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21
on: December 21, 2025, 05:44
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| Started by Vigilante - Last post by Vigilante | ||
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Tends not to load stylesheet most of the time, and I was not able to post a bug report thread with attachment (takes forever to finish, I have given up after trying to create thread four times), although at least created one other thread (without attachments) in Jupiter Hell's Post Mortem so not completely hopeless. Nonetheless, Firefox's Network console only shows access to this site, no third-party sites, just sometimes connection to specific resources (especially css) tends to time out. Is it happening to anyone else across the world, or is it connections on my side / country where I reside?
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22
Jupiter Hell / Post Mortem / [1.8h|U|Sc|YAAM] GunKata Scavenge and Hoard to 100% UV including Dante Inferno
on: December 21, 2025, 03:52
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| Started by Vigilante - Last post by Vigilante | ||
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(GOG version, so 1.8h rather than 1.8j)
As you might know if you've attempted yourself, Gun Kata tends to run out of ammo in Dante L3/L4, even if not going to Dante Inferno. As of recent returning to Jupiter Hell after a long bring, I am doing runs on UV with all various kind of masteries, targeting full clear including Dante Inferno, and this posed the most challenge of masteries tried so far (whereas with Entrenchment Technician, for example, I won two games in a row). The format I am going through this is Fated, then if I fail, I do non-Fated runs with the same mastery selected manually until I succeed. Gun Kata gave me so much trouble I put it off for a while and run other masteries, after I had a non-100% win that did get through Dante Inferno. That run also would have been 100% were it not for the bug, but was then carried by medusa relic making everything in sight bleed, which enabled me to go melee, so I didn't consider that a "proper" victory for this mastery, but rather for the Scout being easiest to go melee in late game when that was not originally in the plans. So this is a "proper" though non-Fated run with Gun Kata in my opinion, not totally absent good items of course (AV3 amp rolled with 40% crit-chance to pistols, even if the other bonus took 4 multitools to reroll to a useful +% crit damage), but one that feels to have more due to execution than mere luck.
So, GunKata can work for 100% clear with emphasis on ammo and some attention to get crit nearer to 100%. Fortunately, the mastery itself does provided bonus to crit chance, depending on distance with it only becoming 0% at distance=6, which given the limited optimal range of pistols pre-calibration, the GunSlinger L1 optimal distance penalty, usually tends to still help enough with pushing crit to 100% apparently, and especially where you most need it (enemies approaching close). Vigilant, level 17 Scout, |
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23
on: December 19, 2025, 16:36
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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I managed to double up Inquisitor Diamond with Inquisitor Angelic in 0.9.9.8, but given the Marine is significantly worse in 0.9.9.7, I didn't even attempt to do that in my 0.9.9.7 Inquisitor Angelic run, so now it's time to get Inquisitor Diamond on its own. While I managed Inquisitor Angelic, the Diamond badge isn't that much more of a breather comparatively; Angel Of Purity is a deceptively nasty challenge in DRL as you not only aren't able to use Invulnerabilities and Berserk Packs, but being unable to use Health Globes and Supercharges severely reduces your effective health supply, while being unable to use Armor Shards and Megaspheres means you effectively cannot repair armor without getting lucky with levers or finding an Onyx or Nano mod. Then the majority of medkits and armors that do spawn will be nabbed by Formers and Hell Nobles, farther dwindling your health and armor supply, while all these problems get exacerbated significantly on Nightmare. On top of that, Inquisitor Diamond requires beating AoP on N! as a Marine, which invalidates the Marine's passive of extended powerups, leaving the Marine only with their measly 10 extra max HP passive (as this was before later versions gave them their inherent energy resistances bonus). As a testament to this badge's difficulty even when you try cheesing it in AoOC, only three people have verifiably won it according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread, of which only papilio did it purely (while Sereg and Icy got it through painfully running hundreds of attempts in AoOC), and no one is recorded winning it in any of the versions prior to 0.9.9.7 either.
So what to do for the build. I briefly considered Survivalist, but this is the awful 0.9.9.7 Survivalist with no inherent energy resistances, before Ironman's and TaN's buff, still has its awful prereqs, and before Survivalist got its doubled healing from medkits perk; any extra tankiness it adds will be too little to assuage its complete lack of offense and speed. Then Army Of The Dead and Bullet Dance are obviously out. So that leaves Vampyre, Ammochain, or masterless. papilio in his run used a masterless Marine that immediately gunned for Intuition 2 and then Dodgemaster, claiming they were essential, but I disagree with that assessment; Vampyre would be the clear way to go, as it solves the issue of not having enough health, and while Vampyre churns through armor at a ridiculous rate, with Berserker you'll be tanky enough to subsist on a Nanofiber Red Armor even if you don't get an Onyx/Nano mod to solve the armor problem. Its only real significant problem would be a rough early game, but given that AoP is a challenge that retains difficulty after Phobos, trading a harder start would be worth bolstering your lategame survival. However, given how much I have used melee builds in these 0.9.9.7 runs and will continue to do so in upcoming Diamond/Angelic badges, I wanted to try this first with Ammochain. Ammochain itself doesn't offer much to AoP other than just being one of the Marine's only two good masteries, though Ammochain letting me carry less ammo to make room for more medkits and armors gives it a little something extra for AoP... if you're able to gather up enough medkits and armors to really make use of that advantage. I considered opening with Finesse -> Juggler, but given how strong Ammochain is and Reloader + SoB giving it a solid enough early game, I decided to just go straight with Ammochain's prereqs. I would reset quite a few times until I got both medkits on Phobos Base Entry and a floor 2 that didn't go badly. Once I did that, I would go and clear Hell's Arena; clearing it is a rough proposition in N! AoP as you won't come in with boosted health nor any berserk/light goggles and can't comfortably eat plasma/acid balls to destroy corpses with such a limited medkit supply, as well as when it carries the cost of making Chained Court much harder later on, but I found trading a couple Small Medkits worth getting two Large ones, a Blue Armor, and most importantly the Rocket Launcher. Aside from its general corpse disposal and wall busting utilities, the Rocket Launcher is going to be direly necessary to get past Phobos Anomaly without Hellrunner or Phase Device luck. After some so-so Phobos floors in the ever perilous 3 to 5 floor range (the worst being a Pinky cave that cost me a couple medkits), I decide to try Unchained Court, which sounds crazy when the Berserks no longer work, but I think I can make do with the single Chainsaw berserk and really want the mods + EXP. Unfortunately when I'm trying to pepper away at a Baron on the left side of the center building, a Baron the right side immediately storms in. I was going to try saving the Chainsaw's berserk for the Arena Master, but if I don't grab it now, it'll get destroyed and I'll surely die in this position. On my way to retrieve the Chainsaw I get lucky with the Baron's acid ball explosions not rolling high enough to destroy it before I can grab it. After sawing him down and the other Baron coming in, I get more bad lucky with the Arena Master quickly storming the center building instead of hanging out in the back as he usually does. Fortunately I'm able to Chaingun him down before the Berserk runs out, and then I'm able to slowly clean up the rest of the level, but I take a big beating overall and unfortunately the two mods were a Bulk + Power mod, what I wanted to see least. The late Phobos floors were surprisingly light on the nasties they normally have, but no Former Commando spawned and thus left me with no Plasma Rifle, so I ended up building a Gatling Gun with a second Bulk mod I found on floor 7. Luckily I rolled Military Base, if I got Phobos Lab I would have had to skip it when I got no sort of speed boost nor a Plasma Rifle and not a single Phase Device to save me if checkmated by the Nightmare Demons. Military Base goes easy, but I would only get a single Small Medkit from the crates, and again no Agility mod, hopefully that's not a bad omen... Then for the Anomaly, with the Red Armor equipped and using a radsuit 12 steps in the ambush room, I rocket jump through, and then I rocket jump past the Bruisers as well; with no Agility-modded Plasma Rifle and needing all the health + armor I can get, it wasn't worth trying to fight them. I would make it to Deimos with 4 Large Medkits, but the challenge ain't done yet, oh hell no... Deimos 1 would be pretty rough, being a small room level where two Barons and a Revenant quickly besieged my starting location, nearly destroying my Red Armor, but I get through it. Then it comes the most important special level, either Hell's Armory or Deimos Lab, and unfortunately I rolled the former; the latter is a lot harder, but Ammochain won't have too much a problem with the Shamblers and I could get some Medkits there, while most importantly having much greater odds at getting an Onyx or Nano mod to solve the armor problem. Farther unfortunately, I get bad luck with the Cacodemon starting spawns on Hell's Armory and end up having to burn a medkit, but after securing the starting buildings, I can then camp and clear out the rest of the level without a problem, while the weapon cache would bless me with a Nuclear Plasma Rifle, which with Ammochain is basically a Nanomachic one. After killing the Shambler, I would get a Firestorm Mod from the lab cache, which while still very nice for Ammochain, is the rare mod I wanted least, and I also still don't got any Agility mods, so I'm still slow and can't fix Ammochain's accuracy issues. I also started getting Finesse to build towards Whizkid, but don't have enough levels for it yet, so I can't Firestorm the Nuclear Plasma Rifle that already has a Tech mod on it, and I also hold off on Nanofibering my Red Armor, as I'm really going to need to Power mod it after and I won't be able to do that if I build it before getting WK2. After the very mixed Armory, my luck take a sharp turn for the worst with a very nasty Cacodemon cave where I had to fight several of them with no good cover, burning two medkits from it. I rolled Containment Area for the Deimos 3 special level and went inside hoping to get medkits from the crates, but unfortunately don't get any, and while I could probably handle the Backpack ambush, I don't attempt it as I don't need the Backpack and the EXP isn't worthy burning any of my medkits. Deimos 4 was a pretty nice breather when I get a quick concealed camping spot on it, though something I didn't mention yet is when camping near acid/lava, I have to clear up all the weapons and ammo left behind by Formers, to ensure that any medkits or armor they do have doesn't get dropped in said acid/lava. I then go into City Of Skulls, which besides being free EXP, I hope to get Blood Skulls for extra health or even Hatred Skulls would be nice, but in yet more bad luck, I get the absolute worst outcome with three Fire Skulls, especially useless as I don't plan on trying to clear Mortuary/Limbo. The bad luck continues when I get a terrible Deimos 5 start next to a Former Platoon, Baron, and Archvile near an acid river, where I have to rocket jump across the acid to escape and get shot up by an Arachnotron on the other side. I would find a Plasma Shotgun there to make corpse disposal a nonissue the rest of the run, but things get dire with a nasty maze on Deimos 6. I find what I thought was a workable camping spot, but end up nearly dying when a Mancubus pops up at a bad angle and chases me across the bridge to an Archvile + Baron. I survive the encounter and do secure a foothold on the maze with the help of some Napalm Barrels, but I end up running out of medkits and am down to 68% health. Deimos 7 would give me a breather with a Pain Elemental + Lost Soul cave, but unfortunately it would have no medkits that I desperately need. It did have a Laser Rifle, normally an amazing find for Ammochain and I would have actually preferred it over the Nuclear Plasma Rifle initially, but as the latter is already FT modded, it'll outperform the Laser Rifle in most cases even without EE. I get a level of HR at this point, as with no medkits, no fire-resistant armor better than a B-modded Red Armor, and no radsuit, my only hope against the Cyberdemon is getting several successful dodges. The Laser Rifle does come clutch here as its accuracy lets me effectively fight back while having Run active and I can dodge most of his rockets while killing him before it er... runs out, but I do still get hit a couple times, including a high roll that leaves me at 27% health as I go into Hell... ...And the run looked like it was over, as Hell greets me with an immediate maze. After taking a barrage from a Mancubus on the other side of the river and being on the verge of death, I thought that was it. But I fight off the urge to Q+Y and try this dodgy looking camping spot as I slowly wait for enemies to wander onto the red starts 1 by 1 and plasmae them down, it's not often you can utilize enemies leaving no corpses on stairs. I level up and get Ironman for some desperate HP, as the +10 max HP does get added to your current HP. That camping spot actually pulls through, but if any Former had medkits they got dropped into the lava, and there was still one enemy left that I had to seek while on the verge of death after it would not show up no matter how much I mashed run -> wait. It ended up being a trapped Baron and after it wouldn't show up when waiting after shooting it, I just hammered away from far out of vision until it died as I couldn't risk walking into its vision when one acid ball could kill me. Unfortunately there was no medkits left behind nor any other helpful items, so after surviving this floor by the skin of my teeth, I had to enter Hell 2 at 14% health... and I enter an Arachnotron cave immediately surrounded in the open. The stairs are in sight, but not close enough for me to reach them before the two Arachnotrons wake up, and there's a high chance another would be down where the stairs are, so I thought the run was surely dead there. I don't throw in the towel yet and try to kill the two Arachnotrons before they wake up, I unfortunately misclicked the wrong direction on the first burst and so wasted a free shot, which then allowed the second Arachnotron to wake up before I killed it, resulting in it knocking me down to 4% health. After killing it, all I could do then was activate Run and pray no other Arachnotrons were near the stairs. There was one across the river that tried shooting me, but luckily every shot miss and I made it to the stairs to stave off near-certain death for one more floor. With only 2 HP remaining however, I needed a miraculous reversal of luck, and so I shambled into Hell 3 thinking if I should just go straight to Vampyre for my next attempt... when I then got exactly what I needed with an immediate uncontested Large Medkit. while the stairs are in view to boot. There was a Mancubus at the top, but he doesn't see me, and just like that I'm back in it. I briefly entertained sticking around on what seemed like a pretty easy island level, until I remembered that this floor had a deadly air event and I immediately get out of there, I can't throw away the lifeline given to me. Hell 4 would go well and I would finally get an Homing Phase, which I then use to get some good stuff from Limbo; unfortunately it teleported me to the Assault Shotgun corner, the corner I wanted least, but getting two fresh un-bulked Red Armors and a Large Medkit was still worth trading the Homing Phase for. Hell 5 would be another relative breather, but teases me with a Hatred Skull right after leaving Limbo, would have been nice to leave Limbo with a lot of berserk. The game decides I haven't had enough mazes and gives me yet one more on Hell 6. Taking it very carefully and with lots of camping, I do survive it with my last Medkit preserved, and I dip into Erebus to kill all the Pain Elementals + Lost souls to help me get one more Ironman level for more HP before the Mastermind. After getting through Hell 7 without getting any more medkits before fighting the Mastermind, I would find exactly the item I could ask most for at this point: a nuke to ensure a partial victory. The nuke would not be needed however, as the Nuclear Plasma Rifle I loaded up with the final few mods I found on the last couple floors would stunlock the Mastermind to death (20 damage is such a low flinching threshold... hopefully she gets the proposed difficulty-dependent flinching thresholds in future versions). And there it is, perhaps the greatest comeback I pulled off in DRL to get Inquisitor Diamond purely. This was the first attempt that made it past a Q+Y on the first two floors, but that was a very hard fought attempt. Granted I got some horrible luck throughout it, with the awful level generation, and some terrible item luck aside from the Exotic plasma rifles, including getting only one medkit in all of Hell (aside from a guaranteed one in Limbo), and never finding a single Agility Mod while playing the rapid fire mastery that has EE blocked. Winning such a formidable badge with such unideal luck though does make the victory all the sweeter. The most nasty aspect of this badge is that unlike how most DRL runs go, it still remains very difficult past Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab and runs with hours poured into them can still easily end up failing late in the game, as this run shown with how close it skirted near death throughout much of its second half. If anyone else gets inspired to attempt this badge in 0.9.9.7... just go Vampyre, Ammochain can viably win but Vampyre will make it so much less stressful. I hardly even got to benefit from Ammochain letting me carry extra medkits and armors around, when I spent the entire last 2/3rds of the game perpetually short on medkits. Well with all that said, here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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24
on: December 15, 2025, 18:41
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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With three days off from work, I decided to now get the awful grind that is 0.9.9.7's Centurial Angelic out of the way. Centurial Angelic isn't that much harder than Centurial Diamond, but the inability to save on Nightmare in DRL versions prior to 0.9.9.8 makes it awfully prohibitive to try going for, even when rushing it 666 floors still takes a really fucking long time, especially when there are so many damn enemies on each floor. Having to leave DRL running on my computer over the past two nights was very annoying. I also want to get Armorer Diamond out of the way and so have a good chance to double it up with Centurial Angelic here.
Well for the build, I just repeat the same Blademaster strat I used in my Centurial Diamond run, I don't care about breaking new ground here when I'm just trying to get this over with as quickly as I can. The only difference is I do get a second level of Ironman at the end since I figure I can rely enough on Napalm Barrels and face-rocketing with a 3P Rocket Launcher or especially 3P Napalm Launcher to trigger Berserker while I plan to use the Dragonslayer when I found it, and in hindsight I should have gotten a third level when the 3P Napalm Launcher could have reliably triggered Berserker still to keep me near perma-berserked until I got the Dragonslayer. I'm not writing up a walkthrough on this, so some notes:
And that's the run. Frustratingly the Subtle Knife never spawned, so I'm still a Subtle Knife short of getting Armorer Diamond, I can just hope it finally spawns in one of my runs for the remaining badges and so I don't need to speedrun more A666 playthroughs to get it. Overall yeah this badge is much more imposing because of the no save restriction, a few more people certainly would have won it if not for said save restriction, will be interesting to see though if this badge becomes more actually challenging than tedious in the newer DRL versions with the revamp that later A100/666 got (as well as now actually being able to save and so people that can't comfortably leave DRL running on their computers over the course of multiple days aren't automatically prohibited from getting this badge). Now here is the big ass mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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25
on: December 13, 2025, 18:57
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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The next Diamond I decided to go for in 0.9.9.7 was Lightfoot Diamond, which is one of the more common Diamonds with 11 people recorded winning it in 0.9.9.7, 3 of which did it purely and another 5 doubled it up with Lightfoot Angelic. I considered just going straight for Lightfoot Angelic, surely if you could get that you deserve the Diamond anyway right? But Archangel Of Light Travel does give you an even bigger speed boost, so it's not exactly "Lightfoot Diamond but harder" and thus I decided to get it purely first. Also the few extra inventory space does give me more flexibility of which build to use.
Speaking of which, the build. Generally people went one of four builds for this badge; masterless shotgun-centric Scout, masterless melee Scout stairdive (which works by just avoiding finishing off any enemies in melee), Ammochain, or Sharpshooter (which AoLT's speed boost also really helps the brutal early game of). I decided to go with Shottyhead for fun though to get really crazy firing speeds; the thing is with infinite ammo farming on N!, ammo is just not that serious of a concern, I just need a single secured Shotgunner to ensure I have the ammo to clear out any floor and fill out my inventory, while shotguns are plenty ammo efficient without SoB (which relatively barely helps shotguns anyway). I could hit a rough spot in Hell with some bad luck, but I'm so fast I should be able to just leave levels if need be until I find more ammo, and Shottyhead will be so powerful with the AoLT boost that any combat will be trivial (speed is something that's more powerful the more of it you have, at least until you hit the speed cap that is). With trait order, I do delay Shottyhead for Int2, something I would normally strongly recommend against (and often I go without Int2 entirely in my non-A100 Shottyhead runs), but the AoLT speed boost compensates for the lost of combat power that getting Int2 normally entails, while detecting powerups is a lot more valuable when I can only carry one or two medkits at a time, and enemy detection to avoid attrition damage is similarly more valuable when I may not always have the medkits on hand to heal, as well as saves me ammo with radar shooting whenever I do hit one of the aforementioned rough ammo patches. And unlike my other Shottyhead runs, I don't get Brute + Berserker; I was planning to in the lategame, berserked AoLT Shottyhead's firing speed would be incredible, but I couldn't justify getting it in the end without sacrificing Whizkid (and it also gave me insurance anyway from accidentally punching out a weak enemy I bump into, which I already lost too many Lightfoot Diamond runs to when beta testing it in the versions the badge was broken and I lost a Lightfoot Diamond in JHC near the very end from that). In the run itself, I got an incredible floor 2 for N! that gave me the perfect camping corpse disposal spot. Generally though, clearing floors wasn't really hard thanks to the AoLT speed boost, even a floor 4 maze was just more tedious than actually dangerous. Despite having to go in with limited ammo, I did Hell's Arena, which wasn't too bad, as with how fast you are you can limit most of the respawning and effortlessly kite enemies, while getting the Shell Box and Blue Armor were very nice. I would skip Unchained Court, as it would have been too tedious without the Rocket Launcher and I can't kill stuff in melee anyway, while it also has no Shotgunners and so I especially risk running out of ammo here if things went really badly. Military Base was an obvious stop and gave a much appreciated big EXP boost, though I could have easily done Phobos Lab too if I rolled it instead. Then came the Anomaly, which thanks to finding a Rocket Launcher on floor 7, I don't need to worry about outrunning the ambush, and with AoLT's speed boost, I'm able to effectively fight back and kill the Nightmare enemies in the open despite no Shottyhead yet. After an unremarkable Deimos 1, I would go into Hell's Armory, and in its weapon cache I found the best thing I could ask for, a Super Shotgun!. I was contemplating whether to just build an Elephant Gun or try to hold for building a Focused Double Shotgun, but this find settled it for me, neither. Unfortunately I got an Onyx instead of a Nano mod in the lab cache, so no AoLT-boosted Shottyhead with a Nano-Shrapnel Super Shotgun to trivially win the rest of the game damageless, but an Onyx mod isn't bad when it means I won't need to worry about my inability to store backup armors (unfortunately I already A-modded my Red Armor, so I had to wait a few more floors before I got Whizkid to put it on). I would skip the rest of the Deimos special levels after this; I had a Rocket Launcher for The Wall but I temporarily stopped carrying rockets to make room for the aforementioned Onyx mod and Deimos 3 just so happened to not have a single rocket ammo drop nor Revenant/Mancubus on it, City Of Skulls would have risked putting me in a bad ammo spot for little reward, and Spider's Lair has no shells whatsoever on it. After another free Cybie fight thanks for a Deimos 7 Invuln, Hell 1 would spawn another weapon that would be amazing for Shottyhead, the Jackhammer. Unfortunately with the inventory constraints and this being before 0.9.9.8 gave it a single-shot fire mode, I had to leave it behind; the Super Shotgun was more practical for being a lot more ammo efficient and no single-shot mode means it can't replace the Tactical Shotgun either. There was additionally a pair of Agility mods on this floor and a spare pair of Steel Boots, so I rebuilt Tactical Boots incase I found a third A mod to mod them (...but I forgot I didn't have WK2 yet and so was still unable to mod them farther, it didn't matter however as I never found any more A mods after this). Hell 2 gave me a funny floor, spawning me right next to a gasoline lever that would have been fun to hit, but I had no radsuits nor Homing Phase and so it would have been instant death if I hit it. This floor would also mark a point where I went through a drought of finding any Shotgunners nor a Shell box, and so by later Hell I finally faced a real ammo crunch that forced me to leave several floors early, which I couldn't always cleanly do, such as an island level spawning me in a room with a Hell Noble group and an Archvile + Mancubi group right outside it (though thankfully with Shottyhead I had no problem fighting my way out of it), while I got an Arachnotron cave immediately after I had to immediately flee (I could have also stayed and fought with Shottyhead, but it could have left me too crippled ammo-wise). I had to dip into Lava Pits too to escape, which put a big dent in my kill percent. Hell 7 would finally have a Shell Box, as well as a couple Shotgunners, I had enough ammo anyway to finish off the Mastermind and a clean path to the stairs, but I stayed to clear out one last level. It was then on my way to Dis, where the Mastermind was hopeless against a AoLT-boosted Shottyhead wielding a Super Shotgun. I have to admit this wasn't technically a first try, the first one I lost when I overextended near a Cacodemon vault on floor 2 while getting pincer'd by respawns that I then quit out of, but this was a second try win that was a pretty relaxing run overall with very few moments that remotely pressured me. Lightfoot Diamond might be a bit overly easy for a Diamond, but respawns no longer dropping ammo in 0.10-onward should give it the needed difficulty buff; being able to carry limited ammo just does not matter if you can farm infinite ammo whenever you want off of any enemy that drops ammo, and the unlucky Hell shell drought I got wouldn't have mattered if I had a plasma weapon on hand (or could have finished building my Tactical Rocket Launcher to better utilize all the rockets from Revenants and Mancubi). Now here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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26
on: December 12, 2025, 14:01
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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Since I've gotten pure Quartermaster Diamond over a year ago, and then the once-believed near-impossible in 0.9.9.7 Eagerness Anglic and Inquisitor Angelic, it was time I go for the last of the AoRA-related badges I don't have in 0.9.9.7, Quartermaster Angelic. Now this one gives a bit of a "reprieve" by allowing UV instead of only N!, and according to the Badge Hunters thread, three people won it in 0.9.9.7 (Tormuse, papilio, and lainuki), so it doesn't look exceedingly difficult by Angelic standards, there are several Diamonds that were won as or less frequently than this. 80% kills, while a lot, especially with a mere 2 and a half minutes on each floor, is still miles of leeway compared to 100%; unlike in Quartermaster Diamond attempts, you won't have runs ended because a single Imp or Lost Soul wandered off on the opposite side of the map. Still, that 2 and a half minute timer is strict, there's a very serious danger you don't find the stairs at all on every floor, especially when you spend time fighting enemies to rack up the kill count, so this is certainly an Angelic-level challenge.
For the build, I decided to go Blademaster yet again, especially as the prior three recorded runs were Gunrunner. Not getting Fin/Rel/SM will make Phobos a lot more difficult, but I'll be less dependent on Invulns in the later game to rack up the kills needed, and once I get Blademaster, I'll be able to do some safe kill farming on Pain Elementals to buff the kill count if needed, especially if I get it before City Of Skulls. However, the initial few attempts I tried went very rough; without Shotgun-boosting traits, and without HR2 (which I was putting off to try getting Berserker ASAP), I was forced to play much more aggressively with a strict time limit while being unable to adequately fight back, and the result was simply just repeatedly running out of armor and health, while I wasn't levelling up fast enough for my liking. This should work if I kept pushing through and eventually get a good run of luck, but after having a run that made to The Chained Court and still failed very quickly after, I got an idea that would maybe better facilitate this Blademaster strat; go for this badge on Nightmare! instead. This might sound crazy at first, especially in a version where respawns still count towards the kill counter, but with the doubled healing from Health Globes and Small Medkits, doubled armor repair from Armor Shards, crucially any Berserks I get lasting twice as long (as well as Invulns lasting twice as long for big Invuln rampages later), and levelling up significantly faster with the EXP boost + extra enemies, I figured Blademaster might actually have an easier time getting off the ground, and once it does, it can clear out floors even on N!, significantly buffing my kill count. Plus respawns hardly matter when you're spending only 2 and a half minutes on every floor, and any lucky Invulns I do get will eradicate respawns, so Invuln nuking will get me even bigger kill boosts than they would on UV. Plus again, 80% kills is not 100% or even 90%, so some respawns getting up as I exit a level won't matter all that much. When trying N!, I was getting even more brutal deaths early on, as trying to shotgun down or just run past a bunch of enemies in the open with their 50% increased attack rate meant I got quickly shredded, while I was repeatedly running into several Hell Knights in that always perilous floor 3 to 5 range or mazes that had several enemies in every direction. But these attempts went fast, and I was noticing the much greater impact from just finding a early single Berserk, as well as getting a lot more health from Health Globes/Small Medkits and how much faster I was levelling, so I kept at it. And in less than a dozen attempts (four recorded deaths + several more I quit out on), I was able to make it to The Chained Court, where it went off from there. At the start of the run, I of course open with HR, but I gun for Berserker after that; there's a case to be made that going for HR2 would be better, but you need to actually kill things very quickly, and Berserker is critical to doing that, especially with N! making it even more likely to spawn you next to large groups of enemies. There's also a case to be made to get a level of Finesse to get that critical early universal combat boost and when I'll want it later anyway, like I did in my Eagerness Angelic run, but any additional delay of Blademaster is painful when the rate you level up still isn't as great as you'll hope. Phobos Base Entry is mostly the same, except you can't run -> wait until the Formers come out and so if the Formers don't play nicely, I can take enough damage here to force a reset. Floor 2 I'll usually make it past, but it too can force a reset if I get a bunch of enemies on me without cover. I try to kill what I can but I'm not too fussed with kills here, just take your time to gather up shells since you can run out later when you won't have the time to gather up all ammo you see, and prioritize nabbing any armor or medkit you see since those are such a commodity early on. Getting a quickly accessible massacre lever here can be huge, you could reset until you get one since they aren't too uncommon, but I don't think it's worth doing so when the hardest floors are coming and your run will likely still end after all those resets to get a floor 2 massacre lever. You could also reset if you get any vaults on floor 2, normally a great thing but you have no hope you to clear them out at this point without a nearby Berserk, especially if they're Cacodemon vaults, and they'll put you in a big kill count hole early as vaults inflate the enemy count. You shouldn't be too fussed with your kill count this early though, and who knows, you might actually be able to get inside a vault for something good, or at least get more EXP than usual if you can kill some Cacodemons, which is more important than your kill count at this point. Speaking of which, I always went into Hell's Arena if I found its stairs in time; actually clearing Hell's Arena in AAoRA is just impossible without coming in with lots of berserk and getting extremely lucky wave spawns, but you can consistently clear out the first wave, getting you desperately needed EXP and fluffing your kill count a little (even if an enemy or two respawns, you can just ignore it and still come out positive in kill percentage). Then comes floors 3 to 5, your objective is to just survive and make it to The Chained Court. Pick up any safe kills after finding the stairs or fight when it's absolutely necessary, but you really don't want to get bogged down fighting the Hell Knights here if you can avoid it, as corner shooting a single Hell Knight down with just the basic Shotgun + no Shotgun-boosting traits can take up to a dozen seconds, and potentially over twice that if they found any armor or medkits. Try fighting a couple Hell Knights, and you'll likely see the "Warning! Explosion in 60 seconds!" message with most of the floor still unexplored. Leaving behind the EXP of killing a Hell Knight does suck, but you could shotgun down a group of Imps or Formers in less time than it takes to kill a single Hell Knight, while that group gives equal or more EXP and helps your kill count much more, so avoid isolated undamaged Hell Knights if they're not blocking the only way forward. In this particular run, I got a Lost Soul cave in this range, which is a double-edged sword as they are awful for EXP, but in this run I gladly took it, as it meant an easy floor I could kill everything on and safely gather up whatever supplies spawned on it. Then it got followed up with a Pinky cave that had a horizontal acid river, again not good for EXP but it's another level I could actually fully clear without serious danger and safely gather up whatever I find. With these two breather floors, I reach The Chained Court, which is especially huge on N! when you get 500 actions of berserk here instead of 250, and you get more bang for your buck EXP-wise when taking the opportunity to safely kill the Barons. The time limit is too strict to try killing everything, and I also don't have time to get the mods, if I played more aggressively I could have probably gotten the mods but my armor + health supply wasn't too great even after the aforementioned caves and so I didn't risk it. I also pick up the first level of Intuition at this point; it delays Blademaster a level, but Invulns will be spawning soon, and immediately knowing where they are is critical, while detecting other powerups is also very useful, so the delay is worth it. Unfortunately I got no Invuln on Phobos 7, and the last two floors before Anomaly don't go too great, I survive but I'm going into the dreaded N! Phobos Anomaly at only level 5 and having only HR1. Anomaly going from what would have been a relative breather into a big run ender is one other serious drawback of doing this on N!, and without Blademaster or Vampyre, trying to actually fight the N! Anomaly ambush in melee would be suicide. Fortunately as a Scout, HR1 is enough to outrun the ambush, unfortunately it's not fast enough for me to be able to close the door after getting through it and not fast enough to break LoS with the Nightmare Demons before I tire out as I reach the Bruisers. I nearly died, but I'm able to make it through after burning more medkits, and I make it to Deimos with only a single medkit in store. After that awful Anomaly, Deimos 1 would give me a big break by giving me a relatively close Invuln in a small rooms level, which I'm able to secure and safely camp out to nuke the level. Then the other big benefit of N! comes here as that Invuln not only lets me safely kill everything on the current floor, but the doubled duration means I can take a lot of it with me to the next floor to safely kill a bunch of enemies at the start there too, especially with Berserker. I get another Invuln a couple floors later for another easy floor clear + partial clear of the next floor. I unfortunately don't get Blademaster before City Of Skulls to get a big kill dump there, but I'm snowballing, and upon getting Blademaster + a rocket launcher by later Deimos, the run is nearly secured; I'm fast enough that I can actually clear floors within only 2 and a half minutes, I can stretch Invulns out very far, and Armor Shards repairing doubled on N! keep my Red Armors healthy so I can keep face rocketing to trigger Berserker and rocket jump around. For traits I get Juggler so I can rocket jump into enemies and immediately switch to a melee weapon, or occasionally to instantly swap to the Shotgun if there's an Imp or Former being annoying. Forgot to take a screenshot of my stats before entering of Tower Of Babel, but I had a kill rate of somewhere around ~75% going into Hell, not there yet but certainly within range for me to make up the kills needed for 80%. Hell 1 would greet me with another Invuln in a small rooms level, this one was near a barrel with lots of Hell Nobles and a Mancubi near it, but I'm able to secure it, then take it with me into Unholy Cathedral after waiting out the nuke to get the Longinus Spear with minimal damage. After another Invuln on Hell 2, Hell 3 would greet me with a Pain Elemental + Lost Soul cave, exactly the level I wanted to see. I'm able to go through it fast enough to farm the last Pain Elemental a bit, he is uncooperative as he kept trying to move into melee range instead of spawning Souls, I'm thinking I should have left a couple Elementals alive to make the farming more efficient, but after this floor I am over 80% kills (I also find a Sniper mod here and so am able to make a Plasmatic Shotgun for easy corpse disposing, though I didn't really need it at this point). Hell 5 would then give me an Onyx mod, not a game changer at this point since I had several healthy Reds and as mentioned the doubled Armor Shards can keep up with repairing them, but still nice to have. Hell 6 would give me a double Invuln near the red stairs (plus a third offscreen on the other side of the map), and after clearing out Hell 6 normally, I take these invulns with me into Mt. Erebus, which the additional kills weren't needed but I still want the Lava Elemental to pad out my Carmack kills for the Apostle rank. The invulns last so long, that with Blademaster and rocket jumping around, I'm able to clear Mt. Erebus and exit before the invuln runs out. Hell 7 was nothing of note, and with a Ripper I built on Hell 6, Carmack dies without being able to put any real fight. So overall, this took about a dozen attempts over the course of less than two hours, which is a pretty stark contrast to when pure Quartermaster Diamond took me over three times the amount of attempts over the course of several days. I wouldn't necessarily say this was easier than pure Quartermaster Diamond though, I would chalk up the difference to my improvement since then, not being as optimal with my trait selection (notably if I redid Quarter Diamond, I wouldn't have gotten Int2 and would have instead gotten Finesse, Reloader if playing a version after 0.9.9.8, or would have only delayed Blademaster for Int1), and some plain old lousy luck in those Quartermaster Diamond runs (I'll never forget how many attempts it took me to just find a Rocket Launcher by early Deimos...), so any aspiring players should definitely not skip getting Quartermaster Diamond before going for this badge. If anyone is going for Quartermaster Angelic though and are struggling with it on UV, perhaps try it on N!, especially if you're playing on 0.10-onward and so don't even need to worry about respawns negatively affecting the kill count. My sixth Angelic secured, I get the rank of Chaos Major General, joining Tormuse and papilio as the only players I believe to have verifiably achieved that rank. With that all said, here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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27
on: December 11, 2025, 08:37
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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With Shottyman and Marksman Diamond done, I decided to go for the last of the weapon-locked Diamonds with Berserker Diamond. According to the Badge Hunters thread, Berserker was one of the rarer Diamonds in 0.9.9.7, with only six people recorded winning it, and just three of which did it without Sereging it (papilio of course, appuru, and surprisingly, the namesake of Sereging did it purely himself). This is surprising to me, as Berserker Diamond doesn't look that particularly difficult in this version; the easiest way to beat Nightmare! is to just rush through the game with a melee build, which will work mostly the same in AoB, surviving Phobos just becomes more luck-based but not exceedingly so, and you lose rocket launchers for rocket jumping or self-triggering Berserker, which sucks but isn't too bad a handicap with how strong lategame melee already is. There's a 60% minimum kill requirement, but that's so low you should reach it naturally unless you are just rushing to the stairs as fast as possible, and even if you do end up a bit short, it's trivial to farm a respawn or Pain Elemental for a bit to make up the kills needed before finishing the game. When looking at older versions, it does appear Berserker Diamond was won a lot more often, with over a dozen different players winning it prior to 0.9.9.7, so was there something in particular that made it more difficult in this version even with Sereging being able to easily cheese it?
For the build, it's nothing ground-breaking here, just good old Vampyre, which is near immortal on N! without you fucking up majorly. Maybe getting Fin2 and WK2 before Bru3, Badass 2, and any TaN might be seen as a little unusual, but that's my usual trait order for Vampyre regardless (Finesse does more for DPS than more Brute does after Brute 2 when you got the Chainsaw and is crucial to triggering Berserker faster from hitting enemies, while WK lets me buff my defenses more than TaN does while also buffing my offense and movement speed). The only other maybe unusual thing is not getting any Ironman, which is also the norm for me when playing any build that relies on Berserker, especially as the Marine when just a single level of it means Archvile zaps will no longer trigger it and Mancubi/Revenants almost never will. As inferred earlier about the more luck-based Phobos, the early game is the hardest part of this badge by far. Phobos Base Entry is easy enough, but even floor 2 can be unsurvivable if you get spawned in an open level with little cover near a bunch of enemies, especially if you get plopped near Pinkies before you get Brute 2, and I indeed had a few resets on Phobos 2. This get exacerbated on N!, when the much more aggressive enemies means a squad of Imps or Formers will shred you fast in the open, and of course respawning is extra bad when health is a very finite resource at this point while you can't really kill enemies without avoiding damage. The natural inclination might be to just dive for the stairs, but you should reset until you get a floor 2 with a good corpse disposal spot that lets you clear it without depleting most of your resources, as you really want to hit level 3 for Berserker before advancing or at least get no more than a few kills away from it. When you get to the floor 3-5 range where Hell Knights and Cacodemons start showing up, and caves and the ever dreaded mazes can spawn, you should just dive as fast to The Chained Court as you can; even if you miss out on some levels you're much more likely to die in this level range trying to clear them out than you would be in later Phobos with the Chainsaw a couple levels lower. I did get a very fortunate floor 3 in this run though, not only spawning me in a room with only a single doorway that I could safely camp and kill everything in while also not having that many Hell Knights, but it also had a whopping three Berserks, allowing me to take a huge berserk stack with me into the next floor, that turned out to be a nasty warehouse level with the stairs on the complete opposite end of the map, something I probably would not have survived without going in with so much berserk. I reached The Chained Court in floor 5 not long after, and it is tempting to just grab the Chainsaw + all the berserks at once and make a dive for it, but I do kill everything here, since it's mostly safe EXP and those mods are very valuable (of which I get a Technical + Bulk mod, I immediately slap the T mod on the Chainsaw as the greater DPS boost and being able to trigger Berserker faster is more important than a bit more damage, while I put the B mod on a damaged Blue Armor to help me survive a bit longer to Vampyre). Reaching this point doesn't guarantee safety, my first attempt that made it this far did come extremely close to death on floor 6 until I hit the crucial level 6 for Vampyre right when I killed a Baron and was able to heal myself back up with a nearby Pain Elemental, but in this run I would reach Vampyre shortly after Chained Court without being in a serious danger, at which point you basically have the game won unless you do something catastrophically stupid (foreshadowing...). I rolled Phobos Lab for the floor 7 special level and decided to do it, meleeing Nightmare Demons is brutal but Berserker can allow me to do it as long as I don't have several in melee range before Berserker kicks in, and I can abuse a respawn to fully heal whenever. The level just takes a while but the mods, extra Large Medkit, and fresh Blue Armor are worth it (unfortunately I don't get the A mod I really wanted for a build with no HR...). Then it's the Phobos Anomaly, a pivotal moment for any N! run. I mentioned earlier that you should never die with Vampyre on N! without doing something really fucking stupid, and well, I actually lost my first run that made it past Phobos 2 here, because I held off on grabbing the Large Health Globes and tried running back to the opening room to nab them after triggering the ambush, but doing that with no speed boosts is just not viable whatsoever and I died not even particularly close to the room. In this second attempt that made it this far, after already having a bit of berserk from the Large Health Globe at the end of Phobos Lab, I decide to immediately grab both Large Health Globes without grabbing the Medkits or Red Armor first, and then immediately run to the ambush; thanks to doubled powerups on N!, the berserk last long enough to make it to the ambush, and with Berserker + Vampyre, I am able to kill all the nightmare enemies, after which I go back to get the Red Armor and medkits left behind, quickly run to the Bruisers, kill them, and then leave. The rest of the run isn't too interesting to do this walkthrough style on, so I'll just recap some highlights:
And that's the run, with Hell 7 being nothing of note and then Carmack going down as easily as you would expect to an endgame melee build with a Ripper. Altogether this only took two attempts that didn't reset in Phobos 2, and if you count those than that just adds a few more. Yeah a lot more people should have won Berserker Diamond in 0.9.9.7, maybe most of the people that won it prior just kept transferring their player data forward and so never went for it again, and the new blood in 0.9.9.7 were too spooked by the thought of N! AoB? Can't think of any other reason for why so much more people won Marskman Diamond than Berserker Diamond, when the former is certainly a lot more difficult. I would also say getting the Gargulec Cross in UV is harder than getting Berserker Diamond, since in the former you have to kill everything in the early Phobos levels and can't just rush to Chained Court. Hell you might even be able to make a case that Berserker Platinum is harder if you just rush through them, since N!'s doubled powerups and doubled healing, as well as leveling you up faster, probably makes it easier to rush through the game, while Berserker Platinum's kill requirement is a little more relevant than Berserker Diamond's functionally irrelevant kill requirement. Anyway here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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28
on: December 08, 2025, 05:07
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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Next up in my 0.9.9.7 completion, I decided to go for Marksman Diamond. This is one of the most straightforward Diamonds on the surface, you just simply have to make it to Dis and kill the Mastermind in Angel of Marksmanship, no kill percent or additional stipulations required. However, Pistols really suck in 0.9.9.7, between their extremely pitiful early game, lack of a guaranteed upgrade weapon, having masteries that all range from heavily flawed to outright horrendous, their big midway powerup trait (Dualgunner) tending to be counterproductive without certain rare infinite ammo pistols, being far more trait intensive than other builds, being especially weak against crowds until you at least get SoG4, getting less mileage out of powerups and running due to using more cumulative actions to kill enemies, and their supposed saving grace of an OP lategame not actually being all that much stronger than what most other builds offer (especially compared to melee builds, which have a similarly rough start but amp up way faster and are actually super dominant in the lategame). These problems get amplified on Nightmare, and N! exposes another problem of AoMr in your inability to effectively corpse dispose, since you won't be able to just blow up corpses unless you find a rare Firestorm mod to make a Demolition Pistol or find the even rarer Anti-Freak Jackal, and Pistols struggle to utilize corpse stacking or knocking enemies into fluids with their unreliable knockback unless you get Sharpshooter or several levels of SoG + SoB. As a result, Marksman Diamond is actually one of the harder Diamonds, and while the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread lists 11 players winning it, only four of them did it purely (Sylph, papilio, Tormuse, and llama of doom, the former three of which are revered as among DRL's most accomplished players, and llama in his mortem claims it took him nearly 100 attempts over the course of 3 months to get his win).
So first thing, deciding what build I'm going to actually use. As mentioned, the Pistol masteries all have serious cons to them; Sharpshooter is the easily the best of the lot and is actually one of the strongest mastery effects in the game when you get it, but the excessive requisite levels of EE and inability to pick up SoB gives it an abominably difficult Phobos, while Sharpshooter isn't so strong as to guarantee winning if you survive long enough to get it. You also are going to need a level of HR at least by Phobos Anomaly to get through it without getting lucky with a Phase Device or floor 7 Invuln, which Sharpshooter is going to have a very hard time getting (you're going to need to basically kill everything and do all the special levels to reach level 8 before Anomaly, which Sharpshooter's early game is going to make very difficult to do, and any delay of getting Sharpshooter to get HR sooner will seriously jeopardize your chances of surviving the brutal late Phobos and early Deimos floors). Then Gun Kata offers a slightly less brutal early game and has HR2 as part of its prereqs, but Gun Kata itself is a rather underwhelming and finicky mastery effect, and the pistols themselves are seriously lacking in power without Sharpshooter or SoB (which Gun Kata blocks) until you get SoG5, while Gun Kata additionally requires a lot more ancillary traits just for a lategame that is still not up to snuff. And last but certainly least is Bullet Dance, which writing down all the problems to would make this OP way too long, but I'll simply note that it blocks Hellrunner, and that alone makes it unviable, as with no access to rocket jumping, it is simply going to get walled hard by N! Phobos Anomaly without Phase Device or powerup luck. With this all in mind, I go for the unconventional pick with Scavenger, even with this being the pre-buff 0.9.9.7 version that could only dissemble ranged weapons rather than being able to dissemble any equipment. The plan behind it is I play it like a pseudo-Sharpshooter build, but I don't need to pick up a third level of EE and I can pick up levels of SoB that make the early game less hellish, while I can also more easily fit in the aforementioned mandatory level of HR to escape the Anomaly, and then while I will have a much weaker midgame, I can close the gap lategame with the SoB levels and extra mods I get, particularly the rare mods, including giving me a much higher chance at procuring a Demolition Pistol for corpse disposal. With trait order, I immediately gun for SoG3 at the start, this is nonnegotiable as pistols are worth shit all without it. I then follow it up with a level of SoB, even just this one level of SoB makes a significant difference as the chance of knockback per hit with a P-modded pistol doubles from 12% to 24%, significantly increasing the chance of killing bigger enemies before they reach me and helping me knockback enemies into fluids, and it significantly increases the chance of me one-shotting Formers from 40% to 60%. The order of traits after this will then depend on the state of the run; I go for a level of EE after, as that first level of EE is very helpful when pistols do miss an annoyingly high amount without it and it'll make shooting while running a lot more viable, then it's the first level of WK to get more than one mod on my pistols (particularly to get a 2P pistol, which increases the aforementioned knockback chance to 41.7% and Former one-shot chance to 72.2%), then it's the mandatory HR a level earlier than I wanted since I rolled Phobos Lab and it'll be needed there if I want to actually complete it, and then it's SoB2, which aside from the farther DPS increase, now bumps up my knockback chance with a 2P Pistol to 58.3% (i.e. I'll now be knocking back an enemy more often than average between their moves) and the Former one-shot chance to 83.3%. After that, it's the second level of WK to start building assemblies without worrying about losing the inability to mod them later and finishing Scavenger with EE2 -> Int1 -> MSv, and immediately maxing out SoG once I get Scavenger. The traits beyond that aren't very important, but I get Int2 to make the lategame less of a slog, a third level of SoB, and finally a level of Reloader to help with the reloading bottleneck before Carmack. For the beginning of the run, I simply reset until the bonus starting mod is an Agility mod. People usually do this so they can make a Speedloader Pistol immediately with the Technician's starting Technical mod, but I do this to guarantee I'll have A-modded Boots at least before Anomaly, since it's so important you have the running speed to comfortably outrun the Nightmare enemies there, while it's possible to find no Agility mods in Phobos, especially if you're unable to beat the special levels (one of which, Phobos Lab, you're probably not going to be able to beat without having A-modded Boots prior to it). With the starting Tech mod, I just immediately slap it on my starting Pistol and have no plans to turn it into a Speedloader; the greater firing speed is simply far more valuable at this point of the game and Ammochain boxes can fix the reloading issue in meaningful fights later, while before I get an Ammochain box, I can swap to another fully loaded Pistol in my prepared slot if needed, which takes only 0.2 seconds more than reloading the Speedloader would. I'll additionally be able to turn that T-modded Pistol into an Energy Pistol, Demolition Pistol, or a Storm Bolter if I wanted to later, so even if you don't have Scavenger and thus would be able to get that Tech mod back, you should immediately Tech mod your starting pistol without worrying about "wasting" it. Strategy on Phobos Base Entry doesn't really change, though you're less likely to get both medkits as you can't use a Shotgun to nigh-guarantee one-shotting the other Shotgunner with a medkit. Floor 2 isn't too bad but the annoyance of being pistol-locked already starts, at least the EXP boost of N! means you'll just need to kill a few enemies to hit level 2, which you direly need ASAP before you try taking on any Pinkies or large enemy groups. Hopefully enough enemies spawn for you to hit level 3 before the end of it because you're gonna really need SoG3 before entering Hell's Arena or going to floor 3, in this run I finished just short but luckily only needed one more kill to hit level 3. I then go into Hell's Arena; even if you don't clear it you should almost always go in and do at least the first wave for the mostly safe EXP. I however do go for the Hell's Arena clear, it's very difficult and even more unbearably tedious in N! AoMr, but getting that guaranteed early Power Mod and Ammochain box is worth it if you're able to do it, even burning all your Small Medkits in the process won't be too bad as the Supercharge + Large Medkit + Blue Armor you get will compensate for that. I do take a big beating though, even when going in with a Berserk near the stairs. There's then the infamous difficulty spike upon entering floor 3 when Hell Knights start appearing and Cacodemons + Pain Elementals follow soon after; whenever I enter a new floor at this point I equip the Ammochain box, as it's crucial to surviving any rough level starts that plop me near these big enemies or the big Pinky group can start appearing on Floor 4. When I establish a foothold in a mostly safe spot, I then unequip the Ammochain to preserve it, you shouldn't waste it when shooting isolated enemies safely behind a corner. If running lowish on health, I'll also equip the Blue Armor when entering stairs, but will similarly unequip it when no longer threatened by Hell Knights or Cacodemons to preserve it, especially as Armor Shards don't start spawning until floor 5 and I may not get another healthy Blue Armor throughout Phobos. I get a pretty fortunate floor 5 that had a big water river running through it to make corpse disposal less of a hassle, and it contained a little Cacodemon vault that was not only easy to clear out, but also had a Power Mod and Homing Phase. With that second Power mod, I go for WK1 instead of getting SoB2, since a P2 Pistol with SoG3 + SoB1 has a slightly higher knockback chance than a P1 Pistol with SoG3 + SoB2, while it also keeps the T-modded Pistol I have in my offhand less likely to knockback for when I want something to die on the spot it's standing, and that Homing Phase will give me a mulligan when I try the difficult special levels. Speaking of which, next up is the Unchained Court, which most would probably advise against trying in N! AoMr, but it is doable. You'll need to eat some acid balls while berserked to destroy the Baron corpses, or otherwise try to knock them into the lava as you kill them or finagle them into the doorways without getting hit too much. The Arena Master himself won't be too much of a problem if you can save at least one berserk for him, as you can win the damage race and kill him with a pistol before the berserk runs out (keep in mind it's better to fight him from a distance than up close, his attack rate will be much slower when he is zapping you and so he actually has a higher DPS in melee range, especially when his zap isn't as damaging as a typical Archvile zap). Cleanup of the Formers after though will be very annoying, especially if the Arena Master and Barons destroyed most of the center building, if you can't safely door camp you'll have to keep killing the Formers as they revive until you can knock them back into the lava, but if you still have your tactics intact you can use the Arena Master's Staff to gib a couple of them. Given the difficulty of eliminating the Barons and the sheer tedium with disposing the corpses in N! AoMr, I don't blame anyone if they rather only clear Hell's Arena or give up the guaranteed early Power mod + Ammochain from the Arena to get the easy Chained Court, even if it means they would have to do a few more resets to get through Phobos (this will be way more bearable in 0.10 and beyond though, where Pistols have reliable knockback and clearing special levels was changed to kill each distinct enemy once rather than needing everything dead simultaneously). After some standard tough late Phobos floors, I rolled Phobos Lab for the floor 7 special level instead of Military Base. About anyone would probably advise that going into N! Phobos Lab in AoMr is suicide, especially not without HR2 and Tactical Boots, but with several Large Medkits and my running speed exceeding the crucial 0.71 seconds benchmark by a comfortable amount (the speed of Nightmare Demons), I decide to give it a shot, especially since I could always Homing Phase out if I truly got in an unsurviveable position, and no Invuln nor Berserk spawned on Phobos 7 anyway to use for Phobos Anomaly. I did get in a terrible spot early on when a respawned Sergeant opened the door I was trying to camp out some Nightmare Demons behind, I survived it but had to burn both Small Medkits when I wanted to save them for restoring running (fortunately the back Nightmare Demon was already almost dead and so immediately died in the acid). Phobos Lab ends up taking a while but I'm able to clear it, not without burning a lot of medkits and taking a whopping 280 damage on the level though. Then it's Phobos Anomaly, where with HR and A-modded Boots, I'm able to outrun the ambush, and then I simply run pass the Bruisers since even with a Radsuit on I can't quite beat them in an open damage race and getting pincer'd by the Nightmare enemies would end me, though I still take a large chunk of damage and lose my bid at 100% kills, which sucks but it's not worth trying to kill the N! Anomaly enemies in AoMr. Deimos would very conveniently start me right next to a massacre lever, not as helpful as it would have been in Phobos but permanently eliminating a bunch of Formers and weakening the bigger enemies still gave me a nice breather of a floor. I rolled Hell's Armory for the Deimos 1 special level, which I don't mind for another relative breather, and I indeed clear it out without having to expend any medkits after using a radsuit to get the Supercharge. The weapon cache unfortunately didn't have an Exotic pistol, and the big reward of a Sniper mod is ok but was what I wanted least, I just put it on a spare Pistol while I turn my 2P pistol into an Energy Pistol and prime my T1 pistol with another T + P mod to eventually make it into a Demolition Pistol. With the P-modded Energy Pistol and sufficient levels of SoG + SoB, I'm able to go through The Wall, which I do by shooting a one-tile wide tunnel at the top, where I then wait until I see a Baron pop up near the end, shoot it, retreat behind the corner, make sure I finish off the Baron diagonally in front of me, and then stand on the Baron corpse while I wait for another Baron to pop up so it cannot get up. If one of the Archviles pop up, I shoot at it and then once I see it raise its arms, I move back behind the wall to avoid the zap and have it blow up the Baron corpse for me. Repeating this until I get the last Baron as a corpse, I then go retrieve the Backpack + the Missile Launcher for later Scavenging and wait for the respawned Baron to come near this area, where I can then finish it off in the doorway to get rid of the final Baron corpse. I would enter City Of Skulls after this to keep the Explorer Pin intact, but I don't release the Lost Souls, as I didn't want to have to risk burning my Homing Phase that I would need to not die in Halls Of Carnage. And indeed I would roll Halls Of Carnage on Deimos 6, where after retrieving the first mod with the aid of a berserk, I just Homing Phase to the stairs, grab the BFG to use a cell backpack, and then wait on the stairs until the lava catches up, but immediately descend once I saw a Baron in the lava staring me down and knowing the Nightmare Cacos were around to pop up at any moment. While I didn't really need the Backpack from The Wall, getting the Missile Launcher there and my Scavenger strat would pay off, as upon finally getting Scavenger on Deimos 6 and dissembling a couple non-Pistol exotic weapons I had, dissembling the Missile Launcher would net me a Firestorm mod, that I immediately use to make a Demolition Pistol. The very next floor though would have a random Firestorm mod right next to a Unique, teasing me for getting Scavenger just to make a Demolition Pistol one floor early (unfortunately you can't put Firestorms on explosive weapons with a radius smaller than 3 for some asinine reason in this version, so I can just slap that second Firestorm on my BFG to maybe make a Biggest Fucking Gun later, or rather a Biggest Fucking Cellpack). That Unique was a Railgun though, so Scavenger does pay off definitively by getting me a second Sniper mod and thus allowing me to use a very useful 2S Pistol for unobstructed out-of-vision shooting. Hell 1 would have a Mega Buster that I then dissemble into... a third Sniper, which you can apply up to three Snipers on a single weapon, but in this version the third Sniper does nothing, so this was a useless drop. Once I get the Demolition Pistol and 2S Pistol alongside SoG4 and 5, the run becomes much easier, though it still had heart-stopping moments like me accidentally stepping into a Commando's view and eating a full plasma volley that nearly kills me. I go into the Cathedral for Explorer but leave instantly, and then I go into the Vaults that is trivial to clear, while it too pays off with a Trigun. I have the dilemma to keep the Trigun as a much stronger pistol for in-vision enemies than the other pistols I have on or scavenge it for the guaranteed Nano mod; I decided to keep it, since I figure it's too late to build something with the Nano mod that would be better than having the Trigun itself. The game isn't going down easy after this, with Hell 4 being a Pain Elemental cave (it had a Hell Staff that I can't dissemble but bring along with me), Hell 6 being a maze with a lot of barrels, and Hell 7 being yet another barrel level. I would also venture into Limbo, and upon seeing a bunch of Archviles in vision at the start, I contemplate using the Hell Staff to try getting me out immediately... or stick around and try clearing it. And after successfully clearing out the starting island, I would use the Demolition Pistol to weed out the enemies on the other islands before raising the bridges (since the explosions would hurt several bunched up enemies and launch them into the lava), while then taking advantage of the 2S Pistol to shoot enemies out of vision off the bridge into the lava (or sometimes used the Energy Pistol to save ammo after farming an Arachnotron for cells). This process took a long time but eventually I'm able to kill every last one of them. Explorer is then secured by being able to freely enter The Lava Pits, though I clear it too even without a Radsuit or lava immune boots, taking advantage of the Hell Staff to get me across the lava where I then have the overabundance of Radsuits in this version of Lava Pits to get me back safely. Finally, Carmack, as usual in this version, is a pushover, as I can keep hammering away at him and his spawns with the Demolition Pistol after he knocks me out of vision. Well damn, that was a big writeup, this was a long and pretty excruciating run, belying it only being my second attempt that didn't reset at Phobos Base Entry (the first made it to Deimos, but I fucked up in Unchained Court by trying to wait for an almost dead Arena Master to die in lava instead of finishing him off, forgetting that all Viles were bugged to be immune to fluids in this version, getting me hit with a zap without berserk and destroying most of the central building, a mistake that lost me two large medkits and put me in a hole I never recovered from that was followed by nasty mazes on Phobos 6 and Deimos 1, and me fruitlessly trying to fight the Bruisers instead of just running past them, with me ultimately throwing against the Revenants on Deimos Lab). Pistols are just so bad before 0.10... there are few Diamonds I think will end up being more unpleasant than this one, and even if several of the remaining Diamonds end up being harder, I'll probably enjoy the process of going for them more. I also kick myself for not taking the opportunity to Angel Arm a half dozen times at the end with the Lava Element active, could have gotten the Fallout Platinum Cross out of the way and get me one step closer to Heroic Diamond. Well here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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29
on: December 05, 2025, 08:31
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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For my next 0.9.9.7 Diamond, I decided to go for Reaper Diamond, which according to the Badge Hunters thread, is one of the rarest Diamonds, with only three players recorded to have won it, being felttippen, Tormuse, and Icy (and papilio claimed to have won all Diamonds but Arena Diamond and the two grinding ones in Technician/Armorer, which I believe him though he never posted his Reaper Diamond mortem that I can find). None of these runs did it pure either, with felttippen and Icy mixing AoCn with AoMC to get it, and Tormuse mixed it with AoB, which notably starts you with a Chainsaw when mixed with AoCn. Now is this because Reaper Diamond was actually one of the hardest Diamonds? Ehhhhh....
Well the process of beating Mortuary or Limbo in Angel of Confidence isn't all that much harder, as you'll only be a couple levels weaker by the time you reach it if you kill most enemies along the way and you still get to access all the Deimos special levels that have the guaranteed rewards critical to beating Mortuary/Limbo. The difficulty of this badge comes however from getting said rewards from the Deimos special levels without all the levels and equipment you would have gotten from Phobos, most notably you only get a single floor of preparation now before Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab. This still won't be that big of a hurdle though if you just play a melee build; even with just a Combat Knife, you'll have little issue beating the Shamblers once you get Berserker, you just might need to reset a few times to get a floor 1 that can be cleared and not deplete all your medkits, then Vampyre or Blademaster will have a completely free time in City Of Skulls/Abyssal Plains, would be fast enough to easily handle N! Halls Of Carnage without a Homing Phase, and they'll of course have a free Unholy Cathedral as well to get the Spear or Scythe. Given how much I have used melee builds in 0.9.9.7, and will continue to do so with 0.9.9.7's relative lack of compellingly viable options for most Diamond/Angelic badges, I wanted to try getting Reaper Diamond first without using a melee build. For this, I decided to go with Ammochain, since if I'm not going Berserker, my best shot at beating the Shambler(s) after a single floor would be with rapid fire, and I also don't see myself going with Ammochain for much if any of the remaining Diamonds/Angelics (maybe Inquisitor Diamond or the Lightfoot badges, and that's it). If I was forced to reset an annoying amount when trying to beat the Shambler(s) here without a melee build, I was ready to just go play melee and get it over with. In the first attempt, I got a Deimos 1 with a convenient river and immediate accessible Berserk Pack but no good cover, and so I can kill everything on it but not without using up all my Medkits and not getting any back. Hell's Armory spawned and I was able to exploit the old "camp in the first north building" tactic to kill all the enemies with little damage, and then the weapon cache had a Laser Rifle, perhaps the best find for Ammochain and so I should have maybe just left the level here. With a Radsuit in stock from the prior floor that meant I could get the Supercharge, I decided to release the Shambler and try retreating back to the Supercharge, where I could then fight him in all that lava with Supercharged health. However I would get bad luck with the teleports, having to burn my running midway and getting brought near death as he got a good amount of hits on me, and then tragically he would end up killing me only one tile away from the Supercharge... In the second attempt, I would get a Pinkies + Lost Souls cave for Deimos 1. This is very bad EXP wise, but the floor was really easy and so I didn't need to burn any Medkits, while I also got another Large Medkit on it with no Formers nor Nobles to steal it. I get Hell's Armoy again and after leading off with Fin -> SoB2, I decided to deviate farther from Ammochain's prereqs and get Juggler. This paid off, as after farming a Commando for a ton of Plasma Rifles, I exploit the Juggling Overcharged Plasma Rifles trick to kill the Shambler without getting hit. Unfortunately I did get hit quite a bit at the start of the level, so no Shambler's Head, and farther unfortunately the weapon cache had nothing useful in it. I get a Sniper Mod for the big reward, and rather than making a Plasma Shotgun, I decide to save it for a Hyperblaster, as that mostly fixes Ammochain's big flaw of no EE. While the weapon cache was a letdown, I ended up finding an Assault Shotgun on Deimos 2 anyway, so that's a great general find to helping me just survive through the game. With wanting to make the Hyperblaster ASAP, I decide to go for getting WK2, which would put Ammochain off all the way until level 12, but I need a more reliable rapid fire weapon when I have no EE and I don't want to hoard all the mods I have until then when I need inventory space for the upcoming Skulls and other useful stuff. The next special level is The Wall, which with a Rocket Launcher found on Deimos 2, I'm able to go in and clear it easily. I reach WK2 there and so I'm able to build the Hyperblaster plus slap the Sniper Mod on it. It is then City Of Skulls, which with a PPT Assault Shotgun and still having the Shell Box from Armory intact, is also easily beaten, while I get one of each Skull; I obviously take the Hatred Skull, being the most useful item for Mortuary/Limbo by far, but I also take a Blood Skull, since it would allow me to gib the corpses around the Nuclear BFG without risking destroying it nor having to use the aforementioned Hatred Skull there (which I would much rather pop immediately). The normal Deimos floors weren't particularly remarkable up to this point, with me getting an unusual high amount of small rooms levels, but in Deimos 6 I would find a second Sniper mod. Unfortunately I'm not playing a Technician in 0.9.9.8 or later, where I then could have gotten WK3 and put a second Sniper on my Hyperblaster to blast away at out-of-vision enemies as much as I want, but it's still very nice to build a Plasmatic Shotgun with a spare Power Mod I had lying around in my inventory just to make corpse disposing in Nightmare less tedious. For the next special level, I was really hoping I got Spider's Lair, as aside from being much easier on N! than Halls Of Carnage, the latter level simply would have been way too dangerous for a build with no HR, only A-modded Steel Boots, no speed-boosting armor, and while I had no Homing Phase to just zip immediately to the BFG. I could have maybe done it with lots of rocket jumping, but even if that worked, I probably would have severely burned through my armors and medkits doing that + getting through the Nightmare enemies in the maze, so I was going to just skip it and accept doing Mortuary/Limbo without the BFG if Halls spawned. Fortunately it was Spider's Lair that spawned, which I was able to go in and clear for the easy BFG. At this point, it's just making it to Mortuary/Limbo now. Cybie goes down without much of a fight, the first few Hell floors are unremarkable other than me finally getting Ammochain, and I skip Cathedral as I'm unable to beat it with what I have (an Invuln spawned on Hell 1 but no nuke), while I then skip the Vaults as I didn't even have a Phase Device to try gambling and I didn't want to throw the 100% kills I had going by only partially clearing it. In Hell 4 I would get a rather nasty frozen event in a maze, but thanks to the S-modded Hyperblaster and juiced up Assault Shotgun, I'm able to fight without good cover and kill everything without burning Medkits. In that maze I at last then find I get Mortuary, the much harder of it and Limbo in this version, and I'm thoroughly prepared for it. In Mortuary, I employ my usual opener of immediately popping a Hatred Skull, Hyperblaster down an Archvile blocking the way, then rocket jump to the eastern area, shoot some BFG blasts to blow up most of the corpses in the right area, rocket jump farther right, pop the Blood Skull to destroy the corpses around the Nuclear BFG and then rocket jump to the Nuclear BFG. With the Nuclear BFG secured, I then rocket jump back to the western side of the map, blow up most of the corpses there with the BFG that haven't gotten up yet while berserk + P-modded Red Armor lets me tank the hits from all the enemies around, and then rocket jump back out to the foothold I had set up on the eastern side. With this successful opening that takes out most of the corpses, Mortuary maxes out with no more than a few dozen enemies up at once, at which point it's a fairly easy mop up and I finish N! Mortuary with less than 100 damage taken. I could just kill myself at this point and get Reaper Diamond, but I finish out the run and go for the full win to kill Carmack for good measure (and to help build towards Apostle rank, which I'm not so far from now). With Reaper Diamond, I'm also halfway towards getting all the Diamonds in 0.9.9.7. Overall, yeah Reaper Diamond doesn't seem it was really that hard, especially if you just do it with a melee build, cheese it by mixing AoCn with AoMC, or cheese it with Whisper Of Death spam. Is its rarity a matter of people just being overly spooked by the thought of taking on N! Mortuary with a bit less preparation? Way more people should have won this badge. Anyway here is the mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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30
on: December 01, 2025, 23:08
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| Started by Omega Tyrant - Last post by Omega Tyrant | ||
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With having two days off from work, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get Centurial Diamond out of the way (as well as Dervis' Medallion to build towards Heroic Diamond, of which I'm now 7 medals shy from). It's not that hard by Diamond standards (this is before 0.10 greatly enhanced later game A100 and so lategame A100 here largely devolves into a nonstop barrage of VMRB hordes that are more tedious to get through than actually dangerous for a lategame A100 player), but since 0.9.9.7 still disallowed you from saving on Nightmare, you really want a good amount of time to set aside for it, lest you'll be leaving DRL running on your computer overnight or when you're away.
For the build, I just went with yet another Blademaster. I was thinking doing something more unique than the other recorded Centurial Diamond runs, but given the aforementioned inability to save and not wanting to leave the game on overnight, I just went with the build that would get me through the game fastest. When it came to trait order, I do lead off with getting Finesse -> Juggler and push Blademaster back in the process, since having Juggler really helps for an early game that is substantially harder without the guaranteed loot from the special levels, while the lack of a guaranteed Chainsaw means Blademaster won't be quite as strong until later anyway. Unlike in most of my other runs, I do often get two levels of Intuition in A100 mainly to speed the game pace up, but I don't pick it up here until halfway into my traits, as I wanted to get in a strong place combat-wise first before picking up the Intuition levels. And then as usual for my Berserker runs, I avoid getting Ironman to not mess with my Berserker procs. When it comes to the run itself, I was planning to stair dive at some point as I wanted to get this done in a single sitting, and so in one of the Phobos floors I let two Pinkies go on a floor that would have been more annoying than it was worth to destroy their corpses. However I did get too tired and so did end up just leaving the game running overnight. I came to regret letting those early Pinkies go, as after returning back to the game I ended up getting in a groove that saw me killing nearly everything anyway and so narrowly missed out on getting the only 100% N! A100 run in 0.9.9.7 (the remaining six missed kills must have been enemies that got back up right when I went down stairs, there were some corpses I didn't bother destroying since the chance at 100% kills was already lost). Guess I'll just need to settle for the Centurial Diamond mortem that came closest to 100% :p Some notes about the run: * This run had an unusual shortage of Bulk mods for much of it, not being able to make the ever reliable Tactical Rocket Launcher until floor 43. Then when I decided to make a Nanofiber Red Armor not long after that when I had some stretches without Armor Shards that endangered my armor supply, I couldn't find another Bulk mod to make it until floor 68. * No Uniques spawned at all until floor 44, where it was then just the lowly pre-buff Necroarmor. The second half of the run would have a large amount of Uniques though, including the Laptop Boots on floor 65 that I held onto just in case... which then paid off when I got Malek's armor on floor 79, and with this being pre-nerf Inquisitor Set, it was nearly IDDQD at that point. I didn't need the Inquisitor Set to win as I was mostly mindlessly rampaging through floors at this point, but still very nice for allowing me to get through the lategame even faster. * After getting the Inquisitor Set I would finally pick up a level of Ironman for my last level, as I no longer needed Berserker for VMR insurance, and with facerockets no longer damaging, I didn't need to care about facerocketing to trigger Berserker sometimes taking a few more rockets. * I was able to complete the Phaseshift Set too, but again since this is the version of Inquisitor Set before its speed nerf, before fluids in later A100 were more varied than "oops all lava!", before fluids slowed down non-flying entities, and before greater enemy variety was introduced, the Phaseshift Set was mostly obsolete. Still held onto it though just in case I ever found a Nano mod to make Antigrav Phaseshift Boots... * ...Which I never did, nor did I find any other rare mods for that matter until a Firestorm right near the end of the game I could do nothing useful with. * Also never found any of the special melee weapons, so I had to rely on a P-modded Chainsword for the whole run, which was adequate but it would have been nice to have something that would have let me get through the game even faster. The Dragonslayer as Blademaster would have been the dream of course, especially as the Dragonslayer is one of two uniques I need to find one more of for Armorer Diamond (the other is the Subtle Knife, which as trash as it is, was disappointing to not find, I really do not want to get to a point where I have to intentionally grind out A666 runs to finally get Armorer Diamond...) * Got a Lava Elemental Cave only a few floors after getting the Inquisitor Set. Not that they would have been a real threat anyway though, as I had Cerberus Boots and 0.9.9.7 has the wimpy pre-buff Lava Elemental. * I got a couple nuke levels late in the game, but by that point I was going through floors so fast that I would get everything dead and gibbed before a minute even passed. * I remade a Tactical Shotgun after getting WK2 so I could put a Power Mod on it, but it didn't really matter as 99% of my weapon usage for the last three quarters of the game was meleeing or using the (Tactical) Rocket Launcher to rocket jump, trigger Berserker, break walls, and destroy corpses. I occasionally shotgunned a group of Formers that were being annoying but that was about it. * Somehow avoided getting a single Nightmare Arachnotron Cave, which was appreciated as they're the only level type in 0.9.9.7 (alongside the rare yet very deadly Shambler levels) that could have really threatened me, especially after I got the Inquisitor Set. * I encountered two Barons with a Ballistic Shield during this run, which both instances at least occurred late enough where it was more amusing rather than the potential run ender it could have been if it happened early in the game (and it allowed me to make use of a Laser Rifle I held onto for about 75% of the run but never actually used otherwise). This overall only took me one attempt, a nice change of pace after those AoOC Diamonds that were much quicker but required a lot more resetting. Going back to 0.9.9.7 and its version of A100 after experiencing 0.9.9.9/0.10's vastly improved A100, I wonder how I ever enjoyed this mode as much as I did in 0.9.9.7's heyday; almost all the levels look the damn same after only floor 16, the difficulty curve is out of whack (A100's difficulty is even more front-loaded than most other challenges, and you get a big lull in new threats being introduced when you reach the floor 25+ range, until you get a sudden big spike at floor 44/47/50, and then it mostly flatlines again until you get one more big spike with most of the remaining enemies getting introduced at floor 74/77/80), and all those VMRB hordes you punch through for over three quarters of the game can get mind-numbing. I will probably go for Centurial Angelic, but after that I'll certainly be glad to not play A100 in 0.9.9.7 again, especially on N! when 0.10 or even 0.9.9.8 would actually let you save and take breaks without having to leave the game running. Anyway, here is the big mortem: -------------------------------------------------------------- |
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