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1

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

« on: May 21, 2025, 10:34 »

Thanks for the detailed answer. (Btw, I tried 0.9.9.9b7 yesterday, and joined the Discord. I'm "Balmipour" out there

Ah I didn't recognize you there, since Kornel already responded to some of your stuff in the Discord, I'll respond to the stuff he didn't.

(bug) shooting the last 4 ammo with my plasma gun gives me 65k ammo via some overflow.  Cool (and works the same with a chain-fired chaingun), but needs fix :D.  I've read about it on Discord too, but it looked 100% reproducible to me. Even got saves if necessary

Yeah it's a simple underflow bug whenever you shoot a burst that would deplete more ammo than you have in your clip remaining, but it has been already fixed for the next beta (if you want some broken fun though in the meantime, try exploiting it with a Jackhammer or full-auto GCB :p).

I think my suggestion of adding a lone lost soul facing you a few squares away when entering UC is decent-enough to be added to the list.
Any veteran will just enter and stomp it even before it wakes-up, but it would help every noobie trying to shoot it, which is valuable

Done

And unless I forgot a point, reworking boss fight looks quite relevant to keep in the "TO-DO list" as well. I must say JC's fight being a dummy one and this poor spider being nuked every time we meet it is a bit sad.  Complex point, I must agree... but worth a thought.

Maybe when we get to making the compilation list for the next version (1.0.0.0 or 0.9.9.9.1?) and some good ideas are brought up, but this is something that definitely isn't going to be possible for 0.9.9.9 when we're currently in the cutting room floor for it (I will note that Carmack did get buffed in 0.9.9.9, as spawned enemies now "wake up" faster, his spawns infighting each other neuters it at the moment though but that could be fixed if the proposal to disable infighting in boss levels is added. The Mastermind also got AI tweaks if you actually fight it and so it shouldn't be getting stuck anymore, but I haven't really experimented with its AI yet).

(unrelated to version, but useful) : have a "rename character" command !  Reading about Tormuse's AoHu badge did remind me how I tanked the mortuary (Went for a survivalist marine --0996 or 0997 survivalist--), since my scouts were all dying to a clumsy-moves-into-lava with their 10hp.  Had to manually rename my guy in the mortem (possibly screwing checksum xD) because I wanted my hero to be "Homer simpson"

Like the time display suggestion, this is something I personally don't see much use in but also no harm, maybe it could mess with the game's data recording but otherwise it would be up to Kornel to decide if it's worth programming or not.

But I'll aslo ask whether the difficulties have been reworked.
The reason I try UV before HNTR is because it feels much easier to me !
HNTR gives little XP (and stuff), and I often ended-up with stupid death, because I was lacking things (be it traits, mods, or even a common plasma rifle).  None of these is necessary, of course, but I don't think lesser difficulties feeling harder than higher ones is a good thing.  Doom or quake never felt like this to me.
I'd suggest giving an XP boost to balance for the lack of enemies in these difficulties, but slightly better items drops would probably be a good thing too.
Might be the occasion to give back some accuracy to enemies in these skill levels.

This is something I strongly disagree with (and seeing how many people got their shit pushed in when making the jump to UV and asked here and on the Discord for help dealing with UV, it being easier is a very fringe opinion). True you don't get as much EXP (even though you do have a 1.2x EXP multiplier in HNTR), and you probably won't get a Plasma Rifle until Deimos because Commandos no longer spawn in Phobos unless you find one in a vault, however you're overlooking some very important things that are much more meaningful:

*Enemy counts are increasingly smaller on the easier difficulties, the difference in enemy density on floors between HNTR and UV is huge, especially so when high weight enemies are involved (Hell floors in particular can become pretty empty on difficulties below UV).

*Stronger enemies show up much later. For example, UV is infamous for its floor 3 Hell Knights, while on HNTR, they don't start showing up until floor 9. While you don't get EXP as fast, you will still be at a higher level when you start fighting Hell Knights on HNTR (level 6 or 5 if you 100%ed everything prior and didn't skip the special levels) than you would be on UV (only level 3 if you completed Hell's Arena, even lower if you skipped Arena). You'll also have much better equipment by that time too (item generation is not difficulty dependent, more floors means more chances at finding good stuff, and nearly all special level rewards are not difficulty-dependent, with the only major exceptions being the Scythe, Dragonslayer, and Berserker Armor). When you start fighting Hell Knights in HNTR, you should at minimum have Red Armor and multiple Blue Armors, a Combat or Tactical Shotgun, several mods for your equipment, a Shell/Ammochain box or two, and a stash of Large Medkits, whereas in UV, most of the time you'll be fighting them with only a basic Shotgun or Chaingun or unmodified Pistol, a Rocket Launcher with very limited rockets and a single Blue Armor if you completed Hell's Arena, Green Armors that don't do anything against their plasma balls, and only a single Large Medkit on hand and a few small ones.

*The special levels themselves see big jumps in their enemy loadouts between difficulties, and some even farther tweaks on higher difficulties (such as the flood being faster in Halls Of Carnage or Lava Pits/Erebus taking away Radsuits). Phobos Lab on HNTR is not remotely comparable to Phobos Lab on UV.

*Enemies having that universal +2 accuracy boost on UV does matter. For example, Arachnotrons have +3 accuracy normally, which works out to them hitting 84% of their plasma bolts at point blank and 62% at edge of vision. On with the UV boost, they now hit 95% of their bolts at point blank, and 84% at edge of vision, seriously improving their effective damage output. This is why you take so much more damage on Spider's Lair in UV than on HMP, despite UV only adding two more Arachnotrons to it.

*Level types and level events also get nastier the higher the difficulty, for example nuke events get a smaller timer, deadly air events drain health faster, flood events are faster (and if on UV or N, can flood as fast as Halls Of Carnage), or some stuff won't even appear below UV (such as boss-only levels or blood caves in the standard game).

I think the only thing I would maybe change here is giving UV a slightly lower EXP multiplier (maybe x0.95?), particularly to account for the new special level pair that is being added on floor 4, and some new more EXP-heavy enemies being added to special levels.

EDIT: I did a standard HNTR run just because it has been so long since I did one and was thinking maybe I underrated the impact of getting less levels... and nah, beating it was completely mindless. No Hell Knights and nothing else bigger than them in Phobos made it a breeze to run through with no caution, and like I said, by the time I did have to fight them, I already had pretty good equipment to handle them. Then Deimos levels never had more than a few of the bigger baddies, I didn't even encounter an Archvile until Hell 3, and speaking of empty Hell levels, I spawned near an Archvile + Revenants group on the penultimate floor, where after dispatching them, the enemy reveal activated as there were only three enemies left on the entire rest of the floor. The special levels were also all way easier, the only speedbump was Cathedral because I couldn't get Brute nor Finesse 3 before reaching it (lacking the latter made my Chainsaw not quite fast enough to where he sometimes got hits in during my timing trick), but since he had so much less health, I was able to outlast him without much trouble (and kill him before getting any warnings about the Enraged Timer). Only ended up missing out on the Conqueror because the levers on Erebus are currently bugged and I didn't have the Scythe to fallback on to kill the unreachable enemies.

The only real annoying thing with gaining levels at a slower pace on HNTR was that I couldn't get Whizkid until over halfway into the game, while the game gave me a ton of mods. But since the difficulty was so light, I could get away with having my inventory being halfway full with mods and running around with a single Large medkit in reserve without ever being in real danger.

2

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

« on: May 20, 2025, 19:26 »

Wow, nice compilation.  Thanks for all this work.

I just discovered 0.9.9.8 and completed my first game (UV, kept my 0.9.9.7 player.wad)


Most suggestions I've seen here looked relevant to me.
After reading most of this thread (but about nothing else yet), here's my 2cts hot-feedback, for you to consider/inculde/ignore :)
note : While I notice the improvements, I rarely send flowers about what's good.  What I focus on is always the issues.

Nice to see you back, and any feedback is welcome! I'll also note that 0.9.9.9 is on the horizon, and we have active beta tests going for it if you're interested (check out the #doomrl-testing in the Jupiter Hell Discord server).

No quick selection keys anymore for weapons is extremely painful.
My usual run uses no more than shotgun/chainsaw(scythe)/plasma(laser) rifle/tac RL.  I don't want to bind them manually every game, which even seems to need de-equipping them first so they are in invertory.
The old system where every weapon could have its quick key (and I did bind every one of them) was MUCH more efficient.  Its only issue was quick-keying did give a movement-cost reduction, which was nonsense and shouldn't be paired with what is just a UI feature.

I find the manual ingame quickkey binding to be very quick and second nature once you get used to it, and for people like me that used to frequently change the quickkey weapons manually to use them with exotics/uniques, I've found this to be a very welcome change. Perhaps though an optional setting could be added that automatically sets the quickkeys to the old defaults, would have to ask Kornel if that is possible to implement.

Is keybindings.lua not meant to come back ?  I also had some bindings to use items.  Especially both medkit and phase devices.  Having to open inventory for this is an annoyance

The settings.lua file keeps the information for your settings, including keybindings (you can modify settings ingame, but you can also still modify them in this lua file, or copy it over to other versions to not to have readjust your settings ingame again). I'll also note that you can still set the quickkeys to items ingame.

And a BIG annoyance, since I now also have to scroll manually to item slots.  I've read that for some technical reason, inventory bindings would be complex to keep (I wonder why, yet), but remain surprised by such sacrifices.  I think this will hamper playability too much for me and while I'll try a few more games, may very well end-up sticking with 0.9.9.7 if UI remains like this in the future.

I personally hated the old inventory system, as far too often I would misclick some random key on the inventory screen and end up wasting a medkit or worse (I also use a mouse for faster item selection). If you do really want the legacy inventory system or at least the technical explanation, you'll have to take it up with Kornel directly (alternatively, if you got the programming skills, you could try your hand at implementing it, DRL and the latest beta are open sourced, and additional programming help would be appreciated).

Oh, and having to press space to go downstairs feels weird.  First roguelike I play where I can't press > for it.
I can deal with this, but knowing I'll someday mistakenly go downstairs because I accidentally pressed spacebar is a bit more annoying.  Secondary for sure, but a small loss remains a loss.

From experience, it was weird at first but I got used to it. If you want a workaround, you could set the general action key to ">". Otherwise, you can see if Kornel can add a dedicated key for descending to the "legacy" keybindings (where some other old inputs like opening/closing doors and saving were added).

Shoudl'nt "blood boots" be "Butcher's boots" ? Could even pair for a set with some cleaver ♥)

The Blood Boots were added without any specific inspiration, to give a rare means to obtaining immunity from the new blood fluid. I would like more sets and so would be fine with this if a good idea comes up for what the set will do (maybe it'll let you ignore the fluid-slowing mechanic in blood, useful though a bit mundane).

Phobos lab might be too early, or maybe we need some more ego pistols and get a random one. (Lack of variety is a bit sad here).
Thing is : the issue is more how pistols work than the drop itself.  Guaranteed or not, CP is always useless unless you're a pistol freak.

SoG has been changed to +3 damage/-10% firing time, and even the basic Pistol will be outputting serious power (at the expense of weaker DPS in the lategame), so a stronger more commonly available pistol isn't really needed anymore.

Alternatively, some rewards (pistols or other) could depend on picked skills.  E.G. you could get a guaranteed pistol in HA if you skilled at least SOG2.

Hell's Arena already has challenge-specific rewards, so it should be possible that Phobos Lab/Military Base have the Combat Shotgun replaced in AoB/AoMr, or Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab could have two of the weapons in the weapon cache be guaranteed to be pistois or shotguns if you're playing AoMr or AoSh respectively (making all four be pistols or shotguns may be a bit much though, since that would give you great odds at multiple exotic/unique pistols/shotguns).

As a side note, I never pick-up a combat shotgun anymore. And I always play mostly shotgun all game long (unless I get a nano for my plasma rifle).
I genuinely think regular shotgun with SOB2+ and/or P mods is MUCH more powerful. Hence, I don't agree with it being of any more use than a pistol.
... except maybe for the 5 ammo I salvage from it :)

I strongly disagree with this, but this isn't the place for arguments on tactical differences :p

I strongly disagree with arbitrarly disabling powerups: Messing with normal flow of the game in ways requiring to die-and-retry is painful.
Phobos lab's exception is terrible-enough already, we don't need more of this !  Isn't anyone fighting an apostle berserk and already steamrolling anyway ?
Plus, these edge cases need specific roguelike luck.  From what I see, you currently can't activate a thermobomb in this level ?  Well, remove this then.  I already lost more than one character due to supid exceptions of this kind in several games --which might include this case--, and unless the game tells you in advance, this shit is just frustrating.  Game should just follow the rules, not require you to parse the wiki/forums or die until you know every surprise trap.
Also, this kind of vicious additions removes some tactical play, like fast-diving through 4 levels because you just found 3 invu globes in Hell4 and wanna try some fun ending.  Love diversity, let players use rare cool cases instead of inciting them to rely on a generic safe strat !  THIS . IS . ROGUELIIIIIIIIIKE !

You can activate nukes in Hell Fortress against Carmack, only when you're fighting the Apostle that you're unable to activate nukes. As for carrying powerups into Hell Fortress, I feel you shouldn't be able to trivialize Carmack because of lucky invulns, and going for full wins is supposed to be something extra with enhanced risk and difficulty to it. This isn't a suggestion I feel too strongly for though, and I just realized that it could apply to the Dragonslayer's permanent berserk if a specific exception isn't programmed in, which would be catastrophic if you're fighting the Apostle and don't have Berserker (but at least definitely don't let people nuke Carmack anymore).

Previous case reminds me of my first visit to UC.  There should definitely be some warning telling you you can't shoot when entering.  It could be as simple as a lone lost soul facing you 3 squares away...

Having a more direct way of letting you know you can't shoot in the Cathedral for the newbies seems no brainer to me, and one of Kornel's goals with DRL's renewed development is making it more newb-friendly.

I'm not sure. I think killing Carmack shuld be more rewarding for this to make sense. A lot of players probably play it like I do, and just routinely kill it because "100%".  The notion of partial wins seems enough to me : it's a fun notion when reading your stats.
We could imagine something bigger (Like what JH has near the end), but it looks decent to me in its current form.
If I wanted a rework, I'd say boss fights after anomaly could be made more interesting (I now always berserk into Cyber and nuke/berserk for ending...  yeah, these could definitely use some rework :p)

My problem is that there's currently no real risk with going for the full win, as you'll still be rewarded any badges/medals for winning unless it requires a full win in the first place (I'm reminded of this mortem by apalapan, where he died to Carmack but was still rewarded the Hunter Diamond badge). It also doesn't make much sense to me to get killed by Carmack and the mortem acts like you won; fun fact, there's a unique death message for dying to Carmack ("[Player] was pwned by John Carmack"), but you'll never see it ingame because dying to him counts as a partial win and thus you get the partial win message ("[Player] sacrificed himself to kill the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress"). I wouldn't be opposed to making the boss fights more elaborate, but boss changes would need a lot of consideration, because it could make the hardest badges unreasonable or outright impossible (for example if the Cyberdemon fight got spruced up and made harder, it may no longer be possible to beat him in Archangel Of Humanity without nuking him with invuln).

Have less restrictions on Dual Angel combinations
Yes, but please, make them a separate category for medals.
There's a small bunch of badges/medals like N! shotty I only got because I Angel-of-overconfidence'd into Dis, probably relying on some luck (be it invu, berserks, or any other great drops trivializing the ending)
This feels absolutely lame, and wayyyyy less deserved than the badges I got for winning say, my first nightmare games (which were also conqueror 8)).
I'm sure medals for dual angels can make sense too, but as long as an angel challenge gives any positive counterpart, we probably need to make them specific.
An alternative could be to note for every badge what were the winning conditions : Soldier class, challenges... could even be linked to mortem.

I strongly agree with finding Sereging to be extremely cheesy and to not be in the spirit of the achievement the badges represent (while also finding it annoying when looking through the Badge Hunters thread for strategies used and seeing most of the Diamonds were gotten with a lame AoOC stairdive and pray or with AoMC), and so I did support disqualifying Dual Angels from earning badges that don't explicitly require a specific Dual Angel combination, but I have wavered on pushing for it. Aside from limiting creativity in winning badges, we would miss out on cool ways to earn badges like Tormuse winning Everyman Diamond by combining AoH with A100. Creating new badges/medals to account for these Dual Angel runs instead sounds excessive though, so I'm not sure that's doable either. I did come up with a compromise of sorts in the new Badge Hunters thread, where I note if each mortem won a badge purely or by mixing it with another challenge in a Dual Angel, so those looking for mortems that didn't Sereg a badge or whatever criteria can find them without having to check each individual mortem.

and with a properly seeded game to the full replay -- Yeah, I'm going a bit further... but I think replays in these kind of games should always be available.  They don't just help us boost our ego, they also help making tutorials or reporting/understanding bugs !)

A replay system would be great, especially as a means of proof for people that don't have the means to record their runs (and would help safeguard against another 2Dev situation happening). it's probably too late for 0.9.9.9, but I'll add it to the OP anyway.

3

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

« on: April 30, 2025, 17:29 »

Kornel asked for a priority list on what to focus on of the remaining unimplemented proposals and unresolved issues, as he wants to wrap up 0.9.9.9 soon, so I'll get that done now. Note that the items within tiers aren't to any particularly order.. As things get finished up, I'll strike them through and color them light blue if they were implemented, pink if they're officially postponed to the next version, or red if they're officially rejected.

TOP PRIORITY
The following are things I think are absolutely necessary for 0.9.9.9:

*Make most special levels on Nightmare require killing every distinct enemy once to clear them rather than having every enemy dead at once, so that they no longer require an extremely tedious ordeal of corpse disposal to clear (especially now that the Enraged Timer could make it near impossible to clear the earlier special levels on N! if destroying most corpses is required). Additionally rebalance their enemy loadouts to incorporate the new enemies added, particularly on Nightmare (go to this post for details on how to rebalance each special level).

*Finish the trait rebalancing since we got some loose ends there still (covered in this post, particularly Bullet Dance still needs its buff, Survivalist + Entrenchment are overtuned, and Tough As Nails could be toned down to the originally proposed +5% energy resistances per level). The masteries can all be made less restrictive too as covered in this post.

*Fix the error with selecting Bullet Dance, and the bug with additive traits that sometimes causes their bonuses to get applied twice in a level up.

*The Marine's bio still states they get +20% fire/plasma/acid resistances, when they have been nerfed to +10%.

*Patch up the rough edges of infighting, as covered in this post (namely, add a flag that disables infighting in boss levels and certain special levels, disable infighting when Enraged Mode is triggered or disallow hunting enemies from infighting, don't have enemies infight their own species, don't let enemies retaliate against Archviles, and if possible, prevent enemies in a spawned monster group from infighting each other). There is also some remaining AI issues in that post that need to be fixed too (namely, Formers/Nobles will occasionally get stuck on items/armor instead of picking it up, Formers/Nobles will sometimes not use items at low health for unclear reasons, Lost Souls/Elementals/Cyberdemons will not aggro when you hit them out of their vision, and Souls/Cyberdemons will not retaliate when hit by other enemies).

*Fix the bug that is making full reloads instantaneous.

*When the Combat Shotgun's clip runs out and you do a normal reload, either manually or with Shottyman, you must still pump it after reloading to shoot it again, when previously any reload would cover the pump. Note that full reloading still covers the pump.

*Fix the Acid Spitter being unable to reload.

*Fix the Lava Armor being unable to regenerate its durability in lava.

*Fix the remaining bugs and issues from prior betas in this post that have not been addressed yet (too many to list here, just CTRL + F "Grappling Armor" and look at every entry from there).

*Fix the unwinnable 4 Angelic Badges so that true 100% completion can be possible; UAC Angelic, Demonic Angelic, Speedrunner Angelic, and Pacifist Angelic (go to the Badges post of the OP for current suggestions on what to do with them).

*Fix Item Reveal not working in Nightmare when all enemies are dead. Also add a new message that notifies you when all distinct enemies on a floor have been killed in Nightmare and Angel of Darkness, so that players seeking 100% kills don't need to keep bringing up the Player Info screen to check (and perhaps tie the aforementioned Item Reveal to triggering that message?).

*Replace the redundant Missile Launcher in City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains (current suggestion is a guaranteed randomized Exotic Armor since current Deimos special levels are lacking in armor rewards).

*Fix the softlocks in The Wall, Containment Area, and Mt. Erebus.

HIGH PRIORITY
These are important things I think would really improve 0.9.9.9 and a good chunk of them should make it into 0.9.9.9, but they aren't all necessary to implement now if stuff has to be left on the wayside for the next version (1.0.0.0 or 0.9.9.9.1?):

*The Chaingun, Frag Shotgun, Assault Rifle, and mods changes listed in the equipment section of the OP (the other suggested equipment changes listed would be nice, but those ones aren't as important and so I would put them down in the mid priority tier).

*Give default sounds to all mute enemies (the Nightmare enemies, Elite Formers, Lava Elemental, Agony Elemental, Arena Master, and Apostle). Aside from the subjective value of it livening up the game, it eliminates the ethical grey area with players modding sounds for those enemies, and it would be nice compensation for the Enraged Timer no longer letting you camp them too, so that players exploring around without Intuition 2 can detect these enemies are around without stumbling face first into them. Since adding new sounds into the game isn't on the table because of copyright concerns, Nightmare enemies and Elite Formers can just reuse the sounds of their normal counterparts, the Agony Elemental can just reuse the sounds of the Pain Elemental, and the Arena Master and Apostle can just reuse the sounds of the Archvile; Lava Elemental is unclear with what sounds to give, though in my own personal setup I gave it Mancubus sounds.

*Nerf the amount of bullets that Former Captains carry to 40, and buff the Nightmare Archvile's explosion radius to 2, as covered in the enemy section on the OP. Also Nightmare Cacodemons are overtuned after their massive buff and can be a bit tedious to kill, so they should have their current 50% fire and acid resistances nerfed or removed outright, or alternatively, have their innate armor reduced to 1 or give them a -25% resistance to bullet + sharpnel damage to better emphasize their vulnerability to physical weapons.

*Make single enemy type levels be able to have Nightmare enemies just like how Caves can (and make Archvile + Elite Formers be possible in the Black Magic level type) at sufficiently high level rolls, so that they no longer remain breather levels in deeper A100 and on higher difficulties. Also add a unique level feel message for these new Nightmare-enemy only levels and for spawning in Nightmare Demon/Cacodemon/Arachnotron/Elemental caves.

*From the Badges post of the OP, implement the suggested changes to the listed Bronze, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond badges, as well as change the Heroic badge series to be percentage-based as suggested (10%/30%/50%/70%/90% of medals for the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond tiers respectively) to account for the new medals added in 0.9.9.8 and possible addition of any new medals in this or future versions, and add Heroic Angelic for obtaining all medals.

*Also from the aforementioned post, implement the suggest changes to the Shotgunnery Cross, Marksmanship Cross, Malicious Knives Cross, Sunrise Iron Fist, and Gargulec Medal.

*A toggle in the settings to disable the overlay filter of powerups.

*Add some more of the proposed new exotics, uniques, and assemblies listed in the New Content post of the OP (don't need to do all of them now, but some more new toys than just Grappling Armor and Blood Boots would be sweet).

*Finish touching up the Apostle, in both its A100/666 fight and Hell Fortress fight, by increasing its teleporting chance per turn and implementing the suggestions for the Hell Fortress fight in this post (CTRL + F "Spruce up Hell Fortress' Apostle fight" to quickly find the exact suggested changes).

*Add method for guaranteed Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor in A100/666, so full wins in those modes do not remain terribly luck based. (If something more elaborate cannot be thought up, current idea is a 100% killrate up to floor 50/333 will spawn a Berserker Armor if you haven't found one already, and a 100% killrate up to floor 99/665 will spawn the Dragonslayer if it hasn't already spawned, while possibly locking the guaranteed spawns behind UV/N!).

*Allow access to Hell's Armory, Deimos Lab, The Vaults, and House Of Pain on ITYTD (I can think up of enemy loadouts for them if needed, just Deimos Lab absolutely needs to have only one Shambler on ITYTD so that it won't be a death trap for newbs).

*Add the new special level pair on floor 4, currently conceptualized as Nuclear Plant and Toxin Refinery.

MID PRIORITY
These are things I would like to see still, but they are definitely expendable to postpone if need be:

*When Enraged Mode triggers, have the screen shake and have all remaining enemies' act sound play at once, for more aesthetic flair.

*The music can be turned off if too many sounds play at once (this only really happened to me when I spammed run -> wait near a lot of enemies, which given the Enraged Timer now invalidates, this isn't too important to fix if it's not simple).

*When picking up a Unique for the first time in a run, the accompanying green flash may not happen, though it's unclear if this bug is with certain Uniques (confirmed it happens with Enviroboots, Medical Powerarmor, Necroarmor, and Angelic Armor) or happens for other reasons. The yellow flash when repairing armor/boots with an Armor Shard also sometimes doesn't happen for unclear reasons. Both of these bugs are purely graphical however, as the Uniques without the green flash still get counted as collected, and your armor/boots are still repaired by Armor Shards regardless of the yellow flash not happening. All other flash effects appear to be working as they should.

*If you hold the wait command for an extended amount of time while enemies are revealed, enemies' sprites cannot visually keep up with their actual movement. As a result, when you let go of the wait button, the enemies' sprites will continue to move around until they "catch up" to their actual positions. This bug appears to be purely graphical however, as proceeding to do other things before the sprites "catch up" will have the game work correctly off of the enemies' actual positionings. It may also be related to the bug where you come unable to prematurely end a run -> wait with enemies revealed in very long games (such as A100/666).

*Various minor text/UI issues listed in the OP.

*Add default sounds for all exotics, uniques, and artifacts.

*The rest of the suggested equipment changes in the Equipment section of the OP that weren't specified as High Priority prior.

*Add sounds for enemies spawning, reviving, and Archviles charging their attack.

*Add corpses for Elite Formers and Lava Elemental, as well as a corpse sprite for the player when they die. The Angel Of Death also currently lacks a corpse, though maybe that could be left intentional as a mercy in case it's added to the A100/666 spawn pool, or in case the player kills it in Unholy Cathedral before killing all the other enemies on N! to trigger the Cathedral collapsing, thus ensuring it can't respawn and force the player to kill it again.

*Allow the Angel Of Death to spawn in very deep floors of Angel Of 100/666 (suggested depth is 90+).

*In House Of Pain, seal away the Large Health Globes behind walls or doors that can only be opened with the Arena Master's Staff, farther incentivizing to carry the Staff along for this level.

*Disallow nukes from being activated in Hell Fortress, and disable any active powerups when the player enters Hell Fortress, so that they cannot trivialize Carmack with a Floor 23 Invuln or Berserk stack.

*Have dying to John Carmack count as a normal death instead of as a partial win, so that there is more risk in going for a full win.

*Expand the amount of possible Dual Angel combinations, as covered in this post.

*Allow the action command to open armor and ammo crates. Alternatively, allow them to be opened by bumping into them.

*Add more Angelic Badges, so that there is an equal amount of them compared to the amount of badges in the other badge tiers. Go to the Badges post of the OP for ideas.

*Any of the other new medal and badge ideas in the aforementioned post can also be considered mid priority.

*Adjust the higher level rankings to require more badges of the lower tiers, instead of capping out at 15 for each badge tier. Also make No-Life King require every badge, not just every Angelic.

*Create/readd locked vaults as they're described on the wiki, as well as add the proposed new Trap Rooms in the Features post of the OP. (It would be very cool to have these, but listing as mid priority I don't think they'll be easy to add and test).

*Any of the new level events proposed in the New Content post of the OP. (Though getting at least the Max Carnage and Snake Eyes events would be neat)

*The new Chained Court alternative level, that is currently conceptualized as Central Processing (though Kantarza may already have that in the works?).

*When you have the Berserker Set equipped, the infinitely spawning Nightmare Demons and Nightmare Cacodemons severely complicate clearing special levels, so some caveat should be added to make clearing special levels with that set a much less tedious ordeal (whether not counting the spawned Nightmare enemies towards a special level's completion, disabling their spawning in special levels, or giving them a spawning limit of some sort so that the Berserker player will be guaranteed able to get everything dead eventually).

Low Priority
These are things I would still support being done, but yeah you don't need to worry about them right now unless they would be very low effort to implement:

*Ensure bridges that go over rivers aren't blocked off by walls or rooms with no doors.

*Give EXP for pulling Levers, but consider disabling it if you have Intuition.

*Add color coding to badges and medals in the endgame mortem.

*Disallow Dual-Angel challenges for any badge that requires a specific challenge. This includes Berserker Bronze Badge to Pacifist Bronze Badge, Berserker Silver Badge to Pacifist Silver Badge, Berserker Gold Badge to Arena Gold Badge, Berserker Platinum Badge to Everyman Platinum Badge, and Reaper Diamond Badge to Arena Diamond Badge. (Aside from effort concerns, I'm also putting this in low priority because I'm not so sure I still support it, Sereging is very cheesy but maybe players should be allowed the extra creativity when badge hunting that Dual Angels allow. Maybe though just address some of the most egregious cheese that clearly goes against the spirit of the badges, like the Destroyer badges not actually requiring their respective Untouchable medals and all the badges that require Explorer/Conqueror not actually requiring those medals, thus resulting in those badges being much more easily won in AoOC despite it disqualifying the earning of said should-be requisite medals).

*Allow previously obtained badges to appear in mortems, and keep count of them. To prevent the awards section of UV/N! mortems from becoming absurdly large, have only the highest tier of each badge appear on the mortem, just like how medals with differently tiered versions work.

*Have more badges require at least a standard win, rather than any win, to help make standard wins more meaningful than partial wins. Current suggestion is every Gold, Platinum, and Diamond badge that requires winning the game should require at least a standard win, with the exceptions of those that already require a full win and Pacifist Gold.

*Have the trait selection screen be more color-coded (see the Features post of the OP for the example).

*Add a time display to the Player Info screen.

*Add support for more custom music slots in the Audio.lua file beyond floor 25, to give people the option to have more varied music play in A100/666 if they desire. (Don't know if this was intentional or not but this already works, so checking off).

*Any of the new challenges proposed in the New Content post of the OP.

*Add a replay recording and playback system (would be a great addition, but probably would demand too much dev work to add in 0.9.9.9).

4

Discussion / Re: Favourite special level

« on: April 23, 2025, 11:05 »

Phobos Lab is my favorite Ultimate Doom map, and the DRL version is such a well done creation. Also the UV and N! version with Nightmare Demons can make for some of the most heart pounding experiences in DRL but without getting exceedingly unfair.

Second is Mortuary for its theming, iconicness, its music, and of course its challenge, while having plenty of tricks available to mitigate its challenge. Limbo in comparison is a let down, but the greatly improved 0.9.9.9 version will make it a worthy counterpart to Mortuary.

5

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.

6

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.

7

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.

8

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).

9

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 x1.1. 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. You could justify going with reducing it farther to the standard x1.0 EXP multiplier, but I think we should test the x1.1 multiplier first, especially since the Enraged Timer does add some more difficulty back to N! after its changes, and a x1.0 multiplier may overly punish players that skip most of the special levels, as well as make early A100 unreasonably difficult on N!.

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 and the Enraged Timer.

*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, not only disable respawning, but have every remaining respawned enemy drop dead too (especially now that the Enraged Timer could run out as you try running across the arena to pick up your rewards).

*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?

New floor 4 special levels
These aren't in the game yet, but I'm just going to throw it now that they'll certainly need the clear condition on N! to be killing every enemy once rather than having everything dead at once, as even if you beat Hell's Arena earlier to get the Rocket Launcher, you likely won't have enough rockets to destroy every corpse here and in the next special level, nevermind using those rockets to destroy corpses on the standard floors inbetween.

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 (that you can no longer do with the Enraged Timer), 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. On N!, similar to its normal counterpart, destroying all corpses isn't viable here without door camping that you can no longer do, 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.

New alternative special level to Chained Court
Not in the game yet and may not make it in to 0.9.9.9, but in case it does, the Chained Court alt will definitely need to have its clear condition also be killing every enemy once for the reasons stated with Chained Court.

Military Base
The enemy force is fine as is on all difficulties, I'll just retract my previous proposal to remove the Tracking Map on UV and N!, as with the new Enraged timer making any prolonged camping unviable, the Tracking Map is rather necessary to handle the exit room, otherwise there's a lot of luck involved in clearing it without Intuition 2. However, clearing all the Former corpses here on N! is a tedious affair (not to mention possibly being impossible to do without running out the Enraged timer), 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  the clear condition should be 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 should have 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 and perhaps not even feasible to get everything dead at once without running out the Enraged Timer).

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).

As for the clear condition, it's not too relevant, as clearing Phobos Anomaly isn't required for Conqueror, and Gatekeeper Platinum requires just making it past Anomaly on N! without damage, while Gatekeeper Diamond requires UV and so respawning isn't a factor. For the technical clear condition though, in case a Gatekeepr Angelic badge is added in the future that requires clearing Anomaly on N! instead of just passing it, or in case a player goes for Gatekeeper Diamond on N! or in Angel Of Darkness for some reason, it should be killing every enemy once rather than having everything dead at once, so you don't need to needlessly fuss with destroying corpses or having to put down a respawned Bruiser or Nightmare enemies down again when you lack the firepower to kill them quickly this early in the game.

Hell's Armory
Fine as is on UV and below, especially now that patrolling AI + Enraged Timer 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 a couple of the Cacos with their Nightmare versions as well (though certainly not many of them, 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 (and you could justify removing one of them on HNTR too with how difficult the fight is, while the lower HP the Shamblers have in HNTR gets counterbalanced by the player being at a lower level). Additionally, the Formers near the teleport destinations should be moved away, as due to you no longer being able to safely camp them until they get teleported into the teleport room, 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).

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 except for 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 aggression 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 couple 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 have to deal with the aforementioned Agony Elemental, changing the clear condition to be killing every enemy once should be done 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, so the trap doesn't need more done to it).

Halls of Carnage
Fine as is on all difficulties. Respawning isn't even a issue on N! as the lava flood will destroy the corpses anyway, and it floods so fast that you will never be able to activate the Enraged Timer here without deliberately doing so by camping on the stairs or with lava-immune boots. 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 should be done, 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 Halls Of Carnage 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). This level already disables respawning to prevent soft locks, but you could have the technical clear condition be having everything dead at once, since the VMR room and the final battle both make significant usage of Archviles.

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). Despite that, I was proposing to buff up the enemy force here with how easy the outspeed strat made the level before, however, the newly implemented Enraged mode is a big wrinkle to the outspeeding strat, as it  can take long enough to run out the Enraged Timer before you kill the AoD if you don't got sufficient Brute, EE, and/or a strong enough Chainsaw (especially as the AoD gets extra HP on higher difficulties). As such, the enemy loadout can remain as is on UV and N!, with the only suggested change being to make it more apparent to newbies what Cathedral's gimmick is upon entering (this could be done by having a lone Lost Soul in view at the start, which would allow newbies to immediately see that they can't shoot any guns on the level without aggroing a bunch of enemies on them, while basically not changing the level for those that do know). Also respawning isn't an issue on this level, but the technical clear condition can be killing every enemy once, so if a random Pinky respawns while you fight the AoD, you don't need to waste any time hunting it down.

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 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 (while the player has more than enough levels and tools at this point to get every corpse destroyed even on N! before triggering the Enraged Timer, especially with the aid of the Nuclear BFG here). If the disabled infighting flag is added, Mortuary should definitely have infighting disabled however, to maximize the challenge of the level.

Limbo
Like Mortuary, it should have ammo picksup added, disabled infighting, and should retain the clear condition of everything being dead at once. It could use 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 is done currently.

*On N!, add Nightmare Arachnotrons as is done currently, as well as add the new Nightmare Knight to the corpse mix. You could alternatively have the Nightmare Knights appear on UV, but I think they're nasty enough of enemies to not have them appear here until N!, especially as they can steal the Red Armors and Large Medkits on the map.

Also, with the blood making Limbo much more difficult, more difficult than Mortuary in my testing, it may no longer be necessary to have it spawn extra Archviles compared to Mortuary, but perhaps we can leave the Archvile amount as is and tone it down later if we get too many complains about the new Limbo being too much harder than Mortuary.

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 Nightmare 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). As just mentioned, respawning is a nonfactor, but the technical clear condition should be killing everything once, so if you did kill a Nightmare Revenant on land, you won't need to seek it out if it respawns later.

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 half of 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 (unlike the current version that has them inside), 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 replacing all Cacodemons with their Nightmare counterparts, 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. As for the clear condition, most enemies will die over lava or have their corpses gibbed in the usual combat of the level, but like with Lava Pits I would make the clear condition be killing every enemy once, so you don't need to fuss with corpse disposal here nor seek out a random enemy that respawned when you're on your way back to the exit.

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.

10

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.

**Lost Souls also do not seem to aggro properly when hit (previously they would instantly charge towards whatever hit them), and weirdly Cyberdemons in A100/666 will not aggro when you hit them out of their vision.

**Another AI issue regarding infighting with Lost Souls and Cyberdemons is that they will not retaliate against other enemies that hit them, so they'll just sit there and let other enemies they anger beat them up until they die or something else hits that enemy to get their attention.

**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.

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.

11

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).

12

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.

13

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.

14

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.

15

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).