Chaosforge Forum

DoomRL => Discussion => Topic started by: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12

Title: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12
Hello! I'm a long-time lurker who's played off and on for a few years now, and recently decided to pick the game up again! I'm already fairly competent with the game, but by no means a veteran. I've only ever played with graphics, though I also did play back when the game's name still had vowels.

I've been a competitive gamer for close to 15 years now and always love a good challenge! When I originally started to play and again from a fresh start a couple years later, I wanted to go hard to get as many of the badges as possible, but I never really got around to it between other games, work, school, IRL, and so forth. Lately, I've been in a bit of a rut and interested to start once again and really grind for it this time! I thought it would also be interesting to write about my progress here to share with others, perhaps also motivating more people to play. Kind of like a blog I suppose to also help myself be accountable for not giving up when things get tough. Hopefully it doesn't come off as obnoxious spam or anything. :P

In particular, I remember seeing when Vandam showed off that he had 16 on the Angelic Badges, and I thought it was so cool! In this day and age with the internet and all, it's very rare for a masterfully skilled player/athlete/person/etc to come from out of the blue and re-define what top-level play is like. Almost romantic in a sense. On top, if he was able to do it, then so can I! I'm a pretty smart cookie if I do say so myself, and I'm definitely a grinder when I want to achieve something.

So with all that said, I'll continually post little updates, fire up discussion here, and maybe share some cool post mortems! I'll be starting completely from scratch once again, and will probably need a little derusting, but I'm confident I'll be able to catch up quickly!

I happen to have two post mortems saved from years ago if you'd like to read those too:

My first Angel of 100 completion, back in mid 2013:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And my first Angel of 100 with Max Carnage completion, back in 2015:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 08, 2017, 18:19
Day 1:

I had to get used to the controls again, but caught on pretty quickly. Funny enough, I subconsciously knew how to do a bunch of commands just by muscle memory. The brain is really amazing! :P

I played through my first game on wimp mode to get a feel and flow, and it worked out fairly well overall! I had some insane assembly pak luck, getting both a Sniper and a Nano, on top of a pile of others! A total of 12 assemblies! I made it all the way to JC and since I was going for 100% kills and couldn't remember how the final floor worked in terms of kill count, I fired my remaining BFG shot at a Baron, rather than securing the win. Unfortunately, ammo ran low, my armor was destroyed, and I got finished off. :( I'll get him next time!

I won't post every single mortem, only relevant ones. That said, here's the run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 08, 2017, 19:50
Hi there, and welcome to the forums!  :D

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12
Lately, I've been in a bit of a rut and interested to start once again and really grind for it this time!

I hear ya, there.  I seem to do all my best gaming when things are going wrong in other parts of my life.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12
...perhaps also motivating more people to play.

That certainly would be nice; the forums have been pretty dead lately.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12
Kind of like a blog I suppose to also help myself be accountable for not giving up when things get tough. Hopefully it doesn't come off as obnoxious spam or anything. :P

Obnoxious?  Naw, I'm interested to see what you can do.  :)  Let me know if you'd like me to set goals for you or something.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 16:12
In particular, I remember seeing when Vandam showed off that he had 16 on the Angelic Badges, and I thought it was so cool! In this day and age with the internet and all, it's very rare for a masterfully skilled player/athlete/person/etc to come from out of the blue and re-define what top-level play is like. Almost romantic in a sense. On top, if he was able to do it, then so can I! I'm a pretty smart cookie if I do say so myself, and I'm definitely a grinder when I want to achieve something.

Erm...  hmm...  How should I put this?  I don't want to sour the atmosphere here, but I have to admit that I'm skeptical of Vandam's claims of Angelic achievements.  I'm sure Vandam is a very skilled player, but I'd be able to take them a bit more seriously if they'd posted any mortems.  Have you ever seen any mortems from Vandam?

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 18:19
I had to get used to the controls again, but caught on pretty quickly. Funny enough, I subconsciously knew how to do a bunch of commands just by muscle memory. The brain is really amazing! :P

Just like riding a bike, eh?  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 08, 2017, 18:19
I made it all the way to JC and since I was going for 100% kills and couldn't remember how the final floor worked in terms of kill count

Then I think it's worth pointing out that in this version, unlike some previous versions, when you kill JC, all his summons die at the same time.  I find it's best to focus on him and kill him as quickly as possible.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 08, 2017, 21:40
Welcome( back?)!

I would be very interested in seeing someone attempt to replicate VANDAM's (supposed) achievements - as Tormuse said, there have never been any mortems(or videos, which Tormuse and I have both posted for some of our more impressive runs[though his are significantly more impressive then mine]), but I'm less skeptical then he is; I think there's a fairly good chance that VANDAM actually did what he claimed to, and even if not, my personal opinion is that he's most likely still one of the top players in the history if DRL.

Regardless of that, though, seeing some fresh mortems would be a nice change around here. Everything seems to have gone fairly quiet as we all wait for Jupiter Hell, other then the brief flurry of activity from the Xtreme Arena thread(which I also encourage you to check out).

I wish you the best of luck in your quest, and I'll be lurking around watching for your mortems - hell, if I have time, I might even try to post some of my own, but I feel like I've almost reached the limit of my own skill level, which is why I've sort of dropped off playing for the last few months. Still, seeing new achievements is always inspiring, and might be exactly what I need to get back into it myself.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: LuckyDee on September 09, 2017, 00:22
Welcome indeed! Feel free to log your progress for posterity, and indeed, like Tormuse said, the forum could do with a little more life. Seeing as you previously took the time to complete a dual AOMC/A100 on UV, I'd say you ought to be skilled enough to impress some people around here. Show us what you got!

Also:

Quote from: Tormuse on September 08, 2017, 19:50
I hear ya, there.  I seem to do all my best gaming when things are going wrong in other parts of my life.  :)

Based on your track record, should we be worrying about you, 'muse? ;)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 09, 2017, 01:26
Quote from: LuckyDee on September 09, 2017, 00:22
Based on your track record, should we be worrying about you, 'muse? ;)

Well...  I'm not gonna off myself, if that's what you're asking.  I do have issues with chronic depression, but I have ways of coping, so I'll be okay.  Thank you for your concern.  :)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 09, 2017, 13:43
Thanks for the welcome!

Yeah, I suppose it's reasonable to be skeptical about Vandam, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I'm still going to pursue what he's done. Also I meant I'm more in a gaming rut, rather than a general run, haha. Things are good! :)

Day 2:

After losing to JC last night, I opted to collect some more badges, and did far more than I had expected on an Angel of Berserk run! I gained a huge pile of them, as well as beating the Mortuary for the first time! I got quite a few more assemblies and badges; I reached Sergeant Major after just my 2nd completion! Vampyre with the Angelic set is quite powerful, and I actually forgot that the Angelic Armor can break, ha. I'm used to always using indestructible gear.

Mortem here:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following that, I decided to play another Angel of 100 + Angel of Max Carnage on UV for 100%! I used basically the same build as before, with focus on Cateye and rapid-fire weapons. It's honestly a superb build for the challenge and very fun to play! The entire game is quite easy to execute, but any mistake can be fatal. You dance with death the entire game. Unfortunately, the biggest weakness of the build is overconfidence and I got killed due to some bad luck, but by no means exceptionally bad luck. Entirely my fault for not respecting the danger. If you play intelligently, you basically can't die, just have to respect the danger. Seriously. Respect the danger.

Generally I shoot for getting Cateye as soon as possible, and then work towards Cerberus Boots, Nanomachic Plasma Rifle, and Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest. I had no luck with getting Nano Packs though and also unfortunately died before reaching the level 51 mark. I also passed on a Dragonslayer spawn to avoid ruining my run; cool to finally know how to pick it up now! ;) I'll revisit this challenge some more later and put focus onto unlocking Angel of Overconfidence and start cheesing to collect a bunch more badges.

Here's the mortem:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 09, 2017, 13:58
Impressive runs... that AoB mortuary clear already surpasses anything I've done. If this is the pace you intend to keep,  it won't be long until you reach your goal of surpassing VANDAM.

Keep it up... I'll be looking forward to your next mortem.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 09, 2017, 17:56
Quote from: Icy on September 09, 2017, 13:43
Yeah, I suppose it's reasonable to be skeptical about Vandam, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. In any case, I'm still going to pursue what he's done.

It's entirely possible that I'm being overly sensitive after the whole 2Dev thing and perhaps I should give Vandam the benefit of the doubt too.  I still would like to see those mortems, though.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 09, 2017, 13:43
Vampyre with the Angelic set is quite powerful, and I actually forgot that the Angelic Armor can break, ha. I'm used to always using indestructible gear.

Wha?...  It can break?  :o  Ah, I see what you mean.  It doesn't actually "break" as in be destroyed, but yeah, it can certainly go down to 0% and lose functionality.  An armour shard or Megasphere will bring it back, though.  :)

And Vampyre is generally quite powerful, if used properly.  It's my favourite trait and is responsible for a lot of my best runs!  :D
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: MaiZure on September 09, 2017, 19:25
Interesting blog series going on here. I'll be following!

Quote from: Tormuse on September 09, 2017, 17:56
It's entirely possible that I'm being overly sensitive after the whole 2Dev thing and perhaps I should give Vandam the benefit of the doubt too.  I still would like to see those mortems, though.  :)

For what it's worth, I can rule out VANDAM using time manipulations or VM save-stating in XA. When you start a new game in XA, it tells my server and both your game and my server start independent timers for that session (no comms during game play). When your game ends and it reports your final score, it won't save it if both timers aren't within 99% of each other. Well...VANDAMs games were always in sync! I can also confirm that he didn't start-scum (server sees new games and can count games that never finished). Fun trivia: out of the ~750 games played in this version, there were 1850 games that never ended (rage quit :P) There are many other options to cheat, but he passes on those low-hanging fruit

EDIT: He started out a very good player and did improve with more games, but he was setting high scores at the outset. There wasn't an indication that he was average or below average but then suddenly exploded with skill. He also had a fair number of bad luck runs too...not perfect. These obviously aren't scientific tests, but anecdotally, I'd say he seems like a competition-level gamer. EDIT2: People that operate with that mindset also tend to cheat on the side, moreso to better understand the games, their systems, and force themselves in to outlier situations and build experience that way. It gives them an edge in legit gameplay, and if extra glory comes their way on the side, then great :P. If VANDAM cheats, I don't think he's detracting from the larger community in the process...2Dev on the other hand... 

Sorry for derailing this blog post with this rant! Let's get back to D**mRL!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 09, 2017, 22:30
There's no doubt in my mind that Vandam is an excellent player and I don't mean to accuse them of cheating at all.  (I say "them" because someone drew my attention to the fact that we don't know Vandam's gender)  :)  I just can't fathom the mindset of someone would do all the work to get those ridiculous achievements and then not share it.  I just don't get that at all.  :S

But yeah, perhaps I'm derailing this topic too much; this is Icy's thread, after all.  :)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 10, 2017, 10:33
Thanks Sereg, but AoB Mortuary wasn't that amazing really. With Vampyre and being Berserk the whole time, I just needed to rush the Archviles. I did still almost die twice, and it was on Hey, Not Too Rough. And yeah, misuse of "break" regarding Angelic Armor, haha.

Day 3:

I spent some time grinding out more of the easy medals and badges, as well as assemblies. My ranking is a bit clogged with needing to Pistol kill Hell Knights, but I've already got a ton of overall kills and melee kills. Reaching the Arch-Vile rank shouldn't be too bad, but needing 100 Cyberdemons, and 50 JCs will take some time to get. I'll slowly grind for them on days when I don't have as much free time.

I've been using Angel of Overconfidence a bunch to cheese out some easy badges and medals. My favorite one in particular was combining it with Angel of Pacifism; fun fact: you don't get a nuke! By dumb luck, I managed to find one anyway:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I felt like revisiting my Max Carnage/Angel of 100/UV/100% Kills, and got it very easily. My Cateye build is so overpowered once it gets going. Here's the post-mortem to start off with:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So basically, I get an infinite ammo Plasma (ideally nanomachic instead of nuclear), and with Cateye, 2x Intuition, 2x Triggerhappy, and 5x Son of a Bitch, I become immortal. You can see so far away, and with Max Carnage, accuracy variance doesn't matter, and damage variance doesn't matter. I point and click at purple Xs, and everything dies. I was even killing Shamblers and Elementals in 2 clicks, with Cyberdemons in 5!

Starting off can be rough, and requires quite a bit of ammo. You're very dependent on finding a Nano Pack, and you still can't be making mistakes. The thing is though, if you aren't getting hit, Max Carnage is all benefits, not disadvantages. On top, the Plasma can pierce through walls for even easier targeting. I still of course used a heavy-duty armor and was loaded on Med Packs, but they weren't really necessary at all. My kill streak was frequently in the multiple hundreds.

The only things that can stop you are potentially Cyberdemons, extremely unlucky starts, and your own overconfidence and impatience. It's easy to fall into the idea of being aggressive when picking up Invulnerability and getting into other advantageous situations, but they should be treated as insurance for mistakes. Nuke levels and hard wall levels are also a bit of a pain, but manageable. Even Shamblers and Elementals couldn't fight meaningfully since they're slow after teleporting. If anything ever did go wrong, I also had Phase Devices. It's seriously very, very easy to complete once you get going!

Here's the worst start that I had, but I still didn't get touched:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's my ending main screen. I was very disappointed for not hitting Level 25. I think I'll have to play through 666 to get it, but since I can't combine it with Max Carnage, I might opt for a Shotgun build and PPN+P Super Shotgun instead.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And here's my in-game stats screen just before I left Level 100:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So all in all, it was a lot of fun! It was great that I could repeat my best feat already and with such ease, as well as collecting several medals and badges (Platinum, woo)! My next couple of goals will be killing 50 Hell Knights with a Pistol, and collecting the rest of the Bronze Badges. I also just need one more basic assembly (Tower Shield), but Onyx Packs are hard to come by.

I'm having a blast and playing well!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: LuckyDee on September 10, 2017, 11:28
Quote from: Icy on September 10, 2017, 10:33
I've been using Angel of Overconfidence a bunch to cheese out some easy badges and medals.

The technical term is "to Sereg" ;)

Other than that, good work. Do you have any experience playing a Sharpshooter?
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 10, 2017, 17:26
Man, I don't know how you have the patience to do 100 levels of AoMC; I barely have the patience to do 25!  :P  (I think impatience has become my number one killer in this game)  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 10, 2017, 10:33
Here's the worst start that I had, but I still didn't get touched:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Aw, that doesn't look so bad; you've got some easy cover northeast of you there.  I'd expect worse from UV;  are you sure the RNG wasn't going easy on you?  :)

Also, I hope you don't mind a minor tip...

Quote from: Icy on September 10, 2017, 10:33
...
 There is a cerberus protective boots [0/0] (100%) (A) lying here.
 You picked up a cerberus protective boots [0/0] (100%) (A).
 You wear/wield : a cerberus protective boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
...

I don't know if you're aware, but in this version of DRL, you can push the U key to use wearable/wieldable/usable items directly from the ground, rather than doing it in two steps like you did here.  It's a minor thing, but sometimes, that extra second you save can mean the difference between life and death, wearing armour from the ground, or using a med pack from the ground, etc.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: scotherns on September 11, 2017, 01:21
Quote from: MaiZure on September 09, 2017, 19:25
When you start a new game in XA, it tells my server and both your game and my server start independent timers for that session (no comms during game play). When your game ends and it reports your final score, it won't save it if both timers aren't within 99% of each other.

Hmm, I often get interrupted and have to temporarily leave active games (usually closing/sleeping my laptop - it resumes them just fine when waking up). Does this mean those games wont be counting?

Back ON Topic: Very interested to see this blog, looking forward to seeing how it develops!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: MaiZure on September 11, 2017, 02:07
Quote from: scotherns on September 11, 2017, 01:21
Hmm, I often get interrupted and have to temporarily leave active games (usually closing/sleeping my laptop - it resumes them just fine when waking up). Does this mean those games wont be counting?

Seems like your games have been counting so far...
There's a little more to it than the little bit I described there, so I wouldn't worry about it
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 11, 2017, 06:25
100 levels of AoMC isn't as bad as you think,  at least not with his build. Personally, I sometimes enjoy a slaughter fest, and I've made ArchAo666 attempts looking for YAAM before, so if you have that mindset it's not really such a grind,  either.

As far as the build goes, like he said he can kill everything long before it's anything more then a purple X, so there's no major safety issue... once that build gets rolling,  it's not even really an issue of careful play.

 Honestly,  that's one of my favorite aspects of 100 and especially 666 - that feeling of being utterly unstoppable. Whenever I did get back into DRL, it will likely be to attempt my Diamond and Angelic Centurial Badges.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 11, 2017, 11:03
Thanks for the U key tip, Tormuse! That's definitely important to know! Awhile back, I actually didn't know you could unload weapons with it, and being a perfectionist and overpreparing, I would manually pick up every weapon, empty it, then toss it on the ground. :P The U key is a savior!

Day 4:

Nothing too exciting post-mortem-wise, but I grinded out a whole lot of the easy stuff to get them out of the way. I've reached the ranking of Hell Baron/Major; glad I don't need to be Pistol killing anything anymore. :P I still need 2000 melee kills, 25000/50000 kills, 100 Cyberdemon kills, and 50 JC kills to finish the ranks! Those honestly aren't that bad and progress naturally, but like I said earlier, 50 JCs will take awhile to finish. I'm content with what I'm at so far for now.

I've found every special item now, and only missing 12 more uniques:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I've also made every basic assembly, just missing 5 advanced and 1 master assembly now:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also finished up collecting the rest of the bronze badges I was missing and have all 26 now:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As well as 18/26 silver badges, missing mostly easy ones too:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Like I said, mostly just getting the easy stuff out of the way. Next goals will be 26/26 silver, and getting the rest of the assemblies!

One funny post-mortem I had was another round of Angel of Pacifism, this time with Angel of Confidence, and once again, forgetting I don't get a nuke. Fortunately, I found a little helper in the Mortuary to solve my problem. :P I actually didn't realize it at first and ran at the Spider Mastermind to accept death, but fortunately I also had a Phase Device to have enough time to survive.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another lucky fluke for Pacifism, haha.

That's all for today!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: ZicherCZ on September 11, 2017, 11:21
I'm a bit late, but still - welcome, and thanks for your "blog", it's nice to see someone doing and recording their overall progress :).

Quote from: Icy on September 11, 2017, 11:03
I still need 2000 melee kills, 25000/50000 kills, 100 Cyberdemon kills, and 50 JC kills to finish the ranks!

If you are willing to go through an ultra-grind, just go for a single UV AAo666 game. You don't even need to focus on melee at all - with some luck, you can find a chainsaw to rack up easy melee kills, and 50k kills / 100 Cybies can be done in a single playthrough. Of course, there's no JC along the way, but it's more than enough for a Cyberdemon rank.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
Day 5:

I mostly focused on getting a couple more assemblies and silver badges, then decided to play Ao666 on Hey, Not Too Rough as a test run and for reaching Level 25 for the medal. Because I can't combine it with Max Carnage, I decided to go with a Shottyhead build.

Part way into the run, I noticed that the game is treating it like Angel of 100, saying things like "25 floors to go!" and so forth, and I also noticed in my stats screen it says Ao100. Odd. I was pretty sure I had clicked Archangel of 666, but I was thinking that perhaps the programming of the game doesn't change these messages. Or maybe I just did misclick. Realizing this fact and that it's indistinguishable from a true Angel of 100 game, I thought I had messed it up. On top, around the 92nd floor or so, I also noticed I had somehow missed killing a monster, so I'm scrapping the plan of getting 100% kills now.

Oh and on floor 100, the game told me I have 566 more to go. :P Things like this are why test runs are good!

I'm currently rocking an Assault Shotgun (PPPTT), Super Shotgun (PP), 2x Burst Cannon Nuclear Plasma Rifles (P), Nuclear VBFG9000 (P), Cerberus Boots (A), and Nanofiber Red Armor (P). Throughout 100 floors, I have yet to find a much needed Nano Pack, though to be fair, this is on the easiest difficulty acceptable and I did nuke a few floors, but still. No Onyx, Firestorm, or Sniper Packs for that matter either.

I've been debating on Enviroboots vs Cerberus Boots vs Phaseshift Boots vs Inquisitor Boots, and I'm starting to see the argument in favor for Inquisitor more. I generally lean for Cerberus (A) + Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest (P), but I did some reading in the Post-Mortem sub-board with Papilio's 2 (!) completions of Centurial Angelic badges, and yeah, might need to go for fire immunity. I've already tossed the Inquisitor Boots I found this run, so that's not happening this time in any case. I do intend to do a completion of Ao666 on UV with 100% kills for a fun, personal challenge at some point, as well as Ao666 on Nightmare, but it won't be for a long while yet. I just wanted to do this on an easier difficulty for practice, learning, and to boost up my stats for medals, rankings, and badges. It's going well so far!

Also, I noticed the heavy emphasis on using Biggest Fucking Nuclear BFG9000 (F) and its stats, which seems ridiculously destructive! Can you damage yourself with it like with Demolition Ammo? I opted for VBFG9000 since I already had the mods for it, it was one of my last three missing assemblies (just need Double Chainsaw and Ripper now), and I was concerned about potentially killing myself with BBFF+F.

Anyway, I'll be continuing my warpath, hopefully finally getting a Nano Pack to complete my Super Shotgun, and reaching Level 25 before getting killed. I also want to collect as many specials and uniques along the way to boost up my count on them. In the off-chance I find Dragonslayer after reaching Level 25 and having Berserk nearby, I'm definitely going to botch my run to get it! :P

All that said, I've been having a blast plowing through 100 levels! Here's to 566 more!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 12, 2017, 21:24
Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
Part way into the run, I noticed that the game is treating it like Angel of 100, saying things like "25 floors to go!" and so forth...

...Oh and on floor 100, the game told me I have 566 more to go. :P Things like this are why test runs are good!

Haha, yeah, I remember how I felt the first time playing ArchAo666; I was taking notes, getting ready to make a bug report about those messages, but the "566 more to go" line makes it too funny to consider making any changes.  :D

Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
...2x Burst Cannon Nuclear Plasma Rifles (P)...

Two of them?  Why would you need anything else?  :D  That's a new favourite of mine; when combined with a couple levels of Eagle Eye, it's absolutely devastating.

Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
...but still. No Onyx, Firestorm, or Sniper Packs for that matter either.

Give it time...  666 levels is *a lot* of levels; you're bound to find at least one of everything before the end.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
I've been debating on Enviroboots vs Cerberus Boots vs Phaseshift Boots vs Inquisitor Boots, and I'm starting to see the argument in favor for Inquisitor more. I generally lean for Cerberus (A) + Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest (P), but I did some reading in the Post-Mortem sub-board with Papilio's 2 (!) completions of Centurial Angelic badges, and yeah, might need to go for fire immunity. I've already tossed the Inquisitor Boots I found this run, so that's not happening this time in any case. I do intend to do a completion of Ao666 on UV with 100% kills for a fun, personal challenge at some point, as well as Ao666 on Nightmare, but it won't be for a long while yet. I just wanted to do this on an easier difficulty for practice, learning, and to boost up my stats for medals, rankings, and badges. It's going well so far!

The Inquisitor set is quite powerful...  overpowered, really...  A decent boost to speed, total immunity to all the late game monsters, and decent protection from everything else.  (The ability to avoid damage from lava is also very nice)  It's extremely useful in any game, especially a long run like this so I have to say...

Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
...I've already tossed the Inquisitor Boots...

You what?!?  O_o  TheLaptop will not be pleased...

(All that being said, for the really late game in this kind of game, I think you're gonna find the Phaseshift set more useful, because you're gonna want to get to the exits fast)

Quote from: Icy on September 12, 2017, 15:33
Also, I noticed the heavy emphasis on using Biggest Fucking Nuclear BFG9000 (F) and its stats, which seems ridiculously destructive! Can you damage yourself with it like with Demolition Ammo?

No, and good thing too; it destroys something like half the map, so if it damaged you, it would be impossible to avoid dying.  EDIT:  The BFG10K does damage you, though, so watch out for that one.  I found that out the hard way.  :P

I look forward to seeing the mortem from this; you should have no trouble with your goal of reaching level 25.  :)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 13, 2017, 06:37
Quote from: Tormuse on September 12, 2017, 21:24
EDIT:  The BFG10K does damage you, though, so watch out for that one.  I found that out the hard way.  :P

I look forward to seeing the mortem from this; you should have no trouble with your goal of reaching level 25.  :)

I would just like to add that I, too, have turned myself into wallpaper with the BFG10k. Unfortunately I can't find the mortem for it, but it definitely happened - to this day I still simply pickup(to log the find) and immediately drop that gun whenever I find it. I'm sure it has some uses, but it's way too dangerous in the hands of someone like myself, who tends to just blaze away with whatever I'm holding until the screen is clear.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 13, 2017, 14:31
Burst Cannon Nuclear Plasma Rifles are quite good, definitely the best semi-infinite rapid-fire weapon, but because my build is based around Shottyhead, Eagle Eye is blocked. I just used them for when I ran out of shells.

Like I mentioned, I'm not yet a fan of Inquisitor set compared to my usual go-tos, but I also haven't been surrounded by dozens of fire monsters. Keep in mind that this is still just on Hey, Not Too Rough, so I should be fine without. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but hey, it's a test run after all! I am a huge data, strategy, and optimization junkie, so I'll definitely do more thorough research as my experience with high-level play increases.

Day 6:

At floor 108, I discovered my first special mod pack, being an Onyx! Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I didn't want to complain too much as I do need one of those too. Still, I wanted a Nano Pack and was starting to get a bit more desperate for one. Then on floor 109, two spaces away from me was a Nano Pack! Immediately I finished my Nano-Shrapnel Super Shotgun (P) and have turned the game into Cookie Clicker! :P It's insanely good, even Cyberdemons usually get just 1 (often missed) Rocket in before they get killed by sheer firing speed!

Following that, I also reached Level 25 for my first time ever!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I kind of ran out of useful traits, so I went with Brute and Berserker. I figure that if I'm somehow getting hit hard enough to trigger Berserker, I probably need the +60% Resistances.

So basically, I murdered most everything up to floor 201 where I left off. Nothing too exciting really, haha. I'm on the look out for specials and uniques because I require 3 of each and 1000 total to get some badges, but other than that, all I ever pick up are Large Med-Packs, Phase Devices (mostly homing), Thermies, boosters and health items, and not much more. I'm hoping I can finally find an Energy-Shielded Vest to complete the armor I want (I already have all 5 mods for it), and I also am hoping for Chainsaws to complete my missing assemblies, and a Nuclear BFG wouldn't hurt either to slowly upgrade my current Nuclear VBFG.

My original plan was to botch my run if I stumble upon Dragonslayer, but I'm thinking this opportunity for hunting Cyberdemons as well as massively racking up my kill count is a better idea. I could potentially find a Dragonslayer on any run, but not often do I get to go on a murder spree.

That's all for now! More of this run to come!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 13, 2017, 16:42
 If memory serves,  there might be issues with vest assemblies... but memory is very hazy so I could be completely off base with that one.  What exactly are you planning to make?

Also, be advised that picking up the Dragonslayer will not throw your run, especially since you have those 2 levels in Brute.  It is absolutely homicidal.  The only downside is the permanently red screen,  which makes differentiating mod packs(among other things)  a pain in the dick, especially if you're still looking to make assemblies.

Edit: just looked at your skill build... 3 levels of brute and 3 of hellrunner *AND* 3 of finesse? You would have to be outside of your mind to leave the Dragonslayer on the ground...
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 13, 2017, 21:25
Yeah, what Sereg said.  Don't get me wrong, a Nano-Super Shotgun with Shottyhead sounds blisteringly devastating, (and probably a lot of fun!)  :D  but I think you are vastly underestimating the destructive power of the Dragonslayer if you think it will "botch your run."

Quote from: Icy on September 13, 2017, 14:31
Burst Cannon Nuclear Plasma Rifles are quite good, definitely the best semi-infinite rapid-fire weapon, but because my build is based around Shottyhead, Eagle Eye is blocked. I just used them for when I ran out of shells.

In that case, personally, I would've put Sniper mods on them.  (I mean if you ever did find any?)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 14, 2017, 15:12
I read up on Dragonslayer more carefully and realized what I overlooked. It does an average of 45 damage, which is solid for sure, but my Shotgun is obviously better. However, I forgot to consider that permanent Berserk also means permanent double melee damage! So yeah, Dragonslayer is kind on insane, ha!

And no, I never found any Sniper Packs before tossing them.

Day 7:

Many, many floors of murdering everything, but really nothing too thrilling. Some more uniques, lots of specials to increase my count towards 1000, and many, many kills. Lots of Cyberdemons too, which is good!

Then on floor 286, I finally found an Energy-Shielded Vest! Check it out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's insanely protective and I usually take 1 damage from everything now! Shortly after that, I found a second Nuclear BFG! Currently it's (BBF), so even just one more Firestorm Pack would be awesome!

So of course, I spent some more time thinking about Dragonslayer, and I've definitely shifted my opinion (back) to picking it up should I find it. I believe now it's the only missing unique besides Azrael's (which I could easily get), and it would be nice to get that badge, as well as work towards getting 3 for another badge in the future. With my Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest, I should be fine enough to survive everything anyway, especially with +60% more resistances! On top, I'm going to be bottlenecking my ranking until I get more melee kills, so it'd be helpful for that too. The only downside is my armor is stuck to me, so I won't be able to pair up with Berserker's Armor, but that's okay.

I'm just a bit shy from the half-way mark now, and am getting faster at clearing levels. So long as I don't die, I should get this finished sometime during the weekend! It's a lot of fun, but it definitely takes some time, ha. I'm looking forward to going back to more normal games and collecting some more badges!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 14, 2017, 21:28
I guess I was hallucinating or something - looks like your vest assembly worked just fine. That is one hell of a piece of armor.

I know it's a grind, but keep it up - hopefully you do find the time to finish it this weekend.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: ZicherCZ on September 15, 2017, 01:13
Quote from: DRL Wiki (energy-shielded vest page)
In the Cybernano assembly, it's almost IDDQD.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 15, 2017, 14:46
Yeah, the armor is ridiculous! There are only a handful of other end-game contenders with it really. Since most damage gets reduced to 1, the multi-firing monsters are the only ones that can do anything really noticeable.

Day 8:

Powered through another 120ish floors and now at floor 450! Given that Biggest Fucking Gun at this point won't really change much of my gameplay, and there's not too much I can find that's useful, I've just been killing groups of monsters, searching for Cyberdemons, then leaving. If there are Computer/Tracking Maps around, I'll use those to seek out some more specials, Thermies, and Firestorm Packs, but otherwise, I'm not spending the time to fully explore the floors now. It's a diminishing return to spend 40 seconds looking for a single stray monster or a possible item, when I could get a fresh floor instead. Of course I still get uniques and listen for Cyberdemons, but not much else is really worth it. Kinda wishing I played on Ultra-Violence instead now for higher monster density, but that's okay.

My kill count is now just shy of 12000, which is a huge chunk of the progression towards the needed 50000! I also likely have collected 3 of every special, and have most of the uniques. It'll be nice for regular runs to finish all of these side-goals so that they don't distract from normal gameplay, such as holding onto useless mod packs only because they could make an assembly I hadn't made yet.

I have zero fear of dying given that I've only gone below 80 health once after a few hundred floors. Given that I have 100 HP, monsters can barely do anything, there are constant power-ups, I have a huge pile of Large Med-Packs and Phase Devices (and the Hell Staff), etc, there's just really no way I'm going to get killed. It's definitely fun being an unstoppable god, but it's unfortunately not really challenging, haha. The only scary thing is when barrels are beside specials.

I'm really looking forward to reviewing my own mortem and of course sharing it here when this is all done! I might be able to power through the rest of the run since I'm not fully exploring every floor anymore. We'll see!

Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 16, 2017, 11:11
Day 9:

Mission accomplished!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After nearly 15 hours, I finally finished Ao666! Like I had been saying, it was easy, just long. It was a lot of fun and I will definitely do it again on UV for 100% kills in the future!

Along the way on floor 498, I had my first (and only) staircase adjacent to me, and while there was no Compuer/Tracking Map, I decided for whatever reason to look around a bit, and found my first Chainsaw! A number of levels later to collect the mod packs, I made the Ripper with it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I figured to make that and leave out Double Chainsaw for another time; it was the obvious choice. Besides that, it was just more slaughtering and stair-diving. Surprisingly, I never found a second Firestorm Pack, so that kind of sucked. Like I've mentioned though, I did nuke a ton of levels as well as started skipping chunks of them later on, but still somewhat unlucky to never find another. I think in total, I found 3 Onyx, 7 Nano, and 3 Sniper. Here's some final screenshots before I completed the run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So with that completed, I got my Level 25 Medal, and a huge increase to my special/unique count and number of kills!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My Cyberdemon kill count is now a decent 61, leaving just 39 more! I was pretty disappointed on never finding any Cyberdemon caves throughout 666 floors. I still need a huge number of kills in general, and about 500 more melee kills, but a very good step forward! During the Ao666, I found every unique except for Dragonslayer :P, Berserker's Armor, and Subtle Knife, of which I only previously had Berserker's Armor, while also missing Azrael's Scythe. My total special/unique count was quite a bit lower than I thought it would be, so it'll still take a long time to reach 1000 with that. At least I have almost 3 of every special and 2 of the ones I don't. Overall, an excellent journey and improvement to getting to 100% in this game.

But, I wasn't yet satisfied and kept going.

The first thing to take care of was getting Double Chainsaw. The most sensical way of doing that was playing a Technician and going through all the bonus levels, as well as getting a guaranteed Chainsaw. I had some bad luck with packs, but I got it and completed my assembly list!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With that, I got my first diamond badge, my second platinum badge, and no longer need to build unnecessary assemblies! Very nice milestone to hit!

Next was getting Azrael's Scythe. The obvious way of doing this was playing on Ultra-Violence with a dual-angel of Berserk and Overconfidence, along with some good luck. My very first attempt was actually quite close, but the Angel of Death unfortunately barely won. A few tries later and I had an insane start:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With an Invulnerability 2 steps away, and a huge pack of monsters for experience in the other direction, I flew up the levels quickly, and the floor was cleared with ease! As expected, it was the run that got me Azrael's!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's ridiculously strong and thought it'd be fun to play out the rest of the run. I tried out Whisper of Death too, which is cool. In fact, I ended up finishing with 100% kills!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I noticed after this run that I had 23 medals; 1 shy of getting a well-needed gold badge, and I figured the easiest one to get would be completing Hell's Armory without damage. Max Carnage+Confidence helped a lot, though I unfortunately got Deimos Anomaly. With some luck with teleporting into a non-attacking Zombieman, an Assault Shotgun waiting for me in the weapon room, a Power Pack, and luck with the Shamblers not hitting me, I managed to earn the medal on the harder of the two levels!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And finally, to get my 12th gold badge, I went for completing Angel of Shotgunnery on Ultra-Violence, with the help of Overconfidence! I stumbled onto a Super Shotgun and Hellwave Pack on the first floor, found some life-saving Phase Devices, and just barely survived on two different occasions! On the 7th floor, I started in a room with Archviles and Mancubi, with the staircase in the next room over. I literally was down to 1 HP left before healing. With a ridiculous amount of shells, and a Super Shotgun, I was set to get the badge, so long as I was patient. About two-thirds of my run here was slowly fighting the Spider Mastermind:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As long as you cornershoot, never step into the corners of the pillar, or shoot twice, it's very rare to get hit. I have a huge supply of patience, so I took the time, especially since this opportunity would likely not come back anytime soon. After a long battle, I got an untouched kill and reached the next ranking:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Excellent progress and very happy with all of these results! Moving forward will be 39 more Cyberdemon kills, leaving just 20000 more general kills and 50 JC kills to reach the Apostle ranking! I'll also be finishing up some more silver badges, collecting more specials/uniques, and slowly picking away at the more difficult badges! More to come!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 17, 2017, 09:43
Day 10:

I started off grinding some melee runs to finish getting 3 Longinus Spears, and getting to 2000 melee kills, and they came along quite easily. With those runs, I now maxed out my needed melee kills and reached Archvile rank!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've also got 3 of each super special, except for Azrael's of which I only have 1 of so far. I also have 3 of every special except for Tristar Blaster, which I need just 1 more. Good progress in that area, but I still need a lot of uniques! I'm tempted to do another Ao666... :P

I continued picking away at some of the easier badges and medals, including Conqueror Badge, Lightfoot Badges, and Inquisitor Platinum Badge! One of my Humanity/Overconfidence runs went extremely well actually and I had made it to the Spider Mastermind with 2 Invulnerabilities stacked, and 0 damage prior, all set to get the Untouchable Medal and Cross. I played uncharacteristically risky like a dumbass and approached instead of camping around the pillar. The Spider Mastermind was extremely damaged, but just as I was about to get the kill, my Invulnerability ran out and I was quickly disposed of:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So that super sucked. Though I later realized I wouldn't have received the medals anyway. :P Following that, I got another similar run and just went with a nuke to score an easy victory:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following that, I went to complete Angel of Purity on Ultra-Violence with the help of Overconfidence! The run was basically to survive the 7 floors as much as possible and take it super slow with the Spider Mastermind. You start off with enough ammo to kill her if you're patient enough, so I just had to play out enough runs to make it. That said, ammo was still quite tight and the battle was long. I think I spent about 12ish minutes, ran out of shells, and had to attack with the Combat Pistol (more ammo/damage efficiency than Minigun), but it got the job done! I was ready to throw my Combat Knife endlessly if necessary. :P

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Getting my 2nd platinum badge also gave me another rank up!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next, I played out some Light Travel. I came up with the strategy of going with a Cateye build combined with Max Carnage dual-angel, and used a mix of Shotguns and Chainguns. This sounds contradictory given that I have so little space in my inventory, but because I can see from so far away and always do max damage, I didn't really need to worry about carrying Med-Packs, and could entirely focus on ammo. I mostly used Shotgun/Combat Shotgun/Tactical Shotgun for the bulk of enemies, but had Chaingun/Gatling Gun in reserve for bosses and whenever I lost control of the level. Generally, my inventory would be both weapons, upgraded Red Armor, Boots (A), 1x Large Med-Pack, 1x Ammo Chain, and the rest being Shell Boxes/Shells. It worked wonderfully; the speed really helps a lot!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's also super fun! So I did the same thing again on Hurt Me Plenty to get the gold badge:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It went well overall, except for a sketchy moment:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...and I even cleared out the City of Skulls and the Mortuary! I also had the opportunity to fight JC, but made the mistake of hitting him as a purple X, spawning Barons all over, and quickly getting flooded over by enemies. I think I could have won if not for that mistake, but oh well. Still got the medal and learned a little bit more! Funny that I still have 0 kills on JC since restarting this game. :P

One other little detail is I'm picking up more on advanced gameplay. When I was playing on Light Travel, I had an Invulnerability, Homing Phase Device, and the staircase all scattered throughout the level. Now, obviously I wouldn't be willing to give up one of my precious slots just for an easier next floor, but I realized the power of the U key and setup myself nicely:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I actually hadn't pieced this trick together before and would normally always carry the Homing Phase Device. In my defense I only had just learned about using U. :P Still, it's nice to see personal improvement in other ways besides badges, medals, etc.

I'm now currently at 26/20/16/3/1/0 for badges, and still slowly picking away at the rest of the silver badges. :P I'll get them done soon. I'm also seriously thinking of doing another Ao666 on Ultra-Violence for 100% kills to work on getting my ranking maxed out and to collect more specials and uniques. I had a lot of fun, and think that having more of a challenge next time would make it even funner! I'm wondering how well a Vampyre build would work?
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 17, 2017, 13:30
Well you've surpassed my bronze count, and you appear to be on track to catch silver soon.  The way you play,  you'll probably catch my platinum and diamond counts before too long, too. Keep at it... I look forward to continuing to follow this thread.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 17, 2017, 19:54
Quote from: Icy on September 17, 2017, 09:43
...The Spider Mastermind was extremely damaged, but just as I was about to get the kill, my Invulnerability ran out and I was quickly disposed of

Ouch, that does suck.  :|  Remember to keep an eye on the INV message at the bottom of the screen while you're invulnerable; it darkens a few moves before the invulnerability wears off.  (Same with other power-ups too)  It's subtle and easy to miss, but really important in a battle like this.

Quote from: Icy on September 17, 2017, 09:43
One other little detail is I'm picking up more on advanced gameplay. When I was playing on Light Travel, I had an Invulnerability, Homing Phase Device, and the staircase all scattered throughout the level. Now, obviously I wouldn't be willing to give up one of my precious slots just for an easier next floor, but I realized the power of the U key and setup myself nicely:

Yup, adapting new strategies on the fly is my favourite part of this game.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 17, 2017, 09:43
I'm now currently at 26/20/16/3/1/0 for badges, and still slowly picking away at the rest of the silver badges. :P I'll get them done soon.

*Gasp!*  You've caught up with my Bronze count!  :D  Might I suggest that you put your medal counts in your sig?  It's a nice thing to show off.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 17, 2017, 09:43
I'm also seriously thinking of doing another Ao666 on Ultra-Violence for 100% kills to work on getting my ranking maxed out and to collect more specials and uniques. I had a lot of fun, and think that having more of a challenge next time would make it even funner! I'm wondering how well a Vampyre build would work?

Vampyre builds always work.  :)  The real question is do you have the patience to do 600+ levels of red screen?  :)

Quote from: Sereg on September 17, 2017, 13:30
Well you've surpassed my bronze count...

Now I'm really curious about which Bronze you're missing.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Dr. Granola on September 17, 2017, 20:28
[JK]I'm starting to wonder if you people have no lives at this point. Or you have WAY too much free time. Looking at you Icy.[/JK]

But seriously, I applaud your DETERMINATION (Caps mandatory, you've earned it) and saintly patience for even thinking about doing this. Good job.

EDIT: And what does Sereg'd mean?
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 17, 2017, 20:41
Quote from: Tormuse on September 17, 2017, 19:54
Now I'm really curious about which Bronze you're missing.

Eagerness. I suspect my only AoI wins have been Sereg'd.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 18, 2017, 00:28
Quote from: Dr. Granola on September 17, 2017, 20:28
[JK]I'm starting to wonder if you people have no lives at this point. Or you have WAY too much free time. Looking at you Icy.[/JK]

Funny you should say that; I quit my job recently, so I actually do have extra free time lately.  :)

Quote from: Dr. Granola on September 17, 2017, 20:28
EDIT: And what does Sereg'd mean?

Sereg has become known for his habit of using the Dual-Angel ability to combine difficult challenges with Angel of Overconfidence to get a shortened game.  "Sereging" has become a term for getting extra badges for those challenges by winning that shortened game.

EDIT:  That was supposed to say "quit," not "quite," damn typos!  :P
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 18, 2017, 05:59
 And no,  my ego isn't big enough that I invented the term,  but after coming back from a leave of absence to find it in use, I found it appropriate and adopted it as well... god knows it's a common enough occurrence in my mortem write-ups.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: thelaptop on September 18, 2017, 07:44
Quote from: Sereg on September 18, 2017, 05:59
And no,  my ego isn't big enough that I invented the term,  but after coming back from a leave of absence to find it in use, I found it appropriate and adopted it as well... god knows it's a common enough occurrence in my mortem write-ups.
I take full responsibility for that (https://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,6725.msg59248.html#msg59248).  =D

Edit: Wow, a 4-year-and-a-day term!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 18, 2017, 13:12
Quote from: thelaptop on September 18, 2017, 07:44
I take full responsibility for that (https://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,6725.msg59248.html#msg59248).  =D

Edit: Wow, a 4-year-and-a-day term!

The origin of a legend.  :D  The term's been in use so long, I'd completely forgotten who it came from.  :)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: LuckyDee on September 18, 2017, 13:52
I'll never forget, at least. Smug bastard even corrected me when I used it wrong - by his standards. Pah.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 18, 2017, 15:12
Thanks for the tip on power-ups, Tormuse, I didn't know that! Very good information to have; I'll have to test it out sometime and get a feel for how much time I have remaining during the colour changes.

Day 11:

So I tried out my Vampyre idea for Ao666 and perhaps expectedly, it didn't pan out well. I also tried a little bit with my usual Shottyhead setup, but didn't get anywhere worth mentioning. After that, I instead turned my attention to collecting some of the more annoying medals and badges.

To start, I got both Malicious Knives Cross and Strongman Silver Badge. Nothing too interesting really; I went with a Vampyre build with a Marine and killed everything with a Combat Knife (B), lol. :P It helped that I could earn both on I'm Too Young To Die, so it wasn't too challenging, but here's the mortem anyway:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next was Brick Silver Badge. Now, I realized the trick to this was obviously Phase Devices, but I had a different strategy in mind:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...unfortunately, it didn't work. :P

So I buckled down and decided to get it done the old-fashioned way. However, in my run, I didn't find any Phase Devices, but was lucky enough to get a Sniper Pack from Hell's Armory to make a Plasmatic Shrapnel. Unfortunately, I had used up my Power Pack earlier on an armor. Then the game decided to just give me the run anyway, despite my embarrassing mistake. On Deimos 2, I found a Shockwave Pack, and then on Deimos 3, I found another one!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was just enough to pierce open the wall, and even provided me with a spot to cornershoot from! It took some time to get all the kills, but I played it safely and eventually got the Backpack and badge!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also completed my collection of 3 of every special on a run shortly after by getting a third Tristar Blaster:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next, I set my sights on the Gambler's Shield medal. I figured I would need to rely on generated level luck, getting Phobos Lab, Deimos Lab, etc. I also used Hell's Arena, but left before getting the last kill to get some early experience, and to still get three levers in Chained Court. After some runs not being enough, I decided that I should rely on Limbo as well. I should mention that I had never even completed Limbo before, though I have beaten the Mortuary several times and have used a Homing Phase Device in Limbo to escape a couple times too.

So, I went with Max Carnage + Light Travel dual-angel for maximum offensive power, though still continuing to play safe and slow. I did my usual setup of Gatling Gun + Tactical Shotgun and everything was going swimmingly. No Phobos Lab (I never had this even once on my badge attempts), but I got Deimos Lab, a couple of multi-hit levers with summoning, and healing, and I even got City of Skulls for an extra one. On floor 12, I also got Enviroboots, which are exceptionally helpful, and in Deimos Lab, I got both a Minigun to replace my Gatling Gun, and a Firestorm Pack! On my run, I had the Cyberdemon spawn just a few spaces away from me, but I turned him into swiss cheese!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One mistake I stumbled upon later in the run was when I found an armor healing lever, I had both Enviroboots and Red Armor (O), so I couldn't use it. Good mental note to make for sure.

So I got Limbo and I was behind on the required lever count, and decided I didn't have any choice. Given that I have my dual-angel, my insane Minigun, and Enviroboots, I figured I could make it work. In fact, it went so well, that my very first completion of the level also earned me Angelic Badge! It was totally surreal, but I suppose in hindsight, not that surprisingly really. I destroyed the first couple of Archviles before they could do anything, wiped out the right-side, and took out the left. I also grabbed the Nuclear BFG9000 since I figured it's helpful with Max Carnage.

I was getting near the end of the game now and at 21 levers when I got Mt Erebus! At this point, I had to get into a serious mentality because I realized how awful this medal is to get, while I was guaranteed to get it so long as I played well. I wasn't nervous, but I had to make sure I didn't make any mistakes. It went very well, but I had a rough floor 23 and nearly died! Remember that I only had one Large Med-Pack and this was Max Carnage. Naturally, I would have to take the Spider Mastermind slow, though I did find a replacement Med-Pack before entering.

So I'm at the Spider Mastermind now and hit both levers (took awhile to do safely) when I realized that because I still had my Nuclear BFG and a Lava Element, I could take another shot at JC! I made sure that he clearly saw me this time. :P Once again though, the Minigun (F) with 2 levels of Triggerhappy, the dual-angel I was playing, all with an ammo chain to feed it, I swiss cheesed him too and finally got my JC kill! :P

In hindsight, the Enviroboots and Minigun were the MVPs, but I was so ecstatic to get such an insane run when trying for one of the most annoying medals to get, and finishing my collection of standard medals! I got exactly 26 levers pulled, I gained an extra medal with Angelic Badge that I was not in the slightest expecting to get, and I got to kill JC as a lovely bonus! What a fantastic run!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To put lightly, I got ridiculous luck with getting these medals and badges, and glad to be done with them. Now onto more fun challenges!

I'm now at 22/26 silver badges, missing UAC (lol), Lava, Skull, and Arachno. I'm confident I can easily get them all, but they may take some more luck to achieve. I'll try them out today and see how it goes!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 18, 2017, 22:09
Quote from: Icy on September 18, 2017, 15:12
So I tried out my Vampyre idea for Ao666 and perhaps expectedly, it didn't pan out well.

Like many builds, it's tricky to get started, but powerful once it gets going.  For the first bunch of levels, you're probably going to want to rely pretty heavily on your shotgun, (since Vampyre blocks Eagle Eye and SOB, so your Chaingun won't be very effective) and maybe wait until you get a Chainsword before you start to rely on melee.  In any case, good luck if you decide to try again.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 18, 2017, 15:12
Next was Brick Silver Badge. Now, I realized the trick to this was obviously Phase Devices, but I had a different strategy in mind:

...

...unfortunately, it didn't work. :P

Ah yes, it's probably worth mentioning that it doesn't count the level as complete unless you go down the stairs.  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 18, 2017, 15:12
So I buckled down and decided to get it done the old-fashioned way. However, in my run, I didn't find any Phase Devices, but was lucky enough to get a Sniper Pack from Hell's Armory to make a Plasmatic Shrapnel. Unfortunately, I had used up my Power Pack earlier on an armor. Then the game decided to just give me the run anyway, despite my embarrassing mistake. On Deimos 2, I found a Shockwave Pack, and then on Deimos 3, I found another one!

Two shockwave packs is an amazingly lucky find!  :o  I suppose it's a bit late to mention it now, but if I'd known that you were trying for this badge, I would've pointed out that in AoB, you get a guaranteed Homing Phase Device at the end of Hell's Arena.  This makes that badge ever so slightly less luck-based.

Quote from: Icy on September 18, 2017, 15:12
...and in Deimos Lab, I got both a Minigun to replace my Gatling Gun, and a Firestorm Pack! On my run, I had the Cyberdemon spawn just a few spaces away from me, but I turned him into swiss cheese!...

...Once again though, the Minigun (F) with 2 levels of Triggerhappy, the dual-angel I was playing, all with an ammo chain to feed it, I swiss cheesed him too and finally got my JC kill! :P

Firestormed Minigun in AoMC sounds epically brutal!  :D  (or brutally epic?)  That must've been something to see.  :)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 19, 2017, 14:38
Day 12:

I started by getting UAC Silver Badge out of the way. Hurt Me Plenty was pretty easy overall, though I nearly died on Spider's Lair. I camped the upper-left wall, but got surrounded and had to use a Phase Device. I was sent almost directly to the staircase and considered just escaping, but I managed to regain control and grab the BFG. I generally play Shottyhead builds on runs without restrictions, but the Cyberdemon is a bit of a challenge, so getting the BFG was very important. Once I got far enough into the game and comfortable stair-diving, I quickly finished the game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My next target was Lava Silver Badge. I went back and forth on playing through a Technician to get Cerberus Boots by the time I would reach Mt Erebus/Lava Pits, or playing out a Scout on Overconfidence and hoping for lucky item drops.

My first good run was with the Technician strat, and I built the boots on floor 7, which is insanely early! Especially considering the 4th pack must be Power, it was very lucky and I was set to go. Unfortunately though, I was fighting against an Elite Shotgun Guy in Military Base and didn't realize that his blasts can destroy the walls and my cover, which lead to me getting killed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Frustrated, I tried a couple runs with the Scout strategy and wasn't having the luck needed. I had one particular run where I was looking set to go, but a Mancubus hit me and I got chained into a series of barrel explosions and died:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A couple runs later, I wasn't having the luck again, but I happened to stumble upon Grammaton Cleric Beretta, and decided to turn it into a run for killing the Spider Mastermind with it. All was going well, but on floor 7, I got banged up badly with an awkward position in a Cacodemon cave:

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Keep in mind that with this being Angel of Impatience, I had no way of healing. So as usual, I took the Spider Mastermind on very slowly:

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The plan was to damage her enough down to "almost dead", and then finish her off with Grammaton Cleric Beretta:

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Fortunately, it went well and I got a surprise medal instead!

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I'll probably try some more for that badge and rotate a bit with other goals!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 19, 2017, 15:04
Nice progress.

I thought I saw someone mention this before, but I can't seem to find it now that I went to go quote it, so...

You should consider putting your Badge count in your signature, like Tormuse and I have(and several others on these forums) have them. I realize the way you're playing means you would have to be constantly updating it, but it'd be nice for those of us following your thread here to have a quick way to track your overall progress.

That, and the way you're going, it'll be a status symbol before long ;)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 20, 2017, 14:45
I definitely will in the future, but like you said, I'd be updating it constantly. Once all the easier badges and medals are all done, I'll start using one.

Day 13:

I decided to put my focus onto getting the Iron Skull medal today and did a little theorycrafting for this, knowing it would be a long grind to get. Given the requirements, I needed both a source of 10000 damage and a source of 10000 healing, and given that I'm restricted to normal games (no Ao100/666), that left Medical Armor and Vampyre for healing. I considered a Medical Armor (N) strategy with jumping in and out of lava/acid, but I wasn't 100% sure if it would like I envisioned it to, and it would also take quite a bit longer, at the trade-off of being significantly easier to execute.

So I went with Vampyre and played around in the City of Skulls. I wasn't too big of a fan of the strategy since I wasn't safe from being swarmed against Lost Souls, and would occasionally need to leave the nearby area to pick off a few at a time to heal back up. On top, the Pain Elemental is always roaming around and attacking. I came up with a better strategy idea and fortunately, I had the perfect setup for it in the same run just a couple floors later.

Essentially, I'd trap a Pain Elemental in a room with a barrel blocking its way, in order to cause it to continually create Lost Souls, without being able to move around, attack, etc, while at the same time, blocking off all walls around me so that only one Lost Soul could hit me if desired.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I would camp in this position and attack to the left until I reached maximum health before decay (150% since I only had one level of Badass). Then I would run out to get hit repeatedly:

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Once I dropped to about 50%, I would run back in my hole to regain health. Rinse and repeat. This was much easier to execute, it was safer, and it was much faster too! I peaked around 120 damage a minute when I was clicking my mouse fast, and with some Lost Soul luck of jumping into the hole at a fast rate. After about an hour or so, I met the requirement:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following that, I went to clear out the rest of the floor with my Super Shotgun and Invulnerability. There was literally a Lost Soul on every tile possible!

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After all of that, I went on to finishing the run as well to get an easy Cyberdemon kill, as well as more in general too. Another benefit to this strategy compared to using Medical Amor is I increased my general kill count by well over 10000! I'm now about 900 more to reaching 50000 and maxing that statistic out for the rankings!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following that, I went back to going for the Lava Silver Badge. I used the Scout strategy some more, had a few decent runs where I had no way across (I even tried rocket jumping :P), but then on one particular run...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The single best item I could hope for! All I had to do was survive this floor and make it into the secret staircase! Unfortunately though, I was getting swarmed and had a lot of trouble with Barons. I almost died in a situation where one could have attacked and luckily didn't, just as I ran to hide behind a wall:

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Then going into the next floor, I had an Archvile starting with me in a room with no cover, and I just barely killed it!

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And then finally, I was at the staircase down, but with barely any health and the risk of Cacodemons surrounding me upon entry, I went for some healing and ran into an Archvile, who then resurrected a Baron. I ran out of options and...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Definitely my most heartbreaking death. Getting Enviroboots on a run going for this badge is extremely lucky, but it went to waste. One important note with Angel of Impatience is that it's hard to recharge your running tactics when you can't carry health packs, and it's a very key part of using Shotgun builds.

A little later, I had another run where I scooped up Invulnerability just outside the staircase and actually made it across alive on Mt Erebus! I had a good supply of weapons and ammo, but I got blasted off by a Hell Knight and dunked into lava:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So no luck yet. It's been a battle so far trying to get this badge, so it'll be my main focus until I get it now. Hopefully soon!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 21, 2017, 16:03
Day 14:

And so was another day attempting to get the Lava Silver Badge. It's honestly not that hard, but I've had a string of bad luck trying to get it. It's been quite elusive compared to everything else I've gone for so far, which has been annoying, but it's also expected as the easiest achievements are all done now.

I tried some more Scout strategy runs but wasn't getting anywhere, so I decided to buckle down with the Technician strategy again. Like last time, I combined Impatience with Light Travel and focused on building Cerberus Boots. Early on, I was close to finishing the boots, but they were starting to get quite damaged:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I entered Hell's Armory for a bunch more useful mod packs, and potentially some specials and uniques since I decided to go with Scavenger for weapon buffs. Lucky for me, the two in the room were Agility and Power, so I finished and maxed out the boots right away:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After I got the kill on the Shambler, something I hadn't seen before happened! Instead of a special mod pack, I had a Cybernetic Armor waiting for me! I thought it might be because I was using a Technician, but I learned more about how it worked after reading the wiki. I also learned how to get an additional rare mod pack, which is good information for future runs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I wasn't certain if I should have worn the Cybernetic or used Scavenger, but ultimately I decided to use it with a Power Pack, along with setting myself up really well for finally getting the badge:

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Unfortunately...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As my Cerberus Boots were already partially damaged, I wasn't receiving 100% resistances and cooked myself in the lava. It took me a moment to figure out what happened, and I was super disappointed with my own mistake. At least I learned a little more!

Not wanting to repeat that effort right away, I grinded some more Scout runs. After a number of them, I had one with Invulnerability right outside of Limbo, so I grabbed the Nuclear BFG9000, and then had 2x to stack them for Mt Erebus. After blowing up the level and still having a close battle with the Lava Elemental, I finally killed it on Angel of Impatience and got out of there! One of the cheesiest ways to get it for sure, but I was getting fed up with awful deaths trying to get it otherwise.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The next target was Skull Silver Badge. I went with a Vampyre build and wiped out the Abyssal Plains, but after hunting down a missing Hell Knight, I ended up getting blown up. The next run, I had the same issue with a missing Imp, but decided to leave and unsurprisingly wasn't rewarded the badge. Though on the positive, I happened to kill JC for a second time on that run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With having an issue of monsters escaping, I considered grinding for City of Skulls with the same strategy, but decided it might be best to use a Shotgun build instead. I got City of Skulls anyway and easily cleared out the level:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I should mention that I actually was killed on this run, but I guess with the game being on Red Alert, the bomb killed the Spider Mastermind? It actually crashed the game for me and I was worried I'd have lost my badge, but fortunately that wasn't the case. :) Good programming, Kornel! <3

I actually risked this run earlier by being greedy in the Hell's Armory. I was down to 10 seconds and went for both of the mod packs within reach and escaped by the narrowest margin:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Finally, I decided to go for a faster grind with trying to collect more Azrael's Scythes to hit 3. After a few runs of mostly getting killed immediately, I managed to grab my second one. It was actually an exceptional run too with a Homing Phase Device, and several health packs, which is when I realized, I could go to The Vaults and use the Azrael strategy! So I did that successfully and got a surprise platinum badge I wasn't intentionally going for!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With that, I'm only missing Archno Silver Badge for silvers, and I'd like to get another platinum for Br. General ranking. I think I'm also going to target Apostle Insignia. The plan will be grinding Ao100 on Hey, Not Too Rough and hoping I get both Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, likely with using a Vampyre build. Perhaps I can grab some more Cyberdemon kills while doing that too.

As for my overall progress so far:

Rankings: 72/100 Cyberdemon kills, 2/50 JC kills, everything else completed.
Medals: 29/43; all standard ones completed.
Items: 65/67 missing Dragonslayer and Subtle Knife, need 3 of both of those, 2 of Shielded Armor, Mjollnir, Trigun, BFG10K, 1 of Berserk Armor, Revenant's Launcher, Lava Armor, Azrael's Scythe, and I have 439/1000 for a badge.
Assemblies: 100% completed.
Bronze Badges: 100% completed.
Silver Badges: 25/26; missing Arachno Silver Badge.
Gold Badges: 16/26.
Platinum Badges: 4/26.
Diamond Badges: 1/26 (Technician Diamond Badge).
Angelic Badges: 0/17.

The more pages I can completely finish, the better! I'm definitely the type of person who absolutely loves getting those little checks on a checklist of things to do, so I want to finish up some more nearly completed pages and focus entirely on the harder stuff. I've made good progress overall in just 2 weeks, but still have a long way to go for 100%!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 21, 2017, 17:31
Nice progress - I think you've now pulled down all the Silver badges I'm missing, which are mostly special levels on challenges that don't play well together.

As far as grinding JC kills, I haven't done it yet because I can't stand the idea of playing that many games at such a low difficulty and losing my feel for UV and N!, but probably the quickest method would just be ITYTD Conqueror runs. You don't have to do all the levels, but you still get the supplies to make it to JC, and everything is super easy.

Ao100 and pray for DS/BA is probably one of the least efficient methods of grinding Apostle Insignia - in fact, I'm not entirely sure that Apostle kills count toward the JC killcount for Apostle rank =P
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 22, 2017, 10:49
Day 15:

My first target this time was Arachno Silver Badge to reach 26/26, and went with Darkness+Confidence to start. I had a couple of early runs with rummaging through Deimos Lab for equipment, but kept getting Halls of Carnage:

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I eventually got one run with Spider's Lair, but had no Rocket Launcher for destroying corpses and ended up dying. I noticed after a little wiki browsing that regular Arachnotrons have -100% melee resistance, which I didn't know, so I went with a Vampyre build and using Light Travel. I had a long, solid run that was set to go, but again, got Halls of Carnage. Fortunately, my run after was insanely well-prepared and I rolled Spider's Lair:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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As you can imagine, I crushed it:

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Another JC kill was nice too! And with that, I've collected all of the silver badges!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next was getting another platinum badge to reach the next ranking. I tried a few others, but ultimately went for Eagerness Platinum Badge using Impatience+Overconfidence and had a huge stroke of good luck with a pair of Invulnerabilities next to each other on floor 3, and then a second pair on floor 4, so I entered the Mortuary with 4x stacked Invulnerability! I grabbed the Nuclear BFG9000 and did some stair-diving until the end. They finally wore out when I was a few steps away to the stairs on floor 7, but the area was clear. Following that, I blew up the Spider Mastermind and reached Br General!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To fill in a few more easy medals, I went for Sunrise Iron Fist using a Vampyre build on I'm Too Young To Die, and it was total cake:

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Then finally, I went for Every Soldier's Medal using Humanity+Confidence and played very, very slowly. I found a Missile Launcher and a Trigun in Deimos Lab, so Invulnerability or not, I was set to go. I rolled The Wall, and camped hard until the level was clear. I decided then that I should go for Spider-Killer Cross too if I'm lucky enough to get the level to spawn, and perhaps get Invulnerability just before entering. I actually did find one on floor 5, but it ran out before I could enter Spider's Lair, so I did it slow style with a Tactical Shotgun and careful camping to score the medal! To finish off, I was planning on nuking the Cyberdemon, but I couldn't get the Trigun to work? Was it because my gun was fully loaded? Or is it prevented on Angel of Humanity? Perhaps I just mis-clicked a bunch or something, but I couldn't set it off and died.

So doubling my initial goal, I got both of those Humanity medals, which brought my medal total to 32/43 and thus rewarding me with Heroic Platinum Badge! Very happy with that result!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm not entirely sure what my next goals will be as everything is getting grindier and more challenging, so I'll likely rotate what I go for and see what happens!

Here's my current checklist of what I'm missing to get to 100%:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 23, 2017, 15:21
Day 16:

I was very successful and lucky in my play after rotating around and trying for a bunch of different medals and badges!

My first target was Longinus Platinum Badge, which while difficult is pretty reasonable with Berserk+Overconfidence. After many attempts, I rolled an insane floor 1:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And by a stroke of luck, I was warped just outside the Angel of Death's room with the Phase Device:

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With Brute, Invulnerability, and a Chainsaw (T), I was barely able to kill the Angel of Death after countless attacks, and followed that up with clearing the rest of the level!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With that, I was one diamond badge away from another rank increase, so I tried a few and unsurprisingly struggled a lot. I'm not quite at the skill level required for these yet and went with strategy and luck grinding instead. I opted for Marksman Diamond Badge as I could play for getting a nuke on Spider Mastermind, and with some Invulnerability luck, I did just that! It was nice I also received Marksman Gold Badge too, which I was also missing!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm definitely running out on easy stuff now as I've kept saying, but moreso after every badge and medal! I went for Max Carnage+Overconfidence next and tried to avoid as much damage as possible to get the badge, though realized that this wouldn't work since Untouchable is incompatible with Overconfidence. I decided to play out the run anyway and hey, it turns out it does work! My guess is the Destroyer Badges check for damage itself rather than the medal.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Naturally, I went for Platinum next:

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Very cool to get it the very next run! And of course, that left the Destroyer Diamond Badge on Nightmare! This one took some effort to get, and I had a few extremely trollish runs:

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But with enough attempts, I got it! I lucked out on a string of Invulnerabilities and not only did I take less than 50, but I actually didn't take a single point of damage!

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With having earned a surprise diamond badge I wasn't anticipating, I just needed another platinum badge to reach yet another rank increase! I went for Shottyman Platinum Badge with the intention of nuking the Spider Mastermind like usual, but instead, I had 2x stacked Invulnerability and just fired point blank until she died:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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So I'm now at Lt. General with my badge count being 26/26/18/9/3/0! With my current struggles for more difficult badges, I'm going to put my focus into reaching Apostle ranking for the next while until it's done. I currently need 22 more Cyberdemon kills to reach Cyberdemon, and then 47 more JC kills to be 100% completed with that section. I've messed with a few strategies, including trying to get another Ao666 going, but I think the most efficient way so far for Cyberdemon killing is Angel of Pacifism and using the nuke on him. I've also messed with mixing it with Masochism for a consistent health boost every few floors, but am undecided which is easiest. I'm also not certain whether Scout or Marine is best for this grind, so I change up how I play frequently. 22 more is peanuts though and I wouldn't mind some more relaxed gameplay for awhile.

After that, I believe the most efficient way of getting JC kills is Berserk+Overconfidence Marine runs. Vampyre is excellent, and getting the Longinus Spear is very consistent and effective. I think fresh runs from the beginning aren't worth the time investment and getting a nuke+Invulnerability can be tricky. Perhaps there's a better method of grinding for JC kills, so I'll experiment a bit more, but these will be my goals for now!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 23, 2017, 16:11
Nice progress... and congratulations on the damageless N! win. Sure it was on AoOC, so no Angelic Badge, but even I haven't managed that.  You are correct about Destroyer checking damage not the Medal - I also got my badge with OC, which should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.

Keep up the good work... even if you feel like you're hitting a wall,  keep at it. There's always something else within reach,  and the more you push yourself,  the better you'll get under the conditions for the harder badges.

As far as that goes,  thanks again for starting this thread and motivating me to keep pushing myself, too. I've gone a bit quiet lately but I'm in the middle of a project which will take my profile to new heights,  and it's thanks to you that I'm doing so.

Edit: interesting thought on the JC farming with Berserk plus Overconfidence... that is probably faster then my ITYTD method, and I'm surprised and a bit disappointed that I didn't come up with it myself. Maybe we'll need to re-christen AoOC abuse as Icy-ing ;)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 24, 2017, 08:59
Thanks! Looking forward to seeing what you're trying to complete yourself!

Day 17:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After some experimentation and research, I'm quite confident I've discovered the absolute best way to farm Cyberdemon kills. It honestly could be faster to use this method from 0 to 100 than even an Ao666 run on Ultra-Violence!

Start with choosing Angel of Pacifism, Hey, Not Too Rough, and Marine. Build your character with Hellrunner->Hellrunner->Tough as Nails->Tough as Nails->Dodgemaster, and then your pick between Badass and Ironman. I think Badass is the better pick, but there's an argument for both, and by the time you're far enough to choose between them, it's pretty negligible overall.

I tried using the Scout with his superior speed and early Intuition to search for Computer/Tracking Maps and Invulnerability, but the Marine's extra beefiness and in particular, extra power-up duration makes him by far the best choice. I was getting a Cyberdemon kill once about every 7-8 minutes, and with close to 95% run completion consistency! The first 4 floors can be a bit tricky to survive since you're quite weak, but on floor 5, you have access to Chained Court. It's definitely worth it to seek out the bonus level, even if the regular staircase starts in plain sight because 5x stacked Berserk Packs with their extra movement speed and resistances is extremely good! So long as you can find the staircases reasonably fast on floors 6 and 7, you'll be well into Deimos before they wear off!

Once you're in Deimos, you have a pile of Large Med-Packs from Phobos Anomaly and hopefully previous floors, nearly full health, and a fresh Red Armor. Most of the levels in this episode also have two sets of staircases, which significantly increases the speed of finishing each floor, and once you have Tough as Nails (received as soon as you finish Phobos), you're significantly sturdier when you're getting pelted by everything, in particular, melee attacks. The only bonus levels in Deimos I would skip are Abyssal Plains (though I did beat it once) and Halls of Carnage.

There's also a very cool trick for Angel of Pacifism. It's not correct to say that you get a level-up every third floor, rather, you get one on floors, 3, 6, 9, 12, etc, even if you enter bonus levels in between. However, if you enter a bonus level on any of these floors, you get an additional level-up as the game still treats you on that number! So for example on floor 9 when you receive a level-up, you can then enter Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, still be treated as if you were on floor 9, and get an immediate level-up again! This helps a lot with building up your character, and while it's not necessary to go out of your way to find the bonus levels, they only make the run easier for when you do!

I completed nearly every attempt I did with this strategy, only dying to the early floors a few times, and zero deaths after Chained Court! My longest run was also just over 11 minutes, with my fastest being close to under 5 minutes! The speed, the consistency, the ease of execution all make this strategy phenomenal, and when you actually don't get a run, it's often due to a death at the beginning, so no real progress lost!

So with all that, I quickly finished off all the Cyberdemons I needed to get to the next ranking! All that remains now is 47x JC kills. I'll be doing some more research into figuring out the optimal way to grind for these and hopefully get Apostle ranking in a reasonable amount of time. I think Berserk+Overconfidence is the way to go, but perhaps a double nuke strat with Pacifism could be better? I'll have to see.

Here's the post-mortem of my fastest run. I'm very confident much faster can be completed too with good luck and intent to specifically finish as fast as possible:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 24, 2017, 22:49
Quote from: Icy on September 22, 2017, 10:49
To finish off, I was planning on nuking the Cyberdemon, but I couldn't get the Trigun to work? Was it because my gun was fully loaded? Or is it prevented on Angel of Humanity? Perhaps I just mis-clicked a bunch or something, but I couldn't set it off and died.

None of those things should prevent it from working; shift-R should do the alternate reload which will give you a prompt that says something like "Activate the dangerous Angel Arm? [Y/n]" and then pushing shift-Y will immediately nuke the level.  I've never had any problems with it, so I'm not sure what happened in your game.

Quote from: Icy on September 23, 2017, 15:21
My first target was Longinus Platinum Badge, which while difficult is pretty reasonable with Berserk+Overconfidence.

Just out of curiosity, did you take advantage of the free berserk power-up you get from dropping and picking up the chainsaw?  (I love doing that)  :)

Quote from: Icy on September 23, 2017, 15:21
...
  On level 2 he finally killed by a arachnotron.
...

I was momentarily confused by the weird grammar of the message, but then I realized that the Arachnotron killed you with its wimpy melee attack!  That's gotta be a rare event!  :D

Quote from: Icy on September 24, 2017, 08:59
There's also a very cool trick for Angel of Pacifism. It's not correct to say that you get a level-up every third floor, rather, you get one on floors, 3, 6, 9, 12, etc, even if you enter bonus levels in between. However, if you enter a bonus level on any of these floors, you get an additional level-up as the game still treats you on that number! So for example on floor 9 when you receive a level-up, you can then enter Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, still be treated as if you were on floor 9, and get an immediate level-up again! This helps a lot with building up your character, and while it's not necessary to go out of your way to find the bonus levels, they only make the run easier for when you do!

Ah, thanks for this!  I noticed long ago that the AoPc level-ups don't happen as the game describes and that I sometimes get extra level-ups by entering special levels, but I never actually investigated it to figure out the pattern.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 25, 2017, 13:50
My guess is the Trigun doesn't work on Angel of Pacifism? Maybe there's a limit to how low your HP can go. I actually was wondering that if you had 12 max HP (Pacifism+Ironman) and used it 3 times, would your maximum HP be set to 0, or is there potential for a glitch due to an oversight and going into the negatives? Kind of wish I had tested it in hindsight.

I actually didn't know about the Chainsaw Berserk trick! That makes a huge difference!

Day 18:

I didn't progress too much as my focus was on theorycrafting an efficient strategy for JC, and I've narrowed it down to 4 different kinds. I still killed JC 5 times though and now at 8 kills, but still a long way to go before hitting 50.

Strat #1: Angel of Berserk + Overconfidence

With massive melee power with semi-permanent Berserk and Longinus Spear, the Mortuary/Limbo are quite easy, though Mt Erebus/Lava Pits can be an issue if you have to wade through lava. The resistances help though. This strategy gives the easiest time fighting JC, but getting started is hard given that you need to wipe out most of floor 1, followed by all of Unholy Cathedral. Not having known the Berserk trick with the Chainsaw though, that changes a lot and perhaps using this strategy will be much better. Before entering Unholy Cathedral, I like to be at level 2 + 44% so that I unlock Berserker just as I reach the Demons. They can be lured out into the lava, but not all of them will chase you into there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strat #2: Angel of Max Carnage + Red Alert

Instead of relying on finding nukes and going through Mortuary/Limbo, Red Alert provides that for you, so all you need is the Lava Element. Even stacked Invulnerability won't last enough and you can't set a fresh nuke when one is already counting down. Max Carnage is to help speed up the kills so you don't run out of time in each level, as well as making Mt Erebus/Limbo go faster. It's nice that you can skip all the bonus levels and can just play normal floors. For the Cyberdemon, I pick up Dodgemaster early and play it safe, then it's easy.

The downside to this strategy is you have to play through the entire game for each JC kill, so while it's reliable and pretty consistent as long as you don't make any mistakes, it takes awhile for each kill.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strat #3: Angel of Max Carnage + Overconfidence

Being given an Assault Shotgun and Minigun while paired with Max Carnage makes getting kills easy. I get Intuition right away and take my time with each kill. Mortuary/Limbo isn't too bad with Plasma Rifle and Minigun against the Archviles, but if the run ever gets out of hand, it's nearly impossible to get back on track. The other nice thing is with no time limit like with Red Alert, I can camp with Nuclear BFG and kill everything slowly; particularly helpful in Lava Pits/Mt Erebus since Radiation Suits can be hard to find in time.

This is the main strategy I've been using as it's a very good balance of consistency and efficiency. It's also not too uncommon to find an additional nuke for JC, but if I have to fight him, Plasma Rifle and Minigun helps a lot. Fortunately in all of my runs with this strat, I've been able to blow him up right away, but JC is certainly the most dangerous to fight without a nuke when using this strategy, which is the main disadvantage.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Note that in the above run, it took much longer than necessary as I was firing my Nuclear BFG in the Lava Pits forever, not realizing there's a maximum projectile distance and that I wasn't killing all the Hell Knights. :P

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strat #4: Angel of Pacifism

By grabbing an additional nuke (Nuclear BFG or Thermie) along with Invulnerability before Spider Mastermind, you can double nuke the ending to kill JC. The Marine with this strat is very sturdy because of all the fast level-ups, as well as having a pretty easy start, but the obvious disadvantage is low consistency with relying on good luck towards the end. I tried it a bunch but actually haven't completed a run with this strategy. I definitely don't think it's worth using.

---

I'm leaning on using Max Carnage + Overconfidence as the best strat for efficient JC kills, but I'm going to revisit the Berserk strategy now that I know the Chainsaw trick to fix one of the hardest parts of those runs. The big plus is that if I ever am playing poorly or on a bad streak with a strategy I can rotate and use a different one. I'm not sure what strategy my kills will mainly be composed of, but regardless of how I play, I'm keeping my focus on getting those JC kills.

I might not get too many more kills right away as I do more research and testing, and this will all take awhile in any case, but I want to reach Apostle ranking!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: BBHood217 on September 25, 2017, 17:21
That run was long over, but I still need to mention something regarding cybernano armor and the Dragonslayer: You can't take off cybernano armor once you wear it.  I mean it's a moot point now since you didn't find the Dragonslayer, but it's something to keep in mind for next time.

Quote from: Icy on September 25, 2017, 13:50
you can't set a fresh nuke when one is already counting down

I found this out during one of my Ao666 runs, I tried to use a nuke when the dlevel already started with one and the game just yelled at me if I was crazy and prevented my nuke from being used.  I wonder if an active nuke would also prevent the Trigun's nuclear option from being used.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Tormuse on September 25, 2017, 23:27
Quote from: Icy on September 25, 2017, 13:50
My guess is the Trigun doesn't work on Angel of Pacifism?

AoPc only blocks firing of weapons, not reloading.  You can still use the Angel Arm in AoPc because it's an alt-reload action.

Quote from: Icy on September 25, 2017, 13:50
Maybe there's a limit to how low your HP can go. I actually was wondering that if you had 12 max HP (Pacifism+Ironman) and used it 3 times, would your maximum HP be set to 0, or is there potential for a glitch due to an oversight and going into the negatives? Kind of wish I had tested it in hindsight.

This is possible; I don't actually know.  The Trigun is such a rare find that I've never really tested it because I'm afraid of making my max hitpoints go too low.

As for all your theorycrafting for getting JC kills, you made me curious about what I did, so I dug through my old mortems...  It seems that back in version 0.9.9.4, I just did a bunch of Scout Blademaster speedruns at HNTR.  (I use the word "speedrun" loosely; they weren't really that fast, because I had to secure the Nuclear BFG and Lava Element; 30-40 minutes each)  More recently, in 0.9.9.7, I padded my JC kills by playing AoB+AoOC and that went a lot faster.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: MaiZure on September 26, 2017, 05:27
Quote from: Tormuse on September 25, 2017, 23:27
This is possible; I don't actually know.  The Trigun is such a rare find that I've never really tested it because I'm afraid of making my max hitpoints go too low.

Alt-reload behavior on Tri-Gun:
being.hpmax = math.max( being.hpmax - 5, 10 )

Looks like it won't go below 10. Since that's the starting health on Angel of Humanity...feel free to nuke 'em till they glow :P

EDIT: Scratch that - you MUST have more than 10 hps to activate angel arm. Boo!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 26, 2017, 05:53
Open source to the rescue again. Thanks for having a look at that, Maizure.

I suppose now that I'm trying to take up coding, I ought to get a copy of the source and see what I can learn from it...
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: ZicherCZ on September 26, 2017, 06:21
Quote from: Sereg on September 26, 2017, 05:53
I suppose now that I'm trying to take up coding, I ought to get a copy of the source and see what I can learn from it...

Go for it - the source can provide you with a good number of code-reading exercises.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: MaiZure on September 26, 2017, 07:30
Quote from: Sereg on September 26, 2017, 05:53
I suppose now that I'm trying to take up coding, I ought to get a copy of the source and see what I can learn from it...

Or porting it to something nicer than Pascal ;)

Actually, I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet...or maybe it has and I'm just behind the times
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 26, 2017, 14:59
Yes, I typo'd and meant Angel of Humanity, not Pacifism, but seems you guys figured that out. Interesting detail on how it works with the Trigun! That would explain why I couldn't get to work. Good to know!

Day 19:

I learned the Chainsaw trick on Angel of Berserk+Overconfidence and tested it a little. I actually forgot that you also get the health boost to 100%, so it's even better than I initially imagined!

I also made the important discovery that it actually adds to your special/unique counter too! In fact, on Angel of Overconfidence when you start with the Combat Pistol, Assault Shotgun, and Minigun, you can add 3 each time by dropping them and picking them back up! So being distracted by that instead of grinding JC kills, I reached 1000!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's a big scratch on another page, another platinum badge collected, and this helps significantly in regular games by having less distractions (collecting specials/uniques purely for increasing the counter)! I played on Max Carnage for runs where a unique spawned on floor 1, and I actually grabbed a few additional ones I needed towards getting 3 of each! All that remains now is Subtle Knife x3, Dragonslayer x3, BFG10K x2, Trigun x1, and Revenant's Launcher x1!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So with grinding that, I didn't play out as many JC runs as I was planning to, but still got a couple in and thoroughly tested Angel of Berserk+Overconfidence with my new knowledge. With essentially carrying around a Berserk Pack at the start, killing the Angel of Death to get going is now very common, rather than a grind to get a run! With Berserk's effects, ridiculous killing power, self-healing with Vampyre, and a trivial fight against JC himself, I'm very confident this is the #1 strategy for efficient JC kills! Max Carnage+Overconfidence is a bit too risky, especially when fighting JC, and Max Carnage+Red Alert, while certainly the easiest to play and extremely consistent, is quite a bit slower.

I got 2 more kills and now at 10/50, so still quite a few to go. Now that the research phase is complete though, I'll just be grinding runs and hopefully get my total increasing at a better rate.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mt Erebus was interesting:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Good thing I had a Homing Phase Device! I also got a rather interesting colour aesthetic with the generated items:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you are personally interested in hitting 1000 specials/uniques, definitely use the Overconfidence trick, and if you're interested in JC kills, I highly recommend going with Berserk+Overconfidence! I'll be continuing JC runs and perhaps hit 50 within a week to reach Apostle!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on September 26, 2017, 21:19
Nicely done. I've completed my current mission, but despite it being a full 666 completion, and me stopping to collect every damn special item I could see, I'm still only at 517 or so. Although I suppose I don't really need the platinum badges anymore, I may decide to use your method(dude, you're really taking over the Sereging from me, here =P) in the interest of completion.

It also looks like you'll soon pass me in Experience Rank, and once you're done with your current grind, I have no doubt you'll catch my Skill Rank quickly.

Good luck, and keep it rolling.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 27, 2017, 14:52
I saw your Ao666 completion, very nice! Yeah, I didn't get anywhere close to 1000 after my own Ao666.

I've always been a defensive, low-risk, strategic player, and I always specialize on figuring out every detail about games I play, what I can abuse, and all of what's possible. I have zero problems with cheesing for medals. Some people who have a similar playstyle tend to replace that with actual skill, but I'm very keen on developing that too. To be the best at anything and to reach difficult goals, you must be all encompassing and not restrain yourself over imaginary honor or swag. Optimization is the funnest aspect of gaming to me. <3

Day 20:

Nothing too exciting, just some more JC kills. After spending some more time using the Berserk+Overconfidence strat, it is without a doubt the #1 efficient way to farm runs! I got 6 more kills, bringing my total to 16/50. Still quite a bit to go!

Here's a post-mortem of another very fast run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This run was also neat in that I got an early nuke and skipped Mortuary. With that, I was able to get 100% kills:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

More to come!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 28, 2017, 13:46
Day 21:

Still continuing JC kills, now at 20/50! I had a bad streak of games due to poor decision making, terrible luck, and sometimes combinations of both, so I played out some Max Carnage+Overconfidence for a change of pace, and here's how that went:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah...

This was my first run without having a double nuke and having to fight JC the old fashioned way. Unfortunately contrary to what I thought, the Minigun doesn't immediately tear him apart because of constant spawns getting in the way, him phasing into the dark, needing to heal frequently, and so forth. I eventually tried phasing away myself to regain control, but it turns out he'll endlessly fire rockets and spawn enemies, even from the opposite side of the level. Eventually, I got completely flooded over and started running out of ammo. This strat doesn't work nearly as well as I thought it did.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This run was pretty standard with the Berserk+Overconfidence strat, but I lucked out with stacked Invulnerability and a Homing Phase Device on floor 6, so I was able to skip the Lava Pits!

One of the big factors with Berserk being so good against JC is how powerful it is without need of Max Carnage, having constant healing through Vampyre, double damage with Berserk, and at least 60% melee resistance, but also frequently 85% fire resistance through stacking any leftover Envirosuits.

I'll need to buckle down and stick with Berserk strat and perhaps use Red Alert instead if I'm not playing particularly well.

That's all for now!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 29, 2017, 14:01
Day 22:

25/50; halfway there! I had a hot streak early on and was hoping for more runs, but things went sour shortly after.

On one run, I had stacked Invulnerability and a Homing Phase Device again to skip Mt Erebus and finished with my fastest run yet for the sub 15!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And just two runs after that, I smashed it!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following these runs was a bad streak of gameplay and luck, and sitting at 24/50, I really wanted to reach the half-way milestone, so I went with the true backup strat that actually works with Max Carnage+Red Alert, but as you can see by the completion time, it's strictly a backup strat:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also had a funny run where I had collected 7 Phase Devices, none of which were Homing:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One detail I forgot to mention for the last few days is the usefulness of Combat Knives. I frequently carry at least one for destroying barrels, mainly for creating a more direct path from Invulnerability to the stairs, but occasionally for attacking monsters too.

I'm going to go beast mode this weekend and hopefully hit 50!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on September 30, 2017, 09:14
Day 23:

32/50 now! Lots of solid runs and not too much difficulty in getting kills this time. I had one run to Lava Pits where I ran out of health and had to bail in hopes of finding a replacement Invulnerability on floor 7, but it didn't pan out. On a different run, I had Mt Erebus with no Envirosuits and played roulette with a Phase Device and happened to get one of the best possible locations:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's some post-mortems for your reading pleasure:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then on floor 1 of a run, I found a Trigun!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Since it was an early start, I opted to go for Fallout Platinum Cross, I just needed to rely on luck with Invulnerability since there are so few floors on Angel of Overconfidence. Well, with some super appreciated luck, I got one on floor 2, with stairs nearby, and started to nuke everything!

On floor 5 it finally ran out and I started to get a little worried about completing. I was also worried about dying since I wasn't using my standard trait setup, on top of low inventory and low health. I clicked a Computer Map on floor 6 and this was revealed to me:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I carefully went straight for the Invulnerability and nuked some more floors. I was tempted to grab the Lava Element, but I didn't want to ruin such a rare run. In hindsight, there wasn't any risk, but I figured that I can always get another JC kill and not really another Trigun run. I made it to Dis just as Invulnerability ran out, so I missed out on killing JC, but that's perfectly fine by me.

One other cool thing that happened is with the heavy usage of Angel Arm, my health actually exceeded 200% for awhile:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I assume this happened since my health was larger than my maximum health and it doesn't scale down. Pretty neat! I used to simplify my thinking in that Badass x2 removes health decay, but since you can go over 200%, that's technically not true!

With that, I scratched another medal, of which is super annoying to get! My original plan was to grind a Scout with Intuition on Angel of Confidence and scouring through Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab until I got a Trigun. I'm very happy I don't have to do that! On top, this was my 3rd Trigun, so now I'm just missing Dragonslayer x3, Subtle Knife x3, and BFG10K x2!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Good progress with an extra surprise!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on October 01, 2017, 09:32
Day 24:

38/50, getting closer to the end of this! I'm really looking forward to moving onto other goals afterwards.

I had one Max Carnage+Red Alert run that I was playing out trying to get 100% kills for the badge, but on one floor, I took one step around a corner and a Former Commando immediately melted me. Pretty crushed about that one, but at least I've seen the challenge is pretty easy and I look forward to trying it again.

Another little detail I've learned a few days ago is when you gib a Pain Elemental, it doesn't produce Lost Soul spawns on death, which is very handy to know! It helps plan out when I want to go Berserk, because they're quite annoying to deal with, and are one of the main causes of early deaths in my runs. I definitely miss having ranged attacks. :P

Also one on of my runs, I got a really cool map unlike one I've ever seen before so far:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Really neat how tiny the level was!

All that said, nothing too exciting again. I'm learning a lot of minor details in my play and getting better at my reasoning with the game, so I'm really keen on playing for badges and medals again!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on October 01, 2017, 20:12
Interesting level - not sure I've seen that before.

Keep up the good work - not alot to say right now during your JC grind, but I'm still following your progress.
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on October 02, 2017, 14:04
Yeah, not too fascinating with grinding the same thing repeatedly, but progress will be more interesting soon!

Day 25:

45/50 JC kills now and at the home stretch! If my luck pans out well, I'll get this done tonight!

I went for another attempt at Max Carnage+Red Alert for the Quartermaster Gold Badge while getting a JC kill and pulled it off this time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also had another neat level on one of my runs with an island completely detached from any bridges and walkways:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's pretty much it for today! Apostle soon!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on October 03, 2017, 15:01
Day 26:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After about a week of grinding for JC kills, I've finally reached 50 and achieved Apostle ranking! :D 100% completion of the ranking, all done forever!

I had a bit of a struggle getting the last 5 runs, but I was very motivated to get it done. After getting a bit annoyed again with Berserk+Overconfidence, I tried some more Max Carnage+Overconfidence and lucked out one run with a second nuke. Another run with it, I had the Jackhammer and yet I was still killed by JC. Once again, this strategy is very inconsistent and very difficult to complete without another nuke. With an extra however, it's very fast and easy.

Another run died to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Funny that it came up after the topic of rare maps.

I also am continuing to develop my gameplay skills and created a nice setup to deal with Cacodemons without putting myself in danger. I thought it was a bit clever. :)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I got to 49/50, I had some more unlucky deaths and eventually got another run going where I started off with a nuke on floor 1, allowing me to skip Mortuary/Limbo. However, I repeatedly got into bad situations, had very low gear all throughout, and had to start stair-diving. I got to just outside the Lava Pits, but had no Platsteels, no Phase Devices, no Envirosuits (one on the next floor though :P), nothing, so the only hope left was finding Invulnerability on floor 7.

I step down and see this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And with that, I was set to fight JC with by far the worst setup I've had compared to all of my 49 kills, making for a very climactic finish. I barely scrapped by with enough health and almost died a couple times, but did indeed secure the win:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So with that, no more JC runs! I'll probably be rotating around again on what to do next with all the badges and medals left! I could continue collecting the rest of the gold badges, or finishing more of the easy medals, or seeking out Dragonslayer, Subtle Knife, and BFG10K, or perhaps earn my first angelic badge! In any case, it'll be far more exciting and fun than what I've been up that last while here!

Very happy with this achievement!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: scotherns on October 04, 2017, 01:10
Congratulations!
Title: Re: The Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on October 04, 2017, 14:42
Thanks!

Day 27:

With Apostle now done, I tried out a few challenges and rotated around. I had a few decent runs at some of them, but died repeatedly. Eventually, I decided to try for Masochist Gold Badge, and tried to combine Masochism+Pacifism, given that I'd get a guaranteed health boost every 3 levels. I think it's a decent strategy, but it wasn't working out for me. Instead, I opted for Max Carnage instead and that worked out much better. Since I'm a fairly careful and defensive player, the lack of health wasn't too big of a deal.

I focused a lot on killing everything since I wanted to keep up a flow of healing, and ended up getting 100% kills! I was at the Spider Mastermind and decided to nuke her for fun and continue the run with JC. Until now, I never got a kill on him with Max Carnage, but with more levels, Dodgemaster, and a BFG, it went much better! 51/50! :P

Spoiler (click to show/hide)