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DoomRL => Discussion => Topic started by: Icy on July 03, 2020, 18:08

Title: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 03, 2020, 18:08
Hello once again! I hope you've all been well under these extraordinary times.

Continuing my trend of playing this game every few years, I've had an itch to pick it up again and am keen to push even further and faster than I did previously! For those who may be unfamiliar, I had a daily blog of sorts with my progress before, "The Journey to 100% (https://forum.chaosforge.org/index.php/topic,8171.0.html)", and think it would be fun to do it another time. Maybe I'll get much closer to 100% this time, maybe I'll crash and burn after playing so much again, who knows. Maybe there will be a part 3 in 2024 or something.

The main thing that always draws me in is D***RL is it's an extremely fun, well-designed, satisfying game to play, even if there are some balance issues. It really fits well with my grindy and analytical gaming playstyle, and I can enjoy playing single-player at my own pace.

Since I know so much more now and am far more experienced coming into the game this time, I think I'll quickly get back to where I was before. For reference, the last time I tried this, I clocked in over 300 hours within 2 months, while also working full time, and at the current moment, I just finished my last day of any sort of productivity for the next couple months. I did have some backups of my progress before, but not up to when I stopped last time, and quite honestly, I think it would be a lot more fun to start fresh anyway.

I'm thinking of doing the same type of blog style I did before, both to provide some interesting reading material, and to also contain everything I do in one place instead of flooding out what other players post in the mortem section. It's also helpful to have a lot of strategy ideas for those who are also seeking achievements, and I definitely will be referring to my old mortems to help myself.

I also think this time I'll try some non-badge challenges that seem like fun to keep things interesting. Some sort of difficulty existing between Diamond and Angelic would be wonderful as the jump between them is quite ridiculous and can be demotivating. That said, I really want to try to catch Papilio and Tormuse. One itch that I never scratched is I was an Angel of 100 on Nightmare from getting the last Medal and with it, two more Diamond Badge, which I really wish I did.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy what I have to share and hopefully don't take this in as spammy or anything like that. :)
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 03, 2020, 18:18
Day 1

Starting off, I of course don't have access to all the game settings that help scoop up tons of easy badges, so I had to do things the old-fashioned way.

I went with a basic run of ITYTD with a Cateye build and clearing everything along the way. Unlike last time, I actually killed JC on my first run and finished with a good pile of Bronze Badges. It took awhile since I had to refer to the wiki a number of times, but I'm getting the hang of things again.

One mistake I made was firing at him early, since he was in my extended vision through Cateye and I almost died for it. Because of the extra Barons, I actually got a level up after finishing the game, which made for a very important and tough decision.

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My next goal was to complete the game in under 10 minutes, which I did through ITYTD and a Melee build. There wasn't anything too interesting, and naturally didn't want to waste too much time on screenshots.

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Next was playing on Angel of Light Travel using Melee for some more easy badges. I had my first death after some poor positioning and tried again.

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I had one solid run going and after killing 3 of the Archviles in The Mortuary, I was too tempted to clear it instead of taking an easy exit for my first Silver Badge and unfortunately died shortly after killing the last one.

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I decided to try something else and went for Arena Silver Badge with a Shotgun build on Angel of Light Travel and got it fairly easily, even nabbing the Medal for not taking any hits!

Later, I stumbled upon an Invulnerability somewhat close to the stairs into Phobos Anomaly...

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...but it unfortunately just barely ran out.

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Along the way, I had an interesting situation and was able to create a nice setup for clearing the rest of the monsters.

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I also decided to try out Spider's Lair, but ammo started to get quite tight and would need to lure the Arachnotrons into clumps, but unfortunately that wasn't enough.

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After that level, I was killed pretty much immediately after.

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With some new options available, I combined Angel of Berserk and Confidence to score a variety of Silver Badges. I was extremely fortunate with getting a Piercing Chainsaw quite quickly, and later found Butcher's Cleaver, alongside grabbing Longinus Spear!

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Here's another interesting setup I was able to create, where I then caused a Revenant to blow himself up along with some friends.

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I decided to try Limbo this time and had some close calls. The instant Berserk boost with dropping the Chainsaw helped a lot, and then Angelic Armor made the rest very easy.

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To get my sixth Silver Badge, I decided Gatekeeper would be a good pick and went with a generic Shotgun build. I kept going since I had a decent kill streak but a Zombieman shooting not me, but a Barrel ended it just a little early. After that, I got impatient and recklessly charged the Cyberdemon.

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That's all my progress so far, but most importantly, I have all the useful challenges unlocked with Max Carnage, Overconfidence, and Light Travel, so I should be able to complete heaps of achievements now!
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 04, 2020, 18:32
What happens when you combine experience, ambitiousness, time, and a little bit of luck? Well, you might get something like this:

Day 2

After unlocking all of the helpful challenge modes, I decided to take advantage and start grinding. I went for difficult combinations of challenges so I could amass a pile of badges with each completion.

My first choice was a dual-angel game with Max Carnage and Overconfidence on Nightmare. Starting with all that you need and doing massive damage makes it pretty easy.

Along the way, I had a triple Cacodemon vault and thought I was going to go deaf:

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I also had a nasty start on one level:

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But overall it was pretty easy.

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Next was a dual-angel of Shotgunnery and Overconfidence. I was somewhat tempted to go for the Angelic Badge, but opted to not push quite that far. Early on I got a nice setup of Invulnerabilities which carried me throughout the run:

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Next was a dual-angel of Pacifism and Overconfidence with speeding through in mind. I managed a pretty fast completion:

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Then I tried Max Carnage with Light Travel and got an awesome item to help out:

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I had a close call though:

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Next was Berserk with Overconfidence on Nightmare and without Brute. My general gameplan was to use Eagle Eye for accuracy boosts, grab a nearby Invulnerability, and then rush to the Angel of Death. It took some tries, and I almost died after the kill, but got it done.

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Following that was Impatience with Overconfidence on Ultra-Violence to collect a few more easy badges.

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Next would be a full win on Nightmare with the help of Max Carnage and Overconfidence, ideally with a double Nuke. I was fortunate to roll Limbo, but then unfortunate when I got stuck:

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After escaping, I found this:

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And this:

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And also this:

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And that was the end of JC:

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I went for a slightly easier challenge next with Darkness and Overconfidence to get a quick Silver Badge:

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Then I noticed I needed a couple more unique items to get another badge, so used Overconfidence and dropped the starting weapons:

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Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 04, 2020, 18:34
And then I grabbed a quick Advanced Assembly using a Technician on Humanity and Overconfidence:

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Next challenge was Marksmanship and Overconfidence, and I had an incredible find early on:

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I was fortunately able to finish the run and score an extra Medal:

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I had an extremely cool tactic pulled off during my next challenge. I was going for Humanity with Overconfidence and stumbled upon a Trigun, which would help a lot with killing the Spider Mastermind. Normally, you can't use it when your max HP is so low, but I snuck in a quick Ironman trait and then blew us both up!

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I then wanted to beef up my other ranking and needed Pistol kills on Cacodemons. I used the Nuke trick to get some quick kills for that while wielding a Pistol:

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Next was Berserk and Overconfidence, with nothing too exciting, but I was fortunate to make a Piercing Chainsaw right before the Spider Mastermind on my completed run:

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Then I went for Marksmanship and Overconfidence on Ultra-Violence:

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And for the grand finale of the day, I decided I was going to go for Angel of 100 on Ultra-Violence and with 100% kills. This would gain me a handful of different badges and is one of my favorite ways to play the game. I was deciding on if I wanted to go with Max Carnage and chose to since it would help with ammo, gibs, and the actual speed of the game.

I went with a hybrid rapid-fire into shotgun build that used Cateye, and was fortunate to find the main weapons I wanted.

Here was a particularly nasty level:

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And I rolled this rather early and just barely survived with some Phase Device luck but I had to deplete my entire inventory of Med-Paks:

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This level was also awful with both the start and the setup. If I had to give up on 100% kills, I could still earn most of the badges, but fortunately I pulled through with all the kills on this level.

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Fairly deep in, I finally found a Nano Pak:

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I decided to hang onto it if I were to stumble upon a Super Shotgun, and held a regular Shotgun as a backup if I ran out of ammo. Nano-Shrapnel also does less damage, although the piercing may negate that:

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And fortunately...

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From this point unless I did something stupid or got horrendous luck, I was pretty golden. The game didn't take long to try me though:

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I also found the last touch for my primary weapon right after:

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A bit later, I also found my backup, which is helpful for clearing scary caves or Cyberdemons:

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The game had been giving me a surprising amount of Cyberdemons, and then really gave me the middle finger:

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So in this situation, I had no way of swiftly killing them all and had to figure something out. It would be awful to die this far in due to terrible luck. I decided I would clear out some of the barrels, let them start to clump towards me, and then I would warp to the left side of the level. Once they then clump around me there, I would use a Homing Phase Device back to the center and then grab the Invulnerability.

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It got very scary, but I managed to make it work. I kept getting Cyberdemons too and just as I was entering the final floor, the game decided to get real cute with me:

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Fortunately, he was easy enough to pick off in this situation. Here's my stats screen just as I descended the final stairs:

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And with that, I managed to complete the whole thing in one try!

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With a very grindy, busy day, my status now after two days of playing again is [22|19/17/14/6/3/0]!

So let's reflect on this a bit. I think this goes to show just how much you can achieve if you already have heavy experience with the game and if you're willing to take all the advantages you can to earn them. It truly is like riding a bike; I think my tactical play is slightly still rusty and I had to refer to the wiki quite a bit, but otherwise I'm playing close to as well as I did before.

I also obviously can't and won't maintain a pace this high. For starters, it's not particularly healthy to do so, and I want to not burn myself out again, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment while my file is still basically fresh as a one-time thing. I still plan to play a lot, but not anywhere near this blistering pace. I'll probably opt for some easy stuff for the next while.

I also think it clearly demonstrates skill level potential in this game. I certainly could not achieve this when I played the game before, as with any newer player. I also imagine those who are even more talented than myself could match it and beyond if they were willing enough. I think that also means that high peaks must exist and I want to try to get to them.

Hopefully this was an interesting read, but please don't be expecting nearly as much content each day. :)
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 05, 2020, 15:45
Day 3

After a crazy day yesterday, I took things more simple. My main two goals for the day were to finish getting all the Bronze Badges, and to collect 1000 Specials.

I started with Pacifist Bronze Badge, which was uneventful and only took one try.

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Next, I combined Angel of Darkness and Angel of Confidence to collect both badges in one run, and to nab Arachno Silver Badge too.

My first attempt went extremely well and I was collecting more than enough for what would be needed.

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But I unfortunately didn't roll Spider's Lair.

I tried again with slightly less gear, in particular missing a weapon for corpse disposal, but didn't have too much trouble.

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Then I went for Marksman Bronze Badge, another one which was trivially easy.

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Then I went for another combo with Angel of Shotgunnery and Red Alert. It was going very well, but I accidentally did a run->wait and you can imagine what happened. The next try, I had better judgment.

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And the last Bronze Badge was Eagerness, again, very easy and nothing worth noting in particular.

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For my next goal, I decided to get one of the big grinds out of the way with getting 1000 Specials. The easiest way to do this is to use Overconfidence, drop the starting Combat Pistol, Assault Shotgun, and Minigun, then pick them up. If you're patient enough, it gets finished without issue.

Along the way, I went for a couple other goals if I had a good start before diving into death, which was the reason for also using Max Carnage. One quick badge was Scavenger Silver Badge.

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One other thing I would go for would be Hell Knight kills with a Pistol and general Melee kills. I was trying to clear Limbo/Mortuary without taking a hit and one of the key ways to do this is to grab the Nuclear BFG9000 and slowly pick off everything. Failing that, I would nuke the level while wielding a Pistol or Melee weapon to be credited for those kills.

One run, I also found this but was unable to grab it. It would have been perfect for getting the related medal too since I was on the last regular floor.

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After various runs and kills, I eventually got a ranking upgrade.

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With enough attempts and some unnecessarily good luck, I eventually got Angelic Badge:

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The other sub-goal I was keeping an eye out for was an early Trigun to get Fallout Platinum Cross. I had it on other runs before, but none of them panned out. Eventually, I got it on the first floor:

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And fortunately was getting plenty of good luck to go with it:

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I had enough Invulnerability to go for a JC kill too, except I ran out of maximum life, forgetting to put a point into Ironman. Luckily, I found an accompanying Thermie to go with my Trigun.

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And then finally after enough runs, I had got 1000 Specials.

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Overall, solid progress but nothing too exciting. There are quite a few future grinds ahead including Cyberdemon kills, JC kills, general kills, Assemblies, 3 of every Special, killing the Apostle, and Experience Level 25. I'll probably do a few more of these before grinding out more Diamonds, though that essentially will mean playing out Archangel of 666 games.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 06, 2020, 17:09
Day 4

I started off going for Scavenger Diamond Badge with Angel of Berserk and Overconfidence, intending to use the Azrael strategy. This would get me a pile of badges without too much difficulty, but unfortunately the runs I had past Unholy Cathedral all died or didn't have enough Med-Paks.

Some interesting setups during runs:

I can't remember if I had done this before, but I thought this trick was pretty nifty to help on low health runs, and makes use of the full inventory.

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One run I had with Azrael's didn't go particularly well:

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This was a very nice setup before Unholy Cathedral, but unfortunately it went to waste as I died almost immediately after before taking advantage of the items:

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And this was a bit silly:

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This was another nice setup that didn't pan out after:

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So after some attempts, I turned my attention to Assembly grinding. My strategy for this is combining Angel of Confidence and Max Carnage and playing through Hell's Armory and Deimos Lab. Even with a stairdive in, it's pretty easy to complete almost every run.

Along the way, I also got Shambler's Head:

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After some runs, I completed my Basic Assembly list:

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Along the way, I also played out runs where I had parts of a missing Assembly and one run I was pretty well set to clear The Vaults with luck:

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Note that with Max Carnage, I was pretty close to death, but fortunately, I had a helping hand in my inventory:

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With that, I got a pair of badges:

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Some more runs in and I completed the Advanced Assembly list as well:

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I am currently missing three Master Assemblies (Cybernano, Biggest BFG, Ripper) and decided to start an Archangel of 666 game. I'm going with a Shotgun and Melee hybrid, intending to get Experience Level 25, collect piles of Specials to reach three of each, score some kills, hopefully get Apostle Insignia, and get some of my missing Assemblies. Because Cybernano is permanent, I won't be getting that, and if I happen to get Dragonslayer before the two weapons, those will have to be passed on too.

I had a very strong start, assembling Cerberus Boots on just level 14:

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Having these so early help a ton. Fluid immunity, better tactical setup, taking advantage of flooding levels, and so much more. They're seriously amazing for not requiring special paks.

Not too long after, I also found my ideal pre-Dragonslayer weapon:

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Despite not being my ideal pick, I also was fortunate to find this:

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And just three levels later:

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So now I'm pretty well set to make an awesome weapon as well as one of my missing assemblies. The next floor, I also found my ideal armor:

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Generally speaking, I like to make Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest, but because I need to wear Berserker Armor later, I'm planning on going with AOP instead, which isn't too much worse overall.

Ammo was getting to be a bit tight, but having an early Railgun has been helping with its fantastic damage-per-ammo ratio. As it was starting to deplete quite a bit more, I found this, which is also my ideal base:

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I was fortunate not to toss my Firestorm Paks for more ammo room, although I didn't hold Bulk Paks. At least ammo isn't a long-term issue now. HNTR has extremely low monster density, that I can easily run away if I need to take multiple shots.

This floor turned out to not be all that difficult, but it looked very scary:

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And the next floor, I found a twin:

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Now I'm really solid on long-term ammo.

A little later, I also found the final piece to my armor:

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And that's about as far as I went. I saved upon entering floor 60, but there should be no issues for this run:

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Hopefully everything goes as planned. I'm still in dire need of a Nano Pak to help reduce the weapon rotating and needing to carry ammo. I'll definitely keep both Nuclear BFGs, but will toss out my Railgun and Tactical Shotgun once I cna finish my Super Shotgun. Ideally, I don't find Dragonslayer until much later so that I can work on my assemblies as well. I may consider holding onto the pieces of Cybernano on the off-chance I can't pickup Dragonslayer, but that shouldn't happen under any circumstances.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 07, 2020, 17:12
Day 5

Continuing my run through 666, I finally found some Bulk Paks to build Biggest BFG and it helped a ton with mass clearing, especially with infinite ammo as that was still a concern.

It was a bit annoying juggling 4 different weapons based on ammo and speed, but at least progression was not too difficult. Later on, I found another special pak:

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And again:

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Still no Nano. Firestorm would also be nice to further enhance my Biggest BFG. One interesting floor gave me this setup:

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And finally on floor 135, I finally got a Nano Pak. Fortunately I didn't blast the room with a BFG shot:

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Now with Nano Super Shotgun (P), I was facerolling everything and was able to empty out a good chunk of my inventory. I opted to hang on to Railgun and Cells, which could be useful for a Cyberdemon complex, but tossed my regular Nuclear BFG and Tactical Shotgun.

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Floors like this are where Biggest BFG helps out a lot:

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Eventually I reached level 25 to get Experience Cross for later. I also kept finding Nano Paks, about 5 of them, despite having no realistic use for them anymore.

A fair bit later, I found these Boots:

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Since my goal is also to buff up my kill count towards 50000, I ran around on this floor to farm spawns before blasting everything:

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While easy, this was another wild floor:

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Then on floor 256, I finally was ready to start the next phase of this run:

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These are my stats before I changed my gear. I was intending to go for 100% kills, but it gets too risky without Vampyre and let go of that goal pretty quickly after.

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Picking it up was also tricky since there was lots of lava and I had to find a corpse setup to use my Hatred Skull. I made it work though:

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Not too long after, I also found this, thankfully:

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And the last major piece for my build:

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Once I swapped to the Imperial set, I was stairdiving everything, only detouring to collect some power-ups and killing Cyberdemons. I think if I really wanted to, I could have got 100% kills, but it's not worth the time or risk.

Long after, I got to the last floor to fight the Apostle. I was fortunate to have this to help:

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But the map was honestly terrible for this fight and it ran out before I could find him. I was getting slightly worried as monsters were beginning to flood in, but eventually I found him:

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Nice message:

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And with that, I got a pile of general kills, Cyberdemon kills, Experience Cross, and Apostle Insignia. The first 256 floors took about 9 hours, and the last 410 took about 2 hours. Quite a lot of effort for only a couple of rewards, but it's necessary.

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Next, I decided to finish up my assemblies. I was grinding more Angel of Confidence and Max Carnage, but was not really finding any Schematics or useful special paks. I took a look into the coding of the levels and it appears that greater rewards are given when you complete the level on higher difficulties and if you don't take damage. So I switched to Ultra-Violence and played to not get hit, and got this on my first successful run:

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The next successful run, I didn't get Schematics for Cybernano, but got the next best result:

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Naturally, I was going to play it out to find Power Paks. I found one quite quickly:

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And while fortunate to roll Halls of Carnage, I was deciding on if that would be a good idea. I opted to do so and it was a good choice:

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I played out the run for a Cyberdemon kill but died:

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And for my next challenge, I was going to play Angel of Lightfoot and Max Carnage on Nightmare with no Melee kill and under 20000 steps. Quite a combo, but I would earn a pile of badges if I could complete it.

I had a pretty strong start through Phobos, but nothing too extraordinary. Entering Deimos level 1, I was greeted with this:

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The next few levels, I had very fortunate stair placements, like this one:

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Then on floor 6, I had a bit of a mess to deal with:

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While I did have a Homing Phase Device, I really wanted the Invulnerability. With some careful movements and firing, I was able to get to it without too much trouble:

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On floor 7, I found this, but unfortunately it was destroyed as I rushed to grab it:

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So with wanting to save my Cells, I went for a setup against the Cyberdemon like this. Dodgemaster made it trivial, but I had to dodge two rockets per shot, so it took a little while:

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Unfortunately, I rolled a horrible Hell level 1:

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And it got worse:

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I had to use all my remaining Cells and Med-Paks, only to barely survive. Going the long way around was a crawl due to only have Shells for all the Revenants. I managed to get through to the Unholy Cathedral exit, with this along the way:

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This level was also scary:

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However, I found this, which would make the end trivial:

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I was further tempted for the Megasphere, but decided not to push:

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Floor 3, I had this mess:

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Running low on options, I decided to take a huge gamble:

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And could not have asked for a better result!

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Floor 4 gave me a break with an awesome start:

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And the next two floors went pretty smoothly. On to floor 7:

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I decided on using up my Plasma instead of rushing for the corner. There were a number of monsters from the left and upper area, but after managing to clear it, I found a bunch of helpful items:

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The rest of the walk to the stairs was starting to get really sketchy though:

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Bolting for the end through the top, I had very little left and was not in a good spot:

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With some more fortune, I made it:

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Naturally, I blew up the Mastermind and that was a wrap! Amazingly, this took only two tries to get, which is awesome! Triple Lightfoot Badges!

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Overall, this was a very successful day and I got some of the big grinds finished. I still need to kill a bunch of Cyberdemons, lots of monsters in general, and am missing Frag Shotgun to finish my collection of Specials. I already have 3 of almost all of them, so finishing that won't take too long. I'm not really keen on another 100 or 666 run, so I'll chip away at them through other games. I'll probably go for more badge combos, aiming to earn some Diamond Badges, which will yield me corresponding Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 08, 2020, 13:05
Day 6

Today's first target was UAC Diamond Badge, by beating a standard Nightmare game in under 20 minutes. In doing so, I would also get a pile of other badges, and it's not too overly difficult, it just needs some luck. Naturally, there aren't too many screenshots.

My first good run got to the Cyberdemon, but even with Invulnerability, I couldn't kill him without Brute. I always start with Intuition x2, and then Hellrunner, and from there I either go with Brute or Hellrunner to prepare for Dodgemaster. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough experience and died on what was a very good pace.

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Another run that got quite far, I was blasted deep into lava from a Mancubus. Both those and Revenants firing so much more frequently makes it hard to control where you go and I had lost many other runs fighting against what was essentially a repelling magnetic field.

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Fair and balanced:

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This was a really frustrating result where I had Invulnerability and was adjacent to the stairs to Dis, but an army of Nightmare Demons kept piling up on it and I couldn't get through.

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By the time I entered Dis, my Invulnerability was already all gone:

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As you can see, my pace was very quick here:

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I took an aggressive approach with the Chainsaw as my ammo would not have been enough to kill her, let alone on pace, and unsurprisingly died.

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Here is another amusing screenshot moments before death. I absolutely required the Invulnerability and my only realistic option was to dive for it, which got blocked by Demons:

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After some more attempts, I managed to get it done, at a very fast 10:52! I recall having two Phase Devices drop me off right at the stairs and I had stacks of Berserk and Invulnerability, so it was definitely a lucky run, moreso than was actually needed. Still need to cut 7 more minutes...

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Next, I wanted to get Shottyman Angelic Badge, which requires Overconfidence and Shotgunnery on Nightmare with 50% kills. Of course though, two Diamond Badges are also possible with 80% kills, so I decided to go for the trio.

My first good run started on the first level with this nice setup. Notice that there is also a lava tile in front of the door, which made destroying all other corpses very easy:

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Once everything else was clearly, I adjusted the positioning for double kill shots:

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After close to half an hour of setup and kill grinding, I left the first level with these stats:

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Now, this is obviously risky because I still had the rest of the game to play out, but the setup was too good to pass up. On floor 2, I was greeted with this disaster:

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I opted to shoot the right Mancubus into lava and dashed to the right side. AT least that area had a nice positioning setup, and also had the flooding switch, which made corpse disposal trivial:

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After very carefully clearing out everything, I left with these stats:

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Floor 3 was nice:

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Floor 4 was also looking good...

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In hindsight, I should have stairdived, but was too worried about dying. I couldn't fire from either door with a barrel in front of both, both angled directly to the group of monsters, so I went to the right and fought them there. It got messy and I had to charge to the bottom corner:

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As a last ditch effort, I used a Phase Device:

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In another attempt, I found a nice surprise:

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Another run was coming along and I had a nice setup on floor 4 with a rooms level combined with floods of lava. I cornered a Shotgun Guy in the bottom centre and starting farming. However, with just a single enemy, it took awhile:

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Floor 5 looked decent:

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Unfortunately, inside was a Mancubus, Arachnatron, and an Archvile, all of which I couldn't really deal with, I tried to pick off the Mancubus in the water from above but others wandered out and I got into this mess:

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My tactic here was to meat shield with the Archvile, approach within melee range when it raises its arms, and ideally let the Arachnatron get the finishing blow while I shut the door on it. The Mancubus in the upper left would be crawling downward, so it should give enough time to run back up before the Zombieman and others could re-open the door.

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And fortunately, it all worked out!

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Floor 6 cut me a break:

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And floor 7 presented me with another puzzle:

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I wasn't sure what was in the bottom area, so I assumed Archviles. Weighing all the options, I decided to shoot at the pack to back them up and alert them, and so when I would go down and left, they would chase me, but not initially see me. Unfortunately, it was worse than Archviles:

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With luck and barely anything left, I managed to get to the stairs to Dis!

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I had a giant pile of ammo and had a guaranteed win here, but I had to play extremely safe and slow. It took a long time to kill the Spider Mastermind, but I got it done!

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My next goal was beating ITYTD with only my Fists and killing everything, which would get me a couple of rewards.

On floor 3, I saw a really interesting room. I have never seen a group spawn like this naturally:

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On floor 6, I found a very early one of these:

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Deimos floor 7 was also very nice:

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One of the odd things was I found something like 20 paks at only half way through the run, of which about 10 were Power, and not a single one was Agility, which would have helped to make Piercing Chainsaw and Ballistic Armor.

On Hell floor 7, I was also greeted with this:

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And I was thinking, maybe I'll go for a full win with just my fists, but as I explored the other room, my Cybernetic Armor was completely damaged, giving me no protection and very slow movement. Bad armor:

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So unfortunately, I had to burn through all of my Med-Paks and use up the Invulnerability for this floor. I was still able to kill the Spider Mastermind though, but it was a bit sketchy.

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Next, I went for Gambler's Shield to finish my normal Medals. I combined Max Carnage and Light Travel for making the gameplay easier and went with a Shotgun build. I was lucky to get many triple levers with armor repair, summoning enemies, and others, because I had the absolute worst luck possible with bonus levels. Instead of Phobos Lab, Deimos Lab, City of Skulls, Limbo, and Mt. Erebus, I had all of the others. In any case, I got it done.

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Overall, another great day of progress, and it's nice to have an Angelic Badge again, even if it's pretty eas
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 09, 2020, 15:58
Day 7

Today, I decided to go for Inquisitor Diamond Badge, beating Angel of Purity as a Marine on Nightmare. It's a tough one, but with some luck, it's not too terrible and I honestly think it's a lot of fun. My strategy for it is to also use Angel of Overconfidence, and go with Eagle Eye x2 -> Intuition x2. If I make it to Dis, I have 465 bullets for the Spider Mastermind to very slowly chip away at her. Naturally, a run like this requires lots of luck and is very much a monkey typerwriter strategy, but it does work.

Here are some screenshots of interesting and amusing scenarios:

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Pain Elemental caves are one of the best floors to roll and are usually clearable, giving a chance for lots of useful items. The only major downside is it often uses most if not all of the Shells.

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Here's the entrance of my first run to floor 6:

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And I rolled a terrible floor 7:

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RIP

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Another run to floor 6:

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And another to floor 6. I didn't have any Med-Paks, so I opted to run upwards and try to loop around them.

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Nope.

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On floor 6, I found a detour to gather some needed experience:

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Another run slowly turning into a disaster:

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Just not having it.

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I had an insane first floor which was a Pain Elemental cave filled with useful stuff. Here are my screens before leaving:

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I entered a pretty bad floor 2:

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I used my Homing Phase Device, and on floor 3, I explored a huge portion of the level, not able to find the stairs:

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But that's how it goes.

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Another run to floor 7, and yet another awful roll:

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I'll let you guess what happened.

Here was an odd floor with a set of doors I have never seen before:

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I really wanted this:

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Onto another floor 6 with a big stack of items and experience level 5:

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Floor 7:

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Once again, rolling a terrible floor and not finding the stairs:

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And not catching a break:

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On this run, I gained the needed experience very early and made use of Intuition:

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And found the stairs to floor 4:

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Scary, but overall lucky floor 4:

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And landing immediately into another Arachnatron cave. Fortunately, the hiding spot above me was exactly the distance to be out of the bottom Arachnatron's vision:

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Not a great floor 6:

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Fortunately I managed to clear it without much trouble:

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Looks like I can avoid the mess above:

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And even nab a quick extra:

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Onto yet another floor 7 that isn't particularly great looking:

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Getting messy fast:

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Good Phase Device though overall:

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Things got rough fast though:

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Another one gone:

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I found a Rocket Launcher near the Mortuary, so instead of Phase Device luck, let's try rocket jumping:

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Nope.

Onto another floor 6. This was a decent start and I figured I would need to get the rest of the experience now in order to figure out my approach:

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After carefully picking off the enemies, I was rewarded quite nicely:

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And yet another terrible floor 7:

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Let's try a Phase Device:

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Let's try another:

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Let's try the teleporter:

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Unfortunately, I was getting chased along:

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Most of the left area was clear, but I had to kill piles of tough monsters with lots of tight movements:

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I found the stairs!

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And a Mancubus...

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I opted to take the risk to jump onto the tile and he didn't fire!

After many, many attempts, I finally had my run! I had nothing useful but ammo in my inventory and was practically a corpse upon entering Dis, so I would have to take everything extremely carefully and slowly. First, I went through all of my Shells. Then I switched to Combat Pistol, setup an aimed shot to start using up my bullets and...

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I don't know what I was thinking, but I had a total lapse in judgement to use an aimed shot. I actually survived the first blast of damage, and in a second lapse of judgement, I activated running instead of ducking around the corner and was killed over an incredibly stupid mistake. All I had to do was take normal shots and it was a guaranteed win, but instead, I'm back to floor 1.

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It really sucks and is not the best feeling in the world, but I will continue playing for Inquisitor Diamond. Hopefully I can just nuke her upon arrival.

For the record, I have done 472 runs so far. That might seem like an insane amount of play, but keep in mind that the majority of these runs never leave the first floor, often dying within 10 or so seconds. For reference, the last time I earned this badge, it took 353 tries and I suspected I was somewhat lucky in doing so. Given that I should have had this done on attempt 472, I think an average of 400ish is a good estimate. I've had pretty bad luck on floor 6 and 7 among these runs as well and have always had to go on a huge scavenger hunt for the stairs.

I think I'll get this soon, this time without choking.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 10, 2020, 16:59
Day 8

After choking a guaranteed win for Inquisitor Diamond Badge, I went out trying for it again. Along the way, I got some more interesting screenshots.

Usually an arena level, especially on floor 1 is death, but I was able to work around the monsters and had the layout that allows for easy camping to rack up lots of ammo:

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Unfortunately, I was surrounded and killed soon after in the next floors.

Here is another amazingly awful start:

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On one run with lava islands, I was slowly picking off enemies along the left two islands, ran out of ammo and used a Phase Device and fortunately landed on the other one. After some more monster clearing, I found the stairs on a pretty dead run, but decided to play it out:

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On floor 5, I found the stairs almost immediately and made a mad dash for them:

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On floor 6, I roll an Arachnatron cave, but had one of the exits two steps away!

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And floor 7 was a Pain Elemental cave! With no Shells though, I had to guess and hope for the stairs before being flooded over with Lost Souls:

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And I got lucky!

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So I once again arrived at Dis and took some precautions. First off, I immediately started running and stopped, and I also decided to only take shots when the Spider Mastermind was one tile out and never two. In other words, I would shoot here:

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But not here:

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As you can imagine, it took forever, but I was patient and disciplined enough and got it done!

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It took another 227 runs since my failed attempt, which is significantly faster than expected. It happened on what I thought was a dead run as well before getting a ridiculous string of good luck.

While it took a lot of effort to get the badge, along the way, I got lots of monster kills and specials, so I can improve my other ranking relatively sooner now once I get the Cyberdemon kills needed, and I'm closer to the Armorer Diamond Badge.

I decided while in the flow of things to go for Eagerness Diamond Badge next, which is very similar. Being able to grab Invulnerabilities, Soulspheres, and Computer Maps are a huge help, even at the trade-off of harder starts without the Med-Paks.

This run was a nice start by isolating enemies and camping on the stairs:

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It didn't last long though.

On another run with being able to use Invulnerability again, I had a much more realistic chance on getting through the Mortuary:

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Although I had some stacked Invulnerability, it was starting to run a bit low as I had a long dash through floor 5:

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Got an insane roll for floor 6!

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And another on floor 7, and with another Invulnerability!

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As I charged for it, I was quickly surrounded though and had to slowly pick out a hole through a wall of Nightmare Demons:

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After running into the large body of lava to the left, they slowly died out and I grabbed a Power Battery as I went for Dis:

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I had a guaranteed win again, but was able to speed up the process significantly with having lots of Plasma ammo, and Invulnerability for part of the fight:

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Overall, Eagerness Diamond Badge took 81 runs, which again was mostly dying on floor 1, but it's clearly a significantly easier badge to earn.

Now that the badges requiring a certain class are done, I can go back to using Scout and early Intuition. While I was already of the belief that it's one of the best traits in the game, its power was really demonstrated when I had to play without it for quite awhile. Generally speaking, the only time I use other classes is when I am doing a Melee run and want Vampyre, and will likely continue sticking with that.

I'm not sure what I want to play for next, maybe I'll finish getting 50000 kills and 100 Cyberdemons kills and start working towards 50 JC kills, or maybe I'll clean up my Silver and Gold Badges. I kind of want to go for something easier I think.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 11, 2020, 14:10
Day 9

Today I decided to work on all of the grindier stuff, including monster kills, collecting 3 of every special item, and going for Gutts' Heart.

There isn't too much overall to show off since most of the grinds aren't completely finished and they themselves don't give too many rewards. I was playing Angel of Berserk and Overconfidence, switching between Marine and Scout based on how I felt like playing. One interesting run where I grabbed Azrael's Scythe and went for Gargulec Medal was able to push all the way to JC with another nuke in hand and so I blew him up. Just before doing so, I was curious to see if Barons would spawn if I had used Whisper of Death, and unsurprisingly, it did:

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I also had a run where I got Hellwave Pack on floor 1 and decided to test it on the Angel of Death. It was a pretty disappointing result:

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One very odd thing I saw that I had never seen before was a group of Shotgun Guys and Commandos were camping inside a vault, similar to how Demons do when they get stuck and even entering the doorway, they refused to move.

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After clearing it, I think I found out why:

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My assumption is because of Berserker Armor being there to trigger them trying to grab it but being unable to, effectively froze them in place. I wonder if this could be a viable strategy for giftdropping?

On another run, I found Medical Armor and decided to play things out more thoroughly on the off-chance of a Nano or Onyx Pack, in order to make self-healing armor. The idea would be to jump in lava repeatedly and get Iron Skull, instead of using a Vampyre strategy.

To my amazement, I actually found an Onyx Pack!

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I created this nice setup where Medical Armor (O) would heal me up to 26%, stepping in lava would drop me to 2%, and I could easily spam it. I positioned myself such that I could hold left arrow key, smack into a wall, click on my mouse to go back, and repeat:

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However...

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Medical Armor (O) loses durability!!!

I was quite shocked to discover this! The display in the menu also showed Durability at 100, but this is clearly not the case and I could no longer use my strategy for Iron Skull. I am extremely curious now if Nano Pack would fix this and actually work? If so, it would mean that a Nano Pack actually has an advantage over Onyx Pack for armors. And if not, then that would mean the only realistic way to get Iron Skull would be Vampyre. Very interesting!

On the note of Iron Skull, I misclicked Angel of Confidence once and learned that you start with a Chainsaw in Deimos as well, and not just in Hell. For some reason, I thought you started with a Combat Knife, perhaps because the Chainsaw doesn't start in your hands. So I decided to try a couple runs of that to create a Pain Elemental blocking setup and got this:

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Now, this was working, and I even had Butcher's Cleaver for added protection, but the fact that the Pain Elemental's position meant Lost Souls spawning behind the building made this very inefficient, so I stopped trying and decided I'll do it on another run another time.

And that's all that there was today. I tried a lot for Gutts' Heart but never found a Dragonslayer. On that note, for 3 of every Special, I am only missing 2 Dragonslayers and 1 Frag Shotgun to get Armorer Diamond Badge, as I found a mass pile of everything else through all my runs. I also finished getting 50000 kills and now only need 18 Cyberdemon and 45 JC kills to finish that ranking. I'll likely continue these grinds some more and try to get them done.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 12, 2020, 14:52
Day 10

Today, I continued grinding to get Gutts' Heart, but Dragonslayer just wouldn't show up for me. Instead, I ended up getting a pile of other stuff.

Here's a really interesting floor on one of my Gutts' Heart attempts:

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After a number of attempts, I decided to finish up my Silver Badges. I went with Skull Silver Badge, which is pretty trivial.

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Next was Brick Silver Badge. I took advantage of Angel of Confidence and Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab to try and make Plasmatic Shrapnel. On one run, I found this:

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I basically rushed to The Wall/Containment Area and had quite the arsenal set to go:

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But...

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"Despite some visual similarity, it's not a shotgun." Oops. Fortunately, I had Phase Devices:

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While I had a lot of gear, I didn't have much for a huge fight, assuming I could just camp at the entrance:

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RIP.

On a different run, I was able to go with plan A and it was easy from there:

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That leaves Lava Silver Badge. The obvious challenge is getting through the lava without Envirosuits, Phase Devices, and other useful stuff. However, I found something even more awesome:

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Now I just needed a Technical Pack, and just before heading down:

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I had a giant pile of useful stuff and an Invulnerability to help too. Despite that, I made a lot of dumb mistakes and it became too much:

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The main thing I did was hitting the left switch first, whereas I should have done that second to better manage the Mancubi. It always sucks to lose a golden run.

Not long after, I found something even better than an Onyx Pack!

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And the needed complementary piece:

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Floor 6 was also nice:

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And that was the end of that!

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Next, I went for Masochist Diamond Badge, which would also give me a handful of others. Combining with Max Carnage makes it not too bad so long as you're careful, and you get enough experience for Dodgemaster before the Cyberdemon. I also try to adjust my experience such that I get a level up on the kill so I'm at 200% entering Hell.

On floor 2, I made a dash for a Homing Phase Device:

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And it lead to a bit of a mess:

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Floor 3 was much nicer:

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The next few levels were stairdives and on floor 6, I encountered an interesting situation:

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I likely had enough Invulnerability to run through most of floor 7, but a Homing Phase Device and then out on this floor should last long enough too. The issue was there was a pile of Nightmare Demons and I was worried about getting walled in. I thought about it and opted to skip the Homing Phase Device.

And it seems it was the right call:

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There was unfortunately a pack of Archviles, Revenants, and other nasty monsters around the stairs:

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And I was repeatedly one tile away from entering Dis, but I couldn't get a nice angle since the stairs weren't against a wall and I had enemies from all sides knocking me all over the place. My health was looking grim:

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Maybe?

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Nope.

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It sucks, but that's how it goes sometimes.

On a new run, I had an interesting spawn of monsters:

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I also had a big helping hand for Phobos Anomaly:

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Even if the run didn't finish, I really wanted to get to the Cyberdemon since then I could get Gatekeeper Diamond Badge, but unfortunately I died part way through Deimos.

Late into another run, I had this on Hell floor 4:

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The rest from there was easy, and I was able to use Butcher's Cleaver to make quick work of the Spider Mastermind.

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I tried some more for Gutts' Heart and nothing. I did find another interesting floor with a naturally spawned Revenant stuck:

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Later, I had noticed that I got an extra medal from my Masochist run and realized it was my first Untouchable Medal, not realizing I didn't get those already, so I decided to go for Untouchable Cross on ITYTD.

It's very easy to get, despite even playing rather poorly. I had 45 damage early on after pushing a barrel too far into acid, and other dumb mistakes. Nonetheless, I got Untouchable Cross:

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More Gutts' Heart, still no Dragonslayer...

Next, I decided to go for some of the Hell's Arena medals, starting with Chessmaster's Cross. I tried some runs with Impatience and Light Travel, but later switch to Impatience and Max Carnage. One run had a really nice floor 2:

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Some more attempts later, I found a really helpful item in a vault:

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And next door found another!

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I had this absolutely insane arsenal for Hell's Arena and knew that there was no way I wouldn't get the medal, barring astronomically bad luck or poor play. I was thinking that with the amount of rockets that I could potentially go for a damageless run and grab Hell Arena Pwnage Medal at the same time.

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With a good start and helpful rockets, it was very easy:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was playing quite slow and had a bit of a bad spot for the second round:

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Third round was nice though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And with the big help from Plasma Rifle and Rocket Launcher, I completed it damageless!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I figured to go for Arena Gold Badge while I was at it and used Light Travel. My floor layout was nice such that I would have a long stretch where I could lure in monsters and hit them a large number of times:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got slightly reckless though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And had a major save with awesome luck:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I circled around the pillars for easy kills since I had faster movement. The square-shaped ones on this floor are excellent for that. And despite that, I got reckless a second time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And got lucky a second time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Very poorly played, but it worked out at least.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And continuing for others, I decided to play for Marksman Diamond Badge. On floor 7, I had a Nightmare Demon cave and was able to drag them into lava:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had somewhat low ammo though, but lots of Med-Paks, so I took the Spider Mastermind more aggressively. I pushed it a bit too far though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another run, I had this silly floor, which actually was a huge problem:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I had this awful floor 7 and died:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another good run, I used a Homing Phase Device and was greeted with everything I could ask for:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But both of them managed to get destroyed:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The very next floor made up for it with absolute absurdity:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My Invulnerability lasted the whole fight:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 13, 2020, 12:59
Day 11

My first target today was Iron Skull, just to get it over with. I played using Angel of Berserk with Light Travel and used a Vampyre build, searching for a Pain Elemental I could block.

Once I built up the needed experience, I created this setup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

However, it was horribly slow compared to simply clicking a single square, so I cleared out the area, nearly dying in doing so, pushed some barrels into the spot to create a tunnel, but then I accidentally misclicked:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had already spent a ton of time and was exactly a quarter of the way upon leaving, hoping that I would be able to create another setup.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I almost died in the next level with unfortunate monster positioning after using a Homing Phase Device:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After some struggling, I found another Pain Elemental I could use for a setup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And almost died yet again:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once in position, the rest was easy and actually fast, relatively speaking. I would camp at the far left to raise my health, then step to the right to quickly deplete it and repeat until I reached 10000 damage.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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I think the point is made after even just 5000 damage, but I'm sure I'm not the first to complain about it. It certainly can't be good for either my wrist or mouse, but in any case, it's all done now.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I decided to try more for Gutts' Heart and on my second attempt, I finally found Dragonslayer:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a little sketchy to receive it on the first floor in fear of dying before reaching the Spider Mastermind, but I do need 2 anyway, so I wasn't too concerned overall. I played it very cautiously and the game didn't give me any difficult situations.

I was also tempted to just blow up Dis with a nuke because I believe so long as I was holding Dragonslayer on the Spider Mastermind's death, it should still give me the medal, but I didn't want to risk being incorrect and just whacked her instead.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The next thing I did was started a Max Carnage Angel of 100 to hopefully find the last Frag Shotgun and Dragonslayer I need. I opted to go for a masterless melee/shotgun hybrid. Honestly though, I would almost consider including Berserker in a build to not necessarily be for melee purposes because having berserk kick in when struck hard is extremely helpful in sketchy situations, especially with Max Carnage. Mancubi go from potentially killing you on false move to being fairly harmless. Three traits is an expensive cost though.

Early on, I found some very helpful items:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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I also had this amusing message:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And immediately on the next floor had another silly message:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After I had most of my build put together, I started stairdiving and unfortunately didn't find either item. I at least got 2 Cyberdemon kills though.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I decided to go for more Medals instead. I went for Every Soldier's Medal and Spider-Killer Cross by combining Angel of Humanity and Confidence. With some careful play, they're pretty easy, but I was having terrible luck of getting the correct levels, as well as a Rocket Launcher.

One stacked run had no wall-breaking items, but I did have a Phase Device with Invulnerability too, but...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No luck.

I also had a big mish-mash of items, being indecisive on what to use:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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No luck.

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On another run, I found this awesome weapon:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But unfortunately rolled Containment Area:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And on the road to Spider's Lair, I found this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I read through the code and I believe that the Medal is rewarded upon killing everything, while most everything else is rewarded upon a cleared exit, so I think nuking should work. Unfortunately...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Shortly after, I got the same awesome weapon again:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And rolled Containment Area once again...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Annoyed, I decided to look more thoroughly into the code and you actually can get Every Soldier's Medal through Containment Area, so I wish I hadn't quit out of some of the better runs I had earlier. I still cleared it without much trouble at least. Naturally, I decided to continue the run and rolled Spider's Lair:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While the Plasma Shotgun is awesome for The Wall/Containment Area, I was destroying some of my cover here, and opted to just go with Tactical Shotgun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I took things slow and camped at the bottom, waiting for Arachnatrons to teleport in. Fortunately, I was never swarmed and easily picked them all off. I decided to continue the run further to grab a Cyberdemon kill, possibly.

For most of the fight, I dodged all his rockets as I had Tactical Boots, but was struck hard near the end of it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Despite healing, the second shot killed me just as the Cyberdemon was almost dead:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And indeed I got both Medals! Looking at the requirements in-game, it does say Every Soldier's Medal can be done on either The Wall or Containment Area, but Spider-Killer Cross is strictly Spider's Lair. It seems that only the wiki is wrong.

So overall, I gained 4 of my missing 7 Medals to reach the 40 count, which is nice. I think I'm going to start a 666 game next to try to finish getting Frag Shotgun and Dragonslayer, possibly also getting my last 10 Cyberdemon kills needed.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 14, 2020, 16:26
Day 12

I decided to play a game of 666 with the goals of finding a Dragonslayer, a Frag Shotgun, and killing 10 Cyberdemons. Like before, I went with a masterless, Shotgun/Melee hybrid and plowed through basically everything, especially once I built a Biggest BFG.

I found a Super Shotgun quite early:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And later on, found the Frag Shotgun:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also killed 10 Cyberdemons quite quickly and started skipping most of the many others I found.

Despite that though, I went through the entirety of 666 floors and never found Dragonslayer. I also never found a single Nano Pack either, though granted, I did start stairdiving after awhile, but I was never able to complete my setup.

Pretty disappointing...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I decided to go for Hunter Diamond Badge next, which isn't too bad, just need some luck. After a small handful of tries, I managed to get it rather quickly.

I entered Limbo with Invulnerability and a Phase Device, and warped quite close to the Nuclear BFG. It helps a lot with either taking out the Spider Mastermind with no worry of ammo, or clearing a regular floor that could otherwise be difficult.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 6 was sketchy with what was usually a favorable Pain Elemental cave, as I went the wrong way and was getting overwhelmed:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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But luckily, I found the special stairs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was my inventory upon entering floor 7:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I had what was looking to be a rough floor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I ran towards the right and was getting surrounded by strong monsters, quickly burning my Med-Paks, and I thought it was over, but by a miracle, I found not the stairs, but this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After that, I nuked Dis and snatched a quick victory!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I then chose to get Hunter Gold Badge since I had Platinum and Diamond now. My strategy was to quickly blast through the levels and create a setup to farm for kills. I had a good run going here on floor 5, but rolled a maze with puddles of lava, which had the howling alarm:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I went downward to start farming Shotgun Guys and buffed up my kills so that I could hopefully just run to the end:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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Now, there were a pile of enemies waiting for me, a horizontal river of lava below, and I didn't have much to work with, so despite taking the time to farm, I wasn't expecting to complete this run.

Around a corner, I had a really fussy Archvile here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My plan was to kill another monster, have it revived so that it would no longer be targeting me, then have it step into the corner in front of the Archvile, forcing the Archvile to appear in my view where I could safely pick it off. It took awhile to get the manipulation to work, but it did work:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately, almost immediately after, I got killed:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In a later run that was mostly unremarkable, I got up to floor 6 with an Invulnerability and was able to find the stairs a little later:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 7 appeared to be an island map, featuring two Invulnerabilities as well, and I had a pretty heavy arsenal to farm almost anything:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Luckily, the stairs were also easy to find, and there was a Chaingunner who I could later kill after clearing the rest of the floor. I opted to use both Invulnerabilities here since I could easily kill the Spider Mastermind later without them.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I definitely needed both as there were lots of Archviles, and Mancubi, but eventually had a great setup for killing Chaingunners:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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I found a Power Pack as I was leaving, which would have been nice earlier. I decided to use it for my Combat Pistol in case using the rapid-fire weapons were too slow and dangerous against the Spider Mastermind.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had quite the ammo as I was entering Dis:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I played it a bit aggressively with Plasma and then Minigun since I had health to spare, and not long after, got Hunter Gold Badge:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Following that, I grinded more Berserk + Overconfidence in hopes of finding a third Dragonslayer. This time since I didn't need to worry about survival, I started with Intuition instead and played much more aggressively. After many tries, I never found it, but I did get more silly messages on the start of some floors:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that's it for today. I still have JC kills to go to reach Apostle ranking, but I think I'll put that aside for now. My main goal is to get that last Dragonslayer, and then chip away at some of the easier unearned Medals and Badges after.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 15, 2020, 14:21
Day 13

Today, I went more for Dragonslayer and some scattered attempts at various badges in between, and I've been finding that playing for multiple goals at the same time leads to me making silly mistakes, so I think I'm going to stick with one thing at a time now.

While attempting for Dragonslayer, there have been a number of runs where I end up with nukes and stumble across Invulnerability on floor 7, so naturally, I've been collecting some JC kills too. Previously, I used the Overconfidence + Berserk strategy for JC kills, but I would visit Unholy Cathedral and Lava Pits/Mt Erebus. I'm finding that grinding for luck is actually more efficient time-wise. I also often have a few Phase Devices and can grab the Nuclear BFG in Limbo/Mortuary fairly consistently too with some luck.

One run in particular, I had a whopping 4 nukes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately, it was not one where I had Invulnerability.

As I played more and was getting JC kills, I realized it was significantly easier than I remembered. One absurd run, I got the kill without even having Brute!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another run, I killed him without having killed anything prior, getting a full win with 0 experience!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As I played more, I also reverted back to starting with Brute instead of Intuition, as the inability to kill anything was a huge problem.

Here was a convenient find:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Only to also find three different other solutions:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here was an interesting floor with four single-tile horizontal halls:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here was another interesting floor that was an island map with three vaults:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One of my JC kills, I had a photo finish with nuking the Spider Mastermind:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that's it for today. I'm now at 13/50 JC kills, while not even focusing on them primarily, and still no third Dragonslayer. At the rate things are going, I should have somewhere between 16000-18000 JC kills and be receiving my pension by the time I get Armorer Diamond Badge. More attempts to follow.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: khiijol on July 16, 2020, 12:54
even for a veteran player, this is pretty incredible progress for two weeks
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 16, 2020, 15:18
Thanks, I've been having a ton of fun with it!

Day 14

Today, I've shifted my focus slightly away from Dragonslayer hunting and playing for JC kills with my somewhat new strategy. I'm now at 30 of them and can get them very consistently. Since I don't have much else to comment on, I'll explain my gameplay a bit more thoroughly.

With Angel of Berserk and Overconfidence, the first two levels tend to be a bit rough, and it's important to not be afraid of using the starting Large Med-Paks. Save the Chainsaw boost though. I usually grab some nearby items, evaluate the situation, then find a door to camp behind and pick away at enemies using Run->Wait. Naturally, the widely varying possibilities for situations calls for widely varying actions, but this is generally my plan. Always skip Unholy Cathedral and Vaults, but exiting through them is fine of course.

After that, I stock up on as many Phase Devices as possible to prepare entering Mortuary/Limbo, ideally with a little extra if possible like Invulnerability and Envirosuits. Limbo is generally better because of the lava separating enemies more, and Phase Devices more likely to be beneficial, but Mortuary can work too. Use Phase Devices before Homing Phase Devices so that if you get unlucky while burning through them all, you can still at least exit alive. The top-right corner is ideal of course since that's where the Nuclear BFG is, but the bottom-right can also work if you can tough out any enemies. On Limbo, the two little islands nearby are also fairly manageable. Be cautious of enemies who can destroy the Nuclear BFG. If you're lucky and got a nuke before entering, always skip this level entirely.

If you have a nuke upon entering floor 5, it may be worthwhile to start seeking out Invulnerabilities or at least buffing up your inventory a little. Floor 6 and 7 are better of course, especially if you have Homing Phase Devices leftover. If you're unlucky, the run ends if you can't get Invulnerability, but I still always skip Lava Pits/Mt Erebus since the gear required is a ton, and time-wise, starting a new run can be close in speed anyway.

Nuke Dis, approach JC on a straight horizontal line a bit past the "d" of "id". Use an Envirosuit if available, drop the Chainsaw and pick it up to boost, then approach in a zig-zag. Play aggressively and always focus on attacking JC, healing only if necessary. I very rarely ever die here. Of course if you're extra lucky, you can just use a second nuke here.

My trait selection is always Brute->Brute->Berserker->Brute. From here, I usually pick Intuition to scout for Invulnerability, or Hellrunner if I think I may need an extra help making it to Dis while invulnerable. If I have no need for either, I go with Finesse.

For mod packs, Agility Packs go into Chainsaw, then Boots, Technical goes into Boots if I have a pair for Grappling Boots, which is very helpful for Revenants, Mancubi, and JC, and Power goes into Chainsaw then Red Armors. Bulks are rarely useful, generally only if there's a lack of everything else. Piercing Chainsaw helps with damage significantly and Red Armor (P), especially with Berserk makes you pretty unkillable.

That's all there is to it! I've tried various other strategies in the past for JC kills, including a different style of Berserk + Overconfidence, but this method has got to be optimal. I can get JC kills at worst once every 20 minutes, I've had 2 kills in a row multiple times, and I've had 3 kills within 20 minutes as well. It's also pretty fun to play. The only major downside is requiring Invulnerability on the last couple floors where some runs do end up immediately dying, but getting a nuke usually isn't a problem.

Some highlights:

A nice Trigun run made quick work of the ending, and the whole run was less than 6 minutes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had one really unique run where I was very low on health and got a level up. As I was just about to be attacked, I went with Ironman specifically for the immediate health boost, survived, and I went on to kill JC too:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One time entering Hell Fortress, I used Hell Staff and of the 1367 possible tiles to pick from, I got the absolute best one:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here, I had Invulnerability, but needed to exit fast before it ran out. I also needed a nuke since I didn't get the Nuclear BFG. On floor 7, I grabbed a Tracking Map and saw this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With a Homing Phase Device, I was able to scoop up the nearby nuke and exit quickly enough, turning what was a run on life support into another JC kill!

Finally, I once had a massive stack of Phase Devices before entering Limbo:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Funny enough, none of them were Homing Phase Devices, but I still got to the Nuclear BFG after 3 of them.

And that's all for today. I'll keep grinding JC kills to reach 50, which shouldn't take too much longer. Maybe I'll find Dragonslayer too...
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 17, 2020, 14:53
Day 15

Today I continued with JC kills, now having reached 41/50. The last 9 should come by and then I'll have the Apostle ranking and be done with the grind.

Some highlights:

I was having a relatively weak run, one with no Med-Paks and pretty low health. I found a Tracking Map in this situation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see, I had a Baron in basically every direction, with Invulnerability to the left near the door, a Large Health Globe to my right, and the stairs right below me. I decided that the best choice was to dance around and hope that I could approach the Large Health Globe without being spotted.

However, I was not having any luck with the Barons and had to use the Chainsaw boost early and went for Invulnerability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After some fighting, I managed to get to the stairs in decent shape:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's always fun to be presented with interesting, challenging puzzles like this. Fortunately, use of the Chainsaw boost wasn't a problem because I found a second nuke shortly after:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And the much needed Invulnerability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And a very nice floor 7:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's nice that the game rewarded me with good fortune after previously receving bad luck with what I believed was the correct decision. It also shows again that weak runs can still get JC kills.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's an amusing start. It's actually very nice for a quick kill and easy experience:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here was another interesting start:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The options here are to head up-left, charge the Revenant, charge the Baron, head down-left, or head down-right. I actually decided to wait since there was a good chance the Revenant would blow itself up and then I could charge the Baron with an extra level of Brute. Unfortunately:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn't get the Revenant to fire. I still made it work, but not as optimally as it could have been.

Here was another interesting situation, though I'm encountered similar ones many times:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had no Phase Devices, and the Invulnerability was too far to make it in time to survive nuking Dis. However, by cutting the door, pushing a barrel towards the Invulnerability and then using my Combat Knife to throw at it, I was able to make it, with 3 turns of Invulnerability to spare. The Combat Knife has come in handy many times actually for other barrel-blasting setups, usually for opening paths.

Another amusing run I had insisted on giving me Bulk Packs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And on another run...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Finally! There were lots of tough monsters and not a ton of help towards it, but I managed to grab it with some careful play:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm very happy I won't need to do another 666 game now, and I finally get Armorer Diamond Badge! Getting this on floor 1 also meant I can skip the Berserker trait, which is now useless. On the next floor, I found the next best unique for this character:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No Malicious Knives on this run of course though.

I got a little overconfident and fought through Limbo instead of rushing for the Nuclear BFG and got beat up pretty bad for it, but managed to survive:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On floor 6, I found stacked Invulnerability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And another stack on floor 7!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Except...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I completely forgot I wouldn't be able to use the Nuclear BFG and needed a regular nuke, oops. Fun fact, you also can't Chainsaw boost, unsurprisingly:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Knowing that now, it could have been very helpful on the approach to getting Dragonslayer, rather than saving it just before actually picking it up. Anyway, I made short work of the Spider Mastermind in 3 hits and got another Gutts' Heart:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's all for now. Once Apostle ranking is done, I will have completed all the major grinds that interfere with runs and can focus entirely on collecting Badges and Medals without being sidetracked. It'll be a breath of fresh air after all this JC grinding for sure.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 18, 2020, 15:54
Day 16

After a long grind, I have finally reached 50 JC kills and got Apostle ranking!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's not that hard to get, but it takes some serious time to get all those kills, and I'm glad it's all done now. This also means every major grind is out of the way and I can focus entirely on Badges and Medals now. I'm not sure what I'll go for first.

Some highlights:

This was a crazy room to open, with 16 out of 21 tiles occupied, all by monsters who can't open doors:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the same floor, there was a somewhat similar one too:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On one run, I had my first triple nuke before floor 4, meaning I could blow up an extra floor, in particular, Mortuary/Limbo. I found the necessary Invulnerability right by the start and the stairs too:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My first run through this grind on grabbing Angelic Armor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floors 5 and 7 were also nice and I was able to actually complete the run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In one scenario, I was able to barricade myself and pick off Arachnatrons. If you weren't already aware, they cannot destroy Napalm Barrels because of the high armor value:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On one close run, I didn't have an Invulnerability on floor 7 as my current one was almost out, but I rolled this instead:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I once killed a Baron who exploded like a pinata:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that's it for now!
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 19, 2020, 13:34
Day 17

One of my current goals now is to re-earn everything I had previously got and the list is getting quite short now. They are as follows:

Medals: Gargulec Cross, Thomas's Medal
Gold Badges: Strongman
Platinum Badges: Reaper, Berserker, Quartermaster, Everyman
Diamond Badges: Gatekeeper, Reaper, Berserker, Quartermaster, Scavenger
Angelic Badges: Veteran, Lightfoot

So far, I haven't earned anything that I didn't before.

I cycled around a bit with different challenges without too much success, and I was attempting a few things that would give me multiple badges in one completion, but after that I decided to just go for some easy stuff.

My first pick was Quartermaster Gold Badge, which I got in one try. It's a pretty easy challenge with the help of Max Carnage, but I had quite a bit of good luck too. On floor 7, I got a very early Assault Shotgun:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I happened to find another one a bit later too:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Later on, I also found a relatively early Trigun, which does still work with Red Alert:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn't find much for Invulnerability, but it still got some usage:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And otherwise, it wasn't very eventful. Very easy to get.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After that, I played for Daredevil Platinum Badge, which likewise wasn't too much trouble or particularly interesting. I carried two nukes with me and found my first Invulnerability on Hell floor 4:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I found another on the very next floor, nearby both the start and stairs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I tried to make the most of each action of Invulnerability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 6 also tried to work with me for another, but I ran out of nukes at that point:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And near the end, I got slightly reckless with a Mancubus and almost died. It would have been pretty annoying, but it was completely avoidable and my fault:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And likewise, it was easy overall and nothing too eventful.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's it for today! I'll continue picking away at some of the easier achievements and see what I end up earning.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 20, 2020, 16:47
Day 18

My first target today was Gatekeeper Diamond Badge. I think it goes without saying that it requires some good luck since Phobos Anomaly requires either a Phase Device or Invulnerability. After some attempts, I got a run with a Phase Device that worked out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I used a rocket to open up the door but blew off far more than I intended. I still was able to clear everything without getting hit, and I chipped off the edge bit with another rocket to cornershoot the Bruisers after:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After that, it was very easy:

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With Dodgemaster, the rest of the run is essentially not getting killed to Tower of Babel. Along the way I found this:

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However, I took a look at the code before trying this challenge and knew that nuking the Cyberdemon wouldn't count. Still, it can come in handy for regular floors. I found something even better later:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And with that, I got my Gatekeeper Diamond Badge, and a new ranking:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next, I went for Reaper Platinum Badge with Overconfidence and Max Carnage. It's pretty easy, just takes some luck to get to the Nuclear BFG and then defend the island. I had some good runs that all died and managed to get it on a bad one with Invulnerability and rushing towards an empty island. My Phase Device failed on me, but the lack of monsters balanced out the luck:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For awhile, I was confused how monsters kept respawning with no Archviles in sight, forgeting that they do that on Nightmare.

I shot repeatedly into the darkness until everything was dead. For those who go for this in this manner, always aim between you and the monsters so any knockback effects send them away. After some time, I got the completion:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next, I went for Reaper Diamond Badge. Technically, I could have just gone for this and get both in one run, but felt like playing them separately for fun.

On one run, I found a first floor Trigun:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had a number of Invulnerabilities and nuked a pile of floors for quick experience. I later rolled a nasty Cacodemon cave with no proper cover:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I later also realized I had to cross lava and with no health remaining, which was the end of the run:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What's cool though is I got another Fallout Platinum Cross. Honestly, Trigun is one of the most OP weapons in the game and I can see myself relying on finding it for the ultra difficult challenges ahead.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another run that was looking good, I rolled this for Hell floor 4:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My strategy for this badge is basically the same as before: grab the Nuclear BFG through either Phase Devices, Envirosuits, or Invulnerability, then camp until everything is dead. Invulnerability right by the stairs here is very promising.

It looked like I had a long way to go though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After some running around, I discovered that the door tile was one further than I saw, nice:

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I had fresh Invulnerability and one Homing Phase Device and took the coin flip risk:

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Unfortunately, I got the absolute worst pick and in trying to get to where I needed to be, I was getting walled out by projectiles and unable to move much:

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I eventually made it to the island but the Nuclear BFG had been destroyed and that was the end of the run:

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On a new run with Invulnerability still fresh after the Cyberdemon kill, I found this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This would mean that the Nuclear BFG would be unnecessary! I decided a Rocket Launcher would definitely be the best pick, but I could also double the rate of ammo refill on the Nuclear BFG. I also found this along the way but decided I didn't need it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had a really nice floor 4:

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And it kept getting better:

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Before entering, I had a huge stack of goodies:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After three tries of Homing Phase Devices, I got the second best spot and decided to just go with that:

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I was having trouble defending and bad spawns appeared:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

With Dodgemaster, I can normally handle Nightmare Cacodemons, but I was getting boxed in and with no cover. After burning through my Med-Paks, I decided to use my last Homing Phase Device, but with hardly any effect:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Out of desperation, I used a regular Phase Device and it went about as well as you could guess:

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On another run, I had an interesting first floor where I could cut everything off and blow up all corpses, leaving just a Commando and I stocked up on Cells:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Having Plasma helped a lot and I had lots of other good fortune through the way. On Hell floor 4, I had a pretty good start:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also rolled Limbo again and had another nice stack of items, the only main thing I was lacking was Med-Paks:

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I decided to take another risk and used a regular Phase Device, which worked out pretty well:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nightmare Cacodemons were swarming again, but all the Plasma I had helped a lot, and I needed almost all of it to defend my space. After quite some time with blasting Cacodemons and firing Nuclear BFG shots into the darkness, I eventually cleared Limbo.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Overall, a pretty good day. While my rate of play will remain high, there aren't really many easy challenges left, and many of which require long runs, so I might start seeing days where I don't get anything new. I'll put in a good fight and see how things go.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 21, 2020, 13:19
Day 19

Today, I went for Scavenger Diamond Badge with the Azrael strategy. I tried a few times and was struggling to get really anywhere, so I switched to using the Humanity variant and got it pretty quick. It's very easy and probably the best way to get it. Humanity + Overconfidence supplies you with Ballistic Red Armor and Chainsword, and tons of Med-Paks to use Whisper of Death once arriving at The Vaults. 4 attacks are the minimum required to kill Archviles, with 5 the maximum if any Revenants get resurrected.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After that, I decided to bring the difficulty down to Hurt Me Plenty and play for Platinum Everyman Badge and Thomas's Medal using the same strategy. I've had quite a few good runs, but it's hard to make it through the later parts of the game when running around with at most 5 HP. I didn't manage to get them just yet, but I should soon.

Here's a few interesting screenshots:

This was a silly setup for floor 1:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And I believe this was the longest level feeling I've ever had, almost a short novel:

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On my best run with tons of gear, I rolled this for floor 4:

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I decided to save the nuke for later, and certainly not nuke Mortuary/Limbo as I need all the goodies inside. I was able to sneak in and used several Whispers of Death between all the Soulspheres and Med-Paks. When leaving, I had this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On floor 5, I found two more Small Med-Paks, got some extra experience to get towards Dodgemaster, and was pretty set to get a completion, but of all things that could happen, a Cacodemon stepped into a teleporter, appeared in front of me, and instantly killed me. That's how it goes.

It's a pretty fun challenge and Everyman Diamond Badge with the same strategy should be good too once I go for that later on.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 22, 2020, 14:22
Day 20

After a bit of struggling the last couple days, today was a huge success! On my first run of the day, I got Everyman Platinum Badge and Thomas's Medal with the Humanity + Overconfidence strategies!

The first floor had two Homing Phase Devices, which meant I could later skip floors 5 and 7, but I didn't want to get too excited since the hardest parts are at the beginning. After getting Azrael's Scythe, wiping The Vaults, and clearing out Limbo with some luck and more Whispers of Death, I was well set to complete. The stack of items leaving Limbo means there's enough Med-Paks for Lava Pits/Mt Erebus, Red Armor (P) for tanking the Lava Elemental, Nuclear BFG where needed, even if just for the ending, and a Soulsphere to reach a whopping 10 HP.

I had Invulnerability for Lava Pits, which ran out, but I also had an Envirosuit and killed the Lava Elemental in 2 hits:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then with the Homing Phase Device for floor 7 and Nuclear BFG for Dis, it was all done.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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Next, I tried for Quartermaster Platinum Badge and got that in just a few tries too! My general strategy was to use Max Carnage, kill a handful of monsters along the way to get Dodgemaster for the Cyberdemon, and stairdive for most of the whole way through.

On Deimos floor 4, I had a nice double Invulnerability:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On floor 7, I found a Homing Phase Device while still Invulnerable and opted to use it then.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hell floor 1 was a bit rough:

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But I found another Homing Phase Device:

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And decided after searching through most of the level which has two staircases to hold onto it, which was a bit risky with some of the monsters that were around:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On floor 2, while this weapon is basically useless, it's a nice source of Cells:

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Funny enough, it was good that I went to grab it or I may have had a very long level:

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Floor 3 was also a mess and while I wanted to hang onto my Homing Phase Device, I think it was the right call to use it there:

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And it was for sure:

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Floor 4 was nicer:

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And looking even better with yet another Homing Phase Device. I was a little worried about all the Archviles and Revenants though so I tried to stay above to direct their fire away from it:

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Which also revealed the stairs!

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After killing them, it seems that it was destroyed unfortunately:

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Or not:

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Floor 5 was fair, and I was lucky to have ran in the right direction:

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And with this floor 6, I had the game won!

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I did Run->Wait at Dis to end the game after.

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My next pick was Berserk + Overconfidence on Ultra-Violence with 100% kills to get me both Gargulec Cross and Berserker Platinum Badge. My general strategy for this is to get a strong floor 1, grab Azrael's Scythe, and then Run->Wait camp to kill everything on the rest of the floors. So long as you can kill basically everything in one hit, door camping is very safe, especially once getting Vampyre.

This challenge took a number of tries unlike earlier, and I had some interesting games along the way.

I had a really odd island level with intersecting bridges:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On one run, I rolled a lever that would floor the whole level with lava, and also found a Homing Phase Device:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My plan was to pull it, warp onto the stairs, and get an easy clear, although I wouldn't be getting Azrael's Scythe on this particular attempt:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately, there were a number of flying enemies, and a nearby Chaingunner who was safe on an opened door:

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I couldn't do a whole lot from here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another run, I found a Trigun on floor 1!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also with an Invulnerability near the stairs to Unholy Cathedral:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately though, there were Barons hanging around there, it was a flooding level, and I had just slightly too little health to grab it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On another good run, I had a Revenant level, which is excellent for experience and easy kills. I left with a giant stack of Med-Packs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was able to get Azrael's Scythe and not long after floor 2, got Vampyre. Getting runs up to this point can be rare, so I had to take things a bit more seriously from here. Floor 3 was nice and I was able to start door camping:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 4 was also nice:

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The entire right side of the level only had one entrance, which made camping very powerful:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was very helpful too since the other side was a mess:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because of the Tracking Map, Run->Wait was only so fast, so I slowly approached and cleared out the level. I had a pretty solid stack of items:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 5 gave me another Computer Map and revealed lots of useful items:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was also able to isolate very well:

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Floor 6 once again gave me a Computer Map:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had to play a bit aggressively as there were a ton of Archviles and Mancubi to the right, with barrels littered everywhere. Envirosuit helped a lot, but I had a few sketchy moments:

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After that side was empty, I was able to do more door camping:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 7 was a big mess of a level, but at least I found yet another Computer Map:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because of the angle of a vault towards a rough spot below, I decided to charge in. It's not as dangerous as it looks since the Cacodemons end up meat-shielding each other and they all get killed easily:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was considering using some Whispers of Death, but wasn't sure if it would be the best call to approach the Spider Mastermind with less HP. I decided not to and was able to clear the bottom without as much trouble as I expected:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And with that, it was an easy finish!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Next up, Berserker Diamond Badge. Like other Nightmare challenges with kill requirements, my strategy was to rush to the end, isolate an enemy, and repeatedly kill it until I'm set to finish.

This start didn't look very promising:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

On a much better run, I got to floor 4 and accidentally went to The Mortuary, thinking it was The Vaults. Lucky me, the upper-right area was pretty empty!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And on floor 5, I found an Invulnerability to go with my Nuclear BFG:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I decided to nuke floor 5 for the experience, get Intuition, and hopefully find some useful power-ups in the next floors. And it worked out really well!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 7 was the main floor that mattered and it had two lava rivers!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The left side was already cut off!

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For the right side, I was going to make use of a few barrels to help. Combat Knives are really helpful for this on Berserk challenges:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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I wasn't quite sure what to do with the right side though and there was a pile of Hell Knights and Barons over there. I had most of the bodies destroyed, except one Hell Knight and hoped I could push the last barrel close enough to it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not quite:

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So instead, I let the Hell Knight destroy the Mancubus corpse I was saving and went for repeated Hell Knight kills instead, which was slightly riskier:

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In any case, the setup was complete, but I had quite a few kills to get:

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I still had to fight the Spider Mastermind without dying, but I had the Chainsaw boost to help:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And after just a small handful of runs, I got the badge!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I now have earned all the Medals and Platinum Badges I previously got and decided to get around to the last Gold Badge, which was Strongman. I'm not sure if my strategy or playstyle is weak, but I've always felt relatively weak on challenges that require Knives and Fists only. Despite that, I got a complete luckbox run and got the badge after just a couple tries!

After an average start with some door camping, I had a bad floor 5 and had no choice but to skip Chained Court:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 7 was where things started to look really good though:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Most of Deimos was me running around with Invulnerability and stairdiving, however, I realized my run was basically finished at the Cyberdemon with little experience and no Chainsaw. Perhaps related to my weakness on these challenges, I clearly had a major misunderstanding of how powerful Berserk really is. I started off with blasting the Cyberdemon with Plasma, took a couple hits which triggered Berserker, and charged at him with a basic Combat Knife. To my surprise, I actually managed to kill him, and with lots of health and a couple Med-Paks too!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hell floor 2 was a terrible start, but a Phase Device dropped me off right at the stairs!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 3 had the stairs one tile over!

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Floor 4 had an Invulnerability near the stairs, but I did have to work a little for this one at least:

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I also found this, but it was destroyed before I could grab it:

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Floor 5 put me by the stairs again!

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Floor 6 was good too!

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And floor 7 too!

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And suddenly, I was at the end of the game. I was still slightly worried about dying, but with Berserk and lots of Brute, I was still strong enough to make the Spider Mastermind flinch and took her out without too much trouble!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Slightly insulting to be given all this merely for a Gold Badge, but I'm certainly not complaining!

I now am only missing 3 rewards that I had previously obtained: Quartermaster Diamond Badge, Veteran Angelic Badge, and Lightfoot Angelic Badge. These are all tough challenges, but I think I can get them without too much trouble. I'm definitely at the point now where I don't think I will be getting new things every day, especially since I just cleared out a lot of what I was missing just today.

My other main targets are Everyman Diamond Badge using the Azrael strategy, which isn't too much harder than doing so on HMP, and completing an Angel of 100 game on Nightmare will give me all of Dervis' Medallion, Heroic Diamond Badge, and Centurial Diamond Badge, completing my Medal count and really upping my Diamond Badge count. I've been a bit frustrated with myself for not having done it before since it's so many rewards for one run, especially since I'm a huge fan of Angel of 100, so it will be some good redemption for sure. There's lots more unfinished business ahead, and there are a lot of non-reward challenges I intend to do too once the remaining rewards start becoming more and more infeasible.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on July 23, 2020, 03:11
Welcome back Icy, good to see you again... looks like you've made pretty incredible progress so far.

Got the really tough stuff left to go though - it'll be interesting to see how you handle it this time around, and if you can exceed your previous achievements.

Best of luck!
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Icy on July 23, 2020, 13:18
Thanks, although I have to say, you chose an amusing time to pop in.

Day 21

I decided to start with Veteran Angelic Badge, which isn't too bad once you get through the first half of the game. If you can get to Mortuary/Limbo and grab the Nuclear BFG, it solves a good amount of problems for the run.

Last time, I got a golden run and was able to get this badge on my first try, and with that, I took this run very carefully to see if I could do it again.

To start, I found a great armor on floor 1:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also found a much needed weapon:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There were also a few Mancubi and Shotgun Guys who I farmed up a bit for ammunition. 100% kills on Nightmare can be a bit of an obstacle since everything needs to be killed and then destroyed, which is very ammo-expensive.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 2 was a bit messy, but a fair challenge, and I was able to scoop up more ammo:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 3 was a maze with a vertical lava river, and I accidentally blew up the bridge, which I actually did not want because crossing over later is dangerous:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Once again, I had tons of ammo to grab:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Overall, a very strong start:

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Floor 4 had a horizontal lava river and was very nasty. I also almost died pretty quickly:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After clearing the floor, I was at a tough decision as I rolled Limbo, but didn't have any of the needed supplies to take it on, in particular, Med-Paks and Phase Devices:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I decided I would push my luck and hope I could find a nuke by chance. Floor 5 was a decent start:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At one point, I was getting attacked by a Mancubus with few options to go from here. I decided to use my Homing Phase Device, despite it being at an angle relative to where it was firing from, hoping it wouldn't kill me:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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But it unfortunately didn't work out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No first try this time! This run took almost an hour though and it's pretty draining to do all that only to not get the desired luck regarding Limbo. This is the kind of thing where you can only get a few runs a day, even if you play a lot.

So I decided to try something more sprinty and a bit crazy.

I was theorycrafting a bit with Pacifist Angelic Badge and perhaps most people go with Hellrunner, but I am pretty convinced that Intuition is the optimal choice. While Hellrunner does give you more movement speed and dodging, Intuition provides you with the locations of Computer/Tracking Maps, which are invaluable, as well as Invulnerabilities and other useful powerups. While it's obviously necessary to prevent any monsters killing each other, you yourself must also survive. I would argue the movement speed difference from Hellrunner is made up for by having access to maps as well.

I also looked into the coding and the badge requires exactly 1 kill and a completed run, so no silly business here. However, it's worth noting that if a player makes it to Dis while Invulnerable, they should let it run out before nuking the Spider Mastermind, in the off-chance that JC accidentally kills something it spawns.

On my tenth attempt, with my previous best being Phobos floor 5 with no deaths, I had this happen.

To start, I had a very interesting room:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also found a pretty useful armor early on, which is nice for better damage reduction and movement speed compared to Blue Armor:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 4 gave me a nearby map:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 5 also gave me a Phase Device! As you need to get through Phobos Anomaly with 0 monster deaths, it's essentially mandatory to have at least one of these. Invulnerability also likely won't cut it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also found both the main exit and the Chained Court and was undecided of where to go. I think the Berserks could be helpful, but I was concerned with monsters all killing themselves and decided I would look into it on a future run where I only found Chained Court. With this, I have now surpassed my previous best!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 6 gave another excellent example of the power of maps:

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I took a chance with the nearby teleporter, but it was unfortunately mostly useless:

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Things were getting dicey:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But I managed to make it to floor 7!

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I really wanted the map if not the stairs, but I couldn't reasonably approach it:

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Even from another angle:

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But I found the stairs!

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So after all this, I still have to get very lucky with a Phase Device to skip all the early monsters. I used it and...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got past! I ran around the Bruisers and rolled an amazing Deimos floor 1, that also had no risk of monster kills with a Lost Soul cave!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It got better too:

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Floor 2 also had very nearby stairs!

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And again on floor 3!

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Floor 4 was looking bad though:

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Or not! I even rolled City of Skulls, whereas Abyssal Plains would have to be skipped:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 5 was another cave, and it had Invulnerability too!

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This was getting pretty insane.

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Floor 6 didn't look too promising, but Invulnerability helps. However, I heard a Demon yell in pain and got worried:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

After exploring the starting rooms and having nowhere else to go, I had to go left and had a room of Demons with a bunch of damaging fluids. And just like that, it was all over:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I did go the correct direction too, so there weren't really mistakes on my part:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This was an absolutely crazy run that had ridiculous luck in it, but ultimately, I was barely half way done, getting low on supplies, and lost it due to monsters being dumb. It would honestly take me hundreds of more attempts to get another run like this, and some ungodly amount to actually complete it. I did genuinely think that this was something a player could realistically get if they played out enough runs, but after having been given everything I could have realistically imagined, I've been thoroughly convinced that this is not feasible at all.

Anyway, I've been getting struck by the same feelings I had before where the game is slowly turning from fun into a slog, despite me clearly capable of a lot more, so I'm going to take another break. For reference, I have played 150 hours in the last 3 weeks, which is more than most full-time jobs! If it wasn't obvious already, I'm generally very on/off type of person.

Hopefully the burnout is just temporary, but I have everything up to this point backed up so I won't have to redo everything again. Maybe it will be 3 days, maybe it will be 3 years, but I'm going to do some other stuff for awhile. Perhaps maintaining a daily blogging style is not the best way to approach since I unnecessarily put pressure on myself to perform, though it does get some fast results. Maybe I'll simply post in the post-mortem board section for future rewards and create an additional separate thread if I discover any more relevant strategy ideas like the Humanity Azrael strategy or JC farming, etc. We'll see!
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: Sereg on July 24, 2020, 07:41
Ah, dammit, just when it was getting good, too...

I don't blame you, I'm very similar myself - which is why I've only just now popped back in after another long hiatus.

Pretty amazing Pacifist Angelic attempt there... I've never made it anywhere near that far myself. I think you're right though, the luck you need to complete that particular challenge is probably well above that required for anything else.

And not to tempt you as you're looking to the door, but what do you think of Speedrunner Angelic? Personally I believe it to be doable, and with a great deal less luck than Pacifist, but I suspect it would still take quite a lot of grinding to both build the right amount of intuition to play quickly enough to meet the time standard, as well as to land a run where that intuition would work out correctly for you in all critical situations.
Title: Re: Another Journey to 100%
Post by: khiijol on July 24, 2020, 09:53
switch it up with some jupiter hell!