Completed Let's Play Doom RL: RNG busting edition

[Renegen]

You can use the alt fire to do single fire and and the alt reload to do a single reload.

For the double shotgun? Crap

 

[Renegen]

update 10: Phobos lvl 7, too close

Spoiler

nomusic (YT doesn't have it)

Damn right I feel uneasy.

The Wall contains a wall, with horrible animals sounds on the other end and blood everywhere. No matter how experienced you are, the Wall gives time for pause.

Let's start with a clear rocket incision to get this opened.

Always fire straight, not diagonally or in different spots. You want a really straight opening.

Something else I learned playing on higher difficulties is to open up a backup cover spot. You don't want to blow off a second hole but a small crevice where you can hide if they overrun you in the first cover spot.

Well fuck. As you can see I have an almost perfect second cover except for that prickly concrete block that sticks out.

I don't want to ruin my perfectly straight walls so maybe I can make the block disappear if I fire a rocket here and get some splash damage...

the rockets don't stop where I want them to and instead...

This is very bad. We were unlucky and a hell BARON is waiting for us. This is really bad because our backup cover isn't ready (the baron would be able to get a shot) and he's too close for the shotgun. I think long and hard about what to do and come up with melee.

The cleaver has to be able to do the job, right?... right?

Not only do I miss several times but it takes a lot of hits to bring him down. And look how much health I lost, I'm shocked. This kind of ruins the run I had planned for this level.

The important thing is that I didn't use a medpack, and I won't use one now. This LP has just become a "How long until I absolutely, positively, must use a medpack" challenge.

In a fit of rage I unload my shotgun. I aggro two of them however. More pain ahead?

It all works out pretty well. The shotgun comfortably kept them at range.

I blow that stupid concrete wall for the backup. If I could, I'd just stand here and blind fire all day but I know I can't.

I do it anyway. More come. It's important to exercise patience as we don't have intuition.

On the other hand, the shotgun works really well. I'm never in any danger. That son of a bitch trait really did the job.

Our shotgun shells are down. We use about 5 shots at least per enemy here.

We venture in deeper. I blindfire like a madman in all directions.

If they ever get to you in melee, you need damage upgrades. Or they could be hiding in holes left in the wall if it wasn't properly destroyed. Knockback helps too.

My player card. Took me several dozen hours before I found this. It appears my small movement speed bonus is enough to outrun the hell barons and hell knights. You want to outrun them.

Back to aggroing. I must be firing 5 times before each move. As soon as I hear a scream, I rush back. Of course they usually ambush me instead.

The last few monsters are the hardest as they can easily ambush you in fact.

A few more firefights and my ammo is quite low.

Hallelujah. When moving away I like to move diagonally, it might help with dodging chances.

Time for the precious loot. Not only a backpack that increases ammo size but a critical missile launcher with 4 shots before reloads.

Final inventory. We used a lot of shotgun ammo, a lot. It was necessary to carry 3 stacks because we've gone through more than 2 of them.

I love the next level, it's kind of like a mini-boss battle.

Final Grade: B+
Horrible opening but then I recovered quite well. Just gotta be very prudent and be ready to waste a ton of ammo.

bonus multi-poll: For Phobos Anomaly, you get to decide how I die live!
Choice A is to use the trusty Butcher's Cleaver. Let's reach our potential and see what this weapon is made of.
Choice B is my favourite techie technique, the Arena Master's staff. After how the Cleaver went against the Hell Baron, I'm not to confident.
Choice C is rocket launcher up close and see me end this LP.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

How do you view the player card? Dammit I never knew about that.

And you exhibit far more patience then I normally do for the wall. Usually I roll dodge builds though, so as long as I'm away from splash damage and don't run into like, 3 of them, it's still ok. As for Phobos Anamoly B is safest... so A. Should be more thrilling. I've tried C before when I was still really new. /facepalm

 

[Damned Registrations]

Staff won't work on lost souls now, they're nearly fire immune. Why wouldn't you use the shotgun?

Unless you meant for the brothers. shotgun or RL best for them.

Protip for melee: Running fucks your melee accuracy. Not a good idea unless you have brute or some other accuracy bonus.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Had a really good Marksman run going; found the beretta in the Vaults. But then I entered the Mortuary. Big mistake. So yeah, I'd advise against that if you get that far unless you have a gameplan for it. Anyway, my vote was actually for melee vs the skulls. Then, whatever works vs the bruiser brothers.

 

[Destroid]

How the hell do you beat The Wall. Strangely I've had the most success with Marine builds, while most people seem to find Scout best.

EDIT: Still haven't beaten The Wall, but I got pretty far with a rapid-fire marine, ended up with a 3-11*8 plasma gun that only used 1 round per burst after all the traits. Ended up dying to over 9000 lost souls

 

[Renegen]

How do you view the player card? Dammit I never knew about that.

And you exhibit far more patience then I normally do for the wall. Usually I roll dodge builds though, so as long as I'm away from splash damage and don't run into like, 3 of them, it's still ok. As for Phobos Anamoly B is safest... so A. Should be more thrilling. I've tried C before when I was still really new. /facepalm

press @ to view the player card, it is indeed very useful once you find out where it is.

Staff won't work on lost souls now, they're nearly fire immune. Why wouldn't you use the shotgun?

Unless you meant for the brothers. shotgun or RL best for them.

Protip for melee: Running fucks your melee accuracy. Not a good idea unless you have brute or some other accuracy bonus.

The staff still works against the lost souls. I've only ever tried it with the latest graphic whores version. You just need to cast it three times, still very safe. I gather you also are going for option A? Yeah, the poll is about the lost souls, they are a bitch. As for that hell baron, I had to run I think to get into melee without him having a free shot. Even normally (as shown on the player card!) my melee accuracy is 74%.

How the hell do you beat The Wall. Strangely I've had the most success with Marine builds, while most people seem to find Scout best.

EDIT: Still haven't beaten The Wall, but I got pretty far with a rapid-fire marine, ended up with a 3-11*8 plasma gun that only used 1 round per burst after all the traits. Ended up dying to over 9000 lost souls

Do you mean the Mortuary? (yeah it's a killer), Phobos Anomaly? We just did The Wall in the last update. Some good tips there, the important thing is to use shotgun as most of the time you won't see the enemies as you're behind cover. Shotguns also have knockback. Bring tons of ammo. If using chaingun then use chainfire.

 

[Destroid]

Ah, I didn't spot that as it was labelled by depth, not by name. That seems to be the way to go, duking it out certainly doesn't work. It seems this game is exceedingly hard if you don't finish all the arenas and get the bonus stuff.

The homing beacons do this:

Spoiler

Teleport you to the downstairs.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can turn running off when you want your accuracy for attacking. There's no penalties except not being able to run again (or activate certain items) until you eat a health item or go downstairs.

Best way to handle lost souls is to activate running just before the walls disappear, then run clear through the other side (Shoot the door open before opening the walls) then blast the room with a shotgun repeatedly. The far side will have you get hit less often than the near side.

Also, using the staff 3 times seems like a waste of medkits to me. Especially for lousy lost souls. Though at least it would indeed be safe on a techie. Whole thing should take only half a second.

 

[Lindblum]

Doom-E1M1 on 8 floppy drives. I somehow prefer this to the instrumental version.

 

[Renegen]

update 11: Phobos Anomaly, the unnamed level

Spoiler

music

Let's get this over with. The level isn't that bad.

It only kills about half my builds, usually the challenge builds.

It's a test really for whether you can improvise but also plan ahead. Doom RL and its tutorials, it never ends!

Spot the differences.

Yo I heard you like armor, so I put... it should help with the melee, as long as it doesn't break.

We're going with option A, the melee option, as the codex hivemind made it so so clear.

Remember when I said I was only going to use melee?

I lied.

Well this is it. The Butcher's Cleaver has a special ability that gives you a free action if you kill an enemy. If all goes well, I'm going to go all Super Sayan on their asses.

I kill one and then miss. They let me know how they feel. Don't fail me now RNG.

4 go down and I get a level up.

We take Brute the second time. Let's seal the deal.

They're still very fast so some of them get a free action but it's done. For the proper way of doing it, Damned Registrations described very well how to succeed. I personally just never got the hang of running back so I'm always a bit more creative.

There's also 2 cacodemons.

I don't really want to go into melee, I know how painful they are.

This one is kind of stupid and I kill him without getting hit.

In hindsight, I should've just used the missile launcher. I don't really have any suggestions against the cacodemons here. They will hit you. The arena master staff option works well to kill a few of them off, or you could chainfire or rocket them.

Now for the easy part.

Equip the missile launcher and just run here. The missile launcher and its 4 rockets will make easy work of these very tough fuckers.

I almost fuck up by clicking the wrong mouse button.

Just reload whenever they are off-sight and fire when on-sight. It's even easier with intuition. And it doesn't really work with the 1 shot rocket launcher, you need the missile launcher.

I make quite a few inventory changes.

Gone is the blue armor as I now sport the red armor. That little [4/4] instead of the [2/2] means it's twice as good, that's the most important stat.

We leave the safe confines of Phobos for the dark uneasiness of Deimos. This could get ugly.

Final Grade: A-
Well the Cleaver strategy was lulzy, though it was probably the single riskiest choice in this whole LP. I fucked up on the cacodemons a bit.

 

[Gregz]

The missile launcher is pretty great, saved me more than a few times against bosses and tough mobs.

 

[Destroid]

My chain build was pretty successful again, made it all the way to the next boss but then I died due to a combination of attrition leading up to that point and being too slow to avoid damage. Averaging >50 plasma if all 8 rounds hit sure is jolly, but it's not that useful against very tough opponents who deal big damage.

Doing that missile launcher trick will certainly improve my performance on this level, I usually just gut it out and have a hp battle with them. I'm impressed how well you are doing with an ostensibly melee build, mine all die very early on.

 

[Renegen]

If you took the ammo chain trait I find it pretty awesome with the nuclear plasma rifle. With unlimited ammo, you can just blindfire everywhere and play very cautiously. In fact I think that's how I won the game on 'Hurt Me Plenty'. I like rapid fire weapons, but they go with intuition. I'm also collecting those phase devices for the bosses, they really hit hard indeed.

 

[Destroid]

Yep ammochain, but I use a high power plasma rifle (1d9x6). Very deadly, and the reduced magazine capacity is entirely meaningless when each burst only takes one round. Hurt Me Plenty is the only difficulty I've played on, so that could explain why I'm having a hard time.

Maybe I should have used my BFG on the boss.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you took the ammo chain trait I find it pretty awesome with the nuclear plasma rifle. With unlimited ammo, you can just blindfire everywhere and play very cautiously. In fact I think that's how I won the game on 'Hurt Me Plenty'. I like rapid fire weapons, but they go with intuition. I'm also collecting those phase devices for the bosses, they really hit hard indeed.

Once you get your malicious knives trait, bosses should be a non issue. Keep a blade in the offhand and go melee them, they'll hit like pansies.

Accuracy bonuses are a must for chainfire weapons. If you don't have a couple levels of eagle eye or some accuracy mods, all those shots don't add up to very much at medium/long range, which is where rapid fire weapons have their advantage. I think they depend a lot more on knowing enemy hp/armor levels though to avoid wasting turns and ammo and choosing your fights. Everything looks more or less the same to a pistol or shotgun build, but the difference between an arachnotron's health and armor and a hell baron's can easily be the death of you if you misjudge them too often with rapid weapons.

 

[Renegen]

update 12: Deimos lvl 1, a challenger appears

Spoiler

music

What a warm reception, a hell knight is there to greet us. Deimos has indeed arrived.

We blow through the grace period and don't even get close to killing him.

Oh shit, how did this get out of hand? I sure hope the large medpack makes it, or me for that matter.

The biggest problem with these hell knights are their ranged plasma attack. I get tossed around and lose 28% more hp before finally getting into position.

One hit and he dies, impressive. I should melee the knights more often. Let's go forward and...

Bad move.

For him. I'm slowly becoming deadly in melee.

With the hell knights out of the way, it's all down to cover shooting now.

Hell yeah, an assault shotgun, I love it. It's fully automatic so that saves two mod packs and it's exotic so we can spend those two modpacks to upgrade it further.

And now for the fun part, collecting more medpacks.

We um, encountered some more grunts along the way. They didn't make it.

Oh come on. I guess it's now common to see these tough enemies.

Maybe it's a bad habit to empty my shotgun at this range, but we have an assault shotgun for exactly this purpose.

No way through.

So we blast a new opening. This is something that I think I will do more often. Though dangerous, it's almost inevitable acid/lava will block your path going forward.

A bulk mod pack, what a pleasant surprise. Good thing it didn't get destroyed.

A lot of blind fire going on.

A second bulk mod pack. We'll leave them for the end of the level.

And here we have a bridge. This is Deimos lvl 1 and already the map looks like Hell, I don't like.

And he's down. What a weird level.

Gonna repair my armors with those shards. I also take the 3rd homing phase device, I kind of regret it now.

So I'm thinking I can probably leave a medpack behind and take 1 bulk mod pack. But the second pack has to be used right away.

The red armor shall be reinforced. I'm going for a pretty standard armor schematic that gives auto-repair, maybe we can find something better eventually. See you next level!

Final Grade: B+
Eh, it wasn't that great of a run, but we had to leave behind 3 small medpacks so nothing has been lost.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Nice find for the assault shottie. A huge upgrade over the standard one. The missile launcher is a pretty swell pickup too, as you able demonstrated vs the bruiser brothers. RNG's been pretty kind to you as far as drops go methinks. It is funny seeing a normal run after so many AoM attempts; your inventory looks all wrong to me, but then I remember, right, he can use more than one gun. Are you planning on doing all the special levels or whatever, or just some?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Assault shotgun is indeed a nice find. I always hate when I find it either after making a tactical shotty or when I'm on a challenge. That thing works miracles. Though it does tend to chew through ammo as well.

There's actually a lot of unique/exotic weapons that I wouldn't bother with if I'm on a character with juggler, because being able to swap to a weapon instantly is a huge advantage. Assault shotgun probably falls into that category for me, assuming I have a tactical one already.

 

[Renegen]

The goal I hope is to do all special levels, no less. Very high chance the Spider's Lair will kill us, not gonna lie. But all of Hell should kill us, this LP certainly won't be straight forward. The RNG Gods have been kind with the drops, all we need now is an amazing armor or an amazing rapid-fire weapon.

As for Juggler, I don't have too much experience with it. Some exotic or crafted weapons can be switched instantly, while other's cant. It's weird. Btw, since I'm a technician, if I go in the inventory and switch weapons, does that only take 0.1 seconds?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Crafted weapons count as whatever the base item was. So a tactical shotgun can be swapped to as though it were a combat shotgun.

No idea about the weapon swap thing. Maybe test it near a former human standing in melee range. At worst they'll punch you for 1 dmg.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

You seem pretty well geared up, I think you should be able to take the Spider's Lair. Roll in, knock some shots of with the missile launcher, book it for the teleporter, use the 2 walls for cover. While I will be the first to bitch about the arachnatrons (they've ended lots of my runs), I haven't found the Spider's Lair to be a horrible deathtrap.

Also, I meant to point out there is rocket launcher behind the teleporter at the end of Phobos Anomaly that you seemed to ignore. Not sure if you even had room for it, but worth noting.

 

[Destroid]

Even applying the strategy The Wall kills me like 75% of the time

 

[Renegen]

Even applying the strategy The Wall kills me like 75% of the time

How the fuck? What part exactly?

 

[Damned Registrations]

You seem pretty well geared up, I think you should be able to take the Spider's Lair. Roll in, knock some shots of with the missile launcher, book it for the teleporter, use the 2 walls for cover. While I will be the first to bitch about the arachnatrons (they've ended lots of my runs), I haven't found the Spider's Lair to be a horrible deathtrap.

Also, I meant to point out there is rocket launcher behind the teleporter at the end of Phobos Anomaly that you seemed to ignore. Not sure if you even had room for it, but worth noting.

Do not take potshots with the rocket launcher first. Arachnotrons are FAST. Beeline for those fucking teleporters if you're going to do that level. If they get to fire at you even one turn while you're in the middle there you're in deep shit.