Doom Roguelike Enemy Analysis: Nightmare Archvile

HP: 150

Protection: 3

Ranged Accuracy: Special

Melee Accuracy: +4

Ranged Damage: 20d1 Plasma

Blast radius: 1

Melee Damage: 1d3 (+8) Melee

Speed: 180%

Inventory: Nothing.

Experience: 1220

Danger: 20

Minimum floor: 90/87/84

Maximum floor: Infinite

Experience per Danger: 61

Can open doors. Immune to Acid and Lava on the floor. 33% chance per action to spend it resurrecting a corpse within the Nightmare Archvile's sight. When killed, leaves behind a 'bloody corpse' object, which cannot be resurrected.

Ranged attack is special: first they announce the attack, then on their next turn they spend it actually performing it, with this second action involving no accuracy check but involving a Dodge check to see if the Nightmare Archvile correctly targets Doomguy's tile.

Evasion: 10% base, +10% per tile of distance, making for a maximum of 90% evasion.

Attack chance: 60%

Prior to 0.9.9.8, Nightmare Archviles were just straightforwardly upstatted Archviles, doing 25 Fire damage rather than the 20 Fire damage regular Archviles do. They were also pretty pointless, as they could only be seen in Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 (No Special Level used them in 0.9.9.7) and in Angel of 100 they don't show up until you're almost done with the run. It's entirely possible to finish an Angel of 100 run without ever seeing a Nightmare Archvile! (As in, I've had this happen. Multiple times, even))

With 0.9.9.8, though, they're more meaningfully different and more relevant: they've switched to 20 Plasma damage (Which is overall more dangerous than 25 Fire damage by the time you see them, generally speaking), and importantly regular Archviles were made no longer immune to hostile fluids while Nightmare Archviles are no longer terrified of hostile fluids. Additionally, the House of Pain was introduced, and on higher difficulties its final fight upgrades its Archviles into Nightmare Archviles, finally letting them appear in standard runs.

But seriously, 20 Plasma damage is pretty terrifying. Fire resistance is easier to raise than Plasma resistance, and while I have an overall low opinion of relying on high Protection, I do sometimes end up with a run spending at least some time relying primarily on high Protection rather than resistances, where the switch to Plasma damage can be a big spike in threat level.

Most of the time, Angel of 100 runs that get that far don't really care, mind, so I'm really glad they can show up in the House of Pain to actually matter. An Angel of 100 run that gets that far often is able to delete Nightmare Archviles with only slightly more difficulty than regular Archviles in spite of them having over double the HP and an additional point of Protection: this can still happen with the House of Pain encounter, but is a much less common scenario.

Oh, and of course Nightmare Archviles are completely silent. This is honestly one of their more meaningful/obnoxious qualities, as you can't sound out where they are while you're Shotgunning the enemies they're reviving. I assume it would also make it easy to not realize they're around in Nightmare! and/or Angel of Darkness runs, though I've never managed to have that come up myself...

Overall, they're still kinda whatever a lot of the time, one of the least notable Nightmare enemies, but at least the House of Pain gives them more opportunity to matter.

They're also probably the least janky Nightmare enemy in regards to the 'gain widespread immunity to hostile fluids in 0.9.9.8' decision. They can't be resurrected in the first place, so wandering over Lava to die on it isn't strongly beneficial to the player the way it can be with other Nightmare enemies, and it's actually kind of nice (if slightly balance-strange, since this is a way they can be less dangerous than regular Archviles) that Nightmare Archviles can't end up trapped such that they end up spending every turn resurrecting. So that's nice.

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Next time, we leave Nightmare enemies behind in favor of Elite zombies, starting with the Elite Former Human.

See you then.