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We thought we were funny to win Hell's Arena without getting hit, we were wrong. The Arena Master himself is coming after us, and many noobs have perished at his hands.
Standard procedure is to always open the right doors and to kill as much as possible. The Arena Master is on the left side.
The Arena Master has a tendency to resurrect anything he sees, and that includes these cacodemons. The map is wide open so you don't want one of those sneaking up on you.
Getting ambushed, not a huge surprise. I wanted to really go for this cacodemon since they don't always present themselves so nicely. Any way to prevent getting hit here? Going to switch to the chaingun and try to kill the former human first.
It worked pretty well. Juggler is used so often I don't even think about it. I guess a build without juggler is like Diablo 3 without skill swapping, you're forced to go with what you have equipped.
The next grunt hits us however. Should've ran for cover. Chaingun still isn't dependable to kill them in one shot, I have good reason not to trust the weapon.
How lucky I am these cacodemons are just exposing themselves. This is the ideal spot to be, just pump em full of lead. The trick is to spot them from afar and with cover nearby.
He does hit me though, twice. No good spot to camp for them on the level.
This is the situation you don't want to find yourself in.
Only one option is left, chainfire with the chaingun. It's the safest way to kill him.
Maybe he shouldn't have tried charging me in melee.
With the 4 cacodemons killed relatively easily, we can scout the area and use the agility pack. I'll assemble the ballistic armor for no reason.
(Achievement unlocked, crafted an item!) With those resistances it's pretty awesome. I think the Shambler is a great target for this. I don't know if there's any other special occasions to use it.
Now the hard part. We must kill the Arena Master. Fortunately, I have come across a safe tactic against him.
The first critical part is to gib every normal enemy on your way to the Arena Master. For this we have our rocket launcher ready.
You don't want to have 5 grunts shooting at you while you are running away from the arena master.
Let me get berserk too because we never know if we will be surprised. The guy hits for as much as 40% of our health.
Level up.
I take the melee trait Brute which will help us in this fight but is also a requirement for Malicious Blades.
This part is harder without intuition since every enemy will surprise you.
It's that much tougher on the 3rd difficulty and up where you have shotgun grunts here.
One way to do that is to aggro everyone with weak shotgun blasts that don't kill and follow it with a rocket. Eagle Eye is also great here as rockets miss a lot.
Here he is. I don't try to launch a rocket as it might miss, or switch to a chaingun or anything but instead I run.
The fucker can hit you out of sight. I also try to shoot a few times to be sure I aggro him, maybe a mistake.
I overestimated how fast I could run, he's too close to me. Well I run to the berserk packs anyway.
And here's how we kill him, in melee. You aggro him, take the berserk and then charge him in melee.
He goes down in three hits. Even if you're not melee, always use the chainsaw and go melee him. It's simply the safest way to do it as compared to trying to rocket him or to charge with a berserk pack that expires or using normal weapons around cover.
Our ego is definitively shattered but I think we came out alright. If he hadn't destroyed a berserk pack, I would now have 100% health. We use the second agility pack on our boots.
Are these power cells I see? I'm going to grab some more, but this time I have a good item to throw away.
Final Inventory. Since we have the Butcher's Cleaver, we're good if someone reaches melee. So I will get rid of my second shotgun which is mainly a backup shot against anyone who makes it to melee and grab 50 more power cells.
Using a medkit is tempting but I hope the next level gives some free healing.
Will our overconfident hero get horribly ambushed? Find out next time.
Final Grade B-
The Arena Master could've gone much better, I don't like getting hit as much as I did. I think it's a pretty consistent theme that I forget to plan ahead. Should've used the first agility pack on my boots or did the opening better.