Doom Roguelike Analysis: Archangel Challenges (0.9.9.7/0.9.9.8)

Archangel Challenges are distinguished by being, essentially, regular Challenges, But More So: each of them is named in direct relation to a regular Challenge, just attaching 'arch' to the beginning (Well, except Archangel of 666, technically), and is in fact just that regular Challenge but with harsher rules.

I won't be super-wordy here because honestly I haven't played Archangel Challenges much. Angel Challenges are neat for challenging me to play the game differently, but Archangel Challenges, by nature of their concept, are prone to being pretty directly comparable to their regular counterpart overall, and just more stringent on competency of execution. Two of the six don't fit that prior framing, but they have their own issues that limit my desire to play those Challenges.

The actual function of Archangel Challenges really seems to be just to challenge one's self to be better, and while that's perfectly fine to be a thing and I'm sure plenty of people do like the Archangel Challenges for exactly that reason, I tend to find the result a bit dull when it gets taken to this kind of extreme.

Also, I should note that Archangel Challenges don't get to interact with the Dual-Challenge system at all. You can't do Angel of Shotgunnery alongside Archangel of 666 or anything like that, and you can't mix Archangel Challenges together. From a design standpoint this feels arbitrary, but I suspect from a coding standpoint that the inclusion of such options would be a lot of work. As I personally don't think much value would be added by such options, I don't exactly mind the omission.

Anyway, on to specifics!

Archangel of Travel

Effect: Doomguy has only 2 slots for carrying items, but he generates 30% more Energy per game tick.

Archangel of Travel is actually probably my favorite of the Archangel Challenges. While it's really just a more extreme version of Angel of Travel, trading 3 more inventory slots in exchange for another 10% of base Energy generation, this actually does have a modest but noticeable impact on the way one plays. It's still skewed in broadly the same directions (Melee builds are all but mandatory, Mod Packs are pretty use-it-or-lose-it, etc), but the reduction in inventory slots pushes your inventory management even farther away from standard play: in Angel of Travel runs, it's not unusual for my late-game play to be functionally pretty similar to a standard run's late-game play that happened to go melee, just with a less absurd supply of Medpacks sitting in my inventory Just In Case. And even early in such a run, I often have my fifth slot variably occupied by Maybe Useful things, like a Mod Pack I'm undecided on whether/how to use. In Archangel of Travel, you basically can't justify 'maybes' sitting in your inventory at all!

The fact that Archangel of Travel ups the advantage also makes it less Just Be Better. The trade is overall poor, certainly, but 130% Energy generation is a small-yet-significant advantage over 120% Energy generation: among other points, in Archangel of Travel it's actually pretty easy to run away from Pinkies!

It does unfortunately mean Archangel of Travel is even more prone to running into strange behavior due to the game's underlying implementation diverging from its ostensible or intended behavior. A Blademaster Scout is basically guaranteed to be getting regularly hampered by Blademaster's 'set to 5001 Energy' behavior, and even non-Scouts will find it that bit easier to end up generating Energy faster than they spend it and so end up with weird sequences where later actions are functionally occurring faster than they're meant to.

Still, Archangel of Travel is reasonably neat. If all the Archangel Challenges were designed more like it, I'd be pretty positive on the collection.

I wouldn't recommend trying it until after you've gotten used to Angel of Travel, mind. The intense inventory crunch is difficult to adapt to, and it would be so much worse if you went straight from only doing standard inventory size runs to Archangel of Travel...

Archangel of Red Alert

Effect: A nuke with a 2 minute and 30 second timer is placed at Doomguy's feet upon entering each new floor. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations.

That's Angel of Red Alert, except the timer is halved.

As I'm not terribly fond of Angel of Red Alert, you're probably not surprised to hear I don't care for Archangel of Red Alert. I have tried it, but only once, and it was only once precisely because it ended in a floor blowing up on me before I could find the stairs through functionally no fault of my own. I didn't linger, I was careful with my movement, I actually took Hellrunner as my first level-up pick, but the floor just happened to generate such that the route from my starting position to where the staircase was meant taking a very circuitous route, with a key part of the path being a single-tile-wide corridor blocked by multiple Pinkies: I'm pretty sure even if I'd somehow cheated to know where the stairs were that it would have been literally impossible to reach the stairs in time.

I would guess there are people who can beat it reliably enough that they're perfectly comfortable with unavoidably losing some runs to this kind of thing, but that's just too much of an uncontrollable death roulette for me. 'The dice unavoidably kill you sometimes' is an inherent risk to the overall roguelike framework, but I prefer when that result can be pushed to the outer edges by improving one's skills: I'm doubtful Archangel of Red Alert really fits into that range of design. Its timer really is just brutally short, and it gets hit so much harder by the fact that the timer isn't constantly tracked.

Archangel of Masochism

Effect: Almost all healing fails to increase HP, and also doesn't reset Tactics to Cautious. (The Marine's Vampyre Mastery still functions) Unlike regular Masochism, you don't get healed by levelups.

I have difficulty mustering enthusiasm for Archangel of Masochism. Unless you specifically take Vampyre, the pressures skew pretty heavily toward Angel of Humanity-esque play: in both cases, success hinges pretty heavily your ability to minimize opportunities for enemies to attack you in the first place. The details are a bit different, especially late in a run, as Angel of Humanity can potentially get a strong enough defensive kit that it becomes acceptable to be attacked and then just heal off the damage like in a standard run, whereas Archangel of Masochism doesn't have to worry about being pasted by a single attack out of the box but will always resent any damage it takes no matter what, but... especially early on, they really do skew toward very similar demands on how one plays.

I guess Angel of Masochism is pretty easy to see how to make it harder and that's why we got Archangel of Masochism, but... ehhh....

Archangel of 666

Effect: Completely removes all fixed floor generation cases, with the game ending upon completing your 666th floor.

It's Angel of 100, But More So. It is of course 666 floors as a Number of the Beast reference.

As of this writing I've done Archangel of 666 exactly once (I keep meaning to do it a second time), and I have difficulty recommending anyone else do it more than once, maybe twice. Angel of 100 is already pretty prone to having the last 5-20 floors be basically a tedious formality, and Archangel of 666 just means you spend over 500 floors on Basically A Formality play. It's legitimately kind of cool getting to actually expect your run to see things like a Cyberdemon single-monster-floor, so there's some value to it, but you're liable to take literal days to complete a run, and the majority of that time will be with your build complete and unchanging.

If you're interested in testing item generation claims and whatnot, I guess it has some utility for that. (I did my run in part to try to get screenshots of Uniques, for example) My Archangel of 666 run is a big part of why I'm confident the wiki is wrong on points like 'a Unique stops generating if you ever pick it up': because I had multiple Uniques in that run I did in fact pick up, then drop, then have generate again on a later floor to pick up, drop, and then generate yet again still later. Angel of 100 runs are short enough it's genuinely unexpected for a run to see the same Unique twice.

Archangel of 666 does also pretty clearly illustrate how rare the rare stuff is. When I started my run, I figured I'd see literally everything at least once apiece given I'd be doing literally dozens of standard runs worth of floor with most of them well past the minimum floors of the rarer items and all, and so confirm eg Mjollnir's sprite. Nope! I had multiple Uniques and even some Exotics that simply never generated. It was frustrating!

But from a For Fun sort of perspective, Archangel of 666 really does just drag on way too long. If it was Archangel of 150, or 200, it would honestly still drag on too long -Angel of 100 already tends to- but I could see someone feeling there's enough value added by that length to play it semi-regularly, or maybe even by default if they don't mind the time commitment aspect. As-is... yeah, Number of the Beast, I get it, but seriously, this really should be a lot shorter.

At least you can just ignore it. I'd be a lot more down on Archangel of 666 if Doom Roguelike locked actual content behind doing it. This is true of the Angel Challenges in general, but Archangel of 666 is certainly the most stand-out case of 'it would be awful if this was made mandatory'.

Archangel of Pacifism

Effect: Doomguy is unable to attack. Doomguy starts with a nuke for use on the final boss, and the first floor generates as a standard randomized floor instead of the Phobos Base Entrance fixed floor. Scouts don't passively see staircases. Unlike regular Pacifism, Doomguy doesn't gain Levels. 

This is harder than Angel of Pacifism, but less so than you might expect. In a regular Angel of Pacifism run, you don't actually get that many level-ups in total, they're parceled out pretty slowly, and your range of options for usefully benefiting from those Trait points is pretty limited, so missing out on Trait points hurts a lot less than it would in a non-Pacifism context. Perhaps more importantly, a lot of situations that will doom a Pacifism run will do so regardless of Trait investment, because the problem isn't that you weren't fast enough or tough enough, but rather is that you get physically blockaded by enemies in corridors or the like and Pacifism removes almost all ability to resolve these kinds of situations.

Unfortunately, I find Archangel of Pacifism is just really boring. It is harder than Angel of Pacifism, but not in a particularly interesting way, and not in a particularly consistent way. Sometimes you just get trapped and die either way, possibly so early that the difference literally doesn't apply at all! And sometimes you keep getting lucky and just immediately run down the staircase that's in view right after you descend, and the difference technically exists but still isn't meaningfully impacting the run.

I'd frankly have rather had an Archangel version of some other Challenge, rather than of Pacifism, but even for Pacifism I feel like there must be a more interesting way to do an Archangel version.

Archangel of Humanity

Effect: Doomguy's base HP is 20% standard, including that Ironman has only 20% its normal benefits. (ie Scouts and Technicians have 10 HP, Marines have 12 HP, and Ironman adds 2 HP per rank) He also does not benefit from Levels, only ever having the one starting point to invest in a Trait. Doomguy starts with Red Armor equipped, 2 Large Medpacks in inventory, and 1 copy of each Basic Mod Pack (ie Power, Bulk, Technical, and Agility), in addition to the standard starting kit.

I have never beaten this and expect to never manage the feat. My handful of attempts never made it very far; the farthest I got was the Phobos Anomaly, and I didn't make it through the ambush.

As such, I can't really speak to how different an experience this is. I'd be pretty shocked if it truly felt the same as Angel of Humanity, but I wouldn't be surprised if Doom Roguelike veterans who have beaten it feel it's not strongly interesting.

I can appreciate the idea in abstract, at least: Archangel of Humanity makes a sort of sense as 'realistic' Doom Roguelike, in the sense of stripping out gamified player advantages. No, you don't 'gain experience' and have your skin become bulletproof. No, you are not an inhumanly tough person who can take a fireball to the face and shrug it off and just apply some bandages or whatever later, over and over and over again. If you're going to fight your way through the forces of Hell and kill hundreds of foes without dying, it'll be by virtue of you being amazingly skilled, not by virtue of being a monster who can go hand-to-hand with a hugely muscled demon-man who's got more than a head of height on you and casually rip him in half.

But I can't really speak to how well it works as a gameplay experience.

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Next time, we talk about Duel-Angel Challenges, starting from the Angel of Shotgunnery ones.

See you then.