Doom Roguelike Enemy Analysis: The Apostle (0.9.9.7/0.9.9.8)

HP: 255

Protection: 30

Ranged Accuracy: N/A

Melee Accuracy: +2

Ranged Damage: 40d1 Plasma

Blast Radius: 3

Melee Damage: 1d3 (+12) Melee

Speed: 160%

Inventory: Nothing.

Experience: N/A

Danger: N/A

Minimum floor: N/A

Maximum floor: N/A

Experience per Danger: N/A

Can open doors. Immune to Acid and Lava on the floor. Immune to knockback. Each turn, has a 5% chance of teleporting, and a 25% chance to resurrect a dead enemy in its view. Regenerates 1 HP per action.

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 Apostle correctly targets Doomguy's tile. The Apostle is also immune to its own splash damage.

Upon spawning, permanently prevents nukes from being activated.

If you have Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor equipped, the Apostle will appear instead of John Carmack in most runs. In an Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666 run, spawns on the final floor (Still requires Dragonslayer+Berserker Armor), instantly killing all enemies generated on that floor. Killing the Apostle awards a full win in most runs, but a standard win in Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 runs.

Evasion: ??

Attack chance: ??

The most secret enemy in the game.

Before I start, I should note that my experience with the Apostle is quite limited. I only ever fought it once, back in 0.9.9.7, and it was a quick affair. As such, my understanding of its AI is nonexistent, and I'm mostly just paraphrasing what the wiki says about it and trusting that it's probably correct. So for example I have no idea how its 'disables nukes' behavior actually works, and indeed have not confirmed it's even a real behavior. I similarly think it has no audio (Outside its attacks), but am not actually sure this is so; I didn't think to specifically test that when I ran into it, and it died a lot quicker than I expected it to, so honestly it's possible it has audio and I just killed it too quickly to notice, or whatever.

By a similar token, it's entirely possible 0.9.9.8 gave it a new graphic. I still haven't encountered it in 0.9.9.8, and the patch notes weren't exactly thorough about mentioning changes to the sprites. I can confirm it's just a plain Archvile sprite in 0.9.9.7, though; it didn't even do palette stuff. (I suppose it's possible it's meant to and the Berserk filter overruled such, but I'd be surprised given that in 0.9.9.7 the Nightmare enemy blue coloration overruled Berserk/Envirosuits/Invulnerability) As the Apostle is tied up in this Dragonslayer/Berserk Armor stuff, which is all a Berserk reference, I'd guess the Apostle is also a reference, and presumably to something that doesn't look like an Archvile, it would potentially make sense to have given it new art... though I've never read Berserk, so that's all supposition.

This failure to see any hypothetical new sprite is of course because the Apostle is... even more demanding to encounter than John Carmack. You can technically fight it reliably, y'know, if you're the kind of player who can not only clear Nightmare! at all but 100% Hell's Arena while taking no damage, all reliably, but not only is that a very demanding skill requirement but it also means you can't fight the Apostle reliably unless you're playing on the right difficulty and aren't playing on any of the Angel Challenges that prevents access to Hell's Arena. So lots of possible run types can't do it reliably.

Anyway, the Apostle is kind of hinted at if you beat Angel of 100 or Archangel of 666, as normally clearing them will be considered a 'partial' victory and you'll get a message implying you didn't really win properly and need to figure out 'the mystery' of Dragonslayer and Berserk Armor. I've said this before, but I'll repeat it; I'm not a fan of how this message is handled, as Dragonslayer and Berserk Armor are so rare it's entirely possible to simply never see either of them, multiple successful Angel of 100 runs in a row. This was especially annoying in 0.9.9.7, where you couldn't pick up the Berserk Armor at all unless you were equipped with Dragonslayer, and so even if a run generated both, it could place them in the wrong order and so you still couldn't do this whole thing.

Said hint is... almost the entire answer itself for getting the Apostle to spawn. In Angel of 100/Archangel of 666, if you reach the final floor with both equipped, the floor will generate as normal, but then every enemy will die and the Apostle will spawn in; if you then kill the Apostle and exit the floor, the game considers that a 'full' victory and congratulates you on your success.

In other runs, it's slightly more complicated, because the Apostle specifically displaces John Carmack in Hell's Fortress. As such, you will additionally need to jump through the hoop of nuking the Spider Mastermind without dying; simply equipping Dragonslayer and the Berserk Armor isn't enough on its own.

I've yet to get Dragonslayer and the Berserk Armor equipped in a standard run, so I don't actually know what happens when encountering it in Hell's Fortress. The wiki seems to imply it doesn't spawn in enemies to kill in that scenario, but it's possible this is an oversight/omission in the description, not an intentional implication that such doesn't happen. It'd be kind of weird if it didn't have enemies to revive, but, again, I don't know.

The Apostle itself has a pretty solid statline for a boss, with outrageous firepower that's scarily reliable and a decent enough base HP and eyepopping Protection, all backed by Archvile Speed, and even its melee attack is pretty strong, but in practice it's probably the least threatening boss in the game simply because you can't fight it unless you have Dragonslayer and the Berserk Armor equipped.

Since you're constantly Berserking, 40 Plasma damage a shot is actually only 16 damage before other modifiers. That's barely better than the Arena Master's damage, which is itself worse than a plain Archvile. Then there's the Berserk Armor, which will be reducing incoming damage by a further 2 at minimum and can be upwards of 7 damage negated (Albeit only when very low on HP), so actually the Apostle does at best 14 damage a blast. Even if you're not a Marine, don't have ranks in Tough as Nails, don't activate an Envirosuit Pack, etc, the Apostle's real damage will be very manageable.

Its melee damage works out even worse since Berserker Armor gives significant resistance to physical damage types; you're taking 1 damage from its slaps, period.

Similarly, while it has a breathtaking 30 Protection, it won't survive long. Say you have no Brute ranks for some reason; the Dragonslayer will average about 40 damage a swing before Berserk doubles it, so actually it'll average about 80 damage. After Protection, that's about 50 damage per successful hit, killing the Apostle in 5-6 hits. More likely, you have Brute 3 or Brute 5; in the former case, your final damage averages around 68, while in the latter case it averages about 80 damage a hit, so you expect to kill the Apostle in either 4 hits or 3-4 hits.

Even its Speed isn't very impressive since, y'know, Berserking. A non-Scout is only slightly worse at Energy generation while Berserking, and a Scout is exactly equal.

Also contributing to this is its capacity to teleport. If it lacked that, it would be plausible to get into trouble from having to scythe through the legions of dead it's resurrecting while you search for it, but in actuality the Apostle is probably going to teleport atop you before you can even find anybody it's resurrected. (Certainly, that's what happened to me) To be honest, I've sometimes wondered what the devs imagined teleportation would do for an enemy's threat profile: it seems unlikely that it's intended how prone it is to making them less threatening, but I've never been able to come up with a plausible guess for how it could've been imagined to add to an enemy's threatingness.

Taken altogether, my experience of popping it very fast, before I was ever in any danger? That's pretty much the expected outcome.

So that's funny.

I do find it interesting how the Apostle is a special hidden boss that can spawn into Angel of 100/Archangel of 666. I wish it was handled better, but it is interesting. This kind of 'plain long mode' tends to be reluctant to have this type of Special Event content in it.

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Next time, we cover basic Angel Challenges.

See you then.