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

Angel of Darkness of course is not allowed to pick itself as a secondary, but otherwise has access to all secondary options... even if those options won't let you select Angel of Darkness as secondary... weird.

An extremely unnecessary refresher on Angel of Darkness:

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.

Also, I'm not sure I've ever actually started a dual-challenge run where Angel of Darkness was my initial choice. It's possible I have and have just forgotten in the over-a-decade since I first got into Doom Roguelike, but I doubt it. So... this is Speculation Time!

That said, since Angel of Darkness is a primary and secondary, one of these combos I've already covered, The... one I've already said I definitely haven't tried... so yeah...

Angel of 100

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

I think I might've tried this combo, actually? Maybe? I know I definitely considered it, since there was a long period where it was literally impossible for me to do a Nightmare! Angel of 100 run but I kind of wanted to see what a Nightmare!-like experience would be like in Angel of 100, but it's been something like a decade since I was thinking of this, so I'm not completely sure whether I did or not. If I tried it, I must've died pretty quick.

With 0.9.9.8 letting you save even on Nightmare! this particular appeal no longer exists, but hey, it's still something to consider if you want Nightmare!-like gameplay in Angel of 100 but want a less aggressive difficulty curve. I'm pretty sure Darkness+Angel of 100 on Hurt Me Plenty is overall harder than 'plain' Angel of 100 on Nightmare! difficulty, mind, but maybe you're really intimidated by early Barons and whatnot?

Ultimately, I'm doubtful of the fun factor, just because Darkness is so anti-fun in general.

Angel of Light Travel

Effect: Doomguy has only 5 slots for carrying items, but he generates 20% more Energy per game tick.

I hate the very idea of this combo.

The core of my issue is that Angel of Light Travel fundamentally makes floor objects a much more constantly relevant point, where retreating to heal or pick up new ammo or a replacement Armor or Medpack or whatever can come up pretty readily, and then Angel of Darkness means you have to juggle all that information 100% in your head and then blunder around trying to re-find whatever it is you went back for at all. That's not an interesting challenge, that's just a toxic anti-fun experience where most of the 'challenge' comes from humans not having an eidetic memory. Or you just write things down or take photos with your smartphone or otherwise go through an extra hassle to basically ignore the Darkness-induced mental load, at which point it's just time-wasting hassle.

That's in part commentary on how absurdly awful the 'tiles are not remembered' aspect of Angel of Darkness is, but Angel of Light Travel pushes it way more to the front.

No thanks. I don't expect to ever give this a shot. I can't recommend readers give it a try, either.

Angel of Impatience

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

I still don't get why Impatience+Darkness is invalid, but Darkness+Impatience is valid. Did they just miss that they'd done that?

This isn't as absurdly bad as Angel of Light Travel about sounding like a horrible combo with Darkness on the face of it, but Impatience... also forces you to go back for stuff more than usual, so it still drags the issue to the forefront a lot more.

No thanks.

Angel of Confidence

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

I dunno, maybe I'd like it more than 'plain' Darkness if I tried it. I haven't, I don't want to. Sorry, not sorry!

Angel of Purity

Effect: Powerups do nothing.

See the Angel of Purity dual-Challenge post for my commentary on this combo.

Angel of Red Alert

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

This is another dual-Challenge that just sounds amazingly horrible on the face of it. Imagine finding the stairs immediately, then going exploring for fights and loot, then when you go back for the stairs you fumble around in the darkness and get blown up not because you didn't budget enough time to reach them but because you slightly-but-crucially misremembered the positioning/layout and wasted an unexpectedly large amount of time! Yikes! Awful!

No thanks, probably never trying this.

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 sounds like one of the more appealingly interesting Darkness combos? Masochism removes a huge amount of incentive to end up going back for stuff on the floor, and since levels come faster in Darkness that means Masochism heal-based level-ups come faster. I can imagine maybe enjoying juggling the tension between 'try to optimize for experience' and 'try to optimize for HP', actually.

...

I probably will never give it a try, honestly (I really, really don't like Angel of Darkness), but if my paragraph sounds fun to you, I can totally understand why you might give it a try.

Angel of Overconfidence

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

See what I said about Confidence.

...

Yes, I really don't have much to say about the Darkness Challenges. I'm only doing a post for thoroughness' sake, sorry.

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Next time, we wrap up dual-Challenges with the Angel of Humanity ones.

See you then.