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Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoRa|55%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-7
« on: May 11, 2026, 14:23 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y3WeY1oRw8
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of red alert = every floor spawns with a nuke, set to detonate in 5 ingame minutes
aora on top of aob certainly makes the early game tougher,
since normally you wanna be playing phobos slowly due to how weak melee starts off
aora also disables stair sense, so you can't just stairdive as scout
(although in the current version, regular aob already has a 15 minute nuke in the form of the enrage timer)
though once you get to deimos you'll probably have hellrunner and so it's not much different from regular aob thereafter
albeit you still don't get scout's stairsense meaning you can't just invuln stairdive to the end willynilly
(unless you're playing marine in which case you won't have it anyway, but scout is the way to go for aora)
attempts: 29
skill: 50/100
luck: 66/100
difficulty: diamond
i think it's somewhere in the diamond range in terms of difficulty,
there's some luck involved in getting through phobos, but afterwards it's just regular aob basically
if there was a kill req it could be a high diamond, depending on how many kills you'd need
and if it had a really tight kill req it could maybe even pass as an angelic
but just winning with these two together isn't that tough
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Bru, Int, HR, HR, MBm, Fin, Fin, WK,
i went blademaster (again), it's the obvious choice in a time sensitive challenge like angel of red alert
---
also you might notice i skipped one of the dualies, aob+aop
that combo turned out to be insanely luck based, like on par with the toughest angelics
so i'm gonna be skipping it for now, but i will return to it once i'm done with the rest
---
mortem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y3WeY1oRw8
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of red alert = every floor spawns with a nuke, set to detonate in 5 ingame minutes
aora on top of aob certainly makes the early game tougher,
since normally you wanna be playing phobos slowly due to how weak melee starts off
aora also disables stair sense, so you can't just stairdive as scout
(although in the current version, regular aob already has a 15 minute nuke in the form of the enrage timer)
though once you get to deimos you'll probably have hellrunner and so it's not much different from regular aob thereafter
albeit you still don't get scout's stairsense meaning you can't just invuln stairdive to the end willynilly
(unless you're playing marine in which case you won't have it anyway, but scout is the way to go for aora)
attempts: 29
skill: 50/100
luck: 66/100
difficulty: diamond
i think it's somewhere in the diamond range in terms of difficulty,
there's some luck involved in getting through phobos, but afterwards it's just regular aob basically
if there was a kill req it could be a high diamond, depending on how many kills you'd need
and if it had a really tight kill req it could maybe even pass as an angelic
but just winning with these two together isn't that tough
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Bru, Int, HR, HR, MBm, Fin, Fin, WK,
i went blademaster (again), it's the obvious choice in a time sensitive challenge like angel of red alert
---
also you might notice i skipped one of the dualies, aob+aop
that combo turned out to be insanely luck based, like on par with the toughest angelics
so i'm gonna be skipping it for now, but i will return to it once i'm done with the rest
---
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
2
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoI|23%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-5
« on: May 10, 2026, 13:15 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMJjL7wVgU8
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of impatience = portable items (medikits, phase devices, etc.) are no longer portable
attempts: 28
skill: 57/100
luck: 95/100
difficulty: high diamond, could pass as an angelic
this one is on par with aob+aoms (berserker angelic) in terms of silliness,
although i do think it's easier since you can (on average) heal yourself more than you would in aob+aoms
your heals are sporadic and they usually don't happen when you need them to, but they do happen more often than in aob+aoms
i hate aoi by the way, it's my least favorite angel by far
aob on n! is already a cirus in the early game, but combining it with aoi just amplifies the things i don't like about both of these angels
melee may not require ammo, but medikits are more or less melee's equivalent of ammo, so being starved of them just makes the run boil down to luck
also since you're playing melee only, when you do find a medikit/globe there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to get to it without one of the late game enemies blowing it up right in your face as you're about to grab it...
build order:
Bru, Bru, Int, Ber, HR, HR, Bru, MBm
I went with the same build I did in aob+aoms,
wherein you open with bru2 and then you go int into ber
the idea being, between level 3 and level 4 i'm going to be berserked from the chained court anyway
so i get int before ber in order to powerup chain more effectively
then after ber i get hr2 to extend the invulns
after level 7 it doesn't really matter what i get,
since at this point i'm likely going to be in the hell maps (which i'm gonna be diving in),
but i might as well finish off with blademaster for some extra firepower
mortem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMJjL7wVgU8
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of impatience = portable items (medikits, phase devices, etc.) are no longer portable
attempts: 28
skill: 57/100
luck: 95/100
difficulty: high diamond, could pass as an angelic
this one is on par with aob+aoms (berserker angelic) in terms of silliness,
although i do think it's easier since you can (on average) heal yourself more than you would in aob+aoms
your heals are sporadic and they usually don't happen when you need them to, but they do happen more often than in aob+aoms
i hate aoi by the way, it's my least favorite angel by far
aob on n! is already a cirus in the early game, but combining it with aoi just amplifies the things i don't like about both of these angels
melee may not require ammo, but medikits are more or less melee's equivalent of ammo, so being starved of them just makes the run boil down to luck
also since you're playing melee only, when you do find a medikit/globe there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to get to it without one of the late game enemies blowing it up right in your face as you're about to grab it...
build order:
Bru, Bru, Int, Ber, HR, HR, Bru, MBm
I went with the same build I did in aob+aoms,
wherein you open with bru2 and then you go int into ber
the idea being, between level 3 and level 4 i'm going to be berserked from the chained court anyway
so i get int before ber in order to powerup chain more effectively
then after ber i get hr2 to extend the invulns
after level 7 it doesn't really matter what i get,
since at this point i'm likely going to be in the hell maps (which i'm gonna be diving in),
but i might as well finish off with blademaster for some extra firepower
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
3
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoLT|87%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-4
« on: May 08, 2026, 15:05 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SiPBxE9xGI
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of light travel = You're limited to 5 inventory slots, but you get a +20% universal speed boost
dualing with aolt makes the early game easier, though the late game becomes harder
but drl and especially aob on n! is harder in the early game, so it's a good deal
this is definitely easier than single angeling with aob for the most part
attempts: 12
skill: 40/100
luck: 47/100
difficulty: platinum (maybe low diamond?)
not sure whether to grade it at platinum or (very) low diamond, but it's easier than berserker diamond for sure
however it's not an automatic win, you still have to pay attention to how you clear floors and you can still get fucked over with hot starts, cacodemon vaults on phobos, etc.
the 5 inventory slots can also hurt in the mid/late game if you're having bad luck with powerups
and speaking of berserker diamond, this is one of the ways to sereg it
(the others being aob+aooc and aob+aod)
this combo can also be used to get the gargulec cross, although if you're gonna garg it up, then I suggest going uv instead of n!
build order:
Bru, Bru, Bru, Ber, HR, HR, MBm, Int, Fin, Fin, WK, HR, WK, Fin, Bru
I went bru3 into blademaster again,
but to be honest any of the melee masteries can work here since the lack of passive speed isn't a problem for marine/tech in aolt
(even mal blades can work if you wanna challenge yourself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SiPBxE9xGI
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of light travel = You're limited to 5 inventory slots, but you get a +20% universal speed boost
dualing with aolt makes the early game easier, though the late game becomes harder
but drl and especially aob on n! is harder in the early game, so it's a good deal
this is definitely easier than single angeling with aob for the most part
attempts: 12
skill: 40/100
luck: 47/100
difficulty: platinum (maybe low diamond?)
not sure whether to grade it at platinum or (very) low diamond, but it's easier than berserker diamond for sure
however it's not an automatic win, you still have to pay attention to how you clear floors and you can still get fucked over with hot starts, cacodemon vaults on phobos, etc.
the 5 inventory slots can also hurt in the mid/late game if you're having bad luck with powerups
and speaking of berserker diamond, this is one of the ways to sereg it
(the others being aob+aooc and aob+aod)
this combo can also be used to get the gargulec cross, although if you're gonna garg it up, then I suggest going uv instead of n!
build order:
Bru, Bru, Bru, Ber, HR, HR, MBm, Int, Fin, Fin, WK, HR, WK, Fin, Bru
I went bru3 into blademaster again,
but to be honest any of the melee masteries can work here since the lack of passive speed isn't a problem for marine/tech in aolt
(even mal blades can work if you wanna challenge yourself)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
4
Century Lounge / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+Ao100|29%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-3
« on: May 05, 2026, 14:54 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjFmXWH1cWg
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of 100 = You have to play 100 randomly generated floors
attempts: 34
skill: 47/100
luck: 78/100
difficulty: mid diamond
I'll go with mid diamond for this
the early game is brutal, just like in regular aob on n!
and this time you can't just find invulns on floor 1 like in aocn/aooc,
you also don't get a guaranteed chainsaw from the chained court, in fact you might not find one at all and you'll be stuck with the dinky knife
but only the first ~15 floors are a challenge, the rest is easy once your build comes online, even 'mid diamond' might be overselling it a bit
(and especially so in the current version where you basically become permanently invuln if you're not full clearing floors)
playing carefully in the early game can work, but levelgen is probably gonna fuck you over on the next floors
so i opted to stairdive again, felt like a more time-efficient way to beat this
also i beat it under an hour, so i get the honorary sereg medal i guess
although i wouldn't count it, the current version allows for much quicker win times than what sereg played
(my centurial angelic was ~3 hours for example, which is wayyy faster than it would've been in pre-jhc versions)
build order:
Bru, Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, HR, HR, MBm, Fin, Fin, WK, HR, WK, Fin, Bru, Bru, DM, Jug, Int, EE
build wise, it's blademaster again, but i'm opening with bru3 instead of bru2 berserker,
the reason why is because I'm relying on throwing knives a lot and brute 3 definitely helps more with those than berserker does
(although note that thrown knives do still activate berserker, which can come into play)
and then later i go into whizkid, as you normally would,
although in ao100 it's important to go whizkid at some point since you'll need to beef up your gear for the later floors
attempts: 34
skill: 47/100
luck: 78/100
difficulty: mid diamond
playing carefully in the early game can work, but levelgen is probably gonna fuck you over on the next floors
so i opted to stairdive again, felt like a more time-efficient way to beat this
also i beat it under an hour, so i get the honorary sereg medal i guess
although i wouldn't count it, the current version allows for much quicker win times than what sereg played
(my centurial angelic was 3 hours for example, which is wayyy faster than it would've been in pre-jhc versions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjFmXWH1cWg
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of 100 = You have to play 100 randomly generated floors
attempts: 34
skill: 47/100
luck: 78/100
difficulty: mid diamond
I'll go with mid diamond for this
the early game is brutal, just like in regular aob on n!
and this time you can't just find invulns on floor 1 like in aocn/aooc,
you also don't get a guaranteed chainsaw from the chained court, in fact you might not find one at all and you'll be stuck with the dinky knife
but only the first ~15 floors are a challenge, the rest is easy once your build comes online, even 'mid diamond' might be overselling it a bit
(and especially so in the current version where you basically become permanently invuln if you're not full clearing floors)
playing carefully in the early game can work, but levelgen is probably gonna fuck you over on the next floors
so i opted to stairdive again, felt like a more time-efficient way to beat this
also i beat it under an hour, so i get the honorary sereg medal i guess
although i wouldn't count it, the current version allows for much quicker win times than what sereg played
(my centurial angelic was ~3 hours for example, which is wayyy faster than it would've been in pre-jhc versions)
build order:
Bru, Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, HR, HR, MBm, Fin, Fin, WK, HR, WK, Fin, Bru, Bru, DM, Jug, Int, EE
build wise, it's blademaster again, but i'm opening with bru3 instead of bru2 berserker,
the reason why is because I'm relying on throwing knives a lot and brute 3 definitely helps more with those than berserker does
(although note that thrown knives do still activate berserker, which can come into play)
and then later i go into whizkid, as you normally would,
although in ao100 it's important to go whizkid at some point since you'll need to beef up your gear for the later floors
attempts: 34
skill: 47/100
luck: 78/100
difficulty: mid diamond
playing carefully in the early game can work, but levelgen is probably gonna fuck you over on the next floors
so i opted to stairdive again, felt like a more time-efficient way to beat this
also i beat it under an hour, so i get the honorary sereg medal i guess
although i wouldn't count it, the current version allows for much quicker win times than what sereg played
(my centurial angelic was 3 hours for example, which is wayyy faster than it would've been in pre-jhc versions)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
5
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoOC|45%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-2
« on: May 04, 2026, 13:28 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrWUIQ5y7uw
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of Overconfidence = You start in Hell 1 instead of Phobos 1
Pretty much everything I said about aob+aocn applies to this combo too, except this one is easier since now you only have 7 floors to stairdive and the mastermind is weaker against melee than the cyberdemon is.
For some reason you start with no armor on this one?
and you start with a chainsaw equipped
(whereas in aob+aocn you get a chainsaw, but it's not equipped)
attempts: 3
skill: 25/100
luck: 70/100
difficulty: platinum
Going with platinum for this one, since it's even easier than AoB+AoCn, which I graded as low diamond
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, Bru, HR, HR, MBm
I went with bru, bru, ber, int into blademaster again,
for the same reasons:
- blademaster is generally the best mastery for pure melee
- it's on scout, which makes stairdiving easier
- bru2 into berserker is also really good when you're fighting tough enemies at a low level
Int could also be considered opening with, so you can just find powerups immediately (you'll level up extremely quickly anyway)
mortem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrWUIQ5y7uw
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of Overconfidence = You start in Hell 1 instead of Phobos 1
Pretty much everything I said about aob+aocn applies to this combo too, except this one is easier since now you only have 7 floors to stairdive and the mastermind is weaker against melee than the cyberdemon is.
For some reason you start with no armor on this one?
and you start with a chainsaw equipped
(whereas in aob+aocn you get a chainsaw, but it's not equipped)
attempts: 3
skill: 25/100
luck: 70/100
difficulty: platinum
Going with platinum for this one, since it's even easier than AoB+AoCn, which I graded as low diamond
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, Bru, HR, HR, MBm
I went with bru, bru, ber, int into blademaster again,
for the same reasons:
- blademaster is generally the best mastery for pure melee
- it's on scout, which makes stairdiving easier
- bru2 into berserker is also really good when you're fighting tough enemies at a low level
Int could also be considered opening with, so you can just find powerups immediately (you'll level up extremely quickly anyway)
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
6
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoCn|23%|YAVP] Every Dual Angel combo on N! World 1-1
« on: May 03, 2026, 14:57 »
video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXVGScXKTzg
Well, I (nearly) 100%'d the game in terms of badge hunting
but it doesn't seem like v0.11 is coming out any time soon and I really don't wanna seriously try doing pacifist/demonic angelic
So I decided to try a different idea that I've been thinking about doing:
beating all the dual angel combos on N!
Not sure if I'm actually going to sit through every single one of them, but I'll try and give it my best...
and the ones that I do end up beating, I will be grading in terms of difficulty (relative to the badge tiers) and also how much skill/luck I think they require
I am going to be skipping a few, either because they're the same as some of the angelic badges:
AoB + AoMs (Berserker Angelic)
AoMr + AoD (Marksman Angelic)
AoSh + AoOc (Shottyman Angelic)
AoI + AoRa (Eagerness Angelic)
AoP + AoRa (Inquisitor Angelic)
or because they're duplicates:
AoD + AoI is the same as AoI + AoD
AoD + AoP is the same as AoP + AoD
(although I will make an exception for AoMr + AoD, since I wanna try doing marksman angelic without cateye)
I already did the angelics, so just check out my drl playlist if you wanna see those:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf6blLaBeV0&list=PLoiemCdQ_pCxJdMIGumzTobwhQ7HSdEJ_
----------
anyway, I'm going from top to bottom, so the first one is AoB + AoCn
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of Confidence = You start in Deimos 1 instead of Phobos 1
attempts: 28
skill: 30/100
luck: 75/100
difficulty: low diamond
I'm thinking low diamond for this one in terms of difficulty?
if you get lucky with powerups then there's very little skill involved
and you can get invulns to spawn immediately, so I can't put this any higher than low diamond
actually fighting is tough, so if there was a badge/medal that forced you to do this with a kill req, it'd be rated higher
you can try fighting back, but melee starts off really weak
you're also gonna take a ton of damage in return and there's no guarantee you'll be able to recoup your losses
you want a decent stockpile of medikits too, as you may need them for the cyberdemon
so I opted to stairdive and just get lucky with drops
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, Bru, HR, HR, MBm
for the build, I just went with blademaster, it's the best mastery for pure melee right now, it's also on scout which is great in case I need to stairdive
(and aob on N! is certainly annoying enough to warrant stairdiving)
Opening with int could be seriously considered in this dual angel
mortem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXVGScXKTzg
Well, I (nearly) 100%'d the game in terms of badge hunting
but it doesn't seem like v0.11 is coming out any time soon and I really don't wanna seriously try doing pacifist/demonic angelic
So I decided to try a different idea that I've been thinking about doing:
beating all the dual angel combos on N!
Not sure if I'm actually going to sit through every single one of them, but I'll try and give it my best...
and the ones that I do end up beating, I will be grading in terms of difficulty (relative to the badge tiers) and also how much skill/luck I think they require
I am going to be skipping a few, either because they're the same as some of the angelic badges:
AoB + AoMs (Berserker Angelic)
AoMr + AoD (Marksman Angelic)
AoSh + AoOc (Shottyman Angelic)
AoI + AoRa (Eagerness Angelic)
AoP + AoRa (Inquisitor Angelic)
or because they're duplicates:
AoD + AoI is the same as AoI + AoD
AoD + AoP is the same as AoP + AoD
(although I will make an exception for AoMr + AoD, since I wanna try doing marksman angelic without cateye)
I already did the angelics, so just check out my drl playlist if you wanna see those:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf6blLaBeV0&list=PLoiemCdQ_pCxJdMIGumzTobwhQ7HSdEJ_
----------
anyway, I'm going from top to bottom, so the first one is AoB + AoCn
Angel of berserk = You're only allowed to use melee weapons
Angel of Confidence = You start in Deimos 1 instead of Phobos 1
attempts: 28
skill: 30/100
luck: 75/100
difficulty: low diamond
I'm thinking low diamond for this one in terms of difficulty?
if you get lucky with powerups then there's very little skill involved
and you can get invulns to spawn immediately, so I can't put this any higher than low diamond
actually fighting is tough, so if there was a badge/medal that forced you to do this with a kill req, it'd be rated higher
you can try fighting back, but melee starts off really weak
you're also gonna take a ton of damage in return and there's no guarantee you'll be able to recoup your losses
you want a decent stockpile of medikits too, as you may need them for the cyberdemon
so I opted to stairdive and just get lucky with drops
build order:
Bru, Bru, Ber, Int, Bru, HR, HR, MBm
for the build, I just went with blademaster, it's the best mastery for pure melee right now, it's also on scout which is great in case I need to stairdive
(and aob on N! is certainly annoying enough to warrant stairdiving)
Opening with int could be seriously considered in this dual angel
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
7
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|100%|YAAM] standard N!/100% with bullet dance
« on: April 29, 2026, 12:36 »
video:
this isn't a badge or a medal or anything, it's just a run for fun
standard N! with 100% kills using by far the worst mastery in the game
so what does bullet dance do? well it lets you fire extra shots out of your pistol for every level you have in triggerhappy
on paper that's already a bad thing, why would you want to be forced to fire extra shots out of your pistol? if you have sog 3+ you can already one shot a lot of the enemies in the game, you're also probably going to be pushing enemies outside of your vision with your first shot, meaning your extra shots come with a 'bonus' accuracy penalty
and if you're doing nightmare, then the extra shots are gonna make lining up corpse stacks trickier...
I guess if you can get yourself a nanomach pistol (or two of them ideally), then you could solve the ammo problem, but the build path doesn't have much room for deviations to whizkid until way later in the game (when you're gonna wanna get sog4 and sog5) and y'know there's no guarantee you'll find a nano mod in the first place, so this is unlikely
another thing is that the extra shots come at a price - your turns become longer the more levels you have in triggerhappy, +50% of a single shot's fire time per triggerhappy to be exact; so you're also wasting time that your enemies can use to sneak up on you while you're dakka dakka'ing it up
and not only that, but there's also a bug currently where the bonus attack speed doesn't even work!
bullet dance is supposed to grant extra shots for only 50% extra firing speed, but right now it's actually for 100% extra firing speed, meaning bullet dance is just an active handicap, you're being forced to take double turns for absolutely no bonus!
It used to work as intended in previous versions, but it wasn't really much better, in fact it was still considered to be the worst mastery in the game and even its younger brother in jhc - bullet storm - is also considered to be the shittiest mastery of that game too
let's look at the traits you need for it:
son of a gun is a must for any pistol build of course,
dualgunner - I'm actually not really a fan of dualgunner,
a single pistol is usually more than enough to beat the game with, but it's not a bad trait by any means
son of a bitch is... odd; it's not very useful in the early game,
though I suppose if you want more late game dps then it's not a bad idea
triggerhappy though? triggerhappy is useless for pistols normally
(unless you get a cleric beretta and only use the full auto mode i guess...?)
and also as mentioned earlier, forcing your pistols to fire more shots is the last thing you want, so any extra levels in triggerhappy are just gonna make things worse!
also bullet dance blocks hellrunner, which is awful for a myriad of reasons, but that would take a bit too long to explain why...
but with all that said, can you beat nightmare with it?
yes!
even with all its problems, it's not bad enough to the point of being completely unusable
(you're shooting yourself in the foot if you try to use it for most of the platinum+ badges though)
I was thinking about doing a conqueror run, but turns it out it also blocks brute, I'd rather not be forced to do longinus diamond on top of this;
not to mention some of the specials are a death wish with bullet dance, so I only ended up doing some of them...
I also forced myself to get bullet dance as early as possible, which is not what you want to be doing normally;
in fact if you are going to get it, then you'd want to get it at the last possible opportunity (like in the jhc badges) because it's just a hindrance if you get it any earlier than that
and if you insist on getting it (somewhat) early, then at least go for sog 3 first so you can get your pistol as strong as possible for the early-mid game
even still, despite having it, the game ended up being about me trying to NOT use it lol
as in like, I didn't get any extra levels in triggerhappy and I tried to not use my second pistol unless I had to, since it's just a waste
I tried to go for only pistol kills too, but I ended up getting like 10 rocket kills
(and a fist kill when an imp got in the way while i was invuln);
but hey the vast majority of my kills were with pistols, that's good enough for me
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
this isn't a badge or a medal or anything, it's just a run for fun
standard N! with 100% kills using by far the worst mastery in the game
so what does bullet dance do? well it lets you fire extra shots out of your pistol for every level you have in triggerhappy
on paper that's already a bad thing, why would you want to be forced to fire extra shots out of your pistol? if you have sog 3+ you can already one shot a lot of the enemies in the game, you're also probably going to be pushing enemies outside of your vision with your first shot, meaning your extra shots come with a 'bonus' accuracy penalty
and if you're doing nightmare, then the extra shots are gonna make lining up corpse stacks trickier...
I guess if you can get yourself a nanomach pistol (or two of them ideally), then you could solve the ammo problem, but the build path doesn't have much room for deviations to whizkid until way later in the game (when you're gonna wanna get sog4 and sog5) and y'know there's no guarantee you'll find a nano mod in the first place, so this is unlikely
another thing is that the extra shots come at a price - your turns become longer the more levels you have in triggerhappy, +50% of a single shot's fire time per triggerhappy to be exact; so you're also wasting time that your enemies can use to sneak up on you while you're dakka dakka'ing it up
and not only that, but there's also a bug currently where the bonus attack speed doesn't even work!
bullet dance is supposed to grant extra shots for only 50% extra firing speed, but right now it's actually for 100% extra firing speed, meaning bullet dance is just an active handicap, you're being forced to take double turns for absolutely no bonus!
It used to work as intended in previous versions, but it wasn't really much better, in fact it was still considered to be the worst mastery in the game and even its younger brother in jhc - bullet storm - is also considered to be the shittiest mastery of that game too
let's look at the traits you need for it:
son of a gun is a must for any pistol build of course,
dualgunner - I'm actually not really a fan of dualgunner,
a single pistol is usually more than enough to beat the game with, but it's not a bad trait by any means
son of a bitch is... odd; it's not very useful in the early game,
though I suppose if you want more late game dps then it's not a bad idea
triggerhappy though? triggerhappy is useless for pistols normally
(unless you get a cleric beretta and only use the full auto mode i guess...?)
and also as mentioned earlier, forcing your pistols to fire more shots is the last thing you want, so any extra levels in triggerhappy are just gonna make things worse!
also bullet dance blocks hellrunner, which is awful for a myriad of reasons, but that would take a bit too long to explain why...
but with all that said, can you beat nightmare with it?
yes!
even with all its problems, it's not bad enough to the point of being completely unusable
(you're shooting yourself in the foot if you try to use it for most of the platinum+ badges though)
I was thinking about doing a conqueror run, but turns it out it also blocks brute, I'd rather not be forced to do longinus diamond on top of this;
not to mention some of the specials are a death wish with bullet dance, so I only ended up doing some of them...
I also forced myself to get bullet dance as early as possible, which is not what you want to be doing normally;
in fact if you are going to get it, then you'd want to get it at the last possible opportunity (like in the jhc badges) because it's just a hindrance if you get it any earlier than that
and if you insist on getting it (somewhat) early, then at least go for sog 3 first so you can get your pistol as strong as possible for the early-mid game
even still, despite having it, the game ended up being about me trying to NOT use it lol
as in like, I didn't get any extra levels in triggerhappy and I tried to not use my second pistol unless I had to, since it's just a waste
I tried to go for only pistol kills too, but I ended up getting like 10 rocket kills
(and a fist kill when an imp got in the way while i was invuln);
but hey the vast majority of my kills were with pistols, that's good enough for me
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
8
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|17%|YAVP] UAC ANGELIC!!! with video proof! (& Chaos Marshal!)
« on: April 28, 2026, 13:34 »
video:
build order:
Int, Int, HR, HR, Bru, Bru
Suprise! One more badge to rule them all!!!
I know I said that I was done with v0.10 and this badge was beyond me, but hey I thought I'd at least give this one an honest chance...
After some attempts I managed to make my way to anomaly completely damageless,
I failed right after since I didn't find a phase device or an invuln, but I knew full well that getting to anomaly was the hard part, invulns can carry you through the rest of the game if you get lucky enough and after that run I knew I had to keep trying this badge before the incoming nerfs to powerup stacking & running are deployed
So just like with speedrunner, you can debate whether this one is actually impossible or not in the current patch
(well 'impossible' is a misnomer already, but basically it's a swear word used for any kind of challenge that requires absurd luck/skill to win)
On one hand you can't just camp out in a corner and wait for all the enemies to come towards you, like you could in the pre-JHC versions of the game
but on the other hand, once you get to phobos 7, the invulns are going to last much longer which will require less luck in finding enough invulns to beat the game.
I'd say this is one of, if not the hardest badge in the game currently (besides pacifist and demonic), but it is *plausibly* beatable!
much like the other angelics that i stairdove (everyman, speedrunner, etc.)
the plan is to grab the chainsaw in the chained court, either get a phase device or an invuln on phobos 7 and then just invuln rush my way to the end of the game.
The only difference with this badge is that phobos 1-7 is extra painful and for the rest of the game I have to be pretty much constantly invulnerable, because otherwise I'll likely fail the damageless part of this badge.
for the build:
Obviously you wanna open with int2, you'd have to be clinically insane to try and beat this without opening int2
and then after that I went with hellrunner 2 into berserker,
hr2 first because I wanted to crank out every drop of invuln I could, but hr1 into berserker has worked in the other stairdived angelics, so it could probably work here too
if you somehow get to level 8 then I dunno, finesse maybe? I never got that far
floors:
phobos 1 is really annoying, there's like a 90% chance the zombies will hit you on this one
the idea is to run to the right immediately and then try to corner shoot your way into grabbing a shotgun
if you get into an unavoidable fight with a pistol zombie, then try eating a medikit to run again (they have really bad accuracy, you might just survive)
shotgunners can't miss, so don't bother with running for them, instead try to lure them over to you so you can take their gun
if that's not an option, then either try to get into melee range, or try to get a pistol zombie behind them for a potential infight
the vast majority of my runs ended on phobos 1, so it may take a while to get through this
you also wanna try and get 100% kills in phobos 1, since you'll want to reach level 2 as soon as possible
on phobos 2 you wanna radar scan like crazy until you hit level 2,
once that happens it's just a matter of reaching the stairs in the safest manner possible
general tips for phobos 1-7:
you want to be running around as much as possible (don't be afraid to burn medikits to keep it up), running is important since it'd a big boost to your speed and you get a dodge bonus on top of the one you (will) have from hellrunner
the downside is that your accuracy takes a hit, but that's not a problem for the shotgun
^don't use any other type of weapon in phobos by the way, they either require too many traits to work or you're nearly guaranteed to be taking damage in the case of melee
you'll really need to git gud at corner shooting, since that's the only way to (somewhat) reliably clear floors without taking damage, I'm not gonna get into every possible angle here, but just know that you should only be engaging from around a corner.
If you're fighting zombies/imps/pinkies/lost souls then you can afford to do it in the open, but all the beefier enemies are too risky to fight like that
also remember that you can manipulate enemy movements via radar scanning:
as long as they don't see you, they'll simply walk towards the tile you shot them from
while they're doing that you run over to a different spot from where you can safely corner shoot them to death
don't use any armor with a negative speed mult for obvious reasons
(but feel free to pick it up so that zombies and nobles can't use it against you)
(and I guess you could keep some green armor for a potential tactical armor, but the odds are very low for this to happen)
have a second shotgun in your prepared slot, since in the current patch switching to it only takes 0.5 seconds, which can often let you get a crucial second shot against an enemy thats about to attack you
and just y'know, try to get lucky,
if you get even a lukewarm start you'll probably fail,
if you get a maze with the stairs far away you'll probably fail,
if you get a cacodemon/arachnotron cave you'll probably fail...
there's a lot of luck involved in this badge unfortunately
also don't go for hell's arena, the rewards are very mediocre in the context of this badge:
the armor and supercharge are useless,
the extra medikits are nice, but you'll probably burn a bunch trying to beat it anyway...
the rocket launcher can be useful for extending the invulns later in the game, but it alone cannot get you past anomaly, so you'll still need to get lucky for that
the biggest attraction is probably the extra xp, which will get you to level 3 (and maybe even 4 if you there's a vault on phobos 2 and you fully clear it), which is nice, but you'll likely hit level 4 by anomaly anyway; and you'll get more xp afterwards just from enemies catching each other in the crossfire while trying to hit you while you're invuln
HOWEVER if you do beat hell's arena (all 3 waves), then you won't have a guaranteed chainsaw anymore since unchained court is pretty much impossible to do damageless
beating hell's arena damageless on n! is no joke by the way, I'd say my odds are probably in the single digits for that,
so I'd rather just try and all in on that sweet phobos 7 invuln
chained court is mandatory again, the chainsaw is more than enough to beat the game's bosses without having to get lucky with finding some other weapon, so I'd rather not push my luck further just for that
you wanna start chained by corner shooting in the middle until the enemy count gets to about 16;
once that happens you roid up and get out
if you happen to have a rad suit you could also go for the mod packs
(the mod packs aren't fully blocked off, you can reach them via the lava canals without flipping switches)
or you could save the rad suit for a potential crappy start later, it's up to you
all the other specials are to be used for transit purposes only, don't actually try to clear them
toxin refinery/central processing - No!
phobos lab/military base - No!
hell's armory/phobos lab - yes
the wall/containment area - yes
city of skulls - yes, but you have to walk across an entire floor pretty much, don't do it if you have an invuln
abyssal plains - No!
halls of carnage - No!
spider's lair - yes, but only if you're invuln or if your move speed is really high; the arachnos will probably hit you otherwise
the vaults - yes
house of pain - yes (just don't accidentally accept the invite)
unholy cathedral - yes
the mortuary/limbo - just like speedrunner, you could maybe do this one for the guaranteed nuke if you're invuln and have a rocket launcher, but otherwise hell no
lava pits/mt erebus - yes
phobos 1-6 you should just be stairdiving,
but phobos 7 you wanna hold off on the stairs and have a look around
I already have intuition, so I can spot any invulns,
but if there isn't one then I might as well try and look for a phase device
anomaly is the big filter here, it's impossible* to beat it without an invuln or a phase device
and if you only have a phase device, well, you better hope it takes you past the bruisers
(if it takes you past the first ambush you could try and bait the bruisers into infighting with the nightmare demons and walking past them while they're distracted I guess? it might be better to just try and run past the bruisers like usual though)
*if you have dodgemaster and get insanely lucky you could maybe get through it, but I'd rather not bet on that
and I'm also not going for dodgemaster since I'm gonna be pretty short on xp and dodgemaster isn't a necessity otherwise
There's not much to comment on the stuff past anomaly:
if there is an invuln out of the way of the exit, you should consider grabbing it
and also you should try and make sure none of the enemies nearby can destroy it before you get to it,
some other items of interest that can be considered for grabs:
berserk packs (duh, it's a speed and damage boost),
modpacks (either for buffing the chainsaw or agility mods for extra speed),
phase devices, especially homing ones (since you might spawn far from the stairs),
a rocket launcher/rocket ammo if you don't already have both (for rocket jumping)
any boots/armor with a positive speed multiplier (or higher than what you currently have)
but really, you're mostly relying on luck with invulns to actually win and I just so happened to get a run where I could afford to stay invuln for long enough
anyway though, that's 15/17 angelics for me, meaning I reached the chaos marshal rank!
And no, it didn't unlock a Nightmare+ difficulty :P
My badge hunting in this version is over for real this time;
this one may have been a one in a thousand kinda badge to get,
(but for an angel of luck such as myself it took about ~300 attempts? i wasn't keeping track)
but pacifist and demonic are more like one in billions, maybe even more than that
Even if I try them all day every day, I'm pretty sure v0.11 is going to come out sooner than me getting lucky enough to actually beat them
in v0.11 these badges will (hopefully) get reworked into something a little less impossible anyway...
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
build order:
Int, Int, HR, HR, Bru, Bru
Suprise! One more badge to rule them all!!!
I know I said that I was done with v0.10 and this badge was beyond me, but hey I thought I'd at least give this one an honest chance...
After some attempts I managed to make my way to anomaly completely damageless,
I failed right after since I didn't find a phase device or an invuln, but I knew full well that getting to anomaly was the hard part, invulns can carry you through the rest of the game if you get lucky enough and after that run I knew I had to keep trying this badge before the incoming nerfs to powerup stacking & running are deployed
So just like with speedrunner, you can debate whether this one is actually impossible or not in the current patch
(well 'impossible' is a misnomer already, but basically it's a swear word used for any kind of challenge that requires absurd luck/skill to win)
On one hand you can't just camp out in a corner and wait for all the enemies to come towards you, like you could in the pre-JHC versions of the game
but on the other hand, once you get to phobos 7, the invulns are going to last much longer which will require less luck in finding enough invulns to beat the game.
I'd say this is one of, if not the hardest badge in the game currently (besides pacifist and demonic), but it is *plausibly* beatable!
much like the other angelics that i stairdove (everyman, speedrunner, etc.)
the plan is to grab the chainsaw in the chained court, either get a phase device or an invuln on phobos 7 and then just invuln rush my way to the end of the game.
The only difference with this badge is that phobos 1-7 is extra painful and for the rest of the game I have to be pretty much constantly invulnerable, because otherwise I'll likely fail the damageless part of this badge.
for the build:
Obviously you wanna open with int2, you'd have to be clinically insane to try and beat this without opening int2
and then after that I went with hellrunner 2 into berserker,
hr2 first because I wanted to crank out every drop of invuln I could, but hr1 into berserker has worked in the other stairdived angelics, so it could probably work here too
if you somehow get to level 8 then I dunno, finesse maybe? I never got that far
floors:
phobos 1 is really annoying, there's like a 90% chance the zombies will hit you on this one
the idea is to run to the right immediately and then try to corner shoot your way into grabbing a shotgun
if you get into an unavoidable fight with a pistol zombie, then try eating a medikit to run again (they have really bad accuracy, you might just survive)
shotgunners can't miss, so don't bother with running for them, instead try to lure them over to you so you can take their gun
if that's not an option, then either try to get into melee range, or try to get a pistol zombie behind them for a potential infight
the vast majority of my runs ended on phobos 1, so it may take a while to get through this
you also wanna try and get 100% kills in phobos 1, since you'll want to reach level 2 as soon as possible
on phobos 2 you wanna radar scan like crazy until you hit level 2,
once that happens it's just a matter of reaching the stairs in the safest manner possible
general tips for phobos 1-7:
you want to be running around as much as possible (don't be afraid to burn medikits to keep it up), running is important since it'd a big boost to your speed and you get a dodge bonus on top of the one you (will) have from hellrunner
the downside is that your accuracy takes a hit, but that's not a problem for the shotgun
^don't use any other type of weapon in phobos by the way, they either require too many traits to work or you're nearly guaranteed to be taking damage in the case of melee
you'll really need to git gud at corner shooting, since that's the only way to (somewhat) reliably clear floors without taking damage, I'm not gonna get into every possible angle here, but just know that you should only be engaging from around a corner.
If you're fighting zombies/imps/pinkies/lost souls then you can afford to do it in the open, but all the beefier enemies are too risky to fight like that
also remember that you can manipulate enemy movements via radar scanning:
as long as they don't see you, they'll simply walk towards the tile you shot them from
while they're doing that you run over to a different spot from where you can safely corner shoot them to death
don't use any armor with a negative speed mult for obvious reasons
(but feel free to pick it up so that zombies and nobles can't use it against you)
(and I guess you could keep some green armor for a potential tactical armor, but the odds are very low for this to happen)
have a second shotgun in your prepared slot, since in the current patch switching to it only takes 0.5 seconds, which can often let you get a crucial second shot against an enemy thats about to attack you
and just y'know, try to get lucky,
if you get even a lukewarm start you'll probably fail,
if you get a maze with the stairs far away you'll probably fail,
if you get a cacodemon/arachnotron cave you'll probably fail...
there's a lot of luck involved in this badge unfortunately
also don't go for hell's arena, the rewards are very mediocre in the context of this badge:
the armor and supercharge are useless,
the extra medikits are nice, but you'll probably burn a bunch trying to beat it anyway...
the rocket launcher can be useful for extending the invulns later in the game, but it alone cannot get you past anomaly, so you'll still need to get lucky for that
the biggest attraction is probably the extra xp, which will get you to level 3 (and maybe even 4 if you there's a vault on phobos 2 and you fully clear it), which is nice, but you'll likely hit level 4 by anomaly anyway; and you'll get more xp afterwards just from enemies catching each other in the crossfire while trying to hit you while you're invuln
HOWEVER if you do beat hell's arena (all 3 waves), then you won't have a guaranteed chainsaw anymore since unchained court is pretty much impossible to do damageless
beating hell's arena damageless on n! is no joke by the way, I'd say my odds are probably in the single digits for that,
so I'd rather just try and all in on that sweet phobos 7 invuln
chained court is mandatory again, the chainsaw is more than enough to beat the game's bosses without having to get lucky with finding some other weapon, so I'd rather not push my luck further just for that
you wanna start chained by corner shooting in the middle until the enemy count gets to about 16;
once that happens you roid up and get out
if you happen to have a rad suit you could also go for the mod packs
(the mod packs aren't fully blocked off, you can reach them via the lava canals without flipping switches)
or you could save the rad suit for a potential crappy start later, it's up to you
all the other specials are to be used for transit purposes only, don't actually try to clear them
toxin refinery/central processing - No!
phobos lab/military base - No!
hell's armory/phobos lab - yes
the wall/containment area - yes
city of skulls - yes, but you have to walk across an entire floor pretty much, don't do it if you have an invuln
abyssal plains - No!
halls of carnage - No!
spider's lair - yes, but only if you're invuln or if your move speed is really high; the arachnos will probably hit you otherwise
the vaults - yes
house of pain - yes (just don't accidentally accept the invite)
unholy cathedral - yes
the mortuary/limbo - just like speedrunner, you could maybe do this one for the guaranteed nuke if you're invuln and have a rocket launcher, but otherwise hell no
lava pits/mt erebus - yes
phobos 1-6 you should just be stairdiving,
but phobos 7 you wanna hold off on the stairs and have a look around
I already have intuition, so I can spot any invulns,
but if there isn't one then I might as well try and look for a phase device
anomaly is the big filter here, it's impossible* to beat it without an invuln or a phase device
and if you only have a phase device, well, you better hope it takes you past the bruisers
(if it takes you past the first ambush you could try and bait the bruisers into infighting with the nightmare demons and walking past them while they're distracted I guess? it might be better to just try and run past the bruisers like usual though)
*if you have dodgemaster and get insanely lucky you could maybe get through it, but I'd rather not bet on that
and I'm also not going for dodgemaster since I'm gonna be pretty short on xp and dodgemaster isn't a necessity otherwise
There's not much to comment on the stuff past anomaly:
if there is an invuln out of the way of the exit, you should consider grabbing it
and also you should try and make sure none of the enemies nearby can destroy it before you get to it,
some other items of interest that can be considered for grabs:
berserk packs (duh, it's a speed and damage boost),
modpacks (either for buffing the chainsaw or agility mods for extra speed),
phase devices, especially homing ones (since you might spawn far from the stairs),
a rocket launcher/rocket ammo if you don't already have both (for rocket jumping)
any boots/armor with a positive speed multiplier (or higher than what you currently have)
but really, you're mostly relying on luck with invulns to actually win and I just so happened to get a run where I could afford to stay invuln for long enough
anyway though, that's 15/17 angelics for me, meaning I reached the chaos marshal rank!
And no, it didn't unlock a Nightmare+ difficulty :P
My badge hunting in this version is over for real this time;
this one may have been a one in a thousand kinda badge to get,
(but for an angel of luck such as myself it took about ~300 attempts? i wasn't keeping track)
but pacifist and demonic are more like one in billions, maybe even more than that
Even if I try them all day every day, I'm pretty sure v0.11 is going to come out sooner than me getting lucky enough to actually beat them
in v0.11 these badges will (hopefully) get reworked into something a little less impossible anyway...
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
9
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|ArchAoMs|41%|YAVP] Masochist Angelic (+ 26/26/26/26/26/14 badges!)
« on: April 25, 2026, 04:31 »
video:
build order:
Int, Int, Fin, Jug, HR, Rel, Rel, Iro, HR
welcome to archangel of masochism, where health items do not work on you whatsoever.
in regular angel of masochism, you are compensated by the fact that you get a free 200% heal every time you level up,
on the other hand, when you level up in archaoms the game flips you the bird instead...
in archaoms, there are only 3 ways to heal yourself:
1. traits - specifically ironman and vampyre,
ironman just increases your health by 10 (or 12 on marine), so if you get it at 1/50 health then you'll end up with 11/60; ironman is pretty crappy and you really shouldn't be wasting traits on it, but i dunno it might be useful to know...
and vampyre heals you for every melee kill, depending on the max health of whatever you kill. vampyre itself is of course highly useful, but actually getting to it is extremely difficult
2. the blood skull - there is a portable item in the game called the blood skull, which turns nearby corpses into health
you can find one randomly, or you can kill the agony elemental in city of skulls/abyssal plains for 3 random skulls (which may or may not include blood skulls);
the blood skull is really good and it's certainly worth going for if you happen to find the city of skulls; but i usually got the abyssal plains instead (which are way harder than the city of skulls) and in this run I was too busy invuln rushing to make a pit stop there
3. medical (power)armor - medical armor (and its brother) heals you for 1 health in exchange for lowering its durability, this can singlehandedly make or break a run, since you now have a reliable source of healing
there is a guaranteed medical armor in toxin refinery, but uh...
even if you make it there with 100% health, int2, fin-jug AND a rocket launcher, getting through it alive is very challenging and not worth the hassle if you ask me
you can also find one randomly
(and you'll have to find one randomly if you want the powerarmor variant)
there's a couple ways you can go about beating this badge, namely:
A) go marine, open with fin jug and just try to survive long enough till you get vampyre, this was the option of choice in v0.9.9.8 when vampyre was stupid strong (and there was a bug that let you get dodgemaster for free basiclly), but in the current verison surviving long enough for this to happen is extremely unlikely
B) go shottyhead scout also opening with fin jug, take a mandatory detour to hell's arena for the guaranteed rocket launcher, then get int2 and just play super careful from that point onward
^I was trying to do this one a bunch of times, but sigh... I just kept losing too much health in the process, I'm really bad at these "dont get hit" type challenges, (it's also why I opened with int2 instead of fin jug)
so I decided to pray to icy instead of omega and I went with:
C) pretend it's everyman angelic and just stairdive with invulns
^Yeah, I didn't wanna do this again, seeing as how I already did this with centurial, everyman, berserker and speedrunner
at least with the last 3 you're kinda forced to do it, but you don't need to do it here per se, I would've preferred not to...
but whatever, I hated this badge frankly, so I'll settle on beating it this way
essentially it just turns into demonic diamond, but instead of the untouchable medal (less than 200 damage taken), you're aiming for the untouchable cross (less than 50 damage taken)
I don't have much to say about the actual gameplay, just use int2 to spot where the enemies are before you fight them
for phobos 1, I restarted if my health was less than 85% after beating it, I am gonna need all the health I can get, no need to waste it on phobos 1
in phobos, shotguns will be enough to corner shoot everything, even a single shotgun is (usually) enough to stop hell knights and cacodemons
also remember, you can equip another shotgun in your prepared slot, it only takes 0.5 seconds to switch to it instead of the usual 1 second
if you find a shellbox, then that's even better, as you can reload 5x faster than usual from it
jug lets you swap between weapons instantly, so you basically get a shotgun with a clip of more than 1 lol
you'll once again want to find a rocket launcher/phase device/invuln for anomaly, since you're not getting through it otherwise
if you get to the cyberdemon without an invuln, then you better have dodgemaster (and plenty of ammo to actually kill him)
for the spidermaster, if you don't have a nuke/invuln then combining hellrunner 2 + scout's passive (and taking off your armor if it has a negative speed mult) should be enough to outrun it as you corner shoot it to death with a shotgun
mortem:
anyway though, that's the last badge, I now have 14/17 angelics!!!
unfortunately, that's where my journey is gonna have to end
speedrunner has been (inadvertently) nerfed to the point where it's not considered to be impossible anymore,
but the remaining 3 impossibles are actually even more ridiculously difficult/luck based than they were before
///// uac angelic - beat standard nightmare! DAMAGELESS!
I agree that this is the "easiest" of the impossible ones, but this one is still FAR beyond me
first of all I've never been good at these "dont get hit" badges,
I prefer to play fast and reckless, which may work for angel of red alert or the speedrunning medals/badges,
but my play style falls completely flat on its ass when it comes to doing stuff like demonic diamond, masochist angelic and of course this badge
and unlike the first two, this badge has 0 room for error
in earlier versions the idea would be to hunker down somewhere in the map and then shift+w until all the enemies come to you
once you get to anomaly... ummm... just hope you can invuln chain/phase device your way to the end and then nuke the mastermind?
(nuking yourself does not count as taking damage)
of course you'd have to pray that you don't get a hot start along the way if you're not invuln
and by "hot start" i mean like anything above freezing in the case of this badge
however the enrage timer/patrol routes shuts down the camping strategies that you could've theoretically used before
and also in previous versions respawned enemies would drop ammo again, so you could just keep killing the same zombie for infinite ammo
^but this has also been fixed
the second half of the strat, the invuln chaining, would actually be easier now with the time based invulns
(and some of the other angelics like everyman and berserker are heavily reliant on it already)
but you'd still be forced to play aggressively in the early game in order to get to that point and the early game is almost always the hard part
thus I would consider it to be at least on par with how this badge was in v0.9.9.8, arguably even harder
I did beat masochist with 42 damage taken (after hundreds of attempts), so in theory 0 damage is possible,
but going from 42 to 0 is a huge leap
it also requires a standard game, so going AoMc to cheese it is off the table
(although even then, you'd still have to get lucky with anomaly & no hot starts)
- the proposal is to change it to "beat standard UV damageless"
^which would still make it one of the hardest badges in the game, but far less absurd
///// pacifist angelic - beat archangel of pacifism WITH ONLY ONE KILL!
archangel of pacifism itself is easy, it's this stupid undertale ass restriction on top of it that's the problem
that one kill has to be the spider mastermind, every other enemy you see has to stay alive
seriously you'd need some lottery winning grade luck in order to beat this one
there's not really that much skill involved, it's 99% getting lucky and 1% skill in making sure your movement doesn't get any enemies killed
I have tried this one before and my best so far has been deimos 3,
i believe icy has gotten to deimos 6 (*icy did it before infighting was added)
the idea being to just hope you can get to the stairs before anything dies/kills itself trying to attack you on... well, most of the floors
you might sometimes get a freebie with a lost soul cave (lost souls are incapable of killing each other/themselves),
you may also find a homing phase device, which is a skip for any floor (besides anomaly), babel and dis are also free, but everything else is a gamble
for anomaly you'd have to find a phase device, the cacodemons are extremely likely to kill one of the lost souls in the first ambush,
so not only do you have to get lucky with stairs, you also have to get lucky in finding a phase device before that
and unlike most of the other badges, post anomaly is worse, since there's more enemies and there's more opportunities for them to spawn inside of lava where they will die near instantly
this badge is even more ridiculous in the current version due to the infighting
not only do you have make sure enemies don't blow themselves up with barrels/lava,
you also have to make sure they don't hit each other, because if they do,
then they'll start butting heads and somebody is gonna die in the next few turns
honestly though, if I were to try and beat any of the impossible ones, this is the one I would go for
I actually really like angel of pacifism, I find it oddly relaxing and it forces you to play the game in a very unconventional way,
all you really need to do is find the exit and avoid enemies, your brain doesn't have to be firing on all cylinders for this one
what I don't like though is being forced to get 20+ lucky floors in a row
it's definitely a lot more pleasant than the other two where you constantly have to sit there with formulas flying around your head thinking about every single step you take in order to consider whether you'll be taking damage or not
but it would still likely take thousands of tries (probably a lot more actually) to beat it and thus it is still firmly impossible
- the proposal is to change it to "beat archangel of pacifism on N!"
^this would make it a low/mid tier angelic, in fact I've actually already beaten this in a test run
it took about 25 tries and it was still annoyingly luck based, but it was an order of magnitude less so than the current version
and i do think it would still be difficult enough to be worthy of the angelic tier
oh and style points for being consistent with the other "archangel on N!" group of badges
video of archangel of pacifism on N!:
mortem of archangel of pacifism on N!:
///// demonic angelic - beat standard nightmare! DAMAGELESS! WITH 100% KILLS!!!!!
ok this one is in a league of its own with how absolutely bonkers it is
at least for the other two I have an idea of what I'd realistically do in order to beat them
it'd still take ages, but like, you could do it eventually
what in the fuck are you expected to do for this???
presumably you would've used camping strategies to beat this one in earlier versions, just like in uac angelic
but again that doesn't work anymore with the enrage timer and patrol routes
I guess the idea would be to *SOMEHOW* get through phobos 1-7 radar scanning your way across with a shotgun,
then finding an invuln on phobos 7 and using that to fully clear anomaly (also *SOMEHOW*),
then finding a trigun and using that to nuke every floor to the end,
^while finding enough invulns and getting enough levels in ironman to keep up the nuke spam
or possibly instead of a trigun, you randomly find a nano mod, 3 power mods and a super shotty for a nano-shrapnel
^this wouldn't be fool proof like the trigun method, but I think it could plausibly work (if you went for whizkid x2)
that's a lot of somehows and randomly finding specific items that you would need in order to have a CHANCE of winning
what are the odds of all that happening? and more importantly, does the game's presumably pseudo-random rng even allow for it to happen?
this badge is so bust that I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible without actual cheats
not to mention you'd still have to be doing damageless up to at least phobos 7 before you can find invulns to carry you
in other words, you need the absurd luck of pacifist angelic AND you need to be playing perfectly like in uac angelic
I mean I suppose if you can get uac angelic then doing a few floors damageless/100% would be feasible for you...
but man, this has to be one of the hardest video game challenges I've ever laid my eyes on
I know there are people who have supposedly gotten it before, but none of them have provided video proof.
and given how ludicrously skilled AND lucky you'd have to be at the game in order to win this,
anyone who claims to have gotten this badge is either a game breaking bug abuser, a cheater or simply a liar until proven innocent if you ask me
- the proposal is to change it to "beat standard nightmare! with 100% kills & untouchable medal (or untouchable pin)"
this would keep the theme of having to beat N!/100% with minimal damage and it'd be in line with demonic diamond, but it would still be insane
I'd be in favor of the untouchable pin version to be honest,
demonic diamond (standard N! w/untouchable medal) is already on par with the low angelics imo
and having to do it all with 100% kills on top of it (you'd have to fully clear n! anomaly for example) is a really tall ask
another idea is to change it to something else entirely (i think icy suggested ArchAo666 on UV with 100% kills instead?)
because again, this badge is so bananas that you can't make any simple changes in order to make it plausible
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
build order:
Int, Int, Fin, Jug, HR, Rel, Rel, Iro, HR
welcome to archangel of masochism, where health items do not work on you whatsoever.
in regular angel of masochism, you are compensated by the fact that you get a free 200% heal every time you level up,
on the other hand, when you level up in archaoms the game flips you the bird instead...
in archaoms, there are only 3 ways to heal yourself:
1. traits - specifically ironman and vampyre,
ironman just increases your health by 10 (or 12 on marine), so if you get it at 1/50 health then you'll end up with 11/60; ironman is pretty crappy and you really shouldn't be wasting traits on it, but i dunno it might be useful to know...
and vampyre heals you for every melee kill, depending on the max health of whatever you kill. vampyre itself is of course highly useful, but actually getting to it is extremely difficult
2. the blood skull - there is a portable item in the game called the blood skull, which turns nearby corpses into health
you can find one randomly, or you can kill the agony elemental in city of skulls/abyssal plains for 3 random skulls (which may or may not include blood skulls);
the blood skull is really good and it's certainly worth going for if you happen to find the city of skulls; but i usually got the abyssal plains instead (which are way harder than the city of skulls) and in this run I was too busy invuln rushing to make a pit stop there
3. medical (power)armor - medical armor (and its brother) heals you for 1 health in exchange for lowering its durability, this can singlehandedly make or break a run, since you now have a reliable source of healing
there is a guaranteed medical armor in toxin refinery, but uh...
even if you make it there with 100% health, int2, fin-jug AND a rocket launcher, getting through it alive is very challenging and not worth the hassle if you ask me
you can also find one randomly
(and you'll have to find one randomly if you want the powerarmor variant)
there's a couple ways you can go about beating this badge, namely:
A) go marine, open with fin jug and just try to survive long enough till you get vampyre, this was the option of choice in v0.9.9.8 when vampyre was stupid strong (and there was a bug that let you get dodgemaster for free basiclly), but in the current verison surviving long enough for this to happen is extremely unlikely
B) go shottyhead scout also opening with fin jug, take a mandatory detour to hell's arena for the guaranteed rocket launcher, then get int2 and just play super careful from that point onward
^I was trying to do this one a bunch of times, but sigh... I just kept losing too much health in the process, I'm really bad at these "dont get hit" type challenges, (it's also why I opened with int2 instead of fin jug)
so I decided to pray to icy instead of omega and I went with:
C) pretend it's everyman angelic and just stairdive with invulns
^Yeah, I didn't wanna do this again, seeing as how I already did this with centurial, everyman, berserker and speedrunner
at least with the last 3 you're kinda forced to do it, but you don't need to do it here per se, I would've preferred not to...
but whatever, I hated this badge frankly, so I'll settle on beating it this way
essentially it just turns into demonic diamond, but instead of the untouchable medal (less than 200 damage taken), you're aiming for the untouchable cross (less than 50 damage taken)
I don't have much to say about the actual gameplay, just use int2 to spot where the enemies are before you fight them
for phobos 1, I restarted if my health was less than 85% after beating it, I am gonna need all the health I can get, no need to waste it on phobos 1
in phobos, shotguns will be enough to corner shoot everything, even a single shotgun is (usually) enough to stop hell knights and cacodemons
also remember, you can equip another shotgun in your prepared slot, it only takes 0.5 seconds to switch to it instead of the usual 1 second
if you find a shellbox, then that's even better, as you can reload 5x faster than usual from it
jug lets you swap between weapons instantly, so you basically get a shotgun with a clip of more than 1 lol
you'll once again want to find a rocket launcher/phase device/invuln for anomaly, since you're not getting through it otherwise
if you get to the cyberdemon without an invuln, then you better have dodgemaster (and plenty of ammo to actually kill him)
for the spidermaster, if you don't have a nuke/invuln then combining hellrunner 2 + scout's passive (and taking off your armor if it has a negative speed mult) should be enough to outrun it as you corner shoot it to death with a shotgun
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
anyway though, that's the last badge, I now have 14/17 angelics!!!
unfortunately, that's where my journey is gonna have to end
speedrunner has been (inadvertently) nerfed to the point where it's not considered to be impossible anymore,
but the remaining 3 impossibles are actually even more ridiculously difficult/luck based than they were before
///// uac angelic - beat standard nightmare! DAMAGELESS!
I agree that this is the "easiest" of the impossible ones, but this one is still FAR beyond me
first of all I've never been good at these "dont get hit" badges,
I prefer to play fast and reckless, which may work for angel of red alert or the speedrunning medals/badges,
but my play style falls completely flat on its ass when it comes to doing stuff like demonic diamond, masochist angelic and of course this badge
and unlike the first two, this badge has 0 room for error
in earlier versions the idea would be to hunker down somewhere in the map and then shift+w until all the enemies come to you
once you get to anomaly... ummm... just hope you can invuln chain/phase device your way to the end and then nuke the mastermind?
(nuking yourself does not count as taking damage)
of course you'd have to pray that you don't get a hot start along the way if you're not invuln
and by "hot start" i mean like anything above freezing in the case of this badge
however the enrage timer/patrol routes shuts down the camping strategies that you could've theoretically used before
and also in previous versions respawned enemies would drop ammo again, so you could just keep killing the same zombie for infinite ammo
^but this has also been fixed
the second half of the strat, the invuln chaining, would actually be easier now with the time based invulns
(and some of the other angelics like everyman and berserker are heavily reliant on it already)
but you'd still be forced to play aggressively in the early game in order to get to that point and the early game is almost always the hard part
thus I would consider it to be at least on par with how this badge was in v0.9.9.8, arguably even harder
I did beat masochist with 42 damage taken (after hundreds of attempts), so in theory 0 damage is possible,
but going from 42 to 0 is a huge leap
it also requires a standard game, so going AoMc to cheese it is off the table
(although even then, you'd still have to get lucky with anomaly & no hot starts)
- the proposal is to change it to "beat standard UV damageless"
^which would still make it one of the hardest badges in the game, but far less absurd
///// pacifist angelic - beat archangel of pacifism WITH ONLY ONE KILL!
archangel of pacifism itself is easy, it's this stupid undertale ass restriction on top of it that's the problem
that one kill has to be the spider mastermind, every other enemy you see has to stay alive
seriously you'd need some lottery winning grade luck in order to beat this one
there's not really that much skill involved, it's 99% getting lucky and 1% skill in making sure your movement doesn't get any enemies killed
I have tried this one before and my best so far has been deimos 3,
i believe icy has gotten to deimos 6 (*icy did it before infighting was added)
the idea being to just hope you can get to the stairs before anything dies/kills itself trying to attack you on... well, most of the floors
you might sometimes get a freebie with a lost soul cave (lost souls are incapable of killing each other/themselves),
you may also find a homing phase device, which is a skip for any floor (besides anomaly), babel and dis are also free, but everything else is a gamble
for anomaly you'd have to find a phase device, the cacodemons are extremely likely to kill one of the lost souls in the first ambush,
so not only do you have to get lucky with stairs, you also have to get lucky in finding a phase device before that
and unlike most of the other badges, post anomaly is worse, since there's more enemies and there's more opportunities for them to spawn inside of lava where they will die near instantly
this badge is even more ridiculous in the current version due to the infighting
not only do you have make sure enemies don't blow themselves up with barrels/lava,
you also have to make sure they don't hit each other, because if they do,
then they'll start butting heads and somebody is gonna die in the next few turns
honestly though, if I were to try and beat any of the impossible ones, this is the one I would go for
I actually really like angel of pacifism, I find it oddly relaxing and it forces you to play the game in a very unconventional way,
all you really need to do is find the exit and avoid enemies, your brain doesn't have to be firing on all cylinders for this one
what I don't like though is being forced to get 20+ lucky floors in a row
it's definitely a lot more pleasant than the other two where you constantly have to sit there with formulas flying around your head thinking about every single step you take in order to consider whether you'll be taking damage or not
but it would still likely take thousands of tries (probably a lot more actually) to beat it and thus it is still firmly impossible
- the proposal is to change it to "beat archangel of pacifism on N!"
^this would make it a low/mid tier angelic, in fact I've actually already beaten this in a test run
it took about 25 tries and it was still annoyingly luck based, but it was an order of magnitude less so than the current version
and i do think it would still be difficult enough to be worthy of the angelic tier
oh and style points for being consistent with the other "archangel on N!" group of badges
video of archangel of pacifism on N!:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
mortem of archangel of pacifism on N!:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
///// demonic angelic - beat standard nightmare! DAMAGELESS! WITH 100% KILLS!!!!!
ok this one is in a league of its own with how absolutely bonkers it is
at least for the other two I have an idea of what I'd realistically do in order to beat them
it'd still take ages, but like, you could do it eventually
what in the fuck are you expected to do for this???
presumably you would've used camping strategies to beat this one in earlier versions, just like in uac angelic
but again that doesn't work anymore with the enrage timer and patrol routes
I guess the idea would be to *SOMEHOW* get through phobos 1-7 radar scanning your way across with a shotgun,
then finding an invuln on phobos 7 and using that to fully clear anomaly (also *SOMEHOW*),
then finding a trigun and using that to nuke every floor to the end,
^while finding enough invulns and getting enough levels in ironman to keep up the nuke spam
or possibly instead of a trigun, you randomly find a nano mod, 3 power mods and a super shotty for a nano-shrapnel
^this wouldn't be fool proof like the trigun method, but I think it could plausibly work (if you went for whizkid x2)
that's a lot of somehows and randomly finding specific items that you would need in order to have a CHANCE of winning
what are the odds of all that happening? and more importantly, does the game's presumably pseudo-random rng even allow for it to happen?
this badge is so bust that I'm not sure if it's even theoretically possible without actual cheats
not to mention you'd still have to be doing damageless up to at least phobos 7 before you can find invulns to carry you
in other words, you need the absurd luck of pacifist angelic AND you need to be playing perfectly like in uac angelic
I mean I suppose if you can get uac angelic then doing a few floors damageless/100% would be feasible for you...
but man, this has to be one of the hardest video game challenges I've ever laid my eyes on
I know there are people who have supposedly gotten it before, but none of them have provided video proof.
and given how ludicrously skilled AND lucky you'd have to be at the game in order to win this,
anyone who claims to have gotten this badge is either a game breaking bug abuser, a cheater or simply a liar until proven innocent if you ask me
- the proposal is to change it to "beat standard nightmare! with 100% kills & untouchable medal (or untouchable pin)"
this would keep the theme of having to beat N!/100% with minimal damage and it'd be in line with demonic diamond, but it would still be insane
I'd be in favor of the untouchable pin version to be honest,
demonic diamond (standard N! w/untouchable medal) is already on par with the low angelics imo
and having to do it all with 100% kills on top of it (you'd have to fully clear n! anomaly for example) is a really tall ask
another idea is to change it to something else entirely (i think icy suggested ArchAo666 on UV with 100% kills instead?)
because again, this badge is so bananas that you can't make any simple changes in order to make it plausible
10
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|AoB+AoMs|14%|YAVP] Berserker Angelic (& 26/26/26/26/26/13)
« on: April 20, 2026, 13:57 »
video:
build order:
Bru, Bru, Int, Ber, HR, HR, Bru
continuing with the theme from everyman angelic,
Here's another painfully luck based stairdive angelic badge.
although unlike everyman, this one is arguably even worse, since you can't really fight back in the early game
at least there you had a shotgun which could carry you through phobos, but here you're forced to go melee due to AoB
just by its nature, melee is going to be unavoidably taking constant chip damage and since this is AoMs,
I have no way of healing myself unless I level up...
Yeah this badge is just a slot machine pretty much,
you can be as skilled as you want at the game, it's simply impossible to beat this one without good luck
it's all about hitting that berserk/invuln jackpot
for the build - I opened with brute 2, as you always do in aob
after that though i went with intuition, which is unusual for a pure melee game
normally you'd go berserker, but keep in mind that i'm stair diving ASAP and by the time I hit level 3,
I'm already going to be berserked from all the packs in chained court, so getting berserker on top is a bit redundant
I also really want an invuln or a phase device for anomaly,
there's no guarantee you'll get a phase device (besides doing refinery/processing, fuck that lol),
so having int to (hopefully) get an invuln on phobos 7 is the next best thing
I did get berserker right afterwards though, just in case
and then instead of bru3 i went with 2 levels in hellrunner, since they help extend the invulns
I guess you could also arguably go hr/int first instead of brute 2, if you're intending to stair dive immediately
but I'd rather go brute 2 first since melee weapons are prone to missing without brute's accuracy
(and the knife is pretty wimpy without brute)
delaying brute 1 is a horrible idea though, phobos 1 is ass without it
in earlier versions you could conceivably go vampyre (if you can somehow survive long enough to get it),
but vampyre has been nerfed quite heavily since then, so I'd rather not rely on it
anyway as I mentioned earlier, the plan is to invuln stair dive again, just like in everyman:
phobos 1 is mighty annoying, since you can't just run at the zombies and there's no telling how they'll position themselves
I'd say keep your armor on and try to beat phobos 1 with at least 50% health, if you end up with less then restart
it is actually possible to beat phobos 1 completely damageless(!!!)
^(the zombies have such bad melee accuracy that it can happen)
and I had it happen once, but it's highly unlikely, so I wouldn't be restarting just for that
also note the medikits aren't entirely useless, you can use them for gift dropping, although I did not do so in this run
(giftdropping is a trick where you drop a medikit behind cover in order to lure a zombie towards you)
phobos 2-5 is just stair diving, you HAVE to get lucky, this combo of aob+aoms does not give you much wiggle room for skill
the only exception is if you get a lost soul cave, you should consider clearing it since lost souls can be dodged without dodgemaster,
they're also quite weak in a melee fight and they give high xp per kill
('high xp' for how squishy they are, i mean)
transiting hell's arena is worth it by the way,
you're not likely to get hit by the cacodemons and you can cause an infight with the cacos/pinkies for some easy xp
for the chained court you want to try and enter it at 80% or more xp,
doing chained court damageless is damn near impossible in aob and you'll be taking some heavy hits from the chaingunners
your best chance is to get the level up supercharge in the middle of it so you can exit with a decent amount of health
phobos 6-7 is more stair diving
you want to try and get a phase device/invuln for anomaly, otherwise you'll probably die
(although maybe if you hit a level up right as you enter it, you might be able to survive?)
and then the rest of the game just degraded into invuln rushing
I suppose at this point I could actually realistically fight back,
but keep in mind that you need more and more xp to level up each time
taking damage is inevitable as melee and you really wanna fight the bosses at full hp if you don't have an invuln,
so I didn't risk it...
mortem:
Oh yeah and with this badge I now have the coveted 26/26/26/26/26/13 in the latest patch,
but it ain't over just yet, I still have to do masochist angelic...
(the extra angelic badge is from speedrunner which is now possible, but the other three impossibles are still (nearly) unbeatable;
I'll do a more detailed write up on the impossible ones and why they are still (near) impossible once I beat masochist)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
build order:
Bru, Bru, Int, Ber, HR, HR, Bru
continuing with the theme from everyman angelic,
Here's another painfully luck based stairdive angelic badge.
although unlike everyman, this one is arguably even worse, since you can't really fight back in the early game
at least there you had a shotgun which could carry you through phobos, but here you're forced to go melee due to AoB
just by its nature, melee is going to be unavoidably taking constant chip damage and since this is AoMs,
I have no way of healing myself unless I level up...
Yeah this badge is just a slot machine pretty much,
you can be as skilled as you want at the game, it's simply impossible to beat this one without good luck
it's all about hitting that berserk/invuln jackpot
for the build - I opened with brute 2, as you always do in aob
after that though i went with intuition, which is unusual for a pure melee game
normally you'd go berserker, but keep in mind that i'm stair diving ASAP and by the time I hit level 3,
I'm already going to be berserked from all the packs in chained court, so getting berserker on top is a bit redundant
I also really want an invuln or a phase device for anomaly,
there's no guarantee you'll get a phase device (besides doing refinery/processing, fuck that lol),
so having int to (hopefully) get an invuln on phobos 7 is the next best thing
I did get berserker right afterwards though, just in case
and then instead of bru3 i went with 2 levels in hellrunner, since they help extend the invulns
I guess you could also arguably go hr/int first instead of brute 2, if you're intending to stair dive immediately
but I'd rather go brute 2 first since melee weapons are prone to missing without brute's accuracy
(and the knife is pretty wimpy without brute)
delaying brute 1 is a horrible idea though, phobos 1 is ass without it
in earlier versions you could conceivably go vampyre (if you can somehow survive long enough to get it),
but vampyre has been nerfed quite heavily since then, so I'd rather not rely on it
anyway as I mentioned earlier, the plan is to invuln stair dive again, just like in everyman:
phobos 1 is mighty annoying, since you can't just run at the zombies and there's no telling how they'll position themselves
I'd say keep your armor on and try to beat phobos 1 with at least 50% health, if you end up with less then restart
it is actually possible to beat phobos 1 completely damageless(!!!)
^(the zombies have such bad melee accuracy that it can happen)
and I had it happen once, but it's highly unlikely, so I wouldn't be restarting just for that
also note the medikits aren't entirely useless, you can use them for gift dropping, although I did not do so in this run
(giftdropping is a trick where you drop a medikit behind cover in order to lure a zombie towards you)
phobos 2-5 is just stair diving, you HAVE to get lucky, this combo of aob+aoms does not give you much wiggle room for skill
the only exception is if you get a lost soul cave, you should consider clearing it since lost souls can be dodged without dodgemaster,
they're also quite weak in a melee fight and they give high xp per kill
('high xp' for how squishy they are, i mean)
transiting hell's arena is worth it by the way,
you're not likely to get hit by the cacodemons and you can cause an infight with the cacos/pinkies for some easy xp
for the chained court you want to try and enter it at 80% or more xp,
doing chained court damageless is damn near impossible in aob and you'll be taking some heavy hits from the chaingunners
your best chance is to get the level up supercharge in the middle of it so you can exit with a decent amount of health
phobos 6-7 is more stair diving
you want to try and get a phase device/invuln for anomaly, otherwise you'll probably die
(although maybe if you hit a level up right as you enter it, you might be able to survive?)
and then the rest of the game just degraded into invuln rushing
I suppose at this point I could actually realistically fight back,
but keep in mind that you need more and more xp to level up each time
taking damage is inevitable as melee and you really wanna fight the bosses at full hp if you don't have an invuln,
so I didn't risk it...
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh yeah and with this badge I now have the coveted 26/26/26/26/26/13 in the latest patch,
but it ain't over just yet, I still have to do masochist angelic...
(the extra angelic badge is from speedrunner which is now possible, but the other three impossibles are still (nearly) unbeatable;
I'll do a more detailed write up on the impossible ones and why they are still (near) impossible once I beat masochist)
11
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|ArchAoHu|23%|YAVP] Everyman Angelic (& Chaos General)
« on: April 19, 2026, 05:06 »
video:
build order? nu-uh buddy, this is archangel of humanity
in regular angel of humanity you're heavily relying on traits to keep you going, whether it be bulking up into a tank build to give yourself some room for error, or all in'ing into offense traits and killing things before they get a chance to attack
in archangel of humanity however, all of that goes out the window
you only get ONE SINGLE TRAIT at the start of the game, any more xp/levels gained during the game is just funny numbers on your hud
and of course, you have the regular angel of humanity handicap of having your maximum health divided by 5, making you extremely vulnerable past phobos
most enemies can just one shot you and since you only get 1 trait, there isn't much hope for you to fight back
anyway though, I went scout | intuition
my strat here is to just stairdive till I win, relying on powerups
intuition is unquestionably the best choice for that
and yeah I know, dumpster diving for invulns is lame, but I really have no idea what else you'd do on this one...
you do still start with a bunch of useful crap though:
an equipped red armor, a bunch of medikits and one of each basic modpacks
that red armor is gonna be your only shot at tanking things on phobos
the modpacks are kinda like a substitute for lack of traits
there's a bunch of options on what you could do with them, but I opted for:
technical mod goes onto my shotgun, giving it a pretty rad 20% fire rate boost (on top of scout's passive 10%)
agility mod goes onto any steel boots I can find,
or if I can't find any by anomaly, then it'll go on an armor
bulk mod is just a fail safe in case my red armor gets damaged before anomaly (you're gonna get one shot if it gets damaged)
power mod I didn't end up having a particular use case for, but i guess you could use it for a tactical shotty if you find the ingredients for it or maybe to beef up one of your armors for the cyberdemon
floors:
phobos 1-5 isn't so bad, a tech modded shotgun is more than enough to clear everything, invulns can't spawn yet, but intuition still helps you out by spotting health globes (which fully heal you here) and berserk packs
you can still very much die if you get some shitty hot start with a bunch of hell knights or something, but most of the time you'll be fine
chained court is kind of annoying, the idea is to first sit around and shotgun any zombies coming my way, then later i grab all the berserks and b-line to the exit
I also swap to my green armor for a bit to save some powerup time
(remember, time based powerups are a bad thing if you're wearing heavy armor)
phobos 6-7 has a bunch of scary enemies that can easily kick your ass (plasma zombies, revenants, barons, arachnotrons), this is where you stop being able to fight back and start trying to exit while grabbing anything important
remember, xp is useless, so there's no point in trying to kill anything that you don't have to
also on phobos 7 I got lucky and found an invuln for anomaly
PSA: don't forget to take your armor off when you're invuln
(or if you have one with a positive speed modifier, then put that on)
anomaly is um...
well I'll be blunt, you better bring an invuln/rocket launcher/phase device for this one or you're fucked
your movement speed is pretty bad even with berserk due to your heavy armor and lack of traits
and even with berserk+armor the nightmare cacos can roll enough damage to one shot you at 100% health anyway
if you're berserked, then you don't get the dodge bonus from running
and if you're not berserked then you're gonna get clapped by the cacos or bruisers
it is actually possible to get through without an invuln/launcher/phase device, it did happen a few times for me, but the chances are slim and I'd rather go out of my way to grab a launcher/phase earlier in phobos instead
(if there's a vault and a computer map shows you that there is a launcher/phase device inside of it, you should seriously consider clearing it)
deimos and hell are highly luck dependent since your ability to fight back at this stage of the game starts falling off hard
not much to say really, just try and grab all the invulns you can,
take off your armor while invuln and rocket jump if needed
in fact I got so lucky with invulns that I managed to get both
the compet-n platinum medal (win in less than 10 minutes real time)
and the untouchable medal (win with less than 200 damage taken)
It's kind of a shame this was the winning run to be honest,
some of my other runs were far more impressive in terms of clearing floors the hard way (but then the next floor vaporized me with a hot start)
It is what it is though, this is considered to be one of the hardest badges in the game and even beating it this way is glorious enough
and yeah, that's angelic #12 for me, which gets me to chaos general!
I haven't been posting them all on the forums, but I have videos of them on youtube
I'm thinking about making a mortem dump thread when I'm done with all non-impossible ones
Mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
build order? nu-uh buddy, this is archangel of humanity
in regular angel of humanity you're heavily relying on traits to keep you going, whether it be bulking up into a tank build to give yourself some room for error, or all in'ing into offense traits and killing things before they get a chance to attack
in archangel of humanity however, all of that goes out the window
you only get ONE SINGLE TRAIT at the start of the game, any more xp/levels gained during the game is just funny numbers on your hud
and of course, you have the regular angel of humanity handicap of having your maximum health divided by 5, making you extremely vulnerable past phobos
most enemies can just one shot you and since you only get 1 trait, there isn't much hope for you to fight back
anyway though, I went scout | intuition
my strat here is to just stairdive till I win, relying on powerups
intuition is unquestionably the best choice for that
and yeah I know, dumpster diving for invulns is lame, but I really have no idea what else you'd do on this one...
you do still start with a bunch of useful crap though:
an equipped red armor, a bunch of medikits and one of each basic modpacks
that red armor is gonna be your only shot at tanking things on phobos
the modpacks are kinda like a substitute for lack of traits
there's a bunch of options on what you could do with them, but I opted for:
technical mod goes onto my shotgun, giving it a pretty rad 20% fire rate boost (on top of scout's passive 10%)
agility mod goes onto any steel boots I can find,
or if I can't find any by anomaly, then it'll go on an armor
bulk mod is just a fail safe in case my red armor gets damaged before anomaly (you're gonna get one shot if it gets damaged)
power mod I didn't end up having a particular use case for, but i guess you could use it for a tactical shotty if you find the ingredients for it or maybe to beef up one of your armors for the cyberdemon
floors:
phobos 1-5 isn't so bad, a tech modded shotgun is more than enough to clear everything, invulns can't spawn yet, but intuition still helps you out by spotting health globes (which fully heal you here) and berserk packs
you can still very much die if you get some shitty hot start with a bunch of hell knights or something, but most of the time you'll be fine
chained court is kind of annoying, the idea is to first sit around and shotgun any zombies coming my way, then later i grab all the berserks and b-line to the exit
I also swap to my green armor for a bit to save some powerup time
(remember, time based powerups are a bad thing if you're wearing heavy armor)
phobos 6-7 has a bunch of scary enemies that can easily kick your ass (plasma zombies, revenants, barons, arachnotrons), this is where you stop being able to fight back and start trying to exit while grabbing anything important
remember, xp is useless, so there's no point in trying to kill anything that you don't have to
also on phobos 7 I got lucky and found an invuln for anomaly
PSA: don't forget to take your armor off when you're invuln
(or if you have one with a positive speed modifier, then put that on)
anomaly is um...
well I'll be blunt, you better bring an invuln/rocket launcher/phase device for this one or you're fucked
your movement speed is pretty bad even with berserk due to your heavy armor and lack of traits
and even with berserk+armor the nightmare cacos can roll enough damage to one shot you at 100% health anyway
if you're berserked, then you don't get the dodge bonus from running
and if you're not berserked then you're gonna get clapped by the cacos or bruisers
it is actually possible to get through without an invuln/launcher/phase device, it did happen a few times for me, but the chances are slim and I'd rather go out of my way to grab a launcher/phase earlier in phobos instead
(if there's a vault and a computer map shows you that there is a launcher/phase device inside of it, you should seriously consider clearing it)
deimos and hell are highly luck dependent since your ability to fight back at this stage of the game starts falling off hard
not much to say really, just try and grab all the invulns you can,
take off your armor while invuln and rocket jump if needed
in fact I got so lucky with invulns that I managed to get both
the compet-n platinum medal (win in less than 10 minutes real time)
and the untouchable medal (win with less than 200 damage taken)
It's kind of a shame this was the winning run to be honest,
some of my other runs were far more impressive in terms of clearing floors the hard way (but then the next floor vaporized me with a hot start)
It is what it is though, this is considered to be one of the hardest badges in the game and even beating it this way is glorious enough
and yeah, that's angelic #12 for me, which gets me to chaos general!
I haven't been posting them all on the forums, but I have videos of them on youtube
I'm thinking about making a mortem dump thread when I'm done with all non-impossible ones
Mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
12
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|91%|YAVP] Strongman Angelic
« on: April 18, 2026, 09:21 »
video:
build order:
Bru, Bru, TaN, TaN, Bru, Ber, HR, HR, Fin, Fin, WK, Bru, Bru, WK, HR
for the build - I went with a weird scout masterless melee/tank.
vampyre used to be the way to go for this badge in earlier versions, the idea being you just find a cozy corner and shift+w until all the enemies stumble their way towards you
That doesn't work at all in the current version of the game, you have to be aggresive now:
first of all vampyre's defence has been nerfed massively, it's nowhere near the killdozer type build that it used to be
enemies now have patrol routes instead of random wandering, so you can't just use the same barrel fort for the whole floor
not to mention the new enrage timer also shuts down any kind of camping strat in the early game - 15 minutes might sound like a lot, but it's not that much when you're constantly dancing around and luring enemies one-by-one into doorways
I went masterless so I could become as tanky as possible:
tough as nails gives you +1 protection and +10% energy resistance per level
berserk gives you +4 resistance and +50% resistance to everything
then i made myself some nanofiber red armor, which is +2 protection (and a further +2 resistance if i can get whizkid and a power mod)
i don't have the constant healing that vampyre provides, but that's fine, most of the enemies won't be dealing much damage to me anyway
I guess survivalist could also work, but that blocks berserker which really sucks for the low damage of the fists and you're still going to be struggling in the early game anyway
i still have to open with at least brute x2, the fists deal a laughable 1d3 damage without brute.
even if I'm fighting things one by one, 1d3 is just not going to cut it,
so I settled on brute 2, that lets me TKO imps after i tap them with a pistol
oh and speaking of, you're not actually going to be playing fists only, you can still use any weapon you want, you just have to make sure that the finishing blow is with your fists
(or with a melee from your guns, which also counts as fisting)
"other" kills are also allowed, this includes stuff like infighting, pinkies diving into lava, enemies killing themselves with barrels, etc.
^your offensive capabilities are very limited, so you might just have to get creative with some of your kills
for the weaker enemies, the play was to tap them with the pistol in order to get their attention and then I JUDO CHOP them while hiding behind cover
I kept a shotgun for stronger enemies, but you have to be careful so as to not accidentally shotgun a zombie/imp in the process
the shotgun can also be used to tap weaker enemies from afar (since the pistol is really bad outside of vision)
there's also the knife, throwing it is a safe bet when the shotgun is too dangerous and if a caco/knight gets in your face... well you might as well knife it a bunch before you finish it off with a punch
floors:
phobos 1 is kind of annoying, but it's not too bad
if the zombies eat your medikits you should just restart,
YOU'RE GONNA NEED'EM
phobos 2-5 is insane, more than 99% of my fails were here!
it's often said that the most difficult part of drl is the early game,
but this badge is by far the most extreme example of that.
if you get any kind of hot start, maze, cacodemon vault with someone opening the door, lack of powerups, and so on; then you are going to die.
i don't think there's any point in going into an in-depth analysis for phobos here, just hope you can get plenty of cover and berserk packs for the knights.
if you get some really stupid floor that you can't do, then at least try and stairdive; 90% kills is a lot, but you do have space to skip a few floors
you can make up for it later once you get to deimos
(and if it's still not enough then you can always just pin a pain elemental up against a wall and keep punting lost souls)
the chained court isn't peanuts either, you can normally gun down all the zombies quite easily, but that's not an option here, so you're gonna be taking a lot of chip damage
still, if you use your berserk packs right, then you leave without any lost medikits
phobos 6-7 is more spinning the wheel of levelgen, but this time you can actually fight back somewhat
anomaly isn't too bad, you get some armor and health for free,
the nightmare enemies are far too strong for me to fight, so I just rocket jumped past all of it
as mentioned earlier, once you get to deimos it gets way easier
the hard part becomes making sure you don't accidently kill something with a gun (as I did... twice...)
eventually you'll become strong enough to where you can just start going ham as if it's a regular melee game
brute x5 means you'll be doing 16-18 damage per punch (x2 if you're berserked), that's actually on par with a chainsaw without brute (if you ignore accuracy); it's enough damage to where you can genuinely start clearing floors fists-only
I didn't bother with any of the other special floors, most of the challenge was in phobos and so I didn't wanna take any chances once I got past it
(i would've checked out deimos lab though. there's plenty of cover and health crates there, but I got the armory instead)
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
build order:
Bru, Bru, TaN, TaN, Bru, Ber, HR, HR, Fin, Fin, WK, Bru, Bru, WK, HR
for the build - I went with a weird scout masterless melee/tank.
vampyre used to be the way to go for this badge in earlier versions, the idea being you just find a cozy corner and shift+w until all the enemies stumble their way towards you
That doesn't work at all in the current version of the game, you have to be aggresive now:
first of all vampyre's defence has been nerfed massively, it's nowhere near the killdozer type build that it used to be
enemies now have patrol routes instead of random wandering, so you can't just use the same barrel fort for the whole floor
not to mention the new enrage timer also shuts down any kind of camping strat in the early game - 15 minutes might sound like a lot, but it's not that much when you're constantly dancing around and luring enemies one-by-one into doorways
I went masterless so I could become as tanky as possible:
tough as nails gives you +1 protection and +10% energy resistance per level
berserk gives you +4 resistance and +50% resistance to everything
then i made myself some nanofiber red armor, which is +2 protection (and a further +2 resistance if i can get whizkid and a power mod)
i don't have the constant healing that vampyre provides, but that's fine, most of the enemies won't be dealing much damage to me anyway
I guess survivalist could also work, but that blocks berserker which really sucks for the low damage of the fists and you're still going to be struggling in the early game anyway
i still have to open with at least brute x2, the fists deal a laughable 1d3 damage without brute.
even if I'm fighting things one by one, 1d3 is just not going to cut it,
so I settled on brute 2, that lets me TKO imps after i tap them with a pistol
oh and speaking of, you're not actually going to be playing fists only, you can still use any weapon you want, you just have to make sure that the finishing blow is with your fists
(or with a melee from your guns, which also counts as fisting)
"other" kills are also allowed, this includes stuff like infighting, pinkies diving into lava, enemies killing themselves with barrels, etc.
^your offensive capabilities are very limited, so you might just have to get creative with some of your kills
for the weaker enemies, the play was to tap them with the pistol in order to get their attention and then I JUDO CHOP them while hiding behind cover
I kept a shotgun for stronger enemies, but you have to be careful so as to not accidentally shotgun a zombie/imp in the process
the shotgun can also be used to tap weaker enemies from afar (since the pistol is really bad outside of vision)
there's also the knife, throwing it is a safe bet when the shotgun is too dangerous and if a caco/knight gets in your face... well you might as well knife it a bunch before you finish it off with a punch
floors:
phobos 1 is kind of annoying, but it's not too bad
if the zombies eat your medikits you should just restart,
YOU'RE GONNA NEED'EM
phobos 2-5 is insane, more than 99% of my fails were here!
it's often said that the most difficult part of drl is the early game,
but this badge is by far the most extreme example of that.
if you get any kind of hot start, maze, cacodemon vault with someone opening the door, lack of powerups, and so on; then you are going to die.
i don't think there's any point in going into an in-depth analysis for phobos here, just hope you can get plenty of cover and berserk packs for the knights.
if you get some really stupid floor that you can't do, then at least try and stairdive; 90% kills is a lot, but you do have space to skip a few floors
you can make up for it later once you get to deimos
(and if it's still not enough then you can always just pin a pain elemental up against a wall and keep punting lost souls)
the chained court isn't peanuts either, you can normally gun down all the zombies quite easily, but that's not an option here, so you're gonna be taking a lot of chip damage
still, if you use your berserk packs right, then you leave without any lost medikits
phobos 6-7 is more spinning the wheel of levelgen, but this time you can actually fight back somewhat
anomaly isn't too bad, you get some armor and health for free,
the nightmare enemies are far too strong for me to fight, so I just rocket jumped past all of it
as mentioned earlier, once you get to deimos it gets way easier
the hard part becomes making sure you don't accidently kill something with a gun (as I did... twice...)
eventually you'll become strong enough to where you can just start going ham as if it's a regular melee game
brute x5 means you'll be doing 16-18 damage per punch (x2 if you're berserked), that's actually on par with a chainsaw without brute (if you ignore accuracy); it's enough damage to where you can genuinely start clearing floors fists-only
I didn't bother with any of the other special floors, most of the challenge was in phobos and so I didn't wanna take any chances once I got past it
(i would've checked out deimos lab though. there's plenty of cover and health crates there, but I got the armory instead)
mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
13
Nightmare! / (v0.10.8) [N!|19%|YAVP] Speedrunner angelic in 3:50! (with video proof!)
« on: April 13, 2026, 13:17 »
video:
AT LAST
I BEAT* ONE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE FOUR ANGELICS
*well ok, this was considered impossible in v0.9.9.7/v0.9.9.8 when the game ran a lot slower,
I did briefly play v0.9.9.7, but at the time I couldn't even get past the cyberdemon on ITYTD with my 0 experience in roguelikes,
so I can't really be the judge there...
additionally in the current version, powerups are time-based, so if you have high movement speed and you stack them together they can last for an absurdly long time (I did angelic centurial the other day with an invuln chain from floor 40 to floor 666)
^it's confirmed that this is getting nerfed, which will make this badge a lot more luck based (but still possible I think)
Nonetheless, beating this badge is a triumph!
alright, so much like the other angelics, you have to get lucky.
in this case it's mostly about finding enough invulns for you to stroll right on over to dis
This would normally be extremely tedious to just expect a bunch of invulns on a silver platter, but on the other hand this whole thing only lasts 4 minutes and most of the runs are failed in phobos/early deimos within the first 2 minutes;
that's a lot more chances to get lucky compared to the other diamond+ badges that can take hours in a successful run
(hell a lot of my runs were failed on phobos 1 within seconds due to the zombies playing xcom with their nutty positioning)
obviously you need to be playing fast,
AND I DO MEAN F A S T
most of the other badges expect precise movement and careful planning...
forget about all of that here - you're not playing chess with guns, you're playing 2d superhot
you need to be taking turns pretty much non-stop, especially in the early game when invulns can't spawn yet
for movement, I highly recommend mashing diagonals instead of tapping single keys
for example: if you want to walk right, don't just tap the "move right" key, instead you wanna be tapping move top right and move bottom right;
for whatever reason this is MUCH faster than just moving normally
if you combine the diagonal spam with the regular cardinal direction keys then that's even quicker
When I say "quicker" though, I mean quicker in terms of real time, this does come with a price - you're cycling through frames faster, which means enemies are getting free turns to attack you, do be careful with this technique when you're not invuln
^also the player's sprite moves slower or faster depending on their movement speed, which is why you should be running as much possible so that the sprite doesn't lag behind where you actually are
(it's also why I opened with hellrunner)
(keep this in your mind if you're wearing some heavy ass armor)
(running is good in general since it makes enemies less likely to hit you)
I'd also highly suggest rebinding your keys, the default ones suck for speedrunning since they're all over the place
I rebound mine so that the diagonal movement keys (Q, E, Z, C) are right next to the cardinal ones (W, A, S, D); that way my right hand is always on the mouse in case I'm messing up my inputs
(it's also why my movement looks so drunk, I'm not used to the rebinds lol)
also go into your config.lua and change "MorePrompt" into false
(this stops the game from forcing you to mash enter when there's a lot of things happening at once)
build explanation:
I'm opening with hellrunner, both because it's just a good trait in general, but also because of that player sprite thing I mentioned earlier
next I'm going with int1, powerup chaining is my bread and butter here, it'd be foolish not to take int1
and then I'm rushing towards berserker; there's no guarantee I'll be berserked, so this is a nice guarantee when I'm fighting a boss or just getting blasted by the angry locals in the later floors
if you get more xp, then it really doesn't matter what else you take, it's not gonna save much real-time
(just don't get ironman since it messes with berserker)
here's the plan:
phobos 1 : start running and mashing diagonals immediately
try to kill one of the shotgunners so you can grab their shotgun
if you lose a lot of health and the zombies eat the medikits, just restart
phobos 2-5 : stairdive as quickly as possible
you wanna be using the shotgun at first: it's strong, it doesn't need precise aiming and most importantly - it's single shot - which means you can fire and reload with the same mouse2 button
if you know you're not getting hit (or you think you can take the heat), then you can shoot it like 5 times in a single second if you're using some kind of technique to quickly click your mouse
(eg. I used butterfly tapping)
on phobos 5 you'll be taking a mandatory detour to the chained court, no way this is happening without the chainsaw
unfortunately scout's passive only detects the regular stairs, not the special floor stairs, so finding them might take a bit
(if you get a shitty phobos 5 where you can't find the stairs, just restart in my opinion)
and yes it is possible to find a chainsaw randomly (or a butcher's cleaver even), but even if you're betting on that, the 4 berserk packs are a great buff for getting through the anomaly ambushes
chained court - grab the berserks, swap weapons to your empty hand and grab the chainsaw, shotgun your way to the exit;
you want to be mostly using the chainsaw from this point onward (actually you wanna be running past stuff, but if someones in your way, then you use the chainsaw), but you have a shotgun to swap to just in case
I'd recommend swapping your equipped/prepared slot and using shift+g to instantly grab weapons/items instead of fiddling around with hotkey'ing in your inventory to save some seconds
phobos 6-7 : stairdive
anomaly: grab the medikits, armor, globes and mash your way to the teleporter
(slowdown a bit for when the ambushes trigger though, since you'll probably get ping ponged a bit)
deimos 1-7 : stairdive, you want to be grabbing as many invulns as you can, which is what int1 is for
babel : kill the cybie like in a normal melee game, if you have invuln then just keep clicking on him, if not then slow down and heal if needed
hell 1-7 : more stairdiving/invuln grabbing
dis : ideally you want to find a nuke along the way, but as you can see it is doable even without one
the mastermind doesn't like to stand still, annoyingly, (and her shots slow the game down for some reason),
so a nuke is still the preferred method of winning
(if you do nuke then don't forget to wait out your invuln before hand)
(^I failed one of my runs like this...)
Don't even think about doing the other special floors aside for transit purposes if the regular stairs are really far away
which specials can you transit?
hell's arena - yes, but it's a long walk (and it's early in the game, consider a restart)
toxin refinery/central processing - No!
chained court - yes, it's mandatory
phobos lab/military base - No!
hell's armory/phobos lab - yes
the wall/containment area - yes
city of skulls - yes, but you have to walk across an entire floor pretty much, don't do it if you have an invuln
abyssal plains - No!
halls of carnage - No!
spider's lair - yes, but you'll get some chip damage
the vaults - yes
house of pain - yes (just don't accidentally accept the invite)
unholy cathedral - yes
the mortuary/limbo - if you're invuln and/or you have a rocket launcher to rocket jump then this one could be considered for the guaranteed nuke; if you have neither, then stay away
lava pits/mt erebus - yes
hell fortress:
In this current version, if you get lucky, there is actually enough time to do a full win if you're quick and you have a nuke+invuln,
but um, I think I'll pass...
with all that said, I'm still very much in favor of changing this badge to be 8 minutes instead of 4
4 minutes is pretty ridiculous and it's also probably still very much impossible if you're playing the game in console mode/keyboard only/with a steam deck (through jhc)
post mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
AT LAST
I BEAT* ONE OF THE IMPOSSIBLE FOUR ANGELICS
*well ok, this was considered impossible in v0.9.9.7/v0.9.9.8 when the game ran a lot slower,
I did briefly play v0.9.9.7, but at the time I couldn't even get past the cyberdemon on ITYTD with my 0 experience in roguelikes,
so I can't really be the judge there...
additionally in the current version, powerups are time-based, so if you have high movement speed and you stack them together they can last for an absurdly long time (I did angelic centurial the other day with an invuln chain from floor 40 to floor 666)
^it's confirmed that this is getting nerfed, which will make this badge a lot more luck based (but still possible I think)
Nonetheless, beating this badge is a triumph!
alright, so much like the other angelics, you have to get lucky.
in this case it's mostly about finding enough invulns for you to stroll right on over to dis
This would normally be extremely tedious to just expect a bunch of invulns on a silver platter, but on the other hand this whole thing only lasts 4 minutes and most of the runs are failed in phobos/early deimos within the first 2 minutes;
that's a lot more chances to get lucky compared to the other diamond+ badges that can take hours in a successful run
(hell a lot of my runs were failed on phobos 1 within seconds due to the zombies playing xcom with their nutty positioning)
obviously you need to be playing fast,
AND I DO MEAN F A S T
most of the other badges expect precise movement and careful planning...
forget about all of that here - you're not playing chess with guns, you're playing 2d superhot
you need to be taking turns pretty much non-stop, especially in the early game when invulns can't spawn yet
for movement, I highly recommend mashing diagonals instead of tapping single keys
for example: if you want to walk right, don't just tap the "move right" key, instead you wanna be tapping move top right and move bottom right;
for whatever reason this is MUCH faster than just moving normally
if you combine the diagonal spam with the regular cardinal direction keys then that's even quicker
When I say "quicker" though, I mean quicker in terms of real time, this does come with a price - you're cycling through frames faster, which means enemies are getting free turns to attack you, do be careful with this technique when you're not invuln
^also the player's sprite moves slower or faster depending on their movement speed, which is why you should be running as much possible so that the sprite doesn't lag behind where you actually are
(it's also why I opened with hellrunner)
(keep this in your mind if you're wearing some heavy ass armor)
(running is good in general since it makes enemies less likely to hit you)
I'd also highly suggest rebinding your keys, the default ones suck for speedrunning since they're all over the place
I rebound mine so that the diagonal movement keys (Q, E, Z, C) are right next to the cardinal ones (W, A, S, D); that way my right hand is always on the mouse in case I'm messing up my inputs
(it's also why my movement looks so drunk, I'm not used to the rebinds lol)
also go into your config.lua and change "MorePrompt" into false
(this stops the game from forcing you to mash enter when there's a lot of things happening at once)
build explanation:
I'm opening with hellrunner, both because it's just a good trait in general, but also because of that player sprite thing I mentioned earlier
next I'm going with int1, powerup chaining is my bread and butter here, it'd be foolish not to take int1
and then I'm rushing towards berserker; there's no guarantee I'll be berserked, so this is a nice guarantee when I'm fighting a boss or just getting blasted by the angry locals in the later floors
if you get more xp, then it really doesn't matter what else you take, it's not gonna save much real-time
(just don't get ironman since it messes with berserker)
here's the plan:
phobos 1 : start running and mashing diagonals immediately
try to kill one of the shotgunners so you can grab their shotgun
if you lose a lot of health and the zombies eat the medikits, just restart
phobos 2-5 : stairdive as quickly as possible
you wanna be using the shotgun at first: it's strong, it doesn't need precise aiming and most importantly - it's single shot - which means you can fire and reload with the same mouse2 button
if you know you're not getting hit (or you think you can take the heat), then you can shoot it like 5 times in a single second if you're using some kind of technique to quickly click your mouse
(eg. I used butterfly tapping)
on phobos 5 you'll be taking a mandatory detour to the chained court, no way this is happening without the chainsaw
unfortunately scout's passive only detects the regular stairs, not the special floor stairs, so finding them might take a bit
(if you get a shitty phobos 5 where you can't find the stairs, just restart in my opinion)
and yes it is possible to find a chainsaw randomly (or a butcher's cleaver even), but even if you're betting on that, the 4 berserk packs are a great buff for getting through the anomaly ambushes
chained court - grab the berserks, swap weapons to your empty hand and grab the chainsaw, shotgun your way to the exit;
you want to be mostly using the chainsaw from this point onward (actually you wanna be running past stuff, but if someones in your way, then you use the chainsaw), but you have a shotgun to swap to just in case
I'd recommend swapping your equipped/prepared slot and using shift+g to instantly grab weapons/items instead of fiddling around with hotkey'ing in your inventory to save some seconds
phobos 6-7 : stairdive
anomaly: grab the medikits, armor, globes and mash your way to the teleporter
(slowdown a bit for when the ambushes trigger though, since you'll probably get ping ponged a bit)
deimos 1-7 : stairdive, you want to be grabbing as many invulns as you can, which is what int1 is for
babel : kill the cybie like in a normal melee game, if you have invuln then just keep clicking on him, if not then slow down and heal if needed
hell 1-7 : more stairdiving/invuln grabbing
dis : ideally you want to find a nuke along the way, but as you can see it is doable even without one
the mastermind doesn't like to stand still, annoyingly, (and her shots slow the game down for some reason),
so a nuke is still the preferred method of winning
(if you do nuke then don't forget to wait out your invuln before hand)
(^I failed one of my runs like this...)
Don't even think about doing the other special floors aside for transit purposes if the regular stairs are really far away
which specials can you transit?
hell's arena - yes, but it's a long walk (and it's early in the game, consider a restart)
toxin refinery/central processing - No!
chained court - yes, it's mandatory
phobos lab/military base - No!
hell's armory/phobos lab - yes
the wall/containment area - yes
city of skulls - yes, but you have to walk across an entire floor pretty much, don't do it if you have an invuln
abyssal plains - No!
halls of carnage - No!
spider's lair - yes, but you'll get some chip damage
the vaults - yes
house of pain - yes (just don't accidentally accept the invite)
unholy cathedral - yes
the mortuary/limbo - if you're invuln and/or you have a rocket launcher to rocket jump then this one could be considered for the guaranteed nuke; if you have neither, then stay away
lava pits/mt erebus - yes
hell fortress:
In this current version, if you get lucky, there is actually enough time to do a full win if you're quick and you have a nuke+invuln,
but um, I think I'll pass...
with all that said, I'm still very much in favor of changing this badge to be 8 minutes instead of 4
4 minutes is pretty ridiculous and it's also probably still very much impossible if you're playing the game in console mode/keyboard only/with a steam deck (through jhc)
post mortem:
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DRL (0.10.8) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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sanic, level 6 Cyberdemon Chaos Lt. General Scout,
defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
He survived 7512 turns and scored 327769 points.
He played for 3 minutes and 50 seconds.
He opposed the Nightmare!
He killed 162 out of 820 encountered hellspawn. (19%)
He killed 162 out of 823 enemy spawns total.
Who gave him the ticket to Hell, anyway?
-- Special levels --------------------------------------------
Levels generated : 12
Levels visited : 3
Levels completed : 0
-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------
Cyberdemon's Head Killing the Cyberdemon w/o taking damage
Mastermind's Brain Killing the Mastermind w/o taking damage
Major Icarus Cross Won the game in less than 20,000 turns
Compet-n Platinum Cross Won the game in under 10 minutes
Untouchable Pin Won taking less than 500 damage
Speedrunner Angelic Badge Win standard N! game under 4 minutes
-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------
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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Health 50/50 Experience 13532/6
ToHit Ranged +0 ToHit Melee +6 ToDmg Ranged +0 ToDmg Melee +9
-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------
Class : Scout
Hellrunner (Level 1)
Brute (Level 3)
Berserker (Level 1)
Intuition (Level 1)
HR->Int->Bru->Bru->Ber->Bru->
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[ Armor ] red armor [4/4] (100%)
[ Weapon ] chainsaw (4d6)
[ Boots ] nothing
[ Prepared ] shotgun (8d3) [1/1]
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
pistol (2d4) [1/6]
10mm ammo (x14)
shotgun shell (x6)
large med-pack
large med-pack
large med-pack
large med-pack
-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------
bullet - internal 50% torso 50% feet 50%
melee - internal 50% torso 50% feet 50%
shrapnel - internal 50% torso 50% feet 50%
acid - internal 50% torso 50% feet 50%
fire - internal 50% torso 75% feet 50%
plasma - internal 50% torso 50% feet 50%
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
36 former humans
29 former sergeants
8 former captains
2 former commandos
39 imps
16 demons
15 lost souls
1 cacodemon
4 hell knights
2 barons of hell
2 arachnotrons
1 mancubus
1 nightmare imp
3 nightmare demons
1 nightmare cacodemon
1 Cyberdemon
1 Spider Mastermind
Melee kills : 12
Pistol kills : 2
Shotgun kills : 66
Unarmed kills : 1
Other kills : 81
-- History ---------------------------------------------------
He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
He cowardly fled the Arena.
He left level 3 as soon as possible.
On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
He left level 6 as soon as possible.
He arrived at the Phobos Anomaly.
He left level 10 as soon as possible.
On level 11 he witnessed the Wall.
He left level 11 as soon as possible.
Not knowing what to do, he left.
He left level 15 as soon as possible.
He found the Tower of Babel.
Level 19 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
He left level 19 as soon as possible.
He left level 21 as soon as possible.
On level 22 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
On level 23 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
He left level 23 as soon as possible.
Then at last he found Dis!
On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
Mastermind hits you.
You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
taste blood!
You need to taste blood! You are hit!(x6)
You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
taste blood!
You wear/wield : a pistol (2d4) [1/6] You need to taste blood! You are hit!
You are hit!(x5)
You dodge! Boom! You dodge! Boom! You dodge! Boom! You are hit!(x3)
You hit the Spider Mastermind. You need to taste blood!
You hit the Spider Mastermind. You're going berserk! The Spider Mastermind
flinched!
You are hit!(x6) You need to taste blood!
You wear/wield : a chainsaw (4d6) You are hit!(x6)
You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations!
You defeated the Spider Mastermind!
-- General ---------------------------------------------------
1120 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
952 of those were killed.
2 of those were killed by something unknown.
50 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
And 32 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.
84 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
10 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
49 killed the bitch and survived.
25 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.
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