Angelic Badges
UAC Angelic Badge
Win a standard game on Nightmare without taking damage.(Note: Deemed impossible!)Getting through without damage Phobos Base Entry can be annoying, especially if you want to farm kills for ammo, but it's not too bad. The main bulk of the challenge is floors 2-6 where there are tons of enemies, likely at least a couple of stairs far away, and no real equipment or traits to help you safely get kills. Then from there, you almost certainly need Invulnerability to spawn on floor 7 to get through Phobos Anomaly without damage, as the only other way is a very lucky Phase Device use. And if by multiple miracles you get through all of Phobos, you then need to heavily rely on a huge stack of Invulnerabilities to get through the next 16 floors. Hypothetically, and on an individual level basis, it's possible, but getting everything required in a single game is not realistic at all, and would be horrendous to grind for.
Veteran Angelic Badge
Fully win with 100% kills on Nightmare.The big advantage here compared to most Angelic Badges is you aren't restricted with how you can play this, allowing you to take advantage of Angel of Max Carnage + Angel of Overconfidence for example. There's nothing too fancy about this challenges, except you'll need to be a master of the game with destroying corpses, avoiding hits, killing enemies appropriately, and all other factors of top-level play. The main obstacle is making sure you can get to JC, which is easiest if you grab the Nuclear BFG in Limbo/The Mortuary, and the Lava Element in Mt Erebus/The Lava Pits. Once you have the Nuclear BFG, you also have an easy method of corpse disposal too. Remember that to fully win the game, you must survive killing JC, so a double nuke is not always an option. A lucky Trigun with some Invulnerabilities at the beginning of the game is also an easy way to win.
Some players prefer doing this more purely, which can be more consistent, but also quite a lot longer of a game. Going through Phobos and Deimos allows you more chances to find a Thermonuclear Bomb, which allows you to skip Limbo/The Mortuary, but I would still recommend getting the Lava Element. Having a much stronger character for the later levels and JC also significantly increases your chance of surviving, and bonus levels such as Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, and The Wall/Containment Area can offer you useful items to making you much stronger. If you prefer, you may want a nice in-between of using just Angel of Max Carnage so that you still have the time to build your character, but gameplay is more efficient and rewarding for good decision-making. Remember not to wield Berserker Armor as killing the Apostle does not count as a full win.
Strongman Angelic Badge
Win a standard game with 90% kills or more on Nightmare with only fist kills.(Note: Not personally achieved.)Since you only need 90% kills, this means you can effectively rush most of the game and then repeatedly farm a respawning enemy near the very end with a nice setup. Marine has the best melee trait with Vampyre, but Scout has stair sense to help skip through most of the game. Grab the Chainsaw in the easy version of The Chained Court as a buffer weapon for the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind before striking with the final blow with your fists. Nuking the Spider Mastermind also works. For the actual setup, trapping a Former Human, Former Sergeant, or Imp, isolating it from the rest of the level, and then repeatedly killing it a gross number of times will get you all the kills you need. Lost Souls from Pain Elementals work, but you will likely need to be using Vampyre to survive some of the inevitable attacks. Shielded Armor is excellent and gives you more selection in what enemy to trap, and while you can only get kills with your fists, you can still use other weapons for softening up enemies and destroying corpses. Prepare yourself for a long game.
Speedrun Angelic Badge
Win a standard game on Nightmare in 4 minutes or faster.(Note: Deemed impossible!)Quickly breaking down the timer, there are 240 seconds to complete 24 floors, or an average of 10 seconds for 24 consecutive floors. Let alone all the dangers of a standard Nightmare game, but the actual distance running through levels, being slowed down by enemies appearing and attacking, while also needing a quick form to kill the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, there simply isn't enough time to beat this fast enough. You would need fast stairs that are several degrees beyond lottery luck. Even with IDDQD, beating this in 4 minutes would be extremely difficult, and I recommend anyone who thinks they're fast enough to even try to do it on I'm Too Young To Die. I can personally see somewhere around 8:30 being within the realms of possibility without several miracles performed, and I think a more appropriate time for this challenge would have been 10 minutes, but 4 minutes is simply not possible.
Elite Angelic Badge
Win a standard game with 100% kills on Nightmare, completing all bonus levels that are generated.(Note: Not personally achieved.)Quite honestly, this challenge is extremely fair and has nothing unique or special about it. Going for 100% kills and clearing all the bonus levels on Nightmare is very difficult, but a master of the game can definitely achieve it with many different build types. Important keys for this badge are farming Shotgun Shells at the beginning so you don't have ammo issues, planning out a way to tackle all of the tricky bonus levels like The Wall/Containment Area, Unholy Cathedral, and Limbo/The Mortuary, and gaining a form of corpse destruction as soon as you can. The rest is simply DoomRL itself in a nutshell. If you want to rely on luck, finding the Trigun would be extremely beneficial.
Demonic Angelic Badge
Win a standard game with 100% kills, without taking damage, on Nightmare.(Note: Deemed impossible!)Unlike most Nightmare challenges where you could hypothetically just get a giant stack of Invulnerability and run for the stairs repeatedly, this badge requires you to actually kill everything on every floor. Between the sheer amount of enemies that is, controlling every corpse, and managing to never take hits, especially in the early levels of the game, there's simply not enough room for realistic possibility of completing this. This badge is impossible.
Berserker Angelic Badge
Win the game on Angel of Berserk and Angel of Masochism on Nightmare.(Note: Not personally achieved.)Given that melee attacking will usually result in you being unable to avoid damage, while also having few ways to heal said damage, you can get chipped away at pretty quickly. Marine with Vampyre allows you to heal, and once getting to that point, the rest of the game isn't too different than a regular Angel of Berserk attempt, although certainly still much harder. A Scout and simply running through the levels can also work as always, although without guns, you have little control of any enemies that can get in your way. I would suggest the stair diving strategy, but both can work.
Marksman Angelic Badge
Win with 50% or more kills on Angel of Marksmanship and Angel of Darkness on Nightmare.(Note: Not personally achieved.)Being stuck with Pistols, not being able to effectively see, not being able to use Run->Wait due to less vision, and not being able to see the stairs, this combination is rather brutal. Extremely fast experience gains helps a bit, so you can still somewhat attempt stair diving, but you will need to create an enemy respawning trap near the end of the game to farm up the needed kills, ideally with a Former Human or Former Captain to keep ammo levels high. While a Scout is still good for Intuition and higher natural speed, the lack of stair sense may mean a Marine with the double powerup duration may be more useful so you can rush through with Invulnerability luck.
Shottyman Angelic Badge
Win with 50% or more kills on Angel of Shotgunnery and Angel of Overconfidence on Nightmare.By far, this is the easiest Angelic Badge, and is easier than many Diamond and even some Platinum Badges. You'll need a bit of luck, but start off the first few floors simply killing only those enemies that cross your path and collecting the useful items you find, but do try to make an effort to survive and keep your health in good shape. Ideally on floor 7, you'll find some Former Sergeants that you can isolate from other enemies and repeatedly kill. If you can't destroy all the other enemies in the level and have to deal with them respawning, try to use barrels to close off parts of the level so that you can repeatedly kill a respawning Former Sergeant without being interrupted. Once setup, use Run->Wait repeatedly to get it to respawn, kill it, and then continue doing so until your kill count is a high enough percentage. This could potentially be done with other weak enemies, but ammo can be a concern. You can also do this on floor 6 or possibly floor 5 if you find a really nice setup, but be sure to buffer an extra amount, assuming 50 or so enemies per floor (including Mt Erebus/The Lava Pits). While you only need 50% kills, you may want to go for 80% kills while you're at it since the setup is trivial once in place, and 80% gets you a pair of Diamond Badges as well. This badge is a bit tedious, but it's not too exceptionally hard to get with this strategy.
Lightfoot Angelic Badge
Win with 0 melee kills on Archangel of Light Travel, on Nightmare.With no access to melee attacks, the Shotgun becomes the weapon of choice as it has excellent ammo efficiency. The rest of the most efficient strategy is using a Scout with Intuition and stair diving, hoping to collect some Invulnerabilities along the way. With the speed boost, you can quickly move and control most floors better than normal, significantly making diving easier than other Nightmare challenges. This is definitely one of the easier Angelic Badges.
Eagerness Angelic Badge
Win with 90% or more kills on Angel of Impatience and Angel of Red Alert on Nightmare.(Note: Not achieved by anyone.)Because of the time limit, and also the need to kill enemies, while also suviving without bringing Med Paks with you, this challenge is extremely difficult and may be bordering on impossibility. I would suggest using a Gunrunner build so that you have extra running time, and can attack extra enemies as you seek out the stairs. Once you know where the stairs are, buff up your kill count as much as you safely can, then exit. If you find Invulnerability, camp and protect it, then let the level explode so you can get a large boost to your kill count. You'll likely need a lot of floors with this to get the kill count high enough. A Trigun can also help a lot with giving you more access to nuking floors.
Inquisitor Angelic Badge
Win the game on Angel of Purity and Angel of Red Alert on Nightmare.(Note: Not achieved by anyone.)With this combination, you have no stair sense, no Invulnerabilities to rely on, and being absolutely forced to push through hordes of difficult enemies. The Scout's early Intuition and the Marine's powerup bonus won't be helpful here, so I would suggest using a Scout with Hellrunner and Dodgemaster early as you rush through the levels. Use Shotguns, which are strong even without useful traits to support it. You also need to make sure you have a method to kill the Cyberdemon, so finding a Plasma Rifle and plenty of ammo is also important as Shotguns and melee are out of the question with the time limit and constraints. I don't think this challenge is realistically impossible, but I may be mistaken. It might be pretty close to bordering it though.
Quartermaster Angelic Badge
Win with 80% kills or more on Archangel of Red Alert, on Ultra-Violence or harder.(Note: Not personally achieved.)With only a brief amount of time before each level explodes, it's most important to actually find and camp at the stairs, using up all the time available to buff up your kill count before moving on. Speed is important, so avoid using heavy armors. The most recommended build would be a Scout with Gunrunner since you will inherently be faster, but also be able to stay in your running state for much longer, and attack additional enemies as you search for the stairs. If you find Invulnerabilities, camp and protect them, waiting for the timer to nearly run out before using them. A Trigun is also extremely helpful as it can be used before the countdown runs out. One other strategy is to find a cave with a long horizontal river, survive the explosion, and then use the Berserker Armor strategy with spawning Nightmare Demons slowly all getting killed in the river. However, this would require naturally finding everything and ideally occurring near the end of the game, which is very unrealistic luck-wise, but would trivialize the entire challenge. Most realistically, use Gunrunner.
Masochist Angelic Badge
Win on Archangel of Masochism on Nightmare.(Note: Not achieved by anyone.)This is probably the easiest unachieved badge left, but it's still extremely difficult and requires masterful play combined with very good luck. Not being able to restore tactics means you can only run once per floor, hurting the general stair diving ability, and without most forms of healing, you effectively have 50 health for the entire game. The only ways to heal are with Vampyre, Medical Armor, and Medical Powerarmor. While you can hypothetically get large stacks of Invulnerabilities and Berserk Packs to help through Deimos and Hell, getting through Phobos and minimizing the permanent damage is very tough, especially with Phobos Anomaly. Because you can't heal, this is one of the few cases where you can have something permanently taken away from you, and it adds a lot of mental and emotional toil with every mistake and bad luck. All that said, I think someone will achieve this eventually.
Centurial Angelic Badge
Win on Archangel of 666 on Nightmare.(Note: Not personally achieved.)Functionally, this isn't too too much harder than completing Angel of 100 on Nightmare, as your character should be fully built and already essentially immortal by 100 floors anyway. An extra 566 floors does increase the probability that you get a few to potentially screw you over, and because the amount of enemies that keep spawning is uncapped, some of the late floors are absolutely packed with well over 100 enemies. Use the same strategies as Diamond Angelic Badge, and quickly try to get Inquisitor set, Phaseshift Armor (PAO), Anti-grav Phaseshift Boots (A), and one of the god weapons in the game. Dragonslayer is excellent with providing you Berserk to keep you alive as you'll most definitely want to use a Scout and be stair diving each floor. Save Homing Phase Devices for caves with Nightmare Arachnotrons, Nightmare Cacodemons, and Shamblers which all have deadly amounts of plasma damage. Some luck will be required early on to get the needed items, and because you can't save during Nightmare games, you'll either need to do one mega session, or you'll have to leave your computer on running, unfortunately. All that said, this is one of the "easier" Angelic Badges.
Pacifist Angelic Badge
Win with exactly 1 kill on Archangel of Pacifism.(Note: Deemed impossible!)At first glance, this badge might seem within the realms of possibility since nothing on a level-by-level basis is impossible, but the issue is how many levels there are. This is akin to flipping a coin 24 times, and while heads isn't uncommon, tails is bound to show up. Across 24 floors, you can't be getting killed, enemies can't be dying to attacking each other, blowing up barrels, spawning in acid or lava, or any other means. You have no stair sense and not much for class abilities, so you also will need to run across half the map at least a bunch of times with no way of defending yourself.
The other major barrier is Phobos Anomaly where you essentially must have a Phase Device to skip past the trap room, which will almost inevitably result in some enemies dying. Again, this in isolation isn't a huge ask, but on top of all the other luck required, it will result in a ton of games ending.
One player used save scumming as a means as a proof of concept that it is possible, although this shouldn't be too shocking and of course, it doesn't actually count. Under proper gameplay without cheating, I can't see this badge being possible without a grotesque amount of grinding required. One may want to record a video in their attempts for proof if they are genuinely trying to get this badge.
Everyman Angelic Badge
Win on Archangel of Humanity on Nightmare.This is an extremely tough badge that essentially requires good luck to succeed. Going through Nightmare with only one trait and basically no health means you have to play fairly damagelessly, but you don't have any character abilities to support this. Given that you only get one trait, there are functionally only 30 builds. Naturally, Scout will be the best class because of stair sense, and among the traits, Intuition is definitely the best choice given your reliance on Invulnerabilities. Although Invulnerabilities only start appearing on floor 7, Intuition also helps a lot with finding Berserk Packs, as well as Health Globes which will functionally work like Soulspheres. Hellrunner is also a good choice because of the faster movement speed and dodging bonus.
Given that leveling offers you no benefits, there is no incentive to kill enemies unnecessarily, so simply run as well as you can to the end. Ideally you can just nuke the Spider Mastermind, and possibly the Cyberdemon as well, but using the AI trap on the Spider Mastermind can work too, although it's much harder and a bit risky to setup without Intuition 2. Grabbing the Chainsaw and Berserk Paks at the easy version of The Chained Court is also helpful for the speed and resistance, and the Chainsaw is your fastest boss killer when Invulnerable in most cases and especially with Berserk. Overall, you'll need masterful play and very fortunate luck to complete this. For more thorough details, refer to my research thread
here.
