you'll take a heavy amount of unavoidable attrition damage and so having the mastery that heals off that attrition damage is imperative, while trying to avoid the attrition damage with Blademaster won't work that well when you'll be unable to one-shot anything bigger than Imps even when berserked. When it comes to your opening traits, in a normal Vampyre run I would usually open with Finesse, or if in AoB, I would go straight for Berserker, but in a Strongman run, getting Brute 3 ASAP is non-negotiable; not only is increasing the damage of your punching vital when it's so weak, but since building up the Berserker counter requires hits to deal at least 10 damage, you can't even trigger Berserker with your fists without having Brute 3. Then you need to get Vampyre ASAP after that; picking up Finesse or TaN instead of Badass is tempting, but as established, you just won't survive if you don't heal off all the attrition damage and you'll probably be running low on medkits by the time you reach level 6, if you have any at all. After Vampyre you then get some differing options to build, Tormuse in his run went straight for TaN, however I go for Fin2 and then WK2 immediately; Finesse is not only a means for increasing DPS, but it'll also help you trigger Berserker faster, which is crucial to reducing the damage you take. For example, punching a full health Baron with no berserk is a very unfun time, as he'll get three hits in before you get four punches in to trigger Berserker, which each Baron swing will deal 9-11 damage that even a Red Armor will only reduce to 5-7 damage, so 15-21 total in said Red Armor (even greater in weaker armor), and he'll still get another hit or two in after Berserker kicks in, while you get 6 HP back for killing him. With Finesse, you can get a double hit or two in on him to reduce the hits he get in before Berserker triggers, significantly reducing the damage you take punching him, and this damage saving will be even more drastic when you're in a midst of a horde and triggering Berserker ASAP is your only hope of survival, thus it will save you more damage than TaN will (not to mention it'll also let you more effectively damage bigger enemies with other weapons before they reach you, so even more damage saving there). Then getting WK2 is important because the most crucial piece of equipment is getting yourself adequate indestructible or regenerating armor, as even with doubled-repairing shards, this run will make you chew through armor like Nightmare Demons chew through noobs, and TaN alone does not suffice, especially when TaN does not reduce the damage your armor takes (as it's applied in damage calculation after your armor). (Your different armor options are explained in the spoiler)
Barring getting very lucky with finding one of the indestructible or regenerating rare armors early, such armor will come in one of three forms; a Nanofiber Red Armor, an O-modded Red Armor if you get an Onyx mod from Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, or a Powered Red Armor if you get a Nano mod from said special levels. If you don't get an Onyx or Nano mod from Armory/Lab, then you need to Nanofiber your Red Armor, and you need to get WK2 before doing so to Power mod it after, as Nanofiber Red Armor is pretty lousy without it (even when berserked, Nanofiber Red Armor would fail to reduce tougher melee hits to 1 damage, and hits taken without berserk will really sting). If you get an Onyx mod that's much better, as even just an O-modded Red Armor is better than the aforementioned P-modded Nanofiber Red Armor, but you still want WK to buff it up farther; a PO Red Armor gets you an indestructible 6 protection armor with a 25% fire res, which will reduce nearly everything to 1 damage when berserked and will make slugging it out without berserk not so painful, while with WK2 you could add an A mod on top for a much appreciated speed boost. Getting a Nano mod for a Powered Red Armor is the best, as its armor regeneration is nearly as good as being indestructible but it also doubles the fire resist to 50%, gives a much needed +25% melee resistance, and gets rid of the movement penalty altogether, while with WK2, you can P-mod it after to get a 7 protection armor, which with the aforementioned resistances can let you tank most things even without berserk.
After WK2 I go for Juggler, which can be surprising as at this point as I'm not so reliant on using weapons to weaken enemies and so Badass 2 or TaN would be more valuable, but if I make this far, when I do use weapons, I want to absolutely minimize the time I spend with it equipped to reduce the chance some random Pinky dies in lava or something else dies while I have a weapon equipped, which is probably a bigger risk to ending a run at this point than me actually dying. After that is level 12 and so I still don't get Badass nor TaN as I can get more Finesse and Brute; I go for Fin3 first, I already explained the importance of faster attacking speed and speed is something that gets even better the more of it you have (at this point I will be getting 2 punches for nearly every 1 attack from standard speed enemies, and even against Archviles I can now sneak extra punches in without berserk, while with berserk, I'll be getting nearly 3 punches for 1 from standard speed enemies and getting reliable double punches on fast enemies), and then it's maxing out Brute to make my damage less pitiful (with Brute 5, your punches now deal 16-18 damage, 32-36 when berserked, thus with berserk you can now two-shot any enemy below an Archvile, while also one-shotting Revenants and Arachnotrons). It's Badass 2 after that for extra insurance with carrying around more boosted health, and then I finally get TaN for my final two levels, though if I was relying on a Nanofiber Red Armor in this run, I may have gotten TaN sooner (but with the armor I had, I didn't need the farther damage reduction).
With the overarching strategy, there are two ways to approach Strongman Angelic; you either play it the intended way and actually clear out most floors punching everything to get 90+% kills, or you stair dive and pray you get lucky enough with Berserks/Invulns to survive and farm a Pain Elemental or safe respawn for hours later in the run to make up the 90+% kills needed. Tormuse did the latter, and ended up spending a whopping 7 and a half hours on his run, farming Pain Elementals for an absurd 12029 Lost Soul kills (granted he went that far to get Iron Skull and could have made do with half the Lost Souls, but having to kill 6K Lost souls is still a crazy time-consuming amount), Tormuse however doesn't state how many tries it took him, while stair diving seems extremely unreliable when you're playing a Marine (so no stair sense) and can't use any weapons to kill stuff nor can rocket jump with enemies around (as invariably something would get killed by it or infighting while you have the rocket launcher equipped). Considering how unappealling spamming stair dives until I get very lucky is to me and the extremely tedious lategame Lost Soul/respawn grinding needed if I skip most of the floors, I decided to play it the more "legit" way and actually kill most enemies along the way. Micerang in his Strongman Angelic actually pulled off a YAAM Conqueror, but again considering 0.9.9.8 gave you the cheat code that was the dodging bug and its overpowered Marine + its version of Vampyre that was essentially IDDQD, doing that in any other version would be ludicrous, so I won't be going that far and will leave any floor that is not worth staying on (especially in Phobos), while I will only be entering and clearing special levels that are still easily doable with the fist-only kills restriction.
When it comes to the run itself, it immediately gets annoying with Phobos Base Entry; if the Shotgunners come out early when you approach the building, that's it run is over, reset, even if you can run through their shotgun blasts without dying you'll take too much damage. If they don't come out early and you can get to the side of the building, the level is easy to clear as you can gift drop all the Formers to punching range and approaching an initial Former Human isn't hard as they'll have Storm Trooper accuracy when you're running. The next part of aggravation though comes in getting those Small Medkits that you
really want when you need all the health you can get early on and getting them is a terrible luck-based ordeal; I found a trick where you can guarantee a double attack on a Shotgunner if he attacks on consecutive quick swaps you do, but with Brute 1 your punch does 4-6 damage, so if you roll 4 on one punch and then don't roll a 6 on the other punch, you won't kill him in two punches, and you only have 74% accuracy too with Brute 1 so your finishing punch will miss annoyingly frequently, where the Shotgunner will then use the medkit up. And unlike in a normal run where you can use the first Shotgunner's Shotgun to one-shot the second Shotgunner with a medkit, you can't do that here, so you will need roll the unreliable odds again. Calculating all the probabilities here would be annoying, but I would say you only have around 25% or less odds of getting a good Phobos Base Entry with both medkits and not taking too much damage, so aiming for that will make you quickly reset a lot, and even getting a good Phobos Base Entry will often be for naught as you get a floor 2 that isn't viable. I kept trying for the ideal Phobos Base Entry, but in retrospect you probably should just settle for the one medkit and not taking too much damage, the extra medkit won't save you getting a fucked early Phobos floor and any run that makes it to Chained Court can be viable (as you'll see), so all those resets that will be caused trying to get both medkits here won't be worth it.
Speaking of floor 2, it'll be the floor with the most deaths or resets if you don't aim for an ideal Phobos Base Entry. To start with, if you spawn near a bunch of enemies in the open without an immediate good escape path, your run is already over, Formers will shred you quickly in the open and you can forget about trying to punch out several Imps at once with only Brute 1. If you get forced to fight a Pinky before you get Brute 2, your run is also over; with only Brute 1 your fist will deal an appalling 2-4 damage to them while their bites deal 6-8 damage and they'll be getting a double attack in for every 2 or 3 punches you throw, so you absolutely need to avoid them before you at least get Brute 2 (ideally you'll want Brute 3, since with Brute 2 you're still dealing only 5-7 damage, but Brute 2 can be workable if you can at least weaken them significantly first). If you don't get an immediate run-ending start, first thing will be trying to find a workable camping spot with a door or water tile ASAP and then set up camp, as well as hoping you can punch out enough Formers before having to punch out Imps with Brute 1 (who are a lot more competent in melee than Formers and will often not die to two punches if not previously damaged, as you will need to roll two 6 damage rolls without missing either punch to do so). Once you got a camping spot, you can gift drop with one of your medkits to lure Formers into punching range, but you can safely shoot them once with your Pistol to aggro them into position or just weaken them into one-punch kill range since saving any damage you take helps (without damage boosts, the Pistol can't do more than 8 damage and so can never kill an undamaged Former in one shot, however the Pistol does frequently miss and so you shouldn't shoot if you can see a barrel behind the Former). Imps are trickier, as they can't be lured in by gifts, and with their just above-average speed, they can get a double move as you wait and so can get a surprise attack in, or immediately pop into melee range, while the math isn't in your favor if you try duking it out with several undamaged Imps (Imps deal 3-5 in melee, 2-4 if you got Green Armor on, and won't frequently miss like Formers will, while they can occasionally get double hits in without Finesse and you can't one-punch a full health Imp without Brute 3, which even then you'll only do so 33% of the time). You'll need to Pistol Imps from behind cover to safely get their attention, and you'll want to Pistol them to one-punch range; usually you can only get one safe Pistol shot on them but if their health is displayed as "lightly wounded" or "scratched", the Pistol low rolled and left them at 9/10 HP, so you can (and should) Pistol them again to ensure they're in one-punch range with Brute 2 or especially Brute 1 (but after you get Brute 3, you'll always one-punch them after any Pistol shot). If an Imp is at least 8 tiles away, a Shotgun will fail to one-shot them even with an incredibly unlikely max damage roll, but using a Shotgun is risky as barrels could be around just outside your vision that would get blown up, or there could be Formers or Lost Souls right outside your vision that get killed in the spread, so you shouldn't use Shotguns to aggro an Imp unless you're damn sure nothing is behind it.
Regarding Lost Souls, with their 50% bullet resistance you can safely get at least two Pistol shots off on them and you won't need to worry about them leaving a corpse, but don't Pistol a wandering Lost Soul that's less than 5 tiles away, as a shot Lost Soul will immediately charge and cover up to 4 tiles in a single move, while their charge hits harder than Imps with 5-7 damage (ideally after you Pistol a Lost Soul, it charges right into punching range for you to finish off). With Pinkies, ideally you have some acid on the level and can just wait for them to kill themselves in the acid or lure them over it, otherwise you are going to want to bust out the Shotgun to weaken them, as the Pistol likely won't get more than a few shots off before they reach you with over half their health intact, which is going to be a very unpleasant time with only Brute 2. If a Pinky's health is displayed as "wounded", they can die to any closish Shotgun blast (they can have as little as 13 HP left, which a very high damage roll can inflict to them even from a few tiles away), but this early it's a risk you have to take as a "wounded" Pinky can have as much as 18 HP and even a 13 HP Pinky will likely take up to three punches with Brute 2 to kill while you lose nearly half your health in the exchange (you should try getting them down to at least "severely wounded" before punching them, when you have Brute 2 I would even say you should probably risk another Shotgun blast on them at "heavily wounded"). For one more note with Pinkies,
always check their health before shooting them, otherwise you might risk shooting a Pinky that's already nearly dead from running through acid offscreen (and I did lose a couple runs from shooting at Pinkies that happened to injure themselves to near death, you should also do the same with Imps since they can survive telefrags with 1 HP and I lost another run to shooting at an Imp without looking at its health that indeed survived a telefrag offscreen).
With vaults on Floor 2, they can be a mixed blessing; vaults can have very nice things inside, but on N! they'll be filled with over a half dozen Pinkies or Cacodemons, while you won't be able to get Brute 3 + Berserker this early to berserk through them. First thing is to try finding the vault and setting up camp near its entrance to make sure no enemies open it, you do not want the enemies inside getting out before you get Brute 3. If you can guard the vault and kill all other enemies on the floor, you can then try dealing with it. If there is a nearby Berserk Pack, you should utilize it to clear out the vault, but if not you'll need to approach it more carefully. If it's Pinkies and there's acid, you can try luring them over to it or push an acid barrel near the vault and blow it up, otherwise you'll have to break the door open from a distance and try isolating them once you get them out, while utilizing doors to block them off when needed. Cacodemons have a lot more HP and hit even harder in melee (doing 7-9 damage), while they'll fly over any acid, but they are a lot slower, so they might actually not be as bad if you can isolate them, as you can much more easily escape them and more easily weaken them before they reach you (you want to get them to "mortally wounded" before punching them, you can risk shotgunning a "heavily wounded" Caco this early but should switch to the Pistol if they're "severely wounded" but not yet in your face as a Shotgun has too high of a chance to kill them even near edge of vision, while they're guaranteed to survive at least one Pistol shot at that health range). If you get lucky with a vault and can clear it out, you could get a Red Armor early that will be extremely helpful, a Phase Device of either sort that will be crucial for a certain later level or a Rocket Launcher that will be even better for said level (and do emergency corpse disposal in the meantime), and early Large Medkits. Even just a Blue Armor would be useful for getting through the next few floors, and if there's nothing good inside, at least it'll be extra crucially needed early EXP. Whatever the floor layout is, you should fully clear floor 2 or reset/die trying if you're unable to, killing everything on floor 2 should get you enough EXP to hit level 3 to get the direly needed Brute 3, or it'll at least get you no more than a few kills away from hitting level 3, you
do not want to be punching Hell Knights with Brute 2. In my winning run, I got a
Massacre lever on floor 2; I got one in a few prior runs that I couldn't find in time before dying, but in this run I was able to escape that nasty looking start and find it. If you get a Massacre lever, you should try finding it and hit it ASAP; as it'll gib all Formers, kill all Imps, and significantly weaken Lost Souls and Pinkies (you'll lose any medkits or armors picked up by the Formers, but it's probably worth the tradeoff here). You could try going into Hell's Arena despite clearing it being out of the question, I usually go in even in runs where it's unviable just to get some kills for EXP, however I skipped it in nearly all my attempts here as it can go quickly awry and I typically already spent 15+ minutes just getting through floor 2 (the only time I went in was when I got a lucky early Shell Box from an ammo crate so I could weaken the Cacos and Pinkies much more safely, maybe if I got a Combat Shotgun from a floor 2 vault I would consider it too). Even if you get any Berserk Packs on floor 2, you shouldn't waste them going into Hell's Arena, as they'll help you survive the upcoming floor much more and you're not clearing Hell's Arena anyway.
After floor 2 is the ever dreaded floor 3-5 range, with the Hell Knights and more dangerous level types showing up. Hell Knights hit as hard as Cacodemons do, but they have even more HP, are faster than you with 110% speed, and can wear any armor they find as well as steal + use medkits. You'll rarely be able to cleanly shotgun down a Hell Knight to one-punch range, and unless you started shotgunning from far away, they'll probably get to you with over half their health remaining, where it'll take you at least three punches to kill them even with Brute 3. Hell Knights also often spawn heading a group of Imps, at which point you can't shotgun them down unless you can get the Hell Knight separated from the Imps. Whenever you find Berserk Packs, seeking and punching out any Hell Knights you see or hear while berserked should be your immediate kill priority, and you should eat an Imp fireball on top of their corpse to destroy it. You need to hit level 4 to get Berserker, as otherwise lethal hot starts and generally unviable floors can be survived with it, while the run's ultimate success still hinges on getting Vampyre, so you should try clearing floors in this range if you can do so. But if a floor is just too tough (such as a Cacodemon cave, Warehouse levels, or any maze), then you should leave upon finding the stairs, reaching The Chained Court is your top priority. In this run, I entered floor 3 with
much needed berserk and had another immediately accessible Berserk Pack, so I could clear out the Hell Knights and a vault that spawned (as well as nabbed myself a Phase Device from inside it). The next two floors would be awful Warehouse levels with the mass barrel quasi-event, so clearing them out was unviable and I got brutalized fighting my way to the stairs. I was able to make it to The Chained Court but I thought the run was over as I had no armor and only a single Small Medkit (I didn't even bother taking screenshots because I thought the run was going to die in Chained Court or shortly after anyway).
If you make it to The Chained Court, it's tempting to grab all the Berserks and hightail it, but you should actually clear it, as if done correctly, you can come out of it without burning any medkits and you really want that Baron EXP, while you also want the mods (you can't mod your fists but you need A mods to move faster and P mods to buff your armor, as well as B mods for your armor if you don't get an Onyx nor Nano later). For clearing Chained Court, grab the Chainsaw (and immediately unequip it), then just immediately run to one of the exit rooms; punch out any Formers that are in the way but otherwise run past them until you get to the exit room and set up camp in there. You'll get shot up a lot and will probably be low on health, but you should make it (while a Berserk will fully heal you in a bit), and once you have the exit room secured, you can drop a medkit or armor in the doorway and camp it until all the non-caged Formers come to it (if there's a Chaingunner you had to punch out in the exit room, you'll have to keep punching him as he revives until you're sure no Former is right outside, then you can step out as he gets back up and wait for him to get in the doorway to put him out for good before resuming camping). Once all non-caged Formers are dead, it's onto the Barons; grab a Berserk and then go release the right Barons, punch one out and eat an acid ball on its corpse to destroy it, then immediately run back to the center, where you can then shotgun the Baron until it's sufficiently weakened for you to punch it out in the doorway. You then repeat the process for the Barons on the left side, except you instead lure the last Baron into the exit room instead of to the center room, and once the last Baron is killed in the doorway, you can camp with a gift there until the remaining Formers released in the center room come to you. Doing this I'm still able to clear The Chained Court despite the dire state I was in, and have two Berserks left to take with me to the next floor.
Phobos 6 was a maze that I would have no hope in if I stayed, but I find the stairs quickly enough and nab myself a battered Blue Armor for some armor as well as a Supercharge along the way, and then Phobos 7 is yet another Warehouse level with a hot start, but I survive just long enough to get Vampyre. I also find the red stairs quickly, which turned out to be
Military Base! If it was Phobos Lab I would have kept looking for the normal stairs (I already lost my deepest run prior from Phobos Lab after being forced into it when rolling an Arachnotron Cave on floor 7, punching out Nightmare Demons just isn't viable and I didn't have the speed to safely lure out the cave Nightmare Demons nor a Rocket Launcher for preemptively triggering Berserker), but Military Base I could easily clear with Vampyre online regardless of my armor/health supply and it'll be a huge EXP dump alongside having lots of armor, potentially medkits from crates, and two mods, so I just go right in after my berserk runs out. Then it's Phobos Anomaly, you get a much needed Red Armor and two Large Medkits, but you have to get past the Nightmare enemy ambush. The simplest way to get past would be to get an Invuln on floor 7, the next safest way is rocket jump through if you found a Rocket Launcher (and you'll be safe from anything dying as you do so as the Nightmare enemies are so tanky), or if you have no Hellrunner, then you need to get lucky with a Phase Device. I'm unsure how to handle it without those things in this run, especially if you don't even got A-modded boots as I didn't yet in this run; your only shot might be P-modding the Red Armor, punch the Nightmare Demons and hope Berserker activates before you die, then run back to the starting room with berserk and hopefully Vampyre can keep you alive as you punch out everything in the doorway. Luckily that aforementioned Phase Device I got does get me past the ambush, I then pop the radsuit from Military Base as I punch out the Bruisers (should have used the Chainsaw to weaken them but I'm able to successfully punch them out without using my Red Armor), and at last
I finally get a run to Deimos after dozens and dozens of attempts. This also serves as a good lesson that as long as you can make it to The Chained Court, Strongman Angelic is still viable, no matter how bad your armor and health situation is.
Deimos would immediately give me a big reprieve, with its first floor having not just
One Invuln,
two Invulns (plus a Hatred Skull that might be handy), but
three Invulnerabilities! I'm able to take them all with me to Deimos Lab, where I just
run straight to the Shamblers and punch them out with Invulnerability (the Invuln wasn't really needed when they would have been manageable enough with Berserker, but it was some much needed catharsis). I would have to retreat back to the teleporter room and wait for all the remaining enemies who didn't get their corpses destroyed to teleport in, after this bit of tedious cleanup, I can access the lab cache, and get a Sniper Mod...
plus a Nano mod! I have my Red Armor already P-modded and so can make Powered Red Armor, however I'm still a level off from getting WK2 and I'll need it first or else I won't be able to mod it after (yet again I'll question why the hell this restriction with modding pre-WK2 assemblies existed, 0.9.9.8 getting rid of it was seriously one of its best changes). So I'm left at the conundrum of if to just make the Powered Red Armor now or wait until WK2; since my medkit supply is looking
much better after Military Base and that good first Deimos floor, I make the decision to try holding out for one more level (and use the Sniper Mod to make a Plasmatic Combat Shotgun for easy anywhere corpse disposal + safe wall destruction, but I have to use it very sparingly as I do not want the run ruined at this point because of something dying while using it). I would get a pretty good Deimos 2 (as well as a stark reminder why you can't walk around with weapons equipped in this version, as I
walked into a Mancubus' vision that then fired and killed enemies behind me, the run would have been over right there if I had anything equipped), and then on Deimos 3 I would
reach level 10, where I promptly make the
Powered Red Armor and P-mod it for a regenerating armor with 7 protection, 50% fire resist, 25% melee resist, and no movement penalty. If that wasn't enough, I find a
Rocket Launcher (after having one blown up on the prior floor by the aforementioned Mancubus) that I immediately use all the Bulk mods I had to turn into a Tactical Rocket Launcher (which will let me take more Invulns with me at the end of a floor and the smaller radius can let me more safely rocket jump around enemies in a pinch), and finally an
Agility mod for my boots (I somehow did not get a single one in the prior three special levels). At this point the run is mostly won, the Powered Red Armor will reduce all melee damage short of the Nightmare Demon and the biggest bosses down to 1 damage, VMR will be nearly harmless even without berserk, and with berserk basically everything will get reduced to 1 damage with no TaN needed (in this version, only plasma hits that deal over 11 damage won't get reduce to 1 damage, which among common enemies only a max damage roll from a Hell Knight or Cacodemon can do for a single extra point of damage, and the only other enemy I can encounter that can is Nightmare Cacodemon rolling for a maximum of 3 damage after my defenses). I would near exclusively use my fists at this point to be absolutely sure nothing inadvertently dies when I have a weapon out, as weakening enemies prior to punch them is no longer needed when I have achieved a near-IDDQD state, and I can even get more corpses destroyed by just tanking explosive projectiles on them if they're not already destroyed in the crossfire. I just need to be careful to not overextend against Arachnotrons (who can still rack up a lot of damage since their rapid fire bursts add up fast even after reducing each plasma bolt to 1 damage) and not take too many acid balls from Barons without berserk (they can still roll up to as high as 12 damage without berserk and a few acid balls in quick succession can damage my Powered Red Armor, putting me in a bad spot if I can't quickly get a breather for it to repair itself).
I skip Containment Area but head into Abyssal Plains for the Skulls that might be useful and a big easy kill pad, with it
pushing me over the needed 90% kills threshold and so I won't need to do any respawn or Pain Elemental farming later as long as I clear out most of the remaining floors. Having a nuke on hand and an Invuln spawning on Deimos 6, I would use the opportunity to
nuke Spider's Lair, which conveniently has all its rewards spawn in after the nuke goes off; unfortunately I can't use the BFG but the Plasteel Boots will be nice... yet are immediately rendered irrelevant when Deimos 7 has
Enviroboots drop in my immediate vision. Deimos 7 is finished off easily and then I
punch out the Cyberdemon effortlessly, not even needing to Chainsaw him down to near death first. Hell gives me an easy opener with a
Pain Elemental + Lost Souls cave, and then Unholy Cathedral is free EXP, with me
also punching out the Angel of Death without needing to weaken him with the Chainsaw. I find a Bulk in that cave after using all the ones I had prior on the Tactical Rocket Launcher, which I used to make a P-modded Nanofiber Red Armor out of a spare Red Armor I had just in case I got into a fight that damaged the Powered Red Armor... and that proved immediately necessary when Hell 2 gave me an Arena level with an Arachnotron group right near the start as well as a nearby Hell Noble group set to hunt me. Had my closest post-Phobos call here as my Powered Red Armor got damaged and I had to slip into that Nanofiber Red Armor, with one particular bad moment when my berserk ran out while waiting for enemies to approach me from behind the starting cover, a Hatred Skull would indeed prove useful here to get rid of the nearby corpses and get berserk back on to finish the remaining hunting enemies so I can put the Powered Red Armor back on to repair itself, after which I can finish off the remaining enemies. Hell 3 is much smoother and I then enter The Vaults, since it's free EXP and missing a handful of kills won't matter, while I also have two Phase Devices to try getting in the center vault without the Arena Master's Staff. The first one doesn't get me in, but the second Phase
does! This turns out to not just be for EXP (and making up for cheesing Scavenger Diamond prior with Whisper Of Death in this version), but is materially worth it as well with the center vault having a
Lava Armor, much better backup armor than the Nanofiber Red that I can also easily repair whenever with those Enviroboots (and I would make use of it a couple times, particularly against some Barons on an Island level who I carelessly face tanked too many berserk-less acid balls from). Hell 4 would have an
Invuln right near Mortuary's stairs, and I had another nuke on hand, so I decided to nuke Mortuary as well. I would pop the other Hatred Skull I got from the Agony Elemental, then do a couple rocket jumps towards the Nuclear BFG before the Archviles start reviving enemies (immediately swapping off once there was too much risk of something dying while rocket jumping), and then run the rest of the way to
get the Nuclear BFG before nuking Mortuary (this was completely unnecessary, but nuking Mortuary is fun). Thanks to Enviroboots, Mt. Erebus is a freebie and it would have
Malek's Armor there, would have been much nicer to have this sooner, but it's nice to have for Carmack, who I opt to fight to continue inching closer to Apostle rank and
I effortlessly punch Carmack out.
A really nasty thing about Strongman runs is that you don't know for sure if you succeed until you see the ending mortem or the rank up screen, since
something may have died at some point while you had a weapon equipped that you didn't notice, and there's no way to see during the run if it's still valid for the Strongman badges, thus you could potentially slug through this ordeal after hours and hours just to not get the badge because you didn't see the message that a fucking Pinky you never even saw ran on lava for the single second you had a weapon out. So upon killing Carmack I sit in anticipation for the rank up screen to verify nothing went wrong.....
and there it is! After 24 recorded deaths (the most brutal deaths being the previously alluded to death in Phobos Lab after being forced in by a
terribly early Arachnotron cave, and this run immediately after where I made it to Phobos 7 with an Invuln near the Anomaly stairs, only to absolutely throw it
by charging on a Revenant in the open backed by a Chaingunner instead of running behind some sort of cover or just using up the Large Medkit I had), probably around another dozen or so I quit out of when getting a fucked floor or something dying while I had a weapon out, and countless resets on Phobos Base Entry if you count those as real attempts, I get Strongman Angelic over two days of attempting it. That is additionally my
9th Angelic, officially tying Tormuse for the most recorded Angelics by any player in 0.9.9.7 and becoming the second player confirmed to have achieved the Chaos Lt. General Rank (this also knocks off the last badge that was only won by Tormuse, which leaves Icy's Arena Diamond as the only badge left exclusively won by a single player aside from my own Eagerness and Inquisitor Angelics). Overall, yeah this badge definitely deserves its Angelic status and I can see why only Tormuse won it in this version, as not only is it extremely difficult, but it also forces the worst of DRL gameplay and it's very frustrating to suddenly lose runs because of anything dying while you had a weapon out. I don't think it's harder than Eagerness Angelic and am not sure it's harder than Inquisitor Angelic either (the difficulty is incredibly front-loaded here and surviving to The Chained Court is heavily luck-based), but it certainly was a lot less fun to go for. Strongman Angelic will be one of the badges most affected by the changes since in 0.10 and beyond; there are lots of good things like respawns no longer counting towards the kill counter, enemies no longer reviving in vision without the aid of Archviles, Tech mods now giving resistances to armors (including +20% melee res), proper infighting being in the game, and best of all, indirect kills are now properly attributed as "other" kills instead of to your equipped weapon, so you can keep a weapon equipped at all times and don't need to waste so much time constantly swapping between armed/unarmed. There are however going to be drawbacks, such as more randomized enemy melee damage meaning enemies can potentially swing harder (notably Pinkies actually average slightly more damage now), berserk being nerfed to giving +50% resistances (the Marine getting an inherent +10% energy resistances will result in your berserked energy resistances being the same if you play the Marine, but you will feel the nerf on the melee side), Vampyre getting some significant but deserved nerfs (Vampyre's HP steal can no longer overheal and Vampyre is now blocked Ironman + TaN, which were buffed to give additional resistances, but as compensation Vampyre can get SoB now for extra punching damage or get EE for Intuition), and most significantly you now have the Enraged Timer that will invalidate excessive camping. I'm not sure if Strongman Angelic will be easier or even harder in 0.10-onward, but it'll certainly be less degenerate to actually play, which would make any grind for it more bearable regardless of if it turns out harder.
Well that was sure a doozy to write up, here is the mortem:
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DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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GRANDMASTERTYSON25,
level 17 Cyberdemon Chaos Mjr General Marine,
nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
He survived 1459188 turns and scored 940230 points.
He played for 3 hours, 13 minutes and 29 seconds.
He opposed the Nightmare!
He killed 2016 out of 2122 hellspawn. (95%)
He held his right to remain violent.
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 11
Levels visited : 9
Levels completed : 9
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Sunrise Iron Fist
UAC Star (silver cluster)
Aurora Medallion
Fallout Gold Cross
Grim Reaper's Badge
Hell Armorer Badge
Strongman Angelic Badge
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 120/60 Experience 150112/17
ToHit Ranged +0 ToHit Melee +10 ToDmg Ranged +0 ToDmg Melee +15
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Marine
Finesse (Level 3)
Tough as nails (Level 2)
Brute (Level 5)
Juggler (Level 1)
Berserker (Level 1)
Whizkid (Level 2)
Badass (Level 2)
Vampyre (Level 1)
Bru->Bru->Bru->Ber->Bad->MVm->Fin->Fin->WK->WK->Jug->Fin->Bru->Bru->Bad->TaN->TaN->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[a] [ Armor ] Malek's Armor [3/3] (93%)
[b] [ Weapon ] nothing
[c] [ Boots ] tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
[d] [ Prepared ] tactical rocket launcher (6d7) [5/5] (P1)
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
[a] plasmatic combat shotgun (7d3) [5/5]
[b] powered red armor [7/7] (100%) (P)
[c] nanofiber red armor [4] (P)
[d] Lava Armor [4/4] (100%)
[e] Angelic Armor [7/7] (100%)
[f] chainsaw (5d7) (BP)
[g] shotgun shell (x50)
[h] rocket (x2)
[i] large med-pack
[j] large med-pack
[k] large med-pack
[l] large med-pack
[m] large med-pack
[n] large med-pack
[o] large med-pack
[p] phase device
[q] envirosuit pack
[r] power mod pack
[s] Enviroboots [0]
[t] shell box (x100)
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
Bullet - internal 60% torso 60% feet 60%
Melee - internal 60% torso 60% feet 60%
Shrapnel - internal 60% torso 60% feet 60%
Acid - internal 60% torso 90% feet 60%
Fire - internal 60% torso 90% feet 60%
Plasma - internal 60% torso 90% feet 60%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
204 former humans
175 former sergeants
182 former captains
275 imps
90 demons
563 lost souls
104 cacodemons
44 hell knights
58 barons of hell
38 arachnotrons
51 former commandos
44 pain elementals
68 revenants
42 mancubi
28 arch-viles
9 nightmare imps
12 nightmare demons
7 elite former humans
5 elite former sergeants
7 elite former commandos
2 bruiser brothers
2 shamblers
1 lava elemental
1 agony elemental
1 Angel of Death
1 Cyberdemon
1 Spider Mastermind
1 John Carmack
-- History ---------------------------------------------------
He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
On level 7 he marched into the Military Base.
He purified his fellow comrades.
On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
On level 9 he entered Deimos Lab.
On level 9 he assembled a plasmatic shrapnel!
He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
On level 11 he assembled a power armor!
On level 11 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
On level 11 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
On level 12 he romped upon the Abyssal Plains.
He slaughtered the beasts living there.
On level 14 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
He nuked level 14!
He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
On level 15 he found the Enviroboots!
On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
On level 17 he assembled a nanofiber armor!
On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
On level 17 he found the Longinus Spear!
He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
On level 19 he found the Lava Armor!
He managed to clear the Vaults completely!
On level 20 he assembled a tactical boots!
On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
He nuked level 20!
On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
On level 22 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
On level 22 he found the Malek's Armor!
He managed to raise Mt. Erebus completely!
Then at last he found Dis!
He overloaded a nuclear BFG 9000 on level 24!
He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You are hit! You need to taste
blood!
You hit John Carmack. You need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! The lost soul hits you. The lost
soul hits you. John Carmack reloads his rocket launcher. You need to taste
blood!
You hit John Carmack. The lost soul hits you. The lost soul hits you. You
need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. The lost soul hits you. You need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. You are hit! The lost soul dies. The lost soul dies.
The lost soul dies. The lost soul dies. You need to taste blood!
You hit John Carmack. John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You defeated John
Carmack! Press <Enter>...
You're going berserk!
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
331 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
133 of those were killed.
1 of those was killed by something unknown.
96 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
93 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
49 killed the bitch and survived.
37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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