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With 11 Angelics and all other badges won, there's very little left I can get; of the 6 remaining Angelics, there's only Everyman Angelic, Masochist Angelic, and the impossible 4. Everyman Angelic has been proven humanly possible before, but Masochist Angelic is in a grey area, as what it requires isn't as outrageous as what the impossible 4 demand, yet in the over 13 years since 0.9.9.7 released, that badge has never been verifiably won by anyone in that version. Vandam infamously claimed to have won every Angelic except for Centurial within a few months of 0.9.9.7's release in his absurd "N+" difficulty proposal, so that would include Masochist Angelic alongside the impossible 4, yet he refused to even post mortems of any of his runs, let alone video proof (with him claiming he "only plays for joy" and "showing mortems is just a way of creating hierarchy"... yet that didn't stop him from boasting about his supposed 16 Angelics). Supposedly he posted a screenshot showing the 16/17 Angelics on his record in that thread before the screenshot got taken down for whatever reason, but that is shoddy proof, when he could have pulled a 2Dev using Cheat Engine to hack the game for them, or more charitably, with Vandam being a beta tester of 0.9.9.7, he could have abused game-breaking beta bugs to get all these Angelics in the betas and then copied his player.wad file over to keep the illegitimately-won Angelics on his record (as an example of such bugs, Tormuse found a bug in the ancient 0.9.9.8 beta that tricked the game into awarding him Speedrunner Angelic when immediately letting himself die on the first floor, while one of the 0.9.9.9 betas had two major bugs where your clips would underflow to give infinite ammo and certain traits would carry over to the next run after dying/quitting with no limit, which I had some fun with to win UAC and Demonic Angelic, such glaring examples why any badges won in any beta versions shouldn't count). With his dearth of proof, and Vandam also having the 2Dev hallmark of not explaining how he actually got his badges, in addition to his sparse attempts at discussing strategy being dubious or even factually wrong (such as the very simple fact of not knowing that you don't need to kill the Cyberdemon to get past Babel in AoPc), we can conclude Vandam's claims are bullshit until proven otherwise. Now Masochist Angelic was legitimately won last year by micerang and he even had full video proof of his run... but it carries the big asterisk of being won in 0.9.9.8. For those that don't know, while an official version, 0.9.9.8 was an awfully buggy release, including a major dodging bug that essentially gave you a 95% dodge rate against everything regardless of HR levels, alongside having an OP Marine and the most broken mastery of all-time with its version of Vampyre that may as well as have been IDDQD. With these things, micerang avoided many more hits than he would have without the dodging bug (a particular moment being when he was repeatedly dodging Barons and Formers in Unchained Court without running nor having any HR levels), and when he did get hit was taking significantly less damage from the 0.9.9.8 Marine's +20% energy resistances, while by the time he reached Vampyre he had only 6 HP left and so his run just objectively doesn't win without the aid of these two factors, while by his admission it still took him hundreds of tries to reach that point even with said factors (I do hate to disparage provably legitimate runs, but the 0.9.9.8 asterisk just can't be ignored, it's even the reason why I started my 0.9.9.7 conquest when I wanted to show I could win the previously unwon-in-0.9.9.7 Eagerness and Inquisitor Angelics without the aid of 0.9.9.8). Of provable Masochist Angelic runs in 0.9.9.7, Icy did get an attempt up to the Cyberdemon; if he didn't take so long to kill the Cyberdemon and avoided getting cornered, there's a legitimate chance the run could have went the distance even with only 3 HP left by that point as he would have just needed a lucky quickly-accessible Invulnerability, so it was a good proof-of-concept to show the badge was indeed possible, unlike with the impossible 4 that have no proof of anyone getting remotely close to achieving them or otherwise have a "proof of concept" that involved grotesque amounts of save scumming (which is also another reason why Vandam's screenshot of his badge collection isn't valid proof when you can't trust that he didn't save scum Pacifist Angelic). Another point of this badge being possible is my recent Demonic Diamond run, where I finished the game with 61 damage taken, while 14 of that damage came from the completely optional Shambler fight and the Onyx mod reward made no real difference the rest of the run, so without fighting the Shambler, I could have finished that run with under 50 damage and thus could theoretically win without ever healing.

So Ultimately, what makes Masochist Angelic so difficult? At bare minimum, with no conventional healing available in Archangel of Masochism, you effectively must beat the game on Nightmare! taking no more than 49 damage as a Scout/Technician or no more than 59 damage as a Marine. Any Ironman levels would give you an additional +10 HP and so you can get up to a potential +50 more damage you can take from Ironman levels, while Vampyre can still heal you indefinitely (...if you can survive long enough to get it), and there are a couple other rare sources that can heal you, but this is basically a much harder version of Demonic Diamond, a Diamond that let you take up to 199 damage and was already known for being on par with the average Angelic in difficulty, while surviving long enough in ArchAoMs to get access to that extra health is much easier said than done. ArchAoMs has an additional wrinkle where without being able to heal to restore your Tactics, you essentially can only activate running once per floor without grabbing a Berserk Pack or Invulnerability, normally you shouldn't need to use running more than once per floor but this could cause you to take more damage that you would have avoided otherwise and does make special levels like Hell's Arena more difficult. This badge demands such an extreme amount of damage avoidance while giving the player no sort of help (you just have more bullets in your starting inventory, which doesn't matter even before considering you can farm infinite bullets from respawning Formers on N!, and you can get an early Red Armor + Plasteel Boots from Hell's Arena if you can clear it without taking a crippling amount of damage), and even if you play perfectly over several floors, it only takes a single bad hot start to instantly ruin the run when you're playing with such a slim margin of error.

With that said, what are the viable builds and strategies to win here? I think there's three viable ways that you could feasibly win Masochist Angelic with:

*The most obvious way is to go for Vampyre (which is what micerang used in his 0.9.9.8 Masochist Angelic run), as if you can survive long enough to get Vampyre, you can then indefinitely heal as much as you want, and so have the badge pretty much won from that point as long as you can get past Phobos Anomaly and avoid making any stupid overextensions, with the only real danger post-Phobos being Arachnotron Caves. However surviving long enough to get Vampyre in 0.9.9.7 is very very hard, as the Vampyre prereq path requires three traits in two Brute levels and Badass that are virtually worthless until you get Vampyre (you can't fight in melee when you can't heal and you can't get any boosted health yet for Badass to retain while the knockback reduction is more counterproductive if anything), and the Marine's 10 extra HP barely helps (in the early game where you likely have lackluster armor, it basically amounts to being able to take only one or two more hits, the Scout's +10% universal speed bonus is far more helpful as it'll let you completely avoid more hits than that). Vampyre does give you the option of a free trait to choose, but a single level of Finesse often won't be able to shotgun down Pinkies or corner shoot Hell Knights to death before they reach you, at which point you can't get away from them when you have no Hellrunner nor can tank them when you got only 60 HP total before Vampyre, so delaying Vampyre by detouring for the Finesse -> Juggler opener is direly necessary to have any real hope of surviving long enough for it. But any delay in getting Vampyre is painful, making that an extra floor or two you need to survive without Vampyre, and for any hot start that Juggler can't get you through, you won't be able to as effectively escape without Hellrunner, while you also can't get Intuition and so will have to play very very slowly, when you can't afford to step into any enemy's vision.

*The second option is to do a masterless Scout stairdive that guns for Int2 and then Dodgemaster to beat the Cyberdemon, which is what Icy was using and got his Masochist Angelic run that made it to Babel with. The main advantage of this strategy is it's the fastest in real time and so is more spammable to get more attempts in the time it would take you get a good attempt with the other options, but this strategy has a major problem in it leaves your combat woefully inept, so you're heavily reliant on getting very good Invuln/Berserk and stair luck, as well as avoiding any bad levels in mid-Phobos and onward when you can't realistically fight your way out of lethal hot starts, nor can do things in any of the special levels aside from Chained Court. A build so inept at combat isn't good for the Cyberdemon fight either even with Dodgemaster, as if you take too long to kill the Cyberdemon, his AI gets antsy and will start erratically approaching you between reloads, where he can then corner you in a position where you can't avoid his rocket splash, which is what did in Icy's best attempt. Of the three viable strats, I think this one is definitely the least viable, it's telling that Icy tried this strat in hundreds of attempts and still never succeeded with it, only getting that one run to the Cyberdemon and very few even getting past Anomaly, eventually giving up at it. It can work, but it will require a grotesque amount of luck and you can surely win in less real time if you're good enough with the other two options despite their individual attempts playing slower.

*The third option would be my Demonic Diamond build, damage-avoidant Shottyhead that opens with Fin -> Juggler for the immediate big combat boost, then detours for Int2 to aid damage avoidance and detect Invulns, then the rest of Shottyhead's prereqs. The big advantages of this build are you get very strong early game traits to most effectively mitigate damage in the Phobos portion of the run where you don't yet have Invulnerabilities, and upon reaching Shottyhead, you get your best chance at surviving later hot starts with Shottyhead's ability to kill entire groups of tough enemies before they wake up or at least knock them out of vision, while additionally granting near complete safety when corner shooting, notably being able to repeatedly shoot back multiple enemies approaching from different angles when having to corner shoot from imperfect cover. This build also lets you safely do some important special levels, most notably Hell's Arena at the start for the early Red Armor + Plasteel Boots + Rocket Launcher, and then City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains (the importance of which will be covered later...). Compared to the Vampyre strat, you'll have a much less brutal time even getting to late Phobos, but you'll still be playing on a razor's edge post-Phobos and the run will probably still come down to getting Invulnerabilities to skip most of post-Phobos. I'm unsure what ultimately has the higher odds of success between it and Vampyre, however I think it is just strictly better than the Scout pure stairdive if you're skilled enough at the game; while it will play a lot slower and you might have to deal with runs that had over an hour put into them dying, it'll be so much less luck-dependent that it should still take you a lot less real time to eventually win with.

*For a possible fourth option, people might think Cateye, which is typically thought of as the damage avoidance mastery, with it detecting enemies from farther away than other builds and gives you a vision advantage over enemies to fire on them unimpeded without them being able to retaliate. The issue with Cateye is seeing enemies from farther away won't matter if they're already on top of you, and so Cateye doesn't help with the hot starts that are extra lethal in a challenge where you can't heal. Additionally, Cateye's SoB2 prereq doesn't help your Shotguns as much as Finesse/Reloader/Shottyman does, let alone remotely comparing to the power of early Juggler, and you really want faster firing speed when fighting crowds, while Triggerhappy isn't much better than a dead level. Cateye also doesn't have Hellrunner among its prereqs, a pretty crucial trait to avoiding damage and getting through N! Anomaly; now you can get Hellrunner alongside Finesse and Juggler, but that will all delay Cateye, while you're gonna need Eagle Eye too to take strong advantage of rapid fire weapons that the SoB + TH levels support, delaying Cateye even farther. I wouldn't say Cateye is completely unviable here, but there is a reason why I didn't use Cateye for my Demonic Diamond, Masochist Diamond, and even my Destroyer Diamond runs, the prereqs just aren't that good for avoiding damage in the Phobos portion of the run where it can be most difficult to avoid damage, and mitigating the threat of hot starts is so important, not to mention that Cateye and its prereqs don't help much for the major roadblock that is N! Anomaly.

When I first started Masochist Angelic attempts, I was trying Vampyre, as I do favor trading more early game luck/difficulty for much greater later game reliability; as I put it, I would much rather have several runs that die in 15 minutes or less than a lose a run that goes over an hour. However trying to get to level 7 as the Marine with no Hellrunner nor Intuition, while taking those dead Brute + Badass levels in their place, was brutal. Sure I could infinitely run -> wait camp behind any good camping spot, but finding said camping spot and being able to reach it without taking damage on any given floor is much easier said than done, and you do need a concealed camping spot to be fully safe, as one other detrimental factor with the Marine is that Imps outspeed you and so can potentially get a double move on you as you wait. Normally this hardly matters, when it's uncommon and Imps deal minor damage anyway even if they do get a free shot on you, but here where every single point of damage matters so much, those Imp double move cheap shots are painful. Not to mention that Hell Knights can get double moves when you wait as a non-Scout and they're more likely to than Imps while hitting harder, so you really can't afford to run-> wait behind imperfect cover when Hell Knights are around. You additionally can't clear Hell's Arena, well you can do so with Juggler but doing so means you get the Unchained Court, and Vampyre is going to really need that Chainsaw, but you won't hit level 7 before Unchained Court and so going in would be suicide without a Homing Phase (or playing on 0.9.9.8), while you also really want the Chained Court Berserks to power your way through the final Phobos floors to Military Base or a floor 7 Invuln or through Anomaly (though you should still go in to Hell's Arena to kill some enemies for the EXP and just leave after the first or second wave). Without clearing Hell's Arena, you won't have the Red Armor and so the Marine here can't take as many hits despite the extra HP, and you won't have an early Rocket Launcher for corpse disposal, wall busting, or emergency rocket jumping. The early game also plays dreadfully too, if you're not run -> wait spamming behind the first piece of usable cover you find, you'll be constantly radar shooting every few steps. Then even if you play through multiple floors near flawlessly, it just takes a single bad floor to completely fuck you; in one Vampyre attempt, I got through the first three floors and half of Hell's Arena taking only 5 points of damage, but then I got this awful Phobos 4 maze that suddenly killed the run just like that, with virtually nothing I could have done to survive it even after choosing the right direction to run for the stairs. After 8 deaths and many other runs that I Q+Y'd on the first two floors, while not getting a single Marine past floor 5 nor even to level 5 despite delaying Vampyre for Juggler, I decided to give Demonic Shottyhead some tries before running more Vampyre attempts. Granted I was getting some very awful level generation luck in that Phobos 3-5 range (so...many...damn...mazes), so if I just got a run without early mazes or Cacodemon caves, I might have a shot, but I thought I should give Shottyhead some tries, when I came so close to finishing under 50 damage with it in my first Demonic Diamond attempt that didn't reset in Phobos Base Entry. With the Shottyhead build, in only the fourth attempt that didn't Q+Y in the first four floors, I get a run past Phobos 5 and actually managed to survive this Phobos 6 that would have probably killed the Vampyre or stairdive Scout, and then reached a Phobos 7 Invuln to get a run to Deimos, but it would end up dying in Deimos 3. On one hand it was disheartening to lose a run with nearly two hours put into it, but on the other hand, getting a run that far after not many attempts was promising, while altogether I wasn't resetting so much on Phobos 2, so I gave Demonic Shottyhead a few more tries before trying Vampyre again...

For the immediate start of the run, Phobos Base Entry is a crapshoot, can just employ my usual strategy and hope the Shotgunners don't come out early while also hoping the Former Humans decide to have Stormtrooper accuracy while I'm running to the safe corner. I might accept getting punched by a Former once or taking a minimum damage roll Pistol shot, but anything more than that and it's a reset, every damage point matters and it won't take that long until you get a damageless or near-damageless Phobos Entry. Also while the medkits don't do anything, you should still take one or two with you so you can gift drop with them. I open with Finesse -> Juggler, which means I won't have Intuition 2 for Phobos 2, but I need Juggler for clearing Hell's Arena as safely as possible, and Phobos 2 isn't too bad to do taking one hit or none without Int2 as a Scout, you can makedo with less ideal cover than the Marine as Imps won't outspeed you (well do to timing oddities, it is still possible for an Imp to get a double move on a waiting Scout, but it's quite uncommon). In this run, I nearly got through Phobos 2 damageless, until a charging Lost Soul surprised me out of a thin hallway and hit me for 5 damage, which was tempting to reset for but I just accepted it. Then comes Hell's Arena, clearing which is an even more painfully tedious affair when you can't intentionally take damage to destroy corpses, it can't be overstated how much I despise N! Hell's Arena and the corpse stacking minigame it forces, but it's a necessary evil here when the rewards are so valuable. First the Red Armor, which the -20% movespeed might make me take hits I could have avoided with less slow armor, but in the scenarios where damage is unavoidable, having Red Armor makes such a huge difference over Green and Blue Armor against the small fries, and while it's not great against Hell Knights and Cacodemons, it does at least reduce some damage from their plasma balls unlike Green Armor, so having Red Armor will significantly enhance the amount of hits I'm able to take. Then there is the Rocket Launcher that is a staple in nearly all my runs, having immediate access to corpse disposal is so important when a badly timed Hell Knight or Baron respawn can just absolutely ruin your run, and a rocket jumping is your best shot at getting past Anomaly with minimal damage if you don't get a Phobos 7 Invuln, as well as being crucial to extending your Invulns later or you might even get in a spot where raw rocket jumping will save your ass. The Plasteel Boots are also quite nice to have if you get a floor that forces you to run through acid or lava, that aforementioned run that made it to Deimos dies in that awful Phobos 6 without the Plasteel Boots to mitigate all the acid I had to run through. I will have to miss out on going into The Chained Court later on when the Unchained variant will be a death trap in a challenge you can't heal, but these items are far more valuable than the Chainsaw and free Berserks will be, while I also wouldn't even be able to get the mods in Chained Court without finding a Radsuit prior, since hitting the levers will be substantial unavoidable damage.

In this particular run, I managed to pull off another AoMC-less Hell's Arena Pwnage, and it's actually even harder to do here than in the standard game since I can only activate running once in the whole Arena. I won't be picking up the Cathedral's Dragonslayer later but getting a damageless Arena is still obviously nice when I can take so little damage, otherwise I would accept taking a couple hits in Hell's Arena just so the resets wouldn't get maddening. For the rest of Phobos, I hope I don't get mazes or too deadly of hot starts, and I do actively try to clear out floors when it's possible with minimal to no damage since I do really need the levels to survive tough floors later. Phobos 3 and 4 weren't so bad, and the latter even gave me a Double Shotgun that is very handy for this build, but Phobos 5 would give me a Pinky Cave that I took a couple hits in, which the Red Armor mitigated a lot but still 7 of my total 50 HP just permanently lost and the total EXP yield for the floor is quite low. Then Phobos 6 started me in a room with a Hell Knight, and when I got into a position to corner shoot him, another Hell Knight came from an angle with LoS on me and he got hits in while I couldn't kill him before the other Hell Knight reached me, putting me in this very bad spot. With the stairs nearby, I decide my only hope to keep the run alive is to rocket jump out towards the stairs (after getting out of the nearby acid barrel's range), any self-inflicted damage is painful in this run and rocket jumping without a Fireproof or at least P-modded Red Armor sucks, but it's either that or take multiple plasma balls in the ass as I try to run away. The rocket jump does keep me alive in exchange for 5 more HP lost, but then I made the bone-headed move of seeing if I could finish off the mortally wounded Hell Knight and didn't notice I depleted all my Shotguns, leading me to try firing with an unloaded Shotgun and reloading instead. Fortunately the one Hell Knight didn't attack and the other was still out of vision, so I just took a melee hit from the nearby Imp for 1 damage, but it's still even more damage I should have avoided and I'm knocked below half my total health allotment before even reaching the Anomaly. Also in retrospect I could have tried using that Phase Device I spawned near to escape the Hell Knight start, but I really wanted to try getting it to save for the Anomaly and it could have put me in a worse spot far away from the stairs, so it wouldn't have been an ideal gamble. It's not looking good, but the run gets much more serious when I get another coveted Phobos 7 Invuln; since the stairs were a bit far away and I didn't have many rockets, while the floor overall looked doable, I do clear it out first before grabbing the Invuln. I take 5 more damage as a result, but I do get the Agility Mods to build some much needed Tactical Boots, and a Power Mod to build a Tactical Shotgun later, as well as get a clean path to the stairs to ensure I can maximize that Invuln to get through Anomaly damageless, so it wasn't too bad. I also had the option of Military Base for a safe two levels and all the other useful stuff there, which I would have taken if I didn't have the Invuln, but since I did and I wasn't playing Vampyre in this run, taking the guaranteed damageless Anomaly is the better play here, especially when I had only 19 HP left and so may not have been able to survive the Anomaly even with rocket jumping if I wasn't Invuln'd.

After effortlessly rocket jumping through Anomaly and the remaining Invuln letting me clear out a hot start in Deimos 1 with a potentially deadly Commando, I'm able to then clear out the rest of Deimos 1 damageless. It could have been argued to have took that Invuln and already try rushing through the rest of the game, but with my low rocket supply and still not having Shottyhead, it would be far riskier to try that, so I stay to clear out Deimos 1 and then head into Deimos Lab. Now fighting the Shamblers in Deimos Lab without Vampyre would be suicidal here, but if played very carefully, I can clear out the pre-Shambler portion of the run for EXP, some mods, a Shell Box I'm going to really need for a very important special level coming up, potentially one of the special shotguns in the weapon cache, and I can farm the Revenants here for a huge rocket stockup, which I will need to successfully Invuln rush the rest of the game with a later Invuln. Unfortunately the weapon cache had a Jackal and Combat Pistol, the Jackal could be used for corpse disposal whenever the Rocket Launcher's explosion would be too big but it isn't that helpful here and the Combat Pistol is worthless in this run, but fortunately the rest of the level goes to plan and I get through it damageless, while also being able to farm a Revenant for a half dozen rocket stacks.

All that effort nearly ended up being for nought though, as Deimos 2 was a terrible arena that started me surrounded with little for cover and near a Commando that can instantly kill me, while I don't have Shottyhead yet to reasonably to fight in this position. I decide now is a time to use a Phase, and it gets me in a better position, but then when fighting off a nearby Pinky horde, there was not one but two more Commandos coming right for me, one of which got a near full plasma burst on me when I shot a barrel near an X not knowing it was a Commando and launched him into vision, knocking me down to only 7 HP left. He ended up in acid, so my only play was to activate running and stay out of the other Commando's vision while hoping running keeps me from getting hit by the other Commando until the acid finished him off, and very fortunately that Commando doesn't get any more hits on me in his next two bursts before the acid kills him, where I'm then able to fight off the Pinkies and other Commando thanks to the Shell Box I just got from Deimos Lab. I try sticking around to see if I could fight my way to the two Berserks that spawned on the other side of the map, when the third Commando I saw at the start gets to me and quickly revives after killing him, at which point I decide just fuck off and book it to the next floor. I reach the same floor as my previous best but with only 7 HP left, I'm really wanting an Invuln... which the game then promptly blesses me with and I'm able to immediately safely reach it. I take this opportunity to book it to the Deimos 4 special level, which turns out to be City of Skulls. I mention previously the Deimos 4 specials are important and are a major advantage for going the Shottyhead path, so why are they? Well I alluded to earlier that there are a couple other ways to heal outside of Vampyre, one such way being the Medical Armor and Medical Powerarmor, but with them only healing you up to 25% in this version, they won't get you out of hot start lethality range and would need the support of many Ironman levels to make a serious difference, which you'll be hard-pressed to fit in addition to the necessary combat traits, so they're not much a factor here even if you luck upon them. The other way to heal without Vampyre is with a Blood Skull, which normally are worse than a Large Medkit, but they can heal you much more than the aforementioned Medical Armors can, and well you have a very good chance of getting at least one if you kill the Agony Elemental, potentially two or even three, so any Blood Skull can essentially be an extra life in this challenge for non-Vampyre builds. I don't have Shottyhead yet to trivialize the Agony Elemental fight, and Shottyhead is also really needed to minimize damage in the rough openings of both levels, but with the Invuln to protect me, I can get through the opening of the Skull City without any damage, and then with Finesse + Tactical Shotgun + Reloader/Shottyman + the Shell Box, the Agony Elemental fight will still be pretty easy (hence why I said the Deimos Lab Shell Box was so important beyond just helping me survive hot starts). Indeed with those said things (and some Missile Launcher usage to save on shells, just making sure to not finish off the Agony Elemental with it since that would destroy the Skulls), I would kill the Agony Elemental and clear out the rest of the level without any damage, which rewarded me with two Blood Skulls!

However I do still need to secure a decent corpse pile to get that health back and not get fucked over by the next floor start, which isn't looking good when Deimos 5 starts me with this, while two of those Xs turned out to be Barons, and with not quite being at Shottyhead yet, I had to use the Missile Launcher to ensure the Baron died without getting a lethal hit on me, which blew up some corpses near the Baron that I really needed for the ASAP heal. I was going to see if I could draw out some of the Formers I heard near those few corpses to get more health back, but then out popped a Commando into the nearby doorway, if he stepped out I would probably have to use the Missile Launcher to be absolutely sure that he doesn't get a shot in on me that will be absolutely lethal, which would then blow up the corpses, so I make the safe play of using my first Blood Skull there... and he immediately walks back into his room. Regardless, while not an ideal Blood Skull I do get 25 HP back, so basically a half life, and with Shottyhead now being online, I'm in a much better spot. I do got the looming Cyberdemon fight though, and after having to skip out on too many floors along the way, it's not looking like I'll get the two more levels I need for Dodgemaster to guarantee getting past him, while I'm also in the bad position of not even having a Fireproof Red Armor that I was hoping to build, nor have I found any Radsuits either for more fire res. The third skull was a Hatred Skull, so as a backup I could use it to take some berserk with me into Babel if I don't get a Deimos 6 or 7 Invuln. Deimos 6 would be a Pain Elemental + Lost Soul Cave with a nasty looking start, but thanks to the recently acquired Shottyhead, I get through it without damage, though this floor was very bad for EXP that I really need, ensuring that I won't get the two levels I need for Dodgemaster before Babel even if I went into Spider's Lair (which I considered since I had Shottyhead and the Missile Launcher, but if I wasn't going to get the levels for Dodgemaster anyway then it wasn't worth the risk), in addition to the floor not having any helpful items. Deimos 7 on the other hand does have the Invuln to guarantee getting past Babel... but it's a barrel level, and I get a nasty hot start with a Cacodemon in my face, an Arachnotron to the north, and the east + south doorways having more enemies behind them, all while there were lethal barrels around that will kill me or destroy cover. I immediately run for the west door for very dangerous cover near a Napalm Barrel and already get hit by the Arachnotron as I open the door, but it's my best-looking shot here, while it also turns out those east enemies are a group of Hell Nobles. At first it is working alright, the Cacodemon only gets one hit in on me before I kill him and with Shottyhead I'm able to keep the Arachnotron + Hell Nobles back, but unfortunately a group of enemies from the west approach, with a Shotgunner then walking into view, putting me in a very bad spot; I can't shoot him without blowing up that nearby Napalm Barrel which will be invariably fatal and he'll blow it up instead to kill me if I don't get out of this spot, but then getting out puts me back in range of the Arachnotron + approaching Hell Nobles, while I already expended my tactics... But I have to take my chances with getting out instead of staying still to get killed by that barrel, and fortunately the Arachnotron doesn't immediately fire, so I can finish him off with the Missile Launcher before eating another plasma burst, but unfortunately the approaching Hell Knight gets a hit on me to knock me down to only 14 HP left. Thanks to Shottyhead I'm able to kill off the remaining Nobles and the approaching Former platoon without taking any more damage, but with only 14 HP left and absolutely not wanting to die before I reach that Invuln, I make the decision to use my second Blood Skull despite only having four corpses around for 20 more HP instead of a full heal, not how I wanted to use these Skulls but waiting for the perfect opportunity could kill such a promising run. Luckily whatever enemy was in the southern room wandered away and there were no barrels near the Invuln, giving me an uncontested path to it, where I then immediately book it to Babel.

I made a mistake when searching for the Cyberdemon, I completely missed him and he ended up being near the start to the south, so after rocket jumping across the entire map, I had to rocket jump all the way back to find him. Thanks to the P-modded Double Shotgun at point blank range, this mistake isn't costly as I'm still able to kill him before the Invuln runs out, surpassing Icy's best Masochist Angelic attempt and getting me to Hell with 34 HP remaining, so it's looking very good here if I can just find another Invuln or avoid any horrible hot starts that even Shottyhead can't handle... Well Hell 1 would be a maze, which are always very bad news and I used up most of my current Invuln killing the Cyberdemon... but it has an Invuln, and I reach it just as my current Invuln runs out! With so many rockets still in my inventory, I just go for it and try invincible rocket jumping the rest of the way. After blasting through Hell 1, 2, 3, and The Vaults, Hell 4 would have another Invuln to stack on my current Invuln, basically securing the run. I accidentally went down the stairs to Mortuary, but with rocket jumping I can still get out without wasting too much Invuln and even nabbed the Nuclear BFG to ensure I win in case my Invuln runs out against the Mastermind, but that wouldn't be needed when Hell 6 had a double Invuln to extra secure the run. Hell 7 would have yet one more Invuln near Dis' stairs, but it's not needed when I have so much already, and so can kill the Mastermind with plenty of Invuln to spare.

At last, I get the first officially confirmed Masochist Angelic in 0.9.9.7, indeed proving mine and Icy's belief that the badge was possible, and with it I now have 12 Angelics to become the first person to have verifiably achieved the Chaos General rank in any version. Altogether I took 13 deaths (8 with Marine for the Vampyre strat and 5 with Scout trying for the Shottyhead strat), alongside many resets on the first two floors when I took more than a single light hit on them, with my attempts being spread out over two days, which isn't as bad as it could have been, though this badge was certainly extremely extremely difficult, with a requirement of pristine play and needing a large amount of luck on top. Maybe it's not quite as brutal as Eagerness Angelic in this version, but I would say it was even harder than Inquisitor Angelic despite that badge also similarly being unwon until I got it recently, and would rate Masochist above Strongman and Berserker Angelic despite them being even more luck-based, since they have a laxer skill requirement (especially the latter). I understand why this badge went unwon for so long, you need to be at the absolute top of your game even with viable luck, and like Icy said, it's very tilting too when any single minor mistake or little unavoidable hit that could normally be brushed off is amplified by magnitudes in this challenge. In JHC-era DRL this badge will be affected by several of the major changes since, most notably you'll no longer be able to infinitely camp thanks to the newly added Enraged Timer, but I think that won't actually be as big of a deal here, since most of the damage you'll take and eventual deaths will be from hot starts before you reach viable cover, it doesn't matter if you can infinitely camp or not if you get spawned in a maze with dozens of enemies immediately surrounding you with no good cover to get behind. Meanwhile, respawns no longer happening in vision will be quite significant for this badge; aside from hot starts, a lot of damage will come from enemies respawning near you out of cover or when you're corner shooting another enemy at a different angle, which happens annoyingly often even early on in floors before the global respawn chance gets high. There's also other little things like Hell's Arena eventually getting changed to no longer require killing respawns and so being much less tedious to clear on N!, Marines having inherent +10% energy resistances to make surviving to Vampyre a bit less brutal, the Medical Armors getting buffed to heal to 50% and Blood Skulls getting buffed to heal 10 HP per corpse, powerups becoming time-based and so will last longer in the later game, Reloader getting buffed to help boost Shotgun combat, Ironman and TaN getting buffed to be more viable survival-extending options, and Technical Mods giving resistances to armors to farther help survivability. There are however going to be other things that make it harder, such as berserk and Vampyre being nerfed so surviving to Vampyre is no longer a win condition on its own, Finesse and Intuition 2 getting nerfed, Scout's stair sense no longer detecting red stairs so you're less able to use them for quicker escapes, powerups possibly getting changed to no longer stack duration, and I put in a proposal to make N! City Of Skulls much more difficult, which as a side effect would make retrieving Blood Skulls for this challenge a more daunting prospect. Overall I think it may become slightly easier, but it'll be hard to say until I go for this badge again in a later version.

Well my 0.9.9.7 journey is coming close to finishing, I won't be getting the three more Angelics needed for the Chaos Marshal rank, guess I'm not good enough to play Vandam's proposed "N+" difficulty that he wanted locked behind that rank, but there is one more Angelic I can get in Everyman Angelic to set what will probably be the closest anyone can verifiably get to 100% completion in 0.9.9.7 without outright cheating. With all this shit talking of Vandam and his unsubstantiated boasts though, it's only fair if I provide the video proof for this Masochist Angelic run here (I strongly recommend watching it sped up, lots of very slow playing and lots of pausing when I was live posting about the run in the Jupiter Hell Discord). Here is the mortem if you just want to see that, which are not only helpful for evidence but also for other people to learn things about your run that will help them possibly achieve these badges for themselves:

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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 invulnorbust, level 10 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 238187 turns and scored 341623 points.
 He played for 2 hours, 18 minutes and 6 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1009 out of 1517 hellspawn. (66%)
 He was an Archangel of Masochism!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 7
  Levels completed : 3

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Cyberdemon's Head
  Mastermind's Brain
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Untouchable Medal
  Chessmaster's Token
  Chessmaster's Cross
  Hell Arena Pwnage Medal
  Masochist Angelic Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  #>#####################................................####
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  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ####################........####.....####.....####........#
  ###################.........####.....####.....####.........
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  #################..........................................
  #################.....###............................####..
  #################....####.....%......................####..
  #################....####.....X......................####&.
  #################....####............................####..
  #################..........................................
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  ###################.........####.....####.....####.........
  ####################........####.....####.....####........#
  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ######################...............####...............###
  #>#####################................................####
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 34/50   Experience 40956/10
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +0  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +0

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 1)
    Hellrunner       (Level 2)
    Reloader         (Level 2)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)
    Shottyhead       (Level 1)

  Fin->Jug->Int->Int->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh->HR->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [4/4] (89%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   double shotgun (10d3)x2 [0/2] (P1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x80)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] tactical shotgun (8d3) [5/5]
    [b] rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1]
    [c] missile launcher (6d6) [2/4]
    [d] nuclear BFG 9000 (8d6) [40/40]
    [e] shotgun shell (x50)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x26)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] rocket (x10)
    [k] rocket (x10)
    [l] agility mod pack
    [m] bulk mod pack
    [n] hatred skull
    [o] plasteel boots [2/2] (100%) (A)
    [p] shell box (x1)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    84 former humans
    86 former sergeants
    43 former captains
    108 imps
    100 demons
    447 lost souls
    37 cacodemons
    9 hell knights
    10 barons of hell
    1 arachnotron
    14 former commandos
    34 pain elementals
    31 revenants
    2 mancubi
    1 agony elemental
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena as a champion!
  On level 7 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 9 he entered Deimos Lab.
  On level 9 he found the Anti-Freak Jackal!
  He fought hard, but decided the reward was not worth it.
  On level 12 he found the City of Skulls.
  He wiped out the City of Skulls.
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  He fled the Unholy Cathedral seeing no chance to win.
  He left level 19 as soon as possible.
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  He came, he saw, but he left.
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  He managed to escape from the Mortuary!
  He left level 22 as soon as possible.
  On level 22 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
  He decided it was too dangerous.
  On level 23 he stumbled into a complex full of arch-viles!
  He left level 23 as soon as possible.
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You dodge! You dodge! You are hit! You dodge! You dodge! You dodge!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun. The Spider Mastermind hits you.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the Spider
 Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 430 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 211 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 12 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 109 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 65 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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It ended up not mattering in this run, but in case anyone else is attempting Arena Diamond and is reading this mortem for advice, here is what I would have done with each of the mods if there were any from vaults I could retrieve:

• Bulk Mod - There's an argument to put this on your Blue Armor to effectively triple its durability, but I think it should definitely go on your Combat Knife. Not only do you increase your average damage by 3 before berserk, but you also decrease your chance of rolling below 10 damage with Brute 2 from 12% to 0.8%. It's basically getting Brute 3 and you near entirely remove the possibility of Berserker not triggering from rolling below 10 damage, which does matter (even in my winning run, it took me 6 hits to trigger Berserker against the last Baron, which meant I rolled below 10 damage twice in 5 hits, which could have cost me the run if I didn't have such a big health surplus to make triggering Berserker not needed). However if you're fortunate enough to also get a Red Armor or one of the Exotic armors in the same vault, I would consider B-modding them since the Red Armor does reduce melee damage so much and something like a B-modded Duelist Armor would let you possibly 1v1 every enemy in the Arena.
• Power Mod - Comparatively, I would unquestionably put a Power Mod on the Blue Armor (or any better armor if I get one from the same vault), rather than putting it on the Combat Knife, as a P Mod increases its average damage by only 1 point and decreases the chance of rolling below 10 damage to 8.33%, not enough to meaningfully eliminate the danger of Berserker not triggering. Meanwhile that extra 2 points of protection would substantially reduce damage and effectively extend the durability of the Blue Armor or whatever armor you put it on, which is certainly going to be a lot more valuable than you dealing marginally more damage. If you're fortunate enough to get both a P and B Mod from a vault, I would absolutely make a Chainsword, as a Chainsword at Brute 2 lets you very consistently two-shot Pinkies without berserk and guarantee one-shot them with berserk, as well as three-shot Cacos without berserk and guarantee two-shot with Berserk (while you could even score one-shots if you get Brute 3), whereas a B-modded Knife has only a 33.18% chance to two-shot Pinkies without Berserk and a 72% chance to one-shot with berserk, while having a measly 19.11% chance to three-shot Cacos without berserk and can fail to two-shot with berserk (having a 6.3% chance to fail it). You could Nanofiber your Blue Armor instead, but that would definitely be far inferior to making a Chainsword or running a B Knife and P Blue Armor, as a Nanofiber Blue Armor is barely better than having no armor. Even if you get Red Armor I would take the stronger equipment over permanent mediocre defense, in my run I didn't lose my Blue Armor until the last Baron, so you're likely screwed if a Chainsword + Red Armor couldn't last you.
• Technical Mod - If you're playing 0.9.9.7 or an even older version, unquestionably put this on your Combat Knife, the 0.8 second attack time would be invaluable when you don't have berserk to getting you double attacks on Cacos and Barons to trigger Berserker faster or just kill them without them getting an extra hit in, and would mostly eliminate double attacks from Pinkies if you're playing Marine or Technician, while entirely eliminating double attacks from them if you're a Scout. If you're playing 0.9.9.8 or later, where Tech mods got changed to give +20% physical and +10% energy resistances to armor, there's much more of an argument to be made on whether to put it on your Knife or Blue Armor, as it will be saving you 2 points of damage on higher melee damage rolls and will shave a point off most plasma balls, but I do think the greater attack speed is more valuable, as every double attack it gets you (or prevents) without berserk is essentially saving you 6+ damage and you won't end up eventually losing it as you would with the armor. If you got Red Armor or one of the melee-resistant Exotic armors, there's much more consideration for putting the T Mod on them instead, as reducing melee damage to the 1-3 damage range would greatly increase your survivability.
• Agility Mod - If you get any boots on the floor in addition to the Agility Mod, you obviously slap the A Mod on the boots. If you don't got boots, you put the A Mod on your Blue Armor or any better armor you get, you'll eventually lose the armor but the faster movement until then will help limit respawns and save you some damage when approaching the Cacos, though if you get both A and P Mods, I would prioritize P-modding the Blue Armor and A-Mod a Green Armor to use for exploration of the Arena. You could A-mod the Knife to reduce misses, but with Brute 2 and the Knife's inherent +1 accuracy, an A Mod increases its hit chance from 95% to 98%, only a 3% increase, so I would only do that if you got the aforementioned P + A combo and absolutely nothing else to put the A Mod on after P-modding the Blue Armor (you could P-mod your Knife and A-mod your Blue Armor in that scenario, but I think the P-modded Blue Armor is so much more useful to make up for the A-modded Knife being negligibly improved). If you get A + T Mods, you have the opportunity to make Ballistic Armor, which sounds obvious at first for the +30% melee res prior to 0.9.9.8 and +40% melee res from 0.9.9.8-onward, while the fire weakness wouldn't matter in the Arena, however currently in all versions that assembly also removes any plasma resistance the armor has, and you really need that plasma res on the Blue Armor to eat some Cacodemon plasma balls to destroy corpses, so I probably wouldn't make that assembly unless you get a Red Armor or at least a spare Blue. It is in the proposal list however to have Ballistic Armor retain the plasma and acid resistances of the base armor, which if that goes through, would make Ballistic Blue Armor a very serious consideration for this run in future versions if you can make it.

[--------------------------------------------------------------]

The only Diamond badge I had left in 0.9.9.7 was Arena Diamond, the most infamous Diamond that was once believed to be nearly impossible after no one won it in over a decade of 0.9.9.7 until Icy finally won it over a year ago. This badge has an interesting history though, as in the versions prior to 0.9.9.7, it was actually one of the more common Diamonds, with the Badge Hunters thread reporting seven players winning it prior to 0.9.9.7 (as well as 2Dev claiming to have won it of course, but his Arena Diamond run has outright proof of being illegitimate, with him claiming he found a Supercharge near the Arena stairs... even though they don't start spawning until floor 4 and so that's impossible), and Game Hunter himself won it too, albeit in a beta version. All of these were additionally won before Dual Angel abuse was a thing (with Dual Angels being introduced in 0.9.9.7) and the Arena itself has never been directly changed, so what happened to make this once-common badge suddenly go through such a long winless drought? Prior to 0.9.9.7, Hell's Arena did have a 50/50 chance to spawn on floor 3, which would give you an extra floor to come into the Arena a level higher and with more resources, but four of the reported Arena Diamonds were won with a floor 2 Arena, so while Hell's Arena being locked to floor 2 would have certainly made this badge harder, it's evidently not the entire reason why it became so rare. I primarily suspect two other things also contributed to this badge being easier back then; one, berserk itself used to be even more OP, with it quartering damage you took prior to 0.9.9.4 (effectively 75% resistance to everything), and two, enemy AI in very old versions used to have them congregate towards the center of the floor, which in the Arena would have made it easier to kill more enemies in your Berserker chains and get more corpses destroyed in crossfire. Whatever the reason though, the last Arena Diamond before Icy's was Q2ZOv winning it in 0.9.9.6 back in 2012, and Arena Diamond was bad enough that it made papilio give up in his quest for all Diamonds at 23/26 (with his only other two unwon Diamonds being Technician and Armorer that he would have eventually won), despite actively grinding for it before. Additionally while the Arena Diamond drought was ended by Icy and then won two more times since (by micerang in 0.9.9.8 and Asbadagba in 0.10), all three of them were won by combining Angel of Berserk with Angel of Light Travel (with AoLT's +20% universal speed boost making it significantly easier), so the badge still has not been won in pure AoB since Q2ZOv did it 14 years ago in 0.9.9.6. I have done all of my Diamonds purely up to this point, not abusing a Dual Angel for any of them, and I plan to keep it that way, but will pure Arena Diamond break me like it did with papilio?

Since you only got two floors of preparation before Hell's Arena, one of which will be Phobos Base Entry with static enemies and items, you don't got many options for the build, as you'll be entering the Arena at or near only level three, maybe a fourth level if you get a clearable Cacodemon vault on floor 2, and in the Arena itself you won't hit level 4 until near the end of it without clearing floor 2 vaults. Icy did it with a Marine for the longer-lasting Berserk Packs, but I decided on the Scout, so I could outrun Cacodemons and Barons with my base movement speed, in addition to being able to more easily outrun Pinkies with running active, as well as get some crucial double-attacks on Cacos/Barons when I'm not berserked (and reduce double-attacks from Pinkies). For the first three traits, Brute 2 + Berserker is non-negotiable, but the fourth trait would be more interesting if you can get it in time to matter; Brute 3 not only increases your damage output but also ensures you can't roll below 10 damage so Berserker will reliably trigger (as your hits need to deal 10+ damage to build the Berserker counter and a Combat Knife has a 12% chance to roll below 10 damage with Brute 2), Finesse improves DPS and lets you trigger Berserker faster, Hellrunner would allow for better kiting and let you more safely approach Cacos/Barons in addition to preventing Pinkies from outrunning you without you needing berserk or running active (at least if you're a Scout, Marines and Technicians will still get outrunned by Pinkies without berserk/running), Ironman or Tough as Nails would give the extra survivability that might be needed to win at the end, and even Eagle Eye could be chosen to make throwing knives semi-functional (since it's EE rather than Brute that increases their accuracy in this version). I wasn't completely set on what I would get for my fourth trait, but as it would turn out though, a fourth trait would prove unneeded...

Phobos Base Entry doesn't play differently, though with it being AoB and wanting to maintain as much health as possible, as well as wanting those medkits, I would reset a lot (though it would also turn out you don't necessarily need both medkits here). The main point of strategy is to immediately take off your Blue Armor, you need to keep that Blue Armor fully intact for the Arena. Floor 2 is also not very different from normal AoB, with it coming down to if you can find a decent camping spot (or massacre lever) before you get shot up too much, just again do not waste the Blue Armor here, if you can't make it to the Arena without using up the Blue Armor, then the run isn't going to survive the Arena anyway. Hopefully you can find Green Armors early enough to wear, which are ok to use up on floor 2 since Green Armors help little in the Arena (they do absolutely nothing to reduce the Cacodemons' plasma damage, the single point of reduction in melee amounts to basically just being able to take one more hit inbetween full heals against the Arena enemies, and Baron acid balls deal so much damage that a single point of protection will do shit all to extend survival against them). A significant portion of the luck for Arena Diamond comes down to a Phobos 2 giving you the resources to viably clear Hell's Arena. It might be tempting at first to reset until you see the "You feel there is something really valuable here!" message on floor 2, indicating you got the fabled floor 2 Butcher Cleaver to spawn, which would be amazing to have but this isn't something you should bother for; one, I've never ever seen a floor 2 Cleaver in my hundreds and hundreds of DRL runs, you could be resetting for days or weeks until you ever get one. Two, even if you did get extraordinarily lucky with a floor 2 Cleaver, it wouldn't be an instawin, especially if no Berserks spawned, while you could very well die on floor 2 before you even find the Cleaver. Considering how maddening resetting for the floor 2 Cleaver would get and how morale-shattering it would be to still lose after finally getting the Cleaver, it is just not worth it to spam resets for. More realistically, you could reset until you get floor 2 vaults, which have lots of potentially good things you wouldn't be able to get on floor 2 otherwise, including mods, more Large Medkits, more Blue Armors or even Red Armor, potentially one of the Exotic or even Unique armors that have melee resistance, or even one of the Skulls, as well as giving you extra EXP to get midway to level 3 or even up to level 4 before the Arena. The problem with vaults though is you often won't even be able to clear the enemies they have in AoB, as they'll be either Pinkies or Cacodemons, while unless it's a Pinky vault and you got acid available to kill the Pinkies for you, you'll need to hit level 3 for Berserker before you can clear them or use up a Berserk Pack that you want to save for the Arena, and usually enemies on the floor will open the vaults up to release the enemies inside before you get Berserker to fight them. Then if the vault gets opened early, these Pinkies and Cacos will ruin any camping strat as meleeing them one-by-one at this point will drain way too much health to outlast them all. In two of my failed attempts, I got a Pinky vault on floor 2 that ended up killing me when they got released before I was ready, and in another I got a Cacodemon vault that a Tracking Map shown a potentially useful Agility mod inside while I was able to hit level 3 for Berserker, but by that point they were too spread out outside the vault to cleanly chain in one Berserker rush and I didn't want the three Berserk Packs on the floor to go to waste, so I took them and booked it to the Arena (which ended up failing). It's possible to get a vault that has both stuff that will help you and circumstances end up that you can clear it out without blowing all your resources, but aiming for that will force a ton more resets that will get annoying fast and it would turn out you don't need any vault help for Arena Diamond. The big thing you really need is at least one Berserk Pack on floor 2 that isn't too far from the Arena stairs, preferably a second or even third Berserk, aside from that you just need a floor 2 that is survivable without using up any of your Blue Armor nor any of your Large Medkits, and lets you bring a few Small Medkits into the Arena.

As for the Arena itself, you do need some more strategy than just rushing down every enemy and hoping for the best. My core strategy revolved around trying to get enemies clumped up together, as roshamboing enemies isolated would scatter corpses far apart, making it more difficult to get them destroyed by Cacodemons as well as making it harder to stretch Berserker chains across more enemies, and you can additionally trigger Berserker in fewer hits if you have more than two enemies in vision, which can crucially save you damage as you take fewer hits without berserk active. So whenever I found a single enemy or two, I would try kiting them to where I heard more enemies, though if you're lucky, the enemies will already be clumped up. I additionally will eat some plasma balls on corpses to destroy them whenever it was feasible, and when running around the Arena looking for enemies, I would remove my armor to speed myself up, as the less time spent running around the arena, the less chance for respawns to happen, and you additionally keep the global respawn chance from increasing as much. You want to avoid run -> waiting unless you're down to the final couple enemies or can gather up a big pile of corpses that somehow avoided being destroyed prior, as you'll inevitably get overwhelmed with respawns if you do so. I also had it in my back pocket that if I got down to a couple isolated Barons or Cacos with the other corpses all destroyed, I could try kiting them around pillars while chucking knives at them, the vast majority of the knives would miss in this version but as long as I could outrun them around the pillars, I could get to throw as many knives as needed to eventually kill or soften them up enough. No matter your skill though, it still comes down to a large amount of luck with how the waves spawn and your respawn luck.

In this particular run, I got an imperfect Phobos Base Entry; I took 11 damage and didn't get one of the Small Medkits, which would have made me contemplate a reset but I decided to roll with it. The floor 2 I got didn't look promising, including the Hell Arena stairs being blocked by acid while I had to makedo with an imperfect camping spot, but I was able to clear it. The resources on it also weren't great, with no Green Armors, I only got to keep three Small Medkits to bring into the Arena, I wouldn't be able to come into the Arena with boosted health, and only a single Berserk spawned far away from the Arena stairs that even with the aid of a nearby teleporter to get me closer, I lost a few dozen berserk turns getting to the Arena. However I was able to keep my Blue Armor 100% healthy and kept both Large Medkits intact, and this would end up actually being enough. In the Arena itself, I got a quick stroke of luck at the start with most of the first wave's enemies spawning clumped together on the right side and I was able to reach them with the initial berserk still intact, letting me kill most of the wave with berserk and get several corpses destroyed. Then I found the last Caco of the first wave near the stairs, where I was actually able to take advantage of stairs destroying corpses by killing it on the stairs (using running to avoid getting hit as I lured it over the stairs). I got another stroke of luck on the second wave spawning a few enemies right around me while I could immediately trigger Berserker after building up my Berserker counter on the previously killed Caco. I then got great respawn luck with only a single Cacodemon respawning (though the aforementioned strategy to eliminate many of the corpses helped with this). Then finally I got more good luck with the final wave, as one Baron spawned reasonably close to the third wave's Large Health Globe, letting me kill it with berserk without having to lure a Baron towards it, and then I was able to find the final Baron shortly after before any of the enemies respawned, while I still had two Large Medkits in reserve to kill him without berserk.

Altogether this took me... only five tries that didn't reset on Phobos Base Entry and about an hour total, I didn't expect to get it this fast, I didn't even bother to use a real name as I thought I would be typing it out hundreds of times in quick succession from all the resets and short attempts. And the winning run didn't even have a particularly good first two floors, just coming in with a few extra Small Medkits and a decent amount of berserk was all that was needed with some good Arena luck. Did Arena Diamond's reputation just spook people from ever trying it? Did people just not have the proper strategy for the Arena itself or even for handling the second floor? Arena Diamond you could always theoretically get quickly on a lucky day and plenty won it before 0.9.9.7, while I seen posts of other people saying they attempted it post-0.9.9.7, so maybe its reputation dissuaded some people from trying it, but I'm thinking some of it was people just not doing the right strategy for the badge itself, and perhaps some people did try resetting for the floor 2 Cleaver or good floor 2 vaults and ended up quitting from the inevitable frustration of constant quick resets that never bore fruit. Regardless, Arena Diamond was still very winnable in 0.9.9.7 all along without the aid of AoLT, and as proven here you don't need a miracle floor 2 to win it either. With Arena Diamond won, I now join Icy as being one of only two players to have verifiably won all Diamonds in any version, and I won them all without having to resort to Dual Angel abuse for any of them. It has been a long road, but I do got a couple Angelics left to get before I finish my business in 0.9.9.7...

If you read this far, I actually recorded my Arena Diamond run from start to finish. While I wasn't recording my 0.9.9.7 runs, I figured I should at least record Arena Diamond since it would be the first pure Arena Diamond in over a decade, you can watch it here.

And here is the mortem if you just want to see that:

--------------------------------------------------------------
 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
--------------------------------------------------------------

 5, level 4 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 was shot by a former sergeant on level 3 of the Phobos base.
 He survived 219351 turns and scored 29929 points.
 He played for 11 minutes and 35 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 70 out of 92 hellspawn. (76%)
 He was an Angel of Berserk!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 1
  Levels completed : 1

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Hell Champion Medal
  Arena Diamond Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  ........0#......................c....#....................#
  .........#..........###..............#............###.....#
  ...##0...#..........###..............#............###|....#
  #.0##....+...###....###...###........#.###........###.....#
  #....s..h#...###..........###.###....#.###....h...........#
  ...##....#...###..........###.###....+.###...B....###.|.0.#
  ...##....#.........###........###....#......###...###...c.#
  .........#...========#...............#..###.###...###.0...#
  #....================i==============.#..###.###.....h.....#
  =============.###....===c===============+==....=X==========
  0====....#........i......###....###.============i==========
  ^........#.i..###....###.............#.....====....###....#
  ....##...#i...###..0.###..###...###..#......###..%........#
  ....##...#....###....###..###...###..#......###.....###...#
  .........#i..i|......i.|..###...###..#......#.#.....###...#
  .........#...........................#..............###...#
  .........#................i..........#.................0..#
  .........#.........>...B..i..........#....................#
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 0/50   Experience 4592/4
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +4  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +6

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 1)
    Brute            (Level 2)
    Berserker        (Level 1)

  Bru->Bru->Ber->Fin->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   nothing
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   combat knife (2d5)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   nothing
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   combat knife (2d5)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] large med-pack
    [b] large med-pack
    [c] large med-pack
    [d] homing phase device

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    None

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    15 former humans
    8 former sergeants
    1 former captain
    22 imps
    6 demons
    5 lost souls
    10 cacodemons
    1 hell knight
    2 barons of hell

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena as a champion!
  On level 3 he finally was shot by a former sergeant.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 knight hits you. The barrel explodes! The former human dies. The former
 sergeant dies. The former human dies. Boom!
 The hell knight hits you.
 You hit the hell knight. The hell knight hits you.
 You hit the hell knight. The hell knight hits you.
 You hit the hell knight. The hell knight dies.
 You are hit! You dodge! Boom!
 You are hit! Your blue armor is damaged! You dodge! Boom!
 The missile hits the imp. The imp hits you.
 You dodge! The missile hits the imp.
 You dodge! The missile hits the imp. The imp dies. You dodge! Boom!
 You are hit!
 Boom! You are hit! You are hit! Boom!
 The imp hits you. The former sergeant reloads his shotgun.
 You are hit! The imp dies. You are hit! You dodge! Boom! Boom! Your blue
 armor is completely destroyed! You die!... Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 416 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 201 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 108 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 64 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------


[--------------------------------------------------------------]

With the few winnable Angelics I have left, there is Marksman Angelic, that I largely put off because of my dislike for 0.9.9.7's pistols, but when the alternatives are Masochist Angelic or spinning the slots for either Arena Diamond or Everyman Angelic, there was really no more excuse to procrastinate this one longer. Marksman Angelic requires winning an Angel of Marksmanship + Angel of Darkness Dual Angel with 50+% kills; the kill requirement is completely irrelevant when you cannot realistically stair dive with this combo and you simply aren't going to make it if you don't kill over half the enemies along the way, so that part of the badge can be ignored. However, the combo of AoMr and AoD itself is very nasty, with pistols being the worst weapon to be stuck with for reduced vision when you are going to miss over half your shots against enemies that can still fire on you perfectly fine and later game pistols can knockback enemies into this range, whereas shotguns can still fire back with perfect accuracy, melee has the defenses and/or speed to just rush in, explosives can still hit nearby walls to damage out-of-vision enemies, and rapid fire at least can pump out enough shots to make enough of them hit to effectively kill weaker enemies. This all gets exacerbated by how terrible pistols are prior to 0.10, especially in the early game where AoD additionally makes things all the more tougher. You get AoD's doubled EXP gain that stacks with N!'s 1.2 EXP multiplier, but with how many traits pistol builds already demand to even be functional, this is more a necessary mercy to keep you from completely fucked in the early game. Even Tormuse never got the badge despite actively attempting it, but according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters Thread, two other players have verifiably achieved it, with Cotonou and papilio doing so. Cotonou didn't state how many attempts it took him, but with his 6 for 157 winrate stated on his mortem, we can assume it took him lots and lots, while papilio states it took him 40+ attempts (he also did it a second time but doesn't state how many tries it took him that time), so it's looking like I have my work cut out for me...

For the build, after discussing it with Klapaucius, I first tried a cheesy Vampyre build for a few attempts, since while Vampyre isn't outright broken in 0.9.9.7 like it is in 0.9.9.8, it's still easily the best mastery and on N! it can achieved a near-IDDQD state even with just fists, which AoMr allows you to still use. However, with the vision reduction meaning you can't safely run -> wait camp without finding an enclosed room and how terrible being stuck with fists + pistols already is in the early game, on top of the fact that I still need very good indestructible or regenerating armor to actually safely go on big Vampyre rampages with my fists, I decided to abandon the idea. It is probably doable, but would require even more early game luck than just doing this with pistols would, and it would ultimately basically just play like another Strongman Angelic run that allows you to kill things with pistols, something I do not want to go through again after having already done Strongman Angelic. So with that ruled out, there's one mastery that's clearly far and away the best option for this badge, Cateye. Cateye is technically a rapid fire mastery, but the vision boost is beneficial for any weapon, and once you get Cateye, you would now have equal vision with the enemies, at which point you're basically playing a regular masterless N! AoMr game with no map memory but doubled EXP that makes the mid and late game easier. Cateye is what I used for the same reason with my Hunter Diamond Conqueror run, and is what Cotonou and papilio used in their Marksman Angelic run, so I'm not breaking new ground here, but with how bad pistols are in 0.9.9.7, not using Cateye would make this badge exponentially more terrible, and I'm not gonna run hundreds of attempts just to get some more cool points with using something else.

That said, despite settling on the same mastery as Cotonou and papilio, my way to Cateye and which supplemental traits I get will be quite different. First, while Cotonou and papilio opt to open with Int2 before building their pistol traits, I just go straight for SoG3; pistols need SoG3 to even actually adequately function, knowing where enemies are won't matter if you can't actually fight back against enemies that you can see, I'm sure Cotonou and papilio lost many attempts because they were trying to fight Hell Knights or several Pinkies with SoG1 or 2. Another major distinction then comes in that while they get Dualgunner after SoG2, I never get Dualgunner here; I'm of the firm belief Dualgunner is actually a trap, as any gaudy-looking DPS numbers you get on paper with DG don't matter once you run into the severe reloading bottleneck that two pistols force on you, and so I find that even if not playing Sharpshooter, you're better off sticking to a single pistol and being able to use an Ammochain box to solve the reloading issue in fights that matter, while any extra DPS granted by DG usually ends up just being overkill. You additionally have better crowd control without DG slowing down your firing speed while pistols already struggle with crowds, and you'll end up wasting a lot less ammo too, I'm also sure that Cotonou, papilio, Tormuse, and others lost many runs from thinking they just needed to get Dualgunner. Not getting Dualgunner also means I can get Cateye sooner, and any additional delay to Cateye (which is already getting delayed by the three SoG levels) is painful when that means going through another late Phobos or early Deimos floor with reduced vision while far more dangerous enemies are around. I was initially going to try putting Intuition 2 off for after Cateye since that would delay it, but after getting a level of SoB, I decided that there was too much risk to stumble around without Int2 and that being able to get Cateye a level sooner won't matter if I just end up dying from stumbling into a Baron or Commando that I can't see. It is then getting Cateye after that; the two requisite SoB levels are very good for pistols when it's a farther desperately needed early combat boost and SoB is critical for hitting those knockback thresholds that pistols need to hit, but the requisite Triggerhappy level is a very painful completely dead level, however unlike with Bullet Dance, Cateye here makes stomaching the dead level very much worth it. After Cateye I would immediately want a level of Hellrunner, as at least one level of HR would be needed for the Anomaly, but in this run, since I don't get enough EXP to fit it in time and end up using Phase Devices instead, I get a level of Eagle Eye before HR, since pistols miss far too frequently without any EE (another deviation from Cotonou and papilio, since the former doesn't get EE until his very last level and papilio never gets it at all). I do really want Whizkid, but since I'm at level 12 at this point, SoG4 and 5 open up, which you have to get ASAP as pistols finally become actually very good with SoG5. Then I can stomach some dead Finesse levels for Whizkid to buff up my pistols farther, as well as squeeze one more SoB level in for more damage-boosting double-dipping.

For the immediate start of the game, if the random starting mod isn't a Technical Mod to immediately put on my starting Pistol, I reset, as the immediate firing speed buff is far more valuable in the hardest part of the game than a slightly larger clip on that Pistol or a slightly more accurate Pistol (and while immediately getting speed-boosting boots instead with that starting A mod would be very nice, you might not get your first pair of boots until late Phobos or maybe even Deimos if you're unlucky, so going with the starting T mod is a lot more reliable even if you wanted the movement speed more). This is especially so as beating Hell's Arena in this challenge isn't feasible and so I won't be getting that guaranteed Power Mod from it to buff up my early Pistol instead, making me have to rely on that T-modded Pistol even longer (up until at least Chained Court, possibly even longer until I get my first Power Mod). And as I always say, you don't need to worry about that T Mod going to "waste" when you eventually get SoG5 (and thus hit the firing speed cap), as you can turn that T-modded Pistol into an Energy Pistol, Storm Bolter, or Demolition Pistol later on. Phobos Base Entry plays mostly the same and my usual strategy there applies, but you might have to deal with a Former ending up in that awful "they can see you but you can't see them" range, which could cause a reset. In Phobos 2, you can hopefully find yourself an enclosed space to camp out, though if not, as long as you're not forced into open combat right away or get forced to fight Pinkies in close quarters before you get SoG3, this floor won't be too bad to clear out, just stay out of the open as much as you can. While clearing Hell's Arena isn't realistic, you can go in to get some kills for EXP, but I opt against it, as fighting Cacos in a largely open arena with reduced vision while pistol-locked is far too dangerous for my liking and I really don't want to burn any medkits that I don't need to at this point. As usual, the Phobos 3 to 5 range will be where most runs likely die, fighting Hell Knights does suck, but with SoG3 + SoB on a T-modded Pistol as Scout, they won't be too bad as long as you can avoid getting caught in the open by them. On this floor 3, I spawned near the stairs and a Berserk near it, it could have been tempting to take that Berserk and immediately book it, but it's not advisable in this run, as while the early Hell Knights are bad, the enemies you'll encounter in later Phobos will be even worse if you don't get your levels in now, while a Pistol build also does not get a major power boost from just making to The Chained Court, so unlike with melee builds, you cannot expect to have The Chained Court to make up for any missed EXP by stair diving to it. I did initially try conserving that Berserk to take with me to the next floor, but after taking some damage and hearing Hell Knights around, I just went back to use it now; pistols get the least mileage out of powerups since they cumulatively use up a lot more actions to kill things, but Berserk's massive speed boost and resistances are still very useful at this point for eliminating the Hell Knights and any crowds. On this floor I also find an Ammochain box, which are crucial for any AoMr run as they solve one of the pistol's primary weaknesses of reloading without you needing to invest in Reloader nor make crappy Speedloaders, but you also need to adequately conserve them and not waste their unreplenishable ammo on trash encounters that you don't need fast reloads for (generally I'll have Ammochains equipped when entering new floors to deal with hot starts, unequip them once I got a relatively safe foothold, and then reequip them for any more dangerous encounters that I can't handle with a single clip, such as these early Hell Knights or later on Barons and especially Revenants that take multiple Pistol clips to kill). Phobos 4 has a Cacodemon vault and another Berserk, which I take advantage of to find and clear the vault ASAP, since a vault guarantees a spot you can safely camp in AoD, and of course I want to kill all those Cacodemons while I have Berserk. Unfortunately the way towards where I heard the Cacodemons ended up having most of the floor's enemies and my berserk ran out shortly into it, but I keep up the push towards the vault, with the occasional tactical retreat when things get a little too dicey, and I do succeed in reaching the vault, though by that point most of the enemies have been disposed of so it wasn't much useful (also it had nothing good inside for me).

Phobos 5 would have no good camping spot but did have a horizontal water river running across it that helped with corpse disposal, and so the floor wasn't too bad when limiting my exposure in the open, while I would also get a much appreciated second Ammochain box from an ammo crate. Once my health was running a little low and with the stairs to Chained Court open, I just went into it as burning a medkit to seek out the few remaining stragglers on the floor wouldn't have been worth it. I then make the effort to clear Chained Court since I do want that mostly safe EXP while I also really want a Power and Agility mod. though unfortunately I got the worst mod outcome with a Bulk and Technical Mod, so I still don't have a P-modded Pistol and still no movement speed boost. Fortunately I can get through Phobos 6 and finally reach Cateye by the end of it, so I'm over the biggest hurdle of the run, but I'm not out of the woods yet as I still got the ever deadly N! Anomaly coming up and am still stuck using pistols. I get another unfortunate outcome when the Phobos 7 special level is Phobos Lab when I would have obviously really wanted Military Base. I could have possibly done Phobos Lab and not doing so means I'll be entering Anomaly without any HR (while I also got no Invuln on Phobos 7 to handle the Anomaly ambush), but since I didn't even have A-modded boots and managed to gather up three Phase Devices in Phobos, I decided to play it safe and skip it. For the Anomaly itself, with three Phase Devices, I would have to get extraordinarily unlucky to not get past it, but fortunately just the first Phase gets me past the ambush, and then I'm able to run by the Bruisers even with no HR nor speed-boosting boots by waiting behind the wall until both are near it, giving me a cleaner path around them. With that, I get out of Phobos with my first real Cateye attempt, and my total damage taken in Phobos isn't too bad, I actually had an Untouchable Pin still intact, something I usually lose by this point even in my normal runs.

As I enter Deimos, the absolute worst things at this point are Revenants, who can take over two full Pistols clips to kill while I still don't got reliable konckback on my pistols and they of course hit very hard as well, so using the B and T mods from Chained Court to Fireproof the Anomaly Red Armor was an immediate priority. Going into Hell's Armory is a bit concerning with the two Revenants and several armored Barons, but the potential for one of the special pistols, the mods, and another Ammochain box are too good to give up. It goes surprisingly well, as I am able to mostly kill the Barons and Revenants from the ever reliable camping building before they reach me (aside from taking one Revenant missile when an "almost dead" Revenant didn't die to a Pistol shot while in the doorway, but the Fireproof Red Armor softened it a lot). The Shambler was not bad, aside from some annoyance of having to take some hits to ensure he got finished off in the lava. Unfortunately the weapon cache didn't have any special pistols, and the rare mod was a Sniper; two Snipers on a Pistol would be amazing but just a single Sniper is a lot less useful than any of the other rare mods would have been. At least I do finally get a Power mod to put on a Pistol (on top of SoG3 + SoB2, it increases a Pistol's knockback chance from 18.75% to 40%, making knockback semi-reliable, and when I get SoG5 soon after, it will jump up to 76%), and that Minigun isn't entirely useless as it can store a lot more bullets than a bullet stack can. I skip the rest of the Deimos special levels, as I couldn't make an Energy Pistol before Containment Area to even attempt it (I only entered it for a faster exit), while City Of Skulls and Halls Of Carnage are obviously not worth it in this badge. Most of Deimos went pretty smooth, but I got a pretty nasty maze for Deimos 7, which I would end up handling by using Napalm Barrels to create this shoddy-looking camping spot while I waited for every enemy to shoot them into the lava, and it took a while but it did end up working well to get me out of the maze without taking significant damage. The Cyberdemon fight was a pushover; a Deimos 7 Berserk I brought in didn't last very long (see what I said earlier about pistols running out powerups faster from requiring more cumulative actions to kill things), but a radsuit in conjunction with the Fireproof Red Armor was reducing his hits to 1 damage, and he didn't get many shots off anyway as SoG5 + SoB2 with Ammochain support took him down rather quickly.

Hell gave me a pretty rough intro, as turning the corner to the right ended up having a ton of Formers and several Revenants + some Archviles, which were overwhelming me and so I had to retreat to handle them more isolated after I mostly cleared out the rest of the floor. I was hopeful the Unique that spawned was one of the pistols or armors, but it ended up being the entirely useless Mjollnir. I also built a Storm Bolter here, I don't think very highly of it normally but with excess B + T mods available, I figured it could be nice for when the extra DPS would matter, especially for the Revenants when I've been unable to find another Power mod to make an Energy Pistol to handle them with. After an easy Hell 2, I got a Hell 3 that put me in a scary-looking start with lots of enemies around, but as long as I stood back in the starting room, I did have a safe camping spot and I had the DPS to kill enemies as they stepped into the door, allowing me to clear that floor without much issue. After going through The Vaults for a quicker exit to maintain more of some Berserk I got (and getting teased with a Unique I could not get, couldn't even check the side vaults as I still had no Energy Pistol), I would get greeted with a Pain Elemental cave; normally I love getting those in N! runs since they're very easy for the Shotgun or Melee builds I'm usually playing, but as a Pistol-locked build, they may be even potentially worse than an Arachnotron cave. It did have a Power mod to finally finish assembling my Energy Pistol, and I find the stairs soon after, which I gladly take to immediately leave. That Energy Pistol would funnily end up unused though, as in Hell 5 I would finally find a Homing Phase alongside getting Invuln near stairs, then Hell 6 is a Pinky + Nightmare Demon cave with immediately accessible stairs that I dive for, and then Hell 7 I can completely skip with that Homing Phase. With that Invuln still intact and the Storm Bolter repeatedly flinching her, the Spider Mastermind stood no chance.

Excluding the attempts at the Vampyre strat and the resets to start with a Technical mod, I actually managed this my first try when going for Cateye. Not getting any mazes before I got Cateye was a huge help, as was getting an early Ammochain box, but other than that, I don't think my luck was that exceptional; no Power nor Agility mods until Hell's Armory really sucked, and not getting Military Base set me back a couple levels entering Anomaly, while I also never got any special pistols. I would still rate this badge as very much deserving its Angelic tiering in 0.9.9.7, it just wasn't quite as brutal as I thought it might have been. Now in 0.10, this badge is much easier, as due to SoG being changed to +3 damage/-10% firing time, pistols have their early game woes completely reversed, so surviving to Cateye is a much easier time and then with Cateye you still invalidate the main challenge of AoD. However, I did put in an official proposal in the 0.11 Compilation Thread to change the pointless kill requirement of this badge to a Cateye ban, since Cateye is so over-centralizing in AoD and pistols are no longer bad enough that they need to be allowed it here as a mercy. If that proposal gets accepted, it's certainly going to get interesting to see how this badge evolves in later versions. Well with Marksman Angelic obtained[ I increase my record Angelic count up to 11, but with my only winnable badges remaining being Arena Diamond, Everyman Angelic, and Masochist Angelic, it may be a while before my next badge.....

Until then, here is the mortem for this run:

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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 pistolssux4, level 18 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 1990595 turns and scored 1065986 points.
 He played for 5 hours, 9 minutes and 6 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1340 out of 1469 hellspawn. (91%)
 He held his right to remain violent.
 He was an Angel of Marksmanship!
 He was also an Angel of Darkness!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 4
  Levels completed : 2

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Mastermind's Brain
  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Marksman Angelic Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
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  #........####.....####.....####........####################
  .........####.....####.....####.........###################
  .........####..............####..........##################
  ..........................................#################
  ..####............................####....#################
  .&####............................####....#################
  ..####............................####....#################
  ..####.......................%....####....#################
  .................................X........#################
  .........####..............####..........##################
  .........####.....####.....####.........###################
  #........####.....####.....####........####################
  ##.......####.....####.....####.......#####################
  ###...............####...............######################
  ####................................#####################>#
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 81/50   Experience 188729/18
  ToHit Ranged +2  ToHit Melee +2  ToDmg Ranged +3  ToDmg Melee +3

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 2)
    Hellrunner       (Level 1)
    Son of a bitch   (Level 3)
    Son of a gun     (Level 5)
    Eagle Eye        (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Triggerhappy     (Level 1)
    Cateye           (Level 1)

  SoG->SoG->SoG->Int->SoB->Int->SoB->TH->MCe->EE->HR->SoG->SoG->Fin->Fin->WK->SoB->WK->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [4/4] (100%) (A)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   storm pistol (1d8)x2 [7/9]
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   10mm ammo chain (x83)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] pistol (2d5) [8/8] (B1P1S1)
    [b] energy pistol (2d5) [6/6]
    [c] minigun (1d6)x8 [338/338] (B2)
    [d] red armor [4/4] (100%)
    [e] fireproof red armor [4/4] (100%)
    [f] red armor [4/4] (200%) (B)
    [g] 10mm ammo (x100)
    [h] 10mm ammo (x100)
    [i] 10mm ammo (x72)
    [j] power cell (x50)
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] large med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] phase device
    [r] envirosuit pack
    [s] blood skull
    [t] plasteel boots [2/2] (100%)
    [u] 10mm ammo chain (x250)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    146 former humans
    168 former sergeants
    139 former captains
    353 imps
    91 demons
    186 lost souls
    54 cacodemons
    31 hell knights
    44 barons of hell
    20 arachnotrons
    14 former commandos
    23 pain elementals
    29 revenants
    22 mancubi
    17 arch-viles
    1 shambler
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 8 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 11 he arrived at the Containment Area.
  Not knowing what to do, he left.
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he assembled a storm bolter pistol!
  On level 17 he found the Mjollnir!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  He came, he saw, but he left.
  On level 20 he assembled a energy pistol!
  He left level 22 as soon as possible.
  He left level 23 as soon as possible.
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
 missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the storm pistol.
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The missile hits the Spider
 Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
 missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! The
 missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the storm pistol.
 The missile hits the Spider Mastermind. The missile hits the Spider
 Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the
 Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 411 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 196 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 108 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 64 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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[--------------------------------------------------------------]

NOTE: This post will contain a spoiler about the Dragonslayer that I won't be hiding behind spoiler tags for readability sake, I assume all the secrets involved with it are open knowledge by this point but in case someone reading this doesn't know and still wants to figure that stuff out on their own, they should stop reading now.

To finish collecting all 43 medals in 0.9.9.7 and thus get the Heroic Diamond badge, I just needed one more, the Gutts' Heart, which simply requires killing the Spider Mastermind with the Dragonslayer. The required feat itself is trivial, the issue is getting the Dragonslayer within standard game limits in the first place; the Dragonslayer can randomly spawn starting from floor 16, functionally floor 17 outside of A100/666, given the Tower of Babel occupies floor 16, and it has a spawning weight of 1. Additionally, as a melee weapon, it cannot spawn in vaults, which means it cannot spawn below its minimum spawning depth nor have an increased spawning weight, and it also can't randomly spawn in any of the special levels, so you can't bank on finding it in one of Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, The Vaults, or The Lava Pits/Mt. Erebus, which all have significantly enhanced odds to spawn Exotics/Uniques. As a result, a random Dragonslayer can only spawn on the 7 Hell floors before Dis, with the absolute minimum odds; outside of A100/666, I have seen a random Dragonslayer like twice or thrice ever in all my time playing this game across all versions, and I don't think any of those times were after I even learned how to actually pick it up (or spawned when I couldn't pick it up anyway), so I never got Gutts' Heart. When starting up my 0.9.9.7 conquest, I was hoping to happen upon a Dragonslayer in one of my many Diamond or other Angelic runs to knock out Gutts' Heart, yet alas, after reaching 24 Diamonds with only Heroic and Arena remaining, alongside 10 Angelics with only Marksman, Masochist, and Everyman remaining among winnable Angelics, I never found a random Dragonslayer in any of those runs (excluding the A666 runs) and so I'm now at a point where I have to do a dedicated run for Gutts' Heart. Finding a random Dragonslayer within standard game limits would be horrendous, if that was the only way, getting this medal would be magnitudes worse than my recent A666 grind for a Subtle Knife to complete Armorer Diamond. But I do keep saying "random Dragonslayer" for a reason, as there does exist a way to get a guaranteed Dragonslayer to spawn in Unholy Cathedral in the place of the artifact weapon. The requirement for getting the guaranteed Dragonslayer is quite tough and annoying on its own, as you must be playing Nightmare! and clear Hell's Arena damageless (i.e. get the Hell Arena Pwnage medal) earlier in the run, but doing this is far far faaaaaaarrrrrrrrr more efficient and tolerable than spamming hundreds or thousands of Angel of Overconfidence runs until I luck out with a random Dragonslayer, so that is what I will be doing.

Beating N! Hell's Arena damageless is a very daunting prospect on its own, given how bad the Arena already is on N! when you have no good means for corpse disposal (barring a lucky floor 2 vault with a Rocket Launcher and a stack of rockets for it), especially when your most reliable way to destroy corpses is to intentionally eat plasma/acid balls on corpses, which you obviously cannot do in a damageless challenge. The guaranteed Dragonslayer is not challenge-restricted however, nor is Gutts' Heart, so you can do this in Angel of Max Carnage, which makes this ordeal much easier, between the general massive advantages of AoMC offense (including making the Chaingun much more reliable) and AoMC's exact damage making Shotgun knockback perfectly predictable (so corpse stacking is much easier to control). You could also do it in Angel of Light Travel instead if you don't want to play a later melee-focused game in AoMC, which also makes Hell Arena Pwnage easier with the speed boost letting you a lot more effectively outrun enemies and a lot more effectively Shotgun down enemies before they reach you, as well as better corpse stacking control too since if you try using a Chaingun to finish off an enemy in an exact spot and it fails to kill them, you have more of a chance to get a second burst off before they move off the corpse. Several people have achieved Hell Arena Pwnage through one of these two challenges, and I already did it myself in AoMC during my Destroyer Diamond run, so it would make sense to do that again for my Gutts' Heart run. However I got thinking, has anyone in 0.9.9.7 or earlier actually achieved Hell Arena Pwnage without the aid of these two challenges? I thought papilio did it, but apparently it was just something he wanted to possibly record and then never did. When searching the forums, the only mortems I was finding with Hell Arena Pwnage without AoMC/AoLT were all from 2Dev and Firstblood, i.e. probable cheaters, with the exception of one; this Shottyman Diamond run by scotherns achieved a Hell's Arena Pwnage. Not technically a standard game, but AoSh gives no particular advantage for this medal (AoSh makes it easier to get both medkits from Phobos Base Entry by starting you with a Shotgun and so you could use more running in the Arena, but then you also can't use the Chaingun for more precise corpse stacking, which makes it probably actually a little harder), so I have to give scotherns the full adulations for the first verified Hell Arena Pwnage without the use of AoMC nor AoLT (Micerang also got Hell Arena Pwnage without AoMC/AoLT in his Masochist Angelic run,  and wyrvic additionally posted a non-AoMC/AoLT mortem with Hell Arena Pwnage on the JH Discord, but both did it in 0.9.9.8 with its game-breaking dodging bug, which made it much easier to avoid getting hit and allowed you to very reliably dodge Cacodemons and Barons to have them destroy corpses near walls without having to get hit yourself). While I can't lay claim to the first non-AoMC/AoLT Hell Arena Pwnage, I did still wanted to try adding that feather to my cap and show I could do it even before Hell's Arena is eventually changed in later versions to no longer require killing all the respawns to clear it, so for this Gutts' Heart run I'm doing it in the standard game.

When it comes to the traits to use when going for Hell Arena Pwnage, gunning for Intuition 2 seems obvious at first, as the goto trait for avoiding walking into enemy fire. I opted not to go for it though, as you'll only get three traits before or by the start of the Arena and then a fourth during it (normally near or at the end, earlier if you got a floor 2 vault that let you get more EXP before entering the Arena), and so going for Int2 means you're only left with one other trait for most of the Arena, while without AoMC nor AoLT boosting your offense, you are not reliably killing the enemies before they reach you with one or zero combat-boosting traits. You won't be able to easily escape the Pinkies as well if they get too close without Hellrunner nor AoLT (a running Scout can still outrun them with no HR, but you'll need to burn several run actions for each one tile of space you get from them). With this in mind, I opted for my standard opener of Finesse -> Juggler; not only will Juggling Fin-boosted Shotguns very reliably keep even the Barons from reaching me before they die, but it also really helps with corpse stacking when I can instantly swap to the Chaingun as an enemy steps onto another's corpse, when otherwise I would need to swap before an enemy moves onto said corpse. I could go for Int2 after this but I also opted against that; one, Int1 itself would be functionally a dead level in the Arena, and two, Int2 won't come online until the Arena is nearly done anyway unless I get a floor 2 Cacodemon vault, while getting Intuition here would also farther delay Blademaster that I'm going for later in the run. As such, I end up opting for Hellrunner with my third trait instead, still can't outrun the Pinkies without burning running but any runs I do burn will more quickly get away from them, while it lets me more effectively kite Cacos and Barons around the pillars, and crucially the dodging rate boost could save me if I walk into a Caco's or Baron's vision, or end up in a position where I can't avoid them firing on me. For the fourth trait, I would go for HR2, but in the winning run, it came too late for it to really matter and so I got Brute instead to start building for Berserker later.

For the strat of actually playing a damageless N! Hell's Arena, well it's all about long and painfully corpse stacking, maybe you could lure a Pinky over the stairs before killing them but that's your only other real means to destroy a corpse when you can't take any damage. Without Int2, I have to do lots and lots of radar shooting to avoid stepping into a Caco's vision, it's not a good idea to run -> wait immediately since respawning becomes more frequent the longer the level goes on and so things will get out of hand if you're run -> waiting with too many corpses around, while a Caco could also pop up at an awkward angle that forces having to dodge. With corpse stacking, I will prefer overwriting Caco corpses with Pinkies since Cacos are the bigger threat and Pinkies can be more safely lured over other corpses, but I will just do it the other way whenever it's prudent, and of course when the Barons come, I want to overwrite their corpse with anything else. As mentioned, I want to avoid run -> waiting at first, but when I'm in the second wave and a good chunks of the enemies have been permanently erased, I will start doing tons and tons of run -> waiting wherever it appears least dangerous, and I'll run -> wait on a corpse to keep it from getting back up. For your inventory with the Juggler strat, you want to bring a half dozen Shotguns and a Chaingun, alongside a couple bullet stacks and farm the Shotgunners in the first two floors for hundreds of shells, you're going to need a ton of ammo for radar shooting and repeatedly killing lots of respawns. While you won't be needing to heal if you succeed in taking no damage, you still want some Small Medkits, since there will be spots when you need to activate running to avoid getting hit, and then you'll need to use a medkit to restore your tactics so you can run again if needed. It took five attempts over an hour of play, but I managed to get a damageless N! Hell's Arena in the standard game!

Well the run isn't done yet, I still need to not die on the way to Unholy Cathedral or else I would need to go through the damageless Hell's Arena ordeal again, but at my skill level while playing a good build, standard N! doesn't threaten me much. Even did a 100% Conqueror for the hell of it instead of just speedrunning to Cathedral, since a melee build simplifies and speeds up much of it. And as prophesized, the Dragonslayer spawns in Unholy Cathedral, I could just run straight to the Mastermind but getting to use the Dragonslayer in the standard game as Blademaster is something to have fun with. Some other little highlights:

• I got a Duelist Armor on Phobos 6, why couldn't I get that in any of my Berserker Angelic runs? I would get a Ballistic Vest in early Deimos too and then a Phaseshift Armor in Hell, as well as a Deimos 6 Lava Armor, so I just got all the good armor for this run.
• I got a Nano mod from Hell's Armory, so yes Antigrav Boots with a Dragonslayer-wielding Blademaser.
• I got this funny Cyberdemon spawn, which saved me the few seconds of having to seek and chase him down.
• I got a second Nano on Hell 3, so I made a Powered Red Armor with it just to get even more spoiled with my armor.
• Even with Blademaster having the Dragonslayer, A-modded Antigrav Boots, the Powered Red Armor, all three skulls, and a Hellwave Pack, I still took a decent amount of damage in N! Mortuary. I also had to make sure no corpses got back up as I exited so it counted as cleared. I haven't mentioned it but you get the Berserker Armor instead of the Angelic Armor in Mortuary/Limbo too if you got Hell Arena Pwnage, but the Berserker Armor sucks and you're stuck in it once you put it on, so there's no reason to unless you're intentionally going for the Apostle fight (which I can't do anyway as Gutts' Heart requires killing the Mastermind with the Dragonslayer, and I haven't found a nuke anyway even if I did wanted to).

The Mastermind herself of course stood no actual threat, while I popped the Lava Element before fighting her just to add a little extra dazzle to the mortem with a Mastermind Brain. With that, I finally have the Gutts' Heart and now all 43 medals in 0.9.9.7, which nets me the Heroic Diamond badge (only the fourth player in 0.9.9.7 to do so, after papilio, Tormuse, and Icy). I'm now only one Diamond away from having all 26, but it's the most infamous 0.9.9.7 Diamond of them all... It may be a while before I get it if I don't resort to Dual Angels.

Here is the mortem:

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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 shouldbeheroicangelic5,
 level 18 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 695691 turns and scored 970421 points.
 He played for 3 hours, 40 minutes and 25 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1489 out of 1489 hellspawn. (100%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 11
  Levels completed : 11

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Mastermind's Brain
  Medal of Prejudice
  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Conqueror Badge
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Arena Pwnage Medal
  Gutts' Heart
  Heroic Diamond Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  #>#####################................................####
  ######################...............####...............###
  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ####################.......%####.....####.....####........#
  ###################.......X.####.....####.....####.........
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  #################..........................................
  #################....####............................####..
  #################....####............................####..
  #################....####............................####&.
  #################....####............................####..
  #################..........................................
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  ###################.........####.....####.....####.........
  ####################........####.....####.....####........#
  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ######################...............####...............###
  #>#####################................................####
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 135/70   Experience 165222/18
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +10  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +15

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Ironman          (Level 2)
    Finesse          (Level 2)
    Hellrunner       (Level 3)
    Brute            (Level 5)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Dodgemaster      (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Blademaster      (Level 1)

  Fin->Jug->HR->Bru->Bru->Ber->HR->Bru->MBm->Fin->WK->WK->HR->Bru->Bru->DM->Iro->Iro->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   phaseshift armor [4/4] (100%) (PT)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   Dragonslayer (9d9)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   antigrav steel boots [1/1] (100%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1] (B2)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] powered red armor [5/5] (100%)
    [b] fireproof duelist armor [4/4] (100%) (P)
    [c] Lava Armor [4/4] (100%)
    [d] Berserker Armor [0]
    [e] large med-pack
    [f] large med-pack
    [g] large med-pack
    [h] large med-pack
    [i] large med-pack
    [j] large med-pack
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] large med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] phase device
    [p] phase device
    [q] phase device
    [r] phase device
    [s] homing phase device
    [t] cerberus plasteel boots [0/0] (100%)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Bullet     - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Melee      - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Shrapnel   - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Acid       - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    155 former humans
    155 former sergeants
    65 former captains
    153 imps
    97 demons
    384 lost souls
    95 cacodemons
    35 hell knights
    72 barons of hell
    69 arachnotrons
    20 former commandos
    42 pain elementals
    35 revenants
    19 mancubi
    41 arch-viles
    4 nightmare imps
    4 nightmare cacodemons
    35 nightmare demons
    2 bruiser brothers
    1 shambler
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 Arena Master

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena as a champion!
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 5 he found the Arena Master's Staff!
  He defeated the Hell Arena Master!
  On level 7 he sneaked into the Phobos Lab.
  He broke through the lab.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 10 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 11 he witnessed the Wall.
  He massacred the evil behind the Wall!
  On level 12 he found the Hellwave Pack!
  On level 12 he found the City of Skulls.
  On level 12 he assembled a antigrav boots!
  On level 12 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  He wiped out the City of Skulls.
  On level 14 he found the Lava Armor!
  On level 14 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
  He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  He left level 16 as soon as possible.
  On level 17 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 17 he found the Dragonslayer!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 19 he assembled a power armor!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  On level 19 he found the BFG 10K!
  He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  On level 20 he assembled a cerberus boots!
  On level 20 he found the Berserker Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You dodge! Boom! You are hit! You dodge! Boom! You dodge! Boom! You dodge!
 Boom! You dodge! Boom! You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You miss the Spider Mastermind. You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations!
 You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...
 Next! You're going berserk!

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 408 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 194 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 107 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 63 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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[--------------------------------------------------------------]

Destroyer Diamond has a fairly infamous history; prior to 0.9.9.5, it was absurdly easy for a Diamond, requiring just beating Angel of Max Carnage on N! with no Ironman or Tough as Nails, traits that were pretty useless in AoMC anyway, while AoMC itself was well known for being easier than the standard game, and as a result it was the most commonly won Diamond, with the old Badge Hunters thread listing nearly two dozen players reporting winning it across pre-0.9.9.5 versions. This badge got completely changed in 0.9.9.5 accordingly, with it having no trait restriction but instead now having a requirement of winning N! AoMC with the Untouchable Cross, i.e. you must win with under 50 damage taken. However the badge was bugged, which wouldn't be fixed until 0.9.9.7, the version that introduced Dual Angels, which brought along the cheese strategy of Sereging, i.e. combining challenges with Angel of Overconfidence or other challenges that makes their badges easier to obtain. One thing with Destroyer Diamond is that it doesn't actually require the Untouchable Cross itself despite the badge's description, rather it directly checks if you finish the game with under 50 damage taken. As a consequence, while AoOC normally disqualifies you from winning the Untouchable Cross, it does not disqualify you from earning the Destroyer badges if you combine AoMC with AoOC. This make Destroyer Diamond one of, if not the most blatantly cheesable badge by Sereging, as it's much easier to finish with under 50 damage taken when you got only 7 floors and a Mastermind that's easily bullied in AoMC to get through, and can just spam resets until you spawn near an Invuln that prevents you from taking any damage. If you have the scruples to not resort to abusing such a blatant oversight and actually go for Destroyer Diamond the intended way in pure Angel of Max Carnage with no other challenges combined with it, it becomes possibly the most difficult Diamond in the game (aside from the slot machine that is pure Arena Diamond) and more difficult than many Angelic badges; the only player who reported actually winning pure Destroyer Diamond in 0.9.9.7 is papilio, one of DRL's greatest players who once held the record for most Diamonds with 23, and unlike most other players, he got all his Diamonds without abusing Dual Angels. I could have easily gotten this badge in 0.9.9.7 long ago if I just Sereg'd it like other people did, but as made clear in all my other Diamond runs, I think Sereging heavily cheapens the accomplishment of any badges won from it, and so I made it a point to get all these Diamonds without any Dual Angel abuse, which meant having to get Destroyer Diamond through the much more brutal way of pure AoMC.

So with the preamble done, what is the difficulty with pure Destroyer Diamond? You do get the massive offensive benefit of AoMC that makes it much easier to avoid ever getting hit, but the 49 damage buffer you're allowed is very very strict, especially when enemies are dealing max damage anytime they do hit you. Getting shot by a Former Human in Green or Blue Armor will result in you taking 6 damage, normally not a big deal at all, but here, that's already over 10% of your total damage allowance. Get hit by an Imp fireball in Blue Armor, that's 8 damage, get caught out by an Imp group in the open and that can be the end of the run right there. Get hit by a Hell Knight or Cacodemon plasma ball in Blue Armor, that's 9 damage, take a few of those and your damage allowance is already over halfway used up. Step into a Shotgunner's sight at mid-range, that's gonna be 12+ damage, even shrapnel doubling armor protection won't save you from taking a big hit. Those Chaingunners you can normally scoff at? A single burst from them will deal 16 damage with Green or Blue Armor on, that's basically a third of the damage you can take. Then you better not get hit by any Barons without a certain trait, when they're dealing 20 damage before armor, even a P-modded Red Armor just reduces that to 14. And you absolutely can't ever give a Commando the chance to fire on you, when their Plasma Rifle burst does 30 damage in Blue or Red Armor, and even with said armor P-modded, the 24 damage they'll inflict is still half of the total damage you can take. Then you got the Arachnotrons and VMR soon after... In short, AoMC may give you obscene offensive power to better control encounters and avoid getting hit, but Destroyer Diamond's under 50 damage requirement alongside enemies also getting AoMC's offensive boost means you can make very few mistakes, and it only takes a couple hot starts with unavoidable damage for you to run out the measly 49 damage total you're allowed to take, even just making it out of Phobos with under 50 damage is a hell of a feat, especially when it ends in N! Phobos Anomaly that is brutal to not just die in, let alone get through it without taking significant damage.

Now to discuss the build. Obviously it's going to be opening up with Intuition 2, a must for any badge where extreme damage avoidance is required, especially so in AoMC where any single stray hit is so overwhelmingly punishing, while AoMC offense means you don't feel the power loss as much with taking Intuition instead of direct combat-boosting traits as you would normally. Papilio in his pure Destroyer Diamond would get Hellrunner, Dodgemaster, and then build to Cateye, a typical AoMC build, however I'm going to be doing things differently. After Int2 I get Finesse and Juggler; as demonstrated in many of my other runs, Juggler is a very powerful early game trait, and that's especially so in Destroyer Diamond when instantly swapping between several Shotguns, AoMC-boosted rapids, and even the Rocket Launcher are going to be required to avoid getting hit in any bad hot starts or other bad combat scenarios where I'm caught out without good cover. I then go for maybe the unusual selections of Brute 2 and Berserker; the Brute levels are pretty much dead levels and actually meleeing enemies is out of the question when you can take so little damage, but Berserker is important for two critical reasons. One, Berserker, already a very powerful defensive trait, becomes even more powerful in AoMC when Revenants, Mancubi, Barons, and Shotgunners from within 5 tiles are now guaranteed to always trigger it if they hit you, which in effect gives you permanent +60% resistance against these enemies, so with just vanilla Red Armor, you'll reduce all Revenant, Mancubi, and close/midrange shotgun blasts to 1 damage, while Baron acid balls will get reduced to 4 damage, 2 if you got your Red Armor Power-modded. Ideally you want to avoid getting hit at all, but reducing their damage by such a huge amount will keep your run alive when any mistakes around them could otherwise instantly end a good run with how hard they hit, or if you get into a scenario where you have to choose getting hit either by them or other enemies, you can kill the other enemies and take the hit from them that will deal much less damage, as well as give you the berserk speed boost to farther avoid additional damage. The second critical reason for Berserker is it's your only way to get through N! Anomaly with minimal damage without a lucky Phobos 7 Invuln or gambling with a Phase Device to not only teleport you past the ambush but also teleport you past the Bruisers. With the 50 max HP you'll have by default as a Scout or Technician, AoMC will make rocket jumps with the vanilla Rocket Launcher always trigger Berserker. Why is this important? Without an Invuln, the reliable way to get past the N! Anomaly ambush and through the Bruisers is to rocket jump, but an AoMC rocket jump does a hefty 18 damage; Red Armor reduces that to 10 damage, 8 if P-modded, and so that will be 20/16 damage if you rocket jump past the ambush and through the Bruisers, which is just too much and chances are you won't even be able to take that damage without it sending your total damage to 50+. If you make a Fireproof Red Armor, that will reduce rocket jump damage to 4 and so 8 total, this is a lot more palatable but every damage point counts and you may not even be able to afford taking that damage without failing Destroyer Diamond by the time of Anomaly, while chances are also that you won't be able to make a Fireproof Red Armor unless you clear both Chained Court and the Phobos 7 special level, which is a tall order within Destroyer Diamond's constraints. A radsuit on top of the Fireproof Red Armor would reduce jump damage to 1, but you're not guaranteed one before Anomaly either unless you do Military Base or Phobos Lab. Meanwhile with Berserker triggering on a rocket jump in AoMC, with just a vanilla Red Armor it'll reduce rocket jump damage to 1, so you're guaranteed to only take 2 damage in Phobos Anomaly if you don't get a Phobos 7 Invuln, eliminating the luck needed to get past N! Anomaly with Destroyer Diamond intact (provided you don't make it to Anomaly with exactly 48 or 49 damage already taken), while it can also save your run if rocket jumping is your only way to escape any hot start with minimal damage. Plus I will try to Invuln rush as much of the post-Phobos portion as possible, and berserked Chainsaw will kill bosses faster than even an AoMC Plasma Rifle will, thus burning less Invuln killing them. After Berserker the aim will be for Shottyhead, which is my best answer to getting through hot starts unscathed, but I may not get the levels for it and may have to audible on it, as you'll see later...

The first major obstacle of the run is Phobos Base Entry. As mentioned prior, even a Former pistol shot takes away over 10% of the damage you're allowed to take total, so you really want to get a damageless Phobos Base Entry, but with the AoMC accuracy boost, Former Humans will now actually be able to hit you while you have running active and even with running's dodge bonus you have a well below 50% chance to dodge their bullets, so now you need a lot more luck than just "hope the Shotgunners don't leave the building early". You really need this Phobos Entry layout in particular, as it'll let you get behind good cover before any of the Formers can see you, which is your only reliable away to avoid damage from the Formers before you can get a Shotgun. This layout can also work despite me normally not liking it (with this being the winning run), as it does give you immediate cover, but you'll still need some luck to make it work, as the Formers can pop up at bad angles or multiple can approach you from different angles at once, where damage then can't be avoided (you also gotta remember that you can't try camping behind the narrow tunnel, as it creates one of those weird diagonal LoS angles that enemies can see you but you can't see them, so you have to camp at the top or bottom to avoid enemies getting free shots on you). Any other layout will require far more luck to get through damageless. If you opt to try killing the Formers in the open instead as papilio did in his run, without a Shotgun, you need to get lucky blind firing with your Pistol, having the timing luckily line up to get a double shot off whenever a Former step into vision, or get very lucky with a Former deciding not to shoot when you're in vision (Formers have a 75% attack chance normally, I'm unsure how that interacts with N!'s +50% enemy attack chance modifier but you might have better odds of Former Humans rolling the minimum 2% miss chance that persists even in AoMC than you would with them deciding to not attack on N!); even if you open with SoB, you can't one-shot the Formers with your Pistol, so avoiding damage here in the open would require even more luck than resetting until you get one of the viable layouts. There are going to be many resets in Phobos Base Entry inbetween real attempts, there's just no way around it, you don't want to settle for an imperfect Phobos Entry and then end up losing Destroyer Diamond in the end by a margin of =<8 damage after you took a Pistol shot at the start.

Phobos 2 will be another reset point, as you won't immediately have Int2 and won't have Juggler, so any hot start can immediately cause unavoidable damage, while you have to play very carefully before you have Int2 if you don't got an immediately accessible good camping spot (or the game just says fuck you and immediately spawns you in a position where acid damage is unavoidable, as happened in this run that I then had to immediately Q+Y out). As long as you don't get a bad start, you should be able to get through Phobos 2 damageless, and if you do get hit, you should probably reset, because again you don't want to play through a long Destroyer Diamond game after getting hit in Phobos 2 just to lose it by a margin of 8 or less damage. After clearing out Phobos 2, there is then the question of if to do Hell's Arena; papilio in his run didn't and it's understandable as anything optional is more chances to get hit, but I would say not doing so is a mistake, since getting a Rocket Launcher before Anomaly is critical as explained previously, while having access to reliable corpse disposal is also obviously immensely useful when a badly timed respawn can end such a fragile run (especially so when intentionally eating fireballs on corpses to destroy them is not viable here), and rocket jumping is needed to much more efficiently Invuln rush the post-Phobos portion of the run. AoMC additionally makes Hell's Arena much easier, even on N! you can manage it damageless without serious difficulty (and I would indeed clear Hell's Arena damageless, which will net me the Hell's Arena Pwnage Medal too, one of the three medals I have left), though you could accept taking a single hit from a non-Baron here if doing Hell's Arena damageless would cause too many resets for you. If you skip Hell's Arena, you have to get lucky with a Rocket Launcher spawning on Phobos 7 or in a vault to get one prior to Anomaly, and if you're unlucky, you may not get one for Invuln rushing until deep into Deimos, if you can even make it that far, while you're far more at the mercy of Phobos level generation when you can't destroy Hell Noble corpses or other troublesome corpses on demand. Papilio didn't say how many attempts it took him, but I'm sure skipping Hell's Arena made him have to reset far more runs past Phobos 2.

The Phobos 3 to 7 range is perilous, and it is tempting to just stair dive through them whenever possible, but I do mostly clear them out in this run, as I need to hit level 7 before Anomaly in order to get Berserker in time for it. Another benefit of clearing Hell's Arena is it ensures you'll hit level 4 before Phobos 3 and so I have Juggler before that floor range. After a damageless Phobos 3, I would get a bad floor on Phobos 4, where I spawned in an open area that I had to use crates for cover while a Cacodemon vault nearby got opened, and at one point I accidentally stepped into a Shotgunner's vision, where that was suddenly 13 damage gone, over 25% of my total damage allowance depleted over a single mistake. I then got hit by a Lost Soul shortly after, not as bad but now I'm at 18 damage, a couple more floors like this and the run is over. There was farther tense moments when Cacodemons were approaching me from multiple angles while I ran around the small stacks of crates I had for cover, but eventually I managed to kill everything without getting hit again, and the vault would have a Combat Shotgun, very nice to have when I may not get one otherwise when I'll be skipping the Phobos 7 special level. In Phobos 5 I would get a bad Warehouse level where corpse disposal wasn't easy but I would manage to avoid getting hit, up until the end when it came to clearing out two straggling Hell Knights, and after killing them, rather than just blowing them up immediately with my Rocket Launcher, I would get overly stingy by trying to let them revive to kill them in the doorway, which only resulted in one getting up while I was out in the open and then getting hit, knocking me to 27 damage taken. Just like that I was already halfway over my damage allowance and was feeling pessimistic about the run, I was initially thinking of skipping Unchained Court but since I didn't think the run was going all the way, I went in anyway just to see if it would be that bad to do damageless, as the Chainsaw and mods would be helpful. Going into Unchained Court does sound like a really bad idea at first, when even with berserk, the Barons will deal 6 damage to you in Blue Armor, the Arena Master's zap will do 4 damage, and there's a lot of Chaingunners who will do 4 damage minimum even when you have berserk with armor on, while the level starts you surrounded with shoddy cover. However with Int2, you can avoid the usually prevalent problem of walking into a Baron's vision as you exit the center building, as well as avoid walking into any of the Formers' vision, while AoMC offense will let you reliably one-shot any Formers that walk into range, let you much more quickly kill the Barons when plinking them from across the lava pools (that their AI then get stuck on instead of walking around it), and let you corner shoot the Arena Master from the center building once you get his attention. As such, I was able to clear Unchained Court damageless without even grabbing the Chainsaw nor berserks.

After keeping the damageless streak going through Phobos 6, Phobos 7 greeted me with this run-ending predicament. I managed to avoid the run ending there but I don't get out unscathed, as I would again get hit by a Hell Knight, which are actually worse than Barons once you get Berserker since the 12 damage they inflict before defenses are factored is 4 damage shy of the Berserker trigger amount, and so my total damage is up to 36 now, not even out of Phobos yet and I'm already at nearly 75% of the damage I can take after getting hit just four times (a shotgun blast for 13, a Lost Soul charge for 5, and two Hell Knight plasma balls for 18). I would manage to clear the rest of that maze without any additional damage, but in more bad news, there is no Invuln on Phobos 7, I was prepared for that, it's why I made sure to get Berserker before Anomaly, still a damageless Anomaly would have been nice and I could have potentially parlayed that into an Invuln chain that this run is probably going to hinge on to survive when I got only 13 damage left I can take. Military Base spawned for the Phobos 7 special level, which would be doable damageless unlike Phobos Lab, so I considered going in, but I didn't want to spend a good 15 minutes or so playing Military Base extremely cautiously just to lose this run at the start of Deimos, and as mentioned, I'm banking on finding Invulns at this point, so all the mods and juicy EXP there won't really do much to enhance this run's odds of winning. Then it's time for the Anomaly, I did have a Phase Device to potentially get through it damageless, but I stuck to the Berserker rocket jump plan for two reasons; one, a Phase Device needs to teleport me past the Bruisers to completely avoid any damage, just getting past the ambush won't do, and a Phase Device dropping me in the later half of the ambush tunnel just ends the run, while two, I may need a Phase to get me out of a hot start later. So I stuck to the plan, and indeed Berserker triggers on the rocket jump to reduce it to 1 damage in the Red Armor conveniently supplied by Anomaly, while thanks to AoMC, a single rocket jump will get you completely out of the Nightmare enemies' vision and completely past the Bruisers once you get to them, thus I get through Anomaly with only 2 damage taken. However, I make the dumb mistake of trying to corner shoot the Bruisers from the teleport room, thinking AoMC would make this easy EXP, but then with Int2 I see one of the Bruisers start walking around the top, at which point he would eventually pop into melee range if I stayed, so I decide to bail and get on the teleporter. As it turns out, stepping onto the teleporter doesn't immediately teleport you out, so the other Bruiser got to attack me as I stepped on it. Thankfully Berserker triggers on their acid balls too, but that was an additional 4 damage that was completely avoidable, and so now I enter Deimos with 42 damage taken, the run is technically alive but I got to get through 16 floors while taking no more than 7 damage across them all...

Deimos 1 would be a little rough, with it pitting me against a Baron in a bad spot that got a hit on me, another point where the run would have ended right there without Berserker but his damage gets reduced to 4 to keep it alive a little longer, and I get hit by something else I don't remember for 2 damage (maybe an Imp after I P-modded my Red Armor?). At this point I don't bother to clear out floors, I just need to find an Invuln ASAP as I'm still a few levels away from getting Shottyhead and I can't take any more hits, so the focus is getting straight to the stairs and only killing what's in the way or otherwise potentially threatens me. I would get through the first half of Deimos with no additional damage but no Invulnerability Globes spawn on the first four Deimos floors. Upon reaching Deimos 5, I would finally get an Invuln... but I got an absolutely horrid hot start, that would be a potential run ender in a normal game, let alone in a Destroyer Diamond run where I'm at 48 damage taken and so can take no more than 1 more point of damage or else the run ends. Even with AoMC offense, without Shottyhead, I cannot hope to kill everything with LoS on me before they wake up, so a Phase Device is my only option, and I do have the one I saved from Anomaly earlier, but I also having a Homing Phase. I opt to use the latter, as it would not only have a higher probability to put me in a safe spot (all these enemies means there's likely less or none around the stairs), but in case the stairs are a bad spot too, I could at least then immediately leave and hope the next floor is better, even though I really want that Invuln... The stairs would turn out to have only a single Mancubus in vision, so the Homing Phase not only gets me out of the run ender but also gives me a chance to procure the Invuln. The game makes me work for it with lots of enemies being around the Invuln, but playing very carefully I can slowly chip away at the enemies as they wander out, and thanks to finding the flooding lever near the stairs, I don't need to worry about respawns either. Eventually I manage to get to the Invuln, and it's a good thing I made sure not to shoot towards it too, only shooting enemies through the top or left side of that room, as there turned out to be a barrel right next to the Invuln that would have destroyed it if I did shoot towards it (those Protective Boots are also the first pair of boots I get the whole run, I really didn't get a single pair of Steel Boots in Phobos, and I do have an A mod I've been waiting to put on boots, but I don't put them on yet so the -25% knockback resistance they have doesn't nerf my rocket jumps).

With finally having Invuln and three stacks of rockets in my inventory, I decided it's time to just Invuln rush the rest of the game, as when I can't take any more hits, my best shot is to try remaining Invulnerable for the entirety of the remaining game. I just rocket jump through the final two Deimos floors before Babel, and within Babel I get an inconvenient Cyberdemon spawn on the opposite end of the map, but with how far AoMC rocket jumps send you, it only takes a few before I get to him, where then the berserk Chainsaw kills him with plenty of Invuln left. Hell 1 would then give me an Arachnotron + Cacodemon cave with not just one Invuln, but two of them. I have to make sure the Cacodemons don't blow them up but I managed to get them, so that's a +200 turns Invuln refresh to potentially carry me the rest of the way. I continue the Invulnerable rocket jump mad dash to end, rocket jumping straight to the stairs on every floor, only stopping to pick up rockets and a failed attempt to get an Invuln in another Arachnotron + Cacodemon cave when a Caco did blow it up this time. I reach level 10 shortly into Hell, and since it was clear I wouldn't be getting enough levels for Shottyhead, I use it on HR2 to ensure I can outrun the Mastermind in case the Invuln runs out before I kill or reach her, at which point I would need to chip away at her with hit and run tactics. As I'm blasting through Hell, I get a Hell 6 that perfectly encapsulates why I got Armorer Diamond before doing this run, with a maze that has a Unique within it, which could have very well been the Subtle Knife I was missing for Armorer Diamond previously, but detouring looking for it instead of heading straight for the stairs would likely deplete all the Invuln and potentially ruin the run. With me already having Armorer Diamond, I can just ignore that Unique and stay focused on the current mission. I'm not sure how much Invuln I have left at this point, but Hell 7 gives me close stairs that are reached in a single rocket jump, and just like that I'm in Dis with under 50 damage to keep Destroyer Diamond still intact, when I thought the run was most likely finished after running up 48 damage by early Deimos and was pessimistic about it back in Phobos 5. With the Invuln still not out, I proceed to effortlessly saw the Mastermind down.

Moral of the story? Rocket jumping is damn good, and when you got Invulnerability + AoMC, rocket jumping is really damn good, off that one Deimos 5 Invuln and then those two Hell 1 Invulns, I remained Invulnerable for the entire second half of the game, with a single rocket jump being able to launch me a quarter of the way through any floor without an obstruction in the way. Also, while my first run that wasn't resetted in the first two floors ended up going all the way (two prior runs were resetted on Phobos 2 and over a dozen were resetted in Phobos Base Entry), I think this shows just how hard pure Destroyer Diamond is; altogether I got hit just seven times the entire run + those two rocket jumps in Anomaly for an additional 2 damage, and I finished just 1 damage short of the allowed damage limit, you're given minuscule room for any mistakes. While you don't get AoMC's insane offense in Demonic Diamond, that badge's 199 damage allowance and enemies not having the AoMC boost allowed you to take some hits here and there, so it had a much less strict margin of error in comparison. While there's lots I disagree with in papilio's badge difficulty rankings, I do agree with him that Destroyer Diamond without Dual Angel abuse is one of the two hardest Diamond badges (it remains to be seen if I'll find it harder than Arena Diamond), and that it's more Angelic-worthy than several of the actual Angelics. I see why everyone else took the easy way out on this badge, because very few players could have realistically won it the intended way through pure AoMC, and of those that could, most would have probably needed to do a seriously extended grinding session for it. As for how this badge will fare in the modern DRL versions, you can no longer infinitely camp due to the Enraged Timer, can no longer farm respawns for virtually infinite ammo, and both Int2 + Finesse got nerfed, but I think it might actually not be as bad, as corpses no longer being able to respawn in vision means you don't have to worry about respawn RNG screwing you over with an enemy getting back up at a terrible time, while special levels no longer requiring all respawns be killed for clearing means it'll be easier to do Hell's Arena damageless (once it's unbugged at least), and time-based powerups means your lategame Invulns will effectively last longer. We'll see how it compares across versions when I eventually go for the modern DRL 100%. With Destroyer Diamond won here, I now have 24 Diamonds in 0.9.9.7, surpassing papilio's Diamond count for uncontested #2, and the Untouchable Cross + Hell's Arena Pwnage Medal also bumps my medal count up to 42, I just need Gutts' Heart now for Heroic Diamond (I could have potentially went for it in this run after doing Hell's Arena damageless, but grabbing the Dragonslayer means I then can't rocket jump, and I do not stretch the Invulns out to last the entire rest of the run without rocket jumping, so I'll have to do it in its own dedicated run).

If you're still reading, here is the mortem:

--------------------------------------------------------------
 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
--------------------------------------------------------------

 ONLY50DAMAGE?!,
 level 10 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 256773 turns and scored 345501 points.
 He played for 2 hours, 32 minutes and 48 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 728 out of 1082 hellspawn. (67%)
 He was an Angel of Max Carnage!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 2
  Levels completed : 2

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Cyberdemon's Head
  Mastermind's Brain
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Untouchable Cross
  Hell Arena Pwnage Medal
  Destroyer Diamond Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  #>#####################................................####
  ######################...............####...............###
  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ####################........####.....####.....####........#
  ###################.........####.....#........####.........
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  #################..........................................
  #################......##..X%........................####..
  #################.....###............................####..
  #################....####............................####&.
  #################....####............................####..
  #################..........................................
  ##################..........####..............####.........
  ###################.........####.....####.....####.........
  ####################........####.....####.....####........#
  #####################.......####.....####.....####.......##
  ######################...............####...............###
  #>#####################................................####
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 50/50   Experience 41956/10
  ToHit Ranged +12  ToHit Melee +16  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +6

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 1)
    Hellrunner       (Level 2)
    Reloader         (Level 1)
    Brute            (Level 2)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)

  Int->Int->Fin->Jug->Bru->Bru->Ber->Rel->HR->HR->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [6/6] (100%) (P)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   chainsaw (5d6) (B)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   nothing
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   plasma rifle (1d7)x6 [10/40]

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] double shotgun (9d3)x2 [2/2]
    [b] combat shotgun (7d3) [2/5]
    [c] combat shotgun (8d3) [3/5] (P1)
    [d] rocket launcher (6d6) [0/1] (B1)
    [e] shotgun shell (x50)
    [f] shotgun shell (x46)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] rocket (x7)
    [k] power cell (x50)
    [l] power cell (x42)
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] phase device
    [p] phase device
    [q] agility mod pack
    [r] protective boots [2/2] (100%)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Bullet     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Melee      - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Shrapnel   - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Acid       - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 85%   feet 60% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    136 former humans
    80 former sergeants
    36 former captains
    157 imps
    95 demons
    109 lost souls
    44 cacodemons
    11 hell knights
    22 barons of hell
    1 arachnotron
    18 former commandos
    10 pain elementals
    1 revenant
    4 mancubi
    1 arch-vile
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 Arena Master

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena as a champion!
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 5 he found the Arena Master's Staff!
  He defeated the Hell Arena Master!
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  He left level 15 as soon as possible.
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  He left level 19 as soon as possible.
  He left level 23 as soon as possible.
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You're going
 berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations!
 You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 407 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 194 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 106 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 62 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------


[--------------------------------------------------------------]

In theory, Armorer Diamond is an "easy" Diamond that nearly any serious player could win, you just need to find three of every special item across all your runs, and as long as you're good enough to beat HMP difficulty for the Azrael Scythe, you should eventually get this badge without ever touching N! or even UV. Yet according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, only two players ever reported winning it; Tormuse and Icy, i.e. two of the greatest DRL players. Oh no... that doesn't sound like an "easy badge anyone can win" at all...

So when I first revisited 0.9.9.7 and started my conquest of it a couple months ago with my Eagerness Angelic run, I was only two uniques shy of getting Armorer Diamond, one Dragonslayer and one Subtle Knife needed to complete finding three of every special. Even back before that I was a very hardcore DRL player despite not playing N! before then, with a playtime of somewhere around 700ish hours and nearly 200 games recorded, I reasonably should have already won it long ago with that sort of time invested into the game. But still, just one Dragonslayer and one Subtle Knife, it can't be that much longer to get it, right? Any given run at this point could win it, while I had just five Diamonds and no Angelics yet, so there would a lot of runs to go through before I could think about having to make dedicated runs for this badge...

Well with those two Uniques, the Dragonslayer is perhaps the rarest single piece of equipment in the game, with it having a minimum spawning depth of 16, a spawning weight of 1, and since it's a melee weapon, it cannot spawn in vaults, nor can it randomly drop in any of the special levels. So in standard game depths, you have exactly only 7 floors it can spawn on (Hell 1 through 7), and there's no place where it could drop with enhanced odds unlike other Uniques. However if the Dragonslayer was all I needed, it wouldn't be too bad, as there is a way to guarantee it spawning in a certain special level;

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

clear Hell's Arena on N! with no damage, and then later the artifact weapon in Unholy Cathedral will be replaced with the Dragonslayer.

Getting the Dragonslayer that way is difficult, but wouldn't take too long to do in dedicated runs if it came down to that, especially if I do it in certain challenges. The actual bigger problem is the Subtle Knife, which is among the group of those bafflingly terrible Uniques added in 0.9.9.7 with a minimum spawning depth of 15 and spawning weight of 1, while as a melee weapon, it also cannot spawn in vaults nor in any special level, so it's basically as rare as the Dragonslayer (you only get one more floor you can find it in comparison), except there is no way to force it to spawn if it became the last Unique I needed (the Mjollnir was also among this group of Uniques in 0.9.9.7 and is a melee weapon too, so having that be your last Unique would also be just as bad, but I've had unusual luck finding it with over a half dozen of them on my file). Of all Uniques, I absolutely do not want Armorer Diamond gatekept by this one, as my only recourse would be to speedrun A666 to force this badge...

Well after nearly 60 games in my return to 0.9.9.7, with 11 Diamonds and 5 Angelics achieved, with none of those games having the Dragonslayer nor Subtle Knife, I decided to go for Centurlal Diamond, with some hope I could get Armorer Diamond out of the way there, yet alas I would find neither Unique I needed. 13 games later, with my Diamond count now at 16 and my Angelic count at 6, I decided to go for Centurial Angelic, not only to get that badge but to also double it up with Armorer Diamond, surely I would get both Uniques I need after 666 floors? Well I did find the Dragonslayer in that run after 385 floors, but still never found the Subtle Knife even after 666 floors. The Dragonslayer is the far far far better weapon and did speed up the rest of that particular A666 run, but if I had to only find one, I would have actually preferred the Subtle Knife, since as mentioned, there is a way to force the Dragonslayer to spawn in the standard game and so I could do that as its own run (which I'm probably going to need to do anyway for Gutts' Heart to finish out Heroic Diamond), while with the Subtle Knife, my only recourse would be to grind out A666 games... Still there are many other Diamonds and Angelics left, just maybe I could find it in one of those runs, or otherwise in the several AoOC games I pumped out to get enough Carmack kills for Apostle rank?

Yet here I am, with 22 Diamonds, a record 10 Angelics, and said Apostle ranking, the RNG did not drop the Subtle Knife in any of those runs. With only a few other Diamonds and winnable Angelics left, at this pace I was going to do everything else I could do before I got Armorer Diamond. Since in the remaining runs, I may be unable to detour for Uniques that spawn and not wanting to risk losing something like a Destroyer Diamond or Masochist Angelic run for seeking an out-of-the-way Unique, I decided I should just bite the bullet and grind through A666 to get Armorer Diamond done now. I got unlucky with the Centurial Angelic run not having a Subtle Knife drop, but surely I would get it in the next A666 game, and it wouldn't take that long if I just speedrun through it on HNTR with Blademaster, right?

Well in the first run, I would find the Dragonslayer again (and the Berserker Armor but I forgot to pick it up), yet it'll be a second consecutive A666 game that the Subtle Knife would never drop... (Here's the link to that mortem I posted on the JH Discord if you want to see it, can't post multiple A666 mortems in the same post without running out the character limit.)

Well I could only try again, surely it won't be a third A666 game without the Subtle Knife ever dropping, right? And in this run I had a lot better luck with other items, including an early Chainsaw you almost never see in 0.9.9.7's A100/666 that let me get through the game much faster, many Uniques early on including a floor 17 Lava Armor and floor 23 Malek's Armor that let me comfortably stair dive much sooner, and the Dragonslayer yet again. Yet that luck ended up for nought, as I would go an entire third A666 game without the Subtle Knife ever dropping... (link to mortem.)

To say I was frustrated at this is an understatement, how do I find five Dragonslayers without ever doing the guaranteed method for it in this file before finding a third Subtle Knife, and why does the RNG keep giving me the other stupidly rare yet also useless Uniques like the Mjollnir and Mega Buster (the latter of which I've found 14 fucking times!). There's nothing I can do about it though but just boot up yet another A666 game. My Unique luck this time was much worse, with not finding my first Unique until floor 48, which ended up being that fucking useless ass Mega Buster of course, and the pace didn't pick up that much from there. However on floor 223, at last, the grind for Armorer Diamond would end when the RNG finally decided to drop the Subtle Knife, at which point I just killed myself, as there were too many floors left and 0.9.9.7's A666 is far too repetitive to put up with any longer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

--------------------------------------------------------------
 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
--------------------------------------------------------------

 WHOCREATEDTHESUBTLEKNIFE?!,
 level 22 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 committed a stupid suicide on level 223 of Hell.
 He survived 188170 turns and scored 799559 points.
 He played for 4 hours, 34 minutes and 57 seconds.
 He didn't like it too rough.

 He killed 1980 out of 4378 hellspawn. (45%)
 He was an Archangel of 666!

 He saved himself 3 times.

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 0
  Levels visited   : 0
  Levels completed : 0

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  UAC Star (bronze cluster)
  Experience Medal
  Armorer Diamond Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ######################################################=====
  ###.......#.#.......+...===...........+.........#.....=====
  #########.#.#.......#..=====..........#.......0.#.....=====
  ###.0...#.+.+.......#...===...........#.........+.....Bh=h=
  ###.....#.#+#########......%........}.#.........#.....=====
  ###.....+0#.........+.......%..=......+|.......0#.....=====
  ######+####+####+####=====....==##+#######+####+####+#=====
  ###.......#.......|.+=====...==......++.......#.......=====
  ###.......+.........#=====....#######.#.......#.......=====
  ######=####.........#.=...............#|......+........====
  ###...=...+.........#................%#.......#......A.====
  ###..==h..#.........+.............%...........#........====
  #####=+=###+####+######==#==....##/==.####+####+####+##====
  ###.....=..0........+..=====......=====...............=====
  ###.................#..=====......=====...............=====
  ###=.==.......^.....#...===.>.....=.===......|....[...=====
  ###==......|........#..............===#########+#######====
  ###.................+.................+.....0........".====
  ########################......X....####################====
  #######################################################====

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 0/70   Experience 551536/22
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +10  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +15

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Ironman          (Level 2)
    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Hellrunner       (Level 3)
    Reloader         (Level 1)
    Brute            (Level 5)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Dodgemaster      (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Blademaster      (Level 1)

  Int->Int->HR->Bru->Bru->Ber->Fin->Fin->WK->WK->HR->Bru->MBm->Jug->Bru->Bru->HR->Fin->DM->Iro->Rel->Iro->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   phaseshift armor [4] (AOP)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   nanomachic rocket launcher (6d7) (P1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   antigrav plasteel boots [2/2] (100%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x80)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] tactical rocket launcher (6d7) [0/5] (P1)
    [b] assault shotgun (10d3) [6/6] (P3T2)
    [c] nuclear BFG 9000 (8d6) [68/68] (B2)
    [d] napalm launcher (7d10) [1/1] (B1P3T1)
    [e] red armor [6] (AOP)
    [f] cerberus ballistic vest [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [g] Berserker Armor [0]
    [h] ripper (7d6) (B)
    [i] Subtle Knife (3d5)
    [j] rocket (x6)
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] large med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] homing phase device
    [p] agility mod pack
    [q] nano pack
    [r] onyx armor pack
    [s] Hell Staff
    [t] cerberus plasteel boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [u] Nyarlaptotep's Boots [6/6] (100%)
    [v] rocket box (x20)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Bullet     - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Melee      - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Shrapnel   - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Acid       - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 95% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 85% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    121 former humans
    189 former sergeants
    197 former captains
    104 imps
    22 demons
    155 lost souls
    62 cacodemons
    78 hell knights
    331 barons of hell
    98 arachnotrons
    9 former commandos
    20 pain elementals
    94 revenants
    109 mancubi
    200 arch-viles
    26 nightmare imps
    25 nightmare cacodemons
    53 nightmare demons
    25 nightmare arachnotrons
    7 nightmare arch-viles
    3 elite former humans
    3 elite former sergeants
    4 elite former captains
    6 elite former commandos
    22 bruiser brothers
    7 shamblers
    5 lava elemental
    2 agony elementals
    3 Cyberdemons

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 10 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  Level 22 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  On level 26 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 26 he assembled a cerberus boots!
  On level 28 he ran for his life from acid!
  On level 28 he assembled a chainsword!
  On level 28 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  Level 32 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  Level 34 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  On level 44 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  On level 48, hell froze over!
  On level 48 he found the Mega Buster!
  On level 49 he assembled a cerberus armor!
  Level 50 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  He flooded the entire level 52 with lava!
  On level 53 he stumbled into a nightmare arachnotron cave!
  On level 54 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  On level 55 he found the Revenant's Launcher!
  Level 61 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  Level 65 blasted him with an unholy atmosphere!
  He sounded the alarm on level 66!
  On level 68, hell froze over!
  On level 70 he stumbled into a complex full of revenants!
  He left level 75 as soon as possible.
  Level 76 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 77 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
  On level 78 he found the Hell Staff!
  Level 79 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 79 he found the Cybernetic Armor!
  Level 81 was a hard nut to crack!
  He left level 86 as soon as possible.
  He left level 87 as soon as possible.
  He nuked level 89!
  He left level 90 as soon as possible.
  He left level 95 as soon as possible.
  On level 96 he was bombarded!
  On level 96 he found the Charch's Null Pointer!
  He left level 100 as soon as possible.
  On level 103 he encountered an armed nuke!
  He left level 104 as soon as possible.
  He left level 107 as soon as possible.
  He left level 109 as soon as possible.
  On level 110 he assembled a antigrav boots!
  He left level 111 as soon as possible.
  On level 115 he stumbled into a nightmare arachnotron cave!
  He left level 115 as soon as possible.
  Level 116 was a hard nut to crack!
  He left level 116 as soon as possible.
  He left level 117 as soon as possible.
  He left level 118 as soon as possible.
  On level 119 he stumbled into a nightmare arachnotron cave!
  He left level 119 as soon as possible.
  He left level 121 as soon as possible.
  He left level 122 as soon as possible.
  He left level 126 as soon as possible.
  He left level 127 as soon as possible.
  He left level 128 as soon as possible.
  He left level 129 as soon as possible.
  He left level 130 as soon as possible.
  He left level 133 as soon as possible.
  He left level 134 as soon as possible.
  On level 135 he found the Jackhammer!
  He left level 136 as soon as possible.
  He left level 137 as soon as possible.
  He sounded the alarm on level 138!
  He left level 138 as soon as possible.
  He left level 139 as soon as possible.
  He left level 140 as soon as possible.
  On level 141, hell froze over!
  He left level 142 as soon as possible.
  He left level 143 as soon as possible.
  He left level 144 as soon as possible.
  He left level 145 as soon as possible.
  He left level 146 as soon as possible.
  He left level 147 as soon as possible.
  He left level 148 as soon as possible.
  On level 149 he assembled a ripper!
  He left level 149 as soon as possible.
  He left level 152 as soon as possible.
  He left level 153 as soon as possible.
  He left level 154 as soon as possible.
  He left level 155 as soon as possible.
  He left level 156 as soon as possible.
  On level 157 he stumbled into a nightmare cacodemon cave!
  He left level 157 as soon as possible.
  He sounded the alarm on level 158!
  He left level 158 as soon as possible.
  On level 159 he found the Necroarmor!
  On level 160 he ran for his life from acid!
  On level 160 he found the Berserker Armor!
  He left level 163 as soon as possible.
  He left level 165 as soon as possible.
  On level 166 he encountered an armed nuke!
  He left level 166 as soon as possible.
  On level 167 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  He left level 168 as soon as possible.
  He left level 169 as soon as possible.
  He left level 170 as soon as possible.
  He left level 171 as soon as possible.
  On level 172 he assembled a nanomanufacture ammo!
  He left level 172 as soon as possible.
  He left level 173 as soon as possible.
  He left level 174 as soon as possible.
  He left level 175 as soon as possible.
  He left level 176 as soon as possible.
  He left level 177 as soon as possible.
  Level 178 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 178 he found the Hellwave Pack!
  On level 179 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  He left level 179 as soon as possible.
  Level 180 was a hard nut to crack!
  He left level 180 as soon as possible.
  He left level 181 as soon as possible.
  He left level 182 as soon as possible.
  He left level 183 as soon as possible.
  He left level 184 as soon as possible.
  On level 185 he stumbled into a nightmare cacodemon cave!
  He left level 185 as soon as possible.
  He left level 186 as soon as possible.
  He left level 187 as soon as possible.
  He left level 188 as soon as possible.
  He left level 189 as soon as possible.
  He left level 190 as soon as possible.
  He left level 191 as soon as possible.
  He left level 192 as soon as possible.
  He left level 193 as soon as possible.
  He left level 194 as soon as possible.
  He left level 195 as soon as possible.
  He left level 196 as soon as possible.
  He left level 197 as soon as possible.
  On level 198 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  He left level 198 as soon as possible.
  He left level 199 as soon as possible.
  He left level 200 as soon as possible.
  He left level 201 as soon as possible.
  He left level 202 as soon as possible.
  He left level 203 as soon as possible.
  He left level 204 as soon as possible.
  He left level 205 as soon as possible.
  He left level 206 as soon as possible.
  On level 207 he stumbled into a nightmare cacodemon cave!
  He left level 207 as soon as possible.
  He left level 208 as soon as possible.
  On level 209 he found the Trigun!
  He left level 210 as soon as possible.
  He left level 211 as soon as possible.
  On level 212 he was bombarded!
  He left level 212 as soon as possible.
  He left level 213 as soon as possible.
  He left level 214 as soon as possible.
  He left level 215 as soon as possible.
  He left level 216 as soon as possible.
  He left level 217 as soon as possible.
  He left level 218 as soon as possible.
  He left level 219 as soon as possible.
  He left level 220 as soon as possible.
  Level 221 was a hard nut to crack!
  He left level 221 as soon as possible.
  He left level 222 as soon as possible.
  On level 223 he was bombarded!
  On level 223 he found the Subtle Knife!
  On level 223 he finally committed a stupid suicide.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 Boom! That hurt! You' going berserk! You die!... Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 406 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 194 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 9 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 105 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 61 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------


So once I started attempting Armorer Diamond directly, with only two Uniques I needed for it, it took me four A666 games and running through 2221 floors before I finally got the second Unique I was missing for it. The play time on my 0.9.9.7 file as I got Armorer Diamond was 1031 hours!. Even if you assume half that time was from the game being run idle, it's insane it took that long to get a badge that is purely grinding, especially when I ended up having to bruteforce it sooner by running those A666 games, who knows how even longer it would have been if I didn't do that, I almost certainly get the rest of the Diamonds and winnable Angelics before I win Armorer Diamond, it's no wonder only Tormuse and Icy won this badge previously. I wonder what the hell Game Hunter was thinking when he bumped the old easy Armorer requirements to what they are now, surely there was a more sensible middle ground between the two (well to be a bit fair to him, the Armorer badges got changed in 0.9.9.5, before 0.9.9.7 added all those 15 depth 1 weight Uniques including the Subtle Knife, but even prior to 0.9.9.5 with a smaller specials list and Armorer Diamond then requiring just finding one of every special, only Tormuse reported winning it then, so it's not like Armorer Diamond was an overly common Diamond then to merit bumping up its requirement to such an absurd degree). If you're wondering, it also took me finding 1695 specials total before I got Armorer Diamond. Well with Armorer Diamond done, I now got 23 Diamonds, tying papilio's reported total for second most Diamonds, of which I'm especially not looking forward to Destroyer and Arena Diamond, but at least those won't be purely grinding out 666 floors after 666 floors after 666 floors...

[--------------------------------------------------------------]

With few viable Angelics left, for my attempt at setting the new record of 10 Angelics, I decided to go for Berserker Angelic. This badge requires a horribly asynergetic Dual Angel combo of Angel of Berserk + Angel of Masochism, by the nature of how pure melee works, attrition damage is unavoidable yet you will not be able to heal on demand. Beating Nightmare! with such a combo does look nearly impossible at first, however according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, this badge has been won twice, by Gooselord1 and Tormuse, so it can't be that bad, right?

Well you got two viable strategies for this badge. One is play a Scout, make it to The Chained Court, and stair dive the rest of the way, relying on Invulnerabilities to keep you alive. The other is play Marine, and survive long enough to make it to Vampyre, which will allow you to indefinitely heal outside of levelups, at which point the game won't play that much differently from a normal AoB run. Both options have been proven, with Gooselord winning Berserker Angelic with the Scout stairdive strat, while Tormuse won with the Vampyre strat. The problem is both options require an absolutely hideous amount of luck; the Scout strat simply won't work without ample and reachable Invulnerabilities, even a lategame Blademaster build would sustain too much attrition damage through pure melee to survive between the increasingly scarcer levelups, while you still need a lot of luck to even make it to The Chained Court without being on the brink of death, and if you try the Vampyre strat, you simply will not survive to level 6 to get it without even more luck needed to make it to Chained Court and then getting a floor 7 Invulnerability or making it to a certain other special level. The question is which strat requires less luck? According to Tormuse, it took him 92 attempts in the official 0.9.9.7 release and many more attempts he didn't count in that version's beta testing, and while Gooselord didn't say how many attempts it took him, at the time of his last posted mortem, he had 2467 games with 12 wins recorded, while in his Berserker Angelic mortem, he had 2982 games with only 15 wins recorded, maybe he did something else in his other two wins since that severely inflated his game counter but I think it's safe to assume his Berserker Angelic attempts numbered well into the hundreds at least. Here are the list of advantages for each strategy:

For the Scout:

• Stair sense obviously makes stair diving a lot less luck-based, and so making it to The Chained Court won't be as hellish of an affair.
• +10% universal speed passive will allow the Scout to take less damage when slugging out with enemies, as well as help the Scout better escape enemies.
• Scout has immediate access to Intuition to better find early Berserk packs, as well as Invulnerabilities later.
• Scout can get Hellrunner without blocking off a necessary mastery, which not only helps the Scout avoid damage while stair diving or approaching enemies, but Hellrunner is also crucial to get past the N! Phobos Anomaly ambush if you don't get a floor 7 Invuln nor get lucky with a Phase Device.

For the Marine:

• Any Berserk Packs will last longer, and early Berserks are pretty necessary to have any hope of making it to Chained Court, while functionally getting a sixth Berserk from the Chained Court Berserks could also be a run saver if you get a brutal Phobos 6 or 7. Longer Invulns could be clutch as well if a Phobos 7 Invuln spawns far from the stairs.
• The extra 10 max HP doesn't make up for the lack of a speed passive, but that does translate to a formidable extra 20 HP gotten over the Scout from each levelup Supercharge, which can be meaningful if you get that levelup in the midst of a brawl.
• Immediate access to Badass and builds to the melee mastery, which will allow you to retain your levelup Supercharges if you don't immediately burn the boosted health. With just Badass 1, the Marine effectively gets 90 HP after each levelup, nearly twice that of the Scout's HP after the boosted health decays away. The knockback reduction is also helpful when you got Shotgunners harassing you while you're trying to dive to stairs.
• Can pick up Finesse without delaying mastery, nullifying the Scout's combat advantage.
• Reaching level 6 for Vampyre and getting past Phobos Anomaly nearly secures the run for you, while a Scout that makes it past Phobos will still fail with bad Invuln and stair luck.

With no clear answer on which will require less luck, I decided to try Scout first, under the belief that runs will go faster and so even if it does require more luck, I will hit that needed luck in less real time by being able to grind out more runs. I would quickly find out however that even with stair sense and that speed boost, just making it to The Chained Court still required too much luck for my liking; knowing where the stairs are won't matter if a bunch of enemies or Hell Knights are in the way and I got no Berserk. Unlike usually where it doesn't matter how little health you have when you make it to Chained Court because of the Berserks, here your entering health does matter when the Berserks no longer heal you, and the safe camping spots in the exit rooms still require you to push through several Chaingunners; the first few times I made it to Chained Court I just died because I had too little health to get to the exit rooms, and trying to play cautiously in the center room or around the cage corners will eventually result in a Former popping up at an angle where you're wide open. Gooselord did get Int2 for this problem, as that can make camping the center room more viable, but that means giving up early Berserker, Hellrunner, or even Brute 2 as you probably won't hit level 4 before Chained Court when stair diving, which is just an unacceptable tradeoff for me as that would make  for more games that don't even reach Chained Court for Int2 to matter. While I alternate with some Marine attempts, on attempt 25 I did get a Scout that got a levelup right before Chained Court to get past it, however Phobos 7 had no Invuln, I had no Phase Device, and Phobos 6 + 7 left me near death, with way too little health to have any hope of getting past Anomaly. I was forced into Military Base, hoping to hit some levelups there and enter Anomaly with the health needed to get through it, which almost worked thanks to being able to safely camp as all the weak-in-melee enemies could be gift dropped into melee range, but slugging it out with too many Elite Commandos eventually whittled me down enough to end the run just one kill away from a levelup. Noticing how Military Base is easily clearable under this badge's constraints and how it gave so much EXP that it was going to bump me up to level 6 all the way from level 3, it made me realize that a Marine doesn't need a floor 7 Invuln and could hit level 6 for Vampyre by just making it to Military Base. At this point I decided to grind out runs with the Marine; a Marine that makes it past Chained Court probably has nearly a coin flip's chance of winning, you just need to make it to Military Base or get a floor 7 Invuln to get through Anomaly, whereas the Scout still needs a lot more luck beyond this point to win, and the Scout was still averaging about a dozen attempts for every one that got past Chained Court (I had another one that made it past but then died on an awful Phobos 6), so I figured that requiring even more early game luck would be worth the tradeoff of a much more reliable post-Phobos. Additionally, attempts with the Scout didn't really go all that much faster, because I'm stair diving basically everything after Phobos 2 until I reach Military Base or hit level 6 with the Marine, and the Scout stairdive being much faster post-Phobos won't matter if I don't even reach that point, so there wasn't much of a real-time advantage to playing Scout here.

As for the Marine, well, early Marine is very rough, and it took me another 12 attempts (not counting runs I quit out on the first two floors) to get a Marine past Chained Court, but I had little health left and Phobos 6 spawned me in a big open room of enemies that killed me before I could levelup. It would take another 15 attempts that weren't Q+Y'd to make it past Chained Court, though again on low health, however a Pain Elemental near the start of Phobos 6 allows me to levelup before dying, and with the supercharged health, I'm able to get out of Phobos 6 despite the stairs being on the complete opposite end of the floor. Phobos 7 would give me a maze that seemed like it would be the end if I didn't find an Invuln or the red stairs quickly, but a levelup midway through gives me the juice to keep going and I do find the red stairs... which turned out to be Phobos Lab instead of Military Base. Entering Phobos Lab here without a Homing Phase would be suicide unless maybe I already had Vampyre or was about to get it, so I had to go back through the maze and hope I find an Invuln or at least the normal stairs so I can make some attempt at Anomaly. My Chained Court Berserk finally ran out not long after while my health dwindled away, and I would then find a Tracking Map that basically confirmed the run was over, as the stairs were on the other side with a bunch of enemies in the way while there was no Invuln on the map, with me indeed dying shortly after despite my best efforts to try salvaging it. A run that that got so close to winnable territory but still dying was pretty crushing, so I would take a break for a few days before running attempts again.

So what little strategy is there to this run, aside from stair diving and pray RNG shines on you? Well with Phobos Base Entry, my strategy is the same it usually is; activate run and get straight to the side of the building to set up camp, and Q+Y if the Shotgunners come out before I reach my camping spot or the Formers shoot me up too much. You don't need to fuss much about the damage you take, as you're going to levelup shortly into Phobos 2 anyway to fully heal whatever damage you take, and making it to Phobos 2 with minimal damage won't matter if you get a fucked Phobos 2 start, while you also don't need to fuss with the medkits (though getting one is nice for gift dropping). The only real strategic point here is to take off the Blue Armor, you don't need it to get past Phobos Entry and so you'll only be depleting it before the floors you actually need it, while you can also use it to gift drop the Formers before you get a medkit. On Phobos 2, at first I was just stair diving through it, but shortly in I changed my gameplan to clearing it; if you can find a workable camping spot with a doorway or fluids, it's possible to clear the floor as long as you don't get too many Pinkies nor get a Cacodemon vault that gets opened up. Clearing Phobos 2 will get you near level 3 to get a quick Supercharge in the deadly Phobos 3-5 range or let you hit level 3 to get that important third trait before entering said floor range, not to mention you still need to be at least somewhat through level 3 to ensure you hit level 6 by the end of Military Base, and if you don't get Military Base, you then want to ensure just one Phobos 7 Invuln can carry you to level 6. If you are about to levelup with enemies still alive on the floor and don't have the stairs found or have otherwise unscouted areas that could have Berserks, you should try finding that stuff before killing the last enemy for the levelup, so you can take as much of that Supercharged health with you, while if you get any Green Armor, you should definitely wear that over the Blue Armor to preserve it for the upcoming floors, even go naked if you can get away with it to preserve that Blue Armor.

As for what traits to pick on the way to Vampyre aside from the obvious Brute 2 opener, it'll depend. Usually you would go straight for Berserker in AoB, but if you're not already berserked, often you'll take too much damage triggering it for it to really help you, and so you still very likely won't make it to Chained Court without finding early Berserks, which would make Berserker basically irrelevant at this point of the game. Badass meanwhile will let you retain boosted health and make Shotgunners knocking you around less of an issue, while Finesse will save you substantial damage, but if you don't get any Berserks, then having Berserker may be your only hope of making it to Chained Court without very lucky stairs, so my trait order would vary depending on if I found Berserk Packs or was on a floor like a Pinky cave where Berserker would be absolutely necessary. As for the Phobos 3 to 5 range, you can only stair dive; with Hell Knights around, clearing floors out (barring Lost Soul caves or maybe Pinky caves if you got Berserker) from a safe camping spot is not viable whatsoever, killing a single Hell Knight at this point in melee without prior berserk will drain over 40 or even over 50% of your health, and the Hell Knights do not give enough EXP for you to levelup anywhere fast enough to stave off this damage. Pinkies are also much more numerous in this range, and while you can get through a horde of them without too much pain if you got Berserker, roshamboing them all down one-at-a-time from a camping spot will see them individually drain your health nearly as fast as the Hell Knights do. Maybe if you got a miraculous early Ballistic Vest or Duelist Armor, clearing these floors could be viable, but I never found either in all these attempts, so do not bank on that. The vast majority of Berserker Angelic runs die in this floor range, with absolutely nothing you can do about it; no amount of perfect decision making can make up for the math not mathing for you with meleeing over a hundred enemies, several of which will be Hell Knights that are nearly as strong as you are, while you got only 60-120 HP to work with between levelups.

After another 8 non-Q+Y'd attempts since that prior crushing failure, I would get a promising run with a Berserk Pack near the stairs on a clearable Phobos 2, and then I would find a second Berserk shortly after. I get to Phobos 5, but I'm near death and I spawn in a room with a Pinky group plus several Imps. By maneuvering myself in a way behind nearby crates to prevent more than one Pinky reaching me at a time and avoid the Imps firing on me, I would get a perfectly timed levelup with only 2 HP remaining, and I would find the stairs to Chained Court quickly after. With this Supercharge right before it, I'm able to easily make it to the exit room to safely camp all the remaining Formers and then exit with ample health. As if the run couldn't get better, Phobos 6 would have quickly found stairs, and then Phobos 7 would not only have the red stairs be in the starting spawn's vision, but I also rolled Miltiary Base! However since I had ample health and berserk still, I decide to explore the floor some before immediately diving to Military Base, and while the nearby Cacodemon vault didn't have anything useful aside from getting me enough EXP to hit level 5, exploring the floor pays off with me finding Technical Mods when extra attack speed on my Chainsaw will be crucial to mitigating damage and triggering Berserker faster, as well as a pair of Steel Boots to get crucially needed faster movement speed once I get A mods. After my berserk runs out and with no Invuln found, I make my way back to Military Base, where I finally get a Marine to level 6 for Vampyre. It's a very good thing I found those boots and Tech Mod on the prior floor too, because the crates would not drop any boots and I would get A + B mods in Military Base, while a faster attacking Chainsaw and faster movespeed will be crucial for Anomaly. To my horror though, I would find the Large Health Globes that normally give you some berserk in AoB no longer do so when AoMs is mixed in; my strategy for Anomaly banked on the berserk from the Large Health Globes in the starting room allowing me to be already berserked as I trigger the ambush, as with no HR, there's no chance in hell you can escape the ambush without berserk. It would be awful to finally get a run to Vampyre only to find out that I do need the floor 7 Invuln or Phase Device to get a Marine past Anomaly in this run, but I have to at least try, so the plan is altered; I Bulk up the Red Armor, get a little closer to the wall before triggering the ambush so I don't get the other side's Nightmare Demons immediately in biting range, and then hope with a T-modded Chainsaw + Fin2 that I can trigger Berserker fast enough before I take too much damage, while then hoping Vampyre and my buffed up attack speed can stave off enough damage to survive standing my ground. I do take a huge beating, but thanks to my buffed up attack speed and the Bulk mod keeping my Red Armor from getting damaged midfight, the audible works and I kill most of the Nightmare enemies in a brawl, while I get a good amount of health back when I reach safety with only a few enemies left. Unfortunately my berserk runs out before reaching the Bruisers, and luring the Bruisers back behind the middle doorway or starting room isn't an option when the Nightmare enemies will start reviving, while the Bruisers could inflict fatal damage if they can double team me before Berserker kicks in. I use the radsuit from Military Base to try mitigating acid balls from the back Bruiser as I melee down the front Bruiser, and again thanks to my buffed attack speed + Bulked Red Armor, I'm able to trigger Berserker before taking too much damage and levelup right as I kill the first Bruiser to get all my health back, while the second Bruiser quickly falls after and at last I get a Berserker Angelic run past Phobos. I'm not sure this works out without the T-modded Chainsaw, hitting level 7 in Military Base for Fin2, or the B-modded Red Armor, it would have been an even bigger nail biter for sure without any one of them.

Making it to Deimos with Vampyre gets me over 98% of the hump here, but I'm not comfortable yet until I get myself adequate indestructible or regenerating armor, Vampyre does chew through armors at a crazy rate and I need solid permanent defenses to keep up being able to comfortably outheal all damage I take, so I'm going through Hell's Armory. Deimos 1 is a manageable small rooms level though, so I do clear it, and I find the single most valuable item for this run, a Homing Phase! The biggest threat to this run at this point are Arachnotron Caves when Arachnotron swarms can very easily outdamage Vampyre's healing, so Homing Phases are vital Arachnotron insurance here to ensure I don't need to go through the Phobos jail again (I also got teased with an Assault Shotgun that I cannot use). In Hell's Armory, I do have a little scary moment when I get knocked below 50% health when securing the starting northern building, but I do get the camping spot secured and can get my health all the way back from respawns, while I clear the rest of it with little issue. Unfortunately I get a useless Sniper mod from the Lab cache instead of an Onyx or Nano mod that I really wanted, but I do get a Power mod so I can Nanofiber my Red Armor at least, and I use my level 8 + 9 traits on Whizkid beforehand so I'll be able to later mod it and the Tactical Boots I just made, as well as buff up my Chainsaw farther. Deimos 2 is immediately rewarding with a second Homing Phase and a Power mod for my Nanofiber Red Armor. After I make sure to kill the enemies in the immediate vicinity before getting the P mod so they don't blow it up, I immediately P-mod my Nanofiber Red Armor, and with that armor, I can now comfortably clear levels as long as I have a solid camping spot, but I will leave floors early if there's any risk to it, such as a Deimos 4 maze (which made me miss City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains when I forgot I was on Deimos 4, getting a Blood Skull is very valuable as they can still heal you in AoMs).

On Deimos 5 I would get another great find with Phaseshift Boots, I already have A-modded Tactical Boots and the Phaseshift's boosted knockback is a detriment in AoB, but I hold onto them in case I do need to run through fluids and in case I find the Phaseshift Armor (I also got two A mods on the same floor, so I immediately A-mod them and keep the second A mod in case I find a Nano mod to Antigrav them). On Deimos 5 I also find a nuke and my first Invuln, the nuke will be insurance to ensure I win against the Mastermind in case I make it to Dis at too little health to kill her (especially if I have to enter Dis without berserk), and Invulns are obviously very useful, though I'll remark not finding one until Deimos 5 goes to show how fragile the stairdiving Scout strat will be even if it gets out of Phobos, I'm sure the Scout does not win in this run if I played him instead. With the Invuln obscuring my vision and not paying attention, in Deimos 6 I accidentally enter Halls Of Carnage, so I have to burn one of my Homing Phases to be absolutely sure the lava flood doesn't overtake me when I have no HR and can't rocket jump. I do take advantage of the Invuln to get to the first mod to see if it's a Power mod for my Chainsaw (I do want a Ripper), and then after phasing I check the second mod, unfortunately neither was a Power mod and so I wasted that Homing Phase for nothing but some extra EXP. Fortunately Deimos 7 immediately gives me another Homing Phase to make up for that wasted one (I also build Grappling Boots, an assembly I can't ever remember making with serious intent to use, since I had so many Tech Mods I could do nothing with, on the off chance I do really need the extra knockback resistance at some point). Then came the Cyberdemon fight, which is normally a pushover for any build with Berserker, but I do have to be a little careful, as due to the Marine's 10 extra max HP making Berserker require you to take 20+ damage in a single hit to trigger it, the Cyberdemon's melee attack will not trigger Berserker (it maxes out at 18 damage), and intentionally face-tanking rockets to trigger Berserker is unreliable when there's a 34.4% chance his rockets will roll below 20 damage. Normally those odds are still very good to just charge in and you can just heal up if he keeps low rolling rockets, but when I can't heal until I kill him, I cannot risk taking several low roll rockets that can deal up to 13 damage through my P Nanofiber Red and make me end up at too low of health to beat him down in melee, so I do play a bit cautiously by waiting behind a pillar for him to get closer, and only charging in once the pillar is nearly destroyed. I do eat a rocket that indeed doesn't trigger Berserker, but I can get in and trigger Berserker fast enough from hitting him to get through him without it getting scary.

After getting past Babel, I'm now in Hell, and while a barrel level could be annoying, I immediately find a perfect camping spot to effortlessly clear the floor (I also finally find a second Red Armor just in case I need stronger or faster armor than this Nanofiber Red Armor), and then going through Unholy Cathedral for the Longinus Spear is a given when I'll get all my health back from killing the Angel Of Death. In Hell 2 I would find yet another Homing Phase, forget Arachnotron insurance I can now basically skip the second half of Hell (I also find a second pair of Phaseshift Boots because the game likes to be funny). Hell 3 is then an annoying looking maze with a big acid river, so with the stairs immediately in sight, I just get out of there, I have basically nothing to gain and everything to lose trying to clear out floors at this point. Then Hell 4 not only has a Power Mod I've been wanting for my Chainsaw, but it also has an Invuln. With three floors left after this, I decide it's time to just use up my Homing Phases to finish this; while they won't cover all four floors I have to get through, I figure chances are good at least one of them has quick stairs to make a Homing Phase not needed for a quick exit. I use up my first Homing Phase to immediately get out of Hell 4 after grabbing the Invuln, that's two left. Hell 5 is then a maze with no stairs in a sight, so that's the second Homing Phase (and the stairs were on the complete opposite end of the floor too). Hell 6 also has no stairs in sight, so I grab the Radsuit just in case I need it for Hell 7 and burn my last Homing Phase (and the stairs would again be on the other side of the map, so using the Homing Phase was worth it). Hell 7 would then be... an easy Pinky + Nightmare Demon cave that will be quick to get through, the run is basically won! And it has a Power Mod I need to finally build the Ripper, not that it's needed though, as the Invuln lasts enough to squash the Spider Mastermind.

So there it is after 60 attempts, plus many more I Q+Y'd out of Phobos Base Entry or on a fucked floor 2. With Berserker Angelic won, Tormuse's near decade-long record of 9 Angelics in 0.9.9.7 (or in any version) has been broken, as this records my 10th Angelic win (this also marks the first time that anyone has verifiably achieved double digit Angelics). Attempting this badge was not a pleasant experience though, oh hell no; out of every badge I won, this is without a doubt the absolute worst badge to play for, and of the few remaining winnable ones I have left aside from the pure-grinding Armorer Diamond, I don't think any will top this. This badge is just an atrocious slot machine where skillful play matters little rather than just spinning the slots until the RNG decides you can win, and the actual gameplay is just spamming stair dives as Scout until you get good enough Berserk + Invuln luck to actually win with little healing, or spamming stair dives as Marine until you get enough Berserk + level generation luck to reach level 6 for Vampyre before dying. I preferred even Strongman Angelic to this; despite it being able to be ruined at any moment by a random enemy dying while you have a weapon equipped and enforcing the most tedious of DRL gameplay on top of needing hefty early game luck too, at least that badge required some actual strategy and skilled play could compensate for some unideal luck. While Everyman Angelic and Arena Diamond are also going to be awful slot machines, at least the former will require skilled gameplay, and latter will have attempts go faster. No disrespect to Gooselord intended here, but it's a testament to this badge's low skill ceiling + absurd luck requirement that the only player besides Tormuse who verifiably won the badge was someone with only two other Diamonds recorded in any versions (both of which were won through simple melee stair dives) while racking up a winrate that makes Sereg's winrate look normal, as well as not even having 15 Silvers (as evidenced by his 1st Lieutenant rank upon winning Berserker Angelic); any halfway-competent player could realistically win this badge as long as they're willing to grind hundreds of runs. As for 0.10-onward, throwing knives actually working would help as you now have a means to reliably deal damage in AoB without putting yourself in harm's way, and proper infighting being added will farther help mitigate damage with groups, but Berserk being nerfed to +50% resistances, time-based powerups meaning early powerups when you're slower won't last as long, enemies hitting harder in melee, Enraged Timer meaning you can no longer extensively camp a floor from a single safe spot, and Vampyre getting significantly nerfed meaning it's no longer a win condition on its own, this badge is still going to be an atrocious luck-based affair to actually win, maybe even moreso than it is in 0.9.9.7. After this experience, I'm going to be putting in a proposal to change Berserker Angelic, it may be winnable but Angelics should have a significant skill component to them and should be more engaging than mind-numbingly spamming stair dives until you get lucky enough to win.

Well if you read through this rant, here is the mortem:

--------------------------------------------------------------
 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 health...pls60,
 level 14 Apostle Chaos Lt. General Marine,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 1634189 turns and scored 550208 points.
 He played for 1 hour, 50 minutes and 36 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 960 out of 1315 hellspawn. (73%)
 He was an Angel of Berserk!
 He was also an Angel of Masochism!

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 5
  Levels completed : 3

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Mastermind's Brain
  UAC Star (bronze cluster)
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Berserker Angelic Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

  ###########################################################
  ####################................................#######
  ###################...............####...............######
  ##################.......####.....####.....####.......#####
  #################........####.....####.....####........####
  ################.........####.....####.....####.........###
  ###############..........####..............####..........##
  ##############............................................#
  ##############....####............................####....#
  ##############....####............................####....#
  ##############....####............................####&...#
  ##############....####............................####....#
  ##############............................................#
  ###############..........####..............####..........##
  ################.........####%X...####.....####.........###
  #################........####.....####.....####........####
  ##################.......####.....####.....####.......#####
  ###################...............####...............######
  ####################................................#######
  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 120/60   Experience 83938/14
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +6  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +9

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Marine

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Tough as nails   (Level 2)
    Brute            (Level 3)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Badass           (Level 2)
    Vampyre          (Level 1)

  Bru->Bru->Bad->Fin->Ber->MVm->Fin->WK->WK->Bad->Bru->Fin->TaN->TaN->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   nanofiber red armor [4] (P)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   ripper (6d6)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   phaseshift boots [4/4] (100%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   Longinus Spear (8d8)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
    [b] red armor [4/4] (100%) (A)
    [c] combat knife (2d5)
    [d] combat knife (2d5)
    [e] combat knife (2d5)
    [f] combat knife (2d5)
    [g] combat knife (2d5)
    [h] combat knife (2d5)
    [i] small med-pack
    [j] small med-pack
    [k] phase device
    [l] thermonuclear bomb
    [m] technical mod pack
    [n] technical mod pack
    [o] agility mod pack
    [p] bulk mod pack
    [q] bulk mod pack
    [r] tactical boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [s] grappling protective boots [3/3] (100%)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Bullet     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Melee      - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Shrapnel   - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Acid       - internal 85%   torso 85%   feet 85% 
    Fire       - internal 85%   torso 95%   feet 85% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    90 former humans
    57 former sergeants
    50 former captains
    190 imps
    119 demons
    118 lost souls
    118 cacodemons
    16 hell knights
    50 barons of hell
    7 arachnotrons
    16 former commandos
    10 pain elementals
    14 revenants
    40 mancubi
    8 arch-viles
    4 nightmare imps
    5 nightmare cacodemons
    23 nightmare demons
    7 elite former humans
    5 elite former sergeants
    7 elite former commandos
    2 bruiser brothers
    1 shambler
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 7 he marched into the Military Base.
  He purified his fellow comrades.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
  On level 9 he assembled a nanofiber armor!
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 14 he ventured into the Halls of Carnage.
  On level 15 he assembled a grappling boots!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 17 he found the Longinus Spear!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  He left level 19 as soon as possible.
  He left level 21 as soon as possible.
  He left level 22 as soon as possible.
  On level 23 he assembled a ripper!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You're going
 berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You need to
 taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind flinched! You're going
 berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit the Spider Mastermind. The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations!
 You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 403 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 194 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 97 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 103 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 59 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------


Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Also if you noticed that Apostle rank I now have, after my Demonic Diamond run, I did some AoOC runs to finish out the 50 Carmack kills I needed. I figured out too why my full win count didn't line up with my Carmack kill count, 0.9.9.7 has a bug where full wins in AoOC and AoCn erroneously get counted as standard wins, so that is how you can end up with more Carmack kills than you have full wins).

[--------------------------------------------------------------]

After the extreme damage tanking that Strongman Angelic required, it was time to go in the extreme opposite direction of taking very little damage with Demonic Diamond. This badge sits as perhaps the most imposing Diamond aside from Arena Diamond; completing standard N! with under 500 damage for the Untouchable Pin would already be an impressive achievement, winning with under 200 for the Untouchable Medal is going to make the vast majority of players nope out of even trying it. Additionally, while most of the Diamonds can be cheesed or made at least somewhat easier, Demonic Diamond uniquely sits as an uncheesable Diamond, as you can't mix it with any Angels to make it easier, and there is really nothing you can exploit in the game to win it aside from heavily utilizing general damage avoidance tactics and making the most of Invulnerabilities. Unsurprisingly, according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, Demonic Diamond was tied for the second least won Diamond/Angelic badge with only two players recorded winning it; papilio and Icy, i.e. the player who once held the record for most Diamonds in 0.9.9.7, and the player who broke his record and became the first to verifiably win every Diamond in any version. Two more players were also listed winning it in 0.9.9.6, 2DeviationsOut and Firstblood, and well, anyone reading this likely already knows the story behind 2Dev, while Firstblood's Demonic Diamond mortem is one of the most outlandish things I ever seen on this forum and makes most of 2Dev's mortems look believable in comparison (doing Demonic Diamond as a Conqueror, while playing a melee build that doesn't even get Intuition until late in the game, while hitting a ton of levers for Gambler's Shield without said Intuition, while getting Hell Arena Pwnage with no AoMC and no Juggler/Finesse/Intuition, while getting the luck needed for Shambler's Head without good ranged DPS, while also getting the luck needed for Gatekeeper Diamond on N!, while being melee-locked through nearly all of Hell from the guaranteed Dragonslayer and getting through N! Mortuary melee-locked without taking a ton of damage, while by his own admission not knowing how to properly corpse dispose with a melee weapon yet still managing to clear every special level of every respawn, while also also getting the luck for Scavenger Diamond with no Whisper Of Death cheese and being melee-locked so he had to get lucky with several Phase Devices to get in all three vaults, while it was only the second recorded run on his file that he treated like a casual N! run and is the last thing he ever posted? Come the fuck onnnnnnn). So yeah, only two players have verifiably won this badge legit (well Tormuse also won it in 0.9.9.4, but it had a completely different requirement prior to 0.9.9.5 of beating standard N! with only fist kills, so it isn't meaningful for comparison here).

So what to do for the build. Both papilio and Icy went masterless Scouts that opened with Int2 and then Dodgemaster, while papilio got general offense after Dodgemaster and Icy got TaN2 before getting Fin and SoB, and both had the same overarching strategy of playing through the game fast, not sticking around to clear levels and basically ignoring all the special levels besides Chained Court. I of course though don't like the masterless Scout stairdive, as I find it's too reliant on Invuln/Berserk and stair luck, and is lacking in the power to handle bad hot starts or other bad levels like mazes with stairs on the opposite side of the map; even if such a build could survive, it's sure to take a lot of damage doing so and under 200 damage doesn't give much room for error. Cateye is an option as the damage avoidance mastery, but without being backed by AoMC, Cateye similarly has a lack of power to cleanly get through hot starts or being suffocated by enemies with subpar cover. So I want good damage avoidance, and less reliance on powerups or good level generation luck? What do you know, it's gonna be another Shottyhead run for me! Compared to my typical Shottyhead builds, I do go for Int2 after by usual Fin -> Jug opener, as while the attrition damage from general exploration is something I usually can easily shrug off, I will quickly run out that 199 damage allowance by repeatedly walking into an enemy's vision and so Int2 is pretty necessary here, especially if I don't want to run->wait over a hundred thousand turns on every single floor. I also considered Berserker as damage assurance against the VMR and Cyberdemon, but ended up foregoing it as I won't get the levels to easily fit it in without sacrificing other important traits and I plan to not stick around in later levels where the VMR will be more prominent. With the overarching strategy compared to papilio and Icy, I also do plan to clear out earlier floors when I'm able to reasonably do so with little damage since the extra levels will make me less dependent on powerup luck later, but once I get Shottyhead, I'll be looking to just go for the Invuln stairdive the rest of the way when I see the opportunity to do so.

As always, you got Phobos Base Entry at the start, and it's annoying as avoiding damage here is entirely luck-based, but if you just spam my "run straight for the base and hope the Shotgunners don't immediately come out" strat, you should get a damageless Phobos Base Entry without wasting too much time, but you can settle for getting hit by a single Pistol bullet or some Former punches if resetting for the damageless Base Entry would be excessively annoying. One good thing is you don't need to worry about getting the medkits here, as a successful Demonic Diamond run won't need much healing, but they would be nice to have still, if just as a means to restore running. If you get a bad floor 2 generated that makes you take a lot of unavoidable damage early, you might just want to reset, though after my first damageless Phobos Base Entry, I got one of the best floor 2s I could ask for with a very safe camping spot and a vault with a Combat Shotgun, a Tech Mod to put on it, and a Red Armor (while you want to avoid giving enemies the chance to hit you at all, having very good armor is important because you won't play perfectly or will just get put in situations where damage is unavoidable and so minimizing how punishing any hits you take is important). It took a lot of camping, but I'm able to get through the first two floors damageless (and 100% kills too, so I actually briefly had Demonic Angelic online, but you can see from the turn counter there just how ridiculous it was to do that over just the first two floors...).

I then head into Hell's Arena and do actually intend to clear it unlike papilio and Icy in their runs. Giving up the easy Chained Court sucks (and I would indeed skip Unchained Court later on), but that guaranteed Rocket Launcher is just more important for two key reasons; one, you need rocket jumping to stretch Invulns far longer than they would last otherwise, and two, if I don't get a floor 7 Invuln nor can get lucky with a Phase Device, rocket jumping is needed to ensure I don't take a big amount of damage in Phobos Anomaly. Having access to a corpse disposing weapon early is also gonna be important, because you're not gonna be able to cleanly kill every enemy in a doorway or on fluids and a dangerous enemy respawning at a bad time can potentially result in you taking a lot of damage (and if you don't get this Rocket Launcher, you likely won't get one until early Deimos, and possibly won't get one until even later if the RNG isn't cooperative). The Blue Armor before Hell Knights start showing up will also be nice, less important when I already got a Red Armor but still, it's actually slightly better at reducing damage from Hell Knights and Cacodemons than the Red Armor. Clearing Hell's Arena is also why I open with Juggler instead of Intuition, since Juggler is the single best early game trait for clearing Hell's Arena and could save a reset if I get a bad starting wave spawns (not to mention its value in aiding precise corpse stacking when I can't eat projectiles on corpses to destroy them), while floor 2 is easy enough to avoid damage in without Int2 and I should hit level 4 by the end of Hell's Arena to have Int2 before floor 3. As for how Hell's Arena goes, I do immediately lose my damageless bid and would get hit by another Cacodemon shortly after, but the rest of the Arena went without a hitch thanks to having Juggler (the early EXP boost from that that floor 2 Cacodemon vault was also nice for letting me hit level 4 to get Int2 midway into the Arena instead of at the end). After an easy floor 3, my early strategy gets quickly justified with this floor 4 maze with the stairs on the complete opposite end of my starting point. Running through this level would not have been viable, I would have surely been screwed by respawning Hell Knights if I couldn't blow up their corpses with the Rocket Launcher, and even with my early offensive advantage, there were too many enemies to safely push through the maze and so I had to pull back. Fortunately I was able to set up a workable camping spot near an acid pool for corpse disposal, and while some enemies could pop up from the south, the Imps that largely did so I could safely shoot at a distance, so it took a while but I get through that floor with little damage. The next two Phobos floors would have me fight a disgusting amount of Hell Knights but I get through killing nearly everything in them (while also skipping Unchained Court, since I would likely take a large amount of damage in it), however Phobos 7 would be a very nice breather, not only being an easy safe floor but it also had the most important thing to find before the end of Phobos, an Invulnerability Globe. After clearing the floor I skip the Phobos 7 special level (which was Phobos Lab that was going to be an automatic skip anyway, would have done Military Base though if it spawned and I didn't get an Invuln), and then take the Invulnerability into Phobos Anomaly, allowing me to get through damageless. I finish Phobos with only 24 damage taken, considering avoiding damage is hardest in Phobos and a good Demonic Diamond attempt would finish it around 100, this is an incredible pace, but I can't get too complacent, it only takes a couple bad floors to lose Demonic Diamond.

Thanks to rocket jumping, I'm able to take the Invuln into Hell's Armory, allowing me to safely clean the starting area and set up camp to clear it out without taking damage. My plan was always to stop by Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab since the pre-Shambler portion of them could be safely cleared out with minimal damage and getting one of the Exotic shotguns or the Jackhammer from the weapon cache would be a huge help, while the two free mods and Shell Box are also nice, and then I could just leave without fighting the Shamblers. With me having a shot at the Shambler's Head for the guaranteed Nano Mod and being so far ahead of the damage pace, I do take the risk in releasing the Shambler. Unfortunately I don't get good teleportation luck and I don't have Shottyhead yet, so I do get hit a couple times, while the lab cache reward is an Onyx Mod, normally great but it's actually probably the least useful of the four rare mods here, since if I'm taking enough damage for infinite durability to matter in this sort of run, it's probably over anyway (I decide to hold onto it to make Lava Boots later since it could maybe save me more damage than indestructible Red Armor or a pre-buff Tower Shield would). The weapon cache also wasn't useful; it had a Blaster and GCB, amazing if this was a Pistol run but basically useless for Shottyhead... Coming into Armory was still worth it though for the mods (making a Tactical Shotgun and Boots) and the Shell Box. Deimos 2 would follow this up with an awkward starting room, and I would end up in a rather perilous position where I got pincered by a Baron and Commando while I didn't have Shottyhead online yet to fight them both. With running and getting closer to the Commando, it doesn't go as badly as it could have, but I do take a Plasma Rifle burst and lose my shot an Untouchable Cross (one of three medals I'm still missing, but I'm going to need to get it anyway when I go for pure Destroyer Diamond soon, so that doesn't matter as long as I stay under 200). Deimos 3 would give me this annoying warehouse level, where I had to keep luring enemies into this one door, and while I could have probably done The Wall damageless, I don't need the Backpack or Missile Launcher and so it would be a pointless risk. I also find a Bulk Mod to Fireproof one of my Red Armors, as since I won't be getting Berserker, getting hit by the VMR or Cyberdemon will do a lot of damage even in P-modded Red Armor. Speaking of the Cyberdemon, after getting Shottyhead, my plan was to get HR2 and Dodgemaster to ensure I could get through him damageless (as long as I didn't get bad luck with his starting spawn position), however Deimos 5 would have an Invuln on it, where I then pivot and do Invuln'd rocket jumping to skip through the last two Deimos floors to take that Invuln to the Cyberdemon, allowing me to skip getting Dodgemaster for more Finesse and Whizkid to better help me lategame. The Invuln lasts through the Cyberdemon fight, and I end up finishing Deimos with only 59 damage sustained, giving me a generous 140 damage buffer for Hell to work with. (On a side note, that aforementioned Deimos 5 had a second Blaster spawn, a reminder Blasters have a measly spawning weight of 2 in this version, shame I don't get this luck with the special shotguns instead...)

At this point, since the Mastermind will be easy, I'm ready to do a stair dive through Hell to Dis when I get more Invulnerability. Hell does give me a rough intro however, with Hell 1 being a maze that has both set of stairs far from the starting point, while my Invuln from Deimos runs out shortly in. Taking it very slowly and carefully though, I'm able to get through the maze taking no more than 2 points of damage, and then Hell 2 has the Invuln I need to finish this. After clearing out Hell 2, I take that Invuln, level up shortly into Hell 3 to get Whizkid and build myself a Tactical Rocket Launcher, at which point it's a wrap. I rocket jump invulnerable through the rest of Hell, while taking the opportunity to detour through Limbo after getting another Invuln on Hell 4 to get the Assault Shotgun and mod it up just in case the Invulns run out before Dis, but thanks to the Tactical Rocket Launcher letting me rocket jump several times between reloads, I'm able to Invuln skip the rest of Hell. The Invuln does run out shortly into Dis, but they last long enough to get me safely in the Mastermind's face, where I can hammer away with the Double Shotgun and effortlessly stunlock her to death with Shottyhead. I take just 2 points of damage through Hell, so I end up finishing the game with a mere 61 damage sustained.

And there it is, the Demonic Diamond is secured. Despite how scary this bad looks, after a few resets on Phobos Base Entry, my first run that got past Base Entry damageless ended up going all the way. Despite that first try, I wouldn't say this badge doesn't deserve its reputation, I did have to play extremely slowly and carefully before I got the Invulns to skip most of the second half, and that floor 2 vault with Red Armor + a T-modded Combat Shotgun really helped me mitigate damage in Phobos, but it's probably not the hardest Diamond. Aside from the even more infamous Arena Diamond, I think Inquisitor Diamond may have actually been harder, and I'm not looking forward to pure Destroyer Diamond, though you also have to consider that unlike those harder Diamonds, there's nothing you can do to try cheesing Demonic Diamond with its standard game restriction, other than spam quick runs until you get extremely good Invulnerability luck. An interesting thing to me about this run is that if you subtract the 14 damage I took from the Shambler that I could have not released (the Onyx mod I got from killing him did basically nothing anyway, as I made very little use of the Lava Boots I made from it), I actually would have finished with under 50 damage... which means theoretically this run would have won under Masochist Angelic's constraints even without getting any Ironman or Blood Skulls or Medical Armors to expand your health pool there. That gets me thinking, perhaps when I do eventually try to win the first 0.9.9.7 Masochist Angelic, rather than going Vampyre as I was planning, perhaps I should do this Shottyhead build again... We'll cross that bridge when I get there. Also getting this badge and many other Diamonds + Angelics with Shottyhead, perhaps that could convince people that I'm right about it being a top tier mastery? :p Anyway with Demonic Diamond, I'm at 22 Diamonds now and without cheesing any of them through Dual Angels, though Destroyer Diamond and especially Arena Diamond may test my resolve to not resort to Dual Angel abuse...

Now here is the mortem:

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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 ONLY200?!, level 12 Cyberdemon Chaos Lt. General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 1227766 turns and scored 439960 points.
 He played for 3 hours, 58 minutes and 56 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1078 out of 1455 hellspawn. (74%)

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 3
  Levels completed : 2

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Cyberdemon's Head
  Mastermind's Brain
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Untouchable Medal
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Champion Medal
  Demonic Diamond Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

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  #........####.....####.....####........####################
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  .........####..............####..........##################
  ..........................................#################
  ..####........................X%..####....#################
  .&####............................####....#################
  ..####............................###.....#################
  ..####............................####....#################
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  ###########################################################

-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 83/50   Experience 62054/12
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +0  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +0

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 2)
    Hellrunner       (Level 2)
    Reloader         (Level 2)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Whizkid          (Level 1)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)
    Shottyhead       (Level 1)

  Fin->Jug->Int->Int->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh->HR->Fin->WK->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [6/6] (99%) (P)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   double shotgun (10d3)x2 [0/2] (P1T1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x43)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] tactical shotgun (8d3) [5/5]
    [b] tactical rocket launcher (6d6) [3/5]
    [c] assault shotgun (9d3) [6/6] (P2T1)
    [d] fireproof red armor [4/4] (100%)
    [e] shotgun shell (x14)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] shotgun shell (x50)
    [k] shotgun shell (x50)
    [l] rocket (x10)
    [m] rocket (x2)
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] lava plasteel boots [2]
    [r] shell box (x100)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    139 former humans
    194 former sergeants
    40 former captains
    241 imps
    121 demons
    156 lost souls
    59 cacodemons
    34 hell knights
    19 barons of hell
    7 arachnotrons
    30 former commandos
    17 pain elementals
    6 revenants
    7 mancubi
    5 arch-viles
    1 shambler
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He left the Arena as a champion!
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Hell's Armory.
  On level 9 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 11 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  On level 13 he assembled a lava boots!
  He left level 15 as soon as possible.
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 19 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter Limbo!
  He managed to escape from Limbo!
  On level 21 he ran for his life from lava!
  He left level 22 as soon as possible.
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 24 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You quickly reload the double shotgun.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched! The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the Spider
 Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 332 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 133 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 96 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 94 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 50 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------


[--------------------------------------------------------------]

Next up in my 0.9.9.7 conquest, I decided it was time to get that 9th Angelic to tie Tormuse's record and become the second ever player to have verifiably gotten the Chaos Lt General rank. Among the dwindling options, I decided to go for Strongman Angelic, a badge with only one verifiable win in 0.9.9.7 by Tormuse (it was also won in 0.9.9.8 by micerang, though it was much easier in that version with the dodging bug, the overly buffed Marine, and that version's hideously broken Vampyre). This is a badge that certainly lives up to its Angelic billing and I'm not surprised only Tormuse got it in 0.9.9.7, even papilio apparently gave up on it after stating he was going for it. In Strongman runs, you don't actually need to only use your fists, you can use other weapons to weaken enemies, as long as all finishing blows are from punching enemies, but even with that reprieve doing this in Nightmare is still extremely difficult. The idea of "weaken enemy to near death with your Pistol/Shotgun, then punch them out in one hit when they get close" sounds nice in theory, but the sheer enemy density of N! means you often can't do this cleanly to enemies one at a time and having to fight several at once in the open like N! often forces will be a death sentence when you're slowly trying to punch out everything. You also need cover to do this, as with N!'s increased enemy aggression, any ranged-attacking enemy that sees you will keep firing on you, and if you weaken them from a distance, you'll still need to get in through their constant barrage to punch them, thus making you even more dependent on floors generating with good cover. Then you of course have N!'s trademark respawning on top, while being unable to kill with weapons that inflict knockback nor be able to use stronger melee weapons that can gib, and using rocket launchers or other large explosives to blow up corpses is very risky, when some Former or other weak enemy could inadvertently get caught in the explosion to end the run, thus making you also heavily dependent on floors generating with doors or fluids in spots with usable cover. Even if you get a perfect camping spot with a doorway or fluid tile, and so can perfectly funnel every enemy single file while being able to weaken each of them before they reach you, anything bigger than an Imp you often won't perfectly weaken to be killed in one punch and even Imps can get hits in annoyingly often, so attrition damage racks up fast in ideal scenarios.

The worst thing however hanging over your head is that if a single enemy dies to any weapon, you are immediately disqualified from earning this badge; an enemy wasn't quite in one-punch kill range but your Shotgun/Pistol shot rolled unexpectedly high and killed them, you tried shooting something with a Shotgun and some enemy behind them you didn't see gets killed by it, a Pistol misses and blows up a barrel behind the enemy you shot at that then kills them or another enemy, that's it run is over, Q+Y and try again. There's also the fucked indirect kill attribution of 0.9.9.7, where if an enemy dies by indirect means (e.g. from items, infighting, telefragging, or damaging fluids), the kill will be attributed to the weapon you had equipped at the time of their death. This means you must ardently limit the time you have a weapon equipped, so you can't run -> wait or move around a floor with a weapon equipped, else if an enemy attacks you and kills something else in the crossfire or Formers keep walking into a teleporter and telefrag each other or some Pinky on the other side of the map dies while running through acid, your run is over if you happened to have any weapon equipped when those things happen, and you might not even notice it if you don't pay good attention to the messages to notice the "You hear the scream of a freed soul" message. Being unable to have your weapon out at all times doesn't just make this run more annoying to play, it makes the attrition damage issue even worse, as without Juggler, the time it takes to swap to a weapon will allow an enemy to move back out of vision or to a tile where they get LoS on you, or it's a bigger enemy that moves closer and costs you a crucial additional shot you could have gotten on them before punching them. At least if you punch an enemy with a weapon equipped, the game will correctly attribute it as a fist kill, so you don't need to waste time swapping back to your fists to punch things (before attempting this I did a quick HNTR AoOC test to verify if I could still get Sunrise Iron Fist after punching enemies to death with a weapon equipped, doing a Strongman Angelic run and then not getting the badge if the kill attribution was fucked that way too would have been very deflating).

For the build, there is really only one viable option and that's Vampyre. As mentioned, you'll take a heavy amount of unavoidable attrition damage and so having the mastery that heals off that attrition damage is imperative, while trying to avoid the attrition damage with Blademaster won't work that well when you'll be unable to one-shot anything bigger than Imps even when berserked. When it comes to your opening traits, in a normal Vampyre run I would usually open with Finesse, or if in AoB, I would go straight for Berserker, but in a Strongman run, getting Brute 3 ASAP is non-negotiable; not only is increasing the damage of your punching vital when it's so weak, but since building up the Berserker counter requires hits to deal at least 10 damage, you can't even trigger Berserker with your fists without having Brute 3. Then you need to get Vampyre ASAP after that; picking up Finesse or TaN instead of Badass is tempting, but as established, you just won't survive if you don't heal off all the attrition damage and you'll probably be running low on medkits by the time you reach level 6, if you have any at all. After Vampyre you then get some differing options to build, Tormuse in his run went straight for TaN, however I go for Fin2 and then WK2 immediately; Finesse is not only a means for increasing DPS, but it'll also help you trigger Berserker faster, which is crucial to reducing the damage you take. For example, punching a full health Baron with no berserk is a very unfun time, as he'll get three hits in before you get four punches in to trigger Berserker, which each Baron swing will deal 9-11 damage that even a Red Armor will only reduce to 5-7 damage, so 15-21 total in said Red Armor (even greater in weaker armor), and he'll still get another hit or two in after Berserker kicks in, while you get 6 HP back for killing him. With Finesse, you can get a double hit or two in on him to reduce the hits he get in before Berserker triggers, significantly reducing the damage you take punching him, and this damage saving will be even more drastic when you're in a midst of a horde and triggering Berserker ASAP is your only hope of survival, thus it will save you more damage than TaN will (not to mention it'll also let you more effectively damage bigger enemies with other weapons before they reach you, so even more damage saving there). Then getting WK2 is important because the most crucial piece of equipment is getting yourself adequate indestructible or regenerating armor, as even with doubled-repairing shards, this run will make you chew through armor like Nightmare Demons chew through noobs, and TaN alone does not suffice, especially when TaN does not reduce the damage your armor takes (as it's applied in damage calculation after your armor). (Your different armor options are explained in the spoiler)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Barring getting very lucky with finding one of the indestructible or regenerating rare armors early, such armor will come in one of three forms; a Nanofiber Red Armor, an O-modded Red Armor if you get an Onyx mod from Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, or a Powered Red Armor if you get a Nano mod from said special levels. If you don't get an Onyx or Nano mod from Armory/Lab, then you need to Nanofiber your Red Armor, and you need to get WK2 before doing so to Power mod it after, as Nanofiber Red Armor is pretty lousy without it (even when berserked, Nanofiber Red Armor would fail to reduce tougher melee hits to 1 damage, and hits taken without berserk will really sting). If you get an Onyx mod that's much better, as even just an O-modded Red Armor is better than the aforementioned P-modded Nanofiber Red Armor, but you still want WK to buff it up farther; a PO Red Armor gets you an indestructible 6 protection armor with a 25% fire res, which will reduce nearly everything to 1 damage when berserked and will make slugging it out without berserk not so painful, while with WK2 you could add an A mod on top for a much appreciated speed boost. Getting a Nano mod for a Powered Red Armor is the best, as its armor regeneration is nearly as good as being indestructible but it also doubles the fire resist to 50%, gives a much needed +25% melee resistance, and gets rid of the movement penalty altogether, while with WK2, you can P-mod it after to get a 7 protection armor, which with the aforementioned resistances can let you tank most things even without berserk.

After WK2 I go for Juggler, which can be surprising as at this point as I'm not so reliant on using weapons to weaken enemies and so Badass 2 or TaN would be more valuable, but if I make this far, when I do use weapons, I want to absolutely minimize the time I spend with it equipped to reduce the chance some random Pinky dies in lava or something else dies while I have a weapon equipped, which is probably a bigger risk to ending a run at this point than me actually dying. After that is level 12 and so I still don't get Badass nor TaN as I can get more Finesse and Brute; I go for Fin3 first, I already explained the importance of faster attacking speed and speed is something that gets even better the more of it you have (at this point I will be getting 2 punches for nearly every 1 attack from standard speed enemies, and even against Archviles I can now sneak extra punches in without berserk, while with berserk, I'll be getting nearly 3 punches for 1 from standard speed enemies and getting reliable double punches on fast enemies), and then it's maxing out Brute to make my damage less pitiful (with Brute 5, your punches now deal 16-18 damage, 32-36 when berserked, thus with berserk you can now two-shot any enemy below an Archvile, while also one-shotting Revenants and Arachnotrons). It's Badass 2 after that for extra insurance with carrying around more boosted health, and then I finally get TaN for my final two levels, though if I was relying on a Nanofiber Red Armor in this run, I may have gotten TaN sooner (but with the armor I had, I didn't need the farther damage reduction).

With the overarching strategy, there are two ways to approach Strongman Angelic; you either play it the intended way and actually clear out most floors punching everything to get 90+% kills, or you stair dive and pray you get lucky enough with Berserks/Invulns to survive and farm a Pain Elemental or safe respawn for hours later in the run to make up the 90+% kills needed. Tormuse did the latter, and ended up spending a whopping 7 and a half hours on his run, farming Pain Elementals for an absurd 12029 Lost Soul kills (granted he went that far to get Iron Skull and could have made do with half the Lost Souls, but having to kill 6K Lost souls is still a crazy time-consuming amount), Tormuse however doesn't state how many tries it took him, while stair diving seems extremely unreliable when you're playing a Marine (so no stair sense) and can't use any weapons to kill stuff nor can rocket jump with enemies around (as invariably something would get killed by it or infighting while you have the rocket launcher equipped). Considering how unappealling spamming stair dives until I get very lucky is to me and the extremely tedious lategame Lost Soul/respawn grinding needed if I skip most of the floors, I decided to play it the more "legit" way and actually kill most enemies along the way. Micerang in his Strongman Angelic actually pulled off a YAAM Conqueror, but again considering 0.9.9.8 gave you the cheat code that was the dodging bug and its overpowered Marine + its version of Vampyre that was essentially IDDQD, doing that in any other version would be ludicrous, so I won't be going that far and will leave any floor that is not worth staying on (especially in Phobos), while I will only be entering and clearing special levels that are still easily doable with the fist-only kills restriction.

When it comes to the run itself, it immediately gets annoying with Phobos Base Entry; if the Shotgunners come out early when you approach the building, that's it run is over, reset, even if you can run through their shotgun blasts without dying you'll take too much damage. If they don't come out early and you can get to the side of the building, the level is easy to clear as you can gift drop all the Formers to punching range and approaching an initial Former Human isn't hard as they'll have Storm Trooper accuracy when you're running. The next part of aggravation though comes in getting those Small Medkits that you really want when you need all the health you can get early on and getting them is a terrible luck-based ordeal; I found a trick where you can guarantee a double attack on a Shotgunner if he attacks on consecutive quick swaps you do, but with Brute 1 your punch does 4-6 damage, so if you roll 4 on one punch and then don't roll a 6 on the other punch, you won't kill him in two punches, and you only have 74% accuracy too with Brute 1 so your finishing punch will miss annoyingly frequently, where the Shotgunner will then use the medkit up. And unlike in a normal run where you can use the first Shotgunner's Shotgun to one-shot the second Shotgunner with a medkit, you can't do that here, so you will need roll the unreliable odds again. Calculating all the probabilities here would be annoying, but I would say you only have around 25% or less odds of getting a good Phobos Base Entry with both medkits and not taking too much damage, so aiming for that will make you quickly reset a lot, and even getting a good Phobos Base Entry will often be for naught as you get a floor 2 that isn't viable. I kept trying for the ideal Phobos Base Entry, but in retrospect you probably should just settle for the one medkit and not taking too much damage, the extra medkit won't save you getting a fucked early Phobos floor and any run that makes it to Chained Court can be viable (as you'll see), so all those resets that will be caused trying to get both medkits here won't be worth it.

Speaking of floor 2, it'll be the floor with the most deaths or resets if you don't aim for an ideal Phobos Base Entry. To start with, if you spawn near a bunch of enemies in the open without an immediate good escape path, your run is already over, Formers will shred you quickly in the open and you can forget about trying to punch out several Imps at once with only Brute 1. If you get forced to fight a Pinky before you get Brute 2, your run is also over; with only Brute 1 your fist will deal an appalling 2-4 damage to them while their bites deal 6-8 damage and they'll be getting a double attack in for every 2 or 3 punches you throw, so you absolutely need to avoid them before you at least get Brute 2 (ideally you'll want Brute 3, since with Brute 2 you're still dealing only 5-7 damage, but Brute 2 can be workable if you can at least weaken them significantly first). If you don't get an immediate run-ending start, first thing will be trying to find a workable camping spot with a door or water tile ASAP and then set up camp, as well as hoping you can punch out enough Formers before having to punch out Imps with Brute 1 (who are a lot more competent in melee than Formers and will often not die to two punches if not previously damaged, as you will need to roll two 6 damage rolls without missing either punch to do so). Once you got a camping spot, you can gift drop with one of your medkits to lure Formers into punching range, but you can safely shoot them once with your Pistol to aggro them into position or just weaken them into one-punch kill range since saving any damage you take helps (without damage boosts, the Pistol can't do more than 8 damage and so can never kill an undamaged Former in one shot, however the Pistol does frequently miss and so you shouldn't shoot if you can see a barrel behind the Former). Imps are trickier, as they can't be lured in by gifts, and with their just above-average speed, they can get a double move as you wait and so can get a surprise attack in, or immediately pop into melee range, while the math isn't in your favor if you try duking it out with several undamaged Imps (Imps deal 3-5 in melee, 2-4 if you got Green Armor on, and won't frequently miss like Formers will, while they can occasionally get double hits in without Finesse and you can't one-punch a full health Imp without Brute 3, which even then you'll only do so 33% of the time). You'll need to Pistol Imps from behind cover to safely get their attention, and you'll want to Pistol them to one-punch range; usually you can only get one safe Pistol shot on them but if their health is displayed as "lightly wounded" or "scratched", the Pistol low rolled and left them at 9/10 HP, so you can (and should) Pistol them again to ensure they're in one-punch range with Brute 2 or especially Brute 1 (but after you get Brute 3, you'll always one-punch them after any Pistol shot). If an Imp is at least 8 tiles away, a Shotgun will fail to one-shot them even with an incredibly unlikely max damage roll, but using a Shotgun is risky as barrels could be around just outside your vision that would get blown up, or there could be Formers or Lost Souls right outside your vision that get killed in the spread, so you shouldn't use Shotguns to aggro an Imp unless you're damn sure nothing is behind it.

Regarding Lost Souls, with their 50% bullet resistance you can safely get at least two Pistol shots off on them and you won't need to worry about them leaving a corpse, but don't Pistol a wandering Lost Soul that's less than 5 tiles away, as a shot Lost Soul will immediately charge and cover up to 4 tiles in a single move, while their charge hits harder than Imps with 5-7 damage (ideally after you Pistol a Lost Soul, it charges right into punching range for you to finish off). With Pinkies, ideally you have some acid on the level and can just wait for them to kill themselves in the acid or lure them over it, otherwise you are going to want to bust out the Shotgun to weaken them, as the Pistol likely won't get more than a few shots off before they reach you with over half their health intact, which is going to be a very unpleasant time with only Brute 2. If a Pinky's health is displayed as "wounded", they can die to any closish Shotgun blast (they can have as little as 13 HP left, which a very high damage roll can inflict to them even from a few tiles away), but this early it's a risk you have to take as a "wounded" Pinky can have as much as 18 HP and even a 13 HP Pinky will likely take up to three punches with Brute 2 to kill while you lose nearly half your health in the exchange (you should try getting them down to at least "severely wounded" before punching them, when you have Brute 2 I would even say you should probably risk another Shotgun blast on them at "heavily wounded"). For one more note with Pinkies, always check their health before shooting them, otherwise you might risk shooting a Pinky that's already nearly dead from running through acid offscreen (and I did lose a couple runs from shooting at Pinkies that happened to injure themselves to near death, you should also do the same with Imps since they can survive telefrags with 1 HP and I lost another run to shooting at an Imp without looking at its health that indeed survived a telefrag offscreen).

With vaults on Floor 2, they can be a mixed blessing; vaults can have very nice things inside, but on N! they'll be filled with over a half dozen Pinkies or Cacodemons, while you won't be able to get Brute 3 + Berserker this early to berserk through them. First thing is to try finding the vault and setting up camp near its entrance to make sure no enemies open it, you do not want the enemies inside getting out before you get Brute 3. If you can guard the vault and kill all other enemies on the floor, you can then try dealing with it. If there is a nearby Berserk Pack, you should utilize it to clear out the vault, but if not you'll need to approach it more carefully. If it's Pinkies and there's acid, you can try luring them over to it or push an acid barrel near the vault and blow it up, otherwise you'll have to break the door open from a distance and try isolating them once you get them out, while utilizing doors to block them off when needed. Cacodemons have a lot more HP and hit even harder in melee (doing 7-9 damage), while they'll fly over any acid, but they are a lot slower, so they might actually not be as bad if you can isolate them, as you can much more easily escape them and more easily weaken them before they reach you (you want to get them to "mortally wounded" before punching them, you can risk shotgunning a "heavily wounded" Caco this early but should switch to the Pistol if they're "severely wounded" but not yet in your face as a Shotgun has too high of a chance to kill them even near edge of vision, while they're guaranteed to survive at least one Pistol shot at that health range). If you get lucky with a vault and can clear it out, you could get a Red Armor early that will be extremely helpful, a Phase Device of either sort that will be crucial for a certain later level or a Rocket Launcher that will be even better for said level (and do emergency corpse disposal in the meantime), and early Large Medkits. Even just a Blue Armor would be useful for getting through the next few floors, and if there's nothing good inside, at least it'll be extra crucially needed early EXP. Whatever the floor layout is, you should fully clear floor 2 or reset/die trying if you're unable to, killing everything on floor 2 should get you enough EXP to hit level 3 to get the direly needed Brute 3, or it'll at least get you no more than a few kills away from hitting level 3, you do not want to be punching Hell Knights with Brute 2. In my winning run, I got a Massacre lever on floor 2; I got one in a few prior runs that I couldn't find in time before dying, but in this run I was able to escape that nasty looking start and find it. If you get a Massacre lever, you should try finding it and hit it ASAP; as it'll gib all Formers, kill all Imps, and significantly weaken Lost Souls and Pinkies (you'll lose any medkits or armors picked up by the Formers, but it's probably worth the tradeoff here). You could try going into Hell's Arena despite clearing it being out of the question, I usually go in even in runs where it's unviable just to get some kills for EXP, however I skipped it in nearly all my attempts here as it can go quickly awry and I typically already spent 15+ minutes just getting through floor 2 (the only time I went in was when I got a lucky early Shell Box from an ammo crate so I could weaken the Cacos and Pinkies much more safely, maybe if I got a Combat Shotgun from a floor 2 vault I would consider it too). Even if you get any Berserk Packs on floor 2, you shouldn't waste them going into Hell's Arena, as they'll help you survive the upcoming floor much more and you're not clearing Hell's Arena anyway.

After floor 2 is the ever dreaded floor 3-5 range, with the Hell Knights and more dangerous level types showing up. Hell Knights hit as hard as Cacodemons do, but they have even more HP, are faster than you with 110% speed, and can wear any armor they find as well as steal + use medkits. You'll rarely be able to cleanly shotgun down a Hell Knight to one-punch range, and unless you started shotgunning from far away, they'll probably get to you with over half their health remaining, where it'll take you at least three punches to kill them even with Brute 3. Hell Knights also often spawn heading a group of Imps, at which point you can't shotgun them down unless you can get the Hell Knight separated from the Imps. Whenever you find Berserk Packs, seeking and punching out any Hell Knights you see or hear while berserked should be your immediate kill priority, and you should eat an Imp fireball on top of their corpse to destroy it. You need to hit level 4 to get Berserker, as otherwise lethal hot starts and generally unviable floors can be survived with it, while the run's ultimate success still hinges on getting Vampyre, so you should try clearing floors in this range if you can do so. But if a floor is just too tough (such as a Cacodemon cave, Warehouse levels, or any maze), then you should leave upon finding the stairs, reaching The Chained Court is your top priority. In this run, I entered floor 3 with much needed berserk and had another immediately accessible Berserk Pack, so I could clear out the Hell Knights and a vault that spawned (as well as nabbed myself a Phase Device from inside it). The next two floors would be awful Warehouse levels with the mass barrel quasi-event, so clearing them out was unviable and I got brutalized fighting my way to the stairs. I was able to make it to The Chained Court but I thought the run was over as I had no armor and only a single Small Medkit (I didn't even bother taking screenshots because I thought the run was going to die in Chained Court or shortly after anyway).

If you make it to The Chained Court, it's tempting to grab all the Berserks and hightail it, but you should actually clear it, as if done correctly, you can come out of it without burning any medkits and you really want that Baron EXP, while you also want the mods (you can't mod your fists but you need A mods to move faster and P mods to buff your armor, as well as B mods for your armor if you don't get an Onyx nor Nano later). For clearing Chained Court, grab the Chainsaw (and immediately unequip it), then just immediately run to one of the exit rooms; punch out any Formers that are in the way but otherwise run past them until you get to the exit room and set up camp in there. You'll get shot up a lot and will probably be low on health, but you should make it (while a Berserk will fully heal you in a bit), and once you have the exit room secured, you can drop a medkit or armor in the doorway and camp it until all the non-caged Formers come to it (if there's a Chaingunner you had to punch out in the exit room, you'll have to keep punching him as he revives until you're sure no Former is right outside, then you can step out as he gets back up and wait for him to get in the doorway to put him out for good before resuming camping). Once all non-caged Formers are dead, it's onto the Barons; grab a Berserk and then go release the right Barons, punch one out and eat an acid ball on its corpse to destroy it, then immediately run back to the center, where you can then shotgun the Baron until it's sufficiently weakened for you to punch it out in the doorway. You then repeat the process for the Barons on the left side, except you instead lure the last Baron into the exit room instead of to the center room, and once the last Baron is killed in the doorway, you can camp with a gift there until the remaining Formers released in the center room come to you. Doing this I'm still able to clear The Chained Court despite the dire state I was in, and have two Berserks left to take with me to the next floor.

Phobos 6 was a maze that I would have no hope in if I stayed, but I find the stairs quickly enough and nab myself a battered Blue Armor for some armor as well as a Supercharge along the way, and then Phobos 7 is yet another Warehouse level with a hot start, but I survive just long enough to get Vampyre. I also find the red stairs quickly, which turned out to be Military Base! If it was Phobos Lab I would have kept looking for the normal stairs (I already lost my deepest run prior from Phobos Lab after being forced into it when rolling an Arachnotron Cave on floor 7, punching out Nightmare Demons just isn't viable and I didn't have the speed to safely lure out the cave Nightmare Demons nor a Rocket Launcher for preemptively triggering Berserker), but Military Base I could easily clear with Vampyre online regardless of my armor/health supply and it'll be a huge EXP dump alongside having lots of armor, potentially medkits from crates, and two mods, so I just go right in after my berserk runs out. Then it's Phobos Anomaly, you get a much needed Red Armor and two Large Medkits, but you have to get past the Nightmare enemy ambush. The simplest way to get past would be to get an Invuln on floor 7, the next safest way is rocket jump through if you found a Rocket Launcher (and you'll be safe from anything dying as you do so as the Nightmare enemies are so tanky), or if you have no Hellrunner, then you need to get lucky with a Phase Device. I'm unsure how to handle it without those things in this run, especially if you don't even got A-modded boots as I didn't yet in this run; your only shot might be P-modding the Red Armor, punch the Nightmare Demons and hope Berserker activates before you die, then run back to the starting room with berserk and hopefully Vampyre can keep you alive as you punch out everything in the doorway. Luckily that aforementioned Phase Device I got does get me past the ambush, I then pop the radsuit from Military Base as I punch out the Bruisers (should have used the Chainsaw to weaken them but I'm able to successfully punch them out without using my Red Armor), and at last I finally get a run to Deimos after dozens and dozens of attempts. This also serves as a good lesson that as long as you can make it to The Chained Court, Strongman Angelic is still viable, no matter how bad your armor and health situation is.

Deimos would immediately give me a big reprieve, with its first floor having not just One Invuln, two Invulns (plus a Hatred Skull that might be handy), but three Invulnerabilities! I'm able to take them all with me to Deimos Lab, where I just run straight to the Shamblers and punch them out with Invulnerability (the Invuln wasn't really needed when they would have been manageable enough with Berserker, but it was some much needed catharsis). I would have to retreat back to the teleporter room and wait for all the remaining enemies who didn't get their corpses destroyed to teleport in, after this bit of tedious cleanup, I can access the lab cache, and get a Sniper Mod... plus a Nano mod! I have my Red Armor already P-modded and so can make Powered Red Armor, however I'm still a level off from getting WK2 and I'll need it first or else I won't be able to mod it after (yet again I'll question why the hell this restriction with modding pre-WK2 assemblies existed, 0.9.9.8 getting rid of it was seriously one of its best changes). So I'm left at the conundrum of if to just make the Powered Red Armor now or wait until WK2; since my medkit supply is looking much better after Military Base and that good first Deimos floor, I make the decision to try holding out for one more level (and use the Sniper Mod to make a Plasmatic Combat Shotgun for easy anywhere corpse disposal + safe wall destruction, but I have to use it very sparingly as I do not want the run ruined at this point because of something dying while using it). I would get a pretty good Deimos 2 (as well as a stark reminder why you can't walk around with weapons equipped in this version, as I walked into a Mancubus' vision that then fired and killed enemies behind me, the run would have been over right there if I had anything equipped), and then on Deimos 3 I would reach level 10, where I promptly make the Powered Red Armor and P-mod it for a regenerating armor with 7 protection, 50% fire resist, 25% melee resist, and no movement penalty. If that wasn't enough, I find a Rocket Launcher (after having one blown up on the prior floor by the aforementioned Mancubus) that I immediately use all the Bulk mods I had to turn into a Tactical Rocket Launcher (which will let me take more Invulns with me at the end of a floor and the smaller radius can let me more safely rocket jump around enemies in a pinch), and finally an Agility mod for my boots (I somehow did not get a single one in the prior three special levels). At this point the run is mostly won, the Powered Red Armor will reduce all melee damage short of the Nightmare Demon and the biggest bosses down to 1 damage, VMR will be nearly harmless even without berserk, and with berserk basically everything will get reduced to 1 damage with no TaN needed (in this version, only plasma hits that deal over 11 damage won't get reduce to 1 damage, which among common enemies only a max damage roll from a Hell Knight or Cacodemon can do for a single extra point of damage, and the only other enemy I can encounter that can is Nightmare Cacodemon rolling for a maximum of 3 damage after my defenses). I would near exclusively use my fists at this point to be absolutely sure nothing inadvertently dies when I have a weapon out, as weakening enemies prior to punch them is no longer needed when I have achieved a near-IDDQD state, and I can even get more corpses destroyed by just tanking explosive projectiles on them if they're not already destroyed in the crossfire. I just need to be careful to not overextend against Arachnotrons (who can still rack up a lot of damage since their rapid fire bursts add up fast even after reducing each plasma bolt to 1 damage) and not take too many acid balls from Barons without berserk (they can still roll up to as high as 12 damage without berserk and a few acid balls in quick succession can damage my Powered Red Armor, putting me in a bad spot if I can't quickly get a breather for it to repair itself).

I skip Containment Area but head into Abyssal Plains for the Skulls that might be useful and a big easy kill pad, with it pushing me over the needed 90% kills threshold and so I won't need to do any respawn or Pain Elemental farming later as long as I clear out most of the remaining floors. Having a nuke on hand and an Invuln spawning on Deimos 6, I would use the opportunity to nuke Spider's Lair, which conveniently has all its rewards spawn in after the nuke goes off; unfortunately I can't use the BFG but the Plasteel Boots will be nice... yet are immediately rendered irrelevant when Deimos 7 has Enviroboots drop in my immediate vision. Deimos 7 is finished off easily and then I punch out the Cyberdemon effortlessly, not even needing to Chainsaw him down to near death first. Hell gives me an easy opener with a Pain Elemental + Lost Souls cave, and then Unholy Cathedral is free EXP, with me also punching out the Angel of Death without needing to weaken him with the Chainsaw. I find a Bulk in that cave after using all the ones I had prior on the Tactical Rocket Launcher, which I used to make a P-modded Nanofiber Red Armor out of a spare Red Armor I had just in case I got into a fight that damaged the Powered Red Armor... and that proved immediately necessary when Hell 2 gave me an Arena level with an Arachnotron group right near the start as well as a nearby Hell Noble group set to hunt me. Had my closest post-Phobos call here as my Powered Red Armor got damaged and I had to slip into that Nanofiber Red Armor, with one particular bad moment when my berserk ran out while waiting for enemies to approach me from behind the starting cover, a Hatred Skull would indeed prove useful here to get rid of the nearby corpses and get berserk back on to finish the remaining hunting enemies so I can put the Powered Red Armor back on to repair itself, after which I can finish off the remaining enemies. Hell 3 is much smoother and I then enter The Vaults, since it's free EXP and missing a handful of kills won't matter, while I also have two Phase Devices to try getting in the center vault without the Arena Master's Staff. The first one doesn't get me in, but the second Phase does! This turns out to not just be for EXP (and making up for cheesing Scavenger Diamond prior with Whisper Of Death in this version), but is materially worth it as well with the center vault having a Lava Armor, much better backup armor than the Nanofiber Red that I can also easily repair whenever with those Enviroboots (and I would make use of it a couple times, particularly against some Barons on an Island level who I carelessly face tanked too many berserk-less acid balls from). Hell 4 would have an Invuln right near Mortuary's stairs, and I had another nuke on hand, so I decided to nuke Mortuary as well. I would pop the other Hatred Skull I got from the Agony Elemental, then do a couple rocket jumps towards the Nuclear BFG before the Archviles start reviving enemies (immediately swapping off once there was too much risk of something dying while rocket jumping), and then run the rest of the way to get the Nuclear BFG before nuking Mortuary (this was completely unnecessary, but nuking Mortuary is fun). Thanks to Enviroboots, Mt. Erebus is a freebie and it would have Malek's Armor there, would have been much nicer to have this sooner, but it's nice to have for Carmack, who I opt to fight to continue inching closer to Apostle rank and I effortlessly punch Carmack out.

A really nasty thing about Strongman runs is that you don't know for sure if you succeed until you see the ending mortem or the rank up screen, since something may have died at some point while you had a weapon equipped that you didn't notice, and there's no way to see during the run if it's still valid for the Strongman badges, thus you could potentially slug through this ordeal after hours and hours just to not get the badge because you didn't see the message that a fucking Pinky you never even saw ran on lava for the single second you had a weapon out. So upon killing Carmack I sit in anticipation for the rank up screen to verify nothing went wrong..... and there it is! After 24 recorded deaths (the most brutal deaths being the previously alluded to death in Phobos Lab after being forced in by a terribly early Arachnotron cave, and this run immediately after where I made it to Phobos 7 with an Invuln near the Anomaly stairs, only to absolutely throw it by charging on a Revenant in the open backed by a Chaingunner instead of running behind some sort of cover or just using up the Large Medkit I had), probably around another dozen or so I quit out of when getting a fucked floor or something dying while I had a weapon out, and countless resets on Phobos Base Entry if you count those as real attempts, I get Strongman Angelic over two days of attempting it. That is additionally my 9th Angelic, officially tying Tormuse for the most recorded Angelics by any player in 0.9.9.7 and becoming the second player confirmed to have achieved the Chaos Lt. General Rank (this also knocks off the last badge that was only won by Tormuse, which leaves Icy's Arena Diamond as the only badge left exclusively won by a single player aside from my own Eagerness and Inquisitor Angelics). Overall, yeah this badge definitely deserves its Angelic status and I can see why only Tormuse won it in this version, as not only is it extremely difficult, but it also forces the worst of DRL gameplay and it's very frustrating to suddenly lose runs because of anything dying while you had a weapon out. I don't think it's harder than Eagerness Angelic and am not sure it's harder than Inquisitor Angelic either (the difficulty is incredibly front-loaded here and surviving to The Chained Court is heavily luck-based), but it certainly was a lot less fun to go for. Strongman Angelic will be one of the badges most affected by the changes since in 0.10 and beyond; there are lots of good things like respawns no longer counting towards the kill counter, enemies no longer reviving in vision without the aid of Archviles, Tech mods now giving resistances to armors (including +20% melee res), proper infighting being in the game, and best of all, indirect kills are now properly attributed as "other" kills instead of to your equipped weapon, so you can keep a weapon equipped at all times and don't need to waste so much time constantly swapping between armed/unarmed. There are however going to be drawbacks, such as more randomized enemy melee damage meaning enemies can potentially swing harder (notably Pinkies actually average slightly more damage now), berserk being nerfed to giving +50% resistances (the Marine getting an inherent +10% energy resistances will result in your berserked energy resistances being the same if you play the Marine, but you will feel the nerf on the melee side), Vampyre getting some significant but deserved nerfs (Vampyre's HP steal can no longer overheal and Vampyre is now blocked Ironman + TaN, which were buffed to give additional resistances, but as compensation Vampyre can get SoB now for extra punching damage or get EE for Intuition), and most significantly you now have the Enraged Timer that will invalidate excessive camping. I'm not sure if Strongman Angelic will be easier or even harder in 0.10-onward, but it'll certainly be less degenerate to actually play, which would make any grind for it more bearable regardless of if it turns out harder.

Well that was sure a doozy to write up, here is the mortem:

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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 GRANDMASTERTYSON25,
 level 17 Cyberdemon Chaos Mjr General Marine,
 nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 1459188 turns and scored 940230 points.
 He played for 3 hours, 13 minutes and 29 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 2016 out of 2122 hellspawn. (95%)
 He held his right to remain violent.

-- Special levels --------------------------------------------

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 9
  Levels completed : 9

-- Awards ----------------------------------------------------

  Sunrise Iron Fist
  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Fallout Gold Cross
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Strongman Angelic Badge

-- Graveyard -------------------------------------------------

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-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------

  Health 120/60   Experience 150112/17
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +10  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +15

-- Traits ----------------------------------------------------

  Class : Marine

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Tough as nails   (Level 2)
    Brute            (Level 5)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Badass           (Level 2)
    Vampyre          (Level 1)

  Bru->Bru->Bru->Ber->Bad->MVm->Fin->Fin->WK->WK->Jug->Fin->Bru->Bru->Bad->TaN->TaN->

-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------

    [a] [ Armor      ]   Malek's Armor [3/3] (93%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   nothing
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   tactical rocket launcher (6d7) [5/5] (P1)

-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------

    [a] plasmatic combat shotgun (7d3) [5/5]
    [b] powered red armor [7/7] (100%) (P)
    [c] nanofiber red armor [4] (P)
    [d] Lava Armor [4/4] (100%)
    [e] Angelic Armor [7/7] (100%)
    [f] chainsaw (5d7) (BP)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] rocket (x2)
    [i] large med-pack
    [j] large med-pack
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] large med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] phase device
    [q] envirosuit pack
    [r] power mod pack
    [s] Enviroboots [0]
    [t] shell box (x100)

-- Resistances -----------------------------------------------

    Bullet     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Melee      - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Shrapnel   - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 
    Acid       - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 

-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------

    204 former humans
    175 former sergeants
    182 former captains
    275 imps
    90 demons
    563 lost souls
    104 cacodemons
    44 hell knights
    58 barons of hell
    38 arachnotrons
    51 former commandos
    44 pain elementals
    68 revenants
    42 mancubi
    28 arch-viles
    9 nightmare imps
    12 nightmare demons
    7 elite former humans
    5 elite former sergeants
    7 elite former commandos
    2 bruiser brothers
    2 shamblers
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack

-- History ---------------------------------------------------

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 7 he marched into the Military Base.
  He purified his fellow comrades.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Deimos Lab.
  On level 9 he assembled a plasmatic shrapnel!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 11 he assembled a power armor!
  On level 11 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
  On level 11 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  On level 12 he romped upon the Abyssal Plains.
  He slaughtered the beasts living there.
  On level 14 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
  He nuked level 14!
  He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
  On level 15 he found the Enviroboots!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he assembled a nanofiber armor!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 17 he found the Longinus Spear!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  On level 19 he found the Lava Armor!
  He managed to clear the Vaults completely!
  On level 20 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  He nuked level 20!
  On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 22 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
  On level 22 he found the Malek's Armor!
  He managed to raise Mt. Erebus completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He overloaded a nuclear BFG 9000 on level 24!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.

-- Messages --------------------------------------------------

 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You are hit! You need to taste
 blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! The lost soul hits you. The lost
 soul hits you. John Carmack reloads his rocket launcher. You need to taste
 blood!
 You hit John Carmack. The lost soul hits you. The lost soul hits you. You
 need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. The lost soul hits you. You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You are hit! The lost soul dies. The lost soul dies.
 The lost soul dies. The lost soul dies. You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You defeated John
 Carmack! Press <Enter>...
 You're going berserk!

-- General ---------------------------------------------------

 331 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 133 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 96 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 8 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 93 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 7 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 49 killed the bitch and survived.
 37 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

--------------------------------------------------------------