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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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 DoomRL (0.9.9.7) roguelike post-mortem character dump
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 pistols :((, level 17 Cyberdemon Chaos Lt. Colonel Technician,
 nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 1898450 turns and scored 979564 points.
 He played for 6 hours, 12 minutes and 18 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1878 out of 2009 hellspawn. (93%)
 He held his right to remain violent.
 He was an Angel of Marksmanship!

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

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 11
  Levels completed : 8

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

  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Explorer Badge
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Champion Medal
  Marksman Diamond Badge

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

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

  Health 75/50   Experience 159564/17
  ToHit Ranged +4  ToHit Melee +4  ToDmg Ranged +3  ToDmg Melee +3

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

  Class : Technician

    Hellrunner       (Level 1)
    Son of a bitch   (Level 3)
    Son of a gun     (Level 5)
    Reloader         (Level 1)
    Eagle Eye        (Level 2)
    Intuition        (Level 2)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Scavenger        (Level 1)

  SoG->SoG->SoG->SoB->EE->WK->HR->SoB->WK->EE->Int->MSc->SoG->SoG->Int->SoB->Rel->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   fireproof red armor [4/4] (91%) (A)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   demolition pistol (4d2) [2/8] (B1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   Nyarlaptotep's Boots [6/6] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   10mm ammo chain (x206)

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

    [a] pistol (2d6) [8/8] (B1P2S2)
    [b] energy pistol (2d6) [6/6] (P1)
    [c] BFG 9000 (10d6) [220/220] (B3F1)
    [d] Trigun (3d6) [2/6]
    [e] red armor [4/4] (200%) (B)
    [f] red armor [4/4] (190%) (B)
    [g] Angelic Armor [7/7] (100%)
    [h] 10mm ammo (x140)
    [i] 10mm ammo (x116)
    [j] power cell (x70)
    [k] power cell (x70)
    [l] small med-pack
    [m] small med-pack
    [n] small med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] envirosuit pack
    [r] Hell Staff
    [s] tactical boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [t] 10mm ammo chain (x250)

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

    Melee      - internal 0%    torso -30%  feet 0%   
    Acid       - internal 0%    torso 0%    feet 30% 
    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 55%   feet 30% 

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

    225 former humans
    202 former sergeants
    66 former captains
    403 imps
    86 demons
    271 lost souls
    65 cacodemons
    61 hell knights
    94 barons of hell
    110 arachnotrons
    19 former commandos
    43 pain elementals
    74 revenants
    41 mancubi
    49 arch-viles
    4 nightmare imps
    7 nightmare cacodemons
    36 nightmare demons
    16 nightmare arachnotrons
    1 shambler
    1 lava elemental
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack
    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.
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 9 he assembled a energy pistol!
  On level 9 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 11 he witnessed the Wall.
  He massacred the evil behind the Wall!
  On level 12 he found the City of Skulls.
  He fled the City in terror!
  Level 13 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 14 he assembled a demolition ammo!
  On level 14 he ventured into the Halls of Carnage.
  On level 15 he found the Railgun!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he found the Mega Buster!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  He fled the Unholy Cathedral seeing no chance to win.
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  On level 19 he found the Trigun!
  He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!
  On level 20 he found the Hell Staff!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter Limbo!
  On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear Limbo from evil!
  On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
  On level 22 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He nuked level 24!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.

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

 wear/wield : a demolition pistol (4d2) [8/8] (B1)
 The missile hits John Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack. The cacodemon dies. You are hit!
 You hear the scream of a freed soul! You hear the scream of a freed soul!
 You quickly reload the demolition pistol.
 You quickly reload the demolition pistol.
 You hear the scream of a freed soul!
 You hear the scream of a freed soul!
 You quickly reload the demolition pistol.
 You quickly reload the demolition pistol.
 You hear the scream of a freed soul!
 You hear the scream of a freed soul! You hear the scream of a freed soul! You
 hear the scream of a freed soul!
 You hear the scream of a freed soul! Congratulations! You defeated John
 Carmack! Press <Enter>...

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

 259 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 85 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 76 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 39 killed the bitch and survived.
 31 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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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, 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:

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

 greg, level 16 Cyberdemon Chaos Lt. Colonel Marine,
 defeated the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 871073 turns and scored 824973 points.
 He played for 3 hours, 55 minutes and 19 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1545 out of 1545 hellspawn. (100%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!
 He was an Angel of Confidence!

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

  Levels generated : 8
  Levels visited   : 6
  Levels completed : 6

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

  Medal of Prejudice
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Reaper Diamond Badge

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

  ###########################################################
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ...................................................%%.....#
  ...................................................%%|%...#
  ..................................................%|}|%...#
  ...................................................%%X%...#
  ...................................................%%%....#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
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  ###########################################################

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

  Health 76/60   Experience 135896/16
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +0  ToDmg Ranged +4  ToDmg Melee +4

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

  Class : Marine

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Hellrunner       (Level 1)
    Son of a bitch   (Level 4)
    Reloader         (Level 2)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Triggerhappy     (Level 2)
    Ammochain        (Level 1)

  Fin->SoB->SoB->Jug->TH->Fin->WK->WK->Rel->Rel->TH->MAc->SoB->Fin->HR->SoB->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [6/6] (97%) (P)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   hyperblaster (2d4)x3 [23/40] (S1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   power battery (x120)

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

    [a] plasmatic shotgun (8d3) [1/1] (T1)
    [b] rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1] (B1)
    [c] assault shotgun (10d3) [6/6] (P3T1)
    [d] nuclear BFG 9000 (8d6) [40/40]
    [e] BFG 9000 (10d6) [100/100]
    [f] fireproof red armor [4/4] (71%)
    [g] duelist armor [4/4] (100%) (P)
    [h] Angelic Armor [7/7] (100%)
    [i] shotgun shell (x70)
    [j] rocket (x6)
    [k] rocket (x14)
    [l] power cell (x70)
    [m] power cell (x70)
    [n] power cell (x70)
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] large med-pack
    [r] large med-pack
    [s] plasteel boots [4/4] (93%) (PT)
    [t] shell box (x100)

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

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

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

    60 former humans
    144 former sergeants
    53 former captains
    155 imps
    68 demons
    484 lost souls
    68 cacodemons
    21 hell knights
    70 barons of hell
    105 arachnotrons
    140 former commandos
    48 pain elementals
    33 revenants
    52 mancubi
    38 arch-viles
    1 shambler
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack

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

  On level 1 he entered Hell's Armory.
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 3 he witnessed the Wall.
  On level 3 he assembled a hyperblaster!
  He massacred the evil behind the Wall!
  On level 4 he found the City of Skulls.
  He wiped out the City of Skulls.
  On level 6 he assembled a plasmatic shrapnel!
  On level 6 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
  He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
  On level 8 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 10 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 12, hell froze over!
  On level 12 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  On level 12 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 14 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 14 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  On level 14 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
  He managed to raise Mt. Erebus completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He nuked level 16!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.

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

 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack. Carmack raises his hands and summons hellspawn!
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack.
 The missile hits John Carmack. John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You
 defeated John Carmack! Press <Enter>...

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

 257 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 84 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 75 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 39 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

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:

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

 no saves :(, level 25 Cyberdemon Chaos Major Scout,
 completed 100 levels of torture on level 100 of Hell.
 He survived 1656317 turns and scored 6763834 points.
 He played for 16 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 4833 out of 4841 hellspawn. (99%)
 He was a real killing machine...
 He was an Angel of 100!

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

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

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

  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Experience Cross
  Dervis' Medallion
  Centurial Diamond Badge

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

  ###############################====########################
  ====...........................=======..=====..............
  ====%..........................======.==.====..............
  ====....................}......====...=.=..==..............
  ....=..........................====.....=..................
  ...===.....|....!..............=====...=.......=.===.%.....
  =======........................====.===...###====..===.....
  .======........................====......=========#==......
  =======...#######...#...#.....X====.....#=========#........
  ====.=...========..#...........====.....#=========#........
  ======...========#.#....#......====.....###.#/#####........
  =======..========#.#....#....|.====....................%...
  ===..==./========#.#....#.......====.......................
  ...===...========#.#....#.......====..|....................
  ..=====..========#.#./.##.......====.........[.............
  ..=====......#####..........=..====........................
  ..=====....................=======..===....................
  ...===..........0..........=============...................
  .......%...............00....===========...................
  ###############################====########################

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

  Health 104/60   Experience 1241928/25
  ToHit Ranged +2  ToHit Melee +12  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +15

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

  Class : Scout

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

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

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   Malek's Armor [3/3] (100%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   chainsword (8d3) (P)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   Nyarlaptotep's Boots [6/6] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x100)

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

    [a] tactical shotgun (9d3) [5/5] (P1)
    [b] tactical rocket launcher (6d6) [5/5] (T1)
    [c] phaseshift armor [4/4] (100%) (AP)
    [d] cerberus gothic armor [0/0] (200%) (A)
    [e] rocket (x10)
    [f] rocket (x10)
    [g] large med-pack
    [h] large med-pack
    [i] large med-pack
    [j] large med-pack
    [k] homing phase device
    [l] power mod pack
    [m] power mod pack
    [n] technical mod pack
    [o] bulk mod pack
    [p] Hell Staff
    [q] cerberus plasteel boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [r] phaseshift boots [4/4] (100%) (A)
    [s] rocket box (x20)
    [t] rocket box (x20)
    [u] rocket box (x20)
    [v] rocket box (x20)

-- 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 90% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 100%  feet 100%
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 90%   feet 60% 

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

    234 former humans
    418 former sergeants
    410 former captains
    327 imps
    89 demons
    635 lost souls
    130 cacodemons
    197 hell knights
    559 barons of hell
    193 arachnotrons
    15 former commandos
    86 pain elementals
    302 revenants
    340 mancubi
    449 arch-viles
    39 nightmare imps
    105 nightmare cacodemons
    116 nightmare demons
    29 nightmare arachnotrons
    5 nightmare arch-viles
    5 elite former humans
    2 elite former sergeants
    6 elite former captains
    5 elite former commandos
    70 bruiser brothers
    27 shamblers
    30 lava elemental
    6 agony elementals
    4 Cyberdemons

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

  On level 8 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 8 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 18 he assembled a chainsword!
  On level 21 he assembled a cerberus boots!
  On level 22 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 23, hell froze over!
  On level 25 he assembled a cerberus armor!
  On level 28, hell froze over!
  On level 29 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 42 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  On level 44 he found the Necroarmor!
  On level 49 he was bombarded!
  Level 51 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 51 he found the Cybernetic Armor!
  On level 59 he found the Hellwave Pack!
  Level 60 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 62 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  On level 63 he stumbled into a complex full of arch-viles!
  On level 65 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  On level 68 he assembled a nanofiber armor!
  On level 70 he was targeted for extermination!
  On level 72, hell froze over!
  On level 77 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 77 he found the Enviroboots!
  On level 79 he ran for his life from acid!
  On level 79 he found the Malek's Armor!
  On level 82 he stumbled into a lava elemental cave!
  On level 83 he encountered an armed nuke!
  On level 85 he found the Anti-Freak Jackal!
  On level 86 he encountered an armed nuke!
  Level 91 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 92 he stumbled into a complex full of revenants!
  On level 94 he found the Hell Staff!
  On level 98 he ran for his life from lava!
  On level 99 he was bombarded!
  On level 100 he finally completed 100 levels of torture.

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

 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood! There is a Light-Amp Goggles lying here.
 You see further! You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 There are stairs leading downward here. You need to taste blood!
 You did it! You completed 100 levels of DoomRL! You're the champion! Press
 <Enter>...

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

 255 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 83 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 74 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 38 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


This run certainly deserved a lot more attention than it got at the time it was posted, a sub-hour N! A100 run with a Minor Icarus Cross is seriously damn impressive, so I pinned it for others to more easily see. Hopefully this feat gets immortalized too as a new medal for beating A100 on UV/N! in future DRL versions.

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

Shottyman Angelic is infamous for being an unusually easy Angelic Badge, and the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread does support this, with a whopping 17 players having verifiably won it through 0.9.9.7's history, being the most won Angelic by a substantial margin. Even among Diamonds, only Veteran Diamond has been won more often, just barely. Not only is this a challenge where Sereging is required, 50% kills is just an awfully low kill threshold, especially when you can just farm infinite kills and ammo whenever off of any Shotgunner. Now this isn't a challenge that you'll trivially get done in only a few tries, this is AoOC on N! after all and there is a substantial amount of luck needed to not get a level start that is unsurvivable, more luck needed to not get met with a mass of enemies that just overwhelm you, and yet more luck needed to find more shells before you deplete your lone starting Shell Box. Even if you get off the ground, your run can quickly die from any bad level generated afterward, especially as your armor supply will be shitty without yet more luck. And this badge did take me a lot more attempts than I would like to admit (9 runs died, and about another dozen I Q+Y'd on when I was in an unsurvivable position), a couple of these failed runs should have gone all the way if I didn't throw with bad moves or if I just left floors sooner when I had the opportunity, but again since it's AoOC, attempts are fast and so this still took me less cumulative time than completing a typical N! run would have.

For build, I yet again go with Shottyhead. I just build straight to it instead of detouring for Intuition; knowing where powerups are is very nice, but I find that often they're immediately accessible and so it wouldn't have mattered or I have to fight through a bunch of enemies to reach them anyway, and detecting enemies outside of vision does little good if I can't avoid nor effectively kill them. Meanwhile Shottyhead's great prereq path lets me effectively fight back with semi-decent cover and so I needed a lot less luck with powerups or good level spawns just to survive, and reaching Shottyhead will then let me adequately fight even with subpar cover or outright in the open, as well as ensured Archviles would never get through my corner shooting nor would I be screwed over if another enemy pops up at a bad angle while corner shooting something.

The major obstacle to surviving was really just the fact that you often have no decent armor in AoOC, you need some Blues just for the bare minimum to not lose a big chunk of your life from a Commando or Arachnotron, which is still inadequate for the VMRB and so you hope you get some Red Armor at least. And getting TaN won't help when you need two levels of it to do anything against plasma and when the VMRB hit so hard that flatly reducing 1 or 2 damage does shit all to help you survive them without already having armor with the resistances to significantly reduce their damage. In this run I would get blessed with a Nano Mod on the third floor that I had to carefully extract from a VMRB group around it (wished I remember to take a screenshot, getting that Nano mod without it getting destroying or me dying was rough), and then immediately high tailed it to The Vaults stairs that were open, as the normal stairs were on the other side of the map with lots of enemies still around while I had no medkits, and I didn't want to waste the Nano mod (while the hit to my kill rate from entering Vaults hardly matters when the kill requirement is so low). I decided to hold onto it for a Red Armor, which paid off as the next floor would have a Red Armor that I could retrieve before it got nabbed by a Baron and so I was set on armor, while the floor was a rather easy small rooms level with lots of formers, resupplying my medkits and filling out my shell supply. I was hoping for a Power Mod to make a Powered Red Armor, unfortunately I never found a single Power Mod but I would get a second Nano mod, actually holding off on Nano modding the Red Armor would have been ideal as I could have double Nano'd the Assault Shotgun for an effective Nanomachic Assault Shotgun that would have went really crazy with Shottyhead, but oh well. The run wasn't done yet though, Hell 7 would start me in a very nasty concealed room with multiple VMRB groups right outside my vision and nowhere to escape, the exact kind of situation why I went Shottyhead; if I went the typical Int2 masterless Scout build most people used for this badge or Army Of The Dead that a few others did, I would have died here without Shottyhead's firing speeds unless I got lucky with my Phase Device. Even then I still barely got out after depleting my Shell Box and being unable to safely grab the other, but by then most of the enemies were dead and so I was able to escape when they blew up the wall behind me. I still tried killing everything after running up behind the north wall, but then I got pincer'd by two Barons on far opposite ends that wouldn't die, and with my Nano Red Armor damaged, I just ran to the stairs instead of risking needlessly throwing another run when I didn't need the kills nor anything else the floor could possibly have. In Dis, I just threw my second Nano on a Blue Armor, so I could move a bit faster when fighting the Mastermind, which was helpful as I'm not used to fighting the Masterming without nuking her or having a build that can just flinch her to death, and so don't quite got a handle on how to manipulate her AI to get her stuck. I took quite a bit of damage and the fight took a while but I finish the Mastermind off without ever being in too much danger.

Now here is the mortem:

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

 FREANGELIC, level 10 Cyberdemon Chaos Major Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 190162 turns and scored 254597 points.
 He played for 45 minutes and 28 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 297 out of 346 hellspawn. (85%)
 He was an Angel of Shotgunnery!
 He was also an Angel of Overconfidence!

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

  Levels generated : 4
  Levels visited   : 1
  Levels completed : 0

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

  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Shottyman Angelic Badge

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

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

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

  Health 50/50   Experience 41388/10
  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)
    Whizkid          (Level 1)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)
    Shottyhead       (Level 1)

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

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   blue armor [2/2] (100%) (N)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   assault shotgun (7d3) [3/8] (B1T1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   plasteel boots [2/2] (98%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   double shotgun (9d3)x2 [2/2]

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

    [a] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
    [b] red armor [4/4] (84%) (N)
    [c] shotgun shell (x50)
    [d] shotgun shell (x50)
    [e] shotgun shell (x2)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] large med-pack
    [k] phase device

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

    Acid       - internal 0%    torso 0%    feet 50% 
    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 0%    feet 25% 
    Plasma     - internal 0%    torso 20%   feet 0%   

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

    8 former humans
    73 former sergeants
    31 former captains
    20 imps
    42 demons
    31 lost souls
    8 cacodemons
    23 barons of hell
    5 former commandos
    3 pain elementals
    33 revenants
    8 mancubi
    11 arch-viles
    1 Spider Mastermind

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

  On level 3 he entered the Vaults.
  He came, he saw, but he left.
  On level 6 he stumbled into a complex full of revenants!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  On level 8 he finally defeated the Mastermind.

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

 You swap your weapons instantly!
 You are hit! You are hit! You are hit!
 You reload the assault shotgun.
 Your assault shotgun is already loaded.
 The Spider Mastermind flinched!
 You reload the assault shotgun.
 You reload the assault shotgun. You are hit! Boom! You are hit! You are hit!
 You are hit! You are hit!
 You use a large med-pack. You feel fully healed.
 Modify w eapon, a rmor or b oots? (Escape to cancel) [abw] You use a bulk mod
 pack.
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : out of vision
 Targeting canceled.
 The Spider Mastermind dies. Congratulations! You defeated the Spider
 Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

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

 254 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 83 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 73 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 37 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

Daredevil Diamond is in contention for being the easiest Diamond badge; if you do it "legit" (i.e. no kill farming), you just reset until you get a good level start that preferably has an Invuln or Berserk, or otherwise lets you safely camp, get some levels in after killing a bunch of enemies, and then you'll get 80% naturally as long as you go through most of the remaining floors instead of just stairdiving, with the option to skip any really nasty floors like an Arachnotron cave if you build up enough of a kill buffer. Or you do it the cheesy way where you get a strong start and then rush to the end, while finding yourself a safe respawn along the way to kill over and over until you ensure over 80% kills, whether a former you can repeatedly kill without retaliation and never running out of ammo or anything else if you did the Cathedral and got yourself an Artifact melee weapon. With the nature of AoOC, with its Hell starts that will be unsurvivable at low levels with little to no armor, even top players technically wouldn't be able to win this badge consistently, but with how fast attempts will go and not requiring that much luck to get, most competent players would win this badge without any serious time investment.

As such, I decided to go for 100% kills to make this Daredevil Diamond run a bit more interesting, thus I won't be able to skip out on any bad floor and my kill percent can't get fluffed up by respawns. I initially went a melee-focused Scout, but lost a first good run from getting chipped down, so decided to just go with good old Vampyre; since this isn't 0.9.9.8's outrageously broken Vampyre, I don't feel the guilt of using it even though it's still a strong contender for best build in the game. Now trying to go for Vampyre did make starts harder with the lack of the Scout's speed bonus and having to pick up a level of Badass instead of other much more useful traits, but it still doesn't take much to get a survivable first floor. Also having to use the free trait Vampyre on Brute 3 (that you're going to need to fight the Angel Of Death after only a single floor with a Combat Knife) instead of the much more useful Finesse made starts harder to survive as well. Making it past the first floor and getting your hands on that lovely Scythe from the Cathedral didn't guarantee safety either, especially as your medkits will likely be drained away and your armor will be battered or gone completely, but again it doesn't take that much attempts to get workable floors.

And indeed on only my fifth attempt I would get a run to Mortuary with 100% kills intact, where with an Invuln near the Mortuary and knowing I effectively had infinite health with Vampyre... I decided to go for the bragging rights of beating N! Mortuary in AoOC. Even with the Invuln though that let me take out a lot of enemies in the beginning, whether directly or through infighting, Vampyre in this game state was rather too slow to safely handle Mortuary without a BFG to do a big corpse disposal at the beginning, and so once the Invuln worn off, I started getting overwhelmed and my armor was getting destroyed fast. I was able to make it to the Nuclear BFG though without it getting destroyed, and then setup a safe corner (well about as safe as you can get in Mortuary) to slowly wait for the rest of the enemies to come while using some corpses left next to me to get health back whenever they respawned and repeatedly shooting out Nuclear BFG blasts whenever it was charged (I forgot how broken being able to shoot the BFG out of vision was before 0.9.9.8 prevented you from doing that). Eventually, slowly but surely I would finish Mortuary, but not without taking a huge beating. Floor 5 would give me a maze though that ended up ruining my freshly acquired Angelic Armor and other remaining armor supply, and then I got a floor 6 that should have been an easy small rooms level, but I got super careless and rushed a VMR group without any real armor that I could have just waited for... being reminded just how insufficient TaN is before its 0.10 buff as I got quickly evaporated away, after Berserker failed to proc from several Mancubi blasts (that extra starting 10 max HP of the Marine can really suck sometimes...)

I'll post the mortem of the failed run still though to keep record of the N! Mortuary 0.9.9.7 AoOC clear:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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

 DAREDEVIL2EZ, level 10 Cyberdemon Chaos Major Marine,
 rode a mancubus rocket on level 6 of Hell.
 He survived 263998 turns and scored 207501 points.
 He played for 58 minutes and 43 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 732 out of 749 hellspawn. (97%)
 He held his right to remain violent.
 He was an Angel of Overconfidence!

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

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

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

  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Grim Reaper's Badge

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

  ###########################################################
  ###......B.......R../.........#...0...+....+.0.....+....+..
  ###...............R.#...=.....#...V...#....#########....###
  ###..V.....|........#...=...../.......#....+.......+....#..
  ###########/#########.==.=....#.0..\..#....#.=.....#....#..
  ###.R.....V.........+.===.....#..^....+...}#==.....#....+..
  ###=V=/####/####B######=/####V####+#######+#===+#=##+######
  ###====M/.........../....;..R.........+....#...==..#....+..
  ##===.=..../#########.................#....#...0.[.#....#..
  ##=====.../M........#V................#....+.......+..|.#..
  ###===..X...#.......#.....R...........#....#########....#..
  ###.........#.......+.................+....+.......++...+..
  ######+#....####+#######/####+####+####=##+####+####+######
  ###.......#.#..>...>+....#.......#..../=.|....#B#.......+"^
  #########.#.#.......#....#.......#....==......#.#.......#..
  ###.....#./.+.......#....+.......+..^.#=....../.+...===.#..
  ###.....#.#+#########.B..#########....#=......#/###===#==..
  ###.....+0#.....+...+.^..+.......+..../.......#......0..+=.
  ###########################################################
  ###########################################################

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

  Health 0/60   Experience 45666/10
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +6  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +9

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

  Class : Marine

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

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

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   Angelic Armor [0/7] (0%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   Azrael's Scythe (9d9)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   plasteel boots [2/2] (87%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   nuclear BFG 9000 (8d6) [40/40]

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

    [a] rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1]
    [b] assault shotgun (7d3) [6/6] (T1)
    [c] blue armor [1/2] (28%)
    [d] red armor [1/6] (16%) (P)
    [e] chainsaw (4d6)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] shotgun shell (x50)
    [i] shotgun shell (x16)
    [j] shotgun shell (x50)
    [k] shotgun shell (x50)
    [l] shotgun shell (x50)
    [m] rocket (x10)
    [n] rocket (x8)
    [o] rocket (x10)
    [p] rocket (x10)
    [q] rocket (x10)
    [r] small med-pack
    [s] large med-pack
    [t] envirosuit pack
    [u] agility mod pack
    [v] shell box (x25)

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

    Acid       - internal 0%    torso 0%    feet 50% 
    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 0%    feet 25% 

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

    20 former humans
    40 former sergeants
    37 former captains
    58 imps
    53 demons
    220 lost souls
    57 cacodemons
    26 hell knights
    37 barons of hell
    37 arachnotrons
    24 former commandos
    24 pain elementals
    49 revenants
    30 mancubi
    19 arch-viles
    1 Angel of Death

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

  On level 1 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 1 he found the Azrael's Scythe!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 4 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  On level 4 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 6 he finally rode a mancubus rocket.

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

 There are stairs leading to Mt. Erebus here.
 You close the door.
 You open the door.
 You open the door.
 You close the door.
 You open the door.
 You close the door.
 You open the door.
 You close the door.
 You hit the revenant. The revenant dies.
 There is rocket (x3) lying here.
 You found 3 of rocket. Boom! Boom! You are hit!
 Boom! Boom!
 The arch-vile raises his arms! You dodge! The barrel explodes! The missile
 hits the revenant. The missile hits the revenant. Boom! You are hit! The
 revenant dies. You die!... Press <Enter>...

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

 242 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 73 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 71 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 35 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


After that total throw though, it wouldn't take long to get another good run going, with a floor 1 that had a river that allowed me to safely pick off most of the enemies and a handy Medical Armor for more melee res against the AoD, which when combined with an Invuln near the Cathedral stairs, allowed me to exit the Cathedral with my medkits intact. Then on Hell 4, I got an Arachnotron cave that could be very deadly to 100%, but I was able to manage it, and then that floor blessed me with a Nano mod, so I could build a Powered Red Armor to really help with the armor problem and Vampyre's speed problem. It also had an Invuln near Limbo's stairs, the only thing I was missing was a rocket launcher at this point but I decided to go for it again, and the Invuln would last long enough for me even without rocket jumping to get to the Nuclear BFG. After that it was just abusing Limbo's stairs being easily campable as I killed each enemy that came up to me, popping out occasionally to shoot out Nuclear BFG blasts, until I whittled them down to the last few dozen enemies and then just sought them out (also did a couple Whispers of Death, partially to weaken them but more importantly to ensure Berserker would trigger more reliably without the extra max HP after losing the prior run from that). Not too long after I would finish off Limbo, and though I still took a beating, it was quite a bit less than I took in the prior Mortuary run. With Powered Red Armor, the Scythe, a bunch of medkits, and finding a Rocket Launcher shortly into floor 5, the rest of the run was a cinch, completing Daredevil Diamond with 100% kills and with a Grim Reaper's Badge you rarely if ever see in N! AoOC mortems. Altogether I had six killed runs before this one, and about another half dozen I Q+Y'd on, but this still took me a lot less time than doing a standard 100% N! run would have, even after spending nearly an hour cumulatively on those Mortuary and Limbo clears.

Now for the mortem:

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

 DAREDEVIL2EZ, level 13 Cyberdemon Chaos Major Marine,
 defeated the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 292997 turns and scored 479527 points.
 He played for 1 hour, 8 minutes and 52 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 622 out of 622 hellspawn. (100%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!
 He was an Angel of Overconfidence!

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

  Levels generated : 4
  Levels visited   : 3
  Levels completed : 3

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

  Medal of Prejudice
  UAC Star (bronze cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Daredevil Diamond Badge

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

  ###########################################################
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  .......................................................X}.#
  ........................................................||#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ###########################################################

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

  Health 100/50   Experience 74228/13
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +8  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +12

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

  Class : Marine

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Tough as nails   (Level 2)
    Brute            (Level 4)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Badass           (Level 1)
    Vampyre          (Level 1)

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

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   powered red armor [5/5] (99%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   Azrael's Scythe (9d9)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   Nyarlaptotep's Boots [6/6] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x70)

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

    [a] rocket launcher (6d6) [0/1] (B1)
    [b] assault shotgun (8d3) [6/6] (P1)
    [c] napalm launcher (7d7) [1/1] (T1)
    [d] red armor [4/4] (100%)
    [e] Angelic Armor [7/7] (73%)
    [f] shotgun shell (x50)
    [g] shotgun shell (x50)
    [h] rocket (x10)
    [i] rocket (x10)
    [j] rocket
    [k] small med-pack
    [l] small med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] large med-pack
    [r] envirosuit pack
    [s] power mod pack
    [t] bulk mod pack

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

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

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

    4 former humans
    26 former sergeants
    6 former captains
    27 imps
    29 demons
    132 lost souls
    21 cacodemons
    17 hell knights
    51 barons of hell
    101 arachnotrons
    6 former commandos
    12 pain elementals
    51 revenants
    44 mancubi
    29 arch-viles
    14 nightmare imps
    16 nightmare cacodemons
    2 nightmare demons
    30 nightmare arachnotrons
    1 lava elemental
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack

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

  Level 1 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 1 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 1 he found the Azrael's Scythe!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 2 he found the Railgun!
  On level 4 he assembled a power armor!
  On level 4 he was foolish enough to enter Limbo!
  On level 4 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear Limbo from evil!
  On level 6 he entered the Lava Pits.
  On level 6 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He overloaded a nuclear BFG 9000 on level 8!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.

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

 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 Fire -- Choose target...
 You see : floor
 Carmack raises his hands and summons hellspawn! You need to taste blood!
 Nothing to swap!
 Use scroll to choose weapon, left button to wield, right to cancel... You
 wear/wield : a Azrael's Scythe (9d9)
 You hit John Carmack. You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. You're going berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You hit John Carmack. John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You defeated John
 Carmack! Press <Enter>...

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

 244 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 74 of those were killed.
 1 of those was killed by something unknown.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 72 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 36 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

The only Platinum Badge I had left in 0.9.9.7 was Shottyman Platinum, so doing Shottyman Diamond next was the logical conclusion to get them both. Most people who got Shottyman Diamond did so by doubling it up with the notoriously easy (for an Angelic) Shottyman Angelic, as the same respawn farming exploit used for Shottyman Angelic could also easily get them Shottyman Diamond (and Daredevil Diamond) by just spending another half hour or so repeatedly blasting away a trapped Shotgunner, and even without kill farming, reaching 80% kills in AoOC isn't all that hard. Given my dislike of Dual Angel cheesing though, I wanted to get Shottyman Diamond the intended "pure way", and so I went for this badge in a pure AoSh run.

For the build used, it's obviously Shottyhead; aside from being my favorite mastery making it an obvious choice for me, Army Of The Dead is horribly awful in 0.9.9.7 with its astonishingly crippling blocks that don't remotely justify such a middling mastery effect (I still wonder what the hell the thinking was behind its blocks, did the old devs really think shotguns getting 2 or 4 more damage before dropoff was some incredibly OP perk?), and Fireangel is already mediocre in 0.9.9.7 before even considering it does nothing to boost Shotguns. The only other real viable option would be to go masterless if you want SoB, but the relatively minor damage boost SoB gives to shotguns doesn't remotely compare to the tremendous offensive boost given by 1/3rd firing time. Well you could go Gunrunner too, but it would be basically a worse Shottyhead that takes longer to come online, especially in 0.9.9.7 when it's blocked Whizkid.

With trait order, it's again opening with Finesse -> Juggler, being able to macgyver a Temu Tactical Shotgun with a bunch of shotguns in the early game gives you such an immediate big leg up, especially pre-Reloader buff. Then it's a level of HR to ensure I can comfortably outmaneuver everything and getting the requisite Rel2 + Shottyman to get Shottyhead ASAP; given how massive an offensive boost Shottyhead gives you and its prereqs already gives you one of the easiest early games, you never want to delay it unless you have really damn good reason to get something outside its prereq path. After that it's getting WK2 ASAP for the big mid and late game all-around power boost it provides, and then maybe unusually I get two levels of Brute + Berserker; Berserker is such an OP defensive trait in 0.9.9.7 and it basically makes the VMR a non-threat for the rest of the game, while berserked Shottyhead gets crazy amounts of DPS (also being able to punch stuff out can occasionally be useful to kill things without knockback, and could be used to save ammo as well, but you don't really need that in this version of N! with the silly ammo farming you can do). Then it's just maxing out my firing, movement, and reloading rate after to make myself as strong as possible; the notable omissions are not getting any Ironman, which I do to have Berserker trigger as often as possible, and then I never get the ever popular Intuition, since I don't need Intuition 2 and much prefer getting actual combat-boosting traits if I'm not playing a challenge where attrition damage is a much more serious factor.

As mentioned, with the aforementioned opening traits, the early game is a relative breeze even on Nightmare, even a Phobos maze wasn't all that bad when those are often run enders on N!. I decided to clear Hell's Arena, which being restricted to shotguns with unpredictable knockback can make a bit tricky when trying to line up corpse stacks, but with such a strong early game build, getting some extra spawns isn't much an issue when you come in with an inventory full of shotguns and shotgun shells, even a Baron getting back up wasn't a big deal. I was thinking of skipping Unchained Court since it's one of the few special levels that gives Shottyhead some real trouble and getting rid of corpses is going to be real annoying without a Rocket Launcher, but I decided to go for it and it ended up not being too bad, not even having to use up all the berserks; if you can manage to get the Barons in a position to shotgun them into the lava or in the doorways, you can kill them without a corpse, or if you kill one while still berserked, you can comfortably eat another Baron's acid ball to destroy it, then the Arena Master it's possible to corner shoot to death with this build + the Double Shotgun from the Arena, or you get a berserk and him against a wall, you can hammer him down with the Double Shotty and kill him that way before he can deal too much damage to you. I then rolled Phobos Lab for the last Phobos special level, which having Shottyhead online by then already largely trivializes, and then considering that Nightmare Demons still get hurt by the acid in this version, I almost forget that this is supposed to be one of the most terrifying special levels. After that is the dreaded N! Phobos Anomaly, but it's another normally terrifying level that Shottyhead largely trivializes; I ended up clearing it taking only 38 damage, most of which was from me intentionally getting hit by Nightmare Cacodemons to destroy corpses. Feats like that just add to my pile of "Shottyhead was the most overlooked mastery", Army Of The Dead is just way too slow to outrun the N! Anomaly ambush without a lucky Phase Device and has no hope to try fighting back, while Fireangel and masterless shotgun Scout could escape the ambush but would have a hell of a time actually trying to kill all those Nightmare enemies.

Deimos would greet me with a level opener that would a major threat for most builds, but that Shottyhead again trivializes without needing to gamble with that Phase Device nor running and praying. I rolled Deimos Lab, and I considered just getting what I could from there without releasing the Shamblers. Especially so when the weapon cache didn't have any of the special shotguns and when I failed to hit WK2 before them, so I was left with the predicament to build the Focused Double Shotgun and Tactical Boots now to help fighting them and be left unable to mod them later (since 0.9.9.7 still has the asinine restriction of being unable to ever mod assemblies you made before getting WK2), or play it safe and just leave. Not to mention that fighting the dual Shamblers in N! AoSh without a Plasma Shotgun is going to be extra dangerous as I have to kill them in very specific spots to prevent them from leaving a corpse. I decided to live extra dangerously though by releasing the Shamblers and not finishing the aforementioned assemblies, and it was by far the closest I came to death in this run. My initial plan was to hide out in the mod rooms, wait for one to teleport in, and then hammer at it until it was nearly dead, then finish it off in the door or acid, but when a Shambler did do so... it immediately teleported back out, and they wouldn't teleport back inside, eventually teleporting outside and opening the door, where in the crossfire one of the doors would get destroyed to ruin the setup. When getting one isolated, I did do the "hammer away" strategy and was able to finish it off in the acid, but the other Shambler was very uncooperative and I would get brought down to my last medkit, however I managed to get him in a workable spot within the acid pool and hammer him down before he could teleport out. If I was any other shotgun build here I would have certainly died, as without Shottyhead's firing speed, I would not have remotely enough DPS to kill them when they teleported into a workable position here. It paid off though, as I got the coveted Onyx + Nano mod combo as my reward, and finally hit WK2 right when I killed the last Shambler, allowing me to build my beloved Focused Double Shotgun and put a Power mod on it. For the Onyx mod, I ended up just putting it on the next Red Armor I found (since I already Bulk modded the Anomaly Red Armor) rather than wait for one of the few exotics that can be better (especially as when berserked, I'll take 1 damage with a P-modded Red Armor from nearly everything after this point), and I thought about waiting for maybe a Super Shotgun to appear for the chance at the utterly game-breaking Shottyhead + Nano Super Shotgun combo, but decided to just make Antigrav Boots instead from the Steel Boots I haven't turned Tactical yet rather than wait around for something that may not come at all. Some may have made a regular Nano Shotgun to ensure they always had infinite ammo, but with how easily you can farm infinite ammo in this version of N!, ammo is just not a concern whatsoever.

I unfortunately had to skip Containment Area, as I had no plasmatic shotgun and didn't carry any normal Phase Devices with me, but the game would conveniently spawn a Plasma Shotgun the floor immediately after. Would have really wanted it a floor sooner to keep the dream of a N! AoSh Conqueror alive, but it's still really nice to make corpse disposal a much less tedious ordeal in the second half of the game. I had a nuke prepped for Unholy Cathedral, but no Invuln spawned on Hell 1, so that's another special level I couldn't do. The rest were beaten with no issue, maybe Mortuary could have dragged on but I got pre-buff Limbo instead, and with the Plasma Shotty, two Hatred Skulls, and Enviroboots, it was nothing more than a speed bump.

With Shottyhead, I'm able to get pure Shottyman Diamond first try, and come the closest anyone has to pulling off a N! AoSh Conqueror, while getting Shottyman Platinum completes the collection of all Platinums in 0.9.9.7 for me, joining I believe Tormuse and Icy as the only players to have verifiably gotten every Platinum badge up through 0.9.9.7. Now here is the mortem:

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

 SHOTTYHEADABEST,
 level 18 Cyberdemon Chaos Major Scout,
 nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 1180211 turns and scored 990922 points.
 He played for 3 hours, 57 minutes and 52 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1738 out of 1756 hellspawn. (98%)
 He held his right to remain violent.
 He was an Angel of Shotgunnery!

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

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

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

  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Champion Medal
  Shottyman Platinum Badge
  Shottyman Diamond Badge

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

  ###########################################################
  .......................................|||||..............#
  ........................................|}|...............#
  ........................................||||..............#
  .........................................X................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  .....................................................%....#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  .....................................................%....#
  ###########################################################

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

  Health 89/50   Experience 160312/18
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +4  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +6

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

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Hellrunner       (Level 3)
    Reloader         (Level 3)
    Brute            (Level 2)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Dodgemaster      (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)
    Shottyhead       (Level 1)

  Fin->Jug->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh->Fin->WK->WK->Bru->Bru->Ber->Fin->HR->HR->Rel->DM->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [6] (AOP)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   focused double shotgun (9d4)x2 [0/2] (P1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   antigrav steel boots [1/1] (100%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x56)

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

    [a] assault shotgun (7d3) [6/6] (T1)
    [b] plasma shotgun (10d3) [39/39] (B1P3T1)
    [c] BFG 9000 (10d6) [130/130] (B1)
    [d] phaseshift armor [2/2] (100%)
    [e] shotgun shell (x14)
    [f] power cell (x50)
    [g] power cell (x50)
    [h] large med-pack
    [i] large med-pack
    [j] large med-pack
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] homing phase device
    [m] Enviroboots [0]
    [n] shell box (x100)
    [o] shell box (x100)
    [p] shell box (x100)
    [q] shell box (x100)
    [r] shell box (x100)
    [s] power battery (x120)
    [t] power battery (x120)

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

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

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

    218 former humans
    263 former sergeants
    72 former captains
    180 imps
    115 demons
    285 lost souls
    109 cacodemons
    39 hell knights
    64 barons of hell
    119 arachnotrons
    41 former commandos
    37 pain elementals
    53 revenants
    19 mancubi
    39 arch-viles
    19 nightmare imps
    6 nightmare cacodemons
    39 nightmare demons
    11 nightmare arachnotrons
    2 bruiser brothers
    2 shamblers
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack
    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 Deimos Lab.
  On level 9 he assembled a focused double shotgun!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 10 he assembled a antigrav boots!
  On level 11 he found the Enviroboots!
  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 cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  On level 17 he found the Nyarlaptotep's Boots!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter Limbo!
  On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear Limbo from evil!
  On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits 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 need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You feel more calm.
 John Carmack reloads his rocket launcher.
 Carmack raises his hands and summons hellspawn!
 The revenant dies. The revenant dies.
 The revenant dies. The revenant dies. The revenant dies. The revenant dies.
 The revenant dies.
 The revenant dies. John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You defeated John
 Carmack! Press <Enter>...

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

 237 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 69 of those were killed.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 71 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 35 killed the bitch and survived.
 30 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

Ok so after saying I probably wouldn't do another 100% N! in 0.9.9.7 after my Veteran + Elite Angelic run, it seems I lied. I wasn't planning to go for 100% kills nor Conqueror when going for Hunter Platinum + Diamond, but after going halfway through the run with 100% kills intact and having cleared all the special levels, I thought I may as well finish the job, especially as I don't think anyone has done a 100% nor Conqueror run in Angel of Darkness on N! before (at least no one that posted it to the forums).

For the build, it's the boring choice but I just went with Cateye. Was going to do Blademaster first as I did for the HMP AoD 100% Conqueror run I did a year ago, but I got a bit tired of looking at 0.9.9.7's awfully garish berserk red screen for my past few runs, and this gave me the opportunity to get Longinus Diamond too without having to dedicate a run to it or hindering another run to go for it. There was nothing particularly interesting about my trait order, other than picking up a second level of EE later on that I didn't really need just to make Cathedral not take as long and to make my melee sidearm more reliable in general.

For the run itself, Hell's Arena is mostly a nonissue if you're just entering and exiting for Hunter Diamond, but is the obvious immediate obstacle to an AoD conqueror, especially without Finesse, Juggler, or Hellrunner; I lost the first attempt when it got out of hand and I quitted out, but that run was kneecapped with bad medkit + powerup luck on floor 2 that left me with a single small medkit going in and so I wasn't able to take some plasma balls to destroy corpses nor heal much. In AoD you can't safely run -> wait in Hell's Arena, but I find that you shouldn't run -> wait anyway on N! Hell's Arena until you're down to the last wave and are camping on a single corpse, since respawns become more frequent the longer you spend on a level and so you can more effectively get most of the corpses stacked/destroyed by playing the first two waves faster. As for why I completed AoD Hell's Arena instead of just quickly dipping out if I wasn't planning on Conqueror, I really wanted that rocket launcher, everything just becomes so much harder without it.

The early Phobos floors are rough in N! AoD, but with the crazy EXP rate, you should hit level 6 to get Cateye by only floor 3 or 4, at which point you're just basically playing a masterless Scout standard N! game except with no map memory and no stair sense but with much faster leveling that makes it arguably easier than standard N!. I ended up getting this in only my second attempt, Intuition and especially Cateye really takes the bite out of AoD, this experience definitely enforces my proposal to replace Hunter Diamond's Explorer requirement with a no Intuition requirement (as well as add that to Hunter Angelic if it gets added). I suspect Hunter Diamond being one of the rarest Diamonds according to the 0.9.9.7 Badge Hunters thread is moreso due to people being too spooked to try it rather than it being genuinely one of the most difficult Diamonds (though being one of the most Sereg-resistant Diamonds probably also contributed to that, it's much harder to do an AoOC stair dive with no stair sense and AoD's vision penalty).

As for doing Longinus Diamond, I got a surplus of Power and Agility mods, letting me build a Piercing Chainsaw to make the process much quicker without costing me other valuable equipment, and so just needed to make sure I got my attacking and nonrunning movement speed faster than 0.67 seconds before the Cathedral, which AoD's EXP boost helped with. That ended up proving unnecessary though, as I got two Invulnerabilities on Hell 1, which lasted long enough for me to kill all the Lost Souls, Pinkies, and the Angel of Death without having to bother with doing any timing shenanigans (building the Piercing Chainsaw and getting the second EE level still helped though, I probably don't kill them all fast enough before the Invuln ran out without them). One other thing of note is Hell 1 also had a Nano mod, but it was too late to start building a Nanomachic Plasma Rifle or Antigrav Boots, so I just put it on a Plasma Rifle to ensure I always had ammo (not that I needed it though, since you can infinitely farm ammo off of respawns in 0.9.9.7 and nearly every floor at this point has at least one Arachnotron or Commando). Then the game decided to give me a second Nano mod on Hell 7 that I absolutely did not need, the RNG just likes to be funny like that sometimes.

Anyway here is the mortem:

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

 ICANSEE, level 20 Cyberdemon Marshal Scout,
 nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 1529020 turns and scored 1936602 points.
 He played for 6 hours, 12 minutes and 22 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 2321 out of 2321 hellspawn. (100%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!
 He was an Angel of Darkness!

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

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

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

  Medal of Prejudice
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Conqueror Badge
  Experience Medal
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Champion Medal
  Hunter Platinum Badge
  Hunter Diamond Badge
  Longinus Diamond Badge

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

  ###########################################################
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ..........................................................#
  ...............................................===........#
  ..............................................=====.......#
  ..............................................=====....=X=#
  ..............................................=====...====#
  .............................................=====....====#
  ............................................=====.....====#
  ............................................========...===#
  ............................................=========.====#
  .............................................========.====#
  ................................................==========#
  .................................................=========#
  ...................................................=====..#
  ...................................................====...#
  ###########################################################

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

  Health 93/50   Experience 348855/20
  ToHit Ranged +4  ToHit Melee +4  ToDmg Ranged +3  ToDmg Melee +3

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

  Class : Scout

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

  Int->Int->SoB->SoB->TH->MCe->EE->Fin->Fin->WK->WK->Jug->HR->Fin->SoB->TH->EE->HR->DM->HR->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [6] (AOP)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   hyperblaster (2d4)x5 [5/40] (F1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%) (A)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   plasma rifle (1d7)x6 [40/40] (N2T1)

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

    [a] tactical shotgun (9d3) [5/5] (P1)
    [b] tactical rocket launcher (6d6) [5/5]
    [c] napalm launcher (7d7) [1/1]
    [d] BFG 9000 (12d6) [130/130] (B1P2)
    [e] Angelic Armor [7/7] (100%)
    [f] Azrael's Scythe (9d9)
    [g] rocket (x9)
    [h] rocket (x14)
    [i] power cell (x70)
    [j] power cell (x70)
    [k] power cell (x70)
    [l] power cell (x30)
    [m] power cell (x70)
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] large med-pack
    [p] large med-pack
    [q] large med-pack
    [r] envirosuit pack
    [s] lava element
    [t] cerberus protective boots [0/0] (100%)

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

    Fire       - internal 0%    torso 25%   feet 0%   

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

    265 former humans
    199 former sergeants
    112 former captains
    380 imps
    122 demons
    482 lost souls
    122 cacodemons
    27 hell knights
    92 barons of hell
    75 arachnotrons
    118 former commandos
    55 pain elementals
    100 revenants
    79 mancubi
    35 arch-viles
    7 nightmare imps
    6 nightmare cacodemons
    33 nightmare demons
    3 bruiser brothers
    2 shamblers
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack
    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.
  On level 7 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 7 he assembled a hyperblaster!
  He broke through the lab.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 9 he entered Deimos Lab.
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  Level 10 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 11 he assembled a piercing blade!
  On level 11 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 11 he arrived at the Containment Area.
  He emerged from the Containment Area victorious!
  On level 12 he found the City of Skulls.
  He wiped out the City of Skulls.
  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!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 17 he found the Azrael's Scythe!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  He nuked level 18!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!
  On level 20 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  On level 20 he assembled a cerberus boots!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
  On level 22 he found the Enviroboots!
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits 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 --------------------------------------------------

 missile hits the baron of hell. The missile hits the baron of hell. The
 missile hits the baron of hell. Argh!!! Lava!
 The missile hits the baron of hell. The missile hits the baron of hell. The
 baron of hell dies. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The
 missile hits John Carmack. Argh!!! Lava!
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack.
 Argh!!! Lava!
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile
 hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John
 Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack.
 Argh!!! Lava!
 The missile hits John Carmack. The missile hits John Carmack. John Carmack
 dies. Congratulations! You defeated John Carmack! Press <Enter>...

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

 236 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 69 of those were killed.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 70 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 35 killed the bitch and survived.
 29 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

I've done a ton of complete Nightmare runs in the 0.9.9.9/0.10 beta testing and in JHC since the first 0.9.9.9 beta made some big changes to N!'s respawning, but never actually tried doing a standard N! run before in 0.9.9.7 (nor even in 0.9.9.8, stopping at getting Eagerness and Inquisitor Angelic there), as N! and the whole corpse disposal minigame seemed so awful to play; I once tried beating Hell's Arena in Angel of Darkness on only HMP back when I wasn't as good at the game and immediately noped out of the idea of ever dealing with respawning in the special levels even after I've became very consistent at doing 100% UV runs. Since I've been so involved in proposals and balancing suggestions since DRL's development revival, I thought I should experience the old N! 100% playthrough run at least once however (and show my dislike of how N! played prior to 0.10 wasn't a skill issue on my part :p).

For the build, I just went with my favorite mastery of Shottyhead that I always thought was criminally underrated. I open with the trait order of Fin -> Jug -> HR -> Rel2 -> SM -> MSh; just going straight to Shottyhead in this order gives one of the strongest early games, and Shottyhead itself gives such a massive power boost that you don't want to delay getting it. It's then Fin2 and getting both levels of Whizkid to ensure I can do full modding by the end of Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, and after that I get two levels of Brute + Berserker, I always liked having a melee sidearm and pairing Berserker with Shottyhead to amp up my firing speeds farther as well as get nice lategame defensive insurance. After that it's just maxing out Fin and HR, Reloader as well to amp up my standstill DPS, and then Brute 3 to help lategame gibbing with the Scythe.

For the start of the run, I sure take advantage of respawns dropping their inventory in this version to get a half dozen Shotguns in my inventory for juggling and getting a full inventory of shells from Phobos Base Entry. After Phobos 2 had a very convenient horizontal water river to make corpse disposal less of a pain, it was the infamous N! Hell's Arena, and well it wasn't like it's exceedingly hard, especially with the Fin/Jug/HR opener, but man is it so tedious even when knowing better to seek out enemies and lure them to your corpse piles to limit the respawn rate rather than run -> waiting; can't stress enough how much I'm looking forward to when respawns will finally no longer count towards Hell's Arena wave clearing in the eventual 0.11. After a warehouse level on Phobos 3 that made corpse disposal extra annoying and Phobos 5 having two Cacodemon vaults plus some annoying acid rivers, it was then Unchained Court, one of the very few special levels I think can be a stumbling block for Shottyhead. With berserk being unnerfed in this version though and successfully avoiding let the Barons blow up the berserks, I'm able to take out the Barons and Arena Master without serious issue, it was the cleanup of the formers after that was the very annoying part with the center building near completely destroyed and having too few rockets to just blow up the remaining formers, I am eternally grateful that 0.10 and JHC changed it so respawns no longer count towards a special level's clearing (at least for the ones that aren't bugged about it like Hell's Arena is currently...). After uneventful floors for Phobos 6 and 7, I then get Military Base, which is one of the most cheesable levels with run -> wait camping even on N! but damn is it so fucking tedious, 0.10's Enraged Timer and not counting respawns towards clearing it does wonders towards making the level actually engaging and not a joke compared to Phobos Lab. I can build a Tactical Shotgun and start modding a Double Shotgun towards a Focused Double, but I put off doing so until I reach Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab in case their weapon cache has an Assault or Super Shotgun. Thanks to the Elite Formers giving their obscene pre-nerfed EXP in this version, I hit Shottyhead and Finesse 2 before Phobos Anomaly, so after rocket jumping out of the ambush, I can actually fight back against the terrifying Nightmare horde without taking much damage and then effortlessly cornershoot the Bruisers to death.

Deimos would greet me with an awful maze that's especially annoying when I don't have quite enough rockets to blow up every corpse but I manage it. It's then Deimos Lab, easily the most threatening special level for Shottyhead with the dreaded dual Shamblers, especially when the weapon cache didn't have the Super Shotty nor Assault Shotgun, so I have to settle for making the Tactical Shotgun and I'm still down an A mod to complete the Focused Double before the Shamblers (at least the cache had a Nuclear Plasma Rifle that is nice for saving ammo). When fighting them, at one point one teleports near the wall next to me while the other is out of vision, so with run active, I get a couple spaces away from him and take advantage of Shottyhead's firing rate with a shell box equipped to hammer into him with the Double Shotgun while running mitigate the amount I got hit to kill him before the other Shambler can interfere. The second Shambler I would take some meaty hits from but it wasn't too bad, however I get a stark reminder of why 0.10/JHC not having enemies revive in vision was such a much needed change, as this Shambler would get right back up with full health as I was moving away to blow up his corpse. For a weaker build this could have been a run ender, but with Shottyhead I'm able to handle it after using up a medkit to get run back and repeating the strategy I used to take out the first Shambler. In the lab cache I get two Onyx mods, not really ideal but I just use one on a Red Armor I would mostly use for the rest of the run and then save the second later to make Lava Boots since I got nothing better to use it on. I also get an A mod to complete my Focused Double Shotgun and a P mod to buff it up.

Rather annoyingly, after making that Focused Double Shotgun and P-modding it, I would find a Super Shotgun just a couple floors later... I hold onto it in case I find enough mods to make it better than the modded Focused Double and then enter Containment Area, which can be potentially very nasty but Shottyhead is able to handle it rather easily, especially with a radsuit and indestructible Red Armor, just had to made sure to immediately grab the Backpack since it's still destroyable in this version. Cleanup after was the annoying part with the doors destroyed and my rockets running low, ate quite a few Imp fireballs just to destroy corpses without expending rockets. With a handy Deimos 4 Invuln, the potentially rough Abyssal Plains opening ambush is a nonfactor, and then the Agony Elemental fight is completely free for Shottyhead, super extra free for Shottyhead with Berserker. I get Spider's Lair for the Deimos 6 special level, which is appreciated as it's one of the easiest special levels on N! with its complete lack of enemy layout changes compared to UV while you'll be a couple levels stronger and get supplied with enough rockets to blow up all their corpses, especially compared to Halls Of Carnage that becomes very brutal on N! (however, Shottyhead with Berserker is one of the best builds for doing Halls Of Carnage, so I may have preferred it instead for the extra mods). In Spider's Lair I just get berserked and rocket jump into all the Arachnotrons to chainsaw them down. After an unremarkable Deimos 7, I then get the Cyberdemon fight that is completely free for a Shottyhead with berserker and a PO Red Armor.

After an uneventful Hell 1 (well I guess not technically uneventful as it had a hard walls event), it's the Unholy Cathedral. With Berserker and PO Red Armor, I could just straight chainsaw the Angel Of Death down, but I checked to see if the timing trick I employed in 0.9.9.8 of "get three spaces ahead and then wait, chainsaw if he double moves" worked here after Sylph told me the timing was more complicated than that in 0.9.9.7. I took her word on it since 0.9.9.8 was so buggy and the timing would indeed become more complicated in 0.10, but I find that nope, it is the same timing as 0.9.9.8 and so that is helpful to know for the eventual Longinus Diamond, while I get through Cathedral without taking as much damage as I would have playing roshambo with the AoD. I got an Archvile level on Hell 3, it's funny that what is supposed to be one of the most dangerous lategame level types is actually one of the nicest levels to get when Archviles are a whole lot less threatening without lackeys to revive, especially on N! when it means you won't have to put up with any corpse disposal either. Speaking of funny,  The Vaults is such a laughably easy special level on N! in this version, with any good fire resist the measly 8 Archviles + 8 Revenants poses no threat at all, and you don't have to worry about half the enemies reviving on N! and you get more than enough rockets to destroy the corpses of the other half, I do look forward to any old heads revisiting DRL seeing the massive glow up the Vaults got on UV and especially N! since 0.9.9.7. It is then time for the oh so dreaded N! Mortuary, but after employing my usual opening of immediately popping a Hatred Skull, then rocket jumping around to blow up most of the corpses with the BFG, it wasn't so bad, I only had to deal with 50ish enemies and I would have dealt with even less if I didn't spend precious time near the start to secure the Nuclear BFG. I find the unnerfed Malek's Armor on Hell 6, a bit late for it to matter but it's still nice to have, and then comes Lava Pits that was free with Lava Boots, but I'll mention how sad a boss the Lava Elemental was prior to his 0.9.9.8 glow up, Lava Pits wouldn't have been a issue even if I didn't have Lava Boots. After yet another forgettable penultimate floor, it's then nuking the Mastermind and fighting Carmack, and with my buffed Super Shotgun + Rel 3 + a Shell Box + berserk, I'm able to get over a dozen SSG blasts off on him after he whiffs a rocket, he just didn't stand a chance.

Overall this wasn't really all that hard compared to the Eagerness and Inquisitor Angelic runs, but damn was it tedious. I'm surprised I clocked this run in under 5 hours despite not really trying to play it fast and doing my fair share of run -> wait abuse, it looked like 6+ hours was the average for Elite Angelic runs in 0.9.9.7 and none of the Elite Angelic mortems listed on the Badge Hunters thread even broke under 5 hours. Well it was nice to get the experience and get all those sweet badges to bolster my 0.9.9.7 badge collection, but I don't think I'll do another 100% N! run in 0.9.9.7 anytime soon.

Enough of the yap, here is the mortem:

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

 SHOTTYHEAD2GOOD,
 level 18 Cyberdemon General Scout,
 nuked the Mastermind at the Hell Fortress.
 He survived 887128 turns and scored 1124159 points.
 He played for 4 hours, 46 minutes and 47 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 1983 out of 1983 hellspawn. (100%)
 This ass-kicking marine killed all of them!

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

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

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

  Medal of Prejudice
  UAC Star (gold cluster)
  Aurora Medallion
  Conqueror Badge
  Grim Reaper's Badge
  Hell Armorer Badge
  Hell Champion Medal
  UAC Platinum Badge
  Veteran Diamond Badge
  Veteran Angelic Badge
  Elite Diamond Badge
  Elite Angelic Badge
  Demonic Platinum Badge
  Reaper Platinum Badge
  Arena Platinum Badge
  Longinus Platinum Badge

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

  ###########################################################
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  ###########################################################

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

  Health 52/50   Experience 186932/18
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +6  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +9

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

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 3)
    Hellrunner       (Level 3)
    Reloader         (Level 3)
    Brute            (Level 3)
    Juggler          (Level 1)
    Berserker        (Level 1)
    Whizkid          (Level 2)
    Shottyman        (Level 1)
    Shottyhead       (Level 1)

  Fin->Jug->HR->Rel->Rel->SM->MSh->Fin->WK->WK->Bru->Bru->Ber->HR->Fin->HR->Rel->Bru->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   Malek's Armor [3/3] (100%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   super shotgun (10d4)x2 [0/2] (B2P2T1)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   tactical boots [0/0] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   shell box (x58)

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

    [a] focused double shotgun (9d4)x2 [2/2] (P1)
    [b] tactical rocket launcher (6d6) [5/5]
    [c] nuclear BFG 9000 (8d6) [52/52] (B1)
    [d] BFG 9000 (10d6) [220/220] (B3)
    [e] red armor [6] (AOP)
    [f] Azrael's Scythe (9d9)
    [g] shotgun shell (x60)
    [h] rocket (x3)
    [i] rocket (x14)
    [j] rocket (x14)
    [k] large med-pack
    [l] large med-pack
    [m] large med-pack
    [n] large med-pack
    [o] homing phase device
    [p] lava plasteel boots [2]
    [q] shell box (x100)
    [r] shell box (x100)
    [s] shell box (x100)
    [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 -----------------------------------------------------

    234 former humans
    252 former sergeants
    101 former captains
    326 imps
    113 demons
    397 lost souls
    70 cacodemons
    25 hell knights
    91 barons of hell
    85 arachnotrons
    35 former commandos
    46 pain elementals
    55 revenants
    43 mancubi
    52 arch-viles
    14 nightmare imps
    4 nightmare cacodemons
    9 nightmare demons
    7 elite former humans
    5 elite former sergeants
    7 elite former commandos
    2 bruiser brothers
    3 shamblers
    1 lava elemental
    1 agony elemental
    1 Angel of Death
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind
    1 John Carmack
    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 marched into the Military Base.
  He purified his fellow comrades.
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 8 he assembled a fireproof armor!
  On level 9 he entered Deimos Lab.
  On level 9 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 9 he assembled a focused double shotgun!
  He destroyed the evil within and reaped the rewards!
  On level 11 he arrived at the Containment Area.
  He emerged from the Containment Area victorious!
  On level 12 he romped upon the Abyssal Plains.
  He slaughtered the beasts living there.
  On level 14 he assembled a tactical rocket launcher!
  On level 14 he ventured into the Spider's Lair.
  He cleared the Lair, kickin' serious spider ass!
  On level 15 he found the Grammaton Cleric Beretta!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  Level 17 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 17 he invaded the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 17 he found the Azrael's Scythe!
  He then destroyed the Unholy Cathedral!
  On level 19 he stumbled into a complex full of arch-viles!
  On level 19 he assembled a tactical boots!
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  On level 19 he found the Mega Buster!
  He cracked the Vaults and cleared them out!
  On level 20 he assembled a lava boots!
  On level 20 he was foolish enough to enter the Mortuary!
  On level 20 he found the Angelic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Mortuary from evil!
  On level 22 he found the Malek's Armor!
  On level 22 he entered the Lava Pits.
  On level 22 he found the Cybernetic Armor!
  He managed to clear the Lava Pits completely!
  Then at last he found Dis!
  He overloaded a nuclear plasma rifle on level 24!
  He defeated the Mastermind and found the TRUE EVIL!
  Then finally in Hell itself, he killed the final EVIL.

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

 You quickly reload the super shotgun. You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You quickly reload the super shotgun.
 You need to taste blood!
 You quickly reload the super shotgun.
 You need to taste blood!
 You quickly reload the super shotgun. You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 You need to taste blood!
 Carmack raises his hands and summons hellspawn! You need to taste blood!
 John Carmack dies. Congratulations! You defeated John Carmack! Press
 <Enter>...

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

 235 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 69 of those were killed.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 69 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 35 killed the bitch and survived.
 28 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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


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

Like with Eagerness Angelic, I previously won the never-achieved-in-0.9.9.7 Inquisitor Angelic Badge twice, first in the initial 0.9.9.9 beta when I started doubting its perceived impossibility and wanted to see how it was like firsthand, and then in 0.9.9.8 outright. However, as explained in thread for my recent Eagerness Angelic run in 0.9.9.7, in those versions I was helped significantly by a dodging bug that essentially gave you a 95% dodge rate against everything no matter your HR levels, which I've come to realize made 0.9.9.8 a lot easier, especially in a challenge where health is so limited and you're trying to rush through the game. Additionally I used the Marine, where in those versions he had inherent 20% energy resistances that proved rather OP, especially when stacked with berserk's +60% resistances, OP enough that both the Marine and berserk would later get their resistances nerfed in 0.10. As such, I've come to feel that winning Inquisitor Angelic in 0.9.9.8 is rather tainted, and so wanted to show I can win it without the aid of a major bug and a class with OP tankiness, while like with Eagerness Angelic, I wanted to prove definitively that Inquisitor Angelic was very possible even back in 0.9.9.7 before all the major mechanical and balancing changes made in 0.9.9.8 and beyond.

When it came to the build I would use for this badge in 0.9.9.7, I of course go with the Scout instead of the Marine; without any inherent resistances, the Marine isn't taking any less damage throughout the game, and while the extra 10 max HP would be nice to get more health from your crucial medkits, it wouldn't make up for all the extra damage I'm avoiding with the Scout's 10% speed bonus (as well as said speed bonus giving more leeway with actually finding and getting to the stairs in time). I still go with the same starting seven traits though in the same exact order; Fin -> HR -> Rel -> HR -> Bru -> Bru -> Ber. The attack speed boost is obviously useful for a much needed combat boost, but I particularly open with it instead of HR to increase the chances that I get the small medkits in Phobos Base Entry from the formers (if you don't get both, you should just Q+Y out, you'll probably need every single medkit you can get your hands on in this challenge). After Fin is the obvious HR, and then maybe surprisingly I still go with Reloader despite this being 0.9.9.7 with the crappy unbuffed Reloader; going with the second level of Finesse could work and may be arguably better, but I felt "rounding out" the shot and reload time of the Shotgun was the way to go, as aside from giving a slightly better edge in total shot and reload time of the Shotgun, it also gave me more safety in situations where an enemy pops at a bad angle after I shoot (it'll also make a bigger difference with the Rocket Launcher later in the game that has a much longer reload time, and would give me greater leeway to get away with doing full reloads with the Combat/Tactical Shotgun when berserked to preserve my berserk actions). Then it's HR2; while I want Berserker ASAP, it's absolutely necessary to get HR2 before Anomaly, otherwise you're going to take too much damage or die there without a rocket launcher that you likely won't have or a lucky phase device. After that it's Berserker ASAP, which is going to be needed to survive the later floors and get past the Cyberdemon with so little armor + healing and not many levels. I deviate compared to the 0.9.9.8 run though with getting TaN instead of Ironman after Berserker; even without the physical resistances that Ironman gives in 0.9.9.8 onward, it would have been useful to squeeze more health from the scarce amount of medkits you get, but each level of Ironman makes it increasingly more difficult to trigger Berserker from getting hit (as 0.9.9.8 exclusively has Berserker's trigger based on nominal HP while all other DRL versions make it based off your actual max HP), which will result in me losing more relative health from big hits and make it a lot less reliable to intentionally trigger Berserker with face rockets (something I make use of a lot throughout the run). As such, TaN is the much better durability boosting trait here even without it giving energy resistances like it does in 0.10-onward, and it's especially needed given the difficulty of maintaining armor in a challenge where you can't repair armor normally. I then only get one more level after for Fin2, so no Brute 3, WK, or Juggler that I may have considered if I got more levels.

As for the general strategy, it's still pretty much the same; I enter Hell's Arena to clear out the first wave for some extra easy HP and then get out, stop by Chained Court for the Chainsaw and my one free full heal but don't release any of the Barons, and then only enter special levels after that point if they offer you a quick safe escape, except for maybe Deimos Lab for some safe EXP and to gamble with the crates having medkits, or a couple other special levels where you can safely trade a Homing Phase for some nice rewards. The rest of it is getting enough luck and a healthy dose of just "gitting gud", getting through levels fast while avoiding taking too much damage, and after you find the stairs, appropriately judging the risk/reward between exploring more for more EXP and finding some helpful stuff, or just getting out then and there. The nice thing about Inquisitor Angelic compared to Eagerness Angelic is that kill percent does not matter at all, so once you find the stairs you can just dip out of any tough level, and Berserker is all you really need to get past the Cyberdemon, while you don't even need to beat the Mastermind since you can just wait out the nuke timer there when a partial win still rewards the badge. That doesn't mean you stair dive though; as mentioned you need HR2 before Anomaly, the sooner you get Berserker the better as it'll greatly increase your chances of surviving Deimos floors full of VMR, any additional levels after that increases your chances of surviving tough Deimos and Hell floors, and I mean it when I say you'll need nearly every medkit and decent armor you can find, so not exploring floors enough may leave your resources too deficient to survive difficulty floors later.

Unlike the Eagerness Angelic 0.9.9.7 run that took me a few dozen tries, Inquisitor Angelic here took me... only three real attempts (not counting a few runs I Q+Y'd on Phobos Base Entry, or in one instance, accidentally run -> waiting too much and setting off the nuke on Phobos Base Entry), not only a lot less than the aforementioned Eagerness Angelic run took but also surprisingly a lot less than the Inquisitor Angelic runs i did in the 0.9.9.9 beta and 0.9.9.8 versions that each took a dozen. I wouldn't say Inquisitor Angelic was actually easier in 0.9.9.7, but I managed to get some fortunate luck without too many attempts. Such fortunate luck includes; a vault on Phobos 2 with a Power mod i was able to retrieve and immediately put on my Shotgun (as I learned in my 0.9.9.7 Quartermaster Diamond run a couple years ago, just putting an early Power mod on a Shotgun is very useful for significantly increasing the chances of you one-shotting the small fry at farther distances and killing the bigger enemies before they reach you), finding a radsuit on Phobos 5 that I could then use to retrieve the mods in Chained Court without having to hit the levers, only having to burn a single medkit in Phobos Anomaly, getting a Rocket Launcher in early Deimos, getting an easy Lost Soul + Pinky + Caco cave in Deimos and then an even easier Pinky cave after that also had two fresh Red Armors, and no mazes in Deimos nor Hell. Some things were rather unlucky, notably I never found a single unique nor any exotics aside from the guaranteed Chainsaw, guaranteed BFG, and a Hatred Skull I couldn't do much with, I never found any Bulk mods and so couldn't build a Nanofiber Red Armor to ensured I always had a decent armor (but the game giving me several uncontested Red and Blue armors throughout the run meant I never had to run around in Green Armor or nothing after Phobos), I never found a second Agility mod to make Tactical Boots, and I was never doing too good on medkits. I in fact did run out of medkits mid Hell and felt the run was maybe not going to close it out, but then Hell 5 gave me a Nightmare Demon cave, which would normally be a terrible thing, however with berserk and Nightmare Demons not yet having their fluid immunity they would get in 0.9.9.8, I was able to kill them without taking an excessive amount of damage after luring them into a corner with lava puddles and the floor had several Small Medkits with no Formers nor Nobles around to take them. Hell 7 then had an uncontested Large Medkit at the start to seal the deal for me, and with my Phase Devices I was able to immediately get near the stairs to ensure victory with no fear of suddenly dying trying so (there was a Baron, Mancubus, and Archvile near the stairs that battered me a bit, but with the Plasteel Boots I was able to power through them to the stairs without being beaten around too much). I also had a Homing Phase that I would use in Halls Of Carnage to get the BFG there, which I'm not sure was worth it as I did get in a bad spot in early Hell in an open room with a large amount of Barons, but a Phase Device was able to get me out of that and the BFG was pretty useful to help me get through an Arachnotron cave on Hell 6 without taking a lot of damage.

Now here is the mortem:

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

 ONLYMEDKITS3, level 10 Cyberdemon General Scout,
 defeated the Mastermind at the City of Dis.
 He survived 38939 turns and scored 517795 points.
 He played for 48 minutes and 11 seconds.
 He opposed the Nightmare!

 He killed 684 out of 1098 hellspawn. (62%)
 He was an Angel of Purity!
 He was also an Angel of Red Alert!

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

  Levels generated : 11
  Levels visited   : 5
  Levels completed : 0

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

  UAC Star (silver cluster)
  Minor Icarus Cross
  Inquisitor Angelic Badge

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

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

  Health 15/50   Experience 48396/10
  ToHit Ranged +0  ToHit Melee +4  ToDmg Ranged +0  ToDmg Melee +6

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

  Class : Scout

    Finesse          (Level 2)
    Hellrunner       (Level 2)
    Tough as nails   (Level 2)
    Reloader         (Level 1)
    Brute            (Level 2)
    Berserker        (Level 1)

  Fin->HR->Rel->HR->Bru->Bru->Ber->TaN->TaN->Fin->

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

    [a] [ Armor      ]   red armor [2/4] (33%)
    [b] [ Weapon     ]   chainsaw (4d6) (T)
    [c] [ Boots      ]   plasteel boots [2/2] (100%)
    [d] [ Prepared   ]   nothing

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

    [a] shotgun (9d3) [1/1] (P1)
    [b] tactical shotgun (8d3) [5/5]
    [c] rocket launcher (6d6) [1/1]
    [d] BFG 9000 (10d6) [60/100]
    [e] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
    [f] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
    [g] blue armor [2/2] (100%)
    [h] red armor [4/4] (56%)
    [i] shotgun shell (x50)
    [j] shotgun shell (x50)
    [k] shotgun shell (x50)
    [l] shotgun shell (x46)
    [m] shotgun shell (x50)
    [n] rocket (x10)
    [o] rocket (x10)
    [p] rocket (x3)
    [q] small med-pack
    [r] large med-pack
    [s] phase device
    [t] phase device
    [u] steel boots [1/1] (71%) (A)

-- 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 95% 
    Fire       - internal 60%   torso 72%   feet 85% 
    Plasma     - internal 60%   torso 60%   feet 60% 

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

    79 former humans
    69 former sergeants
    21 former captains
    80 imps
    42 demons
    288 lost souls
    22 cacodemons
    3 hell knights
    11 barons of hell
    11 arachnotrons
    7 former commandos
    16 pain elementals
    1 revenant
    8 mancubi
    6 arch-viles
    18 nightmare demons
    1 Cyberdemon
    1 Spider Mastermind

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

  He started his journey on the surface of Phobos.
  On level 2 he entered Hell's Arena.
  He saw, left a present and left.
  He left level 3 as soon as possible.
  On level 5 he stormed the Chained Court.
  On level 7 he assembled a tactical shotgun!
  On level 8 he encountered the Phobos Anomaly.
  On level 14 he ventured into the Halls of Carnage.
  Level 15 was a hard nut to crack!
  On level 16 he found the Tower of Babel!
  Entering level 17 he was almost dead...
  He left level 17 as soon as possible.
  On level 19 he entered the Vaults.
  He came, he saw, but he left.
  On level 21 he stumbled into a nightmare demon cave!
  On level 22 he arrived at Mt. Erebus.
  He decided it was too dangerous.
  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're going
 berserk! You need to taste blood!
 You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! You are hit! You dodge! You are hit!
 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 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 dies. Congratulations!
 You defeated the Spider Mastermind! Press <Enter>...

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

 234 brave souls have ventured into Phobos:
 69 of those were killed.
 91 didn't read the thermonuclear bomb manual.
 And 6 couldn't handle the stress and committed a stupid suicide.

 68 souls destroyed the Mastermind...
 6 sacrificed itself for the good of mankind.
 35 killed the bitch and survived.
 27 showed that it can outsmart Hell itself.

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