Doom Roguelike Analysis: Angel of Pacifism Dual Challenges (0.9.9.7/0.9.9.8)

Compared to the weapon-specializing Challenges, Pacifism loses access to Angel of Red Alert for some reason. I have no idea why that is. They do admittedly both heavily encourage beelining for the stairs?

Anyway, all the Challenges in this post of course labor under the following:

Doomguy is unable to attack. Every third staircase descended gives a Level-up. 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.

 

Run! Run for the stairs! Faster! FASTER!!

Angel of 100

Effect: Completely removes all fixed floor generation cases, with the game ending upon completing your 100th floor.

I've tried this combo exactly once and keep meaning to get back to it. It really feels like the most meaningfully interesting possibly combo with Angel of Pacifism (Among other points, you can actually get a good number of level-ups), but it's also so brutal and luck-based, even more so than regular Pacifism, that motivating myself to actually do it again is difficult.

Angel of Impatience

Effect: Medpacks, Envirosuit Packs, and Phase Devices are immediately used on pickup, like Powerups.

I've never given this combo a try, as it just sounds really miserable and RNG-based. A non-Pacifism run can respond to Impatience's effects by killing enemies more cautiously, retreating to found Medpacks when low on HP, etc. Pacifism is a lot more at the mercy of the RNG, with limited ability to play around Impatience's effects.

Angel of Confidence

Effect: You start the game in Deimos 1. (ie floor 9)

Reminder that you'll still be Level 1. Also, Confidence's starting gear is mostly weapons, so Pacifism doesn't get much benefit out of that.

You'll at least be past the Phobos Anomaly, and thus the ambush there. I find the ambush is one of the roughest parts of Angel of Pacifism if I don't get lucky with an early Phase Device (Or I do get one, but it just dumps me back in the starting room), so I guess this combo has that going for it.

More subtle is the aspect of map type distribution. Open, readily-navigated map designs are skewed to later in a run, which is noteworthy since Angel of Pacifism runs are readily ruined by chokepoints. While chokepoint tunnels never become impossible for the game to generate, you are far more likely to encounter them in Phobos than in Deimos or especially Hell. I kind of suspect Angel of Confidence+Pacifism would have a higher win rate, all else being equal, than just Angel of Pacifism, given this.

I personally haven't done this combo much, but I don't enjoy Angel of Pacifism in general. That's really the main thing.

Angel of Purity

Effect: Powerups do nothing.

I'm genuinely unsure how impactful this really is for Angel of Pacifism. On the one hand, Pacifism absolutely cares about Powerups for healing, finding the stairs faster, and the defensive benefits of Berserk and Invulnerability, but on the other hand Pacifism often should be skipping Powerups anyway. Normally if you see a Small Health Globe while there's enemies about, you can kill the enemies and then pick up the Globe to offset some or all the damage you took, with the healing being 'free', but for a Pacifism run you have almost no ability to arrange enemy deaths and so going for healing objects when enemies are 'locked on' to you can easily be a net negative, where you end up lower on HP than you would if you'd ignored the object and kept running for the stairs or cover. This is especially so early in a run, where a lot of Powerups you see will be Small Health Globes, but even as more impactful Powerups come into play it can still be pretty clearly a mistake to eg run down a Large Health Globe, if the diversion costs you at least 100% of your base HP. (In the sense of eg losing 60% on the way to the Globe, then another 60% before you get to the stairs or through a door or whatever)

So is this really all that much harder than plain Pacifism? My suspicion is 'yes', but I'm not actually sure in practice.

Angel of Darkness

Effect: Doomguy's base line of sight is reduced by 2 tiles (ie from 8 to 6), the game doesn't display tiles not currently in line of sight, and corpses Doomguy can't currently see have a chance to resurrect periodically. By extension, 'You feel relatively safe now' will never display. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations. Experience is gained twice as fast.

Note that Angel of Darkness' experience modifier does not affect the level-ups Pacifism provides every third floor. You don't have them occur more often, or have them give two levels at a time, or anything like that. It only affects the experience you get when enemies die. This unfortunately means Angel of Darkness giving an experience boost is pretty worthless to Angel of Pacifism; when Pacifism gives a level, it simply kicks you to exactly the experience amount needed for your next level. It thus doesn't matter whether you had 0 experience points or were 80% of the way to the next level when you descended the stairs, they both result in you leveling up and being 0% of the way to the following level.

This might seem a strange thing to point out since Pacifism denies you the ability to kill enemies for experience, but, well, that's not actually true. Pacifism disables your primary methods of delivering damage, but you can still use eg Shockwave Packs, and enemies can still get themselves killed by walking through Acid or Lava. I have in fact had a couple of Pacifism runs where I successfully baited so many Pinkies to their fluid-based deaths that I actually gained a level.

Alas, since Pacifism's level-ups functionally ignore experience values, there's a pretty limited window for this type of 'extra' levelup to occur. Jumping from level 1 to level 2 off vault Pinkies being baited into Acid is luck-based but pretty easy to do if you get enough Pinkies on a floor with hostile fluids. Arranging to jump from level 5 to level 6 within three floors using only environmental kills and the handful of non-weapon offenses available to the player is much closer to impossible. Angel of Darkness doubling kill experience makes it that bit more realistic to get such an 'extra' level-up, but... still not liable to happen all that often.

Tacking Angel of Darkness atop Angel of Pacifism is actually pretty low-impact in general. Enemies reviving automatically largely doesn't matter, because you have limited ability to kill enemies and enemy deaths that do occur are pretty likely to leave behind no bodies. (eg Pinkies running through Acid or Lava) The reduced vision range loses its most important implication, because you can't fire weapons anyway, making the reduction in your maximum effective range irrelevant. The game not displaying tiles not currently in vision isn't very important, because Pacifism is already skewed toward 'never look back', where you're generally just going to descend the stairs the instant you see them, and most items will be picked up immediately or ignored forever. The loss of vision is hurtful, making it easier to make navigation errors and more likely you miss something useful because you don't see it at all, but Angel of Pacifism is the Angel Challenge that least minds Angel of Darkness being stacked atop it. So I guess that's one way to consider dipping your toes in Angel of Darkness, if you're already pretty fond of Angel of Pacifism?

Angel of Masochism

Effect: Almost all healing fails to increase HP. (The Marine's Vampyre Mastery still functions) Gaining a level heals Doomguy to 200%.

This combo is pretty brutal in the early game; outside Pacifism, levelups normally occur quickly and frequently in the early game. Reaching Level 6 in time for the Phobos Anomaly on Ultraviolence is pretty normal if you're hitting all the Special Levels, which means 5 levels in 10 floors (7 regular floors, 3 Special Levels), or put another way an average of one levelup every 2 floors. Angel of Pacifism slowing that to only every third floor giving a level-up means Masochism's level-up heals are painfully far apart in the early game.

I've personally never gotten this combo to the Phobos Anomaly, so... I'm pretty sure it's just miserable in general, but it's possible it's actually less bad in the late game than either Challenge alone?

Angel of Overconfidence

Effect: You start the game in Hell 1. (ie floor 17)

See basically everything I said about Angel of Confidence.

Pacifism+Overconfidence is pretty easy to get a win on, in the sense that a run is so quick you can just keep trying until you get lucky, and it really won't take that long. I personally find the whole thing unsatisfying; a regular Pacifism run feels very luck-based already, but with Overconfidence it feels like what elements of skill-based long-term planning Angel of Pacifism does have are squashed into irrelevance. The trivialness of getting a win through repetitive attempts means victory doesn't even feel like something you earned. So... unsatisfying.

--------------------------------------------

Next time, we cover Angel of Max Carnage dual-Challenges.

See you then.