Doom Roguelike Enemy Analysis: Nightmare Arachnotron

HP: 80

Protection: 2

Ranged Accuracy: +4

Melee Accuracy: +4

Ranged Damage: 1d6*6 Plasma

Melee Damage: 1d3 (+3) Melee

Speed: 150%

Inventory: Power Cell*20

Experience: 452

Danger: 12

Minimum floor: 50/47/44

Maximum floor: Infinite

Experience per Danger: 37.66

Fires on Doomguy, then on its next turn fires again even if it can't see Doomguy anymore. Immune to Acid and Lava on the floor.

Evasion: Base of 20%, +4% per tile of distance, making for a maximum of 52% (probably)

Attack chance: 60%

Nightmare Arachnotrons are of course Arachnotrons, But More So.

Unlike Nightmare Imps and Nightmare Cacodemons, Nightmare Arachnotrons are a pretty big step up in threat profile compared to their non-Nightmare counterpart. They fire an additional shot at slightly higher Accuracy, and so even with a perfect defensive kit they're still over 20% more lethal per volley than regular Arachnotrons. They're silent, so it's easy to be ambushed by squads of them. They have 20% more Speed than Arachnotrons, so they fire about 15% more often. They drop the weakness to Melee damage, so even aside their HP and Protection going up, closing to melee with a halfway-competent melee kit isn't an instant solution like it is against regular Arachnotrons.

Their re-fire behavior is particularly unpleasant a surprise, and even more so than with Mancubi it's really easy to not realize this is a thing they do at all and just be intermittently left confused as to why you died. Notably, I don't think enemies deal with the 'firing into the darkness' penalty that Doomguy labors under, which is much more pertinent to Nightmare Arachnotrons than to Mancubi: Mancubi will often hit Doomguy even when failing their Accuracy check by virtue of their explosions hitting walls and all, and so often wouldn't care about such a darkness penalty anyway.

Their melee damage is still pretty pathetic, gaining only 1 Accuracy and 1 damage over regular Arachnotrons, so if you find yourself a tile away from a Nightmare Arachnotron, stepping into its face does remain a viable way to protect yourself. But overall, they're one of the nastiest enemies of the game, with poor ability to trivialize them in particular. (By which I mean that if you're stomping Nightmare Arachnotrons easily, you're probably stomping everything easily) Especially since they get to show up in mobs! Nightmare Arachnotron caves can be very deadly...

The fact that their Danger is only 33% higher than a regular Arachnotron notably means they show up in only slightly lower numbers on a given floor than regular Arachnotrons, where eg Nightmare Cacodemons cost almost 70% more danger than regular Cacodemons and so swarm noticeably less in caves and whatnot. Given the Nightmare Arachnotron threat profile is pretty straightforwardly more than 33% greater than a regular Arachnotron, this isn't a 'well, individuals are more deadly, but groups are less deadly' situation.

Oh, and Nightmare Arachnotrons are another Nightmare enemy that wasn't immune to fluids until 0.9.9.8. Like Nightmare Imps, I have mixed feelings on this change, as it means they're overall less of a problem in Limbo (Because they end up dying in Lava and so no revival happens) and isn't even a clear buff in Angel of 100/Archangel of 666. With Nightmare Arachnotron caves it's particularly bluntly a mixed bag; on the one hand, you won't get them spawning trapped somewhere by Lava. On the other hand, you also get annoying stuff like them wandering off down a river of Lava and refusing to come back into view. They show up late enough you should have Cerberus Boots or something by then, but it's still annoying.

I get the theory behind this particular change, but man... it's such a mixed bag in practice.

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Next time, we round out the Nightmare enemies with Nightmare Archviles.

See you then.